Editing Kubla Khan (section)

==Critical response==
[[File:George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron by Richard Westall (2).jpg|thumb|right|[[Lord Byron]], second-generation Romantic poet who encouraged Coleridge's publication of "Kubla Khan", by [[Richard Westall]]]]

The reception of "Kubla Khan" has changed substantially over time. Initial reactions to the poem were lukewarm, despite praise from notable figures like Lord Byron and [[Walter Scott]]. The work went through multiple editions, but the poem, as with his others published in 1816 and 1817, had poor sales. Initial reviewers saw some aesthetic appeal in the poem, but considered it unremarkable overall. As critics began to consider Coleridge's body of work as whole, however, "Kubla Khan" was increasingly singled out for praise. Positive evaluation of the poem in the 19th and early 20th centuries treated it as a purely aesthetic object, to be appreciated for its evocative sensory experience.<ref name="Britannica"/> Later criticism continued to appreciate the poem, but no longer considered it as transcending concrete meaning, instead interpreting it as a complex statement on poetry itself and the nature of individual [[Genius (literature)|genius]].<ref name="Britannica">{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Kubla Khan: poem by Coleridge |encyclopedia=Britannica |date=12 September 2023 |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kubla-Khan |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:William Hazlitt self-portrait (1802).jpg|thumb|left|Self-portrait of [[William Hazlitt]], Romantic critic who wrote the first negative review of "Kubla Khan"]]

=== During Coleridge's lifetime ===
Literary reviews at the time of the collection's first publication generally dismissed it.<ref name="Ashton p. 112">Ashton 1997 p. 112</ref> At the time of the poem's publication, a new generation of critical magazines, including ''Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine'', ''Edinburgh Review'', and ''Quarterly Review'', had been established, with critics who were more provocative than those of the previous generation. These critics were hostile to Coleridge due to a difference of political views, and due to a [[Puffery#Puff piece|puff piece]] written by Byron about the ''Christabel'' publication.<ref>Jackson 1970 pp. 8–10</ref> The first of the negative reviews was written by [[William Hazlitt]], literary critic and Romantic writer, who criticized the fragmentary nature of the work. Hazlitt said that the poem "comes to no conclusion" and that "from an excess of capacity, [Coleridge] does little or nothing" with his material.<ref name="Hazlitt1816" /> The only positive quality which Hazlitt notes is a certain aesthetic appeal: he says "we could repeat these lines to ourselves not the less often for not knowing the meaning of them," revealing that "Mr Coleridge can write better ''nonsense'' verse than any man in English."<ref name="Hazlitt1816">William Hazlitt, 2 June 1816 review in the ''Examiner'', Holmes 1998 qtd p. 434</ref> As other reviews continued to be published in 1816, they, too, were lukewarm at best. The poem received limited praise for "some playful thoughts and fanciful imagery,"<ref>William Roberts, August 1816 review in ''British Review,'' qtd. in Jackson 1970 p. 225</ref> and was said to "have much of the Oriental richness and harmony"<ref name=":6">July 1816 anonymous review in the ''Augustan Review,'' qtd. in Jackson 1995 p. 266</ref> but was generally considered unremarkable.<ref name=":5">July 1816 anonymous review in the ''Anti-Jacobin'', qtd. in Jackson p. 221</ref>

These early reviews generally accepted Coleridge's story of composing the poem in a dream, but dismissed its relevance, and observed that many others have had similar experiences.<ref name=":5" /><ref name="Jackson p. 212">Josiah Conder, June 1816 ''Eclectic Review'', qtd in Jackson p. 212</ref><ref name=":7">Anonymous review for the July 1816 ''Literary Panorama'', qtd. in Jackson 1970 pp. 215–216</ref> More than one review suggested that the dream had not merited publication.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" /> One reviewer questioned whether Coleridge had really dreamed his composition, suggesting that instead he likely wrote it rapidly upon waking.<ref>January 1817 anonymous review in ''Monthly Review,'' qtd. in Jackson 1970 p. 246</ref>[[File:James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence.jpg|thumb|right|[[James Henry Leigh Hunt|Leigh Hunt]], second-generation Romantic poet who praised "Kubla Khan"]]

