Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born on October 21, 1772, in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, Engand. He was an English poet, critic and philosopher. Coleridge studied at the University of Cambridge, but didn’t graduate. During this period became a close friend of the poet Robert Southey, who was also a staunch supporter of the French Revolution. Together they planned to found a community based on equal rights and common ownership in America, but the project never came to be. Samuel’s style of writting, perfected a sensuous lyricism, that was to be echoed by many subsequent poets. The Lyrical Ballads written 1798, together with William Wordsworth hosts the famous “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as well as “Frost at Midnight.” The works contained in this volume, heralded the beginning of English Romanticism. His friendship with Wordsowrth, greatly changed political ideas, he became more conservative and less optimistic with regards to the French revolution, being quite shocked by the violence involved. In 1800 he moved to the Lake District and became involved in journalism and got married. His marriage was unhappy and the poet increasingly turned to alcohol and opium for solace and creative inspiration. For a period of time he lived with the Worsdworths before moving to London in 1834. Other poems in the “fantastical” style of the “Mariner,” include the unfinished “Christabel” and the celebrated “Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan.” Imaginative and complex, with a unique intellect, Coleridge led a restless life full of turmoil and unfulfilled possibilities. He died on July 25, 1834, in Highate London.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Summary:
Three young men are walking together on their way to a wedding ceremony, when one of them is grasped by a grey-haired old sailor. The young Wedding-Guest angrily commands the Mariner let go of him, therefore the Mariner obeys. But the young man is transfixed by the ancient Mariner’s “glittering eyes” and can do nothing, but sit on a rock and listen to his strange tale. The Mariner recounts that he sailed on a ship out of his native harbor ”below the kirk, below the lighthouse ” and into a sunny and cheerful sea. In the meantime music can be heard drifting from the direction of the wedding. The listener imagines that the bride is probably entering the hall, but even though he is still helpless to tear himself away from the Mariner’s tale. The Mariner reminisces that the voyage soon darkened, as a giant storm rose and chased the ship southward. Soon after, the ship came to a frigid land “of mist and snow,” where “ice, mast-high, came floating by”; the ship was entrapped in a maze of ice. Suddenly the sailors saw an Albatross, a great sea bird. As it circled the ship, the ice began to crack and split, then the wind from the south carried the ship forward and out of the frigid regions, into a foggy water expanse. The Albatross followed, a good luck charm to the sailors. All of a sudden, a pained look crosses the Mariner’s face and the listener asks him, “Why look’st thou so?” The Mariner then confesses that he shot and killed the Albatross with his crossbow.
At first, the other sailors were enraged with the Mariner for having killed the bird, that made the breezes blow. But soon afterwards when the fog lifted, the sailors decided that the bird had actually brought not the breezes, but the fog. Therefore they now praised the Mariner for his deed. The wind pushed the ship into a still and silent sea, where the sailors soon were stranded; the winds died down, and the ship sat “As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean.” The sea then thickened, and the men had no drinking water. It seemed as if, the sea were decaying, slimy creatures crawled out of it and slithered across the surface. At night, the water burned green, blue and white with the fire of death. Some of the sailors dreamed that a spirit, nine fathoms deep beneath the ship, had followed them from the land of mist and snow. The sailors blamed the Mariner for their plight, and hung the carcass of the Albatross around the seaman’s neck like a cross.
As time passed; the sailors mouths became so parched, they were unable to speak. But one day, gazing westward, the Mariner spotted a tiny speck on the horizon. It soon turned into a ship, coming toward them. Too dry-mouthed to speak out and warn the other sailors, the Mariner bit down into his arm. By sucking the blood out of his wound, he was able to moisten his tongue just enough to be able to cry out, “A sail! a sail!” The sailors smiled, believing they were saved. But as the ship neared, they saw that it was a ghostly, skeletal hull of a ship and that its crew included two figures: Death and the Night-mare Life-in-Death, who takes the form of a pale woman with golden locks and red lips, and “thicks man’s blood with cold.” Death and Life-in-Death began to throw dice, and the woman won, whereupon she whistled three times, causing the sun to sink to the horizon, the stars to instantly emerge. As the moon rose, chased by a single star, the sailors dropped dead one by one—all except the Mariner, whom each sailor cursed “with his eye” before dying. The souls of the dead men leapt from their bodies and rushed by the Mariner.
The Wedding-Guest declares that he fears the Mariner, with his glittering eye and his skinny hand. The Mariner reassures the Wedding-Guest that there is no need for dread; he was not among the men who died, and he is a living man, not a ghost. Alone on the ship, surrounded by two hundred corpses, the Mariner was surrounded by the slimy sea and the slimy creatures that crawled across its surface. He tried to pray but was deterred by a “wicked whisper” that made his heart “as dry as dust.” He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the dead men, each of who glared at him with the malice of their final curse. For seven days and seven nights the Mariner endured the sight, and yet he was unable to die. At last the moon rose, casting the great shadow of the ship across the waters; where the ship’s shadow touched the waters, they burned red. The great water snakes moved through the silvery moonlight, glittering; blue, green, and black, the snakes coiled and swam and became beautiful in the Mariner’s eyes. He blessed the beautiful creatures in his heart; at that moment, he found himself able to pray, and the corpse of the Albatross fell from his neck, sinking “like lead into the sea.