the rime of the ancient mariner by samuel taylor coleridge

This exactly matches the world of the poem, and is nowhere more evident than in the game of dice between Death and Life-in-Death where fate is seen to hang purely upon chance. The context of magic, of course, is a world of – essentially pagan – spirits and powers that are able to act arbitrarily, without the over-arching ‘Good’ of a benevolent deity and His Providence. It is present in several elements: for example, the way in which the mariner’s ‘eye’ compels the Wedding Guest to listen to him the curse of the dead men’s eyes upon the Mariner the reanimation of corpses etc.

We may experience truth and transcendence the Mariner does not.The idea of magic is a useful one in interpreting the poem. He is, in Bloom's words, only a 'story-telling machine,' and there is little sense that he has acquired an authentic self. True to the Romantic form, Coleridge brings his poem of pure imagination to a transcendent finish - for the reader, at least - as the Mariner ends with 'he prayeth best who loveth best all creatures great and small.' Ironically, such over-reaching ecology doesn't reflect much personal truth if we consider the Mariner's condition at voyage's end. However, he - a murderer who brings disaster to the voyage - lives on, while his companions drop dead and become zombie-like minions. These creatures drive the wretched crew to settings of horrendous heat and devastating thirst: 'Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink' is a mystical location as well as an ironic situation.Ĭoleridge demonstrated the poem's rebellion against traditional morality when he responded to a critic that it 'ought to have no more moral than Arabian Night's tale.' Certainly any sense of ethics or fairness leaks out of the poem early on the Mariner shoots the benevolent albatross for no good reason, and is predestined for the living hell that follows by Life-in-Death's dice game. Meanwhile, the Pole Spirit below the waves 'from the land of mist and snow' forces the ship to move or stay calm. The former 'ate the food it ne'er had eat' like Christ - 'I have meat to eat ye know not of' - and parts the ice like Moses. Nature as an occult force is exemplified in the albatross and the Pole Spirit. that thicks man's blood with cold.' We are witnessing a voyage toward nothing so commonplace as land. Imagination in imagery abounds in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner': Robert Penn Warren called it a 'poem of pure imagination.' It details a doomed ship's voyage to the South Pole, where 'ice, mast-high, came floating by, as green as emerald.' A Christ-like Albatross miraculously bisects the glacier after its death, the crew journeys from ice to blazing sun - 'no bigger than the moon' - and is visited by Death and 'the nightmare Life-in-Death.

The rime of the ancient mariner by samuel taylor coleridge