More positive appraisals of the poem began to emerge when Coleridge's contemporaries evaluated his body of work overall. In October 1821, [[Leigh Hunt]] singled out Kubla Khan as one of Coleridge's best works, praising the poem's evocative, dreamlike beauty.<ref name=":8">Jackson 1970 qtd. p. 475-6. Hunt said: "["Kubla Khan"] is a voice and a vision, an everlasting tune in our mouths, a dream fit for Cambuscan and all his poets, a dance of pictures such as Giotto or Cimabue, revived and re-inspired, would have made for a Storie of Old Tartarie, a piece of the invisible world made visible by a sun at midnight and sliding before our eyes...Justly is it thought that to be able to present such images as these to the mind, is to realise the world they speak of. We could repeat such verses as the following down a green glade, a whole summer's morning."</ref> An 1830 review of Coleridge's ''Poetical Works'' similarly praised for its "melodious versification," describing it as "perfect music." An 1834 review, published shortly after Coleridge's death, also praised "Kubla Khan"{{-'}}s musicality. These three later assessments of "Kubla Khan" responded more positively to Coleridge's description of composing the poem in a dream, as an additional facet of the poetry.<ref name=":8" />

=== Victorian period ===
Victorian critics praised the poem and some examined aspects of the poem's background. John Sheppard, in his analysis of dreams titled ''On Dreams'' (1847), lamented Coleridge's drug use as getting in the way of his poetry but argued: "It is probable, since he writes of having taken an 'anodyne,' that the 'vision in a dream' arose under some excitement of that same narcotic; but this does not destroy, even as to his particular case, the evidence for a wonderfully inventive action of the mind in sleep; for, whatever were the exciting cause, the fact remains the same".<ref>Sheppard 1847 p. 170</ref> [[Hall Caine]], in his 1883 survey of the original critical response to ''Christabel'' and "Kubla Khan", praised the poem and declared: "It must surely be allowed that the adverse criticism on 'Christabel' and 'Kubla Khan' which is here quoted is outside all tolerant treatment, whether of raillery or of banter. It is difficult to attribute such false verdict to pure and absolute ignorance. Even when we make all due allowance for the prejudices of critics whose only possible enthusiasm went out to 'the pointed and fine propriety of Poe,' we can hardly believe that the exquisite art which is among the most valued on our possessions could encounter so much garrulous abuse without the criminal intervention of personal malignancy."<ref>Caine 1883 p. 65</ref> In a review of H. D. Traill's analysis of Coleridge in the "English Men of Letters", an anonymous reviewer wrote in the 1885 ''Westminster Review'': "Of 'Kubla Khan,' Mr. Traill writes: 'As to the wild dream-poem 'Kubla Khan,' it is hardly more than a psychological curiosity, and only that perhaps in respect of the completeness of its metrical form.' Lovers of poetry think otherwise, and listen to these wonderful lines as the voice of Poesy itself."<ref>Anonymous 1885. p. 283</ref>

Critics at the end of the 19th century favoured the poem and placed it as one of Coleridge's best works. When discussing ''Christabel'', ''Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and "Kubla Khan", an anonymous reviewer in the October 1893 ''[[The Church Quarterly Review]]'' wrote, "In these poems Coleridge achieves a mastery of language and rhythm which is nowhere else conspicuously evident in him."<ref>Anonymous, ''[[The Church Quarterly Review]]'', 1894 p. 175.</ref> In 1895, Andrew Lang reviewed the ''Letters of Coleridge'' in addition to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", ''Christabel'' and ''Rime of the Ancient Mariner'', saying: "all these poems are 'miraculous;' all seem to have been 'given' by the dreaming 'subconscious self' of Coleridge. The earliest pieces hold no promise of these marvels. They come from what is oldest in Coleridge's nature, his uninvited and irrepressible intuition, magical and rare, vivid beyond common sight of common things, sweet beyond sound of things heard."<ref>Land 1895 p. 284</ref> G E Woodberry, in 1897, said that ''Christabel'', ''Rime of the Ancient Mariner'', and "Kubla Khan" "are the marvelous creations of his genius. In these it will be said there is both a world of nature new created, and a dramatic method and interest. It is enough for the purpose of the analysis if it be granted that nowhere else in Coleridge's work, except in these and less noticeably in a few other instances, do these high characteristics occur."<ref>Woodberry 1897 p. 3849</ref> In speaking of the three poems, he stated they "have besides that wealth of beauty in detail, of fine diction, of liquid melody, of sentiment, thought, and image, which belong only to poetry of the highest order, and which are too obvious to require any comment. 'Kubla Khan' is a poem of the same kind, in which the mystical effect is given almost wholly by landscape."<ref>Woodberry 1897 p. 3851</ref>

