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Quote of the Day: Xanadu
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.
I hope it’s clear I’m not talking about that silly movie with Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck (whoever he is), and Gene Kelly in his embarrassingly awful final film role. (IIRC, this was the movie that launched the Razzies, the annual award for the worst [fill in the blank, movie-related category] of the year.
I’m talking about Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, a poem which (Coleridge always said) came to him in a dream, and which he was writing down after he woke up, only to be interrupted by the dreaded “person from Porlock,” who caused him to forget the other two or three hundred lines that were in his mind. So we have only a fragment of about the first fifty lines to wallow in, and I do. It’s one of my favorite bits of Romantic poetry, shrouded as it is in mystery and luscious images (perhaps I like it so much because it reminds me of Keats), and I don’t have to believe the fanciful story of its origins to love it.
It sprang to mind today, in a rare felix culpa in my life (most of my culpae aren’t at all felix, I assure you) when I received a message from dear @arahant this morning, reminding me that I’d signed up for today’s Quote of the Day.
Well, I’d forgotten.
So I did what I always do first thing, and checked births, deaths, events, and holidays and observances in Wikipedia to see if there was something interesting I could hang a post on. (What a weird locution. Normally one hangs things on posts; one doesn’t hang posts on things. Oh, well. I leave that to the grammarians, syntaxticians, and definitional police (and there are plenty here of all of the preceding) to sort out.)
But, what a bonanza of a day! Talk about being spoiled for choice:
First, it’s Donald Trump’s Birthday. Happy Birthday, President Trump! It’s also the anniversary of Richard II’s chat with the Revolting Peasants at Mile End (1381), and of Owen Glendower’s declaration that he was allying himself with the French against Henry IV, in 1404. Perfidious Welshman. No wonder there are a couple of border towns on the English side where it’s still legal to kill a Welshman as long as you do it with a bow and arrow and at certain times of the day or week.
Today, in 1775, the Continental Army was established by the Continental Congress. And Charles Babbage proposed his “Difference Engine” in a paper before the Royal Society in 1822. (That hearkens back to a recent post of mine; the last QOTD from me, in fact.)
On June 14, 1940, the German Occupation of Paris began. “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray. You wore blue.” On this day in 1982, Argentina surrendered to Great Britain, ending the Falklands War. And three years ago today, the horrific Grenfell Tower fire in London took 72 lives.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811. Margaret Bourke White, 1904. Burl Ives, 1909. Sam Wanamaker, 1921. Boy George (1961).
Benedict Arnold died on this date in 1801 (in his bed, of gout and dropsy). Legend says that his last words were, “Let me die in this old uniform in which I fought my battles. May God forgive me for ever having put on another,” but no one knows if that’s actually true or which uniform he was talking about. Adlai Stevenson (the first one), former Vice-President of the United States–to Grover Cleveland (1914). Emmeline Pankhurst (1928). G.K. Chesterton (1936), Henry Mancini (1994).
Every single one, and lots more, quoteworthy in his, her, or its own right. But the first thing to catch my eye, and the one that stuck, was this:
1287 – Kublai Khan defeats the force of Nayan and other traditionalist Borjigin princes in East Mongolia and Manchuria.
And there you have it. Xanadu, legendary site of Kublai Khan’s summer palace, first recorded in the travels of Marco Polo in 1275, when it served the same purpose for the previous Yuan dynasty.
Some of the loveliest lines in all of English poetry (or so I think):
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.
Xanadu.
I don’t want to pass over the fact that it’s also Flag Day in the United States. And so, in conclusion, a musical interlude, another favorite of mine. (Mr. She and I saw these guys and gals perform in Washington PA, several years ago. Wonderful):
Published in Literature
I keep wondering if year, or this republic itself is turning out to be another sort of opiate dream, one we’re all forgetting as History (instead of the man from Porlock) has begun knocking insistently on our door.
Let’s not forget this fine re-telling of the legend: https://youtu.be/SEuOoMprDqg .
I had this poem memorized when I was about 8 years old. It was in a book of poetry on my parents’ bookshelves. Well there were only three channels on the TV, and cartoons were just for an hour on Saturday morning. What was I supposed to do? The things kids did before Netflix.
Don’t discount dreams. Here is a snippet that I had from a dream:
I have no idea what it means, but it was good enough to write down and incorporate into a story.
As She mentioned, this is the Quote of the Day. We still have five openings in June, including tomorrow. Care for a bit of signing up?
Those opening lines are pretty, but they don’t make a bit of sense. Here’s the way they should read:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
Decree that his carpenters and stonemasons
Should build a stately pleasure dome,
Where Alph the sacred river. . . .
Or:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan decree
That a stately pleasure dome
Should be built,
Where Alpha the Sacred River ran. . . . . .
Wow. Why do I not have dreams like this? Best I ever managed was when I dreamed that a shelf full of cereal boxes had grown arms and legs and were running up and down in my driveway performing Hamlet. (There’s a YouTube clip somewhere which is frighteningly similar, but which postdates my dream by several years.)
