00:00:00.000Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be
00:00:17.720concluding what has become a three-part series talking all about The Rhyme of the Ancient
00:00:23.900Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I had originally intended to get all of this recorded
00:00:31.180before I went up to Makerfield, but it just didn't work out that way. So all of that's happened. I'm
00:00:38.000coming back. I'm sitting now and I've sort of had to reacquaint myself with some of it, go back into
00:00:43.840my reading. But I'm really, really excited to be finishing it. Honestly, of all of the things I've
00:00:50.940covered here on Chronicles. It's certainly analysing and looking at this poem and the
00:00:58.460insights that it has and also looking into the mind of Samuel Taylor Coleridge itself has had
00:01:05.200a genuinely profound effect on me. And even when I'm not covering Coleridge on Chronicles in the
00:01:12.200future, though there are a few more poems and materials from him that I definitely want to go
00:01:18.140into. He's something that I'm never really going to take my eye off now. He's had quite a profound
00:01:23.800effect on me. I have been very touched by all of his insights on imagination, on re-enchantment,
00:01:31.120and on faith as well. And I say that as someone who isn't a man of faith, though I would certainly
00:01:40.640wished to be in many ways, but it's definitely gone some way to chipping away at my armour,
00:01:49.360as it were. And so I'm just really looking forward to talking about the final few parts
00:01:54.940of this poem with you to just give a bit of a backtrack and a revision. So in parts one to four,
00:02:03.000we talked all about the fact that it begins with this framed narrative of a wedding guest,
00:02:08.600and he's there at the wedding with his two friends, and he's singled out by this old
00:02:14.420long-bearded loon, this kooky-looking mariner who is not someone who you would otherwise give
00:02:22.160the time of day, but he fixes a wedding guest with his glittering eye. And what we find more
00:02:28.280and more as the story goes on is that everything falls away for the wedding guest. He is someone
00:02:35.480that at the very beginning of it he is constantly distracted he's looking at the wedding he wants
00:02:41.260to be there but he's just having to deal with the ramblings of this old man but as time goes on
00:02:49.220he becomes more and more sucked into the story and the mariner's tale and what he's endured
00:02:55.060in having witnessed the metamorphosis of the mariner it will go on to have a profound effect
00:03:03.340on the wedding guest as well. And so the mariner tells him this tale of the first four parts of it
00:03:08.880where he and the rest of the mariners are going out into the Atlantic Ocean. They go right down
00:03:14.940into the Antarctic Circle and there amidst the gothic terror of the ice sheets and the seeming
00:03:22.700to be no way out and no triumph over nature itself as the men are boxed in at all sides by the ice
00:03:29.860we find ourselves an albatross and another sign, a more benevolent part of nature.
00:03:38.900And this albatross, they hail it in God's name.
00:03:42.080It's imbued with this rich Christian iconography of its wings spread like a cross.
00:03:48.200And this is something that Coleridge constantly harkens back to and reminds us of throughout the poem.
00:03:54.040And the albatross is able to weave throughout the ice sheets.
00:03:58.460and in doing so, it basically guides the men through. And we can see here nature and humanity
00:04:06.040working in tandem with an interdependency about them, both working together for the mutual
00:04:14.240advantage of both, and also as a bond of the sacred pact that, of course, was made by God
00:04:20.980for mankind to be the stewards of the earth, to not fall into wanton violence. But unfortunately,
00:04:28.460That's exactly what the mariner does, and he decides that after having this albatross, sharing food with it, playing games with it, it's mentioned the fact that the albatross, in fact, loved the man who shot him, just as Jesus loved those who crucified him and all those who accused him.
