English Poetry II

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21 st July 25 th 1834) was born in Ottery St. Mary in the southwest of England. In 1782, his father died, so Samuel was sent to London. Coleridge was considered eccentric by fellow schoolboys, in part because of his enthusiastic interest in philosophy.

In 1791, Coleridge went to Cambridge University, but he thought it was boring and left the university in In 1795 he married Sara Flicker although their marriage was not happy and they eventually separated.

However in 1795 he met William Wordsworth which greatly influenced his life and poetry. They lived together for many years. During Coleridge composed some of his most famous poems including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.

In 1798, together Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads which officially marked the beginning of the English Romantic Movement. It was highly acclaimed by critics, especially Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’

Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered from anxiety and depression. Coleridge was also in poor health and treated his illnesses with laudanum, which created a lifelong opium addiction.

Later, Coleridge travelled around Germany, lectured in England and finished his major prose work ‘Biographia Literaria’ (1817). In 1834, he died of an opium- addiction related heart failure.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was first published in 1798 in Lyrical Ballads. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" can be read as a tale of horror in which a mariner (a sailor) is pursued by disaster and supernatural forces after killing an albatross.

The poem explores the abuse of nature and its psychological effects on the Mariner, who interprets the troubles of his boat crew to be a direct result of shooting down the albatross. The theme is that all things that inhabit the natural world have an inherent value and beauty, and that it is necessary for humanity to recognise and respect this value and beauty.

The simple action of the plot, initiated by the mariner's unthinking, destructive act, leads to his troubles and later maturation. The poem is an excellent example of Romantic poetry and is often read to understand the characteristics of this poetic genre.

In the poem's first line, we meet its protagonist, "an ancient Mariner" or an old sailor. He stops 1 of 3 people on their way to a wedding celebration. The leader of the group, the Wedding Guest, tries to resist the strange old man with the "long grey beard and glittering eye." He explains that he is going to a wedding, he is the close relative to the groom and the festivities have already begun. Still, the Ancient Mariner takes his hand and begins his story. The Wedding Guest has no choice but to sit down on a rock to listen.

The Ancient Mariner explains that one day, he set out sail on a ship full of happy sailors. They sailed along smoothly until they reached the equator. Suddenly, the sounds of the wedding interrupt the Ancient Mariner's story. The Wedding Guest is impatient as the bride has arrived. However, he continues to listen to the Ancient Mariner’s tale. As soon as the ship reaches the equator, there is a terrible storm and it forces the ship southwards.

The sailors reach a calm part of the sea that is "wondrous cold", full of snow and glistening green icebergs as tall as the ship. This is called “the rime.” The sailors are alone in this frightening world where the ice makes terrible groaning sounds. Finally, an Albatross emerges from the mist and the sailors see it as a sign of good luck, like a "Christian soul" sent by God to save them.

The sailors feed the Albatross and suddenly the ice breaks, allowing them to leave the freezing world. The wind starts again and continues for 9 days. The Albatross follows the ship, eats their food and plays with them. The Wedding Guest notices that the Ancient Mariner looks at once serious and crazy. He says: "God save thee, ancient Mariner!/From the fiends that plague thee thus!-/Why lookst thou so?" The Ancient Mariner responds that on impulse he shot the Albatross with his crossbow.

The other sailors are angry with the Ancient Mariner for killing the Albatross, which they believed had saved them from the icy world: "Ah wretch! Said they, the bird to slay/That made the breeze to blow!" Then the mist disappears and the sun shines particularly brightly. The sailors suddenly change their opinion. They decide that the Albatross must have brought the mist, and praise the Ancient Mariner for killing it: "Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,/That bring the fog and mist.”

The ship sails along merrily until it enters an unknown part of the ocean and the wind disappears. The ship does not move, and sat "As idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean." Then the sun becomes unbearably hot and the sailors run out of water. The ocean becomes a horrifying place, the water churns with "slimy" creatures and at night weird fires burn on the ocean's surface.

The sailors dream that an evil spirit has followed them from the icy world. They all suffer from sunburned lips and a thirst so terrible that they cannot speak. To mark the Ancient Mariner’s crime, his sin and to place the guilt on him alone, the sailors hang the Albatross's dead body around his neck.

After a while, a ship appears on the horizon and the Ancient Mariner bites his arm and sucks the blood so he could cry out to the other sailors. The ship was strange: it sailed without wind, and when it crossed in front of the sun, its masts seemed to imprison the sun. Inside the ship the Ancient Mariner could see that it was a ghost ship driven by Death, in the form of a man, and Life-in-Death, in the form of a beautiful, naked woman.

