Ghent University
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
The Eolian Mariner:
The Lack of Human Agency and the Author’s
Romantic Quest for a Reconnection with Nature
in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Paper submitted in partial
fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of “Master in de
Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels” by
Bert Biesbrouck
Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor
January 2016
Acknowledgements
Writing this dissertation has been an exciting experience that allowed me to study the things
that fascinate me the most. However, going through this process would have been very different
if it were not for the help and support of the following people, to whom I want to express my
gratitude.
The first person who I want to thank is Professor Marysa Demoor, who supervised my
dissertation. She allowed me to – after my BA paper, yet again – follow my interest in Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Moreover, her valuable feedback and the
efficient communication with her have made it possible for me to finish the paper in due time.
My thanks also go to Christine Vyncke, who supervised my bachelor paper during my
teacher training a few years ago. I would not have had the self-esteem to enrol for a master
programme, were it not for her encouraging words.
I want to express my gratitude to my mother, my father, and my siblings, for supporting
me throughout the writing process. It should not go without notice that, on the days when I
thought that my muses had forsaken me, they have endured my crankiness surprisingly well.
I am thankful to Anke, who has contributed a great deal in making my dissertation more
reader-friendly. I could always count on her help when I was not sure how to phrase something.
And, most important of all, she has helped me to find back my confidence when the writing
process did not go as well as I had hoped.
Finally, I thank my friends Jonas, Kenny, and Pieter for not keelhauling me every time
I brought up Coleridge or his Mariner in a casual conversation, and for the late night discussions
that have inspired several ideas that eventually found their way into my paper.
The end result of my dissertation would not have looked the same without the help of
these people, so I am grateful to all of them.
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4
1. The Architecture of the Mariner’s Universe .......................................................................... 9
1.1. The Visible and the Invisible Realm as Regulated by the One Life ............................... 9
1.2. The One Life as a Harmonious Whole .......................................................................... 15
2. The Trickster Who Does Not Trick ...................................................................................... 27
2.1. The Mariner’s Resemblance to the Mythological Trickster Figure .............................. 27
2.2. The Mariner’s Resemblance to Specific Trickster Figures ........................................... 39
3. A Traumatic Rebirth and Redevelopment ............................................................................ 50
3.1. The Mariner’s Rebirth and Redevelopment .................................................................. 50
3.2. The Mariner as a Trauma Victim Stuck in Limbo ........................................................ 56
4. The Mariner’s and His Author’s Places in the Cosmos ....................................................... 63
4.1. The Death and Revival of Animated Nature ................................................................. 63
4.2. The Existential Need for a Connection with an Animated Nature ................................ 71
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 79
Works Cited.............................................................................................................................. 84
Word Count: 27 499
Biesbrouck 4
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” 57-62
Introduction
Despite its popularity today, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner1 has
been subjected to quite some criticism by the author’s contemporaries. These criticisms are
perhaps best summarized in a note that was added to the poem in 1800 by William Wordsworth,
Coleridge’s friend. It states:
The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the
principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession
of Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the
controul of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself
to partake of something supernatural: secondly, that he does not
act, but is continually acted upon: thirdly, that the events having
no necessary connection do not produce each other; and lastly,
1
Henceforth referred to as The Rime. Unless otherwise specified, quotations come from the 1798 version as it was
first published in Lyrical Ballads.
Biesbrouck 5
that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated
(Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads 263).
The third and fourth point of critique are the most widely discussed ones. Due to the highly
allegorical nature of The Rime, the symbolic imagery and the causal links between the main
events in the poem often seem quite obscure during a first reading. The best known example
here is the relation between the Mariner’s act of shooting the Albatross and the horrible cosmic
punishments that follow it. Why are the Mariner and the rest of the crew threatened by a
complete lack of wind, utter drought, and the horrible figures Death and Life-in-Death after the
Mariner shoots the Albatross? Are these events related, and if so, why is shooting a mere seabird such a gross cosmic offence? Surely the punishments for this act seem disproportionate. It
makes sense that Coleridge’s contemporary critics often could not understand the narrative
sequence (Haven 366) and considered it “unintelligible nonsense” (Halmi, Magnuson, and
Modiano 68). And today, it might even remind the reader of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, in which
Josef K. is arrested one morning, “though he had done nothing wrong” (3), soon to find himself
in an absurdly incomprehensible bureaucratic world where he eventually receives the death
sentence even though he is still clueless about what his offence might be.
Yet, contrary to the world which Kafka depicts, the universe in The Rime does seem to
have some logical coherence. Critics today generally read the poem as an allegory about the
“One Life”, an important concept in Coleridge’s thinking that puts “the virtue of unity” to the
fore (Perry 148). In this reading, the significance of shooting the Albatross is evident: killing
the bird that metonymically represents unity is a violation against that unity, and therefore
results in disunion for the perpetrator. Accordingly, this separation from the One Life's unity
can only be undone by reconnecting with it by, for instance, blessing a nest of water-snakes.
This reading can be seen as a counter-argument to Wordsworth’s third and fourth point of
Biesbrouck 6
critique. In the allegorical reading, the events do “produce each other”, and the “too laboriously
accumulated” imagery is in fact an indispensable element of the poem.
However, no such counter-argument has been provided for Wordsworth’s first and
second point of critique; that the Mariner “has no distinct character” and that he “does not act,
but is continually acted upon”. As Paul H. Fry notes, “nearly all readers agree” that the Mariner
himself is “at most but the vessel of understanding” (“Wordsworth” 331). But none of these
readers has made an elaborate attempt at explaining why this is the case. This paper aims to do
so, by analysing both the nature and the origins of the Mariner’s lack of agency. More
specifically, it will answer the question to what extent the lack of human agency is not a
“defect”, but a vital element of The Rime that is related to the psychology of the Mariner as well
as that of his author.
In order to do this, the present paper will go through four stages that each take up one
chapter. The first one will consider in what ways the Mariner’s cosmic structure limits human
agency in the poem. The most essential element here is Coleridge’s concept of the “One Life”,
a universal spirit of unity with which everything in the cosmos needs to be connected. By means
of the main narrative pattern, the wind and weight motif, and the Hermit, it will be made clear
that this One Life universe greatly limits human agency in Coleridge’s poem.
Building on this, the second chapter will analyse how the poem’s cosmic structure
influences the Mariner’s personal character. This will be done by juxtaposing him with the
mythological trickster figure. Such a comparison is particularly useful, because trickster myths,
just like The Rime, depict the power relations between a human-like subject and his or her
cosmic order. The Mariner will not only be compared with the general mythological trickster,
but also with two specific tricksters: Prometheus and Loki. These comparisons will help to
further elucidate the nature and significance of the Mariner’s lack of agency within the One
Life cosmos.
Biesbrouck 7
The third chapter will then move on to the question why the Mariner is so dependent on
his One Life cosmos, by looking at his psychology. It will draw on Maud Bodkin’s analysis
that the Mariner is going through a psychological rebirth. Plus, it will use Julia Kristeva’s theory
about the semiotic order of expression to show that the Mariner is regressing into a formative
stage in his development. This will help to illuminate why he seems so powerless during his
experience on the sea. Apart from that, this third chapter will also consider the relevance of
contemporary trauma theory. By means of this, it will explain why the ancient Mariner
continues to lack agency on the extradiegetic2 level of the poem, long after the experience has
taken place.
In the fourth and final chapter, it will be studied in what sense the Mariner’s lack of
agency is also related to the author’s psychology. A look at his historical context will reveal
how his world-view differed from that of the tricksters’ creators and therefore resulted in
different psychological needs. Especially the eighteenth century’s scientific view of a dead and
soulless universe will prove to be interesting here, because this view drastically changed the
way human beings see their place and purpose in the cosmos. Subsequently, this chapter will
draw on Hans Blumenberg’s idea that humanity is “das gewollt sein wollende Wesen”, or “the
being that wants to be wanted” by its god or cosmos (Sels 12). This theory will help to illustrate
in what way the lack of human agency in The Rime is part of a psychologically motivated
counter-reaction against the eighteenth century’s depiction of a dead and soulless nature.
In short, this paper will analyse the “what” and the “why” of the lack of human agency
in The Rime. The initial two chapters will discuss in what sense the Mariner indeed has no
“distinct character” or ability to “act” (Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads 263). The first one will
illustrate that his universe is governed by the One Life, and therefore impairs human agency.
2
The present paper uses the term “intradiegetic” to refer to the Mariner’s story. “Extradiegetic” refers to the
diegetic level in which the Mariner tells his tale to the wedding guest.
Biesbrouck 8
And the second one will compare his agency within his cosmic structure with that of the
trickster figure. The last two chapters will then discuss why the Mariner needs to be depicted as
dependent on his surroundings. The third chapter will argue that this can be explained by the
fact that he is going through a psychological rebirth and redevelopment. And the final chapter
will discuss how the Mariner’s lack of agency might also stem from his author’s psychological
need for a counter-reaction to the eighteenth century’s scientific world-view. In short, this paper
will study how the structure of the Mariner’s universe makes him unable to challenge the
cosmic order, and how this is related to his own psychological reformation as well as to his
author’s psychological needs.
Biesbrouck 9
1. The Architecture of the Mariner’s Universe
1.1. The Visible and the Invisible Realm as Regulated by the One Life
1.1.1. The One Life in Coleridge’s Poetry
One of the most important concerns in Coleridge’s thinking was that human beings should be
in a harmonious relation with nature. In 1802, he wrote to William Sotheby that “Nature has
her proper interest, and he will know what it is who believes and feels that everything has a life
of its own, and that we are all One Life. A poet’s heart and intellect should be combined,
intimately combined and unified with the great appearances of nature” (“To Sotheby” 403-404,
emphasis in original). And of course, Coleridge himself did feel very connected with that nature
and its “One Life”. A year later, he wrote to Thomas Wedgwood that he does “not think it
possible, that any bodily pains could eat out the love & joy, that is so substantially part of [him],
towards hills, & rocks, & steep waters!” (“To Wedgwood” 916).
These sympathies towards nature and its supposed One Life frequently find their way
into Coleridge’s poetry. The best known example of this can be found in some of the lines
which he added to “The Eolian Harp” in 1817:
O the one life, within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in Light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where— (26-29)
The One Life is described here as a force that is internal (“within us”) and external (“and
abroad”) to human beings. It becomes the “soul” of everything that has “motion”, and
harmonizes all these things by creating the same “[r]hythm in all thought”.
This idea is in fact reiterated in another stanza of the same poem:
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
Biesbrouck 10
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of All? (44-48)
In this metaphor, all particles of “animated nature”, including human subjects, are like “organic
harps” that act in harmony with the “intellectual breeze” of nature’s One Life which “sweeps”
over them. As the title of the poem indicates, these organic harps represent Eolian harps:
musical instruments that are made by humans, but literally played by the wind3, and are
therefore in perfect harmony with the forces of nature. Consequently, if human beings are seen
as such harps, the “intellectual breeze” of the One Life reconciles the individual human subject
with the whole of nature.
Coleridge also uses this theme in other poems, such as Religious Musings:
’Tis the sublime of man,
Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wond’rous whole:
This fraternizes man, this constitutes
Our charities and bearings. But ’tis God
Diffus’d thro’ all, that doth make all one whole; (135-140)
Just as in “The Eolian Harp”, human beings are in harmony with the “wond’rous whole” of
nature because everything and everyone is infused with the same God-like spirit.
And in “Frost at Midnight”, we read how the speaker’s child will “wander like a breeze”
(54) until it can
. . . see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
3
“When placed in an opened window, the harp . . . responds to the altering wind by sequences of musical chords.
This instrument . . . seems to voice nature’s own music” (Lynch, Stillinger 439).
Biesbrouck 11
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit . . . (58-64)
Again, there is a principle at work that synchronizes the individual with the whole. God, as the
universal teacher, puts his stamp on everything there is, including the speaker’s child who will
be “mould[ed]” by him. In other words, to be taught by God, is to resemble God.
These three poems; “The Eolian Harp”, Religious Musings, and “Frost at Midnight”,
written in 1796, 1794, and 1798, show that the theme of the One Life, or universal unity, was
very much on Coleridge’s mind in the decade when he was writing his first version of The Rime.
