The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge

("A thousand thousand slimy things lived on,
and so did I."
The Mariner, with albatross hung around his neck,
cannot see the beauty of his fellow creatures,
the sea snakes. Etching by Gustave Doré)

A recent encounter with someone about twenty years my junior made me remember that the Western Canon is no longer something automatically transmitted to the next generation.  "Dead white males", I think sums up the  pedagogical argument that killed the transmission of the Canon.  Oh well, I liked most of what I read of it, and it is now that I return to one of its quirkier constituents: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

The Rime is the longest poem that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote.  It is the story of a man who does not know how to love the world.  Being insensitive to the wonders of nature, he shoots an albatross that had befriended the crew of his ship in the Southern Ocean.  Shortly afterward, a supernatural revenge for the slaying takes place.  The Mariner, at this time a young man, is stranded "alone, alone, all, all alone" without human companionship until such time as he has learned to love the world.

There are plenty of critiques of the poem available, so I won't try to write a new one;  I do want to say a thing or two about my latest reading of this poem.

Firstly, when I re-read the passage about the killing of the albatross, I suddenly had the image of John Lennon in my mind.  As you will remember, Lennon sang about peace and love and about how we are really all one and the same ("Tomorrow Never Knows", for example), and someone shot him for his troubles.  The end of the beginning of the Mariner's troubles starts when he realises the beauty in even the ugliest of creatures and loves them.

Secondly, when I re-read the passage where the Mariner's ship becomes immobilised in the ocean:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean

I was reminded of the film Groundhog Day.  There are definite parallels in the two stories. For instance, just as Bill Murray's character is released from his curse when he learns to be other-centered, the Mariner learns his lesson too: "He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small".

Survival ends and living begins when Love starts.

Publishing details: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (in Coleridge, OUP, Oxford, 1965, ed. J.Colmer)