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2. House of Pleasure of the Kings of Kashmir |
F. Bernier 5. Source of the Nile Lowes argues that descriptions of the source of the Nile (one or two fountains spawning a river that descends in twisting ways to the plains below) combine with similar images from Bartram's tour of America, and Bernier's narrative of his trip to the Kashmir. In Bernier's Ninth Letter, he responds to a friend who wonders about "the old controversy touching the causes of the increase of the Nile." Bernier recalls that In Delhi, he met two ambassadors from Ethiopia, who told him that the Nile "issueth out of the earth at two big bubbling springs," and, as "a pretty river…it runs bending." The source of the Nile, then, is the water pouring up in fountains. And, for Lowes, the source of Kubla Khan's mystery is the conflation of travel imagery, derived from three continents, and described in at least a dozen books. Thus, the flowing together of the images in Coleridge's mind is the magical source of the poem; looking at Lowes, we may be forgiven thinking that he is projecting his own bibliographic ecstasy onto the poet. What were the sources of a magical river to the travel writers, and perhaps to Coleridge, are to Lowes the literary sources of the poem, and the inspiration for his own book. All this rant, of course, springs from a very few words in Bernier. |
 Other sources
William Bartram
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