Narrative Art of Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834) was an English lyrical poet, literary

critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of

the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is

probably best known for his poems “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla

Khan”, as well as for his major prose work “Biographia Literaria”. Although

Coleridge’s poetic achievement was small in quantity, his metaphysical anxiety,

anticipating modern existentialism, has gained him reputation as an authentic

visionary. Shelley called him” hooded eagle among blinking owls.”

Coleridge infatuated the most vigorous mind among the Romantic poets.

In other poets of his age, Romanticism tends to take a single dominant hue which

colours the objects of experience, whereas in Coleridge it attains a fullness of

complexity. In his poetry, there is the glamour of untravelled regions with the

elements of mystery. There is nature in a variety of moods, familiar and

comforting, weird and horrifying, tender and soothing, tumultuous and perturbing,

gay and jubilant, desolate and mournful. In “Biographia Literaria”, Coleridge tells

us that in order to emancipate English poetry from the 18th century artificiality and

drabness, he and Wordsworth had agreed to write two different kinds of poems.

He was to write about ‘persons and characters supernatural or at least romantic’

but he was to given them ‘a semblance of truth sufficient to procure that willing

suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.’ It was in

accordance with this mutual decision that Coleridge’s three major works, “The

Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan” all deal with

supernatural phenomena.

Coleridge is superb in the art of story-telling. He knows how to create

suspense or to evoke interest in the narrative. In “The Ancient Mariner” he

invests the Mariner with a hypnotic power in order to rouse our curiosity in his

story. And he introduces his events very dramatically. By bringing the spectre-

ship gradually closer to view, a hush of expectancy is created before Death and

Life-in-Death are dramatically brought on the scene to determine the fate of the

Mariner. Two hundred sailors cursing the Mariner and dropping down dead one

by one, with their soul passing by him like the whiz of his cross-bow (reminding

him of the murder of the Albatross) also produced a very dramatic effect. The

Wedding-Guest’s interruptions are used to highlight the climactic moments. All

these devices give the poem an incomparable narrative beauty that holds reader

‘like a three years’ child.’

The poetry of Coleridge first transports readers to distant times and

remote places with vast weird possibilities. “It is an ancient Mariner,” he tells us in

the very first line of the poem. The word ancient suggests Middle-Ages when an

atmosphere of magic and mystery was ripe all around and when supernatural

occurrences were not dismissed as the figments of a feverish imagination but

were believed to be really true. The Mariner is voyaging around polar regions in

unknown seas where anything might happen. Before any supernatural element is

introduced, the Mariner does not forget to tell us:

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

Coleridge is regarded as the greatest poet of the supernatural in English

literature and “The Ancient Mariner” is regarded as a masterpiece of supernatural

poetry. Cazamian says, “The very center of Coleridge art lies in his faculty of

evoking the mystery of things, and making it actual, widespread, and obsessing.

Even better than Wordsworth, he knows how to handle that species of the

supernatural whose essence (spirit) is entirely psychological. The supernatural

element in The Ancient Mariner is a hallucination, the outcome of remorse; by the

most sober of method.” His skill in dealing with the supernatural in this poem is

two-fold: first, he has fully achieved his aim of making the supernatural appear to

be natural; and, second, he has employed suggestive, psychological, and refined

(sophisticated) methods of producing the feelings of mystery and horror in the

poem, not crude and sensational like that of the writers before him, i.e. Horace,

Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, and Monk Lewis.

The greatness of The Ancient Mariner lies chiefly in the technique by which the

supernatural has been made believable and convincing. There are, no doubt, a

number of impossible, incredible, and fantastic situation in the poem, such as:

the mesmeric (magnetic) power in the mariner’s gaze, the sudden appearance of

the mysterious skeleton ship, the spectre woman and her mate, the coming back

to life of the dead crew, the seraph-band making signals to the land, the sudden

sinking of the ship, and the polar spirit commenting on or influencing the course

of events. But this supernatural phenomenon is so skillfully blended with the

perfectly believable and natural phenomena that the whole looks real. In the

beginning, the poet gives a very realistic description of the background:

The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the Kirk, below the hill,

Below the light-house top.

Coleridge possesses an unusual gift of evoking the mystery and suspense

of things. The Ancient Mariner is made a mysterious character just by the

mention of his glittering eyes, long grey beard and skinny hands.

--"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

The Mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite

initial good fortune, the ship is driven south off course by a storm and eventually

reaches Antarctica. An albatross (symbolizing the Christian soul) appears and

leads them out of the Antarctic, but, even as the albatross is praised by the ship's

crew, the Mariner shoots the bird ("with my cross-bow / I shot the albatross").

The crew is angry with the Mariner, believing the albatross brought the south

wind that led them out of the Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds

when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears. The crime arouses

the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow";

the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship

into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed.

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

Here, however, the sailors change their minds again and blame the

Mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the Mariner to

wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must

suffer from killing it. Eventually, in an eerie passage, the ship encounters a

ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-

Death" (a deathly-pale woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew.

With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-

Death the life of the Mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a

clue as to the Mariner's fate; he will endure a fate worse than death as

punishment for his killing of the albatross.

There are a large number of situations and episodes in The Ancient

Mariner, which fill us either with a sense of mystery of a feeling of horror of with

both. The first situation that strikes terror in the heart of the Mariner (and also the

reader) is the appearance of the skeleton-ship. When this skeleton-ship is

sighted in the distance, the sailors feel happy to think that they will now get water

to quench their burning thirst. But in a few moments they discover the reality of

this ship. The description of the ship with its “ribs” and its “gossamere-like sails”

fill us with terror.

