Episode 248: "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by S. T. Coleridge, Part 1

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast - Episode 248: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by S. T. Coleridge, Part 1

Release Date: October 29, 2024
Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks
Guest: Cindy Rollins

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Introduction

[00:18] Angelina Stanford:
Angelina introduces the podcast, emphasizing that it's more than just a book discussion. Hosted alongside experienced teachers Thomas Banks and lifelong reader Cindy Rollins, the podcast delves into the art of reading well, exploring classic literature's depth and intellectual traditions. Angelina quotes Stratford Caldecott to highlight the podcast's mission:
"To be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality."

Podcast Agenda and Upcoming Events

[01:38 - 05:13]
The hosts engage in light-hearted banter before transitioning to discuss the main topic: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." They reference the positive feedback from the previous episode, which covered Romanticism and the distinction between Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Angelina teases upcoming educational offerings, including webinars and a mini-class on the relationship between meaning and language, tying it back to Romantic poets' differing views. She mentions the launch of Cassiodorus Press, their new publishing arm, inspired by Cassiodorus's mission to preserve and create literature during the fall of the Roman Empire. Their first publication, Dr. Jason Baxter's "Why Literature Still Matters," is available for pre-order and set to release by Christmas.

Notable Quote:
[05:13] Thomas Banks:
"I had no idea that Wordsworth had a developed theory of linguistics of any kind."

Deep Dive into "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

[13:21 - 28:11]
Angelina and Thomas transition into the heart of the episode: a detailed analysis of Coleridge's poem. They discuss the poem's structure, noting its departure from neoclassical norms with its irregular stanza forms and archaic language meant to evoke a medieval atmosphere.

Key Points:

• Frame Narrative: The poem employs a frame tale, similar to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," where a wanderer is compelled to recount his story.
• Symbolism of Nature: Coleridge portrays nature as an intelligent, often malevolent force, contrasting with the neoclassical view of nature as merely an object to be studied and mastered.
• The Albatross as a Christ Figure: The albatross symbolizes a Christ-like figure, representing blessings and omens. Its killing signifies the mariner's transgression against divine providence.

Notable Quote:
[24:25] Thomas Banks:
"Nature is something that is pregnant with any sort of intelligent spirit and whose powers, though they are real, are supernaturally real."

Literary and Mythological References

[33:21 - 54:53]
The discussion delves into the poem's rich tapestry of literary and mythological allusions:

• Wandering Jew Archetype: Coleridge incorporates the legend of the Wandering Jew, symbolizing eternal punishment and isolation.
• Connections to "Frankenstein": Both works use similar frame narratives and themes of cursed individuals.
• Influence of Herodotus and William Shenstone: Coleridge draws from historical anecdotes and lesser-known literary figures to weave his narrative.

Angelina emphasizes the importance of understanding these references to fully grasp the poem's depth, cautioning against superficial readings that miss the symbolic layers.

Notable Quote:
[54:34] Thomas Banks:
"Coleridge, taking that real life incident, weaves this just kind of fabulous mythological fabric out of it."

Themes and Analysis

[58:35 - 65:23]
The hosts explore the poem's central themes:

• Isolation and Curse: The mariner's solitary journey and the curse he endures after killing the albatross.
• Nature vs. Humanity: The antagonistic relationship between the mariner and the natural world, highlighting the Romantic ideal of nature's sublime and uncontrollable power.
• Symbolism of Light and Darkness: References to the sun, moon, and celestial bodies symbolize the mariner's spiritual journey and descent into despair.

Angelina points out how Coleridge uses repetitive motifs and archaic language to build suspense and convey the mariner's psychological turmoil.

Notable Quote:
[62:37] Angelina Stanford:
"It's very. It's a conservative tendency along with the later religious writings of Coleridge."

Audience Reception and Interpretation

[46:17 - 47:44]
Thomas shares anecdotes from his classroom, illustrating how different interpretations arise when readers focus solely on literal meanings rather than symbolic ones. He recounts debates among students regarding the moral of the poem, emphasizing the necessity of understanding its metaphorical significance.

Angelina reinforces this by highlighting the pitfalls of reading fiction as direct life lessons, advocating instead for appreciation of its layered meanings.

Notable Quote:
[47:44] Thomas Banks:
"Life instead of, what does it mean when I encounter it in a story?"

Conclusion and Teasers for Next Episode

[65:42 - 66:48]
The episode wraps up on a cliffhanger, as Angelina and Thomas conclude their initial analysis of the poem's first half. They tease the continuation in the next episode, promising to unravel the remaining parts of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Additionally, they remind listeners about Dr. Jason Baxter's upcoming appearance and the ongoing promotions for their publishing projects.

Notable Quote:
[65:23] Angelia Stanford:
"This is going to be this Christmas's hot gift. Jason Baxter's book and albatross pendants."

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Key Takeaways

• Symbolism is Central: Understanding Coleridge's use of symbols like the albatross and nature is crucial for interpreting the poem.
• Historical and Literary Context Enhances Meaning: Familiarity with Romanticism, neoclassical traditions, and mythological archetypes enriches the reading experience.
• Avoid Literal Interpretations: Emphasizing metaphorical over literal meanings helps in appreciating the poem's depth and thematic complexity.

Recommendations for Further Listening

• Previous Episode: For a deeper understanding of Romanticism and its relation to Coleridge, listeners are encouraged to revisit Episode 247.
• Upcoming Episodes: Stay tuned for Part 2 of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" analysis and Dr. Jason Baxter's discussion on his new book.

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Join the Conversation:
Engage with the hosts and fellow literature enthusiasts by joining their Patreon group @patreon.com/theliterarylife or their Facebook discussion group. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com for more resources, podcast schedules, and to support the podcast through sponsorship.

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Closing Poem:
The episode concluded with Thomas Banks reciting Gerard Manley Hopkins' "At the Wedding March," adding a poetic touch to the insightful discussion.

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Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford, and with me is the man that I hope is not cursed to wander the earth telling my tale.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no, I don't think I could play that role. Maybe the wedding guest. I think I could pull that one off.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just the guy who's stumbling around, stumbling there and saying, please, please, get away from me, sir. I'm trying to get to this wedding.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, well, that would be you too. You'd be. You would definitely avoid human contact. And the mariner would have to find.

[Angelina Stanford]

Someone else, no question. Just don't even make eye contact.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, sorry, sorry. This guy's weird.

[Angelina Stanford]

My husband, the mysterious Mr. Banks, ladies and gentlemen.

[Thomas Banks]

I think I've. I've definitely. It seems to me that whenever I'm in a place I can't get away from, I'm thinking of traveling by whether airplane or bus. I tend to. I've known a number of ancient mariners. I'll just put it that way.

[Angelina Stanford]

A number of ancient mariners.

[Thomas Banks]

I've known a number of ancient mariners.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that's totally true. You have so many stories of.

[Thomas Banks]

Actually, many of my stories involve like. Yeah, so once I was stranded in a. A blizzard in a bus station that was cut off from any sort of working road. Yes. This actually happened once, and I think everyone was a little bit more psychopathic than they normally would have been.

[Angelina Stanford]

They went full. Like Jack Nicholson in the Shiny.

[Thomas Banks]

It was. Yeah, there were some. There were definitely some. Some Stephen King type characters there. Nobody killed anybody. I mean, no one was pursuing anyone with an axe or anything like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Not yet.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yeah, that would be actually a good story. Yeah. A bus full of people who don't know each other, who get stranded in a blizzard, and one by one they start disappearing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's an Agatha.

