Coleridge’s long ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: A dream of joy

Kerry Handscomb

Interpretation is difficult, of Coleridge’s most famous poem, the long ballad, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Nevertheless, the poem retains its allure and its mesmeric qualities. The image of the Mariner with the dead Albatross hung around his neck is spellbinding and iconic.

The goal of this essay is to suggest a way of thinking about the poem. As a starting point, I will refer to my previous essay on Coleridge’s poem, Dejection: An Ode, which discusses Coleridge’s theory of the imagination.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner contains a large number of images in complex interplay. Each image may be regarded as a symbol or a metaphor. The difficulty of the poem is in fitting all images into a single coherent framework.

In this essay I will review two attempts to explicate the poem by means of an overarching system: Christian allegory and Coleridge’s own theory of the imagination. Both attempts ultimately fail.

Nevertheless, I have found a way of looking at the poem so that even the apparent difficulties in its interpretation may be redeemed — provided the poem’s frame, involving the wedding guest, is viewed in the right light.

Christian allegory is an obvious first attempt to fit the imagery of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner into an overarching framework. The poem is packed with Christian references, both explicit and implicit.

The kirk, or church, is prominent both at the Mariner’s departure and at his return (lines 23, 466, 476, 603, and 605). The poem contains several references to God (lines 97, 470, 599, 616) and one reference to “Lord in Heaven” (line 506). Christ (lines 123 and 487), the Virgin Mary (lines 178 and 294), heaven (lines 244 and 295), and the Mariner’s saint (lines 234 and 285) are each mentioned twice. The singing reanimated crew when the Mariner is close to home is likened to a heavenly choir (line 493). Topping this list, Coleridge completes the poem with some explicitly Christian moralizing in its last few stanzas. Much more Christian imagery is implicit. Let me discuss the most prominent of these implicit symbols, which enters at the major crisis point of the Mariner’s voyage.

The Albatross, at its entrance, is greeted by the Mariner and crew, and,

As if it had been a Christian soul,

[They] hailed it in God’s name.

(lines 65–66)

Surely, however, the Albatross is more than simply a “Christian soul.” I see the Albatross above the ship with wings outstretched in the form of a crucifix. Then, when the Mariner kills the albatross,

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About [his] neck was hung.

(lines 140–141)

Identification of the Albatross with Christ is strongly hinted at later, in the conversation between the two spirits, when one of them remarks,

By him who died on cross,

With his cruel bow he laid full low

The harmless Albatross.

(lines 399–401)

Metaphorically, by shooting the Albatross, the Mariner has rejected Christ. In this state, the Mariner says,

I looked to heaven and tried to pray;

But or ever a prayer had gusht,

A wicked whisper came, and made

My heart as dry as dust.

(lines 244–247)

However, in the light of the Moon, the snake-monsters that the Mariner sees are transformed, and he continues,

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

And I blessed them unaware,

The self-same moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off and sank

Like lead into the sea.

(lines 285–290)

Here, the light of the Moon recalls the redeeming power of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, with the Mariner free of the Albatross from around his neck, the Moon seems to oversee the storm that follows (lines 321, 323), and the crew is reanimated under its light:

Beneath the lightning and the Moon

The dead men gave a groan

(lines 329–330)

On the other hand, in the period of his remorse, before he can pray, the Mariner describes a crescent Moon:

The hornéd Moon, with one bright star

Within the nether tip.

(lines 210–211)

Subsequently, “One after one, by the star-dogged Moon” (line 212) the sailors lay their mysterious curse on the Mariner.

In a footnote Coleridge adds that this configuration of Moon and star indicates that something evil is about to happen. The occlusion of the Moon appears to represent a losing of the power of the Holy Spirit, which returns when the Mariner is able once again to turn to God.

A good candidate for the completion of the Christian Trinity is the Sun, which is very prominently represented in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (lines 25, 83, 98, 112, 174, 176, 177, 183, 185, 199, 355, and 383). According to the Mariner,

Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head

The glorious Sun uprist.

(lines 97–98)

In some ways, the Sun recalls an angry Old Testament Jehovah rather than the New Testament God the Father. The Sun is mentioned frequently during the visit of the grotesque pair “DEATH” (line 188) and “Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH” (line 193), and its standing behind their sail seems to imply that they are sent by the vengeful “bloody Sun at noon” (line 112).

