The Ancient Mariner's Graphic Voyage through Mimesis and Metaphor

Author(s): Renée Riese Hubert

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies , 1985, Vol. 15, Anglo-French Literary Relations
Special Number (1985), pp. 80-92
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3508549

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The Yearbook of English Studies

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ancient Mariner's Graphic Voyage
through Mimesis and Metaphor
RENEE RIESE HUBERT
University of California, Irvine

French painters and graphic artists have as a rule shied

literature while profusely illustrating Greek, Latin, I
Spanish classics. Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mari
of highly descriptive and fantastic elements, is one
masterpieces that have attracted the attention of more
based illustrator. In fact, Coleridge has benefited fr
divergent readings of four major artists: Gustave Dor6 (
(1920), Mario Prassinos (I946), and Andre Masson
expected that Coleridge's perennial mariner fared differe
a Romantic realist, a Cubist, an eclectic Expressionist an
Gustave Dora, by all odds the most prolific and popula
the nineteenth century, if not of all time, completely do
book illustration from the middle of the 1850s until his
1883.2 His fame as an illustrator in a sense did him a dis
him the recognition he deserved as an original painter a
vast unfulfilled project to illustrate the major writers i
including Dante, Ariosto, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakes
and Milton, it is hardly surprising that he should hav
Coleridge's most famous text. Indeed, his choice of m
confined to a specific genre, a single vein, a single mode
single nationality. He showed a predilection for the large
it included humorous and fantastic elements. In Rabe
harrowing punishments, Perrault's ogres, we find the m
sions of his talent; he usually gave overwhelming dimen
almost too voluminous and cumbersome for the a
viewing.3

1 See The Rime ofthe Ancient Mariner, illustrated by Gustave Dori, first American edition, Harpers ( I876)
(in my article I refer to the edition published by Dover (New York, 1970)); The Rime ofthe Ancyent Marinere,
in seven parts, embellished with designs by Andri Lhote, published by Emile-Paul (Paris, 1920o); La
Ballade du Vieux Marin, en sept parties, 22 images et lettrines par Mario Prassinos, published by Guy Levis
Mano (Paris, 1946); Le Dit du vieux Marin, douze lithographies par Andrh Masson, published by Vrille
(Paris, 1948). Plates by Lhote and Prassinos are reproduced with the permission of the Association pour
la diffusion des arts graphiques et plastiques (ADAGP).
2 Millicent Rose's introduction to the Dover edition.
3 See Michile Lavallie, 'Des Livres Dorh partout', in Gustave Dor6 (Strasbourg, I983), pp. 223-2 7.

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RENEE RIESE HUBERT 8I

Dor6, usually labelled a post-Romantic artist, had

nature, whose wonders he lavishly displayed by mean
scapes, emphasizing the inscrutable depths of the forest
sky, the sea ripped wide open. Nature, at once elem
dramatized to the extreme and always in action, knew n
depicted cities both ancient and modern with their in
and crowds. The representation of their swarming exist
visual equivalent of Hugo's and Baudelaire's Paris or D
fact, Dora did graphic documentation on both of these c
To Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner he devo
almost all of them full-sized.4 He attempted, as in most
be as complete as possible. He wished to provide the read
a literary work with the full equivalent of the narration
to make visible the most dramatic moments of its even
editor of The Annotated Ancient Mariner (New York, 19
illustrations are inspired by specific lines which he m
several editions the order of the plates in relation to tha
well as the number of stanzas confronting a single pl
cannot approach the image/text relationship in a uniform
We may wonder what Dor6 means by a complete illust
all must be mimetic. Did the painter include or at least
aspects of the poem? By the end of the nineteenth centur
tions of the poem which expanded or negated one anoth
graphic artist can be considered a critic and interpreter o
not a literary scholar expected to take into account prev
Dor6, in painstakingly translating the verbal into t
possibly make visible the full potential of the poem
ambiguities the twentieth-century critics have dwelt up
JeromeJ. McGann has pointed out that the glosses and t
means duplicate each other, that the interpretation o
presents a point of view quite different from that o
presence of different voices and perspectives as well as fo
also noted by McGann. The reader is subjected to
diachronic experience which the illustrator cannot co
order. Dord's approach to art lacks the sophistication th
text he illustrates. He is content to represent visually on
struck him as concrete in the text; moreover, a cha
perspective never emerges within a single plate but
together comparable events. Dor6's representational m
conventional; his scenes are unified according to the
each one depicting a circumscribable scene or straight

