The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Chronicles #49 ｜ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner： Part II

00:00:00.000 Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to Chronicles where today we're going to be

00:00:17.840 carrying on or really just beginning the full analysis of Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

00:00:23.920 I hope that you all enjoyed the reading of the poem last time.

00:00:28.520 I certainly had fun regaling you with it.

00:00:31.700 And also with me this time, I've brought with me something that's been an absolutely invaluable companion,

00:00:37.980 as I've read and done my research, which is A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mariner, by Malcolm Gite.

00:00:45.700 One of, I think, one of the greatest contemporary minds right now, one of the most interesting people to listen to.

00:00:51.900 and he has such a rich writing style it's so enchanting to read and this is kind of both a

00:01:00.060 biography of Coleridge and also analysis and exploration of Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

00:01:07.740 in particular but as well as ideas and musings that he has about other poems by Coleridge as

00:01:14.380 well so I thoroughly recommend it as a read and also just to say openly with you to be transparent

00:01:21.180 that a lot of what I am going to present to you now, a lot of my ideas about it and the

00:01:27.220 way that I'll be framing it, find their genesis in Malcolm's book.

00:01:32.520 So I just want to be clear with you that he has done a wonderful amount of heavy lifting

00:01:37.640 for me in this, and I shall reference it as we go on because it's really wonderful.

00:01:43.180 But let's begin with part one then of the poem.

00:01:46.860 So when the poem begins, we have of course the famous, it is an ancient mariner, and

00:01:51.980 he stopeth one of three.

00:01:53.580 The entire thing is first of all set at a wedding, and this is all grounded very much

00:01:58.720 in the intentional archaic medieval language that Coleridge employs, though he in fact

00:02:06.140 sort of dilutes this through various versions he went through as time went on.

00:02:12.540 still nonetheless that medieval weight to it. This is really unambiguously stated when later on in

00:02:19.420 the story the mariner and his crew pass into the Pacific Ocean and they're described as being the

00:02:26.140 very first to ever go in there. So they did it before Magellan ever sailed into the Pacific Ocean.

00:02:33.980 So it's probably set around 1500, perhaps even in the 15th century.

00:02:41.220 But we have this wedding and here at the wedding, there is the wedding guest

00:02:46.380 and all of the friends are going together.

00:02:48.460 And, you know, the feast is set, the guests are met and it may just hear they're married in.

00:02:53.940 And so there's this wonderful revelry, there's this fantastic spirit

00:02:57.820 and everyone's just there to enjoy themselves and have a wonderful day.

00:03:02.220 a very wonderful day within the community. And yet this ancient mariner, this strange-looking old

00:03:10.680 man, this bearded loon, as he's described as, he grabs out at one of the wedding guests eventually

00:03:18.540 and he stops him, says, on hand me, grey beard loon. But the question comes to us, okay, why him?

00:03:27.140 Why was the wedding guest the one that was stopped?

00:03:30.040 And the wedding guest even wonders this himself.

00:03:33.140 You know, it's like, gosh, my friends are walking in there.

00:03:36.680 I'm the next of kin at this wedding.

00:03:39.040 I really, I'm kind of needed somewhere else right now.

00:03:42.540 There's something important and something joyful that I'm supposed to be experiencing.

00:03:47.560 My friends have wandered off without me.

00:03:49.940 And now I'm just stuck here listening or indulging this old grade beard.

00:03:56.600 So what on earth does he want with me? And then we get to that point that the mariner fixed him

00:04:03.720 with his glittering eye. The wedding guest begins to listen like a three years child,

00:04:10.040 with that same fascination and intoxication that you have when you're brought into a world of

00:04:16.760 imagination and storytelling, when you are first a child, when you're first discovering

00:04:21.960 all of these things for the first time. It's very important in the use of language here,

00:04:27.640 where Coleridge explicitly says he has his will, and how the guests cannot choose but hear.

00:04:36.520 Actually, something grander is at work here. This is not mere randomness. This all becomes clearer,

00:04:45.640 of course, later on, and for the wedding guest's musings about, well, why me? Why have I been

00:04:51.920 stopped? Well, that is really what the poem is asking. That's what the entire narrative is about.

