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vas | Authors and texts The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Content The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is made up of seven parts and is set in a boundless sea with days of pitiless sun and nights Jit by the moon. Jt is introduced by an ‘Argument’ containing a short summary of the whole poem which consists of two narratives: one is made up of the captions to the right of the stanzas; the other is the poem itself, which deals with the extraordinary adventures of the Mariner. Atmosphere and characters The atmosphere of the whole poem is charged with irresistible mystery because of the combination of the supernatural and the commonplace, dream-like elements and astonishing visual realism. The Mariner and his comrades are hardly characters in any dramatic sense. They are more types than human beings and their agonics are simply universally human. The Mariner does not speak as a moral agent: he is passive in guilt and remorse. When he acts, he does so blindly, under compulsion. From his paralysis of conscience, terrifying and yet refreshing, the Mariner succeeds in gaining his authority, though he pays for it by remaining in the condition of an outcast. Coleridge makes him spectator as well as actor in the drama, so that he can recount even his worst terrors with the calm of lucid retrospection. ‘The Rime’ and traditional ballads This poem contains many of the features traditionally associated with ballads (@ MB, 2.8), that ts: the combination SAMEEL COLEMIDGR VHE RIME HMaTIATES BY cESENE aoe of dialogue and narration; the four-line stanza; frequent repetition; alliteration and internal rhyme; the theme of travel and wandering and supernatural elements. But the presence of a moral at the end and the didactic aim make The Rime of the Ancient Mariner different from a traditional ballad Interpretations This poem has been interpreted in many ways: it may be the description of a dream, which allows the poet to relate the supernatural and the less conscious part of his psyche to a familiar experience. In fact it moves in abrupt stages, each of which has its own single, dominating character, Its visual impressions are brilliant; things move indeed in a mysterious way, but not without some connecting relations; Coleridge’s poem may also be an allegory of the life of the soul in its passage from crime, through punishment, to redemption; * the interpretation that seerns most relevant, however, is the one which sees the poem as a description of the poetic journey of Romanticism. The Mariner is the poet, possessed by a song that derives from guilt, This guilt is the actual origin of poetry: it is the regret for a state of lost innocence caused by the Industria] Revolution, or an attempt to re-discover it by telling a symbolic story of its loss. Poetry coincides with this sense of Joss and, at the same time, tries to fill it. Text bank 47-48 4 Frontispiece to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 1876. o8y nurwoy au, D97 
