Information AboutKubla Khan |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT KUBLA KHAN | |
| 1816 works | |
| british poems | |
| works of samuel taylor coleridge | |
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''Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment.'' is a famous Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge , which takes its title from the Mongol and Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty . Coleridge claimed he wrote the poem in the autumn of 1797 at a farmhouse near Exmoor , England, but it may have been composed on one of a number of other visits to the farm. It also may have been revised a number of times before it was first published in 1816. The poem's opening lines are often quoted, and it introduces the name Xanadu (or Shangdu, the summer palace of Kublai Khan):
Coleridge claimed that the poem was inspired by an . However, it is important to remember that inspiration for this poem also comes from Marco Polo 's description of Shangdu and Kublai Khan from his book '' Il Milione '', which was included in Samuel Purchas ' ''Pilgrimage'', Vol. XI, 231. When he declared himself emperor, the historical Kublai claimed he had the Mandate Of Heaven , a traditional Chinese concept of rule by divine permission, and therefore gained absolute control over an entire nation. Between warring and distributing the wealth his grandfather Genghis Khan had won, Kublai spent his summers in Xandu (better known now as Shangdu, or Xanadu) and had his subjects build him a home suitable for a son of God. This story is described in the first two lines of the poem, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree” (1-2). The end of the third paragraph gives us another close-up view of Kubla. At his home, Kublai had on hand some ten thousand horses, which he used as a means of displaying his power; only he and those to whom he gave explicit permission for committing miscellaneous acts of valour was allowed to drink their milk. Hence the closing image of “the milk of Paradise.” (54)
BORGES AND KUBLA KHAN In his essay "Coleridge's Dream", the famous Argentine essayist and short story author Jorge Luis Borges notes that twenty years following the final revision of the poem, a fourteenth-century Persian work called ''The Compendium of Histories'' by Rashid al-Din was published in English for the first time. This work included the detail that the inspiration for Kubla Khan's palace was given to him in a dream. Near the end of the essay Borges writes,
It should be noted that although many of Borges' works play with the intermixing of historical fact and fictional referencial history, he was always scrupulously accurate and honest in his non-fictional writings (see the introduction to ''Selected Non-fictions''). KUBLA KHAN IN POPULAR CULTURE In Orson Welles ' famous film '' Citizen Kane '', the main character's vast, Byzantine estate is called Xanadu — and was based on real-life newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst 's resplendent home ( Hearst Castle ) at San Simeon, California . The Canadian Progressive Rock Power Trio , Rush , wrote and recorded a song called " Xanadu " based on Coleridge's work. The song appears on their 1977 album, '' A Farewell To Kings '', and it offers a much more pessimistic take on the poem's paradisaical vision of immortality. The American hard-rock band Van Halen's song "Pleasure Dome" from their 1991 album '' For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge '' was actually based on Rush's " Xanadu ", and not on the Coleridge poem. The song " Welcome To The Pleasuredome ", the epic title track to the 1984 Album by the British dance band Frankie Goes To Hollywood is also inspired by Coleridge's poem and features the opening two lines spoken in recitation. The poem, and its nonexistent second part, also plays a central role in the plot of Douglas Adams ' novel '' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency '' as the ramblings of a ghost who accidentally created the human race. EXTERNAL LINKS
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