SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772 - 1834)
Works: he wrote "The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner". This poem contains many of the features
traditionally associated with ballad
that are the combination of dialogue and
narration, the four-line stanza, frequent repetition, alliteration 656c23g and internal
rhyme, the theme of travel and wandering, supernatural elements and the
framework. The poem consists in fact of two narrations: one, which constitutes
the framework and introduces the protagonist and his listener; the other, which
deals with the extraordinary adventures of the mariner. Thus there are two
narrators. The first is the poet who recites the ballad, the second is the
mariner who tells the story of his extraordinary voyage. But the presence of a
moral at the end makes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner different from a
traditional ballad. Imagination:
like Blake and Wordsworth, Coleridge stresses the role of imagination. He
distinguishes between "primary" and "secondary"
imagination. He describes primary imagination as a fusion of perception and the
human individual power to produce images. Primary imagination goes beyond the
mere perception of objects and enables man to form concepts and collectes the world of thought with the world of things.
Secondary imagination is something more, in fact "It dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates in order to recreate.". It is the poetic faculty, which not
only gives shape and order to a given world, but builds new worlds. Fancy: imagination is more important
than fancy, which, thought on a higher
level than mere perception, is based on the power of association. Thus fancy
enables the poet to blend various elements into beautiful images. Nature: unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge
doesn't view nature as a moral guide or a source of consolation and happiness.
His contemplation of nature is always accompanied by awareness of the presence
of the ideal in the real. His strong Christian faith, however doesn't allowed
him to identify nature with the divine, in that form of pantheism in which
Wordsworth believed. He rather sees nature and the material world in a sort of
neo-platonic interpretation, as the reflection of the perfect world of
"Ideas". In other words, the material world is nothing but the
projection of the perfect world of "Ideas". Thus Coleridge believes
that natural images carries abstract meanings. Mistery: the atmosphere of the
whole poem is charged with irresistible mistery because of the combination of the
supernatural and the commonplace. Interpretations:
this poem has been interpreted in many ways: 1) It may be the description of a
dream, which allows the poet to relate the supernatural to a familiar
experience. 2) Coleridge's poem may also be an allegory of the life of the soul
in its passage from crime, through punishment, to redemption. 3) It can also be
seen as a description of the poetic journey of Romanticism. The mariner is the
poet, that derives from guilt. This guit is the
regret for a state of lost innocence caused by the Industrial Revolution, or an
attempt to rediscover it by telling a symbolic story of its loss. The language: Coleridge uses an archaic
language, connected to the old ballads, rich in alliterations, repetitions and
onomatopoeias, to produce a pleasing musical effect. Plot: this ballad is divided into seven parts: in the 1st part the ancient mariner stops a wedding
guest to tell him his dreadful tale. He narrates of how he and his fellow mariners reached the equator and
the polar regions after a violent storm. After several days an albatross
appeared through the fog and was killed by the mariner. The shooting of the
bird may seem a matter of little moment, but Coleridge makes it significant in
two ways. In the 2nd part the mariner begins to suffer the punishment for what he has done. The
world which faces the mariner after his
crime is terrible; the ship has ceased to move and the sailors are tortured by
thirst and the only moving things are slimy creatures in the sea. In the 4th
part the mariner, unaware, blesses the water snakes and begins to re-establish
a relationship with the world of nature. In the 7th part the mariner
gains the wedding guest's sympathy.