00:04:48.720he rose above to give a profound sense of love to mankind. And the mariner is a man who is
00:04:57.440without love. He has a very materialistic, very instrumentalist view of the natural world. And it
00:05:05.600is something only to be conquered and dominated and cast aside when inconvenient or merely at a
00:05:12.600win. And so the mariner shoots the albatross, and in shooting the albatross, this brings a great
00:05:20.080curse upon him. And this is where we delve into not just the theological aspects of the poem,
00:05:27.380but a deep supernaturalism as well. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner isn't just a poem about
00:05:34.620mankind's place in the world amongst in the hierarchy of god and man and beast and the
00:05:43.520environment but it's also a tale of spirits and the supernatural as well these uh these daemons
00:05:51.080um there is a polar spirit beneath the ice five fathoms deep that we're going to come to in just
00:05:57.680a minute that has been following the mariner ever since he shot the albatross and has been behaving
00:06:03.900like a spirit of vengeance following the ship, seeking basically like Pirates of the Caribbean,
00:06:10.820like the black spot, just as this homing beacon for all these vengeful things to fall upon the
00:06:17.940ship and the crew. And the reason why the crew are made complicit in the Mariner's crime is because
00:06:25.100they flip-flop on the issue. Originally, they judged the Mariner and they say, the Albatross
00:06:31.320led us through the ice and you murdered it in cold blood and therefore you are a damned figure
00:06:39.660and then actually once they bloom out and once they cross cape horn down in a at the tip of0.98
00:06:47.160south america and they cross into the pacific ocean well it seems like all is well the breeze
00:06:52.980is high you know they're in good spirits again and so they decide that actually the mariner was
00:06:59.360right to kill the albatross because it was a mariner that brought the fog and mist and actually
00:07:05.460led them into the Antarctic Circle in the first place. It was that that brought the danger and
00:07:11.380the mariner overcame the danger. And by siding with the mariner, the crew decide to make themselves
00:07:18.120complicit in the crime and the deed itself. And so in part three, when we get this spectre bark,
00:07:26.100this ghost ship come, that is brought along without even a gust of wind, just travelling
00:07:33.200upon the sea, like a flying Dutchman, come to collect the souls of the dead. Well, death and
00:07:40.660the lady, life in death, this beautiful exterior figure with radiance and red lips and golden hair,
00:07:49.420but actually inside she is stone cold death and her and death play a game of dice for
00:07:57.520the souls of the crew and death wins the souls of the crew but she wins the soul of the mariner
00:08:06.100and so the mariner has to continue on quite literally as life in death he is alive but all
00:08:14.540the time he sees the bodies of the dead men around him, of the crew, and he painfully wishes for
00:08:21.680death, and yet he cannot die. He has to live on with the guilt of what he did, gnawing away at him
00:08:31.760every day, looking to the water, looking back to the crew in this daily monotony and fatigue,
00:08:38.980and this absolute isolation. And not just isolation from his fellow shipmates and from
00:08:47.300any sign of a vessel coming to save him, but also a spiritual isolation as well.
00:08:54.720His prayers turn to dust. He cannot speak to summon a prayer. He's cut off from not just the
00:09:02.680horizontal world around him, but the vertical, the spiritual ascent to the heavens as well.
00:09:08.520and Coleridge is fantastic in the way that he uses the poles and polarity every time there's
00:09:16.000a crossing of the equator to differentiate the story and its themes and messaging.
00:09:21.900And so we get to this moment where he is going through all of this and towards, with nothing
00:09:28.680to do and no real hopes for his own future as well, certainly no hopes for his own soul.
00:09:35.020He knows he's a deeply damned man at this point, but he looks down into the water at what was once0.89
00:09:42.220he perceived these thousand slimy things, these disgusting creatures that revolve him.0.97
00:09:47.780And it's not just a question of the fact that they revolve him, but it's also a part of the fact that
00:09:53.200he's repulsed by himself as well. He's disgusted by himself. He believes himself to be a wretched
00:10:01.680creature, because he is. But it's not too late for him. Even now, after what he's done, and his0.98
00:10:11.540figure of being the man who crucified Christ, he can still turn his life around. And he sees in
00:10:18.840this moment of a genuine respect and a genuine commitment to the intrinsic value of the water
00:10:29.880snakes. Not just as something that is aesthetically beautiful, actually, but something that has an
00:10:38.280innate value within itself, not merely in its value to him and to human utility. And so all of
00:10:46.860this begins to happen, and his mind begins to break from the instrumentalist view that he's had.
