Can Someone Please Finish Writing This Poem Fragment?

[Mal12345]

The poem is Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge: composed in a dream, it's writing interrupted by a fateful knock on the door by the man from Porlock, and never to be finished.

Here's the fragment of Kubla Khan:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

 

[SilkRoad]

If anyone shows up who can write as well as Coleridge, they can give it a go. I don't think that's too likely.

 

[Mal12345]

If anyone shows up who can write as well as Coleridge, they can give it a go. I don't think that's too likely.

Just make something up and improve on it later. This fragment is introductory to a long epic typical of Coleridge. It introduces the location of the poem, and some of the main characters, at least by name: Kubla, the Abyssinian Maid, and the wizard with flashing eyes. Basically that's all there is to that part.

The next question is, where was Coleridge going with this? A love triangle, and a plot to conquer Japan foiled by the wizard who was in love with Kubla's Abyssinian Maid. It works out well in the end for the wizard.

 

[Mal12345]

I've been reading this article on the poem (Wiki of course...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubla_Khan

While reading this article, with its theories about the meaning of this poem, sometimes I just want to yell BULLSHIT! At other times, I just mumble "bullshit... bullshit..." as I read from paragraph to paragraph.

This epic poem's themes are basically two: sex, and violence, with a little digression into the value of opium as an analgesic and intoxicant. How do I get that? The first two are obvious from the fragment. Every line of the poem is steeped in symbolic sexual imagery. The Abyssinian Maid serves as a source of inspiration - but that inspiration, in reality, was the opiate which induced the sleep that produced Coleridge's dream.

 

[Lark]

I know this poem, and I like it, although I like Abou Ben Adhem or Abdul abul bu amir (I saw the cartoon growing up) better. Just my taste. I also like songs of sour dow too, the cremation of sam magee. And everyone likes If and Desiderata, so that's a kind of given.

 

[Mal12345]

I know this poem, and I like it, although I like Abou Ben Adhem or Abdul abul bu amir (I saw the cartoon growing up) better. Just my taste. I also like songs of sour dow too, the cremation of sam magee. And everyone likes If and Desiderata, so that's a kind of given.

Yes, Coleridge is long-winded. But this poem started out so well.

 

[Mal12345]

From Wiki: "One theory says that Kubla Khan is about poetry and the two sections discuss two types of poems."



Why can't they just keep it simple?

Kubla Khan is about having a wild dream, waking up, and writing down the words to a poem composed during the dream. The dream consisted of a wildly fantastical story set in the Far East. There's nothing deep about it, just the usual sex and violence. The story itself is very simple. The wizard tells Kubla that the stars foretell good weather for a Japanese invasion. The invading fleet is then sunk by a typhoon. The wizard predicted the typhoon but lied about it so he could acquire Kubla's mistress for himself.

 

[Ivy]

It's totally plausible, though, if you know more about STC than "romantic poet." He was more of a philosopher and theorist than a poet. I don't find it at all hard to believe that his dream led to thoughts about the goals and genesis of different types of poetry.

 

[Ivy]

As for why they can't just keep it simple- the Romantic poets didn't keep it simple. They were all about layers of meaning and the most esoteric philosophy they could muster up.

 

[SilkRoad]

I've never felt that the poem is necessarily incomplete in itself. I know about the person from Porlock and so on, but if I have understood correctly, Coleridge had a dream, but it wasn't like he composed the poem IN THE DREAM. He woke up, started writing a poem about the dream, and then the interruption happened and he realised he'd forgotten the rest of the dream. So he wrote and completely the poem based on what he remembered.

I'm not sure if it is known for certain how all this played out. Coleridge didn't just write very long epic poems like the Ancient Mariner, though. I think Frost at Midnight, another of his great poems, is of a similar length to Kubla Khan.

Incidentally, it is more than likely that the guy with flashing eyes and floating hair in the final section is Coleridge himself. He'd been taking opium, so he'd on honeydew fed and drunk the milk of paradise.

 

[Mal12345]

It's totally plausible, though, if you know more about STC than "romantic poet." He was more of a philosopher and theorist than a poet. I don't find it at all hard to believe that his dream led to thoughts about the goals and genesis of different types of poetry.

