Xanadu

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the first five verses of “L’aquoiboniste" (The Whatsthepointist) by Serge Gainsbourg. I have two verses left to learn before I start working out the chords. 

            Just before noon I logged on for my weekly Brit Lit 2 tutorial. 

            Our 200 word paragraph assignment is due on February 7. There are instructions in text form but apparently the professor has also posted an explanatory video. We have to do a condensed analysis of a passage. 

            Carson gave us a little bio of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was born in the last quarter of 18th Century and died in the first third of the 19th. He was born just outside London but grew up in the city. He went to Cambridge but got bored and ran off to join the cavalry under the assumed name of Comberbacke. But he was a horrible soldier and returned to university. He meets Robert Southey and Wordsworth. In 1789 with the French revolution as a backdrop Coleridge was a radical idealist and planned to move to the states to start an anarchist colony. He got married beforehand because he thought that would be a sensible way to begin a colony but ended up not going and the marriage was unhappy. By his middle age he’d turned into a conservative intellectual.

            He was an all round man of letters, a literary critic and a scholar of German philosophy. But he was also a plagiarist of German philosophy. He was considered a promising genius but it wasn’t reflected in his output. He did however write and talk a lot and was considered as the sage of Highgate.

            He was addicted to opium for most of his adult life. 

            “Kubla Khan, or A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment”. Along with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christobel this was one of his most famous poems. 

            Who was Kubla Khan? He was a grandson of Genghis Khan. His realm stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea and from Siberia to what is now Afghanistan. 

            I mentioned that I’d read that the Aga Khan is descended from Kubla Khan but when I looked into it later I see the main claim is that the Aga is descended from Mohammed. Actually one in every two hundred people on Earth is related to Genghis Khan. There doesn’t seem to be a direct link between the “Khan” family name and Kubla. It would be like saying all Smiths are descended from the first man named Smith. 

            Marco Polo met Kubla or at least stayed at his summer home in Xanadu. Of the poem there is speculation as to whether it is really a fragment of a larger work the poet imagined but lost from his memory. Some say that the idea of the fragment is a poetic technique to evoke a sense of the sublime.

            I said that anyone that has ever done drugs would know that it is very possible that this poem really is a fragment. I posted something that I wrote to illustrate that in the chat but nobody responded to it: 

            Why Kubla Khan is Inkomplete 

            Because of a slight indisposition 

            I got high I fell asleep in a sitting position 

            because I got high then I dreamed an elaborate vision 

            and I know why 

            because I got high  

            because I got high 

            because I got high 

            I dreamed a poem about Kubla Khan

            because I got high 

            I woke and found a page to write it on 

            after I got high 

            but from my memory most of it was gone 

            and I know why 

            because I got high 

            because I got high 

            because I got high 

            Samuel (Afroman) Coleridge 

            (Translated from the Greek by Christian Christian) 

            Coleridge links the indefinite with the sublime. 

            I said that I don’t think the explanatory note is meant as part of the poem. It clashes with the musicality of the main work. 

            Carson said the fact that the explanatory note is in the third person might suggest that it is part of the poem. 

            There is included in the introduction someone else’s poem about a fragment. 

            I said the first stanza is pastoral while the second is sublime. The first five lines of the first stanza is heavy in alliteration and assonance. There is alliteration at the end of every line. There are a lot of internal slant rhymes such as “stately pleasure" with "sacred river" and pleasure and river tumble down to rhyme with "measure" in the next. 

            I said the second stanza paints a picture of the chaos out of which Kubla Khan builds Xanadu in the third stanza. 

            The fountain is symbolic of the creative flow of the imagination. 

            The river Alph may be from Alpha or beginnings. 

            There are contrasts between the stanzas. 

            Comparisons can be made to Paradise Lost. 

            Coleridge got a lot of his ideas of the sublime from Kant. Overwhelmingness. Sublimity of reason. 

           I said the second stanza has a lot of assonance with chasm, savage, enchanted, fast, pants, fragments, chaffy, dancing, meandering and caverns. The third becomes peaceful again. The last kind of combines the two. But he wants to use music to recreate the Xanadu dome in the air. I assume the milk of paradise is the opium derived laudanum he drank before having his vision. 

           Someone said she thought Khan was being described here but I said I think the speaker is talking about himself. 

           I had saltines and old cheddar for lunch. 

           It was too messy in the afternoon to take a bike ride and so I did some exercises while listening to season 4, episode 24 of The Goon Show:

           What this has to do with the great saxophone shortage in Tibet, we shall see as we present The Collapse of the British Railway Sandwich System. Into the hell of the Clapham Junction Tea Buffet walks a man whose ragged appearance tell us that he is a middle class Englishman. “I want to complain about this sandwich. It tastes like muck!” “Well, it’s a muck sandwich.” “I wanted a mustard and cress sandwich.” “Someone’s pinched all the mustard and cress out of the sandwiches.” This was the first sign of the mustard and cress shortage which was to cause havoc to British railways. “I’m Seagoon, plain clothes man.” “Then why are you dressed like a constable?” “I’m in disguise.” “What do you want?” “A mustard and cress sandwich.” “Do you want bread?” “No.” “We aint got no mustard and cress.” “How much will that be?” “Mustard and cress sandwich with no bread. No bread with no mustard and no cress. One and six.” “One and six for nothing? That’s cheap. Do you have change for a hundred pound note?” "Yes." "Marry me!" The saleswoman turns out to be Bluebottle who has destroyed every mustard and cress place in the world. “Are you going to come quietly or do I have to use earplugs?” Max Geldray plays. Seagoon tells Crun that British Railways wants him to grow them six thousand acres of mustard and cress in the Amazon. In the Amazon Ray Ellington (a black man) approaches Bloodnok and Eccles. Bloodnok tells him, You’re the first white woman I’ve seen in thirty years.” Ellington sings "Rub a Dub Dub." “Here comes Seagoon." "He's a sight for sore eyes. It's a pity I don't have a pair handy." "We'll be crossing the river Carpa-Tee, which is very cold.” “There's nothing worse than a cold Carpa-Tee.” Eccles was carrying Ellington, Bloodnok and Seagoon on his head. Suddenly, Mr. Eccles has appeared on top of Mr. Seagoon. Thus leaving all of them suspended in mid-air. Some slept standing down, which is standing up sideways. The natives attack. Ellington tries to disguise himself as a woman but it fails because his blonde wig was a man's. 

            I read the selections from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. He mostly talks about how animals and plants depend on each other or how some animals and plants require the absence of some animals and plants in order to thrive.

            I made bread pizza topped by salsa, ground pork and cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story the state attorney’s office sends a student named Bob to Mayberry for law enforcement training before taking a state position. He is made a deputy and despite the fact that he knows Bob’s job is supposed to be temporary he thinks Andy is unhappy with his performance and wants to replace him. Bob is extremely efficient and has compiled charts that successfully predict the statistical likelihood of certain crimes occurring. Barney has always been in charge of the wanted posters on the bulletin board and the board is a mess. Despite the fact that some wanted criminals have been reported as arrested in the news, Barney insists on leaving the posters up until the official notice of their arrest is received. Bob changes all that and puts the board in order. Finally Barney gives up and decides to quit. He gets a job as a vacuum cleaner salesman but is horrible at it. Andy is trying to figure out how to get Barney back when Bob tells Andy that Barney has violated the Green River ordinance by not applying for a salesman’s license. Andy tells Bob to arrest Barney. While in jail Barney hears Bob say that his arrest was predictable because a salesman is arrested every ten years. Barney says Bob is ignoring the human factor and demands his job back from Andy. Andy has his uniform all ready. It looks like Bob just made up the Green River Ordinance to help Barney come back. 

            I looked at the video the professor posted for our paragraph assignment. The paragraph must be 250 to 300 words on a topic selected by the TA. Practice of critical skills of analysis in a single paragraph is the starting point for larger assignments. A larger assignment just becomes an expansion. It will be rigorously graded. If we do better on a later assignment this mark will be cancelled and the 5% that this assignment is worth will be added to the other. The MEAL plan is a bad acronym. M is for Main point or thesis, E is for Evidence, A is for Analysis, and L is for Link. The Main point is central to the paragraph. The point should not be obvious but needs to be need said. An example is that the narrator in Oroonoko is not Oroonoko’s friend. So? Make the point in give or take conversation or response. The narrator’s friendship is still subjugation. The point is that their friendship is not direct. Start with a conversation about the idea you want to challenge. Make the main point part of your response. What do the critics think? You could mention what was said in lecture and disagree. Put your idea in conversation with the work. “At first glance it seems , but.” Make the evidence straight forward. Details, quotes, and language in text matters. Paraphrase, describe the structure of the story, summarize, use these to argue your point. Be precise and don’t use three sentences. Use context and not just quotes. Analysis and explanation are the most important things. The paragraph must explain your argument and refer to evidence. If your claim is good and interesting it should not be obvious. Make your claim clear. If evidence is self explanatory then there is no need of analysis. Keats thinks the Grecian urn is silent would not be good because a claim must need explanation. The more counterintuitive the better. Saying the Grecian urn is not silent invites interest. It is better to try to make a claim you are not sure of. Push yourself to find evidence. If it is not there you can then narrow your claim. The urn speaks in other ways such as in pictures. Revise your claim. The Link caveat is that it is not important in this assignment. In a longer assignment the paragraph is linked to the previous paragraph. Link back to the previous paragraph from the beginning. Transition back and set up the new paragraph. The main point of the thesis is made of several sub points that add up to the big one. Put your point in conversation. Make a difficult claim. If you do well later this grade is meaningless. 

            Carson has yet to post the passage we are supposed to analyze.