4 He claimed that his interpretation of the ballad was one of his strongest w
s 'The Meaning of The Ancient Mariner', Critical Inquiry, 8 ( 1981 ), 36-67

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 82 'The Ancient Mariner' and French Illustrations

devoid of paradox and double meaning. The illustrator's simplifications a

perhaps inevitable, for multiple perspectives existed in literary represen
tion long before graphic art had any use for them.
Intertextuality presents an even more acute difference between the po
and the illustrations. Coleridge's poem echoes other literary texts; li
reminiscent of Shakespeare and of early ballads have been recognize
critics. The sometimes wilfully archaic effect of the poem relies on earl
literature. Intertextuality brings to the mind of the reader memories of o
texts, extending the poetic process of the past into the present. The mari
has been seen not only as a Christ figure, but as a modernized version of
and of the wandering Jew. Such parallels rely on texts and not merely t
oral transmission of myths. The poet-critic Coleridge, a scrutinizing rea
introduces traces of other texts, of their legendary message, a domain wh
once more Dora, whatever his mimetic ambitions, cannot possibly fo
him. The artist nevertheless replaces, or so it seems, literary intertextua
by reminiscences from other paintings. Segoline de Men-Samson, in a re
article, has shown how much his works were steeped in those of other painters
The plate facing lines 84-90 shows the mariner all alone, high above th
sea, leaning against the mast of the ship (Plate I). He is standing up, his
lifted, clutching the ropes and knots. His body, with the legs part
separated and the arms raised, assumes the shape of the cross. Dora resor
to a series of substitutions, whereby the sea replaces the mountain, the
parts of the cross and, above all, the struggling sailor the dead Christ. T
representation of the mariner clearly originates in traditional image
Christ on the cross. And this analogy is confirmed by other plates, provid
close views of the facial features of the sufferer. Thus Dora has made visi
major theme in the text: guilt, martyrdom, repentance. But the philosop
meditation, the re-examination of values undertaken by Coleridge, are n
directly represented in the illustrations. As Dora's sailor varies from plat
plate, in his relative proximity to the sea and reliance on the mast
generates an interplay of continuity and discontinuity in relation to
poem's progression which may perhaps be interpreted as an iconograp
reflection of textual meditations or inquiries.
In the plate facing lines 378-92, the mariner is again represented with
arms stretched upwards and his legs separated (Plate II). Entirely chai
to the boat, he remains in a horizontal, not vertical, position. Dori ev
thereby a greater humiliation. The first plate dramatizes the loneliness of
mariner who has severed his relationship with the crew after the fa
shooting of the albatross. We may refer to the mariner's confession: 'An
had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe' (1. 92). Dor6's scene
not precisely based on a poetic clue in the text. He situates the speaker wit

6 'Les Emprunts d'un autodidacte: sources graphiques de Gustave Dora dans les illustrations de liv
in Gustave Dor6, pp. 2 I14-23.

