Kubla Khan
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Kubla Khan, fully titled 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/Chinese emperor Kublai Khan of the Yuan dynasty. Coleridge claimed that it was written in the autumn of 1797 at a farmhouse near Exmoor, but it may have been composed on one of a number of other visits to the farm. It may also have been revised a number of times before it was first published in 1816.
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 the person from Porlock. This claim seems unlikely, as most opium users have tremendous difficulty recalling dreams when opium was ingested just prior to sleeping. Some have speculated that the vivid imagery of the poem stems from a waking hallucination, albeit most likely opium-induced. Additionally a quote from William Bartram [link] is believed to have been a source of the poem. There is widespread speculation on the poem's meaning, some suggesting the author merely is portraying his vision while others insist on a theme or purpose. Some critics see it as a metaphor for sexual intercourse. Others believe it is a poem stressing the beauty of creation.
Kubla Khan, the visitor from Porlock, and Coleridge himself are referenced extensively in Douglas Adams' comic novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
The poem is quoted at the beginning of the "March Of Time" sequence in the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane and by Doc Holiday in a deleted scene of the 1993 film Tombstone.
External links
- [Full text of the poem]
- [Coleridge's note] and other notes about the poem.
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