1.1.2. The Visible versus the Invisible in the Mariner’s Universe
Therefore, it need not surprise that the One Life theme is also present in The Rime, and even
plays a key role in its cosmic structure. In 1817, the same year that he added the One Life lines
to “The Eolian Harp”, Coleridge added an epigraph to The Rime, of which the significance for
a One Life interpretation has often been overlooked. It starts off by saying: “I can easily believe
that there are more invisible natures than visible ones among the entities in the universe”
(written by Thomas Burnet, and translated from Latin to English in Fry, Rime 27). The
relevance of this epigraph for the cosmic structure of The Rime, is that it signals that the poem’s
universe contains beings that are normally visible (e.g. the Albatross and the mariners), and
beings that are normally invisible (e.g. the Polar spirit and the spectre-bark’s passengers).
This raises the question how the Mariner can perceive the invisible beings, such as the
spectre-bark’s passengers, if they are invisible. An answer to this question necessitates a basic
understanding of the Mariner’s One Life universe. At the beginning of his tale, the Mariner is
Biesbrouck 12
within what the present paper calls the “Visible Realm”; the normal visible part of the universe
with its natural laws to which human beings are accustomed. But next to that, there is also an
“Invisible Realm”; the part of the universe in which the familiar natural laws do not hold up,
and where there are creatures that people within the Visible Realm cannot perceive. The Visible
Realm has logical laws that benefit humankind, because it is governed by the One Life that
unifies everything. Therefore, it is good to be within the Visible Realm and not to be subjected
to the creatures and the lack of natural laws in the Invisible Realm. However, when someone is
dissonant with the One Life, or nature’s divine unity, this person gets detached from the Visible
Realm, and is subjected to the Invisible Realm where there is no such One Life. As such, the
basic rules in this universe are simple: being in harmony with the One Life allows people to
remain within the Visible Realm, and being dissonant with the One Life means that they will
be expelled into the Invisible Realm.
It is in this way that the Mariner’s dissonant act of shooting the Albatross is a “crime”,
or at least something that exposes him to punishment-like experiences in the Invisible Realm.
After this act of disconnection, he can see the invisible beings such as Death and Life-in-Death,
but he is also subjected to a traumatic experience of disunity and isolation: “So lonely ’twas,
that God himself / Scarce seemed there to be” (646-647). The Rime shows a universe in which
there is more than the world that we can normally see, but when we see these things, this means
that we are disconnected from the main governing principle that we need; the divine One Life.
Strongly associated with the Visible versus Invisible Realm dichotomy, are the
symbolical sun and moon in the poem4. Generally speaking, the Mariner’s process of crossing
4
Robert Penn Warren has already argued that the “good events take place under the aegis of the moon, the bad
events under that of the sun” (402). But as Patricia M. Adair comments, this interpretation is not always accurate
(90). For example, the poem depicts the mariners benefiting from the wind under the rule of the sun (99), and
dying under the “aegis” of the moon (221). Therefore, an alternative reading is appropriate.
Biesbrouck 13
the boundary between the Visible and the Invisible Realm can be traced by means of this sun
and moon, as the sun is a symbol of the Visible Realm (connection with the One Life), and the
moon one of the Invisible Realm (disconnection from the One Life).
In this sense, it is significant that the Mariner sees the sun rise (29) at the beginning of
his voyage. It signals that he is in the Visible Realm, and that he can therefore benefit from the
One Life’s natural laws. This is most notably represented by the mariners profiting from the
wind: “A Wind and Tempest strong!” (46), “the good south wind still blew behind” (85), “The
breezes blew, the white foam flew” (99). At this point, the Mariner, being within the Visible
Realm under the rule of the sun, can still count on the One Life cosmos’ natural laws, and is
not yet confronted with the Invisible Realm’s creatures.
This changes after the Mariner shoots the Albatross (80) and hereby symbolically
detaches himself from the Visible Realm’s One Life. The sun is now much further away than
usual, “No bigger than the moon” (110), and it is now, while the sun is so far away, that the
wind stops blowing (103) and that the crew becomes “stuck”, “As idle as a painted Ship / Upon
a painted Ocean” (112-114). Furthermore, they can no longer benefit from the natural rain, but
are subjected to utter drought (118). This shows that the remoteness of the sun prevents the
crew from benefiting from the Visible Realm’s natural laws. And more importantly, they can
now perceive creatures from the Invisible Realm: they first see the Polar spirit in their dreams
(128) and they soon even physically encounter the spectre-bark with Death and Life-in-Death
(184). Remarkably, the latter two figures only emerge after the spectre-bark has moved itself
between the crew and the far-away sun (178), hereby putting the little remaining power of the
Visible Realm’s sun behind bars: “As if thro’ a dungeon grate he peer’d” (171). This shows
that, after the Mariner disconnects himself from the One Life, the power of the Visible Realm’s
symbolical sun becomes obstructed, and he is subjected to the Invisible Realm’s lack of natural
laws, as well as to its horrifying creatures.
Biesbrouck 14
The influence of the Invisible Realm becomes even stronger when the moon rises (211).
The Mariner’s crewmates die because Death has won their soul (221), the ship moves without
wind (311), and the dead crew rise like zombies (333). These events which take place under the
rule of the moon further emphasise that the Mariner is now in the Invisible Realm where normal
natural laws do not hold up, and where he is fully subjected to the Invisible Realm’s creatures.
It might seem problematic in this reading that when the sun returns (249), the zombielike crew, infused with powers from the Invisible Realm, remains (349-350, 384-387). Yet, this
can be explained by the fact that they are still creatures of the Visible Realm, who have only
been marked by their experience in the Invisible Realm. Also, it is telling that unlike when they
were under the rule of the moon, they now have to act in harmony with the Visible Realm’s
One Life. As if they were Eolian harps, “Sweet sounds rose slowly thro’ their mouths” (350),
and imitating the circular movement of the sun, these sounds fly “Around, around” (353) in
order to eventually reach this sun (354). Furthermore, the crew were cursing the Mariner with
their looks when they were under the rule of the moon (257), but now, under the rule of the sun,
they can no longer do so (387). And because they are in the Visible Realm which is ruled by
the One Life, they cannot hurt the Mariner, but actually contribute to bringing him back home
(337-339).
The same counts for the Polar spirit. Even though this Invisible creature is allowed to
remain under the rule of the Visible Realm’s sun, he too is forced to work in harmony with the
One Life. His influence on the reconnected Mariner, like that of the zombie crew, consists of
bringing him back home (1817:381, gloss). Plus, it is remarkable that this Invisible creature
needs to be shielded from the sun by being “nine fathom deep” in the sea (392).
Therefore, the theory that the sun represents the natural Visible Realm, and the moon
the supernatural Invisible Realm still holds. Things associated with the Invisible Realm (e.g.
the spectre-bark) normally disappear under the sun, and if they remain (e.g. the zombie crew
Biesbrouck 15
and the Polar spirit) they are forced by the Visible Realm to act in harmony with the One Life.
In this view, the sun and the moon indicate within which realm the Mariner finds himself. The
sun signals that the Mariner can profit from the One Life’s natural laws in the Visible Realm,
whereas the moon signals the danger of the supernatural in the Invisible Realm.
1.2. The One Life as a Harmonious Whole
Clearly, the poem distinguishes between things that are connected with the One Life (the
Visible Realm under the rule of the sun) and things that are not (the Invisible Realm under the
rule of the moon). Building on this, the remaining part of this chapter will show that the poem’s
moral message is that human beings are supposed to be connected with this One Life. And
furthermore, it will show that this need for cosmic harmony limits the Mariner’s ability to act.
1.2.1. The Main Narrative
The most obvious indication of the need for a connection with the One Life can be found in the
poem’s main narrative sequence. The Mariner’s act of shooting the Albatross disconnects him
from the One Life, and therefore it leads him to miserable punishments in the Invisible Realm.
In his disconnected state, the Mariner experiences the excruciating pains of being no longer
able to move (111-114), drink (117-118), speak (131-134), or pray (246-249), and he even
meets the horrible figures Death and Life-in-Death (1817:188-189). After he reconnects with
the One Life by blessing the water-snakes, he is reintegrated in the Visible Realm and, as a
result, he can once again experience the blisses of being able to pray (290), sleep (294-298),
drink (303-306), move (388), and speak (621). This narrative sequence shows that, in The Rime,
disconnection from nature’s One Life is a horror, and (re)connection with it a bliss, and this
evidently emphasises the need to be in harmony with nature.
Biesbrouck 16
1.2.2. The Wind and Weight Motif
But beside the main narrative sequence, the poem also has other means to show that a
connection with the One Life is crucial for human beings. One of these is the wind and weight
motif in its relation to the theme of guilt versus innocence. In the poem, things that are
associated with innocence (harmony with the One Life) are represented as light, whereas things
associated with guilt (dissonance with the One Life) are represented as heavy. The main
example here is the symbolism of the Albatross’s relation to the Mariner5. At the beginning of
the poem, this bird is flying through the air and can thus be seen as something light. This
corresponds with the fact that the crew describe the bird as an almost sacred being: “And an it
were a Christian Soul, / We hail’d it in God’s name” (63-64). This innocence and lightness of
the Albatross changes after the Mariner shoots the bird and it is hung around his neck, as it then
becomes a heavy symbol of guilt that the dissonant Mariner has to drag along as a part of
himself. Later on, when the Mariner is redeemed after blessing the water-snakes, the bird falls
from his neck, “Like lead into the sea” (239, emphasis added) and hereby represents his undoing
of heavy guilt. Also, the Mariner’s regained innocence is soon confirmed by the fact that he
then – without the Albatross around his neck – feels “so light” as if he were “a blessed Ghost”
(308-310). These occurrences illustrate that the weight of the Albatross is an excellent
barometer of the Mariner’s transition from innocence to guilt and redemption.
There are also other examples that show the importance of the weight motif in The Rime.
For instance, the ship and the Mariner’s dead crewmates, just like the Albatross, “went down
like lead” into the sea (596), illustrating that the heavy guilt of the crew leaves the Mariner
when he returns to his homeland. Appropriately, as Susan Eilenberg remarks (306), this symbol
of guilt sinks under the influence of the innocent Hermit who “singeth loud his godly hymns”
5
Sandro Jung, in one of his lectures, argued that the Albatross is a marker of the Mariner’s transition from
innocence to guilt and redemption.
Biesbrouck 17
(557). Only the godly hymns of the innocent Hermit can untie the guilty ship from the Mariner’s
conscience and make it disappear. Eilenberg also notes (306) that this sinking ship is what
causes the Hermit’s boat to “sp[i]n round and round” (604) and resemble the holy Albatross’s
flying “round and round” (66) from the beginning of the poem. In this way, the sinking of the
heavy ship depicts the Mariner’s further undoing of guilt, while also illustrating the Hermit’s
innocence.
This link between guilt and heaviness is closely related to the poem’s wind motif.
Conventionally, things that are light (innocent, connected) are easily moved by the One Life’s
wind, while this is not the case for things that are heavy (guilty, disconnected). This too is
reflected in the Mariner’s experience. At the beginning of his journey, he is light and therefore
easily helped forward by the “good south wind” (69). But soon after he shoots the Albatross,
his guilt makes him too heavy to benefit from this wind: “Down dropt the breeze, the Sails dropt
down” (103), making him and the rest of the crew “As idle as a painted Ship / Upon a painted
Ocean” (113-114). It is only after the Mariner becomes light again by blessing the water-snakes
and letting the heavy bird fall from his neck that his ship should be able to move again, as “The
upper air bursts into life” (315). This shows that the ability to benefit from the wind is strongly
linked to someone’s guilt (heaviness, disconnection) or innocence (lightness, connection)
towards the One Life.
This interpretation might seem flawed when we read that even though “The upper air
burst[ ] into life” (315), “The strong wind . . . dropp’d down, like a stone” as soon as it “reach’d
the ship” (329-330). The Mariner is redeemed (light), and therefore his ship should be able to
benefit from the wind. However, the fact that this is not the case makes sense when we
acknowledge that the rest of the crew, who justified his crime, is still guilty (heavy). As a result,
the ship cannot be moved by the Visible Realm’s wind. Indeed, the fact that the Mariner is the
only redeemed person on the ship who should be able to benefit from the wind is highlighted
Biesbrouck 18
when he remarks – twice – about this wind that: “On [him] alone it blew” (478, 546). Therefore,
the interpretation still holds: being in harmony with the One Life (innocent) allows someone to
benefit from the Visible Realm’s wind, while being dissonant with it (guilty) results in a cosmic
stand-still.