[Thomas Banks]

And then there were none. Yeah, kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. And there were none at the bus stop. Exactly. Exactly. So, if you're just joining us, we're talking about Samuel Taylor Coleridge's the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. And if you missed last week's episode, you definitely want to start there. We got great feedback on that and people said it was very helpful, the way that we talked about the Romanticism. Romantic movements and romanticism in general, and tracing the different lines between Wordsworth and Coleridge to put it in this context. So I would definitely advise you to. To take a listen to that episode. You know, there's one more thing that I could say. Well, there's more than just one thing, but another thing I want to make sure we say, and I'm not going to develop it a ton here, but if it wets your whistle. We've got a lot of webinars and mini classes on this topic. But, um, we're quite fascinated with the question of meaning. And where does meaning come from and what is the relationship between meaning and language? Um, this is something we've been exploring in some of our classes. We've got a mini class coming up in 2025 about that. Um, our 2025 lit life conference is going to be on this topic. Um, and so Wordsworth and Coleridge actually had two different views on this as well. Wordsworth representing much more the modern view and Coleridge much more the older view. So Wordsworth thought, like so many people today, that there is no relationship between meaning and a word, that it's all arbitrary. And Coleridge took the position that it's not arbitrary and that language is not simply descriptive, but is also transcendent and poetic language is transcendent. So I'm not sure if Anne will talk about that in her webinar with Plato, but Plato brings up this same thing in an early writing about what is the relationship between meaning and language. So this is a very hot topic. So I'm just going to tease you with that. I'm not going to get into any more than that. I'll say that Owen Barfil is on Team Coleridge, Lewis and Tolkien are on Team Coleridge. But Wordsworth's view that language is primarily descriptive and arbitrary is certainly. Certainly winning the day to. To our detriment, I would say. Anyway, just. Just threw that out there as a tease.

[Thomas Banks]

I had no idea that Wordsworth had a developed theory of linguistics of any kind.

[Angelina Stanford]

Don't know how developed it is, but he.

[Thomas Banks]

The man with, like, theories. Really?

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that's much more cool.

[Thomas Banks]

More like a man with impressions.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, no, that's. Well said. That's well said. All right. And speaking of Dr. A. N. Phillips and her upcoming Plato webinar, that is looking fantastic and you should definitely buy a ticket to that. That's going to be November 12th. And her webinar is called Imagery and Allegory in Plato's Republic. And I'm super excited because she's worked very hard on this. She's read all of the Plato in Greek. She felt. She kept saying, I can't say yes to this webinar until I have fully immersed myself in all of him in the original language. Because it makes a difference. It absolutely makes a difference. And as I listen to her talk about what she's going to be saying, I keep, keep laughing and saying to her, so what you're telling me is not only do modern people not know how to read stories, they also don't know how to read philosophy. And she says that is correct. So tune in for that. She's a great speaker, she's incredibly knowledgeable. You're going to definitely get your money's worth. And, and, and she's going to show you an idea of a way to approach Plato that you're going to see really extends into the Middle Ages and our whole conception of medieval cosmology, even the language debate, goes all the way back to Plato. So you can find out about that and purchase your [e-mail] and like everything we do, it's recorded, it's available live or later. So if you can't make the live session, the video recordings are yours to keep.

[Thomas Banks]

I was thinking about Plato recently and I have not taught any Plato in my class or any of my, excuse me, any of my House of Humane Letter classes for a number of years. But I think that one of the reasons why the Republic is misinterpreted so often is that it is very often read in isolation from other Platonic writings and also in isolation from writings inspired by Plato. And I think it's one of those books, if you dive headfirst into it by itself without reading, say, oh, some of his, some of his shorter works first, that it's, you're kind of bound to end up facing backwards. Yeah, I felt, I think the Republic is a, it's not unclearly written so much, actually. He's a very lucid writer Play Plato is. But yeah, it's a very difficult book to wander through without a far seeing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Virgil, boy, you are just making me love you so much. You know, this is my entire hill to die on that this Is this is the challenge that we have when we try to read old books. We read them in isolation. We do not understand the context. We do not understand the world of the, the rest of the world of writings, both before and after that are associated with it. We don't have a Virgil to guide us. There are Virgil's out there, but we have this very modern, individualistic. I don't need any help. I'm just going to pick up this book and read it. And then like you said, they face backwards in my classes, I always say, and they read it upside down. But it's the same, the same idea. We get ourselves twisted into knots and then we decide we know Plato and we can pass judgment on him or kind of crazy.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, like I said, there are other writings of his, I think other dialogues that are a bit more approachable. I think things like the Euthyphro or the apology or, you know, some of the, some of the shorter prison dialogues are. Yeah, I, I think those are maybe more beginner friendly. But yes, the, the Republic is a, it's one of those works of philosophy I think everyone should at least read a part of.

[Angelina Stanford]

And really this is our, this is our mission at the House of Humane Letters. If you go on our website, you'll see that it says we are, you know, it says recover the lost intellectual tradition. This is what we're talking about. Not that the books themselves have been lost, but the tradition that within the books exist in, which includes not just historical background, but, you know, philosophical context, imaginative context. It's the imaginative context that we find that people struggle with the most. That's what's been disregarded and lost. But once you put these works in their imaginative context, it's quite easy to understand them. Um, and so this is something that, you know, we don't have to fret about it being lost. It's not irretrievably lost. It can be regained. And this is what, this is why we exist. This is our entire modus operandi. This is our mission. And this leads me right into my, to my next statement, which is that as we became more committed to this mission, as we looked deeper into what it was going to take to recover this tradition, we very quickly realized this was going to require a publishing arm of our business, that there were just a ton of old works which really are guides which are not translated into English or are not accessible and affordable, and they might be very old and clunky and sometimes old translations need a guide all by itself. And so we started working on some of those projects. And we also realized though that we needed, not only do we need old books translated for the modern audience, but we also need, you know, new books on old topics. And so we did it. We launched our publishing wing, I'm happy to say. Cassiodorus Press is live. You can go to cassiodoruspress.com and we chose the name Cassidy Doris. You can have the whole story on the website. But we chose it because that our mission was Cassiodorus's mission in the fall of the Roman Empire. He saw things crumbling around him and he thought, I've got to start a school and I've got to save all the old books I can. And, and I've got to write new books. And that was his mission. And that is our mission. And, and we're very excited to announce to you our first project of Cassiodorus Press, available for pre order now. It's the brand new book by Dr. Jason Baxter, bestselling author, Dr. Jason Baxter. And I know that our audience loves him. If you've listened to him on our podcast, if you've attended any of his webinars or classes that he does with us, he's an incredible scholar, a fantastic teacher, and we have published a small volume by him called why Literature Still Matters. It's a charming book, a delightful book, a thought provoking book, a beautiful book, and we cannot wait to get this into your hands. And so this can be pre ordered [e-mail] and it will be in your hands by Christmas. And a lot of people are, a lot of people are buying it in bulk to give us Christmas gifts. This, this book will be out at the beginning of December, possibly earlier than that, but we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves a very wide berth in terms of when these things would be in your hands. But if you do order in bulk to give to Presence, you get a much better deal on the shipping. And because we decided to take the very risky move of not going the Amazon route and going with a small distributor for a number of reasons, but. Well, I'll just leave it at that. For a number of reasons. I don't want to get on a big anti Amazon rant at the moment, but we're trying to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. So we're investing in small businesses, in homeschool family businesses and we're bringing you this book that way and we're very excited about it, very proud of it. So again, that's why literature still Matters. You can pre order [e-mail] and Dr. Baxter is actually going to come on the podcast on November 12th, so the same day as Dr. Phillips webinar. We're just going to bring you all the goodness that day. He's going to come on and talk to us about that book and hopefully get you super excited about why literature still matters. We're really excited to have this as our first project for a number of reasons, but one is which, you know, we. We always get asked for. You know, I tried to get my friend to listen to the podcast or this, and that is like a small book I can just hand my friend. And this is it. This is the small volume that you can hand your friend. In fact, this is the first book in a series of small volumes we're going to. Do you know why blank still matters? Like why language still matters, why history still matters, why poetry still matters, why fairy tales still matter. So you can look for those and other titles coming soon.

