The Man from Porlock...what a jerk

The reason we are being asked to memorize Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (besides it being one of the most sublime and astonishing poems of all time) is surely in part due to the back-story surrounding the production of the poem. For those who are not familiar, the poem came to Coleridge in an opium-induced sleep after reading accounts of Xanadu (the summer residence of Kublai Khan located in China) from Samuel Purchas (an English clergyman, who based his own accounts upon those of Marco Polo centuries earlier[i]). Upon awakening, Coleridge began to furiously write down the lines that had appeared to him in his dream, confident that he had 200-300 lines worth of material. Unfortunately, his task was interrupted by a knock at the door—a man from Porlock on business—which caused him to forget much of the poem, and leave it at the 54 lines that we have today.

Thus, a “Person from Porlock” or “Man from Porlock” or just “Porlock” has become a literary illusion to unwanted intruders. For example, in Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert Humbert checks into a motel under A.Person, Porlock, England [ii].

Of course, many criticisms postulate that Coleridge’s story is an absolute fabrication, that the “Person from Porlock” was really just a symbol or device used by Coleridge to allow or explain the fragmentary nature of the poem. In a similar instance, the “letter from a friend” that interrupts his Chapter XIII of Biographia Literaria was later confessed to be the author himself[iii]. Kind of like “the dog ate my homework” excuse on a much larger scale, yes?

Assuming the account to be true, what sort of mnemonic firings might have been occurring in Coleridge’s brain? How did he so vividly recall those 50 lines in the first place? I wonder if there really is a science behind it all, or if some things merely materialize with concentration. I’m sure we’ve all had those “Aha” moments followed by a burst of frenzied writing as you try to preserve the exact thought as it occurred so clearly in your head, while simultaneously waving off your roommate whose come in on business about “those dirty dishes you left in the sink, again”.

All I can hope is that my own interruptions and failures in memory might result in something so exceptional as “Kubla Khan”.

  

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[i] The similarity between Purchas’ description and Coleridge’s poem can even be glimpsed in the first lines:

From Purchas his Pilgrimage: In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately Pallace

From “Kubla Khan”:            

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

[ii] “Person from Porlock”. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_from_Porlock

[iii] Ibid.

Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

     Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

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.

 

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

   

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid

And on her dulcimer she played, 

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.