Notably, this wind-law is only relevant for creatures that are originally from the Visible
Realm. Creatures from the Invisible Realm are not subjected to it and have their own way of
moving. The main example here is the spectre-bark, which seems to move “With never a
whisper in the Sea” (209) or “without wind or tide” (1817:167, gloss). This shows that the
ghost-ship’s movement is not dependent on the One Life’s wind. After all, guilt or innocence
towards the One Life is not possible for something from the Invisible Realm that is not in any
way related to it.
The same inability to be affected by the wind is illustrated in the descriptions of the
spectre-bark’s passengers. About Death, the Mariner says:
A gust of wind sterte up behind
And whistled thro’ his bones;
Thro’ the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth
Half-whistles and half-groans (205-208)
When the wind reaches Death, it does not affect him, but simply whistles through his body.
Evidently, the sounds that this produces, the “Half-whistles and half-groans”, are not the
harmonious sounds which an Eolian harp makes when it is played by the wind. Death’s skeleton
is an example of what Fry calls “the most overdetermined figural recurrence in the poem: the
skeletal ribs of persons or sea sands, bars or grates . . . through which nothing organically
healthy can see or be seen” (“Wordsworth” 331). Here, “see or be seen” could easily be
extended to “perceive or be perceived” to include aural perception. The “Half-whistles and halfgroans” which the Mariner hears are not “organically healthy”, and certainly do not represent
Biesbrouck 19
the harmony of the One Life. Death, as a creature from the Invisible Realm, is not related to the
One Life and does not have the same relation to its wind as the Mariner does.
Yet, the spectre-ship and its passengers are still able to move towards the Mariner’s ship,
and it is this supernatural sort of movement which also complicates the Mariner’s return trip
after he is redeemed by blessing the water-snakes. After this act, he is reconnected to the One
Life and can therefore be affected by its wind again. This is shown by the fact that after “the
spell was snapt” (457), he soon feels that “there breath’d a wind on [him]” (467). But this wind
is a very problematic one. Even though “It rais’d [his] hair” and “fann’d [his] cheek” (471), it
“Ne sound ne motion made” and “Its path was not upon the sea / In ripple or in shade” (468470). The Mariner remarks: “On me alone it blew” (478, 546). As we have seen, the fact that
the wind blows only on the Mariner is easily explained by means of the crew who is still
disconnected from the One Life. But this does not clarify why the ship with the heavy guiltladen crew still manages to move “swiftly” (475) if it cannot be affected by the Visible Realm’s
wind.
If it is not the Visible Realm’s wind that moves the ship, then perhaps it is the Invisible
Realm’s machinery. As Eilenberg comments: “When the Mariner’s ship becomes spectral” after
meeting Death and Life-in-Death’s ghost ship, “it moves the same way, powered by the absence
of wind, which in this case is something other than mere stillness” (310). The fact that this is
not one of the Visible Realm’s processes is made clear by the Mariner’s descriptions of the
crew that drives the ship. Under the light of the moon, which is a symbol of the Invisible Realm,
the Mariner observes the dead crew rising like zombies:
They groan’d, they stirr’d, they all uprose,
Ne spake, ne mov’d their eyes:
It had been strange, even in a dream
To have seen those dead men rise. (333-336)
Biesbrouck 20
He continues: “The helmsman steerd, the ship mov’d on; / Yet never a breeze up-blew” (337338). Moreover, he adds that it is also the Polar spirit “That made the Ship to go” (395). This
shows that the Mariner’s ship is moved by means of supernatural forces, and not the One Life’s
wind.
Nevertheless, the fact that the Mariner is going in the direction of his homeland is still
thanks to his reconnection with the One Life. It is only after he blesses the water-snakes that
his cosmic stasis is broken. Plus, even though his ship is moved by means of supernatural forces,
these, from line 349 on, operate under the rule of the Visible Realm’s sun. Furthermore, the
Mariner himself does feel the One Life’s wind blowing on him during this movement, even if
it is on him alone (478). The reason why the Invisible Realm’s machinery can be involved in
his return trip, is that the Mariner has taken the ghastly crew and the Polar spirit with him into
the Visible Realm. In this realm, even Invisible creatures are forced to act in harmony with the
One Life. In that sense, the Mariner’s ability to be moved back home is still causally linked to
his redemption, or his becoming “light” again, and the fact that he feels the One Life’s wind
blow on him during this movement evidently emphasises this.
Closely related to the wind and weight motif, are the birds in the poem. Birds often make
use of the wind to fly, and in The Rime with its wind and weight motif, this means that they are
in harmony with the One Life. As a result, their presence is particularly praised. This does not
only concern the Albatross “That made the Breeze to blow” (92), but it is also the case for birds
in general. The Mariner after his redemption admires the Lavrock’s “sweet jargoning” (361):
And now ‘twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel’s song
That makes the heavens be mute. (362-365)
Biesbrouck 21
The reason why the bird makes such a lovely sound is the same as with the Eolian harp. Since
it is in harmony with the wind, it represents the voice of the Visible Realm’s One Life.
The point of the Mariner’s reformation is that he too, like the bird, at one point starts to
resemble such an Eolian harp. When he feels the wind blow on him alone, this is not only a
sign that he is reconnected with the One Life, but also an ill omen that he is destined to keep
singing its song6 or moral to people such as the wedding guest. Because of his traumatic
experience of disconnection, he keeps professing the One Life’s well-known moral of
connectedness:
He prayeth best who loveth best,
All things both great and small:
For the dear God, who loveth us,
He made and loveth all. (661-664)
In other words: everything and everyone flows forth from the same loving God, and it is crucial
to love all other creatures in the (Visible) universe. Otherwise, as the Mariner’s story testifies,
the dissonant particle will be detached from its loving god. This most certainly matches the
ideology of the One Life, which now uses the (Eolian) Mariner as its mouthpiece.
In summary, The Rime makes use of a wind and weight motif to show the importance
of being connected to nature’s One Life. Acts of disconnection, such as shooting albatrosses,
make someone’s conscience heavy and hereby make the subject unable to be moved by the
wind. When this is the case, this subject is in a cosmic stand-still until he or she is spiritually
reformed and reconnected to the One Life. In the Mariner’s case, this reformation and
reconnection is so strong that he becomes obsessed with it and keeps professing the One Life’s
moral to the extent that he can be compared to an Eolian harp. This is especially relevant for
his agency, because it shows that as a creature of the Visible Realm, he is completely dependent
6
The Rime is a ballad, and most of it is voiced (or sung) by the Mariner.
Biesbrouck 22
on the One Life and its wind. Both literally and figuratively, he either moves in the direction of
the breeze, or not at all.
1.2.3. The Hermit as an Exemplum
Next to the main plot and the wind and weight motif, there is also a third element in The Rime
that stresses the importance of being in harmony with nature: the Hermit. The previous
subchapter has already briefly touched upon this figure as an exemplum of innocence, because
he is the one who manages to make the Mariner’s guilt-laden ship sink by means of his holy
hymns. But it is rewarding to have a closer look at this Hermit, because he, unlike the Mariner,
functions as the One Life’s role model.
The first and most striking way in which the Hermit is a role model in contrast with the
Mariner, is the fact that while the Mariner is frightened by what is alien, the Hermit is fascinated
by it and even attracted to it. When the Mariner shoots the Albatross, this can ultimately be seen
as an act of abjection originating from xenophobia. The Albatross is a creature that is closely
connected to the Visible Realm, but it does not belong solely to this realm. Quite on the
contrary, the bird is connected to both the Visible and the Invisible Realm, and functions as a
boundary figure. A first indication of this is that the bird is able to cross “Thorough the Fog”
(62), and can therefore freely venture between the Visible and the Invisible Realm, much unlike
the mariners. Secondly, it is able to split the ice, hereby allowing the crew to physically move
into the Invisible Realm (67-68). And thirdly, the Mariner says that we should love “Both man
and bird and beast” (660, emphasis added). The Albatross is the one between, linking man (of
the Visible Realm) and beast (of the Invisible Realm). Therefore, it is also partly related to the
Invisible Realm. This is key, because it makes the bird unfamiliar and even uncannily “other”
for the Mariner to the extent that it frightens him. Shooting the bird, then, can be regarded as
an act of abjecting what is alien.
Biesbrouck 23
Such acts of xenophobia are nowhere to be found in the Hermit’s behaviour, because
this figure appreciates nature in all its facets, or, in both its Visible and Invisible facets. That he
loves the familiar, Visible part of nature is indicated by his hymns which are “ma[de] in the
wood” (553); the fact that he even “lives in that wood” (561); and his habit of praying on “moss”
(568). His love for the unfamiliar, Invisible part of nature, is then shown by his eagerness “to
talk with Marineres / That come from a far Countrée” (564-565); the fact that he lives on the
boundary between the Visible and the Invisible Realm, or, “that wood / Which slopes down to
the Sea” (561-562, emphasis added); and by his habit of praying not just on “moss”, but on
“moss that wholly hides / The rotted old Oak-stump” (568-569, emphasis added). He prays on
both the Visible and Invisible parts of nature; not just on the visible moss, but also on the
invisible, hidden, rotten stump (which as a token of waste may seem abject to non-Hermits).
Also remarkable is that he, in contrast with the pilot, is not at all afraid of the Mariner’s ship,
but “cheerily” exclaims “Push on, push on!” so that he can get closer to it (587-588). This marks
his fascination with the unfamiliar Invisible Realm, despite it being “Strange, by [his] faith”
(574). After all, the Mariner’s ship is described as alien and abject: its “planks look warp’d”
and the sails resemble “skeletons of leaves” which the Hermit associates with uncanny
situations of wolves eating their pups (580-584). Considering that the Hermit is fascinated by
these unfamiliar parts of nature, he is much more open-minded towards otherness than the
Mariner.
This open-mindedness is crucial in the One Life cosmos, because it allows people to
stay within the Visible Realm. When the Mariner shoots the Albatross, this is especially bad,
because he does not only shoot its alien Invisible aspect, but also its familiar Visible aspect.
Hence, by shooting this boundary-figure the Mariner is disconnected from the Visible Realm’s
One Life. The Hermit on the other hand, as a more open-minded figure, does not risk such
disconnection, because he loves nature in all its aspects, including its partly alien boundary
Biesbrouck 24
figures. It is because he feels at home on the boundary region of “that wood / Which slopes
down to the Sea” (561-562), and because he prays on the combination of “moss” and a “rotted
old Oak-stump” (568-569) that he is never expelled into the Invisible Realm like the Mariner.
This leads to another example that shows the Hermit’s connectedness with nature: his
dealing with solitude. Whereas the Mariner in the absence of other human souls laments that he
feels “Alone, alone, all all alone / Alone on the wide wide Sea” (234-235), the Hermit, as his
epithet indicates, has no such problems with loneliness. The most logical explanation here is
that the Mariner feels lonely because he is disconnected from nature’s unity (the One Life),
whereas the Hermit is clearly connected to it.
Furthermore, the Hermit is also opposed to the Mariner by his ability to pray, which the
latter does not have. The disconnected Mariner complains:
I look’d to Heaven, and try’d to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came and made
My heart as dry as dust. (246-249)
The Hermit, on the other hand, “singeth loud his godly hymns” (557) and “kneels at morn and
noon and eve” (566). This is significant because, in The Rime, people can only pray well when
they love well all the creatures of the universe (614-617).
With this evidence for the Hermit’s fascination for both the Visible and the Invisible
Realm, his general connectedness with nature, his strong relation to prayer, and his love for
nature’s creatures, we could even say that the “Hermit good” (561) functions as an exemplum
of what the Mariner should ideally have become through his reformation. It fits that the Mariner
specifically wants the Hermit to “shrieve [his] soul” and “wash away / The Albatross’s blood”
(559-560), because this spiritual figure of connectedness matches the moral values of the One
Life perfectly.
