Comment on Coleridge’s
treatment of supernatural in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
S. T.
Coleridge is the greatest English poet of the supernaturalism and his The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best poems of supernatural ever
written in English literature. The poet employs the supernatural elements in
this poem in a convincing manner. As we go through the poems, there is "a
willing suspension of disbelief" on our part. The poem contains
several impossible incidents, yet we feel inclined to believe what we read. A
lot of unbelievable supernatural events have been incorporated in the poem. But
Coleridge portrays these events in such a way that they might seem natural and
believable to the readers.
The story of
the Ancient Mariner is an unbelievable one. Up to the killing of the Albatross,
everything around the ship of the Ancient Mariner is natural, but after the
killing, unbelievable and supernatural things begin to happen. First of all,
Coleridge aroused the sense of supernatural mystery by transporting us to
distant times and remote places. After the killing of the Albatross, the ship
of the Mariner entered into a silent sea where the ship remained unmoving as
idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.
The appearance
of the spectre ship is a supernatural element. For killing the Albatross, the
sailors had to suffer untold sufferings. They had not a drop of drinking water.
They were waiting for a ship to come and to help them. At that time, a skeleton
ship comes with two supernatural figures on its deck. One of the figures is
Death and the other is Life-in-Death. The poet describes a mood of uncanny fear
in the minds of the readers by describing the physical appearance of the
Life-in-Death.
The manner of
the death of two hundred sailors is also supernatural. Two hundred sailors drop
down dead one by one so quickly that they could neither groan nor sigh. As each
sailor drops down dead, his soul passes by the old sailor like the whiz of a
crossbow.
The most
supernatural event in the whole poem is the coming back to life of the dead
sailors. After the old sailor blesses the water snakes, his redemption begins
and ship is driven towards the home harbour by the Polar Spirit. At one point a
group of Angels enter into the body of the dead sailors and the dead sailors
rise to their feet and row the ship.
The manner of
falling the dead Albatross from the Mariner's neck and the talking of the two
voices in the air are equally supernatural events. For the killing of the
Albatross, the other sailors blamed the old sailor and they hung the dead
Albatross round his neck as a punishment. But when the old sailor blessed the
water- snakes, the dead body of the albatross fell down into the sea automatically
and:
The
selfsame moment I could pray;
And
from my neck so free
The
Albatross fell off, and sank
Like
lead into the sea.
Thus,
Coleridge presented supernatural incidents in such a way that they appeared to
be real. In one stroke Coleridge presents a skeleton ship, the spectre sea, the
woman and her death mate, the coming back to life of the ship's crew and Polar
Spirits talking to one another. But these supernatural incidents have not been
left without their association with reality. With these supernatural incidents,
the poet has artistically woven convincing pictures of Nature like the sun shining brightly, the mist and the snow surrounding
the ship, the freezing cold of the Arctic region, the water-snakes moving in
the water. Thus, the natural and the supernatural, the realistic and the
fantastic, the possible and the impossible have been so artistically blended
that the whole strikes us as quite convincing and credible.
