Kubla Kahn

[Tinsel]

First of all is anyone willing to try to describe what this poem by Coleridge is about? or should I take a shot at it? I'll wait a couple of days unless someone knows the answer.

I'd like to attempt to relate the poem to "The Doom that Came to Sarnath", which I will try to explain afterward. Why not. Let's see what happens.

 

[Tinsel]

One more note. I won't touch it tomorrow, but on Tuesday or Wednesday I should try to say something here in fact. Anyway, to tell you the truth, all that I wanted to say is that "Kubla Kahn" sounds a lot like the Bible story about Noah's Ark.

I'll leave this until than. I'm looking for a couple more pieces of information, and than I'll be able to justify the Sarnath story. I don't want to think about Sarnath just yet, but I will say that it was well done for sure, however I wanted to get more out of it.

 

[Extollager]

Here's one reader's quick response, for what it may be worth; a few points in no particular order and without the text of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" at hand.

1.The poem exalts poetic geniuses (last few lines). The great oet is a man apart from the common folk. That attitude is completely in line with Dunsany's and Lovecraft's aestheticism.

2.The poem is about the loss of a glimpse of a realm of supernatural or preternatural beauty. Coleridge -- or "Coleridge," the speaker in the poem -- longs to see again what he glimpsed. This seems to be a concept that crops up in many fantasy stories. Without checking, I'd say Merritt's "Through the Dragon Glass" would probably be an example. (That story is in Lin Carter's 1969 anthology The Young Magicians, whose two Lovecraft stories, "The Quest of Iranon" and "The Cats of Ulthar," were probably the first HPL works that I ever read. The book was my intro to several other notable authors as well.) Would HPL's "The Silver Key" be another? I haven't read that one in ages!

3.Brief as it is, the poem adumbrates the familiar fantasy fiction and Lovecraftian knack of suggesting a depth that is not there explored. Lovecraft studded his stories with references to entities, calamities, and locales that he did not describe in detail, which Dunsany had done before him. (It's sort of like Doyle's/Dr. Watson's habit of alluding to "the giant rat of Sumatra" in the Sherlock Holmes stories, building up a sense of cases that there's no time or no occasion to relate now.) Coleridge, long before any of them, teases us with, for example, that bit about a woman "wailing for her demon lover" -- wailing because she long for him to come to her again? summoning him? wailing because she was deceived by a demon in the form of a man? We can't say for sure, but nor can we forget it.

4.Between the generation of Coleridge and the generation of the late 19th-century fantasists you have Poe. I think that, at his most fantastic, Poe is often writing, perhaps consciously, as a "Coleridgean." I'm sure that HPL would have brooded over Coleridge, but even if he had not, he would have received a strong indirect influence of STC via Poe. Poe's finest weird verse is Coleridgean.

 

[Tinsel]

In response to Extollager:

It is important to realize where the primary source is located. I do have access to some of Poe's poetry. I also have access to some Coleridge and I should try to find Dunsany. We know that Lovecraft assimilated both Poe and Dunsany and therefore, he likened unto Coleridge.

The poem is about the loss of a glimpse of a realm of supernatural or preternatural beauty. Coleridge -- or "Coleridge," the speaker in the poem -- longs to see again what he glimpsed.

Thinking of the above quote. One of Poe's poems called "The Haunted Palace" must be an example of Poe together with Coleridge. Is the same possible for Lovecraft?

In this writing than "a depth that is not there explored", should support my own argument, and it is an element of fantasy fiction you suggested, than you provided an example of it being used effectively. Can the wailing for the demon lover be connected to the changing/contrasting landscape, especially the damsel with a dulcimer? I might add.

As a side note:
I do have the Lin Carter, featuring "The Doom that came to Sarnath" on the cover. I have it somewhere. It is a great looking cover art.

 

[Connavar]

When i read Kubla Khan i was slightly disapointed, it has interesting elements but it didnt follow as poeticly as i expected. Maybe its more influential,important than being enjoyable read today.

Blake's Tiger,Tiger,others had the kind of flow i expected from this poem and Coleridge.

 

[Extollager]

Connavar, you should hear "Kubla Khan" read by someone like Ralph Richardson!