Biesbrouck 25
It is in the light of this propagated connectedness that we need to see the Mariner’s
inability to act. Obeying the laws of the One Life in order to stay within the Visible Realm
limits someone’s freedom, because the subject is required to act completely in harmony with
nature. Not obeying these laws limits human agency even more, because it causes the subject
to be expelled into the Invisible Realm, which is governed by laws beyond human
understanding, and where fate seems to depend on the throw of a dice, as Death and Life-inDeath demonstrate7 (1817:195, gloss). The Mariner has the choice between two limitations:
accepting his role in the One Life ideology and, for example, not disrespect the Visible Realm’s
creatures (e.g. the Albatross), versus experiencing no logic at all in the Invisible Realm.
In short, part of the Mariner’s lack of agency is due to the architecture of his universe.
In The Rime, the cosmos consists of a Visible Realm (ruled by the sun and familiar logic) and
an Invisible Realm (ruled by the moon and supernatural machinery), and someone’s attitude
towards the One Life determines in which realm he or she will be. The fact that it is necessary
to be connected to the One Life is most notably made clear by the poem’s main narrative
structure as a transition from innocence (connection) to guilt (disconnection) and to redemption
(reconnection). After all, this sequence elaborately illustrates the horrors of being disconnected
in the Invisible Realm, and the blisses of being (re)connected in the Visible Realm. Next to that,
7
Some critics have used this occurrence of the dice game to argue that the One Life cosmos does not fit the
Mariner’s universe. Seamus Perry wrote that “[t]he misfitting nature of this supposedly One Life cosmos is most
emphatically implied by the dice-throwing episode, a decisive moment of apparently sheer randomness: God
doesn’t play dice, as Einstein is supposed to have said” (150). Edward E. Bostetter makes a similar case, claiming
that “the dice game makes chance the decisive factor in the Mariner’s punishment” and that this “throws into
question the moral and intellectual responsibilities of the rulers of the universe” (244). However, using the dice
game to deny the One Life or its moral responsibilities in the poem, is to ignore the fact that the Mariner has
detached himself from this One Life or god. God does not play dice indeed, but after shooting the Albatross, the
Mariner was so lonely “that God himself / Scarce seemed there to be” (646-647).
Biesbrouck 26
the wind and weight motif shows that, both literally and figuratively, the only way to go forward
in nature’s Visible Realm is by adhering to the direction of the One Life’s wind. The Mariner’s
case makes this quite clear, because after his reformation he professes the One Life’s moral to
the extent that he is comparable to an “Eolian harp” being played by the One Life’s wind. And
apart from that, the need to be connected with nature’s One Life is also made clear by the fact
that the holy Hermit, as an embodiment of connectedness, functions as the poem’s role model.
Even though Coleridge must obviously have seen the One Life as something positive, this
concept restricts human agency in The Rime, because anything the Mariner does must adhere
to its moral of connectedness: the imperative to love and respect “All things both great and
small” (662).
Biesbrouck 27
2. The Trickster Who Does Not Trick
Now that it has been established that the Mariner’s cosmic structure limits human agency, this
chapter will zoom in on the Mariner himself. By means of a comparison between the Mariner
and the mythological trickster figure, it will consider how the Mariner’s rigid One Life universe
influences his personal character. At first glance, it might seem odd to compare the Mariner
with the trickster, since tricksters (e.g. Prometheus, Hermes, Raven, Coyote, Loki…) are agents
of change; they “trick”. Yet, it is precisely this what will make a comparison between him and
the trickster so fruitful. This chapter will show that the Mariner is remarkably similar to the
mythological trickster, but that his rigid cosmic structure causes him to differ from this trickster
in one major way: agency.
2.1. The Mariner’s Resemblance to the Mythological Trickster Figure
2.1.1. Boundary-Crossers and Figures of In-Betweenness
Arguably, the most important similarity between the Mariner and the trickster is that they both
are boundary-crossers and figures of in-betweenness. In Trickster Makes this World, Lewis
Hyde calls tricksters “boundary-crosser[s]” (7), “the lords of the in-between” (6), and claims
that all of them “like to hang around the doorway”, such as the one “between heaven and earth”
(124). In Greek mythology for instance, Hermes crosses the boundary from heaven to earth
when he conveys messages from the gods, and Prometheus does the same when he steals Zeus’
fire to give it to humankind.
In many ways, the Mariner also fits this description of a boundary-crosser. This can
already be inferred from his setting. His intradiegetic story is essentially one of crossing the
boundary from the Visible to the Invisible Realm, and the extradiegetic part of the poem takes
place on a wedding, a ritualized boundary-stage in life that symbolizes a transition from
individuality to union. Moreover, G. Wilson Knight has argued that The Rime is set “midway
Biesbrouck 28
between the hell of Christabel and the paradise of ‘Kubla Khan’”, and is therefore a
representation of “Coleridge’s Purgatorio” (Fry, Rime 81). Purgatory fits a story about
boundary-crossing perfectly, as this is the place of ultimate in-betweenness; neither in heaven,
nor in hell. Hence, the Mariner’s setting already signals the in-betweenness in his character.
A closer look at the Mariner himself shows that he is even an embodiment of this
boundary-crossing and in-betweenness. A first example here is that the Mariner, through his
traumatic experience, has partly become stuck in the Invisible Realm. Even though he is
physically back within the Visible Realm, he compulsively retells his experience of the Invisible
Realm to random strangers such as the wedding guest, and hereby keeps mentally returning to
it. As a result, he is never wholly within either realm, yet always partially within both.
Next to that, the fact that he is caught between these two territories is also stressed by
his relation to the Albatross. Chapter 1.2.3 has already established that the Albatross is a figure
of boundary-crossing (one in-between the Visible and the Invisible Realm), and importantly,
the Mariner is almost equated with this bird. It is hung around his neck (138), and even after it
is released and has fallen into the sea (293), the Mariner still feels that “The Albatross’s blood”
is on his hands and needs to be “wash[ed] away” by the Hermit (559-560). However, the Hermit
never actually does this, so the Mariner is destined to keep carrying the Albatross’s symbolical
blood. Furthermore, there is also a structural element that illustrates the Mariner’s identification
with the ambiguous Albatross. In the 1817 revised version of the poem, the first chapter starts
off with “IT is an ancient Mariner” (1), and ends with “I shot the ALBATROSS!” (82). The
fact that both the Mariner and the Albatross are fully capitalized is telling, since it
orthographically links the two figures. This link is strengthened by the fact that the Albatross,
like the Mariner at the beginning, is also referred to by the pronoun “it” (62). Apart from that,
it must also be noted that this gender-neutral pronoun is particularly relevant in an analysis of
Biesbrouck 29
in-betweenness, because it marks an additional boundary: the one between male and female8.
Like the Albatross, the Mariner is neither Visible nor Invisible, neither “he” nor “she”, but
someone who embodies the in-between.
The Mariner’s being in-between the Visible and the Invisible Realm is also signalled by
his ship, about which the Hermit says:
“The planks look warp’d, and see those sails
“How thin they are and sere!
“I never saw aught like to them
“Unless perchance it were
“The skeletons of leaves that lag
“My forest-book along: (576-581)
Even though it is an object from the Visible Realm, it has met the spectre-bark and as a result9
it has come to resemble this ghost ship. Just as the spectre-bark looked like “the skeleton of a
ship” (1817:177, gloss), the Mariner’s ship is associated with “The skeletons of leaves” (580).
This means that the Mariner’s ship now bears the mark of its history of boundary-crossing and
has become a hybrid object of both the Visible and the Invisible Realm.
Such physical ambiguity is not limited to the intradiegetic Mariner’s ship, but can also
be found on the extradiegetic level, where even the Mariner’s own body is marked by the
experience in the Invisible Realm. The wedding guest fearfully remarks: “thou art long, and
lank, and brown, / As is the ribbed sea-sand” (230-231). And the enlightening experience has
8
See also Anne Williams, who argues that the text “repeatedly links [the Mariner] with the conventionally female
in Western culture: the sea, irrationality, motherhood, and nature” (1116).
9
According to Eilenberg, “[i]n the ‘Rime’ you become what you meet”, and “[t]his principle dictates the poem’s
structure and plot” (305).
Biesbrouck 30
turned the Mariner’s “weary eye” into a “bright” and “glittering” one (253, 44, 3). He is back
within the Visible Realm, but his experience within the Invisible Realm has permanently
marked his appearance.
There is also an element in the poem’s vocabulary that reflects the Mariner’s ambiguous
nature. Eilenberg, from a deconstructivist perspective, notes that the line “Alone, alone, all all
alone, / Alone on the wide wide Sea;” (234-235) contains a peculiar oxymoron. “All” is “an
unfinished ‘alone,’ ‘alone’ being a portmanteau of ‘all’ and ‘lone’ or ‘one’” (304-305). She
goes on, arguing that this contains “the germ of one of Coleridge’s favorite intellectual
convictions, that the ‘all’ and the ‘one’ could be reconciled” (305). As such, this part of the
vocabulary further stresses that the Mariner is ambiguously stuck on the boundary between the
disconnected “lone”-liness of his experience in the Invisible Realm, and the “one”-ness of the
Visible Realm’s One Life.
Apart from being between these two realms, the Mariner is also trapped between life
and death. This is signalled most clearly when his soul is won by the figure whose very name
is “Life-in-Death”. But next to that, there are also several signs that the Mariner, despite being
alive, resembles a corpse. At one point, he himself “thought that [he] had died in sleep, / And
was a blessed Ghost” (309-310). Later on, he feels that he is “one that had been seven days
drown’d” (599). And as Eilenberg argues, “the Hermit, the Pilot, and the Pilot’s boy” are never
fully convinced that the Mariner is “a living man” (289). Additionally, on the extradiegetic
level, the Mariner has trouble convincing the wedding guest that his “body dropt not down”
(233). This leads to the conclusion that he appears to be zombie-like, as someone who is stuck
between life and death.
In short, there are several signs that the Mariner, much like the trickster, is a boundarycrosser and an embodiment of in-betweenness. Coleridge’s poem is intradiegetically set on the
crossed boundary between the Visible and the Invisible Realm, and extradiegetically set on a
Biesbrouck 31
wedding-feast, a border between individuality and union. Accordingly, the Mariner
ambiguously embodies both the Visible and Invisible parts of the universe, and this is illustrated
my means of his compulsive narration, his symbolical resemblance to the ambiguous Albatross,
his physical appearance as a creature from both the Visible and the Invisible Realm, and his
ambiguous utterance “al(l-)one”. In addition, his in-betweenness is also stressed by means of
his being trapped between life and death, on the boundary that is Life-in-Death.
However, the Mariner is also fundamentally different from the trickster figure.
Tricksters “like to hang around the doorway” and are “lords of the in-between” (Hyde 124, 6,
emphasis added). The Mariner, on the other hand, certainly gets no enjoyment from having the
Albatross’s blood on his hands or looking like a zombie. And while the boundary position grants
tricksters the advantage that they are “[c]onstrained by neither heavenly nor earthly rules”
(Hyde 126), the Mariner constantly faces the limitations of being between his two realms. He
repeatedly re-experiences the horrors of the Invisible Realm through his compulsive narration
(625-637), while also continuously experiencing the One Life’s law of connectedness in the
Visible Realm. Whereas the trickster would be constrained by neither of these territories, the
Mariner is constrained by both.
Nevertheless, the Mariner and the trickster’s shared characteristic that they are
boundary-crossers still leads to other similarities. Because the trickster is “the adept who can
move between heaven and earth, and between the living and the dead”, “he is sometimes . . .
the guide of souls, carrying the dead into the underworld” (Hyde 6). He10 is frequently a
“gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world” (159). Perhaps the best example of this is
Wepwawet, the Egyptian deity who has the head of a jackal and is known as the “opener of the
ways” because he guides the dead into the underworld (Staels). Similarly, the Mariner is an
10
Tricksters are predominantly male. For an analysis of this phenomenon, see the appendix “Trickster and Gender”
in Hyde’s Trickster Makes this World.
