Kubla Khan
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"Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" is a 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.
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[edit] History and themes
The poem's opening lines are often quoted, and it introduces the name Xanadu (or Shangdu, the summer palace of Kublai 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.
Coleridge claimed that the poem was inspired by an opium-induced dream (implicit in the poem's subtitle A Vision in a Dream) but that the composition was interrupted by a person from Porlock. A note on a manuscript by Coleridge explicitly states that he had taken opium at the time to combat dysentery. Some have speculated that the vivid imagery of the poem stems from a waking hallucination, most likely opium-induced. Additionally, a quotation from William Bartram[1] is believed to have been a source of the poem. There is widespread speculation on the poem's meaning, some suggesting the author is merely portraying his vision while others insist on a theme or purpose.
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 Kubla 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, Kubla 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, Kubla 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 valor) were allowed to drink their milk. Hence the closing image of "the milk of Paradise". (54)[citation needed]
- For he on honey-dew hath fed,
- And drunk the milk of Paradise.
[edit] See also
- Alph River and Xanadu Hills, geographic features in Antarctica named from the poem.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
- Full text of the poem
- Explicated for an undergraduate class
- "Kubla Khan" and the Embodied Mind, a detailed analysis of the poem
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