The Invisible Mentor

Booked on Tuesdays: Review: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

August 2nd, 2011 |

Image via Wikipedia

Of all the genres of literary fiction, I like poetry the least and it could be that I do not understand a lot of it, especially when it’s very deep. As some of you may know already, my summer project is to read through some of the classics in literature.

Because I find poetry so difficult to understand, I did some background research on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. According to Harold Bloom in How to Read and Why, “At the root of Coleridge’s poem is the popular ballad “The Wandering Jew,” but the Ancient Mariner has more in common with Franz Kafka’s characters in “The Hunter Gracchus” or “A Country Doctor” than with the traditional mocker of Christ.” Unfortunately for me, I haven’t read any of those poems so I haven’t seen the story before. If you remember, in How to Read Like a Professor, we are encouraged to ask, “Where have I seen that before?” when reading literary fiction.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in Devon, UK. He was a gifted child who read widely and had a knack for learning languages. As an adult, Coleridge could read in German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Coleridge was a poet, critic, philosopher, lay theologian, and political theorist. He never finished his university education, but like many authors, he was influenced by the social issues of his times. For many years he had an alliance with William Wordsworth and they published literary works together.

Coleridge’s neighbour, John Cruikshank, had a dream which he described to the poet. Coleridge told the dream to William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and discussed the ideas for a poem. William and Dorothy made some suggestions to him on how to make the tale better. Coleridge spent four months writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The version of the book that I have, published by Arcturus Publishing Limited has beautiful illustrations by Gustave Doré.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the longest poem he wrote. It’s a 625-line ballad, in seven parts, written in old English. Some of the passages have modern English interpretations so it’s easier to understand. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is about the events a mariner experienced while he was on a long sea voyage.

There are three men on their way to a wedding feast and the mariner stops one of them to tell his tale. At first the wedding guest cannot believe what is happening to him, he becomes impatient and somewhat angry with the mariner because he is next of kin to the bridegroom and feels that the mariner is delaying him from going to the wedding feast. The wedding guest finally becomes fascinated, listens like a three year old child, and sits on a stone waiting for the tale to unfold.

The tale begins when the mariner and his crew depart on their journey. His ship sets sail southward with good weather. Along the journey they encounter a strong storm, which drives them off course and sends them toward the South Pole, which is located on Antarctica, where they experience mist, snow and ice everywhere. The ship is stuck in the frozen sea.

A great bird, called the Albatross, comes through the mist and snow. The crew sees this as a good omen and feeds the bird. The albatross stays with them and would spin round and round. Magically, the ice splits, the weather starts to improve and the helmsman is able to steer them northward through the fog and ice, leading them out of Antarctica. The albatross follows behind the ship, but the mariner kills the albatross with a cross-bow. The tale takes off from there and we get a glimpse of what it is like to be in Hell.

His shipmates deride him for killing the bird of good luck. The weather calms down and they enter the Pacific Ocean. The crew suddenly change their tune and now say that it was the albatross that brought the bad weather. The weather becomes completely calm and they stop moving – they are stuck again. Even though water is everywhere, they do not have any drinking water. Everything is rotting. The sailors blame the mariner for their thirst.

A spirit follows the ship. The albatross is being avenged.

The sailors place the dead albatross around the mariner’s neck. They later encounter a ghostly ship. One by one his 200 sailors fall dead, and their souls depart in pain from their bodies. The sea is rotting, the ship is rotting, but the mariner lives on. The mariner tries to pray but the curse for killing the bird lives on.

Something changes in the mariner and now he watches and admires the beauty of the water snakes that he sees in the sea. Originally he considered them to be slimy beings. He tries to pray again and this time the albatross falls from his neck. The mariner falls asleep and when he arises it’s raining. The wind comes to life again, angelic spirits fill the bodies of the dead sailors – the helmsman steers the ship, the mariner and sailors work the ropes and the ship moves on toward home. The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies of the sailors and appear in their own form.

The ship sinks like lead leaving the mariner afloat. He is rescued by the Pilot – who is a holy man – and Pilot’s son in a boat, but they think the mariner is dead. When the mariner comes to, he moves his lip and ends up scaring the Pilot. He takes the oars from the son and begins to row. When they reach land, the mariner asks the Pilot to shrieve him. The mariner tells his tale and he is set free, but only temporarily. His agony returns, and the mariner pays penance by going from land to land telling his tale. And he has a keen sense of who to choose to relate his tale to. It appears that one lesson that the mariner learned is that all creatures are important.

“He prayeth best, who lovest best

All things both great and small,

For the dear God who loveth us

He made and loveth all.”

The mariner leaves the wedding guest who now goes home. He feels very forlorn and when he arises the following morning, he is sadder but wiser.

Because I read How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I was looking at the poem with news lens. Water can mean cleansing, destruction as well death and rebirth. Metaphorically speaking the mariner died and was reborn, and is more respectful of all living creatures. He was not completely redeemed because he has to pay penance for what he did. But through the story he grows as a person and has a different way of viewing all things. The name of the person who rescues the Mariner is Pilot, which is someone who flies and flying liberates us.

I’d love it if you read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and give me your take on it. Originally, mostly sailors bought The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. “Contemporary critics were underwhelmed when it appeared in 1798. The ‘Ancient Mariner’ was published anonymously in the Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.”

I read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge twice so that I could really understand it. If you are someone who enjoys poetry, you’ll get it the first time and you’ll enjoy the tale that the poem tells. It’s quite an imaginative and creative work of literature. Incidentally, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge includes other poems such as “Kubla Khan,” Frost at Midnight,” This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” “Dejection: An Ode,” “Youth and Age,” Work Without Hope” and Epitaph.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Some book links are affiliate links.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge