Artistic Immortality as an Objet Petit a: The Subject of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”

Abstract

This study presents a psychoanalytical reading of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” having eye on Žižek’s theory of the subject. “Kubla Khan” contains a host of components providing illustration of Coleridge’s psychological status. In such case, Žižekian approach to psychoanalysis could provide a suitable paradigm for an analytical reading of the poem. The works of Žižek conducted disputatious re-articulations of the subject/object, the displacement of an objet petit a (object of desire) with object-cause of desire, and parallax. Žižek, like Hegel, accentuates the one-to-one relationship of the subject and the object while introducing parallax and the ticklish subject which are later followed by tickling object. It is thus possible to illustrate the psychoanalytical status of Coleridge in the course of writing “Kubla Khan.” The poem pictures a path to immortality while it is in search to immortalize its poet too. In this study it is demonstrated how Coleridge followed his objet petit a, which is ‘artistic immortality,’ in the lines of “Kubla Khan.”