00:05:00.340 So the mariner goes through this experience that he's going to go through so that the wedding

00:05:06.120 guest can hear it. This is all a part of what will become the mariner's penance. It's also a

00:05:13.000 wonderful meta point to employ to the audience, to the reader, to say, you have been fixed by his

00:05:19.840 will. You have been stopped to listen to this story amongst your daily life and all of the

00:05:25.680 things that you're doing. You're here now going to be fixed by his will, and you're going to listen

00:05:31.260 to his tale as well. So the wedding guest and the reader are about to go on the same spiritual and

00:05:38.820 emotional journey as all of this takes hold. The wedding guest sits upon the rock and he begins to

00:05:46.720 listen. He's abandoned his thoughts of the wedding now and he's totally suckered in to what the

00:05:53.840 mariner is about to try to communicate with him. And the mariner begins to tell the story and he

00:05:59.520 talks about how high spirits they were and how cheerful they were as they left the port and

00:06:06.200 they saw just retreating from the horizon, you know, as they go on first the kirk, archaic

00:06:12.880 word for the church, and then the hill, and then the lighthouse, and all of these three

00:06:18.080 things just slowly pass into the distance and they're slowly left behind. Now each one

00:06:23.880 of these three things, of course, has an enormous symbolic significance. The church, or the

00:06:32.440 The kirk is obviously symbolic of the institution of religion itself.

00:06:39.200 It's also symbolic of that building in which the community congregate together to be to

00:06:45.200 one heart and one mind as servants of God and to revere him and to revere Christ.

00:06:51.560 But it also as well harkens back to some of Coleridge's earliest childhood memories growing

00:06:58.460 up in Otterley where he would go out to the church and you find these glorious vivid letters

00:07:04.500 of him recounting how when he was reading all of these great stories as a child, reading

00:07:10.260 the Arabian Nights, reading Robinson Crusoe and many other adventure tales and things

00:07:16.100 that startled and stimulated his imagination, how Coleridge would go out as a child and

00:07:22.240 reenact the stories he was reading in the churchyard. And so the church was not just

00:07:29.340 where spiritual community was had, but it was also Coleridge's playground for his imagination

00:07:37.100 as well. So a very, very special place to him from the very beginning. The hill, of course,

00:07:43.540 is obviously symbolic of the land, the land itself. And there are so many instrumental

00:07:50.740 ways that the hill can be utilised, of course. It can be built upon, it can be climbed for the

00:07:57.440 advantage of spectacle and to see the horizons, to gather intelligence about one's surroundings.

00:08:04.160 But of course, also it presents something not instrumental as well, something truly sacred

00:08:10.920 and earthy. That is the land itself, the natural form of this hill that struts above the rest and

00:08:18.740 is there as a product of God's divine creation. All of these things are there.

00:08:24.420 And then the lighthouse is really symbolic of the light of knowledge, right? It's the light of

00:08:32.500 mankind's civilization, the erection of the lighthouse to put the light out to sea,

00:08:38.260 to guide others to safety. But in order to obviously create the lighthouse in the first

00:08:43.620 place, it requires knowledge. And so it's a two-way thing. You have the actual knowledge

00:08:50.100 required to create the civilization in the first place. And then you also have the light atop of

00:08:56.340 the house, which is really symbolizing the light of knowledge and civilization and all of the

00:09:03.280 things that Coleridge came to appreciate and obviously found intellectually fascinating about

00:09:09.440 the modern day and his own contemporary time and the questions that he was dealing with.

00:09:15.300 And so all of these things are abandoned. All of the safety of civilization, the safety of

00:09:22.520 the grounded land, that hill that has been ever-present for eons and eons, you know,

00:09:29.700 and also, of course, the organized church where you would meet your fellow members of the community,

00:09:35.380 All of those rich things that help to cultivate a luscious life are set aside now, and the

00:09:44.180 mariner and the rest of the crew are going to sail off into the ocean, into the unknown,

00:09:50.920 and it's described very poetically as the sun coming up on the left.