 

[Tinsel]

"Kubla Kahn" is a short poem. What is anyone looking to gain from reading poetry? It is a form of abstract writing. It must suffer without the author or sense of place. I think that excerpts from poems are used in short stories or novels in order to lighten or darken an atmosphere. What else is it good for unless it is uplifting, and in that case, this is a conspiracy because I was prevented from having this advantage. Based on the above comment however I feel that I can live without it.

 

[Extollager]

Oh dear.

 

[Tinsel]

To tell you the truth, I feel quite lost when I read from Edgar Allen Poe. On the other hand, I can relate fairly easily to H.P. Lovecraft. Apparently H.P. Lovecraft felt at home when he read Poe.

I feel especially at a disadvantage while reading any of the literary poetry, although there is one or two which I took more time to decipher, such as "Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson. That poem is related to the adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus.

This here is my theory. What I believe is that some kind of external force is necessary in order to breath life into poetry and also stories, but especially poetry. Without that force, than the poem is inactive. You had said that it helps to have a specific voice do the reading.

Sometimes I read this stuff and I end up in the gutter, but I'm aware of that, so I than retaliate in order to level out or ascend.

 

[Extollager]

Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli. And readers change. I read little poetry till I was in my forties, and I'm still a prose reader almost all the time. Used to be, though, that if someone had literary aspirations, it was as a poet that he or she aimed to shine. There was the idea that the poet needed to stock his mind with history, legend, myth, science, the lore of gems, plants, animals, and the heavens. For us today, much of the older poetry is, at first, too rich. We are used to heaps of unrelated facts, tweets, headlines, slogans, but not to the amazing multi-level but coherent resonances of some of the notable poems.

But this is getting a bit off-topic Lovecraft-wise. He certainly had poetic ambitions. I'll bet he would have been proud and happy to have written something like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath as great narrative verse -- could that only have been possible.

 

[Tinsel]

Homer wrote his narrative poem in which the established pantheon observed the mortals who they promoted. In Lovecraft, the pantheon or Old Ones, lie dormant, besides their reaching out. This than is the song or else the dream. Which is "Kubla Kahn"?

Anyway, I have not got that far but I have heard of "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", and I have it somewhere because I have all three books.

 

[Tinsel]

A quick side note:

"Kubla Kahn" is comprised of three paragraphs. You will notice that in the first and the third paragraph, the first two lines of each of the paragraphs are read together and they end in a colon. At any rate, try reading lines 10 and upward to line 3. What I mean is, read them in reverse order. Same with lines 54 and upward to 39, again read them in reverse order. Than figure out the middle paragraph because I did not bother yet, I'm due for a coffee.

That should breath some understanding into the poem, but my concentration has now ended, so I don't want to look at it anymore today.

 

[Tinsel]

quick note 2:

Sorry for the triple post, but it is like Jewish writing (see the Jewish psalms translated into English...but actually get someone else to read it, stay away from that stuff!), and than in reverse it changes into another culture. That is the difference.

 

[Tinsel]

I am not worthy:

I resign here.

 

[Extollager]

Ah, Tinsel, you may not find it as easy to leave as it was to arrive.......

Seriously, before you dismiss Coleridge, get hold of his (unfortunately unfinished) "Christabel" and give that a reading. You can find a plain text of it online, I'm sure, and an annotated text in common sources such as the Norton Anthology of English Literature. The poem can even be funny right at the beginning (the old watch dog), but you may find it a work of dark enchantment.

 

[Extollager]

Here's an online text of Coleridge's unfinished weird poem "Christabel."

Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

[Tinsel]

I will read it, when I have a day off next week. I did take a run at "Kubla Kahn" and I had power in my hands at the time, and it felt good to take a run at it in reverse order, the last paragraph at least. Than the powers vanished, as they often do, and I grabbed something else and that wiped out any change of a recovery because I did not feel like summoning up my energy again, and especially since I don't know exactly how it happens in the first place.

What I can do, is to read "Christabel" when I am rejuvenated, and even read "Kubla Kahn" again, but I will do this under more controlled circumstances. I did take certain steps recently in order to feel more at ease in general, so that might make things easy.

I liked it when Poe jumped in there with that "likened unto" talk. See I don't have much Poe read yet, but he is sort of cool, and I would like to use him.