Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - Works

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He writes the innocence that people are unable to see. There’s the primary imagination which is the capability to speak and write about what we can see and there’s the secondary imagination which is the capability to recreate the real image, recreate the reality stressing the real meaning. Coleridge uses the secondary imagination, a special gift of the wise men.
The rime of the ancient mariner
It’s as a medieval ballad, it has a strange plot, every stanza is a sort of episode connected to the following. Coleridge wants to stress the importance of the secondary imagination.
The ancient mariner is an old man wiser than a young one. His experience is able to discover something important in his life. He introduced sufferance. Mariner is killing the albatross and he is the only one surviving in the ship, he has experience.
In the second part, there’s the description of weather condition after the death of the albatross. The voice of the mariner is the one breaking the silence. This dreadful reality is for who is unable to see the reality. Water snakes help the ancient mariner to reconquer life again, there’s no reason why they arrive. Ability to understand the reality.
In the final part, there’s the moral of the story. Pray well and love well, this is not a Christian message but this is useful to understand what reality is. A wise man is similar to the ancient mariner.