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RENEE RIESE HUBERT 83
the scene as an actor whose words are in the text, but wh
expressions depend upon performance. Dora relates the image
as a whole, more than he elaborates specific moments or v
this plate shows once again the mariner with raised arms, hi
suggest that he has relinquished his control. Dora no longe
lucidity of a confession, with its implication of suffering and
to a mariner in a state of unconsciousness and dizziness: 'And I fell down in a
swound' (1. 392). He does not supply the physical portrait of the speaker, but
the image of his actions as visual narrative.
Dor6, in representing different episodes, different moments of the
mariner's journey, provides continuity through an iconography all his own,
which does not necessarily correspond to the changing optics and voices of
the literary text. In developing a sequence of recurring yet changing images
which go beyond a merely mimetic rendition of dramatic and epic events and
expand the theme of the journey into other domains, Dora has insisted on a
complex and diversified representation of the ship or segments ofit. The ship
becomes as much a protagonist as the sailor: their destinies are linked. It
could be argued that to a certain degree Dora attempted a realistic 'por-
trayal' of the ship, as though he had faithfully followed a model. In the poem
it is primarily evoked by its movements, by the obstacles and hardships it has
to confront. Dor6's representation of details (the mast, sails, flags, beams,
nails, anchor, ropes) do not recur elsewhere in his post-Romantic opus, in his
landscape and city atmospheres. When Dore insists on detailed descriptions
he does not aim at realism for realism's sake. Realistic detail is often used by
the illustrator to consolidate the domain of the fantastic and the imaginary
(for example, the accumulation of bones on the pillows of the ogre's children,
or the mysterious design created by the abundant foliage, in Tom Thumb).
Dora, like Coleridge, alternates scenes of the natural and of the supernatural,
the imaginary with moments of fairly straightforward narrative. In this way,
Coleridge's ambiguities, fluctuations, and paradoxes are not completely
obliterated in the graphic interpretations. While treating 'the Rime' as a
model, Dor6 does not slavishly follow the poet's patterns but broadens the
context and suggests analogy and interaction between scenes to create
graphically-convincing sequences.
The coherent representation of an outer reality as a self-sufficient unity or
as an end in itself would overwhelm the reader with information and restrict
the demands that the Romantic poet makes on him. The imaginary domain
would, in stretches at least, be mapped out for the reader/spectator and thus
leave fewer options. According to Todorov's theories, the point of departure
for the fantastic is often the daily, recognizable, restricted, and ordered
world from which the reader gets thrust into a wider, more questionable, and
more mysterious realm.' Although theories of the fantastic are primarily

STzvetan Todorov, Introduction a la litterature fantastique (Paris, 1970).

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
84 'The Ancient Mariner' and French Illustrations

connected to prose fiction, it is possible to apply them to The Ancient Mariner

because the ballad form relies heavily on narrative as the sailor throughout
the poem tells a tale relentlessly repeated again and again. The mariner, as
he meets the wedding guest, participates in an everyday world where roles,
aims, and purposes are ordered and defined. The wedding is a 'happy'
occasion, as opposed to the tortured life on the everchanging sea at the mercy
of daemonic, angelic, supernatural, and pantheistic forces. The mariner
refers to the appearance and intervention of powers which surpass man, play
with him, or control his destiny. The narrator, too, refers to these forces
without questioning their nature; he reports on their presence as a matter of
fact, but rarely as an enigma which he would have to solve, or a state of
bewilderment where he would have to provide answers and would be torn by
doubt.
It has been pointed out that the mariner remains rather passive apart from
his unmotivated instinctive shooting of the albatross, while forces spiritual
and physical determine the course of action. The mariner reacts rather than
acts. He undergoes a process of education, until he becomes 'a sadder and a
wiser man' (1. 624). Through the animation of outer spiritual forces which
take possession of his senses and his dreams, the mariner becomes dizzy, and
lies in a swoon, like many other protagonists of fantastic literature. But the
impossibility of solving mysteries barely plays a role; Coleridge's narration
does not make a choice between alternating worlds, labelling one as real, the
other as illusory. In this respect the poet belongs at best peripherally to the
fantastic while his illustrator goes much further, even to the extent of
multiplying almost photographically-exact details as a backdrop to the
unfathomable mystery under discussion. Dori provides the realistic image of
a man in a state of collapse, a striking but somewhat superficial image which,
if taken by itself, hardly heightens our understanding of the poem. The
mariner clings to the ship's ropes, but the rest of his body appears lax, for his
feet no longer rest on steady ground as in the first image. In this section of the
poem the ship is controlled by the Spirit, and stirs suddenly 'with a short
uneasy motion' (1. 388) though becalmed by sun and wind. Ship and sailors
are in the grip of supernatural forces which usurp those of nature. Dor6i
represents the ship as an extension of the mariner, as a large surface with a
complex set of instruments, ready to confront the elements but obviously
dragged and strained beyond capacity. Multiple ropes stretching in all
directions show that the onslaught comes from everywhere, while straight
wooden planks following their one-directional course underline the uphea-
val. Beyond the deck we see only swollen and charging waves, ready to
engulf the ship.
The Spirit and the sun which in the text move or would hinder the ship
remain conspicuously absent from the plate. Dor6's scene, in relation to
Coleridge's text, seems confined to the human and the cosmic, both of them
magnified in certain respects. The mariner in a swound is stretched out in a