=== 1920s–30s ===
The 1920s contained analysis of the poem that emphasised the poem's power. In ''Road to Xanadu'' (1927), a book length study of ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and "Kubla Khan", John Livingston Lowes said that the poems were "two of the most remarkable poems in English".<ref>Lowes 1927 p. 3</ref> When turning to the background of the works, he argued, "Coleridge as Coleridge, be it said at once, is a secondary moment to our purpose; it is the significant process, not the man, which constitutes our theme. But the amazing ''modus operandi'' of his genius, in the fresh light which I hope I have to offer, becomes the very abstract and brief chronicle of the procedure of the creative faculty itself."<ref>Lowes 1927 pp. 4–5</ref> After breaking down the various aspects of the poem, Lowes stated, "with a picture of unimpaired and thrilling vividness, the fragment ends. And with it ends, for all save Coleridge, the dream. 'The earth hath bubbles as the water has, and this is of them.' For 'Kubla Khan' is as near enchantment, I suppose, as we are like to come in this dull world. And over it is cast the glamour, enhanced beyond all reckoning in the dream, of the remote in time and space – that visionary presence of a vague and gorgeous and mysterious Past which brooded, as Coleridge read, above the inscrutable Nile, and domed pavilions in Cashmere, and the vanished stateliness of Xanadu."<ref>Lowes 1927 pp. 409–410</ref> He continued by describing the power of the poem: "For none of the things which we have seen – dome, river, chasm, fountain, caves of ice, or floating hair – nor any combination of them holds the secret key to that sense of an incommunicable witchery which pervades the poem. That is something more impalpable by far, into which entered who can tell what traceless, shadowy recollections...The poem is steeped in the wonder of all Coleridge's enchanted voyagings."<ref>Lowes 1927 p. 410</ref> Lowes then concluded about the two works: "Not even in the magical four and fifty lines of 'Kubla Khan' is sheer visualizing energy so intensely exercised as in 'The Ancient Mariner.' But every crystal-clear picture there, is an integral part of a preconceived and consciously elaborated whole...In 'Kubla Khan' the linked and interweaving images irresponsibly and gloriously stream, like the pulsing, fluctuating banners of the North. And their pageant is as aimless as it is magnificent...There is, then...one glory of 'Kubla Khan' and another glory of 'The Ancient Mariner,' as one star differeth from another star in glory."<ref>Lowes 1927 pp. 412–413</ref> George Watson, in 1966, stated that Lowes's analysis of the poems "will stand as a permanent monument to historical criticism."<ref>Watson 1966 p. 11</ref> Also in 1966, Kenneth Burke, declared, "Count me among those who would view this poem both as a marvel, and as 'in principle' ''finished''."<ref>Burke 1986 p. 33</ref>

[[File:T.S. Eliot, 1923.JPG|thumb|right|T. S. Eliot, poet and literary critic]]
[[T. S. Eliot]] attacked the reputation of "Kubla Khan" and sparked a dispute within literary criticism with his analysis of the poem in his essay "Origin and Uses of Poetry" from ''The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism'' (1933): "The way in which poetry is written is not, so far as our knowledge of these obscure matters as yet extends, any clue to its value...The faith in mystical inspiration is responsible for the exaggerated repute of 'Kubla Khan'. The imagery of that fragment, certainly, whatever its origins in Coleridge's reading, sank to the depths of Coleridge's feeling, was saturated, transformed there...and brought up into daylight again."<ref name="Eliot p. 90">Eliot 1975 p. 90</ref> He goes on to explain, "But it is not ''used'': the poem has not been written. A single verse is not poetry unless it is a one-verse poem; and even the finest line draws its life from its context. Organization is necessary as well as 'inspiration'. The re-creation of word and image which happens fitfully in the poetry of such a poet as Coleridge happens almost incessantly with Shakespeare."<ref name="Eliot p. 90"/> Geoffrey Yarlott, in 1967, responds to Eliot to say, "Certainly, the enigmatic personages who appear in the poem...and the vaguely incantatory proper names...appear to adumbrate rather than crystalize the poet's intention. Yet, though generally speaking intentions in poetry are nothing save as 'realized', we are unable to ignore the poem, despite Mr Eliot's strictures on its 'exaggerated repute'."<ref name="Yarlott p. 127">Yarlott 1967 p. 127</ref> He continued, "We may question without end ''what'' it means, but few of us question if the poem is worth the trouble, or whether the meaning is worth the having. While the feeling persists that there is something there which is profoundly important, the challenge to elucidate it proves irresistible."<ref name="Yarlott p. 127"/> However, Lilian Furst, in 1969, countered Yarlott to argue that, "T. S. Eliot's objection to the exaggerated repute of the surrealist "Kubla Khan" is not unjustified. Moreover, the customary criticism of Coleridge as a cerebral poet would seem to be borne out by those poems such as ''This Lime-tree Bower my Prison'' or ''The Pains of Sleep'', which tend more towards a direct statement than an imaginative presentation of personal dilemma."<ref>Furst 1979 p. 189</ref>

