some time ago the worthless word for the day was: porlock
to interrupt an artist engaged in aesthetic creation
"The Coleridge story, upon which the idea entirely rests, and not on the charcteristics of people in Porlock generally(!), is of course that Coleridge "dreamt" Kubla Khan and on awakening started to write it down but was interrupted by the person on business from Porlock -- and later could remember no more of his 'dream poem'. Strictly, to porlock should mean to interrupt an artist engaged in aesthetic creation. One might extend it to the interruption of any sustained serious theoretical or scholarly reflection or activity. I would be against weakening it to mean any sort of unwelcome interruption."
- Iris Murdoch, in a letter to Norman W. Schur
and, yes, some sources have Coleridge falling asleep and dreaming from taking opium.
(w.m.)
"The Coleridge story, upon which the idea entirely rests, and not on the charcteristics of people in Porlock generally(!), is of course that Coleridge "dreamt" Kubla Khan and on awakening started to write it down but was interrupted by the person on business from Porlock -- and later could remember no more of his 'dream poem'.
Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul begins at the annual Coleridge Dinner at Samuel T.'s [fictional] alma mater. Someone is reading "Kubla Khan" and as they get to the end, Adams lets us know we are in for a wild ride by ending the chapter "and then the reader began the longer and stranger second part of the poem."
To spoil the ending of the book, the protagonists end up saving the universe by travelling back in time and posing as the familiar (to us) porlockian visitor, thereby, interrupting Coleridge so he forgets the rest of the dream.
Interesting that "Porlock" was actually a place name. If I hadn't been told that, I would be mentally trying to figure out its etymology:"lock" means to restrain. but I can't think of meaning of "por-".
Thanks, tsuwm, for resurrecting the word.
Can it be adjectivized?
As in, "I'm going to engage in some porlockian activity"?
no, because properly it's used in an allusive phrase; i.e., a person from Porlock -- but what's to stop you, once the proper noun has been verbed?
(ron)
once the proper noun has been verbed?
I knew you'd like that! [evil grin]
I found a site with evidence that Coleridge got his idea from a previous publication. I think this really shoots the "sex fantasy" idea squarely in the ass.
"'In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure.'-- Purchas his Pilgrimage: Lond. fol. 1626, Bk. IV, chap. XIII, p. 418." A few years later Coleridge made two memoranda quoting Purchas: "Cublai Chan began to reign 1256, the greatest Prince in Peoples, Cities, & Kingdoms that ever was in the World" Notebooks, I, 1840. "Kublaikhan ordered letters to be invented for his people" Ibid., 1281.
>shoots the "sex fantasy" idea squarely in the ass.
as always, bill, nicely asserted.
()
I don't recall having read that Wordsworth had a problem with opium. In looking at encyclopedia bio on him, I did see something I missed when we had thread a long time ago about why Dorothy Wordsworth did not achieve her obvious potential as a poet. We were left with a poem doc_comfort found, implying that she spent so much time waiting on her brother that she had no time to write. MS Encarta encyclopedia says she had mental breakdown.
"Porlock" was also the name used by Sherlock Holmes' mole in Moriarty's camp in the first chapter of The Valley of Fear. He sent a coded message to Holmes that dark deeds loomed at Birlstone Manor and then, frightened by his betrayal, he changed his mind and didn't send the key, but of course S.H. deciphered it anyway...
I'm not seeing the allegorical connection regarding the name. Any assistance?
(Sherlock Holmes "took" opium - do you suppose Arthur Conan Doyle did?)
shoots the "sex fantasy" idea squarely in the ass.
The fact that he borrowed the first couple lines of his poem from a former work doesn't really contradict any theories of symbolic meaning. I could borrow the first few lines of the Star Spangled Banner and create a poem about elephants if I wanted to. I don't, but I could.
Sherlock Holmes "took" opium - do you suppose Arthur Conan Doyle did?)
didn't Holmes take cocaine? not opium?
crossing threads, to lyrics, any one know the artist or more words to:
Coke's for horses,
not for men,
they tell me it will kill,
they don't say when
cocaine, runnin' alround my brain?
Helen, the version I know is Dave van Ronk [Ronke?], from the late 1960's. I'll check later tonight if I still have the album, and will PM you the lyrics I hear or recall.
Edit: Helen, the song is
Cocaine Blues. Bob Dylan recorded it a few years ago. His lyrics are at:
http://www.bobdylanroots.com/cocaine.html,
but the song is an old one, with lots of other verses.
I went to bed last night, singin' a song,
Woke up to find my nose was gone.
didn't Holmes take cocaine? not opium?
Oops! You're quite right. I stand corrected.
Fortunately, Doyle's stories are sufficiently voluminous as to permit me a feeble face-saving comeback: Holmes _did_ flirt with opium too, in The Man with the Twisted Lip.
(But it was definitely cocaine that I _should_ have been thinking of.)
I found a site that said Conan Doyle was a cocaine addict. It also said "Quick Watson, the needle" did not occur in any of the stories.
In reply to:
I don't recall having read that Wordsworth had a problem with opium.
I thought in his day pretty much everyone who could afford to took it for medicinal purposes, and most did not become addicted or have other problems with it.
Bingley
If memory serves me correctly, I believe Lawrence Durrell had a character named Porlock in one or two of the books of the Alexandria Quartette. He had plenty of literary allusions, most famously his narrator, named Darley, also known as Lineaments of Gratified Desire (another literary reference), whose initials LGD are the same as Durrell's.