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RENEE RIESE HUBERT 85

horizontal position, and the two anchors pointing upward

the line of his body. The boat extended beyond capacit
hardly participates in a realistic scene, or even in a g
supernatural forces often remain invisible or undefine
manifestations and interference. Dor6 accounts for a reali
its limits, on the border of transgression. As we examine b
and planks separately, each might convey a convincing asp
the sum total of all elements moves us to another level. C
and wood, the parts look nevertheless animated and assum
No longer merely pieces attached to a ship rocked by wav
vitality which enables them to bend, stretch, regress, or at
to crack and to explode. By interrelating elements, by end
beastlike features, the illustrator suggests dangers and da
everywhere. The analogy of cords, chains, snakes, and
animals dominates; the plate includes anchors and sails wh
stretched position simulate the skin of reptiles. Twiste
loops simulate the watchful eyes of a distorted creature.
Dora, in spite of an extraordinary variation of scenes, re
multiplicity of direct and indirect accounts in the text, ha
illustrations not only by the recurrent character of th
multiple contexts, but by the metaphor of the snake
wedding guest addresses the mariner: 'By thy long grey b
eye'. The glittering eye recurs frequently throughout the p
the physical appearance of the mariner as well as to his sp
image of the glittering eye also establishes analogy with th
the reflections in the sea of stars and moon which are not
ments, but part of a web where the cosmic and the intimat
the spiritual intermingle. Although Dor6's plates do not p
chain of being, the eye, the mariner's frightened look,
sparks become omnipresent, for they also appear in the hol
eyes refer to the beholder, the witness, as well as to what
On the plate for lines 51-55 the viewer confronts the eyes
looking intently, contemplating snow-covered landscap
'And it grew wondrous cold' (1. 52) expresses the unfamiliar
Dor6 enhances the mystery by the complex structure of th
the icebergs and to the bears, with whose elusive motio
identify. Under the impact of the snow and the mist the
itself and its elements, and the shapes melt into each othe
clouds, sails; 'Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken The ice
(1. 57). As the human eye begins to lose its power, the poe
new form of coherence: 'It cracked and growled, and r
(1. 58). In the following plate, Dor6 no longer shows t
destiny through the eyes of the sailors, but focuses on the
icebergs, no longer distinguishable from any other sh

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
86 'The Ancient Mariner' and French Illustrations