They were gambling for the Ancient Mariner's soul. Life-in-Death won and the other sailors were left to Death. The sky went black as the ghost ship went away. Suddenly all of the sailors cursed the Ancient Mariner with their eyes and died. Their souls zoomed out of their bodies, each taunting the Ancient Mariner with a sound like his crossbow. Their corpses refused to rot, they stared at him unrelentingly, cursing him with their eyes.

The Mariner drifts on the ocean, unable to pray. One night he notices some beautiful snakes playing at the ship's prow in the icy moonlight. Watching the creatures brings him joy, and he blesses them without meaning to. When he was finally able to pray, the Albatross falls from his neck and sinks into the sea. He could finally sleep and dreamed of water. When he awoke, it was raining and a thunderstorm begins. He drinks the water and the ship begins to sail. Then the dead sailors suddenly arise and sail the ship.

Once the ship reached the equator again, the ship jolted, causing the Ancient Mariner to fall unconscious. Then he hears two voices discussing his fate. They say he will be punished for killing the Albatross, who was loved by a spirit. They disappear and when the Ancient Mariner awakes, the dead sailors are grouped together, all cursing him with their eyes. Suddenly they disappear as well. The Ancient Mariner is not relieved, because he realizes that he is doomed to be haunted by them forever.

The wind starts and the Ancient Mariner sees his country's shore. Then angels appear standing over every corpse and wave silently to the shore, serving as beacons to guide the ship home. The Ancient Mariner was overjoyed to see a captain and a Hermit rowing a small boat to the ship. He plans to ask the Hermit to absolve him of his sin. Just as the rescuers reach the ship, it sinks suddenly and creates a vortex (whirlpool) in the water.

The rescuers pull the Ancient Mariner from the water, but believe he is dead. When he abruptly awakes and rows the boat, the captain loses his mind. The frightened Hermit asks the Mariner what kind of man he is. Then the Ancient Mariner learns of his curse: that he would be destined to tell his tale from beginning to end when an painful, physical urge struck him. After he tells his tale to the Hermit, he feels normal again.

The Ancient Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that he wanders around the world telling his story. After he tells it, he is temporarily relieved of his agony. Then he says that the best way to become close with God is to respect all creatures, because God loves them all. Then he vanishes. Instead of joining the wedding, the Wedding Guest walks home, stunned. He awakes the next day "sadder and...wiser" for having heard the Ancient Mariner's tale.

From the Ancient Mariner's first contact with the Wedding Guest, we know there is something strange about him. He has a "glittering eye" that immediately upsets the Wedding Guest, who presumes he is mad and calls him a "grey-beard loon." Yet there is more to his "glittering eye" than mere madness, as he makes the Wedding Guest listen to his story with the fascination of a three-year-old child. Although he is human, the Ancient Mariner seems to be from an “otherworld” e.g. not of the real/material world.

But throughout Part 1, the real world interrupts the Ancient Mariner’s tale. For example, as the Ancient Mariner begins the sound of a bassoon at the wedding reception distracts the Wedding Guest. He "beat his breast" in frustration that he is missing the party. It suggests that the temporal/real world with its pleasures tempts the Wedding Guest. He is from that world - he is a relative of the bridegroom and familiar with parties. Meanwhile, the Ancient Mariner cannot enjoy this world because he is condemned to perpetually relive the story of his past.

In the Ancient Mariner's story, the spiritual and real worlds are confused the moment they cross the equator. Suddenly the sailors lose control of their ship. The storm drives them into an icy world that is called "the land of mist and snow.” The word "rime" can mean "ice", and can also be an alternate spelling of the word "rhyme." Therefore, the poem is the rhymed story of the Ancient Mariner, but it is also the tale of the "land of mist and snow."

The "rime” is where the Ancient Mariner's troubles begin. By calling the poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Coleridge equates the "rhyme" or tale with the actual "rime" or icy world. The Ancient Mariner is condemned to feel a terror that makes him tell his "rhyme." This is a fate just as terrifying as the "rime" is for the sailors.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," is about humanity's relationship to the natural world. Coleridge makes it clear that the killing of the albatross brings dire consequences upon the mariner. In a larger sense, it is not his killing of the bird that is wrong, but the mariner's—and by extension humankind's— cruel and destructive relationship with nature that is the problem.