00:10:52.140and with that he manages to pray. The albatross falls from around his neck like lead into the sea
00:11:00.620and so we find the Mariner now at the beginning of part five well on the way with a new frame of
00:11:07.460mind willing to go open himself up to the spiritual metamorphosis that will carry him to safety and
00:11:15.700home later on through the poem and it's at this moment here in the beginning of part five where
00:11:23.860we see so much of Coleridge's imagery that he's been using for so long begin to transform in front
00:11:31.040of the mariner's eyes that which before was filled with gothic imagery and terror which will continue
00:11:37.580as he transitions into the final salvation towards or hope for salvation I should say
00:11:44.200and his penitence towards the end of the poem. Well, we begin to see that happening visually
00:11:50.380here. The Gothic imagery is present, but actually as well, we begin to have something much more
00:11:57.420cosmic, something much more enchanting about the world as all of this goes on. And part five
00:12:04.080begins with him saying, oh sleep, it is a gentle thing. That part of the mariner as well, that
00:12:11.500because of the guilty conscience, because of the curse, he has not been able to sleep. He's been
00:12:18.400entirely sleep deprived throughout this entire thing. And he invokes, he says, beloved from pole
00:12:24.900to pole, to Mary queen, the praise be given. She sent the gentle sleep from heaven that slid into
00:12:32.200my soul. And so we see here the blessed virgin giving him, granting him this grace, right? That
00:12:40.780grace is coming from the Virgin, who through her, we came to know Christ himself, who came to earth
00:12:48.360so that we could understand the will of God himself. And so the mariner is able to sleep
00:12:56.280at last. And it's in these moments of sleep, you know, this, you know, sleep is just, of course,
00:13:02.940something that we do all the time. And when you're deprived of it, of course, you crave it enormously.
00:13:08.520but it's also for the mariner here it allows him just a small psychological reprieve it gives him
00:13:15.680a calm between the storms where he can close his eyes and just shut out you know just enter a world
00:13:23.160of dreams a world of trance and one of the things that Malcolm Guyte which I have his book here and
00:13:29.420I'll read from it again later on is the fact that you know it's in this dream state that it can
00:13:36.340often subconsciously tell us about the things that we actually deeply want to find in our own
00:13:43.040life as well. And here we get this mention of the silly buckets on the deck. The fact that all this
00:13:49.500time, you know, when he and the crew were living in this absolute drought under the blistering heat
00:13:55.080of the sun, they've had these buckets out hoping to collect some rainwater and have been, of course,
00:14:02.360taunted by water, water everywhere, as it's been around them in this vast ocean that they can't
00:14:08.220drink from. And the buckets seem silly at this point. They just sat there empty, taunting the
00:14:15.760mariner of that thirst quenching water that he was never able to have. And without it, that dried
00:14:21.740his throat that meant that he could not create a call to prayer. And we see this small grace here
00:14:29.400where the mariner dreams of rain and when he awakes it is in fact raining, which is of course
00:14:36.360a great blessing for him and will keep him alive a little bit longer on for the journey. And then
00:14:42.800we get these three stanzas where it goes on to say, and soon I heard a roaring wind, it did not
00:14:48.560come an ear, but with its sound it shook the sails that were so thin and sear. The upper air burst
00:14:54.900into life and a hundred fire flag sheen to and fro they were hurried about and to and fro and
00:15:01.180in and out the one stars danced between and the coming wind did roar more loud and the sails did
00:15:07.280sigh like sedge and the rain poured down from one black cloud the moon was at its edge and so we get
00:15:15.020very interesting three um stanzas here because what they're going through first we go through
00:15:19.940three of the four main elements. We go through air with the wind. We then go through fire with
00:15:26.420the upper air bursting into life and the fire flag sheen. So once again, we're invoking here
00:15:31.720the aurora itself. You can see an aurora in the sky. Absolutely dazzling sight. Malcolm Geit
00:15:39.000remarks on the fact that in his book about the fact that this is really a visual metaphor for
00:15:46.260divine beauty. And then we, of course, come to the part of water as well. So we go through air,
00:15:52.980we go through fire, and we go through water. One other thing that's interesting to note as well