crowned by a rainbow as the albatross emerges: a suitable prologu

supernatural, perhaps even before Coleridge has introduced it ove
glittering, sparkling ship is entering a dangerous path; the ext
luminosity and the ominous shapes and shadows reveal that t
extends beyond human scope. Multiple echoes and reflections
and water into a single design, a network which extends from
mountains and clouds.
Like the eye, the image of the snake in Dora's illustration relates less to
symbolism than to ornamentation; it provides patterns of interrelations,
tension, of fluxes which characterize dramatic, narrative, and spiritu
impulses. Snake patterns are not limited to the context of the ship and wat
They emerge from the beginning, amid the foliage of the tree where
wedding guests gather, and continue to the end, when the mariner wande
again among trees. These convoluting images are most fitting in illustrat
a poem which suggests patterns of repetition, cycles which imply that th
present is loaded with memories of the past. Dor6 in most plates relies
detailed depiction of the world of objects which ultimately assume more th
a single function and operate at several levels. They transcend their state
objects to participate in a system where supernatural and universal anima
tion predominates. Also, from an iconographic point of view, plates inclu
areas of mistiness, translucence, shadowiness, opaqueness, and luminos
relating alternatively to dream and reality, the supernatural and the natur
Andre Lhote, who was connected with Cubist art, wrote a number
essays in which he explains his general position in regard to painting and
somewhat personal attitude towards Cubism. He was perhaps more eag
than others to situate the painters within a tradition and to investigate the
mental processes rather than analyse their pictorial techniques and discover
Far from accepting the ultimate consequence of Cubism as abstraction,
insisted on the need for a basis in reality: 'Grace A cette disposition spfciale
leur 8tre, ils peuvent se permettre n'importe quelle invention de formes et
couleurs: ils sont stirs de retrouver, par un d6tour connu d'eux seuls, cett
fameuse nature qui ne se donne qu'a ceux qui savent lui commander'.8
In general Lhote illustrated contemporary writers such as Claudel a
Cocteau, but included Coleridge, for he had a predilection for seafari
texts. In his first vignette for The Ancient Mariner, the land, the boat, and
waves with their highly stylized outlines are recognizable entities, each on
characterized by a specific design in a different section of the vignet
(Plate III). The three elements do not encroach upon one another. Lh
imposes an order by applying some of the reductive, analytical processes
Cubism, which perhaps unfortunately exclude transgression, for encroach
ment might have provided a more faithful way of illustrating Coleridge's
ballad. Cubism does not so much reveal a view of the world submitted to

8 Parlons Peinture (Paris, 1936), p. 21.

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ?~,?: t?: 'i ' )I
t

~t.~k~
~I~*- t j c?~i~Ee~~.'t31~.~ I'
i\

i'.' J. -~ i
:9cr i f
I 4
i ;:?
F
:i? 1 ''lj
~E~a~c: i '
L

so
,-.~..

3- .3,!"
,
A, f ~ * C 1

i: r ii

iS~II
r'

h ~~u';3er~iurL~t3~rl~CI I?.
t--

J.
'Q - O
01,.
:
o,
?;
'1 rL
~- Cr.

?- --1 -CM-k ?~c~? ??~-~~

;
r'?
?_ ..
~t~;?

\~`;;ccJC~

2~?-Ke'?

**A

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 r?

_ L.~.-
la
r

~iF
r, ~LJ~ I~~lli~lC~IL ~

_r

_ _

THE RIME ?~
/
I

OF THE

ANCYENT MARINERE,
IN SEVEN PARTS.
III Lhote, Vignette
? ADAGP Paris 1984
N

IV Prassinos, Portrait of Ancient Mariner

? ADAGP Paris 1984

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RENEE RIESE HUBERT 87
time as it stresses salient features partaking in a world of o
piece reconstructs aspects of the poem through juxtaposition
maritime creatures. By immediately placing the ship under th
angel, Lhote appears to de-emphasize the dramatic threats an
The angelic forces which seem so overpowering compared wi
reminiscent of medieval representation. In Lhote's first plat
on the waves, but in the lower sections the short-lined caden
way to long twisted coiled shapes which suggest fau
dimensions. The strictly horizontal division, creating two fi
realism and enhances the highly decorative quality of the dr
second plate, which signals mythic underground areas, se
duction to the third part, entirely devoted to fantastic eleme
referred back to the text evoke in fixed, stilted patterns th
experiences of the mariner. The painter's selectivity is primar
iconographic reasons; his small tapestry-like images which
epic text appear somewhat dwarfed within their frame by t
understated equilibrium. Lhote rarely illustrates single lines
In Part 5 of the poem we read:
The upper air burst into life
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between. (1. 313)

