Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (12)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772, he received an excellent education but failed to graduate at Cambridge University. He was influenced by French revolutionary ideas and after his disillusionment he planned to move to America and establish an utopian community called Pantisocracy, where every economic activity would be done as a community and private ownership wouldn't exist.

In 1795 he met the poet Wordsworth, with whom he wrote in 1798 “Lyrical Ballads”, and his work inside of it “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” became the Manifesto of the English Romanticism. The preface added by Wordsworth in the second edition of the lyrical ballads explains the role of the two poets: Wordsworth states that his process goes from the natural to the supernatural, because he deals with every day life events, normal nature, elevating it through supernatural events; on the contrary Coleridge deals with supernatural events but introduced every day life events to increase credibility (the willing suspension of disbelief), such as the marriage feats, the wedding guest, the description of the sun according to the hemosphere during his trip, the equator, common people, harbour villages. The supernatural events are for example the zombie mariner, whose eyes are glistening and hypnotising, the skeleton ship in which Death and Life in Death cast dice. In 1817 Coleridge wrote Biographia Literaria, where he explains himself the dual task which he and Wordsworth had set writing the Lyrical Ballads. Coleridge died in 1834.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

In the first part the ancient mariner stops a wedding guest to tell him his tale. He and his fellow sailors reached the equator and the polar regions after a violent storm. After days an albatross appeared, which is sign of good omen, and the ancient mariner killed him for its own sake, with no reason. This action against nature breaks the secret law of life: the mariner suffers punishment for what he has done: the world is dead and terrible, the ships have stopped and sailors will die after Death and Leprosy play dice, Life in Death wins the mariner's life and he starts to establish a relationship with nature again by blessing watersnakes. Then the ship starts moving again and celestial spirits stand by the corpses of the dead sailors. As a form of redemption the mariner has to tell his story as a warning to respect nature.

The Killing of the Albatross

In this ballad the ancient mariner stops a wedding guest in order to tell him his story, the latter tries to resist, but the seaman's eyes are hypnotising and he can't but listen. The old man says that on a clear day he set out on a ship full of a happy crew. They reached the equator and terrible storm forced them southwards. They stopped in the middle of green ice in the south pole, and the sailors are the only living beings in that frightening world where the ice made terrible sounds. Finally they see an albatross, but all of a sudden the wind started blowing and they left the polar region. The wedding guest notices that the mariner has a grave look and he asks why, so he tells him he shot the albatross. As he killed the albatross, he didn't feel guilty, he was careless and superficial, then he started repenting and regretting what he had done. He redeemed himself telling his story and giving a warn to whom the talked to. There is a moral growth from carelessness to sensitivity, which never appears in traditional ballads. This ballad has many characteristics of the old ballad form, such as: it tells a dramatic story in verse, it is written in quatrains, it is full of repetition, it deals with crime and supernatural events, it is written in archaic language and it is a mixture of dialogue and narration. It differs from the other ballads because this one provides a moral aim and a the reader can notice a moral growth in the principal character.

A sadder and wiser man

In this passage the story ends, the mariner greets the wedding guest, who is sad, because he couldn't attend the wedding feast and because he has been listening to a very sad story, but the following day he wakes up feeling wiser, he has understood the moral aim of this story. The wedding guest understands that evil has consequences on others, indeed both the old sailor and his crew suffer punishment. There is no rational explanation to evil, indeed the ancient mariner kills the albatross for no reason. Every element in this ballad has a conotative meaning: the ship, along with the crew is seen as mankind, while the ship alone is the symbol of the human body. The voyage can be identified with life. The further symbols of this ballad are
both parabolic, religious and ethical, such as the killing of the albatross can be seen as the original sin and as the break of the pact of love and respect to nature; while the albatross can be seen as Jesus Christ, the innocent victim. Moreover the sun and the ice are only ethical and romantic symbols: the sun is benign, because it provides light and warmth, therefore life; lastly the ice, which is green and howls and growls like a savage beast, is dangerous, frightening and powerful, so it symbolises the sublime and the power of nature.