A short, unfinished poem describing the pleasure dome of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan at Xanadu, written, Coleridge himself claimed in its 1816 preface, from a vision that came to him in an opium-influenced sleep after reading a passage about Xanadu, and broken off when a visitor, remembered only as the person from Porlock, interrupted him and the rest of the vision would not return. Its fragmentary state, presented by Coleridge as an accident rather than a design, became part of the poem's own mystique, and its closing image of a poet with flashing eyes and floating hair is one of the most quoted passages in English Romantic verse.
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Why is Kubla Khan so short and unfinished?
Coleridge said a visit from a person on business from Porlock made him forget most of the poem.
Coleridge said the poem came to him in a dream. In the account in his preface, he was interrupted while writing it down by a person on business from Porlock. When he returned to the room more than an hour later, he could remember only a few lines, and the rest had passed away. The poem was published in 1816 with the subtitle A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment.
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Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Authored By
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
In Genre
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
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Source Encyclopaedia Britannicatier 1
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Kubla Khan
WikipediaLead
is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816.
Lead paragraph
Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream () is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816.
View the Source 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (1989)
Richard Holmes, 1989on the 1816 preface and the person from Porlock
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University PressIn Genre: Lyric Poetry
The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & CompanyAssociated With: Romanticism
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