[Thomas Banks]

The way you describe that, you know, getting sort of converting a friend, I. It made me think of us handing them out on campuses, you know, little tracts like, you know, the Gideons or something like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

If you died tonight, what books would be left behind? That be my opening line there. All right, well, let's do some commonplace quotes and then jump into the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

[Thomas Banks]

I have a short one. Yeah, I was reading rereading some chapters from Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets, which is a book I returned to again and again. That was one of the first. I think that was really the first book of literary criticism I fell in love with when I was in high school. Anyway, writing makes total sense. Yeah. Writing about the minor English poet and compiler William Shenstone. He writes he was a lamp that spent its oil in burning. I just really like that sentence. And Shenstone, I remember, you may recall I mentioned last week he had compiled or helped compile a book of ballads which included much medieval and early modern matter that had kind of been forgotten and was not a big hit on its first appearance, but did play a part in renewing the interest of many literate people in, you know, the ballad in older English rhymes and stories and things like that, which, yeah, they had had largely been neglected for the better part of, well, more than a century.

[Angelina Stanford]

Really lays the groundwork for Romanticism, which is going to try to kind of.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, so, you know, Shen Stone is not a major literary figure by himself, but he's one of those who sows some Seeds which bear fruit.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, contraire. I wrote. You don't even know this about me. I wrote a huge research paper on William Shinstone's work for my 18th century poetry class.

[Thomas Banks]

No.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, I did.

[Thomas Banks]

You've never been more attractive.

[Angelina Stanford]

I did. And I. I looked at some of his work in terms of the changing views of childhood.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh. I've never met anyone who knew who he was. Seriously.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is our entire marriage, y'all, as having these obscure little things and saying you two. Yes, I know who William Shinstone is. I have. I have a long and enduring relationship with him. I spent a whole semester studying him.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow. Wow. You also did some. I think I remember you telling me that you had also written a comparative essay on Addison and Steel and the Spectator essays and their influence on Jane Austen or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

I did. I wrote that. That was a semester long research project that I did for Dr. Burton Rafael.

[Thomas Banks]

We still have that buried in a box somewhere. Because I'd like to read that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

I do, actually. Yeah, I do. Probably with Dr. Rafael's notes on it. Yes, the Burton Rafael the Translator.

[Thomas Banks]

The Collected Juvenile of Angelina Stanford.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes, he quite liked that, that paper. Yeah, on that. It was on the influence of the Spectator on the work of Jane Austen. Yes, the Burton Rafael of Beowulf, translator. Sagrawan, translator. Don Quixote, translator. He was my professor in graduate school and I wrote that paper for him. Yeah. All right. Well, I have a commonplace quote as well, and I've got a quote here from Northrop Fry, I would never have guessed. I know from a book called A Study of English Romanticism. And I. I wanted to share this quote because I was making my case last week that when we think of the Romantics as sort of these revolutionaries and almost like modern day hippies, that that represents one strain of Romanticism. But it's not the only strain. I don't think it's the dominant strain. I don't think it's the most important one. It's not the one that I teach classes. But here's a great quote that might surprise you if you have thought of the Romantics as just being these kind of free spirited, counterculture revolutionaries in religion. Many Romantics, especially on the continent, adopted a conservative or traditional Christian position, usually Roman Catholic, and saw in Romanticism a revival of an age of faith in reaction to the sterile enlightenment of the 18th century, when a rational and analytic perspective was thought to have reached an extreme. In British Romanticism, Edmund Burke, with his conception of a continuous social contract and his elegy over the passing of the age of chivalry with the French Revolution. And Carlyle, with his effort to reactivate the aristocracy and his vision of the organic filaments of a new religion represent this conservative tendency along with the later religious writings of Coleridge.

[Thomas Banks]

I have never seen Coleridge's religious writings in. Are those just kind of out of print or something?

[Angelina Stanford]

I have no idea.

[Thomas Banks]

I know he actually preached a good number of sermons. That would be a side of him I was actually. I would be interested in learning more about.

[Angelina Stanford]

But see, I love little quotes like this that sort of challenge what we think we know of movements. And there is. There was a. There's a deeply conservative and religious side to Romanticism, which is trying to reintroduce wonder and. And like you said, the ancient. The ancient mysterious faith into an extremely sterile 18th century.

[Thomas Banks]

It's interesting you bring that up. I was just talking about the French writer Rene Chateaubriand the other day. I don't know if you've read Chateaubriand at all.

[Angelina Stanford]

I have not.

[Thomas Banks]

Chateaubriand actually kind of embodies both impulses in Romanticism because he was at. I mean, early in life, a French revolutionary. I mean, kind of like. Kind of like Wordsworth in an odd way. He writes Hail, set in North America amongst the Native American tribes, which kind of valorize a sort of heroic primitivism. So he's kind of a Rousseau type figure in some ways. And then he, later in life converted to Catholicism. He wrote a defense of Christianity called the Genius. The Genius of Christianity, which was one of the. It was kind of like the mere Christianity of its day, honestly. And then a number of other. A number of other works, including his famous memoirs, from beyond the Grave, which is a cool title for a book. So, yeah, there's odd characters who have these. Yeah, A foot in both worlds, kind of. Chateaubriand is one. We also named a steak after him. That's usually what the name summons up today for anyone who's a foodie out there.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nice. Nice. All right, well, I'm excited for you to lead me through this poem. Yes, we've gotten some tremendous feedback so far. Actually. A group of our Patreons have been meeting to read this out loud. One of them met last night and read it around a fire. It said it was like the perfect spooky Halloween. Some other people were really surprised, but that's why we chose it for October. This is. This is your spooky, creepy Halloween story?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And it's. We already mentioned, I think, that this is a poem which plays a pretty important part in the changing of literary fashions as the 18th century turns into the 19th one. One dictum of neoclassical literature is that it ought to be aimed at a kind of meat, a kind of median normalcy amongst its readers and be representative of, you know, kind of commonsensical, ordinary men and women and their interests and their sociable feelings. This is not a sociable poem.

[Angelina Stanford]

Not at all. And also would highlight ordinary speech.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

And. And this is very. Not ordinary.

[Thomas Banks]

This is deliberately. Deliberately, Yeah. I mean, it almost harkens back to.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's very much in the style of Edmund Spencer, who wrote deliberately. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Almost like kind of a pastiche of. I mean, not Middle English exactly, but like a lot of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, Middle English, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

A lot of his spellings and a lot of his diction definitely is not of his time.

[Angelina Stanford]

So let me just clarify for our listeners. The neoclassical period, that's the 18th century period. And so this is right before the Romantics and lead directly into that. And when I said this hearkens back to Edmund Spencer. Edmund Spencer was in the Renaissance, so in a similar time, when the imagination is getting attacked, when people are wanting more classical forms of literature and poetry, when the imagination and fairies and things like that have all gone out of fashion and anything medieval actually was quite looked down upon, just like in the neoclassical period. He deliberately wrote a medieval book with knights and dragons and, you know, fairies and all of these magical things and mysterious things, and intentionally wrote it. If you ever read Edmund Spencer and you're like, this is weird. It was weird to the original audience, like you're reading it correctly. He was trying to make it sound old and that same kind of faux. Faux Middle English.

[Thomas Banks]

So you're have some university. Was it Gabriel Harvey?

[Angelina Stanford]

Hobgoblin.

[Thomas Banks]

Gabriel Harvey, yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Hobgoblin stole the. The laurel from Apollo. It's. It's a phrase like that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

He was quite upset about it and.