Biesbrouck 32
“opener of the ways” to the underworld for the crew. As a result of shooting the Albatross (and
the crew’s justification of this act), he takes them with him into the Invisible Realm, and it is in
this realm that their souls are won by Death. Significant here is that the Mariner is by no means
consciously performing this role. He did not set off his voyage with the intent to bring the crew
to Death. Much rather, this is the result of an impulsive act (shooting the Albatross) of which
he did not even know the consequences. Moreover, the souls of the crew are handed over to
Death as the result of a dice-game, so there is no room for premeditation on the Mariner’s part.
Therefore, the Mariner, in contrast with the trickster, is not consciously acting as a gatekeeper,
but has rather stumbled into this role and performs it unwittingly.
Another similarity is that, like the trickster, the Mariner is always “on the road” (Hyde
6). As a figure of in-betweenness, the trickster “does not live near the hearth” but “is the spirit
of the road at dusk, the one that runs from one town to another and belongs to neither” (6). The
Greek trickster Hermes, for example, is literally the god of the road and its travellers. And the
Mariner too is always on the road. His very epithet, Mariner, already gives this away, and on
the intradiegetic level of the poem this is confirmed by the fact that most of his story takes place
on a means of transportation: a ship. Next to that, the extradiegetic Mariner is an eternal
wanderer who “pass[es], like night, from land to land” (633), with the result that he has
repeatedly been compared to figures such as the Wandering Jew (Grow 25, Fulmer 797). But
the nature of the Mariner’s being “on the road” is again different from the trickster’s. Whereas
the trickster is often the god of the roads, the Mariner a wanderer on those roads. His constant
wandering is not something that gives him a power position, but is much more like a
punishment, or a result of his soul being won by Life-in-Death (1817:195, gloss). Consequently,
the Mariner does not rule the road, but undergoes it.
Nevertheless, this does not keep him from resembling the trickster in yet another
characteristic: both the trickster and the Mariner are “sometimes the messenger of the gods”
Biesbrouck 33
(Hyde 6). Again, Hermes is an obvious example. In the Odyssey, for instance, he is sent to earth
by the god Zeus to urge Calypso to release Odysseus (Pfeiffer 223). The extradiegetic Mariner
also matches the description, because his chief vocation is preaching the divine wisdom that
people must love “All things both great and small” (662), or, in other words, that they must be
connected to the One Life. The Mariner is the One Life’s messenger spreading its moral, and
hence answers to the trickster’s attribute of being a messenger from the gods. The difference is
again a matter of agency. Whereas we expect the cunning trickster to be fully conscious and
active during his task, the Mariner’s message is conveyed compulsively, in a “forc’d” (627)
manner and “at an uncertain hour” (629), beyond his control. This means that the Mariner is
not as much a “messenger” of the One Life as he is its mouthpiece.
This shows that there are several similarities between the trickster and the Mariner, but
that these all stop at the point of agency. Next to being a boundary-crosser and an embodiment
of in-betweenness, the Mariner is, like the trickster, a guide of souls, always on the road, and a
messenger of the gods. However, his act of carrying the crew to their Death was unintended,
his attribute of always being on the road is a punishment rather than something empowering,
and he is not a messenger of the gods because he chooses to, but because of a form of obsessivecompulsive disorder. In short, the Mariner is given the functions of a trickster figure, but these
are performed by accident or under force rather than by will. He is no “lord of the in-between”,
but its slave.
2.1.2. Perpetrators of the Gods as Agents of Change
The attributes listed above are essential in the trickster’s character, but they are not what gives
him his name. His role in mythology is not significant simply because he spends his days
playing the gods’ postman, but because he “tricks”, because he changes the way things are in
the world by redrawing its boundaries. In order to do this, the trickster deceives, lies, and steals
(Hyde 13). The results of this are not always positive. Often the trickster’s acts result in misery
Biesbrouck 34
for himself or humankind. Yet, at other times, they lead to the creation of culture and society.
But there is always one common factor: his name-giving acts result in change.
This is where the analogy with the Mariner ought to be most important. Since the general
patterns of the trickster largely correspond with the Mariner’s traits, we could expect that the
Mariner performs an act that is analogous to the trickster’s trickery, or at least one that has
comparable results. This raises several questions: What is the Mariner’s boundary-testing act?
In what way does he lie or steal? Do his acts lead to misery, or do they contribute to society?
In any case, it should be interesting to see how he, as an inagentive subject, does or does not
lead to change.
Generally speaking, the trickster’s “change” means a change in the established order,
and since this order is usually established by the gods, leading to such change at a certain level
means penetrating into the realm of the gods. In Hyde’s words, “[t]he high gods set guard dogs
around their sacred meadows. If there is to be a change, its agent will have to hypnotize those
dogs, and slip in from the shadows” (91). The Mariner is comparable here because, like the
trickster enters the “sacred meadows”, he has penetrated into the Invisible Realm. However,
this in no way required him to “trick” the gods, since he did it unwittingly through an ignorant
act of disconnection: shooting the Albatross. And peculiarly, he has not entered the realm of
the gods, but rather did the opposite. He has detached himself from the godly One Life by which
he was actually being protected. Instead of having reached the “sacred meadows”, he has left
them. Also, contrary to the trickster, the Mariner is horrified by his experience, and his piercing
into the other realm did not accomplish much. The trickster violates the divine boundaries with
the result that he changes the divine order, but the Mariner at the end of his journey only seems
to affirm it, preaching the One Life mantra that we must love “All things both great and small”
(662). The Mariner, like the trickster, has been into a realm where he does not belong. The
Biesbrouck 35
result, however, is different: his act of boundary-crossing did not lead to a change, but to an
affirmation of the established order.
Next to crossing boundaries, tricksters also tend to unmask false boundaries and expose
their arbitrariness. When Hermes manages to steal Apollo’s cattle, he proves that “the boundary
between his world and Apollo’s is porous; it implies that the rules by which Apollo operates
are contingent and arbitrary” (Hyde 210). The Mariner, on the other hand, evidently does not
prove the One Life’s rules and boundaries to be arbitrary. If anything, he learns the importance
of adhering to them. For him, the boundary between the Visible and the Invisible Realm, and
the One Life as its governing principle, could not be more real.
Peculiarly, when tricksters attempt to change the world, “the order adapts to contain the
introject, the foreign thing it has swallowed” (Hyde 225). This is in stark contrast with the
Mariner’s cosmos. When the Mariner threatens to disrupt the order of things by denying the
One Life, the cosmos expels him into the Invisible Realm. Whereas the cosmos adapts itself in
order to preserve the trickster, it expels the Mariner in order to preserve itself. While the
trickster’s world has room for negotiation (albeit often by violence), the Mariner’s cosmos is a
totalitarian one that does not allow change.
Yet, even though the trickster’s cosmic order can be changed, this does not happen
easily. In order to catalyse change, the trickster has to deceive by lying or stealing (Hyde 7).
For example, Prometheus steals fire from the gods to help humankind, and Hermes steals
Apollo’s cattle to invent the lyre (Pfeiffer 35, 27). Evidently, the Mariner’s strong cosmic order
leaves no room for such deceit. The Mariner’s impulsive act of shooting the Albatross can
hardly be called a case of successful theft. It is not performed consciously, but by impulse, and
it almost immediately leads to a punishment by the omnipotent cosmic order, negating the
possibility to bring about change by means of deceit. The Mariner’s act does not grant fire or
music to humankind. Rather, the results are that the crew dies, and that the Mariner suffers a
Biesbrouck 36
fate worse than death. And considering that deceit is the means by which the trickster “tricks”,
it need not surprise that this is where the Mariner lacks.
What the Mariner does have in common with the trickster, is that he functions as the
fool who gets himself and humankind (the crew) in trouble. The pattern of the trickster hurting
himself is very common, and can be illustrated by means of a Native American story about the
trickster Coyote. The latter gets a cow that will give him meat forever, as long as he does not
kill it, but only cuts pieces from it. However, Coyote cannot contain himself and ends up eating
the whole cow. His belly is filled, but he is empty-handed and will soon be hungry again (Hyde
28). Hyde explains that this “plot is typical: the trickster is given something valuable with a
condition set on its use, time passes, and before too long trickster’s hunger leads him to violate
the condition. As a consequence, the plenitude of things is inexorably diminished” (28).
The Mariner has a similar fate. He gets a bird that gives him wind in his sails (92), and
since it is a source of goodness, it should obviously not be killed. Yet, the Mariner has an
incontrollable urge to kill it anyway, with the result that he can no longer profit from the
goodness that it used to bring. Like the trickster, the Mariner is a fool in the sense that he has
failed to respect the limitation that was set upon the use of his gift, and hereby he has hurt
himself.
But the trickster also often ends up hurting others, especially by worsening the condition
of humankind as a whole (Hyde 26). Perhaps the most familiar Western example here is
Prometheus, who tried to trick Zeus with the food portions. When it was to be decided which
parts of the animals should be offered to the gods, and which parts should be consumed by
humankind, Prometheus tricked the god Zeus by making him choose the portion which
consisted of bones covered with fat (thus looking good, but hiding something inedible).
Consequently, humans got to have the portion which consisted of meat covered with stomachs
(thus looking bad, but hiding something tasty). In this way, he tricked the gods into letting
Biesbrouck 37
humans have the better portion (Pfeiffer 34-37). However, as Jean-Pierre Vernant has
thoroughly argued, there is an additional layer to the story. Because of this distribution, humans
are now destined to stay hungry and can only survive as long as they consume meat. After all,
they got the hungry stomach and the mortal meat. The gods, on the other hand, got the fat and
the bones which do not decompose as easily, and therefore they remain immortal and are not
plagued by hunger (Vernant 186, 194). In short, Prometheus aimed to do good for humankind,
but made them mortal and eternally hungry instead.
The Mariner’s act of shooting the Albatross has a similar development. Even though it
is not a conscious act of trickery, it does in a way give the crew the meat of the dead Albatross.
The crew does not realise the horrible consequences of this at first, and therefore, they shortly
after actually justify the Mariner’s act (97). However, they soon – like humankind in
Prometheus’ story – become aware of their bodily needs that have to be fulfilled. They are
extremely thirsty, to the extent that they can no longer speak (131-134). And – like in
Prometheus’ story – the protagonist’s act has led to their mortality, as their souls are now won
by Death (1817:195, gloss). In that sense, the Mariner as someone who by means of flesh brings
bodily needs and mortality to the crew (humankind), is much like Prometheus, and both
characters in their foolishness end up hurting others.
Next to thieves and fools, tricksters are also often “creators of culture” because they
have “helped shape this world so as to make it a hospitable place for human life” (Hyde 8). This
is related to the fact that they sometimes “invent[ ] language”, and “create lively talk where
there has been silence, or where speech has been prohibited” (76). The analogy with the Mariner
is that he too is in a situation of complete silence: “every tongue thro’ utter drouth / Was
wither’d at the root” (131-132). Yet, he manages to break the silence by creating language: “I
bit my arm and suck’d the blood / And cry’d, A sail! a sail!” (152-153). The Mariner, like the
trickster, manages to use language where this was previously impossible.
Biesbrouck 38
However, there is a critical difference between the trickster’s and the Mariner’s
invention of speech. While trickster stories emphasise the success of this act, the Mariner’s
story emphasises its difficulty and futility. Despite the Mariner’s radical act of biting his own
arm and performing “autovampirism” (Williams 1120), the restoration of his speech faculty is
only temporary. Plus, most important of all, it does not grant language to the rest of the crew.
The Mariner can only be seen as a creator of language for himself and manages to utter only
four words; “A sail! a sail!” (153). Despite his “invention” of speech, he cannot use it to make
society more hospitable for humankind, and the fact that he has to take extreme pains to
pronounce but four words only stresses this.
Thus an extended comparison between the trickster and the Mariner further emphasises
the latter’s lack of agency. While tricksters through their name-giving acts sometimes penetrate
into the realm of the gods, the Mariner’s major act only results in a separation from those gods.
