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Samuel Taylor ColeridgeAutumn 1797, Exmoor; told in 1816

Kubla Khan and the person from Porlock

A poet dreams two or three hundred lines, starts writing them down, and is interrupted by a visitor. The rest is lost forever, or so he said.

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El sueño

Narrado con nuestras propias palabras a partir de las fuentes indicadas abajo, sin citas textuales.

In the note printed with the poem, Coleridge says that in the summer of 1797, unwell and staying at a lonely farmhouse on Exmoor, he took a painkiller and fell asleep in his chair while reading a passage about the palace of Kublai Khan.

He slept for about three hours and was sure he had composed two or three hundred lines, the images rising before him effortlessly. On waking he began writing them down, but was called away by a person on business from Porlock. When he returned an hour later, all but a few scattered lines had vanished, like images on the surface of a stream when a stone is thrown in.

De dónde viene la historia

Kubla Khan was published in 1816, nearly twenty years later, with this note. An earlier handwritten copy, the Crewe manuscript, carries a shorter note of Coleridge's saying the fragment was composed in a sort of reverie brought on by two grains of opium, in the autumn of 1797.

The "person from Porlock" has since become a byword for any interruption that destroys creative work.

Cómo se ha interpretado

Investigación

Opium affects sleep and dreaming, and Coleridge's own earlier note describes a reverie rather than a full dream. The feeling of having composed something vast and perfect in sleep, which cannot be recovered on waking, is also something many ordinary dreamers report.

Preguntas para tus propios sueños

  1. Have you ever been interrupted just as you were about to catch a dream?
  2. Do you tell the story of your own creative work differently years later?
  3. What would you guard more carefully if you knew it could vanish in an hour?

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Fuentes

Todas las interpretaciones de esta página se basan en estas obras. Aún no se han comprobado todas las referencias a páginas; las pendientes están marcadas.

  1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816). Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep. London: John Murray.

    dominio público

    • Ubicación de la cita: prefatory note to Kubla Khan (referencia aún sin comprobar)

    The prefatory note to Kubla Khan tells the dream story.

  2. Antonio Zadra, Robert Stickgold (2021). When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep. New York: W. W. Norton.

    citado, no reproducido

    • Ubicación de la cita: on memory for dreams (referencia aún sin comprobar)

    NEXTUP model: dreaming explores weak, unexpected associations between memories.

  3. Elisabeth Schneider (1953). Coleridge, Opium and Kubla Khan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    citado, no reproducido

    • Ubicación de la cita: whole book (referencia aún sin comprobar)