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.