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Explanation of Symbols in the poem
Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan,
Xanadu is a neo-platonic heaven where the sexual impulse
and the creative impulse have their source.
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sexual=life creation=sunny dome |
war=death destruction=caves of ice |
make up our experience on Earth.
Song of Abyssinian Maid
on Earth: Abyssinian singer is the metaphor of artist, poet
In the poem, the sexual impulse -- "as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing" -- is a symbol of the creative impulse as well as part of life itself, as is war. Coleridge is analyzing the ying and the yang, the complementary opposites, the joy and the grief of life, which is all anyone has to write about in the first place. There is opposition in the act of writing poetry, itself, for the poet is taking the raw, the crude, the elemental, the earthly and transforming the earthly experience into a heavenly experience: poetry.
The creative and the sexual both come from whatever is vital within us: sometimes referred to as "the life force."
Neo-Platonism. Literally, new Platonism. Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher who believed that what we experience on Earth is a dim, shadowy, imperfect version of the Ideal forms in heaven. (Not a Christian heaven, but a place where everything is perfect.) Think of this heaven as another dimension we cannot imagine. Here on Earth we have four dimensions only: height, width, breadth, and time.
For instance, look at trees; there are hundreds of varieties of trees. Which variety is the most beautiful? Which tree is perfect? Not only is there no ideally beautiful tree on Earth, there is no perfectly formed tree. Each tree has imperfections, asymmetry. Also, trees, are subject to time and are denuded of their leaves in winter and are bleak and dreary looking. Eventually, trees die. The same with human faces. The same with chairs. In this other dimension, there is an ideal face, even ideal chairness.
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