2012/01/16

They want to play in Carcosa, i would play in Kubla Khan


Carcosa is a great work, and deserves undoubtedly praise. But it is too prosaic and blood-shedding, and in this it reveals its main shortcoming. It is very easy to depict such things,it is much like a paroxysm in this respect, maybe that is why it aroused controversy when it first came out.

Who will give me a game where i can instead play in such an amazing place as Kubla Khan? I think if i tweaked Al-Qadim a little bit, i could enjoy this experience.

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. 5
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills, 10
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 e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 15
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 20
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 25
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device, 35
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played, 40
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, 45
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! 50
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.
Ancestral voices prophesying war! 30

2 comments:

irbyz said...

"War" before "pleasure", please *points above* :) (Probably a bit like Carcosa, I'd guess, not that I've read that).

Xanadu beats Boosboodle hands down for atmosphere, anyhow. ;)

verification: chingst (no comment...)

paulierockets said...

I agree, but I do want to point out that the name of the place is Xanadu, and that is where Kubla Khan decreed his pleasure dome. "Kubla Khan," aka Kublai Khan, was in real life a descendent of Genghis Khan, and was described in Marco Polo's writings.

Coleridge borrowed him for the poem, which came to him in a laudanum dream. Someone woke him up thus robbing him of the second part of the poem, which was just where it was getting interesting and a bit scary.

Citizen Kane called his estate "Xanadu." So was the roller rink in the Olivia Newton-John movie and song "Xanadu."

See, I'm already getting ideas: I would have Kubla Khan be a reclusive but wealthy king retreated from the world, but people would still be invited to the pleasure dome. Every so often someone would disappear into the far more sinister underground depths. He would be trying to win back his spirit lover, his Muse, played by Olivia Newton-John. (No really, she was a muse in the movie.) Are these things connected? are there other forces at work behind the walls of Xanadu? Morlocks or something similar?

Ooooh!

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