=== 1940s–60s ===
During the 1940s and 1950s, critics focused on the technique of the poem and how it relates to the meaning. In 1941, G. W. Knight wrote that "Kubla Khan" "needs no defence. It has a barbaric and oriental magnificence that asserts itself with a happy power and authenticity too often absent from visionary poems set within the Christian tradition."<ref>Knight 1975 p. 213</ref> Humphrey House, in 1953, praised the poem and said of beginning of the poem: "The whole passage is full of life because the verse has both the needed energy and the needed control. The combination of energy and control in the rhythm and sound is so great" and that Coleridge's words "convey so fully the sense of inexhaustible energy, now falling now rising, but persisting through its own pulse".<ref>House 1953 pp. 117–118</ref> Also in 1953, Elisabeth Schneider dedicated her book to analysing the various aspects of the poem, including the various sound techniques. When discussing the quality of the poem, she wrote, "I sometimes think we overwork Coleridge's idea of 'the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities.' I have to come back to it here, however, for the particular flavor of "Kubla Khan", with its air of mystery, is describable in part through that convenient phrase. Yet, the 'reconciliation' does not quite occur either. It is in fact avoided. What we have instead is the very spirit of 'oscillation' itself."<ref name="Schneider p. 91">Schneider 1953 p. 91</ref> Continuing, she said, "The poem is the soul of ambivalence, oscillation's very self; and that is probably its deepest meaning. In creating this effect, form and matter are intricately woven. The irregular and inexact rhymes and varied lengths of the lines play some part. More important is the musical effect in which a smooth, rather swift forward movement is emphasized by the relation of grammatical structure to line and rhyme, yet is impeded and thrown back upon itself even from the beginning".<ref name="Schneider p. 91"/> She then concluded: "Here in these interwoven oscillations dwells the magic, the 'dream,' and the air of mysterious meaning of "Kubla Khan". I question whether this effect was all deliberately {{sic|?|through|reason="thought" would fit better here}} out by Coleridge, though it might have been. It is possibly half-inherent in his subject...What remains is the spirit of 'oscillation,' perfectly poeticized, and possibly ironically commemorative of the author."<ref>Schneider 1967 pp. 92–93</ref> Following in 1959, John Beer described the complex nature of the poem: "'Kubla Khan' the poem is not a meaningless reverie, but a poem so packed with meaning as to render detailed elucidation extremely difficult."<ref>Beer 1962 p. 212</ref> In responding to House, Beer wrote, "That there is an image of energy in the fountain may be accepted: but I cannot agree that it is creative energy of the highest type."<ref>Beer 1962 p. 242</ref>

Critics of the 1960s focused on the reputation of the poem and how it compared to Coleridge's other poems. In 1966, Virginia Radley considered Wordsworth and his sister as an important influence to Coleridge writing a great poem: "Almost daily social intercourse with this remarkable brother and sister seemed to provide the catalyst to greatness, for it is during this period that Coleridge conceived his greatest poems, 'Christabel,' 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' and 'Kubla Khan,' poems so distinctive and so different from his others that many generations of readers know Coleridge solely through them."<ref>Radley 1966 pp. 18–19</ref> She latter added that "Of all the poems Coleridge wrote, three are beyond compare. These three, 'The Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel,' and 'Kubla Khan,' produced an aura which defies definition, but which might be properly be called one of 'natural magic.'"<ref>Radley 1966 p. 57</ref> What sets apart the poem from the others is its "verbal enactment of the creative process" which makes it "unique even among the three poems of high imagination."<ref>Radley 1966 pp. 77–78</ref> To Radley, "the poem is skilfully wrought, as are all the poems of high imagination. The opposites within it are diverse and effectively so. In tone, the poem juxtaposes quiet with noise...Action presents its contrasts also...These seemingly antithetical images combine to demonstrate the proximity of the known and the unknown worlds, the two worlds of Understanding and Imagination."<ref>Radley 1966 p. 80</ref> In concluding about the poem, she argued, "In truth, there are other 'Fears in Solitude' than that written by Coleridge and there are other 'Frosts at Midnight'; but there are no other 'Ancient Mariners' or 'Kubla Khans,' nor are there likely to be. In evaluating Coleridge's poetry, it can readily be seen and accepted that for the poems of high imagination his reputation is eternally made."<ref>Radley 1966 p. 146</ref>