[Thomas Banks]

That you ought to. If you. If you really want to be in the swim of things, you ought to rewrite this in Virgilian hexameters or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like that and take out all the embarrassing medieval stuff. So it's the same exact sort of thing happening here with Coleridge. He's writing a deliberately archai. Medieval. Very, very mysterious. You know, what's going on. We may never find out what's going on. It's extremely mysterious. And that's part of the romantic impulse to pushing back against this neoclassical idea that the world is clear and simple and easily understood. And they're Saying it's not. The world is mysterious and bizarre and so much of it we are never going to understand. And, you know, it's. It's a lie essentially, to. To act like everything is easily understood.

[Thomas Banks]

And formally, this poem also, it's kind of irregular. I mean, it's. Most of it is in four line stanzas of alternating tetrameter and trimeter, but he'll throw in the occasional six line stanza or just the occasional odd couplet and kind of break up the regularity of the form, which is not something that, again, stricter canons of neoclassical taste in the 18th century would have approved of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, they really, like.

[Thomas Banks]

They would have thought that this was kind of barbaric.

[Angelina Stanford]

Kind of barbaric indeed. Yeah. They like the heroic couplet, those very clean lines, almost like a complete thought is expressed in a couplet in two.

[Thomas Banks]

Lines which has to be end. Stopped. Yes. There has to be some form of punctuation, but. Yes, exactly.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like tidy and clear.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very French almost.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was.

[Thomas Banks]

I think it was kind of meant to imitate the French Alexandrine, but that's a different story. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

I want to also mention to our listeners that I am reading out of the 1798 version, if you have the later 1800 version, some of the archaic language and spelling has been removed from that.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, and something we didn't mention in the later. The later editions of this poem, Coleridge actually added marginal notes as well. Oh, it's kind of. Almost kind of like John Bunyan did in the Pilgrim's Progress.

[Angelina Stanford]

Is it something he just tinkered with the rest of his life?

[Thomas Banks]

This is a poem that. Yeah. He kind of. He kind of fooled around with and returned to here and there. I mean, he never rewrote it entirely. It's not. It's not like. I mean, there's what, six editions of Leaves of Grass. Six or seven editions of Leaves of Grass that. By Walt Whitman that just keep getting bigger and bigger and added to. Yeah. Kindling. Yeah. W.H. auden, I remember writing about that said that at a certain point a poet has to admit that his published work belongs to the public as well as himself.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. You gotta let it go.

[Thomas Banks]

It's like just let Indiana. Let it go. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Let it go about Coleridge's commentary. Is it. What. What's the nature of it?

[Thomas Banks]

So it's basically just little summarizing notes in the margins of the poem. Yeah. As the.

[Angelina Stanford]

That one. To give our.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So the first one is an ancient mariner meet a three Gallants bid to a wedding feast, and detaineth one. Next note. The wedding guest heareth the bridal music, but the mariner continue with his tale.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so is this in response to people saying, we don't understand what this is about? And so he's like, doing a little run.

[Thomas Banks]

Don't actually know, but that may have. That may have been it. And again, it doesn't seem like so strange a poem to us because we're used. Like, Gothicism is kind of a part of our. Of our aesthetic experience. But. Yeah, a lot of his readers, a lot of the polite readers of England in 1798 found this. Yeah. As we said before, just kind of off putting, you know, I mean, if.

[Angelina Stanford]

Somebody'S used to picking up Alexander Pope.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And reading poems that are called essay.

[Thomas Banks]

This does not speak to the ordinary experience of a, you know, urbane, you know, well, rounded 18th century signs are.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like a little learning as a dangerous thing. Okay, Right. And then you turn to this. Once upon a time on a dark and stormy night, what is. What is happening?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And another thing we'll get. We'll probably return to this, but I have. I have met people, not necessarily like, people whose opinions I would have hung a lot by, but who think that the sort of key incident in this poem for which certain of the characters are punished is not equal to the task that Coleridge demands of it. Because it seems, if you read it too literally, it seems kind of trivial. But we'll get to that. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

I want to say this. There are seven parts of the poem, and we're going to cover half today. So, what, through part three, you think?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So also, this is an example of what we call a frame tale, where we begin with an incident which is not directly related to the plot. The main plot itself, it's literally like a picture frame.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I should say that this is a frame device that Mary Shelley, Coleridge's very special girl, uses in Frankenstein. And it's the same exact. There's a ton of Rime of Ancient Mariner references, and it's the exact same frame. Okay, so you have a wanderer trapped in a ship in ice, and he comes on and he's like, I have to tell you my story.

[Thomas Banks]

And Walton, literally, they're eerily alike. They're ear.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. Oh, look at your face.

[Thomas Banks]

I haven't thought of the. Yeah, the ship in Frankenstein.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's it. And the ice, just like this. The icy thing. And Walton literally can't escape from hearing this story. So He's. He's trapped there and he has to. He has to listen to it just.

[Thomas Banks]

With a cursed man.

[Angelina Stanford]

With a cursed man just like this. Because there's something about what's happening here at the beginning that gives you the sense that that wedding guest can't leave, he can't get away. Like there's some kind of. He's almost like entranced. Anyway, take it from the top.

[Thomas Banks]

It is an ancient mariner. And he stoppeth one of three. By thy long beard and glittering eye. Now wherefore stop'st thou me? The bridegroom's doors are opened wide and I am next of kin. The guests are met, the feast is set, maced, Hear the merry din. He holds him with his skinny hand.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's different than mine. Go ahead.

[Thomas Banks]

There was a ship, quoth he. Hold off on hand.

[Angelina Stanford]

Me, gray beard loon is so much better than that. Nay, if thou's got a laugh, some tail, mariner, come with me.

[Thomas Banks]

Ah, okay. No, that is. Yeah, so I have f'd soons. His hand dropped. He.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, no, I got that. See. No, like you, he. I think he took this whole stanza out. See, that's my fourth stanza. He calls him with the skinny hand. See this? No, you're right, third one. Yeah, but still he holds the wedding guest. There was a ship, quoth he. Nay, if thou got a laugh some tail, mariner, come with me.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, go ahead.

[Angelina Stanford]

He holds him with a skinny hand, so.

[Thomas Banks]

And then he. And then the next. Does your next stanza begin? He holds him with his glittering eye. Okay, I actually think that's an important line because it's. I mean, this is an old guy who. It's not like he's physically stronger. We're not told he's physically stronger than the wedding guest.

[Angelina Stanford]

This implication, like he's mesmerized, almost like, you know, he's hypnotized him with his eye. There. Yeah, there's something magical happening here.

[Thomas Banks]

He holds him with his glittering eye. The wedding guest. Excuse me. The wedding guest stood still and listens like a three years child. The mariner hath his will. The wedding guest sat on a stone. He cannot choose but hear either way.

[Angelina Stanford]

Back to that same idea. He can't not listen to it.

[Thomas Banks]

And thus spake on that ancient man, the bright eyed mariner. And so the wedding guest is preparing for a joyous occasion. He's going. He's the best man, we gather, since he's the next of kin in the wedding. And I think that the fact that he's Going to a wedding is not. I don't think it's just a plot device. I think it seems parable ish to me. Well, it seems. It also kind of puts you in the mind of the. What's the biblical text? That it is wiser to go into the house of mourning than the house of feasting, because he's on his way to the house of feasting. But the story is sobering. It's dark. It's.

[Angelina Stanford]

To me almost like, you know, there's so many. There's so many parables that are about a wedding.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. And even though there's not like a lot of direct biblical allusion in this poem, there's definitely biblical suggestions. I mean, I think you can't help but think of Jonah also in this poem.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ah, yes. Yeah, yeah. A guy on a cursed ship. Oh, that's good.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So he begins a story. The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, Merrily did we drop below the kirk, below the hill, below the lighthouse top. The sun came up upon the left. Out of the sea came he, and he shone bright, and on the right went down into the sea, higher and higher every day till over the mast at noon the wedding guest here beat his breast, for he heard the loud bassoon. Okay, now you misses him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, so. So he's. He's missing.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's missing the wedding.

