This article compares Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Preface to the poem “Kubla Khan” with Fernando Pessoa’s letter to Adolfo Cascais Monteiro, of 13 January 1935, about the genesis of the heteronyms. It argues that Pessoa stole Coleridge’s ideas and expressions about genius, inspiration, creativity and interruption, in the process transforming one of these elements in order to construct his own original image of poetic creation.
