As in many Rush songs (e.g., Xanadu), the protagonist of “Red Barchetta” seeks a hidden place of refuge. In this case, that refuge is provided by a secret homestead that his uncle has maintained despite living under a futuristic, Orwellian “surveillance state.” In some sense, this represents the artist as a special kind of “knower” who can find freedom when others are trapped by society’s restrictions.

The singer has drunk. As drug-user, his senses are addled. In the Bible to have drunk can mean to have suffered the wrath of God. “Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.” (Isaiah 51:17)

The milk of Paradise has curdled into a bitter brew, reminiscent of the kumis, fermented mare’s milk drunk by Mongols like Kubla Khan.

And so ends Xanadu. A bad trip? The curse of immortality? A fool’s paradise?

The thought of escape is, in a way, a return to the beginning of the quest, which was a desire to escape from the world and from death. The prisoner seeks to escape from his fate, but cannot do so.

Escapism also motivates recreational drug use, a search for novelty to end the boredom of the ordinary. The icy prison has no vulnerabilities which the prisoner can escape.

The most famous poetic use of “nevermore” is in Poe’s poem, The Raven.

“Nevermore” functions there as a refrain meaning that the poet’s beloved who is dead will never return. Nevermore means death in that case. Here “nevermore” means that the singer will never return to ordinary life, the world of the ordinary people which he left behind. He is as if dead to the world.

The end of the quest is madness. Man cannot live with the endlessness of time. Madness is a traditional punishment visited upon hapless mortals by the gods. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. (Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripedes) Such a punishment is given to those who wrongly seek godlike attributes like immortality. One such was the mortal Icarus who sought to fly to the sun.

A decree or law limits the freedom of the individual. As a mighty emperor, Kubla Khan, has the authority to control the lives of millions of his subjects. Thus, they were under his authoritarian rule. Even a wonderful place like the Pleasure Dome, was a veritable prison, as in this song.

The decree here can also refer to the law which undergirds the working of the universe and of time. This law cannot be circumvented by our pathetic singer.

Held: the verb in this sentence turns pleasure, that which is desired, into a prison. We might think again of the parallel theme of drug use, an altered pleasurable state, as a dimension of this song. Drug addiction led to Coleridge’s destruction. His source of inspiration was his doom.
His very self became his prison.

The final weary repitition of the name of the false paradise. For the philospher Nietzsche, the concept of eternal recurrence illustrates this prisoner’s dilemma:

“My philosophy brings the triumphant idea of which all other modes of thought will ultimately perish. It is the great cultivating idea: the races that cannot bear it stand condemned; those who find it the greatest benefit are chosen to rule…

I want to teach the idea that gives many the right to erase themselves – the great cultivating idea…

Everything becomes and recurs eternally – escape is impossible!"

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