[Thomas Banks]

You Ms. Stanford, I would like you to tell me, is Mr. Banks making too much of this or not? He says that we dropped below the kirk that is below the church, below the hill, below the lighthouse top. It's almost like the ship is descending.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, I know that. Like they're sailing south and like. Yeah, the disappearing above the horizon.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's the scent language. Coleridge knows his style, but.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, there's. Yeah, there is something like a little bit it feels like. What's the. Oh, the Greek word. Akatabasis, which is a word which simply means a journey to the underworld. Literally, it just means a going down. But like when Odysseus or Aeneas or.

[Angelina Stanford]

Someone goes down, we would call the descent to Hades.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it seems like the kirk is the church.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, yes. So that's quite intentional. They're going below the church, like where.

[Thomas Banks]

You would find it. Like a cemetery.

[Angelina Stanford]

Kind of like a cemetery. Like a hell.

[Thomas Banks]

It seems to be a death.

[Angelina Stanford]

Almost like out of the reach of the church as well.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, they're leaving, like the. Leaving the safe world of ordinary human, you know, ordinary human life behind. And the sea itself becomes a well.

[Angelina Stanford]

The sea is always in literature, chaos, Chaos and danger. Yeah, but I think there's a parallel here to the wedding guest trying to get to the church and the ship sailing away from the church and the mariner. The mariner stopping and not letting the guy get to the church.

[Thomas Banks]

That's very good. Yes. Okay, and then the next stanza again. I mean, this would be literally something you would see, you know, the sun coming up on the left since he's sailing southward. But in classical mythology and literature, a left handed omen is a sinister omen. That's what the word sinister means, is left handed. And that is not a propitious omen. Again, you can tell me if I'm doing too much with that.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I don't think so at all. I have a. I have a note here, but it might actually be for a little bit later. No, no, that is the line. That's the line. Okay. So my note says that this is a passage Coleridge took from Herodotus.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yes. Famously in Herodotus, thus, two years having.

[Angelina Stanford]

Elapsed, the Phoenicians returned to Egypt, passing by the pillars of Hercules. And they reported a circumstance which I can scarcely credit, but other people may, that sailing round Libya, the sun rose on the right hand.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now, before we get too far, which.

[Thomas Banks]

Also is, I mean, a suggestion that Herodotus knew that this globe of ours was round. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm wondering if we should talk a little bit about the archetype of the Wandering Jew, because Coleridge, that also is.

[Thomas Banks]

A famous influence on this poem.

[Angelina Stanford]

The idea Colridge specifically says, says it. He said that he had been planning a Wandering Jew as the subject of a romance. And that's a capital W, capital J. That's a. That's a story type. Do you want to talk about that?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So the Wandering Jew is a figure in medieval lore. And I don't know exactly where he originates, but these. There is a story that when Christ was being led up the Via Dolorosa to his passion and death, he. I think he begged for water from one of the passerbys and the pat. And the passerby refused it to him out of indifference, and therefore he was cursed with eternal life without eternal beatitude, so that he would have to wander the earth.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that makes sense. Until the second major vampire vibes.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. So that's that. That legend is a product, I think, of maybe it might be in like one of the Apocryphal Gospels or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

Tell the tale, doesn't he?

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, I think that's Part of it as well. And there. There's a number of modern stories which have some. Some version of this character appearing.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know what struck me though, is, is Christopher Marley from A Christmas Carol.

[Thomas Banks]

Christopher. Bob Marley.

[Angelina Stanford]

Marley. Bob Marley. No, Bob Marley. Bob Marley is a reggae singer. Yeah, that's the name we're looking for.

[Thomas Banks]

No, it is Bob Marley Morley M O r. No, no, I'm serious. It's Marley. Both the reggae. Scrooge's dead partner.

[Angelina Stanford]

I want this mashup fan fiction written for me immediately. Where? Okay, I digress.

[Thomas Banks]

You were thinking of Christopher Marlo.

[Angelina Stanford]

I did. I have. My little dyslexic brain was going to town on that. But the fact that he's cursed to wander.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, so. Okay, yeah, but no. But yes. I mean, all of this, the. I mean, the Mariner here is suffering a similar kind of. Kind of retribution.

[Angelina Stanford]

And there's. There's always the idea that you've been cursed. Okay, pick it up. Okay, we have a repetition here. The wedding guest, he beat his breast, he cannot choose.

[Thomas Banks]

But here. And thus spake on that ancient man, the bright eyed mariner.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, there's going to be. He's going to use this repetition a lot. What do you. What. What is the purpose of that with the poet?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, it's a technique that's common to ballads, and ballads will often have a refrain that they return to again and again, like a chorus and a song.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is a ballad. This is not an epic for anyone listening at home. This is a medieval long narrative poem.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Yes. And now the storm blast came and he was tyrannous and strong. He struck with his or taking wings and chased us south along. Whoa, whoa.

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't know where you are. That's way different from mine.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, what do you have?

[Angelina Stanford]

So mine's got the repetition of Listen, stranger, storm and wind, A wind and tempest strong for days and week it played us freaks like Chaffy drove along. Listen, stranger, mist and snow and it grew wondrous cold and I ma came floating by as green as emerald. And he's using those.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, sorry. I was going back between two different versions of the poem when I was reading the other day, but. Yes, in both of these, though, as soon as nature enters into this poem, it almost seems as if nature is an intelligent being whose purposes are mysterious and who is frequently maligned for inexplicable reasons.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, this is interesting. So the Romantics felt that modern man was quite disconnected from nature and it was harmful to them to be so disconnected. And so you have the rise of the early. The early part of the Industrial Revolution here. And people immediately are talking about that. The dehumanizing effects of that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And also. Also, I think they were reacting against the idea of nature simply as nature is something more distinct from us. Nature is something that is an object of study, something that is there to be mastered and made use of for the improvement of human society, but not something that is pregnant with any sort of intelligent spirit and whose powers, though, I mean, they are real. Are. Are not supernaturally real. So that's. That's. I think Coleridge is, you know, being a romantic, reacting against these ideas as well. Let.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nature is all in Mother Nature nurturing you. It can also be a wild landscape.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that nature is. Nature is strange, unpredictable, and something that is something that we discount at our peril. I think. I think that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Pull up yours, though, because I'm curious where yours picks up. Does yours have this line? And through the drifts the snowy cliffs did send the dismal sheen. No shapes of men, no beasts we can. The ice is all between.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so you were missing those two.

[Thomas Banks]

The.

[Angelina Stanford]

Listen, stranger. Is that right?

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. I do not have.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so the. When you got to the ice, the ship is surrounded by ice. This is how Frankenstein literally begins. Literally begins with Walt. And the ship is surrounded by ice.

[Thomas Banks]

We're meant to understand that they've sailed down to the South. South Pole.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean. And so. And now they're trapped by. Trapped by, you know, flows of ice.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, now, I'm not a poet, and I. This is not my specialty to even talk about this kind of thing, but I can tell you that this. Listen, stranger. Storm and win. Or the next line. The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around. It gives it that sing song creepiness, but also, like. It speeds up.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. Basically the same meter throughout. But, yes, he. By careful use of anapests that appear occasionally and other devices, he can make the poem seem to pick up its tempo even when the stanza form has not changed.

[Angelina Stanford]

And does that create suspense?