I think the fact that kids don’t memorize poetry anymore is really sad. It’s excellent discipline for the mind, expands the vocabulary and improves one’s language skills. None of which objectives is realized as kids soak up and regurgitate back what they hear on TV, on the Internet, and in the movies these days, which have pretty much the opposite effects in all areas. (I suppose you could claim that their vocabularies “expand” in one way. But their word choices seem to be more and more limited, until “those words” occupy far too great a portion of their spoken output, with not very much else coming between.
I once memorized the entire Walrus and the Carpenter. Can still get through most of it without having to look it up.
I knew the excessively literal-minded would show up eventually. Spoilsport.
“The time has come,” the walrus said
“To speak of many things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings.
Of why the sea is boiling hot,
And whether pigs have wings.”
Years ago, there was an Ellery Queen episode based on that.
Poetry lover!
Smile when you call us that, pardner!
It is a lovely poem, @she. Much better than reading about revolting peasants! Thanks.
I first read the poem in my senior English class of high school and was struck by its imagery. (I didn’t advance as rapidly as @rightangles .) As I learned more about the exploits of the Mongols, I liked the Mongols less and less. I wonder what Coleridge was thinking (or not) to immortalize these marauders, rapists, and pillagers who left nothing of any value behind. Probably a function of they never got as far as England. (Fortunate for England.) They had to contend with Vikings, but that’s an entirely different story.
An excellent and highly readable history of the Peasant Revolt of 1381 is Dan Jones’ Summer of Blood.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”
… something, something … there’s a boat ride, lanterns are hung, a horse is spurred. There were other riders not in the poem. Billy Dawes left town by Boston Neck. He and Revere met up outside of town somewhere. The two of them picked up Dr. Prescott, who was … umm … making an early morning house call on a young lady. The three of them ran into a British patrol. Revere was arrested. Dawes took off cross-country. Only Prescott got through to Concord — where the gunpowder was.
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
I pray Henry got that part right.
I don’t know that one, but I will check it out. And hope that “Dan Jones” is a better writer than “Dan Brown,” who I had him momentarily confused with. Thanks!
I found the opening chapters of Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game remarkably clarifying, about both the Mongols and the Russians. It’s a terrific read all the way through. (Full disclosure: I did buy a wall map of Asia from Amazon, hung it up, and stuck little pins with flags with notes on them all over it, because I had difficulty keeping the place names, old and new, straight and a bit of trouble with some of the geography. By the time I finished, the map looked like something out of Winston Churchill’s war room. But it helped, and actually became part of the fun as time went on.)
I knew all of it, once upon a time.
Wait till you’re a bit older. You’ll probably know all of it again.
Yes, and I bet the “incense bearing trees” smelled a lot better too.
Did you have strings running from one pin to another like the obsessive cop who’s still secretly working on the case the captain told him to drop?
LOL. Not quite, although that might have helped with some of the overland journeys. I did color-code them though. British, Russian, French, etc . . .
I will be honest, most poetry I run into makes me want to forget it, not memorize it.
Kids need to read books that are challenging but interesting. I learned a lot of vocabulary from my Dad’s old copies of First Things.
Ah. Betcha never had this book growing up: The Golden Treasury of Poetry. Some real barn-burners in there. I agree with you about the interesting. I read lots of “series” books when I was a kid, well written, and they did not talk down to kids. Of course, when I had whooping cough in the fourth grade and was stuck at home, I read all of Sherlock Holmes, GWTW, and Wuthering Heights. The only ones that really took were the Holmes stories. Cathy and Heathcliff bored me sick, and I’ve become increasingly cross with Scarlett, the older I get, but not for the same (or at least, only the same) reasons it’s frowned upon today.
Why am I crying as I sit here watching those delightful musicians perform that fabulously patriotic music?
Aren’t they great?
@cliffordabrown has a wonderful post: http://ricochet.com/768614/music-that-makes-me-want-to-wave-the-flag/
The book on my parents; bookshelf was called Best Loved Poems of the American People, and I memorized a number of them. It was very thick, and it had them divided into sections from very serious classics to inspirational to humor. I loved the section on “Poems That Tell a Story,” and I used to recite one called The Owl and the Fox to my baby sister at bedtime. But my favorite of all was:
Dried Apple Pies by Anonynous
I loathe, abhor, detest, despise,
Abominate dried-apple pies.
I like good bread, I like good meat,
Or anything that’s fit to eat;
But of all poor grub beneath the skies,
The poorest is dried apple pies.
Give me the toothache, or sore eyes,
But don’t give me dried apple pies.
The farmer takes his gnarliest fruit,
‘Tis wormy, bitter, and hard, to boot;
He leaves the hulls to make us cough,
And don’t take half the peeling off.
Then on a dirty cord ’tis strung
And in a garret window hung,
And there it serves as roost for flies,
Until it’s made up into pies.
Tread on my corns, or tell me lies,
But don’t pass me dried-apple pies.
…………
See? It’s better than Nick Junior!
That’s a terrific one. It does make me chuckle at the thought of the (very expensive) little bags of dried apple “snacks” that are supposed to be healthier for you (maybe it’s the fly poop) than potato chips and those little pretzely things that appear to be stuffed with sprayable cheese whiz.
“Your Majesty! The peasants are revolting!”
“This you call news?”
I had this book when I was a kid.
The Wizard of Id was great!