The vignette shows the ship surrounded by dancing cre

symmetrically coupled, uniting features of birds and sea
horizontal and a vertical separation divide the space.
animal-dance appear in the sky as rhythmically constellat
tions and in the sea as convoluting forms providing variatio
of birds and fish, just as the clouds can be considered variat
Objects do not refer to reality or even to a narration, b
generators of forms and decorative patterns.
Andr6 Lhote's illustrations are determined by pictorial nec
than by literary requirements. Considerations such as sym
rium, patterns, and spatial reduction dominate, undercuttin
thrust of the poem. The death of the sailors on board and th
ship introduce Parts 6 and 7. Next to the sloping vessel with
stands the harmonious stable city with its twinkling lightho
lent flight of the angel and, to a certain extent, the flying c
the viewer with a peaceful vision and make him forget t
according to the poem, will begin over and over again.
Mario Prassinos, in his formative years, came under the st
the Surrealists. Refusing to paint surface and appearance, eag
into the inner and hidden world of the landscape in its ordi
its cosmic dimensions, he shared the theoretical ambitio

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
88 'The Ancient Mariner' and French Illustrations

Breton developed in Le Surrialisme et la peinture. After 1939, under

of the war, Prassinos's art changed in regard to both topics and te
Preoccupied with political problems and their actuality, his repres
ofmen shows considerable affinity with the Expressionist style. Af
he freed himself from what he termed literary associations. He ach
recognition as a stage designer and a graphic artist. Althou
illustrate Sartre's Le Mur, he shows a predilection for fantastic wo
Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe; L'Hirisiarque et Cie and Le Bestiaire, by
naire; Les Contes fantastiques, by Charles Nodier; and Une saison en
Rimbaud. References to a past or a tradition seem rather sca
drawings of Prassinos. In his illustrations of The Ancient Mariner
vignette appearing in the upper right of almost every other page
head of the mariner. One could say that the painter replaces the vo
portrait: the bearded head with glittering eyes (Plate IV). Since he
us at each page of the poet's words, we can assume that, in s
Surrealist leanings, Prassinos did not exclude a mimetic ap
illustration. Although the painter's portrayal is unmistakable, t
not bereft of ambiguity. It shows at once a landscape and a portrait
wavy hair suggests the sea and the wind. This set of features
constitute a psychological portrait or a meditation on the self. It s
simultaneity of the self and the experience, the self and what lies b
self; the portrait negates fixed identity as it summarizes a se
adventures replete with feelings of anguish and fear. It represents
device, comparable to a poetic refrain which provides unity to the il
In addition to the oft-repeated portraits referring to a typically
duality, Prassinos includes for each section of the poem a full-
from which the mariner is absent. Other characters are repres
sailors on the ship, the hermit, death, and death-in-life. The paint
no distinction between the world of the shadow, the invisible, the d
nightmare, the supernatural, and the everyday. He suggests by th
of skeletal figures, subject to torture and suffering, the actual co
modern man. One plate may allude to Coleridge's Christian va
shows three naked men tied to the mast of the ship. But modern m
would contain an implicit accusation against Christianity, leavi
his state of isolation. Prassinos shows the unbearable agony
stretched out one next to the other and forever graveless: 'Chez Pra
revanche, s'expriment un d~sespoir et une mise en question collect
mesure de l'impasse dans laquelle notre civilisation s'est engag
illustrator's anguished mariner refers to experiences differing fro
evoked by the wanderings of the Romantic hero, as he refers to t
modern man. He does not show the shooting of the albatross and o
question of guilt and repentance.

9Jean-Louis Ferrier, Prassinos (Paris, I962), p. 24.