He cannot venture into the divine, only away from it, and he cannot unmask boundaries as false,
but can only learn to respect their reality. Whereas the trickster forces the cosmos to adapt, the
Mariner is forced by the cosmos to adapt. After all, in order to change the cosmos, the trickster
lies, steals, deceives, and this is precisely what the Mariner cannot do. He can, like the trickster,
make a fool out of himself when his acts have unforeseen consequences that considerably
worsen his own fate and that of others. But creating a better fate, for example by the invention
of language, is extremely difficult for him because, in his One Life cosmos, he does not have
the trickster’s agency. This confirms the hypothesis that the Mariner is a trickster who does not
trick. His character shares many traits with that of the trickster: he is a boundary-crosser, a
wanderer, a guide of souls, a messenger of the gods, and his role is significant because he
performs an act that threatens the cosmic order and considerably changes his own fate and that
of others. But, and this is an important but, the trickster resists the cosmos’ “intellectual breeze”
(Coleridge, “The Eolian Harp” 47), disrupts it, renews it, and redraws its boundaries, while the
Biesbrouck 39
Mariner finds himself unable to do so and is forced to undergo that breeze. Despite their
similarities, the Mariner is the trickster’s antithesis: a passive vessel rather than someone who
manages to go against the grain.
2.2. The Mariner’s Resemblance to Specific Trickster Figures
2.2.1. Angering the Gods: The Mariner and Prometheus
An analysis of the Mariner as the trickster’s antithesis can be refined by comparing The Rime
with specific trickster myths, such as Hesiod’s Prometheus11. The previous subchapter has
already briefly compared the effects of the Mariner’s and Prometheus’ foolishness on others,
but the analogies between their stories reach much further than that. In fact, they are so striking
that the points at which they stop serve to further elucidate the Mariner’s general lack of agency.
The story of Hesiod’s Prometheus is well-known: Prometheus tricks Zeus into choosing,
for himself and for his fellow gods, a food portion of inedible bones covered with fat.
Consequently, humankind who were created by Prometheus, get to have the other food portion,
which consists of tasty meat covered with stomachs. Zeus gets angry because of this trickery
and punishes Prometheus by hiding the celestial fire (thunder) from his humans. Prometheus
steals the fire back, and Zeus becomes even angrier. Prometheus, as a punishment, is chained
on the Caucasus and will suffer for eternity because of an eagle who is sent to peck his liver.
Humankind is also punished, as they are given Pandora and her box (or jar). In Greek
mythology, she is the first woman and seems to bring nothing but misery (Pfeiffer 34-36).
Remarkably, all basic components of this narrative pattern are present in Coleridge’s
poem. The first relevant element here is the first act of hubris. Whereas Prometheus tricks Zeus
11
There are two stories about Prometheus by Hesiod: one appears in his Theogony, the other in his Works and
Days. According to Vernant, they are “complementary”, “interlocking”, and “form a single unit” (183, 191). For
convenience, the present paper will refer to the parts about Prometheus in the two stories combined as Prometheus.
Biesbrouck 40
into choosing the food portion of bones, the Mariner shoots the Albatross. As the previous
subchapter has shown, these acts are similar in the sense that both lead to bodily needs and
mortality for humanity / the crew. But more important for the present purpose, is the nature of
the act itself. Whereas Prometheus tricks Zeus premeditatedly, the Mariner shoots the Albatross
by impulse, and is thus less agentive during his act. The Mariner’s hubris is also immediately
noticed by the cosmos, while this is not necessarily the case for Prometheus’ act. After all, the
success of the latter depends precisely on the fact that Zeus does not immediately notice the
deceit. Both characters do something that is not allowed by the gods, but Prometheus’ act
demonstrates much more agency than the Mariner’s.
The punishments for this hubris are analogous. “Zeus refuses to hand over . . . the
celestial fire (the thunderbolt) which men had hitherto been able to use” (Vernant 186). And,
comparably, the Mariner’s crew can no longer benefit from the wind and speech. They are “As
idle as a painted Ship / Upon a painted Ocean” (113-114) and “every tongue thro’ utter drouth
/ Was wither’d at the root” (131-132). Hence, hubris in both stories leads to similar
punishments: something beneficial that was previously “freely available” (Vernant 191) is now
taken away.
More revealing about human agency, is the reaction to this punishment. Prometheus as
an agentive trickster manages to steal the fire back from the gods. But the Mariner can do no
such thing. He is completely at the mercy of his surroundings, and it is outside his power to
make the breeze to blow. He does attempt to restore his speech faculty, but is not very
successful. Even a drastic act such as biting his arm and sucking his own blood lets him
pronounce but four one-syllable words: “A sail! a sail!” (152-153). The Mariner makes a blood
Biesbrouck 41
sacrifice at the supposed benefit of humankind (the crew). But unlike the risk which Prometheus
took, his sacrifice does not change their miserable lot for the better12.
Both Prometheus’ theft and the Mariner’s speech can be seen as forms of protest against
their punishments. In this regard, the fact that Prometheus succeeds in his theft of fire, and the
Mariner barely does so in his act of speaking, is significant. As Hyde remarks, the promethean
“theft of fire” is “a story whose protagonist challenges a weakened spiritual system” (189). The
Mariner’s spiritual system on the other hand, is not a weakened but a rigid one, and therefore
attempts to use wind or normal speech against the will of the cosmos can hardly be called
successful.
The theft of fire and the attempt of speech represent a second act of hubris, and therefore
they also require a second punishment. Again, the punishments which Prometheus and the
Mariner undergo are comparable. Zeus lets Prometheus be put in chains, alone on a rock in the
Caucasus, and sends an eagle to peck his liver for eternity. The Mariner, in a figurative sense,
undergoes the same fate. He was already stuck on the ocean, but now he also becomes lonely
since all his crewmates have died. It is after his hubristic speech act that he finds himself “in
loneliness and fixedness” (1817:267, gloss) and wails:
Alone, alone, all all alone
Alone on the wide wide Sea;
And Christ would take no pity on
My soul in agony. (234-237)
He is alone, suffering on his ship, like Prometheus on his crag in the Caucasus, and does not
get any mercy from his god or cosmos.
12
Of course, neither does Prometheus’ if we take into account that his theft of fire eventually leads to Pandora.
But at this point, Prometheus certainly did manage to steal back the fire at the benefit of humankind.
Biesbrouck 42
Another parallel is that neither Prometheus nor the Mariner is given the relief of death,
but that both are destined to keep undergoing their punishment for eternity. Even though the
eagle keeps pecking his liver, Prometheus cannot die. And the Mariner’s situation is similar, as
he remarks: “This body dropt not down” (233), “a million million slimy things / Liv’d on —
and so did I” (240-241), and “Seven days, seven nights I saw that curse, / And yet I could not
die” (263-264). The gloss remarks that later on “The curse is finally expiated” (1817:446), but
this is not entirely true. Even on the extradiegetic level, after becoming an ancient Mariner, the
protagonist remains haunted by the Albatross and suffers from his chains and liver-pecking.
Through his compulsive urge to tell his tale, he keeps mentally returning to the punishment,
and, remarkably, an equivalent of Prometheus’ liver-pecking is signalled by the fact that every
time he tells the tale, his “heart within [him] burns” (1817:589). Furthermore, the Mariner’s
destiny of eternal enchainment is stressed when his soul is won by the figure called “Life-inDeath”. This illustrates that he can never actually die, but is destined to live on in a death-like
state. In that sense, the Mariner’s endless punishment resembles the one Prometheus undergoes.
This parallel is more outspoken than the parallel of the crime because, after all, no agency is
needed to be punished.
The protagonist is not the only one who gets punished. In both Prometheus and The
Rime, the protagonist’s second act of hubris leads to the arrival of a femme fatale who worsens
the fate of humanity / the crew. Zeus punishes Prometheus’ humans by “making for men
something which has hitherto not existed: It is an evil . . . namely, woman” (Vernant 186).
Pandora, or the first woman, is an evil because “with her came sexual reproduction [instead of
spontaneous birth out of the earth], sickness, insanity, vice, and toil” (Hyde 35). Hesiod is of
course known to have been quite a misogynist (35), but the point of relevance here is that
“[a]fter Prometheus, humans have fire and meat”, but because his second act of hubris resulted
in Pandora, “they also age quickly and die in pain” (35).
Biesbrouck 43
The Mariner’s crewmates are punished in the same manner. Except for the (ominous)
female-like moon, no women have been mentioned in the tale, but as soon as the Mariner bites
his arm and speaks, Life-in-Death appears13. It must be noted that the analogy with Prometheus
is somewhat flawed here, in the sense that Pandora is given to humankind, whereas Life-inDeath gets the Mariner (rather than the crew). Yet, the parallel is worth pursuing, because it is
after the arrival of the first woman that the Mariner’s crewmates meet the same fate as
Prometheus’ humans: they are won by Death and thus their mortality is stressed. After meeting
the Pandora-like figure, they too “age quickly and die in pain” (Hyde 35).
Again, the Mariner’s story differs from that of Prometheus in its representation of
agency. In Prometheus, the gods have to trick the protagonist into accepting Pandora as a gift,
and have to endeavour in making her an attractive temptress for that purpose. Significantly,
Prometheus has the agency to refuse Pandora, and it is his intellectually weaker brother
Epimetheus who eventually accepts this tempting gift as his bride (Vernant 189). In The Rime,
however, Life-in-Death need not be a temptress (Coleridge saved that role for Geraldine in
Christabel). Neither the Mariner nor the crew have to accept her as a gift. Much rather, the roles
are reversed: the Mariner is a gift for Life-in-Death because she won him in a dice-game
(1817:195, gloss). This drastically reverses the agency which the protagonist seems to have in
Prometheus. The Mariner does not have the option to refuse Life-in-Death as a gift, since he
himself is the gift.
It is essential that the femme fatale wins the Mariner rather than the crew. When Pandora
is given to mankind in Prometheus, this is horrible for them because in the myth “the race of
women are to men what drones are to the bees: a hungry stomach . . . that swallows up the fruit
13
The Mariner has already seen the spectre-bark at this point, but Life-in-Death has not yet been identified.
Therefore, there is room for the interpretation that the second act of hubris and the appearance of Life-in-Death
are causally linked.
Biesbrouck 44
of others’ work” (Vernant 187). Men have no choice but to work for women. Since Pandora,
they are no longer immortal and no longer spontaneously rise from the earth, but they and their
offspring need to be born out of a woman (192). Therefore, they, like “slaves” (194), need to
provide for this woman if they want to survive as a race, and in Hesiod’s misogynistic myth
this is represented as quite a burden (187). Importantly, Prometheus himself does not share this
fate with his creatures. He, on his crag on the Caucasus, is punished by his material situation,
but he is not an existential slave to a woman. The Mariner, on the other hand, is such a slave
since he has the same fate as Prometheus’ humans. Like them, he is only alive because of a
woman, for if he were won by the male Death like his crewmates, he would be dead. And this
window of survival also means that he remains a slave to this man-consuming14 woman. Like
man in Prometheus, the Mariner survives, but only as someone who is constantly working for
the female figure, always retelling his experience to people such as the wedding guest15. He
gets to live, but has no actual life power. His “life”, as the name “Life-in-Death” suggests, is
only one “in death”, one of always working for the femme fatale. This is in sheer contrast with
Prometheus, who despite his punishment remains a trickster. Thus it is essential that Life-inDeath wins the Mariner instead of the crew, because this bereaves him of the existential freedom
(of not being a “slave” to a woman) which Prometheus still has.
Clearly, a comparison between the Mariner and Prometheus confirms that the Mariner
resembles the trickster, but lacks his agency. The two figures have remarkably similar stories:
an act of hubris that is punished, an attempt to undo that punishment, and further punishment
14
The poem suggests that this woman lives off the flesh of men. Life-in-Death and Death are described as “woman
and her Mate” (184), and it is stressed that Death in relation to Life-in-Death with her red “vampiric lips” (Williams
1126), or man in relation to this “Woman”, is “a fleshless Man” (189, emphasis added).
15
This is still the result of the fact that “LIFE-IN-DEATH beg[an] her work on the ancient Mariner” (1817:224,
gloss).
Biesbrouck 45
by solitary enchainment and the arrival of a femme fatale. But their differences are more
revealing than their analogies. The Mariner’s act of hubris, contrary to that of Prometheus,
requires no agency. The Mariner fails to rebel against his punishment since he only manages to
speak four words. Unlike mankind in Prometheus, he has no option to refuse the fatal woman
Life-in-Death. And he, rather than the crew, becomes her slave. So if we see the Mariner as a
promethean figure, it is one whose ability to act is watered down to an almost non-existent
level.