[Thomas Banks]

I think it does. Yeah, I think so, too. I think this is. Again, it seems that he's just taken up this kind of folk meter that you would find in any number of, like, Methodist hymns, and used it for its simplicity. But I think he has other purposes as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so now we get introduced to the albatross, and initially everybody's really happy with him. At length did cross an albatross Thorough the fog it came, and in it were a Christian Soul, we hailed it in God's name.

[Thomas Banks]

And an albatross is supposed to be a benevolent omen.

[Angelina Stanford]

Specifically.

[Thomas Banks]

Not just in this poem, but I mean.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, no, no. All over. He's tapping into something all over. So an albatross is a Christ figure because when it's flying, it looks like it's in a cross. That's why I think it's very interesting that he put the word cross in that line. At length. Did cross an albatross.

[Thomas Banks]

We'd have to consult maybe that bestiary of yours.

[Angelina Stanford]

If there's no albatross in the bestiary. I looked it up.

[Thomas Banks]

But there are a number of birds that are Christ figures.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Like pelicans or pelicans, which is why your state flag is the pelican.

[Angelina Stanford]

Pelican's a Christ figure because it feeds its young by cutting its breasts and feeding them off its blood. But everybody thinks it's good. And he's also associating it with Christianity and God and the cross all there together. This is. Now, I'm also seeing a ton of Voyage of the Dawn Treader echoes in here as well, because an albatross is what saves them in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And it's clearly presented as a. I had forgotten that. It's clearly presented as a Christ image there as well. But even like the ship and going into the dark and being cursed and being left, that's all in Voyage of the Dawn Treader as well.

[Thomas Banks]

Now I'm trying to think of possible parallels between the sailor here and Eustace Scrub, but none come to mind. And then he really annoyed his shipmates and they threw him over.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, there's the Jonah again. But. But Coleridge knows about imagery and images and how they work in a story. And so he's not making up the albatross to be a Christ figure. It is a Christ figure. It would have been understood as a Christian symbol. And so they're all feeding it and they're happy to. They're initially. They're happy to see.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, they're happy to receive it and they.

[Angelina Stanford]

Because it's a good omen. And like, you know, we'll be saved from this ice.

[Thomas Banks]

And that also is. I don't think in. I'm trying to think of any 18th century poet, a Oliver Goldsmith, a Alexander Pope, Matthew Pryor or someone like that who would introduce an omen that really is an omen. Oh, no, again, that's deliberately old fashioned.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, very old fashioned.

[Thomas Banks]

Embarrassing. Like your grandmother's, you know, figurine. Collection or something like that. So, actually, yeah, I think this is a poem in a lot of ways, which. It couldn't have been written in the 18th, but it could have been written maybe in the 16th century.

[Angelina Stanford]

So immediately when the albatross sign, when the good omen comes, a good wind comes. And so they're moving along happily, the albatross is following, which makes me immediately think of, like the Exodus, with God following them as they go out.

[Thomas Banks]

The pillar of cloud is like the tutelary, the safekeeping, the defending spirit.

[Angelina Stanford]

So very, very much the. The. The Christ image. And this is a blessing on them. And they're being. Because. Okay, because the sea is also symbolically connected to the wilderness. They're both places of. Of. Of chaos. And you want to, you know, you want to get out of that. That's one of the reasons why sailors have so many superstitions and omens, you know, but. So this is all a good omen, and things are going well.

[Thomas Banks]

All right, so. And a good south wind sprung up behind the albatross did follow. And every day for food or play, came to the mariner's hollow in mist or cloud or mast or shroud it perched for vespers. 9. That's a very delicious prayers reference.

[Angelina Stanford]

For vespers. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Whiles all the night through fog smoke white glimmered the white moonshine.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. He ends this first section on such a great cliffhanger there.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's so abrupt because it's all. This good thing is happening, and boom, I shot him. But I wanted to point out that we're in the moon. The moon is out, and so moon, Latin for moon is luna. So lunacy. Lunatic. And when a moon comes out in a story, that is when crazy upside down things are going to happen. And the. So as soon as he says moon, the guy's like. And so I did this insane thing. I shot the albatross.

[Thomas Banks]

So God save the Ancient Mariner from the fiends that plague thee thus. Why looks thou so? With my crossbow I shot the albatross. This passage in quotations, this is the wedding speaking to him here. So the fiends that plague thee thus. So he has the look of a man who's beset by demons. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Also that Walton asks Frankenstein that. I'm telling you, you got to read the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner next to Frankenstein.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow. And also, it's. I think it's. I think it's very well done on Coleridge's part that he doesn't have Any reason whatsoever. It's like he shoots it out of boredom. He doesn't explain a motive, but it's a. It's a pointless act of. Of violence.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's upside down. It's a crazy thing to do. And the moon came out. Yep. And again you see him associating the cross with the albatross, but this time, it's a crossbow. That's so good. That's so good. Okay, so what happens then in section two is that he starts to talk about the curse. And so do you want to talk about how people miss the fact that the albatross is a Christ figure? What he's done is killed the good omen. He's killed the Christ figure, and that's why the curse happens. But you. You were telling me some stories. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I had to read this part.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're not reading the symbols.

[Thomas Banks]

I read this poem, Let me see, once in high school and twice in college is assigned reading. So it's been a while, but I think I know this poem pretty well. And I remember in one of the instances where I read it in college, I think it was like a 19th century poetry survey course or something like that. The class ended up divided between people who thought that the Mariner really didn't do anything wrong. I mean, it's not like it's someone's pet albatross or something like that, or maybe he needed food. I think someone suggested that.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then.

[Thomas Banks]

And then. And then people who thought that. I mean, yes, he was wrong to kill the albatross, but it was simply an albatross, and the albatross is only an albatross. That was kind of it. And I can't remember. It was actually, I. As I remember this, too. It was like most of the guys were on the, yeah, if you want to kill an albatross, go for it sign. And the other. And the girls were, no, that's mean. And I remember one guy saying, like, you know, I hunt. I go out there. I've done bird hunting before. You know, I've shot ducks. And, like, you know, I don't think, like, I deserve to be cursed for that. And then. And one. There was one girl. I think she. I want to say she was like an environmental science major or something. And she said, yeah, I think that Coleridge is like, I really like this, that he's cautioning us to be kind to animals. And it's. And the teacher kept trying to drive the point in. I mean, yeah, God bless the professor. That, no, the albatross here is not just a seabird. Okay?

[Angelina Stanford]

This is what happens. I say this all the time in my classes. This is what happens when someone makes the mistake of reading a work of fiction and saying, what would this mean if I encountered it in real life? Life instead of, what does it mean when I encounter it in a story? This is not the story of somebody who went hunting and then bad stuff happened to him. This is. This is a highly symbolic story in which someone deliberately destroys God's blessing on him and ends up being cursed. This is not about being nice to animals.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I mean, it's like. It's one of those things where, I mean, if that's what you take away from it, you should be nice to animals. I mean, yes, yes, God bless you. It's.

[Angelina Stanford]

You should also be nice to Christ.

[Thomas Banks]

It's kind of like if you learn from reading Jane Austen, how better to seek out qualities and a potential husband or wife. Again, really good for you. But again, there's more going on than that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Way more going on. Way more. It gets a part two, and immediately we see that we're in an upside down world. The sun comes up on the right, it goes down on the left. And the good wind, the bird is not following anymore. And so everything's going to go down.

[Thomas Banks]

And the good south wind still blew behind. But no sweet bird did follow, Nay, any day for food or play came to the mariner's hollow. And I had done an hellish thing. And it would work him woe for all averred I had killed the bird that made the breeze to blow.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. So he kills the wind.

