Commentary – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, passage part VI

        As a response to the Age of Reason praising logic and science, a new literary movement slowly emerged at the end of the XVIIIth century. The beginning of romanticism was marked by the collection of poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth entitled Lyrical Ballads, which became a landmark in English literature and poetry. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is part of this collection, and just as the title of the latter suggests, it is not a usual ballad as we may read from the Middle Ages, but rather a song for feelings. The speaker of the poem is the Ancient Mariner, who is telling a supernatural story to a wedding guest passing by. When he shot the albatross, bird of good fortune while sailing, horrid things began to happen to him and his crew. In this extract, the Mariner shares the blessed moment he sees his native country again, right after having lived such dreadful events. However peaceful and joyful this passage may be, the Ancient Mariner is not done with the spirits of the crew. This passage therefore marks an important transition between two emotionally charged scenes. Firstly, because it organises a return to order, then we can notice a significant focus on feelings and lastly, this passage is also the beginning of a scene of resolution.

        To begin with, this passage settles a return to order to some extent. First, we witness a calm and peaceful passage. This can be seen in the form of the poem: we only find quatrains, alternating a longer line (8 to 9 syllables) and a shorter line (5 to 7 syllables). The rhymes of a ballad are also respected, the pattern being either abab or abxb. This clear organisation of the poem creates a feeling of balance, and our expectations as readers are fulfilled and satisfied thanks to the rhymes. We also note that there are only few manifestations of gloss (two exactly), so we are not constantly interrupted in our reading and we can feel the sense of tranquillity this passage inspires.

Then, this part also conveys the return of human features. In fact, the Mariner talks about his body, but referring to his hair and his cheeks. This is a rather close and free view of the Mariner and it reminds us of life, movement, and colour (as opposed to black lips and a skinny hand reminding death, or a glittering-eye reminding some evil characteristic). Moreover, his feelings are expressed clearly, and we can relate to them: he describes “fears” and “joy”, which are also shared throughout the lively punctuation (exclamation marks, question marks, dashes), and which makes us read the poem with a dynamic voice and thus feel the same things the Mariner feels. What is more, rhythm allows us to perceive humanity and order through the lines. Indeed, the quatrains contain iambic tetrameters and trimeters. This rhythm puts the stressed syllable every other syllable and begins at the second syllable of the line, thus miming the beating of a human heart to our ears. The regularity of the lines soothes us, as if we were gently rocked by the voice of the Mariner.

Furthermore, some elements that had been lost are found again. The wind is a cherished phenomenon for a sailor, and the lack of it was in fact the doom of the Mariner earlier in the poem. There, he got to use it again, and even more, to mend with it. The quatrain “Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, /Yet she sailed softly too:/Sweetly, Sweetly blew the breeze-/On me alone it blew” is a great example, as the alliteration in -s and the assonance in -ew create harmony and imitate the sound of the wind, so that we can feel it and hear it too, as if we were with the Mariner. The parallelism in the same quatrain (first line and third line) also conveys this idea of return to order; besides, another parallelism can be found before “It raised my hair, it fanned my neck”: here, the personified wind has the power to put everything back to normal. What is also found again is comfort, its semantic field reigning over the passage: “spring”, “welcoming”, “softly”, “sweetly”, “breeze”, “joy”, “smoothly” … We can notice that this vocabulary of comfort is only completing the order settled by the form of the poem, and thus it makes room for other emotions.

Thanks to order and peace, we witness a radical change of mood in the poem; despair finally led to hope, but not only; and this ballad proves that a story can be told with lyricism.

Secondly, this ballad is unusual because it focuses on feelings, hence the term “lyrical ballad”. This passage is a blend of different emotions, and de-familiarisation is one of them. The rhetorical questions emphasise this idea: “is this indeed/The light-house top I see? /Is this the hill? Is this the kirk? /Is this mine own countree?” Here, the mariner has to actually ask himself if he is not mistaken about this landscape being his home, meaning the journey made him forget the appearance of his native country. In fact, he also forgot how to spell the word properly in order to make the stanza rhyme; this process could also combine the ideas of return to order (rhymes in -ee) and de-familiarisation into one meaningful word that is “country”. The unbelievable aspect of the scene adds to the idea of de-familiarisation: I see it, but I will not believe it. The wind is also and old friend coming back and being re-discovered: “It mingled strangely with my fears”. The simple concept of the wind became intimidating with the adverb “strangely” and the word “fears”, and this feeds the idea that we are in a state of expectation, doubt. Moreover, delay maintains de-familiarisation, even on the reader. We understand after him that he sees his home, “Oh!” coming at the beginning of the first line of the stanza, and the explanation “mine own countree” at the far end. Readers are kept waiting, and suspense is created. Also, the mariner is de-familiarised from himself. We can read “O let me be awake, my God! /Or let me sleep alway.” Here, his state of disbelief provides a Manichean vision of his fate: he leaves his destiny in the hands of God, having nothing to lose. The mariner is on the verge of surrendering after this distressing experience, and takes some distance over himself, dissociates himself from his acts by begging for either salvation or death. This is a proof the events have changed him, and he is ready for what is next.

  Besides, the mariner is also a figure of survivor, or even hero. First, by changing his visions thanks to the supernatural events, he eventually found his lost identity. Indeed, we can find several references to his self: “there breathed a wind on me”, “my hair, my cheek, my fears”, “on me alone”, “mine own” … These many first-person pronouns show he sees himself as a one again, being separated from the crew. The proximity to the land he came from is also influencing him, and he feels whole again: the verb “mingled” confirms there is a process of completion going on, and the line “yet it felt like a welcoming” is a result of it: he is, at last, where he is supposed to be, which procures a feeling of fulfilment. Along with this comes the return to his roots, and the mariner can be seen as a pioneer. Just as we thought no one was greeting him (“silentness”), his crew rise again as a form of recognition: “Rising from the same, /Full many shapes, that shadows were, /In crimson colours came.” The combination of “full” and “many” and the plural forms of nouns underlines this image of number, and we feel like the mariner is being encouraged by his crew, rising to greet him on his return. We can feel the pride of coming back alive after such a journey, and the relief of being complete.

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