2.2.2. Attacking the Joints: The Mariner and Loki
Another trickster story to which The Rime is related comes from Norse mythology and concerns
the trickster Loki killing the god Baldr. The general plot of this myth can be summarized as
following: Because Baldr has nightmares about being killed, his mother Frigg asks all the
elements of heaven and earth not to harm her son. She skips the mistletoe because it is too
young, but also because this parasitic plant hangs in the trees and therefore touches neither
heaven nor earth. Since Baldr is now virtually invincible, it soon becomes an amusing diversion
for the gods to throw things at him, such as stones or pieces of wood. Loki the trickster is
agitated by this and sets out to kill Baldr. Disguised as a woman, he gets Frigg to tell him what
can hurt her son: the mistletoe. Loki convinces Baldr’s blind unknowing brother Hödr to shoot
Baldr with this mistletoe. With Loki’s help, Hödr does so, and Baldr dies (Sturluson 71-72,
Hyde 101-102, 253).
One of the most important lessons in this story, is that gods are almost invincible, but
not entirely. As Hyde remarks, they are still “vulnerable at their joints. To kill a god or an ideal,
go for the joints” (253). And of course, it is the trickster who functions as the “joint disturber”,
“kill[ing] an immortal by attacking the joint that is his hidden weakness” (256). In the story
above, Loki is an example of this. Even though the myth contains no bodily joints, “it has joints
nonetheless”, and it is by means of these that Loki manages to kill Baldr (253). The first and
Biesbrouck 46
most important one that Hyde points out is the mistletoe, the plant that “is neither of heaven
nor of earth” because it is a “parasitic plant that grows in the branches of trees”, and “lives
between high and low and belongs to neither, not unlike the trickster” (253, emphasis in
original).
Such a description of the mistletoe is revealing for an analysis of The Rime, because it
is reminiscent of the Albatross’s ambiguity. Just like the mistletoe is a joint between heaven
and earth, so is the Albatross a joint between the Visible and the Invisible Realm. As chapter
1.2.3. has shown, it freely ventures between both realms, and by splitting the ice it even allows
the mariners to travel between these realms. Moreover, the line “Both man and bird and beast”
(660) signals that the Albatross is the one between man (of the Visible Realm) and beast (of the
Invisible Realm). Like the mistletoe, it belongs to two realms and to none at the same time.
Therefore, it is no accident that the Mariner’s vital act of violence towards the divine One Life
happens by means of shooting this bird. The Mariner, much like Loki, attacks a god or cosmos
by means of its joints.
When looking into the story of Loki and Baldr, it is also worth noting that “mistletoe
was ritually gathered on . . . the summer solstice” which is “one of the nicks in time by which
the annual cycle is articulated; it marks the crisis or turning point in the life of the sun when it
seems to stop growing and begins to die” (Hyde 253). Therefore, Loki’s act of killing Baldr
involves a second joint: next to the mistletoe as the hinge between heaven and earth, there is
also the summer solstice as the hinge between the sun’s growth and atrophy.
Similarly, the Mariner’s story also contains other joints. Like the solstice is a joint time
in nature, the Mariner’s setting is a joint space in nature. For example, he is on a ship, which
represents the boundary of land and sea. And soon after he shoots the Albatross (82), it is
signalled that he is at the Equator (Fry, Rime 109), an obvious boundary between the earth’s
two hemispheres. This illustrates that the Mariner’s violation against the cosmos, just like
Biesbrouck 47
Loki’s, also involves a second joint: next to the Albatross as the hinge between the Visible and
the Invisible Realm, there is his setting as one between land and sea, and between the two
hemispheres.
As with the Prometheus myth, the analogy between the trickster and the Mariner stops
where agency begins. Hyde describes tricksters as “joint workers” who “like the flexible or
movable joint”, because they can use it to disrupt “stable harmony” (256-257). They bend
nature’s joints in order to change the divine structure. For instance, Loki uses a joint (the
mistletoe) to actually kill a god (Baldr). But the Mariner’s case, on the other hand, is very
different in this regard. He uses his cross-bow to kill a joint (the Albatross). But he does not use
a joint (the Albatross) to kill a god or cosmos. In the analogy, the Mariner does not kill Baldr
(the god or cosmos), but the mistletoe (the Albatross), which is indeed something very different.
In his One Life cosmos, disrupting the divine order does not seem to be possible as it is for
Loki. The Mariner can harm the boundary-marker of the divine, but not the divine itself.
In fact, the reformative pattern in The Rime can even be seen as a reversal of the one in
trickster stories. Because of the Mariner’s cosmic structure, shooting the Albatross-joint
ultimately means that the Mariner has not hurt the divine, but himself. He has disconnected
himself from the One Life, and the punishments for this act eventually lead him to his own
reformation (rather than that of the cosmos) when he blesses the water-snakes. And remarkably,
these water-snakes also represent a joint. Their jointness or ambiguity is signalled in several
ways. Even though they are creatures of the sea, they crawl with legs, and thus mark a boundary
between land and sea. Next to that, they appear under both the sun of the Visible Realm16 (121),
16
This point might be contested when one remarks that the sun is at this stage “no bigger than the moon” (110)
and that the Visible Realm’s wind has stopped blowing. This is a counter-argument in the sense that the snakes do
not appear under the normal, full, sun. However, it can also be seen as a pro-argument for the snakes as a joint in
Biesbrouck 48
and under the moon of the Invisible Realm (275). And additionally, as argued by Williams,
they can be seen as “ambiguous phallic creatures of the mother” (1122). That they are phallic
is obvious, but they also represent the female mother, since they are creatures of the sea which
is closely associated with the maternal womb17. Therefore, the water-snakes as between land
and sea, between Visible and Invisible, and between phallic and maternal represent another
joint in nature, and it makes sense that this joint is the means by which the Mariner is spiritually
reformed. Consequently, the Mariner’s and the trickster’s positions towards the joints of nature
are opposed. The trickster uses a joint to reform the cosmos, whereas the Mariner’s cosmos
uses a joint to reform the Mariner, and this again emphasises the latter’s lack of agency.
To summarize, a comparison between the Mariner and the trickster is quite revealing,
because it illustrates that the Mariner strongly resembles the mythological trickster, but that –
because the author made his cosmic order so strong – he differs from this trickster at the point
of agency. Like the trickster, he is a boundary-crosser, a guide of souls, a messenger of the
gods, and, most importantly, he too tests the strength of his cosmic order. However, he is
different from the trickster in the sense that he is not someone who actually manages to change
his gods or cosmos. Comparisons with specific trickster figures confirm this. The Mariner’s
story contains all the major elements of Hesiod’s Prometheus, but differs from it in the sense
that the protagonist does not bring fire to the human race and thus cannot “change the way the
world is apportioned” (Hyde 256). The Loki and Baldr story also shows interesting similarities
with the Mariner’s, since both narratives illustrate the significance of joints when reformation
is concerned. However, in the Norse myth it is the divine that is reformed, whereas in The Rime
it is the perpetrator who is reformed. The Mariner is no agent of change, because in his rigid
nature, because it shows that they appear at a stage when the sun and the moon are of equal size, and therefore
represent a clear boundary between the Visible and the Invisible Realm.
17
See chapter 3.1.1. in the present paper.
Biesbrouck 49
cosmic structure he is the one being changed. The structure of his story shows that he could
very well have been a trickster, but that, because of his strong spiritual system, he does not have
the agency to “trick”.
Biesbrouck 50
3. A Traumatic Rebirth and Redevelopment
The previous chapters have shown that the Mariner’s rigid cosmic structure renders him
dependent on his surroundings, and that this causes him to be the trickster’s antithesis where
agency is concerned. The present chapter will now explore why the One Life cosmos in The
Rime is depicted as so powerful and constricting, by looking at the Mariner’s psychology. More
specifically, it will consider how the traumatic process of a rebirth and a redevelopment causes
the protagonist to be stuck in a stage of dependence on Mother Nature.
3.1. The Mariner’s Rebirth and Redevelopment
3.1.1. The Mariner’s Rebirth
A first way in which the Mariner’s psychological experience limits his agency, is the fact that
it involves a rebirth that makes him regress into a stage of dependence on the mother. This can
be illustrated by means of Bodkin’s analysis that the unconscious human mind, as well as
Coleridge’s poem, contains a “rebirth archetype”. With evidence from dream analysis, Bodkin
raises the idea that a “craving for the warm shelter of the mother’s womb persists unmodified
in the mind of the adult” and that “it is only as a result of repression that we fail to feel response
to the expression of such a craving” (64-65). Because of this unconscious desire, the pattern of
a rebirth archetype sometimes finds its way into literature. This pattern is described as
following:
a movement, downward, or inward toward the earth’s centre, or a
cessation of movement—a physical change which . . . appears
also as a transition toward severed relation with the outer world,
and, it may be, toward disintegration and death. This element in
the pattern is balanced by a movement upward and outward—an
Biesbrouck 51
expansion or outburst of activity, a transition toward
redintegration and life-renewal (54).
Since Bodkin’s analysis of The Rime is especially concerned with readers’ psychological
responses to the poem, it generally refrains from discussing the text itself. Nevertheless, the
links between the rebirth archetype and Coleridge’s poem are clear. The Mariner’s experience
on the sea can easily be seen as “a transition toward [a] severed relation with the outer world”,
since he is “severed” from the Visible Realm’s, or, the outer world’s One Life. This experience
could very well have led to his “disintegration and death”, as he has literally seen Death and all
his crewmates have died. And his journey has undoubtedly resulted in a “redintegration and
life-renewal”. In the end, the Mariner is “redintegrated” by means of a reconnection with the
Visible Realm’s One Life, as he can then feel its wind again (478) and is then allowed to return
back home (617). Next to that, this reconnection is complemented by two examples of “liferenewal”: it starts raining (drinkable water) again (302) and the Mariner can sleep again (294).
In that sense, the Mariner’s experience certainly corresponds to the rebirth pattern that Bodkin
describes.
Elsewhere Bodkin also says that the subject being reborn experiences “a state of
compulsion without hope or aim, as though he were enclosed in the mother’s womb” (72). The
Mariner’s experience within the Invisible Realm evidently matches the description of one
“without hope or aim”. But, more importantly, this Invisible Realm also resembles a “mother’s
womb”. The Mariner’s experience in this realm takes place on the ocean, which can be
interpreted as the womb, especially since “The charmed water burnt alway / A still and awful
red” (272-273). And additionally, this realm is ruled by the maternal moon. The latter is referred
to by the female pronoun “she”, and has “a star or two beside” (268) which gives it “a maternal
quality” (Williams 1121). This indicates that the Mariner’s venturing into the Invisible Realm
Biesbrouck 52
resembles someone regressing into an infant-like stage that is set in a womb-like environment
under the rule of the mother.
Clearly, the Mariner’s story fits the archetypal rebirth pattern. The protagonist
experiences a “severed relation with the outer world” to eventually reach a state of
“redintegration and life-renewal”, and his setting of a warm red ocean ruled by a maternal moon
resembles the womb. This shows that, during his sea-faring journey, the Mariner finds himself
in a regressive stage of dependence on the mother, and this of course helps to explain why he
lacks agency.
3.1.2. The Mariner’s Redevelopment
Since the Mariner is going through a rebirth, it need not surprise that he is also going through a
redevelopment. As Williams has claimed, he is once again experiencing the psychological
process of the “attainment of selfhood and subjectivity” (1118). This especially makes sense
when we consider that the main narrative sequence of innocence to guilt and redemption
represents someone being re-educated by his cosmos. The Mariner is being converted into a
person who adheres to the One Life ideology, and, accordingly, he must return to a formative
stage in his development. This is especially important for his agency, because this formative
stage is linked to a strong dependence on the mother.
The Mariner’s regression into such a formative stage can be traced by applying
Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and the symbolic order of expression to The Rime18. This
semiotic/symbolic dichotomy “is roughly equivalent to Freud’s pre-Oedipal/Oedipal
distinction”, but differs from it in that it focuses on the subject’s “signifying process” (Chanter
113). The semiotic is a form of expression that is especially used by subjects who are still in the
18
See also Williams, who refers to Kristeva’s theory of the symbolic/semiotic in her argument that “The Rime
enacts the process by which the speaking subject . . . is constituted” (1115).
