COLERIDGES POETRY

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridges place in the canon of English poetry rests on a comparatively small body of
achievement: a few poems from the late 1790s and early 1800s and his participation in the revolutionary
publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1797. If Wordsworth represents the central pillar of early Romanticism, Coleridge
is nevertheless an important structural support. His emphasis on the imagination, its independence from the outside
world and its creation of fantastic pictures such as those found in the Rime, exerted a profound influence on later
writers such as Shelley; his depiction of feelings of alienation and numbness helped to define more sharply the
Romantics idealized contrast between the emptiness of the citywhere such feelings are experiencedand the
joys of nature. The heightened understanding of these feelings also helped to shape the stereotype of the suffering
Romantic genius, often further characterized by drug addiction: this figure of the idealist, brilliant yet tragically
unable to attain his own ideals, is a major pose for Coleridge in his poetry.
Form
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines long but,
occasionally, as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally tetrameter,
while even lines are generally trimeter. The rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB scheme, though
again there are many exceptions.
Commentary
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is unique among Coleridges important works unique in its intentionally
archaic language (Eftsoons his hand drops he), its length, its bizarre moral narrative, its strange scholarly notes
printed in small type in the margins, its thematic ambiguity, and the long Latin epigraph that begins it, concerning
the multitude of unclassifiable invisible creatures that inhabit the world. Its peculiarities make it quite atypical of
its era; it has little in common with other Romantic works. Rather, the scholarly notes, the epigraph, and the archaic
language combine to produce the impression (intended by Coleridge, no doubt) that the Rime is a ballad of
ancient times, reprinted with explanatory notes for a new audience.
But the explanatory notes complicate, rather than clarify, the poem as a whole; while there are times that they
explain some unarticulated action, there are also times that they interpret the material of the poem in a way that
seems at odds with, or irrelevant to, the poem itself. For instance, in Part II, we find a note regarding the spirit that
followed the ship nine fathoms deep: one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor
angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be
consulted. What might Coleridge mean by introducing such figures as the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael
Psellus, into the poem, as marginalia, and by implying that the verse itself should be interpreted through him?
This is a question that has puzzled scholars since the first publication of the poem in this form. (Interestingly, the
original version of the Rime, in the 1797 edition of Lyrical Ballads, did not include the side notes.) There is
certainly an element of humor in Coleridges scholarly glossesa bit of parody aimed at the writers of serious
glosses of this type; such phrases as Platonic Constantinopolitan seem consciously silly. It can be argued that the
glosses are simply an amusing irrelevancy designed to make the poem seem archaic and that the truly important text
is the poem itselfin its complicated, often Christian symbolism, in its moral lesson (that all creatures great and
small were created by God and should be loved, from the Albatross to the slimy snakes in the rotting ocean) and in
its characters.
If one accepts this argument, one is faced with the task of discovering the key to Coleridges symbolism: what does
the Albatross represent, what do the spirits represent, and so forth. Critics have made many ingenious attempts to do
just that and have found in the Rime a number of interesting readings, ranging from Christian parable to political
allegory. But these interpretations are dampened by the fact that none of them (with the possible exception of the
Christian reading, much of which is certainly intended by the poem) seems essential to the story itself. One can
accept these interpretations of the poem only if one disregards the glosses almost completely.
A more interesting, though still questionable, reading of the poem maintains that Coleridge intended it as a
commentary on the ways in which people interpret the lessons of the past and the ways in which the past is, to a
large extent, simply unknowable. By filling his archaic ballad with elaborate symbolism that cannot be deciphered
in any single, definitive way and then framing that symbolism with side notes that pick at it and offer a highly
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theoretical spiritual-scientific interpretation of its classifications, Coleridge creates tension between the ambiguous
poem and the unambiguous-but-ridiculous notes, exposing a gulf between the old poem and the new attempt to
understand it. The message would be that, though certain moral lessons from the past are still comprehensiblehe
liveth best who loveth best is not hard to understand other aspects of its narratives are less easily grasped.
In any event, this first segment of the poem takes the Mariner through the worst of his trials and shows, in action,
the lesson that will be explicitly articulated in the second segment. The Mariner kills the Albatross in bad faith,
subjecting himself to the hostility of the forces that govern the universe (the very un-Christian-seeming spirit
beneath the sea and the horrible Life-in-Death). It is unclear how these forces are meant to relate to one another
whether the Life-in-Death is in league with the submerged spirit or whether their simultaneous appearance is simply
a coincidence.
After earning his curse, the Mariner is able to gain access to the favor of Godable to regain his ability to pray
only by realizing that the monsters around him are beautiful in Gods eyes and that he should love them as he
should have loved the Albatross. In the final three books of the poem, the Mariners encounter with a Hermit will
spell out this message explicitly, and the reader will learn why the Mariner has stopped the Wedding-Guest to tell
him this story.
Motifs
Prayer
Although Coleridges prose reveals more of his religious philosophizing than his poetry, God, Christianity, and the
act of prayer appear in some form in nearly all of his poems. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner is
stripped of his ability to speak as part of his extreme punishment and, consequently, left incapable of praying.
Rather than recommend a manner or method of prayer, Coleridges poems reflect a wide variety, which emphasizes
his belief in the importance of individuality.
Symbols
The Sun
Coleridge believed that symbolic language was the only acceptable way of expressing deep religious truths and
consistently employed the sun as a symbol of God. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge compares the
sun to Gods own head (97) and, later, attributes the first phase of the mariners punishment to the sun, as it
dehydrates the crew. All told, this poem contains eleven references to the sun, many of which signify the Christian
conception of a wrathful, vengeful God. Bad, troubling things happen to the crew during the day, while smooth
sailing and calm weather occur at night, by the light of the moon. Frequently, the sun stands in for Gods influence
and power, as well as a symbol of his authority.
The Moon
Like the sun, the moon often symbolizes God, but the moon has more positive connotations than the sun. In The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the sun and the moon represent two sides of the Christian God: the sun represents
the angry, wrathful God, whereas the moon represents the benevolent, repentant God. All told, the moon appears
fourteen times in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and generally favorable things occur during night, in contrast
to the horrors that occur during the day. For example, the mariners curse lifts and he returns home by moonlight.