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RENEE RIESE HUBERT 89
The sun and the sea dominate an inhuman world. Th
prominence to his landscape drawings, which are executed
lines. The sun appears again and again in a dark sky a
oversized, and venomous flower, crawling to its frighten
Prassinos's allusions to a modern form of torture and sufferin
ment of the ancient mariner to the 194os, reveal his Express
He uses distortions to heighten man's destiny and warnin
unmistakable decline. None the less, Surrealist trends also
same plates: the sun image doubles as a flower, while the s
operates simultaneously as an abyss filled with crawling crea
metaphoric device thus characterizes the portrait of the m
seascape. Prassinos's horizontal division of the landscape, with
upper part and the telescoped sea and land in the lower, h
affinity with a whole sequence of paintings by Max Ernst, w
simultaneously a surface and a spatialized internal view.
interrelating the outer and deeper world by the use of gr
becomes in spite of his modernism an heir to the Romantics.
Mario Prassinos begins each section with a large initial surr
image or a scene, which becomes, so to speak, the genera
come. Since his text is a bilingual edition such initials occ
right-hand and the left-hand page. The letters in the Fre
English text necessarily differ, so that the two pages presen
landscape or a figure, different moments, gestures, or emph
initials suggest on a reduced scale scenes and figures ana
which occupy the larger plates; although they produce a
they are by no means repetitious, nor do they fulfil the same
letter seems to introduce in a minimum of space the major pr
section: the sun, the moon, the hermit, the ship, the sailors,
summarizes the ballad's narration by abolishing the distinctio
actor and the scene, the microcosm and the macrocosm. Pras
Mariner was printed on the handpress of Guy Levis Mano,
care with the typography, the outlay of the page, and the il
execution of the initials may very well pay homage to the me
book. The artist replaced highly coloured, carefully framed, an
by black lines, which transgress their frames, stressing irre
activity. By the same token, the letter and the landscape or the
writing and the narration, the voice and the pictorial el
intrinsically linked. The twentieth-century artist presents a co
phosis of a romantic bard into a modern writer with a modern
With the exception of Dali, whose enormous output rival
Masson is the most prolific Surrealist book illustrator.10 A la

o10 Francoise Will-Levaillant published a Catalogue des ouvrages illustrds par Andri M

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
90 'The Ancient Mariner' and French Illustrations

works can be termed collaborations with fellow Surrealists, in their joint

attempt at liberating themselves from conventionality in aesthetics, ethics,
and eroticism. To this category belong, above all, Leiris's Simulacre,
Bataille's Histoire de l'oeil, Artaud's Ombilic des limbes and Le Ptse-nerfs.
Masson provided daring visions for these revolutionary texts which offended
Breton's high-minded standards for Surrealist love. Masson, who would rise
above such partisan struggles, published at a later date with Breton Marti-
nique, charmeuse de serpents, rich in hybrid imagery and explosive forms,
leaving no frame of reference for everyday existence. Coleridge is by no
means the only earlier, non-Surrealist, writer he illustrated. Their powerful
and dynamic styles attracted Masson to Victor Hugo (La Pieuvre) and
Rimbaud (Une Saison en enfer). Masson himself stated that 'le pli 6tait pris.
Liseur passionni j'allais aussi vers le passe chercher matibre A illustration
conforme A l'6tat d'esprit de cette 6poque (aprbs la premiere Guerre
mondiale) oii j'6tais envoilti - le mot n'est pas trop fort - par les
romantiques de tous les pays.Je ne le dfnie pas'.1' Masson also abundantly
illustrated novels by Malraux and collaborated with Sartre.
He is a very lucid artist, making clear in various essays his position in
regard to painting. He wrote several texts that he illustrated himself and
thereby gained extraordinary insights into the problems of illustration. The
following description summarizes his artistic ambitions, for the creation of a
new space is irretrievably linked to movement: 'Cr6ation d'un art du
mouvement et d'un espace qui ne sera plus le support de proportions
sereines mais le milieu d'of naitront des masses mouvantes et
tumultueuses.'12 Masson opposes the 'surface' which he leaves behind to
'l'illimit6' he seeks to conquer. His art relies on open-endedness which
purposely leaves unanswered the question of beginning and end. His
dialectics is usually exemplified by a confrontation of geometric and organic
forms. The Ancient Mariner presents a more reductive, concise form of art than
most of his other illustrations: 'Ainsi dans l'6dition de Coleridge en I1948 les
motifs associ~s au ciel, A la mer, A l'oeil quasi magonnique, donnent lieu A des
images d~pouillbes et vigoureuses, dont le noir convient a ces pohmes de
rayonnement tragique A travers les t~nibres.'13 Surprisingly, Masson does
not venture as far into the occult in interpreting Coleridge as in most of his
other illustrations.
Diachronic considerations, which would relate the illustrations to an
earlier period or modernize the Romantic poet, do not apply to Masson as
they did to Prassinos and Andr6 Lhote. Traces of narration have disap-
peared; the plates, although corresponding in number to the sections, do not
directly relate to them. The interpretation cannot be termed episodic since
the plates, at least most of them, refer to the text as a whole. Although the

1 Will-Levaillant, p. 4-
12 Andre Masson, Mitamorphose de l'artiste, 2 vols (Geneva, 1956), II, 68.
13 Will-Levaillant, p. 26.