Although the Christian interpretation in many ways seems plausible, there are some anomalies. Would we expect the Risen Christ to sink “like lead into the sea”? Certainly penance for sin belongs to Christian tradition, and, according to the conversing spirits,

… The man hath penance done,

And penance more will do.

(lines 408–409)

However, the penance of the Mariner appears to be unduly severe and long. As the Mariner explains to the wedding guest,

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

That agony returns:

And till my ghastly tale is told,

The heart within me burns.

(lines 582–585)

Is this the penance one would expect for a man who has turned back to God? Moreover, the Pilot’s boy refers to the returned Mariner as the Devil (line 569). Again, is this the appearance of a man who has turned back to God? The Mariner strikes me as a haunted soul rather than a redeemed soul. He does not find the forgiveness one would expect in a Christian allegory.

One of the many bizarre characters in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the Hermit, who arrives in the rescue party, singing

… his godly hymns

That he makes in the wood.

(lines 510–511).

The Mariner thinks,

He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away

The Albatross’s blood.

(512–513)

Ostensibly, then, the Hermit would be a Christian confessor. However, the Hermit is associated with a woodland life, with “moss” and the “rotted old oak-stump” (lines 521–522). Additionally, the Hermit uses the following striking and fantastic analogy in describing the ship’s sails:

When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,

And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,

That eats the she-wolf’s young

(lines 535–537)

The imagery associated with the Hermit seems to me to be pagan rather than Christian, and I would guess that the Hermit is a druid rather than a Christian confessor.

While so much seems to fit the Christian model, much does not. As I mentioned above, Coleridge completes the poem with some explicitly Christian moralizing:

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

(lines 612–617)

These lines, however, appear to me to be incongruous with the grotesquerie that governs most of the poem. Surely, if Coleridge had meant his poem to carry a Christian message, he would have written it quite differently.

A second obvious attempt to explicate the poem is by means of Coleridge’s own theory of imagination. I am going to draw here on my previous essay on Coleridge’s poem Dejection, in which I discuss his theory of imagination.

As I explained in that essay, I understand primary imagination to be a mystical source of creative power. Secondary imagination is the poet’s own manifestation of primary imagination, bringing something new into the world, a marriage, as it were, of the mystical source and the world. Fancy, the lowest form of imagination, is a work expressed from the poet’s own resources, devoid of primary creative input. Fancy is pseudo-creation, a new arrangement, but with building blocks already present in the world. In my understanding of Coleridge’s meaning from Dejection, fancy is a prideful activity, an attempt by the poet to usurp creative authority. Fancy, therefore, has a negative moral charge.

As I mentioned above, the shooting of the Albatross is the major crisis point in the poem. Perhaps the sailors are doomed from the moment they depart on their journey, which after all is a voyage into uncharted regions for who knows what purpose. Their case is most certainly decided when their leader shoots the hapless Albatross for no apparent reason.

Can the shooting of the Albatross be looked at as a prideful rejection of the primary creative source? Certainly, prideful rejection of the primary source in Dejection leads Coleridge into his hellish frame of mind: the killing of the Albatross plunges the Mariner and his crew into another kind of hell. If the death of the Albatross is viewed as a turning away from primary imagination, then the Albatross, as a descendent from the sky, may be identified as an imminent infusion of creative power. In other words, the coming of the Albatross may be understood to be the arrival of secondary imagination.

In consequence, the primary creative source may be placed in the sky, whereas the world is located underneath the Mariner’s ship, in the ocean.

The

… slimy things [that] crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea

(lines 125–126)

and the “thousand thousand slimy things” (line 238) on “the rotting sea” (line 240) may be viewed as expressions of fancy, as with everything else that happens until the Albatross drops into the sea. For example, DEATH and LIFE-IN-DEATH and their bizarre game for the souls of the crew may be manifestations of fancy.

As I mentioned earlier, the Sun is ascendent during the period when the Albatross is around the Mariner’s neck. Before he shoots the Albatross, however, there is glimmering “white Moon-shine” (line 78).

Then later, with apparently the Moon’s taking over from the Sun, “The moving Moon went up the sky” (line 263). The Mariner watches the water-snakes being transformed in its light, from monsters into creatures that the Mariner describes in the following glowing terms:

O happy living things! no tongue

Their beauty might declare:

A spring of love gushed from my heart,

And I blessed them unaware:

(lines 281–283)

Subsequently, the Mariner is able to pray — turn once more toward the creative source — and the Albatross drops from his neck.

