As is well known, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an opium addict. He took opium in the form of laudanum, that is to say tincture of opium in alcohol, which he drank by the pint. In addition, he was no mean bibber of claret; not a 21-unit-a-week man (or whatever the latest safe level of consumption is), but more like an all-you-can-drink man.
Several witnesses testified to his morning shakes and sweats, which improved after his first laudanum of the day, and in general this has been taken as evidence of his addiction to opium. However, it seems to me more likely that he was suffering from the withdrawal effects of alcohol. The trouble for literary types is that alcohol is a good deal less romantic than opium, and Coleridge was nothing if not Romantic.
His poem “The Pains of Sleep” has often been taken also as a description of what were called “opium dreams.” I think, however, that Coleridge’s unpleasant dreams were more likely to have been the consequence of alcoholic excess than of his consumption of opium. Is there any of us who has not tossed and turned after drinking too much, and dreamed vividly and disturbingly? I don’t want to be too autobiographical, but I certainly have. Coleridge drank so much, indeed, that he might well have had the DT’s (delirium tremens).
In his little preface to the poem “Kubla Khan: Or, a Vision in a Dream,” Coleridge tells us that in 1797, “the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm between Porlock and Linton . . . In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne [laudanum] had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment he was reading this sentence . . . ’Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto . . . And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed within a wall.’’’
Coleridge says he composed the poem in his sleep, committing it to paper when he woke. From thence came the famous lines, bubbling up from his subconscious genius: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure dome decree . . ./So twice five miles of fertile ground/With walls and towers were girdled round.”
Unfortunately, a man from Porlock called on business and interrupted the transcription of the lines, which Coleridge then forgot, which explains (according to Coleridge) why the poem was never completed. Actually, throughout his life Coleridge failed to complete quite a lot, even without men from Porlock to interrupt him.
But equally unfortunately, and brilliant as he was, Coleridge was never very wedded to the truth, and the story about the man from Porlock has been shown to be not merely untrue but a lie. The chief object of Coleridge’s romanticism was always himself.
In “The Pains of Sleep,” Coleridge tells us, with his usual liberal use of exclamation marks that are supposed to tell us how deeply he felt and suffered, that he was prey to: “Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!/And shame and terror over all!”
Towards the end of the poem, Coleridge asks why he should have suffered such horrible visions and emotions, more appropriate to evil men: “Such griefs with such men well agree,/But wherefore, wherefore, fall on me?”
I think the answer is obvious: too much claret, dear STC, too much claret.
Is there any of us who has not tossed and turned after drinking too much, and dreamed vividly and disturbingly? I don’t want to be too autobiographical, but I certainly have