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Samuel
Purchas
Samuel Purchas is the author of the book Coleridge was reading before he
fell into the twilight state, in which he envisioned Xanadu. In 1816,
Coleridge published this description of the genesis of his poem:
In the summer of 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a
lonely farm-house beween Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of
Someset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne
had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair
at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the
same substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimage."
Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden
thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.'
Of course, scholarship has thrown doubt on the date, the quotation, and the
anodyne.
But before all that negative quibbling, Lowes argued that images suggested
by Purchas rose up before Coleridge as things, which showed up as Coleridge
says, "with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without
any sensation or consciousness of effort."
Lowes explicitly says that he
does not consider the Purchas passage a "source" in the conventional sense,
but rather a fountain of associations and visions.
"Their very words, undoubtedly, were now and then remembered. But that is
incidental. What they did for Coleridge was to people the twilight realms of
consciousness with images." 357
And when you compare Purchas's words with the ones loosely recalled by
Coleridge, you see that the poem seems to have retroactively affected his
recollection of the text, turning sixteen miles into ten.
But the passage itself, particularly in the editions of 1614, 1617, and
1626, suggests Xanadu, Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome, and more. Our
selection comes from the 1617 edition, the one that Lowes believes Coleridge
lent to Wordsworth.
Purchas, Samuel. Purchas his Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World and
the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered, from the Creation unto
the Present. London, 1617.
Purchas wrote another book, published posthumously, and Coleridge may have
read some or all of this very long book (20 volumes in an edition of
1905-07). The original was called:
Purchas, Samuel. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes. London, 1625.
Reprinted in 20 volumes, Glasgow, 1905-7. |
Other sources
William Bartram
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