Although the mariner's killing of the albatross, the terrifying deaths of his shipmates and the grotesque supernatural spirits are disturbing. The consequences are all the more terrible for having been set in motion by such a thoughtless act. Coleridge’s goal is to portray the mariner's development into a sensitive and compassionate human being. In so doing, he aims to persuade the reader to reconsider his or her attitudes toward the natural world.

Coleridge also introduces the idea of responsibility in Part 2. The sailors have an urge to blame whatever happens to them on the Ancient Mariner, since he killed the Albatross for no good reason. It seems more important to them to make him claim responsibility for their fate than what their fate actually is. First, they curse him for making the wind disappear and then they praise him for making the mist disappear.

However, Coleridge said that he did not intend for the poem to have a moral, even though when reading the poem it is easy to see a moral message. By having the sailors switch from blame to praise and back to blame again, Coleridge mocks those quick to judge. The sailors represent those too eager to separate the "certain" from the "uncertain", preferring to see things in black-and-white terms.

The major theme of liminality also emerges in this part. In literature (especially Romantic literature) a liminal space is where plot twists occur or things begin to go wrong. The Romantic hero, although at first confident and with a clear mission, stumbles into a bewildering space where he struggles. But he emerges wiser and saddened. Traditionally these places are borderlines, such as the edge of a forest or a shoreline/the sea.

In Part 1 the ship's course is sunny and smooth until it crosses the equator and the storm begins. The equator is the boundary between the earth's hemispheres, and is therefore an extreme example of a liminal space. The icy world or "rime" itself is also a compelling liminal space. At first it seems to be the epitome of the temporal; there are the sailors, whose senses are assaulted with huge icy forms, terrifying sounds, and bewildering echoes.

But it is equally a spiritual place, the home of a powerful spirit who creates havoc to punish the Ancient Mariner for killing the Albatross. The icy world represents a tenuous balance between the temporal and spiritual. But the boundaries between the temporal and spiritual are indistinct. It is not the cold or desolation of the icy world that makes it so terrifying. Rather, it is that nothing is easily definable. It represents the balance that one must seek between the "certain and uncertain," which will ultimately lead to the truth. However, the icy world as a symbol suggests that this path to enlightenment is equally fascinating and terrifying.

The most famous lines are unquestionably: "Water, water, everywhere,/Nor any drop to drink." The sailors are punished for the Ancient Mariner's mistake with deprivation made worse by the fact that what they need so badly - water - is all around them, but is entirely undrinkable. These lines have come into common usage to refer to situations in which one is surrounded by the thing one desires, but is nevertheless denied.

We could suggest that The Ancient Mariner shoots the Albatross because he wants to learn about the spiritual world. The Albatross is an animal, but it is like a spirit and its murder creates spiritual havoc for the sailors. We are given no reason why the Ancient Mariner shoots the Albatross. It is as though he needs to bring the beauty of the spiritual world (embodied in the Albatross) down to the temporal world in order to understand it.

He takes the bird out of the air and onto the deck, where it proves to be mortal. After, the spiritual world begins to punish the Ancient Mariner by making all elements of the temporal/real world painful. They are thirsty, sunburned, cannot sail and are threatened by creatures and strange lights. The sailors add to the Ancient Mariner's physical punishment when they hang the Albatross around his neck, a physical reminder of the spiritual burden he carries.

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ exemplifies many of the Romantic themes. The most central of these is the subjectivity of experience and the importance of the individual. The poem is told largely from the Ancient Mariner's perspective. The Ancient Mariner tells his self-centered tale for a self-centered purpose: to relieve his agonizing storytelling compulsion. The Romantics were some of the first poets to place a literary work's focus on the protagonist's empirical experience of the world.

The poem also exemplifies the Romantic fascination with the holy in nature. Coleridge places the Ancient Mariner out in the ocean, making him very small and vulnerable in comparison to the forces of nature. The Romantics also located the spiritual and sublime in nature rather than religious institutions. Despite the Ancient Mariner's expression of love for prayer, his message reveals his belief that the true path to God is through connecting with and respecting nature.

The poem may have been inspired by James Cook's second voyage of exploration (1772–1775) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean. The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until Judgement Day for taunting Jesus on the day of the Crucifixion.

The metal band Iron Maiden wrote a song called ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ which is based on the poem. If you like rock music, it’s a good summary.