The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
|
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me free. Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns. And till my ghastly tale is told. This heart within me burns. I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; The moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me. To him my tale I teach. [1] |
Notwithstanding the Mariner’s enthusiastic religiosity (he tells the Wedding-Guest of his newfound love of church and prayer and admonishes him to show love to all God’s creatures, both great and small) it seems that he remains under the power of an exterior penitential compulsion—a sort of holy curse. It is this that drives him “from land to land” and it is this that gives him, “strange power of speech.” Here, in other words, is an explanation provided by the fictional data of the poem for his rhyming words.
One remaining puzzle is that the first to speak in the poem is not the ancient Mariner but the Wedding-Guest—and he, too, speaks in rhyme. The poem begins,
One remaining puzzle is that the first to speak in the poem is not the ancient Mariner but the Wedding-Guest—and he, too, speaks in rhyme. The poem begins,
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three. “By thy long grey beard and glittering eye Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? “The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din?” He holds him with his skinny hand, “There was a ship,” quoth he. “Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!” Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye-- The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years child: The Mariner hath his will. |
It seems reasonable to suppose that the rhyming speech of the Wedding-Guest is simply not explained by the fictional data of the poem. And since it has no parallel in ordinary experience, a suspension of disbelief is required—but only when the Wedding-Guest speaks. Another conclusion (equally reasonable but far more consistent, far more satisfying) is that the Mariner’s compulsion, or at least his “strange power of speech,” is contagious. An interesting implication of this idea is that the Wedding-Guest falls under the spell of the ancient Mariner from the very first moment of their encounter; that the Mariner “hath his will” even before ensorcelling him with his glittering eye; that even as the Wedding-Guest rudely repudiates the strange old man he does so in words that are already being mysteriously formed and transformed under the influence of his eldritch presence.
[1] These lines seem to have been inspired by the legend of the “Wandering Jew.” In The Annotated Ancient Mariner, Martin Gardner quotes a fragment of conversation attributed to Coleridge by one J. B. Beer. “It is an enormous blunder,” Coleridge is purported to have said, “to represent the Ancient Mariner as an old man on board ship. He was in my mind the everlasting Wandering Jew—had told his story ten thousand times since the voyage, which was in his early youth and 50 years before.”