Kubla Khan
Music and facts behind the poem
Research the background of a text.
A dulcimer is a musical instrument with strings that the player strikes with two small hammers. Forms of it exist in China and Europe.
Folk cultures have many such rare instruments, like the one-stringed ektara played by the Bauls of Bengal.
'Kubla Khan' fuses dream images with things from Coleridge's wide reading:
- Factual: the emperor Kubla Khan and his summer capital, Abyssinia, the dulcimer.
- Imaginary: the river Alph, its caverns and sunless sea, the dome of ice, the demon-lover.
So even our dreams are built from what we have read and seen.
Dreams are built from what we read.
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