The Moon thus appears to be a symbol for primary imagination. Indeed, the Mariner speaks of the relationship between the Moon and the sea (i.e., world) as follows:

Still as a slave before his lord,

The ocean hath no blast;

His great bright eye most silently

Up to the moon is cast —

If he may know which way to go;

For she guides him smooth or grim.

See, brother, see! how graciously

She looketh down on him

(lines 414–421)

In other words, the primary creative agency, the Moon, acts on the world, the sea.

The Moon remains a prominent feature of the environment up to the Mariner’s return (lines 432, 437, and 475), indicating, presumably, his access to primary imagination.

As with the Christian interpretation, however, the question arises why the Mariner must undergo the endless penance if he has recovered access to the primary creative source? In Dejection the poet descends into hell and appears to remain there, without recovery of primary imagination. The Mariner is no longer in a personal hell by the end of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; but, as I mentioned above, he is still a haunted, driven figure.

Also, if we are to associate fancy with pride, as I argued in the essay on Dejection, pride ought to be an issue in the shooting of the Albatross. I do not detect pride anywhere in the poem. Moreover, are the snake-monsters really a creation from the Mariner’s own resources, whereas the beautiful snakes are created through an infusion of primary imagination? I suppose that the two types of snake exist on the same level of imagination, with one type ugly and one type attractive.

As with the Christian allegory view of the poem, much of the content fits an interpretation in terms of Coleridge’s theory of imagination. Much, also, does not fit.

I have considered other possible explications of the poem. The hero’s journey, in the sense of Joseph Campbell’s comparative mythology is another possibility. Or, could it be that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a surreptitious autobiography? Whichever framework is tried, however, I suspect that none will fit the poem’s imagery perfectly.

I wonder about the significance of the crew, one of whom is actually the Mariner’s nephew (line 343), and the crew’s mysterious cursing of the Mariner in Part IV. Does the Lighthouse (24, 465) have a meaning? I wonder also about the two spirits conversing at the end of Part V and beginning of Part VI — are they angels? The spirit that lurks beneath the ship (lines 132 and 379), and which ultimately transports the ship home, is enigmatic, despite Coleridge’s explanation in the gloss. What is the significance of the Pilot and the Pilot’s boy in Part VI? Coleridge scholars may have managed to piece together the various elements of the poem in an overarching theory, but I have not been able to do so.

Perhaps, on the other hand, the poem is supposed to be essentially meaningless, a simple recounting of a series of bizarre adventures. But I think not. The poem’s riveting, mesmeric power demonstrates that it is not just a random selection of supernatural and natural images, amounting not to much.

The key I think is in the frame, and the power of the Mariner to cast a spell over his listeners with his “glittering eye” (lines 3, 13, 228) — the wedding guest “cannot choose but hear” (line 18). The frame otherwise is not necessary — except to demonstrate the mesmerizing effect of the Mariner and his tale.

I take the Mariner to be Coleridge himself and the reader to be the wedding guest. Across the centuries, Coleridge is holding a mirror up to the reader. The first listener is the Hermit, who probably gets more than he bargained for from the Mariner. The last listener is the wedding guest, who becomes a “sadder and a wiser man” (line 624) in consequence of missing the wedding to hear the Mariner’s tale. But the reader now, you or I, is also the wedding guest, albeit vicariously.

Because there is no easy interpretation of the poem, it is not an example of fancy. For if there were an easy interpretation, in terms of existing ideas, building blocks already present, then the poem would be a fanciful pseudo-creation.

I believe that Coleridge is telling us through the frame that the spellbinding power of the poem, despite its apparent lack of coherence, demonstrates that it is an expression of secondary imagination: Coleridge himself is manifesting primary imagination in the poem.

If I am correct, then Coleridge, by informing us of the greatness of his poem in the frame, its ability to grip and transfix, is displaying supreme self confidence.

In my essay on Dejection I identified joy as a synonym for primary imagination. The word joy comes up only twice in the whole of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, once in line 164, when the crew think they are rescued, and again in the Mariner’s first exclamation on sighting his home: “Oh! dream of joy!” (line 464).

For me, the occurrence of the latter “joy” is crucial, because it epitomizes the self-referential nature that I have identified as Coleridge’s enterprise. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is not “joyful” in the usual sense of the word. However, if “joy” means primary imagination, then the poem itself is a dream of joy.

© Kerry Handscomb 2017. All rights reserved