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RENEE RIESE HUBERT 91

ship and the 'face' of the mariner seem recogni

considered separate entities or objects. Masson said
l'artiste: 'Nous ne peindrons plus l'objet, mais plut6
(p. 8o). The movements and reflections ofsky, water,
form waves and flucutations as well as alternating sha
zones. Dark zones, increasing in the later plates, a
dimension of the poem. The painter shows a ship u
freedom of movement; its mast, its sails, and their m
pushed into a vertical position below a sun that has lo
power of regeneration. In the final plate, which appear
more structured than other works by Masson, para
event is evoked not as an event but as a repercussion.
completely taken over, suggesting an equilibrium; ref
world is undercut.
From the beginning, Masson puts his series under the sign of tragedy.
Objects and creatures appear as two-dimensional schemata, insisting on
their fate, on its ineluctable effectiveness rather than on their own tangible
being. The albatross emerges in the first plate between two black vertical
planes, the outline of the head and the eye being visible between the half-
open curtains. Economy and concision do not prevent the artist from
introducing ambiguity. The bird seems deathbound; its beak, which would
characterize it most strongly, is obliterated by shadows and clouds promin-
ent throughout the series. The eye, in its strong isolation, accuses the
onlooker, the witness, the culprit, thus making their representation super-
fluous. Two drops, of either blood or tears, remain suspended. The albatross
in Masson's interpretation is not a self-sufficient protagonist, but the
mediator who combines dream and death, threat and accusation, the
mariner and his victim, the deed and the sorrow. The following two plates,
again bringing several elements into a single vision, come closest to the
Surrealist credo. Masson presents a constellation of wavy lines whose
circular shape suggests that we are looking at a head, that of the ancient
mariner, undistinguishable from the winds that beat him and the waves that
rock him. Masson has with the same lines evoked not only the motions of the
landscape and those of the protagonist, but also the unrest, the lack of
equilibrium to which the world is subjected. In true Surrealist fashion the
mariner and the landscape generate one another. Each of the first two plates,
with its duality, with its merger of several worlds, relates to the poem as a
whole. Each plate reveals a vision where the physical world is present only
through its released energy and not its tangible existence.
Two of the later plates convey the impression ofa mere unified, condensed
constellation, assuming octagonal or elliptic forms. The sun at the zenith,
recurring in several plates, becomes a strong, almost magnetic, face. The
fourth plate, characterized by a higher degree of abstraction, appears to
formulate an equation relating waves to light. To the dark sun rays, which

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
92 'The Ancient Mariner' and French Illustrations

stretch out in triangular form in the upper section, the painter opposes
luminous circular shapes which send rays upward from the lower part of the
plate. The dark forces of the sun combine with the explosivie life crawling at
the bottom of the sea. Diagonal and circular lines, which cross and compose
the rest of the plate, suggest both the vibrating movement of the sea and the
thunderous quality of light. The circularity of the waves simulates an eye,
which in a sense becomes omnipresent. Viewer and viewed merge, as
luminosity encroaches upon darkness.
Here we rediscover the iconographic signs that Dora introduced into his
interpretation. In Masson's interpretation we no longer have to strip the
design of its realistic dimension and seek for continuity through themes and
their variations. Masson has combined within a single icon the forces at play
in the poem, cosmic and human. He has condensed the unlimited in a sign
which makes reference to the supernatural irrelevant. Masson's illustrations
are, however, not to be construed as reducing Coleridge's poem to its
metaphors and ambiguity, to its essential tragic impact, for the painter has
absorbed the poetic force into his pictorial universe.

This content downloaded from

130.235.66.10 on Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:40:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms