忽必烈汗 (诗)

《忽必烈汗》（Kubla Khan /ˌkʊblə ˈkɑːn/）是塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治写的一首诗，1797年完成，1816年出版。根据柯勒律治自己写的序，这首诗的灵感来自他读了一部描写忽必烈时代元上都的作品后，晚上吸食鸦片后做的梦。醒来的他开始复述梦中想到的诗句，直到被“波洛克来客”（Person from Porlock）打断。这导致他忘掉了后面的内容，这首诗也因此无法按原定的200至300行写完。他一开始没有打算出版这首诗，仅留下来给朋友私下阅读，直到1816年在拜伦勋爵的推动下才正式出版。

这首诗在风格上与柯勒律治写的其他诗有很大不同。这首诗的第一节描述了河边的大都和忽必烈的宫殿。第二节描述的是来自异域的阿比西尼亚女子自然而美妙的歌声。第三节（也是最后一节）描述叙事者本人和他听到歌声的惊喜。

柯勒律治的一些同时代人不喜欢这首诗并认为“梦中得来”的说法不真实，但大多数现代评论家认为这是柯勒律治最好的作品之一。它被认为是典型的英国浪漫主义诗歌，常见于各种英语诗歌集^[1]。其原稿现藏于大英图书馆^[2]。

历史

时间

《忽必烈汗》很可能写于1797年10月，但由于直接证据缺乏，确切日期难以确定。柯勒律治一般都会给他的诗标注日期，但却没对《忽必烈汗》这么做^[3]。

柯勒律治后来在别的地方说它创作于1797年。柯勒律治的“克鲁手稿”（Crewe manuscript）中，柯勒律治的注释说它是“1797年秋天”写成的^[4]^[5]。在1816年这首诗第一次出版时的序言中，柯勒律治又说是“1797年夏天”在萨默塞特郡长期逗留期间创作的^[6]。1797年10月14日，柯勒律治给约翰·塞尔沃尔写了一封信，虽然没有直接提到它，但提到了许多诗中出现的细节^{[注 1]}^[8]。

梦

1797年9月，柯勒律治住在英格兰西南部的下斯托伊，经常与威廉和多萝西·华兹华斯在附近的匡托克丘陵散步^[9] ，散步路线即今“柯勒律治之路” （Coleridge Way） ^[10]。1797年10月9日至14日之间的某个时间，当柯勒律治说他完成了悲剧《奥索里奥》时，他离开斯托伊前往林顿。在回程中，他得了病并在位于卡尔本教堂（Culbone Church）附近的阿什农场（Ash Farm）休息^[9]，这就是他作梦的地方。

根据他自己写的序言，他当时正在读塞缪尔·珀切斯的《珀切斯的朝圣》（Purchas his Pilgrimes），其中有一则忽必烈的故事，他读完后就睡着了。然后，他说他“在深度睡眠中持续了大约三个小时…在这段时间里，他坚信这首诗不可能少于两三百行....醒来时他全诗都记得很清楚，便拿起笔、墨水和纸，立即急切地写下记着的诗”^{[注 2]}。但不幸地是他被打断了：^[12]“此时，他不幸被来自波洛克的一个有事的人叫了出来……在回到房间时，他震惊而沮丧地发现，虽然他对之前的幻觉还保留着一些模糊混沌的回忆，但除了八或十个零散的句子和图像外，其余的都已经消失了”^{[注 3]}。“波洛克来客”（Person from Porlock）这个说法由此而来，后世被用来描述被打断的天才想法。约翰·利文斯顿·洛斯教授这首诗时就告诉他的学生，文学史上最该死的就是这个“来自波洛克的有事的人”^[13]。

柯勒律治的说法有一些疑点。比如珀切斯的书其实是很罕见的，不太可能出现一个偏僻的农场，这本书将近1,000页，因此也不太可能有人会带着它旅行^[14]。一种说法是柯勒律治只是在什么地方读过珀切斯的书，这时候突然想起来了^[15]。此外，他的手稿说他是吃了两格令鸦片，但序言中说的是“由于轻微的不适，吃了止痛药”^[16]。