It is a strange mystery that this ship should sail on the sea without wind

and without a tide, while the Mariner’s ship stands still “like a painted shop upon

a painted ocean”. Obviously it is a supernatural force, which drives the ship, and

the crew also consists of supernatural characters. The feeling of terror is

heightened when a reference is made to the crew of this ship. The crew consists

of Death and Life-in-Death. But Coleridge creates the sense of horror in this

poem not by describing a direct and crude description but by employing

suggestive and psychological methods. The appearance of Life-in-Death is

described in the following three lines:

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold:

Her skin was as white as leprosy,

Coleridge, after giving us only three lines of description, conveys the

horror by saying that the sight of her would have the effect of freezing a man’s

blood. In other words, he leaves it to us to imagine for ourselves the horrible

appearance of Life-in-Death that personifies the unspeakable torture of a man

who cannot die.

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she,

Who thicks man's blood with cold.

Coleridge merely offers a few suggestions to be developed by the reader

himself. The effect of the skeleton-ship with Death and Life-in-Death on board

again conveyed to as by the following two lines

Fear at my heart, as at a cup,

My life-blood seemed to sip!

That is, instead of giving us a detailed description of the whole horrible

sight, Coleridge refers to the effect of that horrible sight upon the mind of the

Mariner and says that fear sipped his life-blood. Another situation that produces

horror in the poem is the death of the two hundred sailors who dropped down

one by one, and each of them looked at the ancient Mariner with a curse in his

eyes:

One after one, by the star-dogged moon,

Too quick for groan or sigh,

Each turned his face with ghastly pang,

And cursed me with his eye.

The ancient Mariner heard a whiz-like sound every time a soul left its

body. What a horrible experience it must have been for the ancient Mariner and

how horrible for the reader too. The agony and spiritual torture of the lonely

ancient Mariner on a wide sea when he could not pray or die are, perhaps, the

most terrifying and horrifying elements in the poem. No less mysterious should

be the bizarre spectacle of the death-fires dancing in real and rout and water

burning green, and blue and white like a witch’s oils:

About, about, in reel and rout

The death-fires danced at night;

The water, like a witch's oils,

Burnt green, and blue and white.

The horror of the situation can well be imagined. Again, towards the end of

the poem, the poet does not describe the horrible face of the Mariner; he simply

describes the effect of the face on the minds of the Pilot, the Hermit and the

Pilot’s boy:

Laughed loud and long, and all the while

His eyes went to and fro.

`Ha! ha!' quoth he, `full plain I see,

The Devil knows how to row.

The poet caught in a creative frenzy is shown as capable of producing

supernatural awe and fear in the minds of his readers. It is worth remembering

that Coleridge makes the supernatural a subordinate element in a wider scheme

intimately related to living human experience. The central idea of need of love

and compassion for the entire creation of God and the agonizing experience

resulting from its absence is so intensely human that even the supernatural

character of the events can not becloud its truthfulness.

The major poems of Coleridge have a strange dreamlike atmosphere. He

fed on his dreams and vitalized them in his poems. “Kubla Khan” is essentially a

dream poem recounting in a poetic form what he saw in a vision. C.M. Bowra in

“The Romantic Imagination” illustrates the affinity of “The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner” with a dream. “It moves in abrupt stages, each of which has its own

single, dominating character. It clings to the memory with a peculiar tenacity, just

as on waking it is difficult at first to disentangle ordinary experience from

influences which still survive from sleep.” This dreamlike texture of Coleridge’s

poems gives a kind of twilight vagueness intensifying the element of mystery and

suspense.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is like a framed painting. The frame

represents one narrator telling about the mariner; the painting represents the

Mariner narrating his story. The Mariner sometimes quotes another person, such

as the Pilot. However, the Pilot is not a narrator, since he is merely speaking

dialogue and not telling a story.

'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look,'

The pilot made reply,

'I am a-feared'--'Push on, push on!'

Said the hermit cheerily

Coleridge is equally adept in painting a complete picture with just a few

broad touches. The landscape in “Kubla Khan” is an example of pictorial quality

and so is in the description of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,

Yet she sailed softly too:

Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--

On me alone it blew.

Coleridge’s musical genius can be best seen in almost all his poems

such as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan”, “youth

and Age”, “Frost at Midnight”, “Dejection: An Ode” etc. The chant-like, musical

incantations of “Kubla Khan” result from Coleridge’s masterful use of iambic

tetrameter and alternating rhyme schemes. In ““The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner”, though Coleridge has not follow any particular rhyme scheme but use

of alliteration enhance rhythmic quality and give a sound touch of musicality.

The guests are met, the feast is set (line 7)

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast (line 49)

And through the drifts the snowy clifts (line 54)

The ice did split with a thunder-fit (line 69)

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud (line 75)

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew (line 103)

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” is rich in figures of speech. The poet

makes use of similes, metaphors and personification here and there in poem.

Here are some examples:

 And every soul, it passed me by,

Like the whizz of my crossbow!

Poet makes comparison of the passing of a soul to the sound of shooting arrow.

Further he compares reflected sunbeams to frost;

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,

Like April hoar-frost spread

At one place he makes Comparison of the motionless ship and ocean to paintings;

As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean

Moreover the poet also personifies different objects in poem like death;

Is that a Death? and are there two?

Is Death that woman's mate?

Coleridge follows Wordsworth’s theory of simple diction. The language

of “The Ancient Mariner” is extremely simple and ordinary. Two other qualities

that considerably add to the wired impression created by the poem are the

directness of narration and suddenness in introduction of new elements or

transition to new incidents, as at the end of the poem the following lines occur:

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

That agony returns:

And till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.

The various characteristics of Coleridge art of narration distinguished him

as the ’most complete representative‘of the English Romantic poetry. His poetry

is small in its bulk and is the product of a brief but amazing period of his creative

activity. His poetry directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age.

He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more

rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems.