Part 1: A 250-word (maximum) abstract must contain: 1) A research question; 2) A thesis statement; 3) A statement of how the thesis statement applies to the chosen film and Borges’ fiction; 4) A state
C o le rid g e ’s D re a m T he lyric fragm ent “K ubla K han” (fifty-odd rhym ed and irregular lines of exquisite prosod y) w as dream ed by the E nglish poet S am uel T aylor C oleridge on a sum m er day in 1797. C oleridge w rites that he had retired to a farm near E xm oor; an indisposition obliged him to take a sedative; sleep overcam e him a few m om ents after reading a passage in P urchas that describes the construction of a palace by K ublai K han, the em peror w hose fam e in the W est w as the w ork of M arco P olo. In C oleridge’s dream , the text he had coincidentally read sprouted and grew ; the sleeping m an intuited a series of visual im ages and, sim ply, the w ords that expressed them . A fter a few hours he aw oke, certain that he had com posed, or received, a poem of som e three hundred lines. H e rem em bered them w ith particular clarity an d w as able to transcribe th e fragm ent that is now part of his w ork. A n unexpected visitor in terrupted him , and it w as later im possible for him to recall th e rest. “T o his no sm all surprise and m ortification,” C oleridge w rote, “that th ough he still retained som e vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, w ith the exception of som e eight or ten scattered lines and im ages, all the rest had passed aw ay like the im ages on the surface of a stream into w hich a stone has been cast, but, alas! w ithout the after restoration of the latter!” S w in burne felt that w hat he had been able to recover w as the suprem e exam ple of m usic in the E nglish language, and that the perso n capable of analyzing it w ould be able— the m etaphor is K eats’— to unravel a rainbow . T ranslations or sum m aries of poem s w hose principal virtue is m usic are useless and m ay be harm ful; it is best sim ply to bear in m ind, for now , that C oleridge w as given a page of undisputed splendor in a dream . T he case, although extraordinary, is not unique. In his psychological study, T he W orld o f D ream s, H avelock E llis has com pared it w ith that of the vio linist and com poser G iuseppe T artini, w ho dream ed that the D evil (his slave) w as playing a m arvelous sonata on the violin; w hen h e aw oke, the dream er deduced, from his im perfect m em ory, the “Trillo del D iavolo.” A nother classic exam ple of unconscious cerebration is that of R obert L ouis S tev enson, to w hom — as he him self described it in his “C hapter on D ream s”— o ne dream gave the plot of O lalla and another, in 1884, the plot of Jekyll and H yde. T artini, w aking, w anted to im itate the m usic he had heard in a dream ; S tevenson received outlines of stories— form s in general— in his. C loser to C o leridge’s verbal inspiration is the one attributed by the V enerable B ede to C aedm on (H istoria ecclesiastica gentis A nglorum IV , 24). T he case occurred at the end of the seventh century in the m issionary and w arring E ngland of the S axon kingdom s. C aedm on w as an uneducated shepherd and w as no longer young; one night he slipped aw ay from som e festivity because he knew that the harp w ould be passed to him and he didn’t know how to sing. H e fell asleep in a stable, am ong the ho rses, and in a dream som eone called him by his nam e and ordered him to sin g. C aedm on replied that he did not know how , but the voice said, “S ing abou t the origin of created things.” T hen C aedm on recited verses he had never heard. H e did not forget them w hen he aw oke, and w as able to repeat them to the m onks at the nearby m onastery of H ild. A lthough he couldn’t read, the m onks explained passages of sacred history to him and he, as it w ere, chew ing the cud, converted the sam e into m ost harm onious verse; and sw eetly repeating the sam e m ade his m asters in their turn his hearers. H e sang the creation of the w orld, the origin of m an, and all the history of G enesis: and m ade m any verses on the departure of the children of Israel out of E gypt, and their entering into the land of prom ise, w ith m any other histories from holy w rit; the incarnation, passion, resurrection of our L ord, and his ascension into heaven; the com ing of the H oly G host, and the preaching of the apostles; also the terror of future judgm ent, the horror of the pains of hell, and the delights of heaven; besides m any m ore about the D ivine benefits and judgm ents . . . H e w as the first sacred poet o f the E nglish nation. “N one could ever com pare w ith him ,” B ede w rote, “for he did not learn the art of poetry from m en, but from G od.” Y ears later, he foretold th e hour of his death and aw aited it in sleep. L et us hope that he m et his angel again. A t first glance, C oleridge’s dream m ay seem less astonishing than that of his precursor. “K ubla K han” is a rem arkable com position, and the nine-line hym n dream ed by C aedm on barely displays any virtues beyond its oneiric origin; but C oleridge w as already a poet w hile C aedm on’s vocation w as revealed to him . T here is, how ever, a later event, w hich turns the m arvel of the dream that engendered “K ubla K h an” into som ething nearly unfathom able. If it is true, the story of C o leridge’s dream began m any centuries before C oleridge and has not yet ended. T he poet’s dream occurred in 1797 (som e say 1798), and he published his account of the dream in 1816 as a gloss or justification of the unfinished poem . T w enty years later, in P aris, the first W estern version of one of those universal histories that are so abundant in P ersian literature appeared in fragm entary form : the C om pendium of H istories by R ashid al-D in, w hich dates from the fourteenth century. O ne line reads as follow s: “E ast of S hang- tu, K ublai K han built a palace according to a plan that he had seen in a dream and retained in his m em ory.” T he one w ho w rote this w as a vizier of G hazan M ahm ud, a descendant of K ublai. A M ongolian em peror, in the thirteenth century, dream s a palace and builds it according to his vision; in th e eighteenth century, an E nglish poet, w ho could not have know n that this construction w as derived from a dream , dream s a poem about the palace. C om pared w ith this sym m etry of souls of sleeping m en w ho span continents and centuries, the levitations, resurrections, and apparitions in the sacred books seem to m e quite little, or nothing at all. H ow is it to be explained? T hose w ho autom atically reject the supernatural (I try alw ays to belong to this group) w ill claim that the story of the tw o dream s is a coincidence, a line draw n by chance, like the shapes of lions or horses that are som etim es form ed by clouds. O thers w ill argue that the poet som ehow knew that the E m peror had dream ed the palace, and then claim ed he had dream ed the poem in order to create a splendid fiction that w ould palliate or justify the truncated and rhapsodic quality of the verses.19 T his seem s reasonable, but it forces us to arbitrarily postulate a text un know n to S inologists in w hich C oleridge w as able to read, before 1816, about K ublai’s dream .
20 M ore appealing are the hypotheses that transcend reason: for exam ple, that after the palace w as destroyed, the soul of the E m peror penetrated C oleridge’s soul in order that the poet could rebuild it in w ords, w hich are m ore lasting than m etal and m arble. T he first dream added a palace to reality; the second, w hich occurred five centuries later, a poem (or the beginning of a poem ) suggested by the palace; the sim ilarity of the dream s hints of a plan; the enorm ous length of tim e involved reveals a superhum an executor. T o speculate on the intentions of that im m ortal or long-lived being w ould be as foolish as it is fruitless, but it is legitim ate to suspect that he has not yet achieved his goal. In 1691, F ather G erbillon of the S ociety of Jesus confirm ed that ruins w ere all that w as left of K ublai K han’s palace; of the poem , w e know that barely fifty lines w ere salvaged. S uch facts raise the possibility that this series of dream s and w orks has not yet ended. T he first dream er w as given the vision of the palace, and he built it; the second, w ho did not know of the other’s dream , w as given the poem about the palace. If this plan does not fail, som eone, on a night centuries rem oved from us, w ill dream the sam e dream , and not suspect that others have dream ed it, and he w ill give it a form of m arble or of m usic. P erhaps this series of dream s has no end, or perhaps the last one w ill be the key. A fter w riting this, I glim psed or thought I glim psed another explanation. P erhaps an archetype not yet revealed to m ankind, an eternal object (to use W hitehead’s term ), is gradually entering the w orld; its first m anifestation w as the palace; its second, the poem . W hoever com pares them w ill see that they are essentially the sam e. [1951] — Translated by E liot W einberger
