"The rime of the ancient mariner" by Coleridge

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
Download:	249
Data:	12.02.2001
Numero di pagine:	3
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE “The rime of the ancient mariner”

In this poem there are supernatural elements like in the medieval ballad and their main features can be summed up :
- the old mariner comes from nowhere and he has “glittering eye” which has hypnotic power, making people listen
to him;
- he is compelled by a mysterious power to tell the story again and again;
- the albatross, a sacred bird in many religion and mythical traditions, is endowed with supernatural powers;
- the poem is full of unearthly creatures (spirits, ghosts, souls, sea-snakes, angels) ;
- the ghost-ship is driven by mysterious forces.
We can also underline the presence of supernatural events and characters, but also the presence of gothic ones;
Supernatural : the albatross, the ghost-ship, Life-in-Death, Death, water-snakes, slimy things, the sea.
Gothic : the ancient mariner, Life-in-Death, Death, phantom ship.
The rime deals with supernatural elements, but deals with a “semblance of truth”.
The albatross represents the love bonded to nature, but it’s also called a Christian soul, shared the food answers they halloo when the mariner kills him; killing the albatross the mariner offends some human values like hospitality and friendship, besides breaking the bond with the nature.
The main themes of this ballad are:
- death as the conclusive process of guilt, punishment and redemption;
- the power of imagination and his visions;
- the mariner means that the only way to love God is to love all the creatures and things created by God
By blessing snakes the mariner shows his love for some creatures. Everything and every creatures in this world are worthy being loved and respected because they are evident signs of God’s presents, generosity and power.
A man must love God by loving all the creatures made and loved by God and this is what makes, at the end, the wedding guest wiser, in fact he has learned to love and knows something that the others men ignore; at the end he’s also sadder, because he has listened a dramatic story.
The all narration can be interpreted as a voyage from sin to redemption, to salvation, in fact at the end the mariner can pray and eventually sleep too.
The main features of the classical, medieval ballad are:
- the accompaniment by musical instruments;
- the use of musical devices like alliterations, repetitions, refrains and internal rhymes;
- the stanzas with four lines;
- the mix between narration and dialogue;
- the absence of a conclusion and so a the moral can only be guessed;
- the rime scheme ABAB.
Coleridge introduces a few variations to the standard ballad, in fact:
- not all stanzas have four lines;
- the typical rhyme scheme here is not respected;
- some descriptions of nature are longer than usual;
- the moral at the end is more explicit than in most ballads.
The use of musical devices underlines some important points of the ballad:
- the mariner’s remorse to have killed the albatross;
- the supernatural atmosphere;
- the apparition of the ghost-ship:
Coleridge proceeding is to mix supernatural with real, in fact he gives realistic details about the wedding, the weather on the sea, the position of the sun as the ship changed hemisphere, the mariner’s native country (the church, the light-house, the hills). On the other hand there is no rational explanation of the supernatural events.
The chief characters of the ballad are: hearth, fire, water, air , that is the four elements that:
- in ancient cosmography made up the universe;
- provided to link between the natural world and the supernatural world, that acts upon it.

The mariner is a character mostly passive, in fact he is himself only three times:
- when he kills the albatross (unexplainable action);
- when he blesses the water-snakes (it’s an unconscious action which turns out to be for his own good);
- when he bites his own arm (it’s a conscious action which brings further disaster)
In the ballad the weather changes as well as the crew’s feelings:
- the sun, the mist and the good south wind; - the crew accuse the mariner when he kills the albatross;
- the sun and the breeze; - they agree with the killing;
- no breeze; - silence;
- the blood sun; - they are in a complete paralysis.
The poem can be seen as an allegory of life and so we can give a symbolic meaning to the elements:
- the ship = the human soul;
- the voyage = the progression from sin to salvation;
- the crew = every man, the human kind;
- the sun = the hope, the reason;
- the ice = the obstacles of the life and so the lack of solidarity;
- the drought = human’s pains of the punishment;
- the albatross = the end of the link with life when it was killed by the mariner;
- the moon = the imagination.