[Thomas Banks]

Hellish. A well chosen word.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Ne dim, ne red, like God's own head. The glorious sonapris. Then Oliver and I had killed the bird that brought the fog and mist. It was right, said they, such birds to slay that bring the fog and miss.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, yeah, they did, lady, on him.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, they blow hot, they blow cold. They are, you know, kind of. Kind of like the people in the prophets rebuke, how long halty between two opinions. They don't know. It's like, maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think again of Moses and the Israelites just, you know, complaining and being fickle as they're out in the wilderness. Because. Because that bird was obviously bringing a good omen. It was bringing a good wind. And then as soon as he kills it, they're like, yeah, well, it was bringing the fog and mist. It was actually a bad omen. It was good that she killed it.

[Thomas Banks]

The breezes blew, the white foam flew the furrow followed free we were the first that ever burst into that silent sea down dropped the breeze the sails dropped down Twas sad as sad could be and we did speak only to break the silence of the sea Sea all in a hot and copper sky the bloody sun at noon right up above the mass did stand no bigger than the moon Day after day, day after day we stuck the breath ne breath ne motion as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Again. A painted ship on a painted ocean.

[Thomas Banks]

So here they are in the doldrums. But the way he describes them and.

[Angelina Stanford]

Land to the audience, that's a voyage of the Dawn Treader, which begins with a painted ship on a painted ocean. Literally, they fall into the painting. So there you go.

[Thomas Banks]

Pause for effect.

[Angelina Stanford]

Pause for effect.

[Thomas Banks]

I should.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, but so, I mean, they're in the doldrums and. Yes, the doldrums are a real. You know, that's a real. You know, what quadrant of the ocean where this effect often befell? You know, mass. Mass power. Excuse me, sail powered ships where they have no winds and they just kind of drift. It was, you know, kind of a famous. You know, you don't want this to happen to you. Curse of the trade. But he makes this seem very otherworldly at the same time where he describes like. It almost like becomes kind of a scene from hell and the blood.

[Angelina Stanford]

There's something almost Dante reference from a sermon from 1737. Christ, the great son of righteousness and savior of the world, having by a glorious rising after a red and bloody setting, proclaimed his deity to men and angels.

[Thomas Banks]

That's really good. That's really good. She didn't even have to consult a note right there. She just knew this.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that's cute. That was a note I was reading.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, if you know who William Shenstone is, like, you know, I can just fake it. Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Then the next line is very, very famous. Right. Water, water everywhere. And all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere. Nay, any drop to drink.

[Thomas Banks]

The very deeps. I love this next bit. The very deeps did rot, O Christ, that ever this should be. So nature itself has begun to mock them. Yes, to kill them and mock them while it kills them, you know, starving them slowly. The very deeps did rot, O Christ, that ever this should be. Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea.

[Angelina Stanford]

He repeats that a few times. That's great. Slimy Stuff is getting you now.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, about, about in real. And the death fires danced at night. The water like a witch's oils, burnt green and blue and white. That's very Shakespearean right there. I thought of Macbeth. Yeah. And some in dreams assured were of the spirit that plagued us so nine fathom deep he had followed us from the land of mist and snow. And every tongue through every drought was withered at the root. We could not speak no more than if we had been choked with soot.

[Angelina Stanford]

So they're all silent because their mouths are too dry to talk. I love that.

[Thomas Banks]

And also, kind of like Dante, the deeper you go into hell, the less the souls of the lost seem to resemble human beings. And these men, it kind of seems like their humanity's sort of being taken from them. Ah, well, a day. What evil looks had I from old and young. Instead of the cross, the albatross about my neck was hung.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so they, now they're mad at him, now they see him as curse. And so this is the third time he has connected the word cross with albatross and this time makes it explicitly with a capital C that he's talking about the Christian cross. And so we've got that upside down imagery again. Instead of wearing a cross around his neck, he's got the albatross. But it's, it's not, not, it's not a good thing. Now.

[Thomas Banks]

I found out that there is a well known public monument of the Ancient Mariner with the albatross around his neck. Yeah, whatever port town from England he's supposed to be from. And should we go into the history of the real Ancient Mariner at all?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, go ahead. But first let me just say our listeners might be surprised that this, this, this is where that phrase comes. I had an albatross hung around my neck.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. I, I once or twice I've used that in conversation and got some really weird looks. I thought that was a really well known thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well known too.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, what do I know? We both know who Shinstone is. Maybe we're not a good gauge.

[Thomas Banks]

Maybe not. Yeah. But no. So I mean this poem, amongst its many inspirations, Wordsworth had a book of mariners, travel stories from this, what, 18th century. And he shared some of these with Coleridge. And one of these was the story of a, the story of a sailor by the name of Simon Hatley who had shot an albatross arbitrarily at some point in his travels.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think the book is called Voyage round the world from 1726.

[Thomas Banks]

Voyage round the World. Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

By Shellvock.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. All right. Anyway. And Coleridge, taking that real life incident, weaves this just kind of fabulous mythological fabric out of it, if you want to reach.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is the actual paragraph.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So here's. Here's the passage. The central incident of the Albatross and its shooting was suggested by Wordsworth on the basis of an anecdote in Shellvox Voyage around the world. World. We had continual squalls of sleet, snow and rain, and the heavens were perpetually hid from us by gloomy, dismal clouds. In short, one would think it impossible that any living thing could subsist in so rigid a climate. And indeed, we all observed that we had not the sight of one fish of any kind since we were come to the southward of the Straits of Le Maire, nor one sea bird, except a disconsolate black albatross who accompanied us for several days, covering about. Was covering, excuse me, hovering about us as if he had lost himself. Till Hatley, my second captain, observing in one of his melancholic fits that this bird was always hovering near us, imagined from his color that it might be some ill omen. That which, I suppose induced him the more to encourage his superstition was the continual series of contrary, tempestuous winds which had oppressed us ever since we had got into this sea. Sea. But be that as it would, he, after some fruitless attempts, at length shot the Albatross, not doubting perhaps that we would have a fair wind after it. So another interesting thing, this sailor, this Hatley, he served on a number of ships in his time before the mast. He was kind of a soldier of fortune. He was a pirate as well as a sailor on legitimate enterprises, and amongst other things, at one point served on a boat with one Alexander Selkirk. Selkirk was marooned at one point in his life and inspired the story of Robinson Crusoe. So the Ancient Mariner and Robinson Crusoe in real life were sailing buddies.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's fantastic. So this incident and what Coleridge does with it is a great example of what we talk about on this podcast. He's not writing a story to describe this event that happened. He is using that event and imaginatively transforms it into this, you know, mysterious, supernatural tale. And, and sometimes I think people not.

[Thomas Banks]

So much what the Ancient Mariner was, but what he means.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, exactly.

[Thomas Banks]

Because we had no idea that this Ancient Mariner really has anything in common, the personality with Hatley.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think sometimes people read and, and, and get very caught up in, like, oh, this was based on that, you know, like. Or, you know, Charlotte Bronte was a governess, and so therefore Jane Eyre is an autobiography. And not realizing that. No, that's not what's happening. She took real events from her own life and then imaginatively transformed them into this other thing. You know, C.S. lewis talks about how. Of course. Of course an author is going to be pulling from what they know. Okay. And they know their lives and they know things they read about and hear about about and people they've met. But that doesn't mean that's what's in the book. He says that they're supposed to take that and then transcend it, transcend their own experience into making it this, you know, universal work of art.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm probably stealing this analogy from someone, but the experience which inspires imaginative literature and the literature itself, maybe the difference between. The difference between grape juice and the wine that is the wine that is cultivated from it, almost.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's a great analogy.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, it's the same, but different.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's completely different. Yeah, it's related to it, but it's not. It's not grape juice. Yeah, you're right. You're right. All right, Section three.

[Thomas Banks]

I saw something in the sky no bigger than my fist. At first it seemed a little speck and then it seemed a mist. It moved and moved and took at last a certain shape I wist a speck, a mist, a shape I wist and still it neared and neared and. And. And it dodged a water sprite it plunged and tacked and veered with throat unslacked, with black lips baked. We could not laugh ne wail. Then while through drouth all dumb they stood I bit my arm and sucked the blood and cried A sail, a sail. With throat unslacked, with black lips baked agape they heard me call Gramercy they for joy did grin and all at once their breath drew in as they were drinking all.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's. That's a Shakespeare expression, Gramercy.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're really throwing back here.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. This is very. Yeah, the slang in this is medieval. That's God grant mercy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. But I think that modern people can miss that because everything seems old.

[Thomas Banks]

Everything seems old.

[Angelina Stanford]

But. But this time, this would be old timey when it was written. I also think this kind of cursed ship, where people are dropping dead one by one and he sucks his own blood like this is very Dracula, too.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So Dracula also pulling from this, and.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, Coleridge himself has a vampire. Isn't Christabel Is Christabel Vampire.

[Angelina Stanford]

I read that in the class. It's quite good. All right.

[Thomas Banks]

He doth not tack from side to side. Hither to work us wheel. Withouten wind, withouten tide, she steadies with upright keel. The western wave was all aflame. The day was well nigh done. Almost upon the western wave rested the broad bright sun. When that strange shape drove suddenly betwixt us and the sun.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so the sun.

[Thomas Banks]

So they're cut off from the light.

[Angelina Stanford]

Cut off from the light. That's it. That's a well known image as well, the sun. So this is. This emphasizes their cursed state, their isolation. They're going, and that's a very Dante image. Getting further and further away from the light and more and more isolated and straight.

[Thomas Banks]

The sun was flecked with bars. Heaven's mother sent us grace as if through a dungeon. Great. He peered with broad and burning face.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just like to point out, I'm gonna show you how well your wife reads. As soon as as it said the sun was flecked with bars, I wrote, oh, they're in prison. And then he explained it. It was like they were in a dungeon screen. I was like, oh, yeah, Coleridge, we're tracking.

[Thomas Banks]

Alas, thought I, and my heartbeat loud how fast she nears and nears. Are those her sails that glance in the sun like restless gossamers? And these her naked ribs, which flecked at that the sun that did behind them peer. And are these two all? All the crew? The woman and her fleshless fear. And P H E E R E. That's companion. Right. Like. Like a peer.

[Angelina Stanford]

I thought that's probably what an old fellow. So there's only two people on this.

[Thomas Banks]

Woman and this skeleton thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Are those her naked ribs? So they. Yeah, they're not looking good. Yeah, they're almost like just skeletons. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

His bones were black with many a crack. All black and bare, I wean, jet black and bare, save where with rust of moldy damps and charnel crust they're patched with purple and green. Her lips are red, her looks are free. Her locks are yellow as gold. Her skin is as white as leprosy and she is far like. Like far liker death than he. Her flesh makes the still air cold.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. I just like to point out here, because he's associating white as the color of death, which is correct. That's the same way Lewis will use it in lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But I'm just going to get on my soapbox here for a second. Because one of the things you will hear, one of the crazy things you will hear about old books is that in old books, they consistently, consistently make whiteness and white skin a good thing. And that is. That's just. That's part of their whole narrative, that all old books are racist. That is not correct. Look, right here, her skin is white as leprosy. That is not a compliment. She's white as death.

[Thomas Banks]

You could multiply examples, like when Christ refers to the Pharisees as whitewashed sepulchers.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Or, excuse me, whitewashed walls. Yeah. That kind of thing is not flattering.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's not true that white. White equals good. Like. Like they say. I mean, it's. It's more complicated than that. I mean, yeah, you want to be washed white as snow, but when he calls this the Pharisees, like he said, white, white walled sepulchers. That's not a compliment. So. And her being said that her skin is as white as leprosy is not. That's not a compliment. That's not a description of someone beautiful. She looks like death. She's white as death.

[Thomas Banks]

The naked hulk alongside came the twain Were playing dice. The game is done. I've won. I've won, quoth she. And whistled thrice.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so this is super weird. We don't know what's going on. On just this weird thing has happened.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So there's this. This game of chance going on between these two sepulchral figures on this rotting.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ship that they see.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So what are they playing for? A gust of wind stirred up behind and whistled through his bones, through the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth. Half whistles and half groans.

[Angelina Stanford]

It really does describe their skeletons.

[Thomas Banks]

With never a whisper in the sea off darts the specter ship, While clomb above the eastern bar the horned moon, While one bright star almost atween the tips.

[Angelina Stanford]

So it's a ghost ship.

[Thomas Banks]

It's also. I wonder if Coleridge would have been familiar with the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which I think that existed in his time. That goes back to, I think, the 17th century. Anyway, no matter. There. One after one by the horned moon. Listen, O stranger to me. Each turned his face with a ghastly pang and cursed me with his E. 4 times 50 living men with never a sigh or groan. With heavy thump a lifeless lump they dropped down. One by one their souls did from their bodies fly, they fled to bliss or woe. And every soul it passed me by like the whiz of my crossbow.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, gosh, this is so good. This is so good. So, yes, that's a very Dante image. So he's becoming further and further isolated as they drop down one by one. And finally he's all alone and the souls whizzed past him like the wizard. My crossbow.

[Thomas Banks]

So he keeps connecting it, like how Coleridge kind of. That's kind of terrifying by itself. Not just the fact that they die, but the fact that these men are comparatively innocent in this matter as. As compared with all these men die. So what fate awaits him who is actually the guilty party?

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. And, and, and we'll just go into this, the first line of the fourth part, because he has built up the suspense. So good. And now the wedding guest says, I fear the ancient Mariner. I. I fear thy skinny hand, and thou art long and lake and brown, as is the ribbed sea sand. So this guy is freak. This story is terrifying. And he just blurts out, I'm afraid. I'm afraid.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah, no, this is. This is really good stuff. Very good. Very good for Halloween.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very good for Halloween. All right, so we've left you on a cliffhanger. Come back next week and we'll see how Coleridge is going to wrap up this mysterious, creepy, supernatural tale.

[Thomas Banks]

Will the albatross rise from the dead as a zombie? Will we have a zombie albatross? Who knows?

[Angelina Stanford]

Will we have albatross necklaces in our hhl Etsy shop next week? That's the real question.

[Thomas Banks]

Get some. Some merch.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's. I. I predict this as this false trip.

[Thomas Banks]

This is vulgarly monetizing everything.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is. This false. This is going to be this Christmas's hot gift. Jason Baxter's book and albatross pendants. If you know, you know. So, yes, don't forget about Dr. Ann Phillips webinar on Plato. Go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and register for that. That. And don't forget about Dr. Jason Baxter's book. Go to CassiodorPress.com and pre order that book. Now, that is what you want for Christmas. And then we'll come back next week for the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. We'll finish it up, and then in two weeks, Dr. Jason Baxter will be on the podcast to talk about his new book. And I'm sure we're going to have another one of our very interesting and lovely conversations about literature with him. All right, well, I hope you guys are enjoying this. I'm having a great time. Mr. Banks, thank you for leading us through this poem.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, this is a fantastic one for me.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is a lot of fun. All right, well, until next time, everyone stick around to the end of this podcast because Mr. Banks has a special poem and you can also join our extremely lively patreon [e-mail] backslash theliterarylife. So I'll see you all next week. And until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

At the Wedding March by Gerard Manley Hopkins God with honor hang your head, groom, and grace you bride your bed with lissome scions, sweet scions, out of hallowed bodies bred each be other's comfort kind deep, deeper than divined divine Charity, dear Charity, fast you ever fast bind, Then let the march tread our ears. I to him turn with tears, who to wedlock his wonder. Wedlock deals triumph and immortal years.