From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri 23 May 2003 - 01:20:17 GMT
>From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: memetics <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: Bonus Points, poetic memes
>Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 21:53:51 -0400
>
>I've got a long-term interest in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."
>I've copied part of the poem below. After that I've copied a section I've
>cut from an essay I'm working on. That section quotes from some of the
>books Coleridge is likely to have read prior to writing the poem.
>
>What memes are in those passages and how did they get from those books into
>Coleridge's poem?
>
>==============
>
>Lines 1 - 28 (out of 54) of "Kubla Khan":
>
>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 e¹er 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,
>Of chaffy grain beneath the thresher¹s flail:
>And Œmid 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 taverns endless to man,
>And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
>
>===============
>
>Cut from an essay:
>
>Now I would like to step away from the poem itself and consider Livingston
>Lowes¹ The Road to Xanadu, an early twentieth-century investigation into
>the
>putative sources of ³The Rime of the Ancient Mariner² and ³Kubla Khan.² I
>agree with the modern judgment that Lowes¹ investigation into Coleridge¹s
>notebooks and library tells us relatively little about how Coleridge¹s
>poems
>work in our minds and hearts, nor is his loose associationist psychology
>very convincing. Nonetheless, I find his display of evidence quite
>fascinating and would like to suggest a way of ³salvaging² it.
>
>His method is quite simple. Lowes examined books Coleridge is known or
>likely to have read either because it is explicitly referenced in
>Coleridge¹s notes or because it is very much like something Coleridge has
>referenced and was likely available to him at the time and found passages
>similar to lines and phrases in ³The Rime of the Ancient Mariner² and in
>³Kubla Khan.² Lowes then reproduced these passages, some at considerable
>length, and provided suitable contextual and connective tissue relating
>them
>to Coleridge¹s interests and habits and, of course, to his poems.
>
>Here are a few of the passages Lowes marshals in contemplation of ³Kubla
>Khan.² I have reproduced them as Lowes did, with certain phrases
>italicized.
>The first passage is from Purchas His Pilgramage, originally published in
>the early seventeenth century. This is the passage that Coleridge cites in
>his preface to the poem, though he misquotes it there (p. 326 of Lowes):
>
>In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles
>of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddows, pleasant
>springs,
>delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the
>middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed from
>place to place.
>
>The next passage is by a contemporary of Coleridge¹s, William Bartram, and
>is from his Travels through North and South Carolina . . . (p. 335 of
>Lowes):
>
>Just under my feet was the inchanting and amazing chrystal fountain, which
>incessantly threw up, from dark, rocky caverns below, tons of water every
>minute, forming a bason, capacious enough for large shallops to ride in,
>and
>a creek of four or five feet depth of water, and near twenty yards over,
>which meanders six miles through green meadows, pouring its limpid waters
>into the great Lake George. . . . About twenty yards from the upper edge of
>the bason . . . . is a continual and amazing ebullition, where the waters
>are thrown up in such abundance and amazing force, as to jet a swell up two
>or three feet above the common surface: white sand and small particles of
>shells are thrown up with the waters . . . when they . . . subside with
>the expanding flood, and gently sing again.
>
>The next passage is from James Bruce, who had journeyed to the source of
>the
>Nile in the third quarter of the eighteenth century and published his
>Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the fourth quarter (Lowes p.
>339):
>
>The second fountain lise about a stone-cast west from the first: the
>inhabitants say that this whole mountain is full of water, and add, that
>the
>whole plain about the fountain is floating and unsteady, a certain mark
>that
>there is water concealed under it; for which reason, the water does not
>overflow at the fountain, but forces itself with great violence out at the
>foot of the mountain. The inhabitants . . . maintain that that year it
>trembled little on account of the drought, but other years, that it
>trembled
>and overflowed so as that it could scare be approached without danger.
>
>While we have good reason to believe that Coleridge had read Purchas,
>Bartram, and Bruce, we do not know that he had read F. Bernier¹s Voyage to
>Surat, from the seventeenth century (Lowes p. 352):
>
>Out of all these mountains do issue innumerable sources and rivulets. . . .
>All these rivulets, descending from the mountains, make the plain and all
>those hillocks so fair and fruitful, that one would take this whole kingdom
>for some evergreen garden. . . . The lake hath this peculiar, that Œtis
>full of little isles, which are as many gardens of pleasure, that appear
>all
>green in the midst of the water. . . . Beyond the lake, upon the side of
>the
>hills, there is nothing but houses and gardens of pleasure . . . . full of
>springs and rivulets.
>
>
>--
>
>William L. Benzon
>708 Jersey Avenue, Apt. 2A
>Jersey City, NJ 07302
>201 217-1010
>
>"You won't get a wild heroic ride to heaven on pretty little
>sounds."--George Ives
>
>Mind-Culture Coevolution: http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/
>
>
Thanks William! This is a great post! I'm very interested in "Puc Puggy"
("flower hunter") as the Florida "Indians" called William Bartram during
his travels to Florida way back when around the time of the American
Revolution. From what I gather his ethnographic accounts of the Florida
tribes he encountered, some lower Creek offshoots known as Seminoles, aren't
too shabby. IIRC he met the Cowkeeper.
I have recently read quite a bit about the Seminoles and the Wars in
Florida, concentrating on the escaped slaves known as "Seminole Negros" who
fought along side the Native Americans.
I'd heard about the possible influence of Bartram on Coleridge. A March 2001
article in National Geographic magazine refers to influence on Coleridge and
Wordsworth. Some of Bartram's naturalist accounts in _Travels_ are quite
vivid, though if a tad hyperbolic. His laundry list of plants he encountered
are a good botanical brushup.
I'll have to take your post into consideration now.
Thanks again!
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