00:15:58.840is that this particular moment here, where it talks about the hundred fire flag sheen,
00:16:04.260well, previously, when the mariner had seen the aurora before, he described them as death fires,
00:16:10.620which is of course a much more cynical visual idea than what we're seeing now with this great
00:16:17.180sheen and it bursting into life and being full of beauty and enchantment and so it's a visual
00:16:23.120representation of the mariner's changed outlook on the world itself almost at this moment where
00:16:29.740after the mariner has woken from his dream and it's guided him psychologically to this
00:16:35.100unfulfilled question of his faith, he wakes up and he sees the grand intelligent design of God's
00:16:44.860universe before him, just as the storms are about and everything begins. And later on, the lightning,
00:16:51.560in fact, just here as well, it goes on to say, like water shot from some high crag,
00:16:56.700the lightning fell with never a jag. The loud wind never reached the ship, yet now the ship
00:17:02.520moved on. So there's a lot to unpack here. First of all, in going from pole to pole, one of the
00:17:08.940great insights that Malcolm Guy points out is that this entire idea of polarity, in crossing
00:17:14.740one boundary into another, is a constant theme of the Mariner's poem. It's both freedom and
00:17:22.000constraint, it's community and it's isolation, it's blessing and it's curse, it's redemption
00:17:29.240and its guilt. And now it's sleeping and reawakening. And we see all of these things
00:17:36.860constantly, you know, at contrition with one another in the mariner's heart. And we will see
00:17:42.440as time goes on, it falls away from all of the pessimisms of those things and into those that
00:17:50.220will grant true meaning and purpose and greater harmony and coexistence in the world. This world
00:17:58.260of interdependence, this divine web of the world and mankind's place in it as God's people.
00:18:06.980But if I just swap the books over for a moment, in this one here, the Malcolm Geick book,
00:18:13.500there's just one particular passage that I wanted to read where Malcolm talks about these elements,
00:18:20.040air, fire, water. And he goes on to say, if we pause now and look at the total effect of these
00:18:27.560four stanzas, two remarkable things emerge. The first is that Coleridge here evokes in succession
00:18:33.820three of the four traditional elements of the cosmos, air, fire, and water. That he is playing
00:18:39.480with the idea of the elements is made clear by the suggestive use of the word element in the gloss
00:18:45.000that accompanies the first of these four stanzas. The missing fourth element is earth, and it is
00:18:51.800missing from what the mariner sees, because it is of course the mariner himself. By this time in the
00:18:58.620poem, he is in some sense the archetypal human being, the one who stands for all of us, the
00:19:05.040fallen Adam. The name Adam means man of earth, formed from the dust of the ground, but enlivened
00:19:12.760and lifted into spiritual being by the other three elements, the breath or spirit of God,
00:19:18.980the divine spark or fire, and the waters of baptism. The mariner's own baptism of full
00:19:25.920immersion is still to come, but here it is first foreshadowed, which brings us to the second
00:19:32.160remarkable thing about the symbolism of these four stanzas. Wind, fire, and water are the three great
00:19:39.500biblical symbols of the Holy Spirit. Coleridge seems almost to be paraphrasing the famous
00:19:45.820description in the book of Acts of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And suddenly there
00:19:52.400came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were
00:19:58.280sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of
00:20:05.560them. Again, just remarkable insights. Cannot praise Malcolm Geith's book enough. So we get
00:20:11.840this entire vision of enchantment and just this magnificent elemental world, just nature flexing
00:20:20.460itself before the mariner's eyes, demonstrating its power, demonstrating its own kind of majesty.
00:20:28.760And then we go right back whiplashed into this feeling of gothic horror again. As I say, we get
00:20:36.840these thunderstorms and lightning and the storm gathers and then we get this great great moment
00:20:43.880where it says beneath the lightning and the moon the dead men gave a groan they groaned they
00:20:50.360stirred they all uprose nor spake nor move their eyes it had been strange even in a dream to have
00:20:58.140seen those dead men rise if you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the lotus eaters
00:21:03.680head to our website where you can find more.