00:09:55.580 So with that, of course, the sun being on the left, it means that the ship is going

00:09:59.340 southwardly and they're sailing south down the Atlantic. And we'll see later on in the

00:10:06.740 journey they'll pass under Cape Horn through what will become the Straits of Magellan and

00:10:11.780 up into the Pacific Ocean. So for now, the sun is shining upon them and everything seems

00:10:19.140 to be going really well. Nothing wrong so far. However, it all seems to fall apart quite

00:10:26.280 quickly, because before we know it, Coleridge has introduced us to the fact that these men

00:10:31.320 have been blown southward into the land of mist and snow. Now, for Coleridge, of course,

00:10:39.240 at the time writing this when he was in the late 1790s, he would have already been very

00:10:45.000 much aware of the adventures of people such as Captain Cook, who I do believe, if my history

00:10:52.120 serves right and bloody better, given that I did the Epoch on him with Bo, is the fact that Cook

00:10:59.020 and his crew were the first to sail into the Antarctic Circle itself. I don't believe Magellan

00:11:06.500 actually did that. But nonetheless, as Coleridge was listening more and more to the adventures of

00:11:13.320 mariners and people who had gone to sea and folk from the Navy, of course, so many generations

00:11:19.220 before, certainly through the decades of the 1700s, had gone to find terra incognita, this great

00:11:26.580 unknown southern land that was thought to be an entire another continent of bounty and plenty.

00:11:33.620 But of course, what it actually turned out to be was Antarctica. And so we have this interminable

00:11:40.420 stretch of ice going out before them. And to reinforce his point, Coleridge says in this

00:11:47.060 stanza. The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around. It's cracked and growled and

00:11:53.540 roared and howled like noises in a swound. And that word swound is very important here because

00:12:00.820 it gives this connotation of a swooning, right? There is something disorientating about the entire

00:12:07.540 experience. There's kind of a between consciousness and people are very confused by everything about

00:12:15.460 them. It's so unfamiliar and that it's used to reinforce just how lost they are. But then,

00:12:23.540 within the very next stanza, we get, of course, at length did cross an albatross, through the fog

00:12:29.860 it came, as if it had been the Christian soul, we hailed it in God's name. And so we get a double

00:12:37.620 rhyme within the first line as well, at length did cross an albatross. Now part of the reason,

00:12:43.940 of course for why albatross is the bird of choice that is used here is that it is a large and

00:12:52.020 magnificent majestic creature, a genuinely incredible bird, but also as well because of

00:12:58.980 the obvious poetic value within its name it rhymes with cross and not only does it rhyme with cross

00:13:06.340 but when the albatross is eventually hung around the the mariner's neck and its wings are spread

00:13:11.620 of course, it is in the shape of the cross as well. And so it lends itself to this marvellous

00:13:17.060 religious Christian symbolism. Coleridge doesn't leave any ambiguity on this point. He says,

00:13:23.540 as if it had been a Christian soul, we hailed it in God's name. Because when they're all about 1.00

00:13:30.580 surrounded by nothing, there are no other men, there's no other civilization, this bird comes

00:13:36.100 to them like a good omen, out of nowhere, with the grace of God, to guide them through these

00:13:44.660 uncharted ice plains. And that's exactly what it does. And what's more as well, the rest of the

00:13:51.940 crew are very, very wonderful and compassionate with the albatross. They share food with it,

00:13:57.220 it's playful with them, they become very familiar and very comfortable with having it around. It

00:14:02.740 It becomes, in a way, a part of the crew itself.

00:14:07.020 And so the albatross is guiding them through the fog and mist,

00:14:10.400 and the moon shines brightly upon them.

00:14:12.980 And we'll come to the significance of the moon in a little bit.

00:14:17.240 But for now, the albatross is guiding them through all of this.

00:14:21.020 And as it does so, we get this remarkable moment where actually it's the first time since the story has began

00:14:28.380 where the wedding guest interrupts the story and lends his own voice in and he says,

00:14:34.720 God save the ancient mariner from the fiends that plagued thee thus, why lookest thou so?

00:14:40.460 And so before we even actually hear what has happened, what is the fate of the albatross,

00:14:46.800 we have already been teed up for the fact that the mariner still to this moment wears on his face

00:14:53.640 the shame and guilt of what happens. And Malcolm Guy really fantastically in his book lays out the

00:15:00.760 fact that when this line lands, that I shot the albatross, it lands with all of the weight of

00:15:07.680 and then they crucified him. Right. There's this bluntness of force that Coleridge uses in how he

00:15:15.020 delivers this truth. And of course, it brings about the remarkable question of why? Why does a

00:15:23.080 mariner shoot the albatross with his crossbow? And the answer to that question is, we don't know.

00:15:31.140 We have no idea. The mariner doesn't attempt to rationalize it out loud. He doesn't attempt to

00:15:37.400 justify it to the wedding guest or explain it to him. He just simply says, I shot the albatross.

