The poem
Suspended lion face Spilling at the centre Of an unfurnished sky How still you stand, And how unaided Single stalkless flower You pour unrecompensed.
The eye sees you Simplified by distance Into an origin, Your petalled head of flames Continuously exploding. Heat is the echo of your Gold.
Coined there among Lonely horizontals You exist openly. Our needs hourly Climb and return like angels. Unclosing like a hand, You give for ever.
I'm studying Larkin's 'High Windows' collection for an exam in a few days, and an idea occurred to me that I just had to test out. In the poem 'Solar', there are some strange phrases describing the sun, for example 'Coined there among lonely horizontals" and "unclosing like a hand". Nobody seems to have any definitive explanation of the 'coined...' bit, but I had the sudden thought that maybe it could be a link to…
Read the whole commentI'm studying Larkin's 'High Windows' collection for an exam in a few days, and an idea occurred to me that I just had to test out. In the poem 'Solar', there are some strange phrases describing the sun, for example 'Coined there among lonely horizontals" and "unclosing like a hand". Nobody seems to have any definitive explanation of the 'coined...' bit, but I had the sudden thought that maybe it could be a link to the Sistine Chapel. 'Coined' could simply mean made up, invented then painted upon the ceiling, and 'unclosing like a hand', well, I'm sure I don't need to go into detail about the God/Adam hand touching bit on that ceiling. So I raced onto the internet to find some pictures to substantiate my idea, and sure enough, there is a large picture of the sun very close to the central God/Adam picture. Also, when looking at larger pictures, I was suddenly struck by another link - the beams running down the length of the chapel ceiling...are these the 'lonely horizontals'? Then there's the obvious link of 'our needs hourly climb and return like ANGELS' (my emphasis)...
Well, it might be that these links are just coincidences, and that Larkin never saw the ceiling, or meant to allude to it in his poem. But whether it's true or not, I think I've found a novel new interpretation of the latter part of 'Solar'.
A bit far-fetched - Larkin only really left the country once and never visited Italy - and certainly wasn't the religious sort.
i like your idea, i think its not that likely but still it certainly corresponds with the pictures. i checked myself.