出版

写完之后，柯勒律治时常给他的朋友们朗读这首诗，1798年曾读给华兹华斯兄妹，但并没有立刻寻求出版。他在1816年4月10日将这首诗读给拜伦勋爵。拜伦说服柯勒律治出版这首诗。1816年4月12日，柯勒律治与出版商约翰·默里签订了一份80英镑的合同^[17]。序言解释说：它是“应一位当之无愧的大诗人的要求印刷的，就作者自己的观点而言，与其说有什么诗歌上的价值，不如说是出于心理上的好奇。" ^[18]柯勒律治的妻子也不赞成出版^{[注 4]}，柯勒律治的朋友查尔斯·兰姆则担心这首诗的印刷版缺少朗读版的力量。^{[注 5]}

1816年5月25日，它与《克里斯特贝尔》（Christabel ）、《睡眠的痛苦》（The Pains of Sleep）一起出版^[21]。柯勒律治还给《忽必烈汗》加了一个副标题“片段”（A Fragment），告诉读者它本来就是不完整的^[22]。该作品的初版分为两节，第一节在第30行结束^[23]。柯勒律治在世时，这首诗一共出版了四次，最后一次出版于1834年的《诗作》（Poetical Works）中^[24]。最后一次出版的标题进一步扩展为“或梦中的幻象。一个片段”（Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment）。在后世的一些柯勒律治诗歌选集中，序言与副标题一起被删除。有时现代版本的序言会缺少第一段和最后一段。^[25]

评价

尽管拜伦勋爵和沃尔特·司各特等人对它赞愈有加，但这首诗一开始并未出名，销量也不佳。最初的评论者发现它虽然有些亮点，但总体上差强人意。然而，随着评论家开始将柯勒律治的作品视为一个整体，《忽必烈汗》得到了越来越多的赞美。

注释

[注 1]
"I should much wish, like the Indian Vishna, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotos, & wake once in a million years for a few minutes – just to know I was going to sleep a million years more...I can at times feel strong the beauties, you describe, in themselves, & for themselves – but more frequently all things appear little – all the knowledge, that can be acquired, child's play – the universe itself – what but an immense heap of little things?...My mind feels as if it ached to behold & know something great – something one & indivisible – and it is only in the faith of this that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give me the sense of sublimity or majesty!"^[7]
[注 2]
"continued for about three hours in a profound sleep... during which time he had the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines ... On Awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved."^[11]
[注 3]
"At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock... and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpose of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away."^[11]
[注 4]
她写给托马斯·普尔："Oh! when will he ever give his friends anything but pain? he has been so unwise as to publish his fragments of 'Christabel' & 'Kubla-Khan'...we were all sadly vexed when we read the advertisement of these things."^[19]
[注 5]
兰姆写给华兹华斯"Coleridge is printing Xtabel by Lord Byron's recommendation to Murray, with what he calls a vision of Kubla Khan – which said vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates & brings Heaven & Elysian bowers into my parlour while he sings or says it; but there is an observation: 'never tell thy dreams,' and I am almost afraid that 'Kubla Khan' is an owl that won't bear daylight. I fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of typography and clear reducing to letters, no better than nonsense or no sense."^[20]

参考文献

引用

[1]
Hit Singles by Joshua Weiner. Poetry Foundation. 13 September 2017 [13 September 2017]. （原始内容存档于2020-08-02）.
[2]
Manuscript of S T Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'. The British Library. [13 September 2017]. （原始内容存档于2019-06-17）.
[3]
Holmes 1989 p. 165
[4]
Manuscript of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'. British Library. [January 25, 2020]. （原始内容存档于17 June 2019）.
[5]
Holmes 1989 qtd. p. 162
[6]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep, 2nd edition, William Bulmer, London, 1816. Reproduced in The Complete Poems, ed. William Keach, Penguin Books, 2004.
[7]
Holmes 1989 qtd p. 167
[8]
Holmes 1989 pp. 166–167
[9]
Holmes 1989 pp. 161–162
[10]
The Coleridge Way. Somerset Rural Renaissance. 2007 [2 July 2010]. （原始内容存档于23 November 2008）.
[11]
Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 435
[12]
Holmes 1998 p. 435
[13]
Perkins 2010 qtd. p. 39
[14]
Fruman 1971 p. 337
[15]
Bate 1968 pp. 75–76
[16]
Perkins 2010 p. 39
[17]
Holmes 1998 p. 426
[18]
Sisman 2006 qtd. p. 417
[19]
Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 431
[20]
Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 429; Doughty 1981 qtd. p. 433.
[21]
Holmes 1998 p. 434
[22]
Ashton 1997 pp. 112–113
[23]
Yarlott 1967 p. 145
[24]
Mays 2001 p. 511
[25]
Perkins 2010 pp. 39–40