In the same year as Radley, George Watson argued that "The case of 'Kubla Khan' is perhaps the strangest of all – a poem that stands high even in English poetry as a work of ordered perfection is offered by the poet himself, nearly twenty years after its composition, as a fragment. Anyone can accept that a writer's head should be full of projects he will never fulfil, and most writers are cautious enough not to set them down; Coleridge, rashly, did set them down, so that his very fertility has survived as evidence of infertility."<ref>Watson 1966 p. 9</ref> He later argued that the poem "is probably the most original poem about poetry in English, and the first hint outside his notebooks and letters that a major critic lies hidden in the twenty-five-year-old Coleridge."<ref>Watson 1966 p. 122</ref> In conclusion about the poem, Watson stated, "The triumph of 'Kubla Khan,' perhaps, lies in its evasions: it hints so delicately at critical truths while demonstrating them so boldly. The contrasts between the two halves of the poem...So bold, indeed, that Coleridge for once was able to dispense with any language out of the past. It was his own poem, a manifesto. To read it now, with the hindsight of another age, is to feel premonitions of the critical achievement to come...But the poem is in advance, not just of these, but in all probability of any critical statement that survives. It may be that it stands close to the moment of discovery itself."<ref>Watson 1966 p. 130</ref> After responding to Eliot's claims about "Kubla Khan", Yarlott, in 1967, argued that "few of us question if the poem is worth the trouble" before explaining that "The ambiguities inherent in the poem pose a special problem of critical approach. If we restrict ourselves to what is 'given', appealing to the poem as a 'whole', we shall fail probably to resolves its various cruxes. Hence, there is a temptation to look for 'external' influences ... The trouble with all these approaches is that they tend finally to lead ''away'' from the poem itself."<ref>Yarlott 1967 pp. 127–128</ref> When describing specifics, he argued, "The rhythmical development of the stanza, too, though technically brilliant, evokes admiration rather than delight. The unusually heavy stresses and abrupt masculine rhymes impose a slow and sonorous weightiness upon the movement of the iambic octosyllabics which is quite in contrast, say, to the light fast metre of the final stanza where speed of movement matches buoyancy of tone."<ref name="Yarlott p. 129"/> Following in 1968, Walter Jackson Bate called the poem "haunting" and said that it was "so unlike anything else in English".<ref>Bate 1968 p. 75</ref>

=== 1970s–present ===
Criticism during the 1970s and 1980s emphasised the importance of the Preface while praising the work. Norman Fruman, in 1971, argued: "To discuss 'Kubla Khan' as one might any other great poem would be an exercise in futility. For a century and a half its status has been unique, a masterpiece ''sui generis'', embodying interpretive problems wholly its own...It would not be excessive to say that no small part of the extraordinary fame of 'Kubla Khan' inheres in its alleged marvellous conception. Its Preface is world-famous and has been used in many studies of the creative process as a signal instance in which a poem has come to us directly from the unconscious."<ref>Fruman 1971 p. 334</ref>