The reason I'm looking at it this way is that Coleridge didn't think anything, he dreamed the poem and then started writing down the words he remembered from the dream verbatim.

Stephen R. Donaldson reported having a similar experience in which he dreamed that he was writing an entire chapter to his latest novel, so when he woke up he had nothing more to do than transcribe the words from the dream.

 

[Mal12345]

As for why they can't just keep it simple- the Romantic poets didn't keep it simple. They were all about layers of meaning and the most esoteric philosophy they could muster up.

Yes, that's easy to see. It's just not a meta-poem, that is, a poetry about different types of poems. The very idea that Coleridge had a meta-poetry dream is a real knee-slapper to me.

 

[SilkRoad]

Ok, here is Coleridge's own commentary on what happened. I think you could interpret this various ways (ie. he actually composed lines in the dream, or he wrote lines down based on images he remembered from the dream - not quite the same thing.) And some have thought the whole story might be a fabrication...


In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimage:' 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.' The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his now small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter:

Then all the charm
Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes--
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo! he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. but the to-morrow is yet to come. As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.

 

[Mal12345]

I've never felt that the poem is necessarily incomplete in itself. I know about the person from Porlock and so on, but if I have understood correctly, Coleridge had a dream, but it wasn't like he composed the poem IN THE DREAM. He woke up, started writing a poem about the dream, and then the interruption happened and he realised he'd forgotten the rest of the dream. So he wrote and completely the poem based on what he remembered.

I'm not sure if it is known for certain how all this played out. Coleridge didn't just write very long epic poems like the Ancient Mariner, though. I think Frost at Midnight, another of his great poems, is of a similar length to Kubla Khan.

Incidentally, it is more than likely that the guy with flashing eyes and floating hair in the final section is Coleridge himself. He'd been taking opium, so he'd on honeydew fed and drunk the milk of paradise.

That's interesting and plausible that Coleridge injected himself into a subconscious dream symbol. In fact, I think that's actually correct. No wonder he, I mean the warlock, won the girl.

 

[Mal12345]

Ok, here is Coleridge's own commentary on what happened. I think you could interpret this various ways (ie. he actually composed lines in the dream, or he wrote lines down based on images he remembered from the dream - not quite the same thing.) And some have thought the whole story might be a fabrication...


In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimage:' 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.' The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his now small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter:

Then all the charm
Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes--
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo! he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. but the to-morrow is yet to come. As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.

I believe that's straight out of the Wiki article I just read. Psychology has a name for the bolded phenomenon, but I forgot what it is called. Something like a "heaven" something-or-other, not intended as literally from heaven. Not "divine inspiration."

 

[Mal12345]

I've never felt that the poem is necessarily incomplete in itself. I know about the person from Porlock and so on, but if I have understood correctly, Coleridge had a dream, but it wasn't like he composed the poem IN THE DREAM. He woke up, started writing a poem about the dream, and then the interruption happened and he realised he'd forgotten the rest of the dream. So he wrote and completely the poem based on what he remembered.

I'm not sure if it is known for certain how all this played out.

If there was more to the dream then, since Coleridge intended to finish the poem, it's now incomplete, a fragment of what would have gone on for something like 200-300 lines. A critic of the time even lambasted Coleridge for writing something so trivial and incomplete: "The fault of Mr Coleridge is, that he comes to no conclusion ... from an excess of capacity, he does little or nothing." What a pity.

 

[Ivy]

Why are you assuming that he dreamed the words verbatim?

 

[Mal12345]

Why are you assuming that he dreamed the words verbatim?

He dreamed the words as a dream narrative while seeing the images at the same time.

I used to have so many of those when I was young, but not from drugs.

 

[Ivy]

I don't think that has been established. He wrote that account almost twenty years after the fact, and even the account doesn't really say outright that's what happened. It's never how I've interpreted his account, anyway.

 

[Mal12345]

I don't think that has been established. He wrote that account almost twenty years after the fact, and even the account doesn't really say outright that's what happened. It's never how I've interpreted his account, anyway.

Well I can tell you that such dreams are far more entertaining than movies and television. And I have also written a sci-fi book in a dream, plotted out the entire thing while dream-writing. But I think I woke up before finishing it.