来源

Anonymous. "Samuel Taylor Coleridge". The Church Quarterly Review. Vol 37 (October 1893 – January 1894). London: Spottiswoode, 1894
Anonymous. Westminster Review. Vol 67 (January, April). Philadelphia: Leonard Scott, 1885.
Ashton, Rosemary. The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
Barth, J. Robert. Romanticism and Transcendence. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.
Bate, Walter Jackson. Coleridge. New York: Macmillan, 1968.
Beer, John. Coleridge the Visionary. New York: Collier, 1962.
Bloom, Harold. "Introduction" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase, 2010.
Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Burke, Kenneth. "'Kubla Khan': Proto-Surrealist Poem" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.
Caine, T. Hall. Cobwebs of Criticism. London: Elliot Stock, 1883.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Christabel, &c. 3rd. London: John Murray. 1816.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Coleridge, Ernest Hartley , 编. The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Oxford University Press. 1921.
Doughty, Oswald. Perturbed Spirit. London: Associated University Presses, 1981.
Eliot, T. S. Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.
Fruman, Norman. Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel. New York: George Braziller, 1971.
Fulford, Tim. "Slavery and Superstition in the Poems" in The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Ed. Lucy Newlyn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Furst, Lilian. Romanticism in Perspective. New York: St Martin's Press, 1969.
Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772–1804. New York: Pantheon, 1989.
Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804–1834. New York: Pantheon, 1998.
House, Humphry. Coleridge. London: R. Hart-Davis, 1953.
Jackson, J R de J. Coleridge: The Critical Heritage. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970.
Kastner, Joseph. A World of Naturalists. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1977.
Knight, G. W. "Coleridge's Divine Comedy" in English Romantic Poets. Ed. M. H. Abrams. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Lang, Andrew. "The Letters of Coleridge". Littell's Living Age. Vol. 206 (July, August, September). Boston: Littell and Co., 1895.
Lowes, John. The Road to Xanadu. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927.
Mays, J. C. C. (editor). The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetical Works I Vol I.I. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Mays, J. C. C. "The Later Poetry" in The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Ed. Lucy Newlyn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
McFarland, Thomas. "Involute and Symbol" in Coleridge, Keats, and the Imagination. Ed. J. Robert Barth and John Mahoney. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990.
Milton, John. Verity, A. W. (Arthur Wilson) , 编. Paradise lost. Cambridge University Press. 1910.
Peart, Neil. "Xanadu". "A Farewell To Kings": Rush, 1977.
Perkins, David. "The Imaginative Vision of 'Kubla Khan': On Coleridge's Introductory Note" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase, 2010.
Radley, Virginia. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. New York: Twayne, 1966.
Rauber, D. F. "The Fragment as Romantic Form", Modern Language Quarterly. Vol 30 (1969).
Roe, Nicholas, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the sciences of life, Oxford University Press, 2001 [2022-04-01], ISBN 978-0-19-818723-3, （原始内容存档于2022-05-06）
Rzepka, Charles. The Self As Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Schneider, Elisabeth. "Kubla Khan" in Coleridge. Ed. Kathleen Coburn. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Sheppard, John. On Dreams. London: Jackson and Walford, 1847.
Singh, Sukhdev, Coleridge and the New Criticism, Anmol Publications, 1994 [2022-04-01], ISBN 978-81-7041-895-5, （原始内容存档于2022-04-01）
Sisman, Adam. The Friendship. New York: Viking, 2006.
Skeat, T. C. Kubla Khan. The British Museum Quarterly. 1963, 26 (3/4): 77–83. ISSN 0007-151X. JSTOR 4422778.
Stillinger, Jack. "Pictorialism and Matter-of Factness in Coleridge's Poems of Somerset" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase, 2010.
Watson, George. Coleridge the Poet. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966.
Wheeler, Kathleen. The Creative Mind in Coleridge's Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Woodberry, G. E. "Samuel Taylor Coleridge" in Library of the World's Best Literature. Vol VII. New York: R. S. Peale and J. A. Hill, 1897.
Yarlott, Geoffrey. Coleridge and the Abyssinian Maid. London: Methuen & Co, 1967.