00:15:44.720 This one singular, unnecessary, petty act of violence ends up forcing the mariner to go on this entire spiritual journey in which he must basically atone for the sin of what he has done by shooting this albatross.

00:16:06.100 Because it's not just the albatross itself, but it's the entire, as Geit describes it in his book,

00:16:13.880 it's the entire sort of instrumentalist, instrumental view of the world as against that which is personal and sacred.

00:16:22.800 There's a mechanistic view, and then there's a sacred view.

00:16:27.320 And that's really what Coleridge is reacting to here.

00:16:30.980 When he talks about the fact that he just shot the albatross, it's like, well, as far as the mariner is concerned, the albatross has served its purpose, right?

00:16:43.840 It has guided them safely through the ice and fog.

00:16:48.960 And now that they're on the other side and they're beginning to travel northward again up into the Pacific Ocean, it can just simply be discarded.

00:16:57.900 It has no intrinsic value within itself, and this is really the lesson that the mariner

00:17:05.800 is going to be forced to learn about the intrinsic value of other things in the world other

00:17:12.720 than how instrumental they can be to the ambitions of human beings and to the ambitions

00:17:20.300 of the mariner himself.

00:17:21.700 Because the Antarctic is a perfect example of an ecosystem that still, according to Christian theology, of course, has been crafted by intelligent design, by God's grand plan.

00:17:37.020 Everything about it, its ecosystem, its habitats, its wildlife, its geology, the physics by which it even exists in the first place, all of this is according to God's will.

00:17:49.200 And therefore also, even though there are no human settlers there, that doesn't make it any less valuable or any less worthy of the respect of man.

00:18:01.300 And so when the sun comes up upon the right and the ship is now going north again into the Pacific, we see at first all of the crew basically damning the mariner, right?

00:18:15.260 They say, and the mariner himself says, I have done a hellish thing.

00:18:19.860 This is the language of damnation. This is the language of sin.

00:18:23.840 Because all of the crew are saying that it was the albatross that brought the breeze,

00:18:28.700 that brought the wind, that pushed them through out of that situation and out into the ocean.

00:18:35.540 Then something very interesting happens.

00:18:38.320 So to begin with, after the mariner shoots the albatross with his crossbow,

00:18:43.200 We have this moment where the crew, once they're up and going north again into the Pacific,

00:18:49.440 the crew decide that they're going to blame the mariner for this, for this act of just savagery, frankly.

00:18:57.360 And they say that you killed the albatross, you killed the bird that was the omen that brought the winds

00:19:03.220 that have now got us sailing safely on the ocean again.

00:19:07.140 And so they damn the mariner, and the mariner in his language says, I had done a hellish thing. 0.86

00:19:12.400 this is the language of damnation. This is the language of sin. But then something very puzzling 0.90

00:19:19.860 happens, which is that it says, nor dim nor red like God's own head, the glorious sun oppressed.

00:19:26.180 Then all averred I had killed the bird that brought the fog and the mist.

00:19:30.300 Twas right, they said, such birds to slay that bring the fog and mist. So within two stanzas,

00:19:37.100 the crew go from blaming the mariner for killing the bird to basically thanking the mariner for

00:19:42.760 killing the bird. They go from this was the bird that brought the wind that saved us to actually

00:19:48.440 this was the bird that brought the fog and the mist and therefore you killing it is what actually

00:19:54.220 saved us and got us out of the mess and are now safe again under the bright sun. So there is one

00:20:01.260 thing here about the superstitiousness of the crew and how seriously they take these omens,

00:20:07.500 but also as well, it seems to be that they blame the mariner immediately to begin with

00:20:14.260 on what appears to be just to be on the safe side, right? That's really what seems to be going on

00:20:21.120 here. And the moment that there seems to be no present danger from the mariner do this,

00:20:26.440 they all begin just patting him on the back and saying, good job, it looks like it's all been fine.

00:20:31.260 That's when it all happens, that's when the tragedy begins to happen, and that's when

00:20:35.900 the journey starts to go, and the curses start to fly out, and also as well, importantly,

00:20:42.160 why the crew also have to suffer.

00:20:45.700 If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters, head to our website

00:20:49.880 where you can find more.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 30, 2026

PREVIEW： Chronicles #49 ｜ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner： Part II

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