In 1981, Kathleen Wheeler contrasts the Crewe Manuscript note with the Preface: "Contrasting this relatively factual, literal, and dry account of the circumstances surrounding the birth of the poem with the actual published preface, one illustrates what the latter is not: it is not a literal, dry, factual account of this sort, but a highly literary piece of composition, providing the verse with a certain mystique."<ref>Wheeler 1981 p. 28</ref> In 1985, David Jasper praised the poem as "one of his greatest meditations on the nature of poetry and poetic creation" and argued "it is through irony, also, as it unsettles and undercuts, that the fragment becomes a Romantic literary form of such importance, nowhere more so than in 'Kubla Khan'."<ref>Jasper 1985 pp. 14, 19</ref> When talking about the Preface, Jasper asserted that it "profoundly influenced the way in which the poem has been understood".<ref>Jasper 1985 p. 43</ref> Responding in part to Wheeler in 1986, Charles Rzepka analysed the relationship between the poet and the audience of the poem while describing "Kubla Khan" as one of "Coleridge's three great poems of the supernatural".<ref>Rzepka 1986 pp. 109–110</ref> He continued by discussing the preface: "despite its obvious undependability as a guide to the actual process of the poem's composition, the preface can still, in Wheeler's words, lead us 'to ponder why Coleridge chose to write a preface...' What the preface describes, of course, is not the actual process by which the poem came into being, but an analogue of poetic creation as ''logos'', a divine 'decree' or fiat which transforms the Word into the world."<ref>Rzepka 1986 p. 112</ref>

During the 1990s, critics continued to praise the poem with many critics placing emphasis on what the Preface adds to the poem. David Perkins, in 1990, argued that "Coleridge's introductory note to "Kubla Khan" weaves together two myths with potent imaginative appeal. The myth of the lost poem tells how an inspired work was mysteriously given to the poet and dispelled irrecoverably."<ref name="Perkins p. 39">Perkins 2010 p. 39</ref> Also in 1990, Thomas McFarland stated, "Judging by the number and variety of critical effort to interpret their meaning, there may be no more palpably symbolic poems in all of English literature than "Kubla Khan" and ''The Ancient Mariner''."<ref>McFarland 1990 p. 42</ref> In 1996, Rosemary Ashton stated that the poem was "one of the most famous poems in the language" and claimed the Preface as "the most famous, but probably not the most accurate, preface in literary history."<ref>Ashton 1997 p. 111</ref> Richard Holmes, in 1998, declared the importance of the poem's Preface while describing the reception of the 1816 volume of poems: "However, no contemporary critic saw the larger possible significance of Coleridge's Preface to 'Kubla Khan', though it eventually became one of the most celebrated, and disputed, accounts of poetic composition ever written. Like the letter from the fictional 'friend' in the ''Biographia'', it brilliantly suggests how a compressed fragment came to represent a much larger (and even more mysterious) act of creation".<ref name="Holmes 1998 p. 435">Holmes 1998 p. 435</ref>

In 2002, J. C. C. Mays pointed out that "Coleridge's claim to be a great poet lies in the continued pursuit of the consequences of 'The Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel' and 'Kubla Khan' on several levels."<ref>Mays 2002 p. 91</ref> Adam Sisman, in 2006, questioned the nature of the poem itself: "No one even knows whether it is complete; Coleridge describes it as a 'fragment,' but there is a case for doubting this. Maybe it is not a poem at all. Hazlitt called it 'a musical composition'...Though literary detectives have uncovered some of its sources, it remains difficult to say what the poem is about."<ref>Sisman 2006 p. 193</ref> In describing the merits of the poem and its fragmentary state, he said, "The poem stands for itself: beautiful, sensuous and enigmatic."<ref>Sisman 2006 p. 196</ref> During the same year, [[Jack Stillinger]] wrote that "Coleridge wrote only a few poems of the first rank – perhaps no more than a dozen, all told – and he seems to have taken a very casual attitude toward them...he kept 'Kubla Khan' in manuscript for nearly twenty years before offering it to the public 'rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the grounds of any supposed ''poetic'' merits'".<ref>Stillinger 2010 p. 157</ref> Harold Bloom, in 2010, argued that Coleridge wrote two kinds of poems and that "The daemonic group, necessarily more famous, is the triad of ''The Ancient Mariner'', ''Christabel'', and 'Kubla Khan.'"<ref>Bloom 2010 p. 3</ref> He goes on to explain the "daemonic": "Opium was the avenging daemon or ''alastor'' of Coleridge's life, his dark or fallen angel, his experiential acquaintance with Milton's Satan. Opium was for him what wandering and moral tale-telling became for the Mariner – the personal shape of repetition compulsion. The lust for paradise in 'Kubla Khan,' Geraldine's lust for Christabel – these are manifestations of Coleridge's revisionary daemonization of Milton, these are Coleridge's countersublime. Poetic genius, the genial spirit itself, Coleridge must see as daemonic when it is his own rather than when it is Milton's."<ref>Bloom 2010 p. 14</ref>