外部链接

Full text of the poem （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）
Explicated for an undergraduate class （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）
Kubla Khan Analysis （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）, another explication of the poem by JM Schroeder
LibriVox中的公有领域有声书《Kubla Khan》

[8] [注 1]
"I should much wish, like the Indian Vishna, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotos, & wake once in a million years for a few minutes – just to know I was going to sleep a million years more...I can at times feel strong the beauties, you describe, in themselves, & for themselves – but more frequently all things appear little – all the knowledge, that can be acquired, child's play – the universe itself – what but an immense heap of little things?...My mind feels as if it ached to behold & know something great – something one & indivisible – and it is only in the faith of this that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give me the sense of sublimity or majesty!"^[7]

[13] [注 2]
"continued for about three hours in a profound sleep... during which time he had the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines ... On Awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved."^[11]

[15] [注 3]
"At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock... and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpose of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away."^[11]

[23] [注 4]
她写给托马斯·普尔："Oh! when will he ever give his friends anything but pain? he has been so unwise as to publish his fragments of 'Christabel' & 'Kubla-Khan'...we were all sadly vexed when we read the advertisement of these things."^[19]

[25] [注 5]
兰姆写给华兹华斯"Coleridge is printing Xtabel by Lord Byron's recommendation to Murray, with what he calls a vision of Kubla Khan – which said vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates & brings Heaven & Elysian bowers into my parlour while he sings or says it; but there is an observation: 'never tell thy dreams,' and I am almost afraid that 'Kubla Khan' is an owl that won't bear daylight. I fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of typography and clear reducing to letters, no better than nonsense or no sense."^[20]

[1] [1]
Hit Singles by Joshua Weiner. Poetry Foundation. 13 September 2017 [13 September 2017]. （原始内容存档于2020-08-02）.

[2] [2]
Manuscript of S T Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'. The British Library. [13 September 2017]. （原始内容存档于2019-06-17）.

[3] [3]
Holmes 1989 p. 165

[:0-4] [4]
Manuscript of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'. British Library. [January 25, 2020]. （原始内容存档于17 June 2019）.

[5] [5]
Holmes 1989 qtd. p. 162

[:1-6] [6]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep, 2nd edition, William Bulmer, London, 1816. Reproduced in The Complete Poems, ed. William Keach, Penguin Books, 2004.

[7] [7]
Holmes 1989 qtd p. 167

[:2-9] [8]
Holmes 1989 pp. 166–167

[Holmes_1989_pp._161-162-10] [9]
Holmes 1989 pp. 161–162

[11] [10]
The Coleridge Way. Somerset Rural Renaissance. 2007 [2 July 2010]. （原始内容存档于23 November 2008）.

[Holmes_qtd._p._435-12] [11]
Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 435

[Holmes_1998_p._435-14] [12]
Holmes 1998 p. 435

[16] [13]
Perkins 2010 qtd. p. 39

[17] [14]
Fruman 1971 p. 337

[18] [15]
Bate 1968 pp. 75–76

[Perkins_p._39-19] [16]
Perkins 2010 p. 39

[20] [17]
Holmes 1998 p. 426

[21] [18]
Sisman 2006 qtd. p. 417

[22] [19]
Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 431

[24] [20]
Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 429; Doughty 1981 qtd. p. 433.

[26] [21]
Holmes 1998 p. 434

[27] [22]
Ashton 1997 pp. 112–113

[28] [23]
Yarlott 1967 p. 145

[29] [24]
Mays 2001 p. 511

[30] [25]
Perkins 2010 pp. 39–40

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