Biesbrouck 53
pre-oedipal phase of maternal dependence. It is mainly found in the discourse of “young
children”, but also in “psychotic discourse” (Kristeva 133). One of its main characteristics is
that it “does not yet refer . . . to a signified object” (133). Instead, it expresses “the workings of
the [unconscious] drives” and takes the shape of “musical and nonsense effects”, such as rhythm
and intonation (133-136). Also remarkable is that this semiotic mode is used before the subject
“recogniz[es] itself as identical in a mirror”, meaning that it is still “dependent vis-à-vis the
mother” (136). The symbolic mode, on the other hand, is a form of expression that is used by
subjects who have moved on to the oedipal stage of subjectivity. It generally corresponds to our
everyday symbolic language, and unlike the semiotic mode, it signifies (133). Next to that, it
does not consist of “musical and nonsense effects”, but is characterized by “complete grammar
and syntax” (Kristeva 136, McAfee 17). Plus, it also differs from the semiotic mode in the sense
that it “repress[es] the instinctual drive and continuous relation to the mother” (Kristeva 136).
Put briefly, the semiotic mode is a preverbal form of expression that is associated with a
dependence on the bodily drives and the mother, whereas the symbolic mode represses these
drives and maternal dependence with the result that it can signify, or symbolize.
Much like a developing child, the Mariner undergoes a transition from the semiotic to
the symbolic order of expression. His first expressive act on the sea (that of shooting the
Albatross) represents the onset of this linguistic redevelopment, because it is fundamentally
semiotic19. The reason why readers are so often puzzled by this act, is that it, like semiotic
expressions, seems to be wholly unmotivated and does not seem to signify anything. It is an
expression, but certainly not one in the realm of language, leave alone one with grammar or
syntax. And more importantly, it is a bodily act that can be linked to the Mariner’s unconscious
19
According to Williams, this act is performed while the Mariner is in the Freudian pre-oedipal stage (1118),
which overlaps with this semiotic stage.
Biesbrouck 54
drives. As argued by Adair, it is likely an expression of original sin20 (47), and surely this
original sin can be seen as an unconscious drive that – at least in Coleridge’s view – is present
in all of us. In that sense, the Mariner’s first notable expressive act certainly fits the semiotic
mode much better than the symbolic one.
Furthermore, the poem especially stresses that, on the sea, the Mariner is not within the
symbolic order. Because of the drought, it is virtually impossible to use spoken, symbolic,
language (133). The Mariner does manage to speak once, but only after sucking his own
blood21, and this allows him to cry out but four one-syllable words: “A sail! a sail!” (152-153).
Importantly, this is only a short disruption of the semiotic order, and not a permanent reentrance into the symbolic order. This is made clear when, soon after sucking his blood, the
Mariner sees the spectre-bark and wants to cry out “Alas!” (172), but fails. Because he is still
within the semiotic order, he could not say it, but only “thought” it (173). And at the same time,
his “heart beat loud” (173), which is something rather related to one of the semiotic order’s
bodily drives than to a form of linguistic signification. Another example is that when he sees
the zombie-like crew “work the ropes”, he “quak’d to think of [his] own voice / How frightful
20
In the same year that he first published The Rime, Coleridge wrote to his brother George: “Of guilt I say nothing,
but I believe most steadfastly in original sin; that from our mothers’ wombs our understandings are darkened; and
even where our understandings are in the light, that our organization is depraved and our volitions imperfect” (“To
George” 242-243). As Adair comments, this “throws interesting light on the evil impulse which slew the albatross”
(47). Seeing the shooting of the Albatross as an involuntary “evil impulse” originating from original sin makes
sense. After all, it is not something that the Mariner seems to do consciously. He does not narrate the shooting as
something premeditated, but simply states “with my cross bow / I shot the Albatross” (79-80).
21
According to Eilenberg, “drinking blood in the underworld is a necessary prelude to true speech” in Homer
(309), and in that sense this occurrence of the Mariner speaking need not be a counter-argument for a reading of
the sea as the semiotic order. The fact that the Mariner actually has to suck his own blood, like in the underworld,
only stresses that it is practically impossible to speak spontaneously within this realm.
Biesbrouck 55
it would be!” (339, 347-348), again demonstrating his inability to make use of the symbolic
mode of discourse. Notably, he cannot speak, but he can “quake”. The OED defines the latter
as “to shake or tremble as a result of an external or internal impulse, natural instability, etc.”
This means that even though the Mariner cannot use language, he can express himself by means
of an internal impulse, which can again be seen as one of the semiotic order’s workings of the
bodily drives. Significantly, the lack of speech is no longer the result of drought here, since it
started raining after the Mariner blessed the water-snakes (302). Hence, these occurrences
further illustrate that the Mariner finds himself within the semiotic order of expression rather
than within the symbolic one.
It must be noted that there is one dubious occurrence where the Mariner might be
performing a symbolic speech act. He blesses the water-snakes (287) and “The self-same
moment [he] could pray” (290). However, he never actually says “I bless you, water-snakes!”
or “Our Father, who art in heaven…”, and therefore these acts cannot really be seen as
performed by means of the symbolic mode. The fact that he blesses the water-snakes “unaware”
(287), and at the same time feels “A spring of love gush[ ] from [his] heart” (286) actually
indicates that the Mariner’s blessing-act is closer to the unconscious bodily drives of the
semiotic order than to the signification of the symbolic order.
The first occurrence in which the Mariner does truly speak (in direct discourse and
indicated by quotation marks), or makes an utterance by means of the symbolic mode without
sucking his own blood, is when he sees that he is getting back home22. At that point, he says:
“I with sobs did pray — / ‘O let me be awake, my God! / ‘Or let me sleep alway!’” (484-486).
And when he actually sets foot on the “firm land” again, he says to the Hermit: “‘O shrieve me,
shrieve me, holy Man!” (618, 621). In other words, the Mariner only manages to truly re-enter
22
See also Williams, who states that “[t]he Mariner’s existence as a speaking subject, his ‘salvation,’ coincides
with his escape from oceanic isolation, his capacity to tell his tale” (1119).
Biesbrouck 56
the symbolic order when he gets back home, while he could only express himself by means of
the semiotic mode when he was on the womb-like sea.
This illustrates that the Mariner’s rebirth is paralleled with a redevelopment from the
semiotic to the symbolic mode of expression. The linguistically meaningless act of shooting the
Albatross represents the onset of this redevelopment, and it is followed by other expressive acts
that match the semiotic mode much rather than the symbolic one. The transition to the symbolic
mode, or the usage of language without the need to suck his own blood, comes only when the
Mariner sees or reaches his homeland. Hence, his journey represents a transition from the
semiotic (on the sea) to the symbolic (on land) mode of expression. This links the
developmental stage of the semiotic order with the womb-like sea, which makes sense because
both the semiotic and the womb are associated with a dependence on the mother – or, in this
case, on Mother Nature – and take the Mariner to a space where human agency is void.
3.2. The Mariner as a Trauma Victim Stuck in Limbo
3.2.1. The Mariner as a Trauma Victim
An analysis of the Mariner as someone who is going through a rebirth and a redevelopment
helps to elucidate why he is so powerless during his experience on the sea. Because the revisited
womb and semiotic order are places of strong maternal dependence, it is only logical that the
Mariner feels so dependent on his surroundings, or, Mother Nature. However, this does not
explain why he remains so powerless and obsessed with connectedness on the extradiegetic
level of the poem. After all, when he compulsively retells and relives his story about the
obligatory harmony with Mother Nature, this also illustrates a lack of agency. Perhaps the most
evident explanation here is that he has become traumatized by his experience on the sea, finds
himself stuck in it, and has therefore never really left the womb-like sea and its semiotic order.
Biesbrouck 57
In fact, there are several ways in which The Rime makes clear that its protagonist is a
trauma victim. Some of the most notable examples here are the ominous signs on the
intradiegetic level of the poem. For instance, even when the Mariner no longer has the Albatross
around his neck, he still feels that the bird’s blood is on his hands and needs the Hermit to wash
it away (559-560). Because the latter never does this, the Mariner remains haunted by his guilt.
Next to that, when the Mariner falls “into a swound” (407) and starts hearing voices, one of
these voices says that “the man hath penance done, / And penance more will do” (423-424,
emphasis added). This shows that the Mariner’s punishment has not ended, but will continue
on the extradiegetic level of the poem. Moreover, it is signalled that his experience in the
Invisible Realm will have permanently marked his perception of things when he gets back
home. When he departed, his country was under the rule of the Visible Realm’s sun (29), but
when he returns, it is submerged in the Invisible Realm’s moonlight (489-491). These
occurrences indicate that even though the Mariner will physically leave the Invisible Realm and
its horrors, these will never mentally leave him in peace.
This is confirmed by the extradiegetic level of the poem. As chapter 2.1.1. has shown,
the extradiegetic Mariner’s physical appearance illustrates the lasting effect of his traumatic
experience. His “weary” eye has become a “glittering one” (253, 3), and his body, being “long,
and lank, and brown, / As is the ribbed sea-sand” (230-231), now resembles the setting on which
the experience took place. But the most prominent sign of trauma is the Mariner’s compulsive
urge to tell his tale to random people such as the wedding guest. This urge answers to the
descriptions of post-traumatic flashbacks. Like such flashbacks, it is not invoked by will, but
comes unexpected and against the will of the subject (Yehuda 108), or, as the Mariner describes
it, “at an uncertain hour” and experienced as “forc’d” by a “woeful agony” (627-629).
Furthermore, just as with post-traumatic flashbacks, the Mariner’s “entire experience is reenacted” when he tells his tale, and this “involves actually reliving (rather than remembering)”
Biesbrouck 58
the events (Laub and Auerhahn 291-292). These symptoms on the extradiegetic level of the
poem illustrate that the Mariner’s experience on the sea has effectively traumatized him.
3.2.2. The Mother Figure
It is not difficult to look for elements in the Mariner’s experience that could be the reason for
this trauma. He first has a dead – and, after seven days, likely rotting – sea-bird around his neck,
is subjected to severe dehydration, and finally even finds himself between the angry-looking
(257-263) corpses of his crewmates. But arguably, the most significant element in the Mariner’s
traumatic experience is his terrifying confrontation with the mother figure.
A first indication of this is that the Mariner’s excursion into the Invisible Realm as a
return to a stage of maternal dependence contains a fundamental paradox. The Mariner is taken
to a place that resembles the womb and is ruled by a maternal moon, but he is also separated
from the caring One Life and therefore his “maternal” surroundings give him no help
whatsoever. Even though he is taken to a place of full dependence on Mother Nature, he does
not get any of the motherly love and care that he is supposed to get, but is left to suffer “all all
alone / Alone on the wide wide Sea” (234-235).
A second element that illustrates the Mariner’s maternal trauma is his encounter with
his parental figures. As Williams points out, these parental figures are Death as the father and
Life-in-Death as the mother (1120). Both of them are depicted as quite terrifying: father Death
is a black skeleton with patches of mouldy damp and charnel crust, while mother Life-in-Death
has a skin “as white as leprosy” and “makes the still air cold” (191-200, emphasis added). Of
these two, it is especially the mother figure who traumatizes the Mariner: “she is far liker Death
than he [Death himself]” (199) and she is the one who eventually wins the Mariner’s soul
(1819:195, gloss).
Biesbrouck 59
The relevance of this traumatic encounter with the mother-figure becomes especially
clear in the light of contemporary trauma theory. According to Dori Laub, a traumatic event is
traumatic because it is so alienating that the mind fails to register it in the way that it normally
does, and instead experiences it as taking “place outside the parameters of ‘normal’ reality, such
as causality, sequence, place and time” (69). The trauma victim fails to truly grasp what is
happening at the moment of perception, and as a result the event “could not and did not proceed
through its completion, has no ending, attained no closure, and therefore, as far as its survivors
are concerned, continues into the present and is current in every respect” (69). In other words,
because the mind could not fully grasp the event at the time of its occurrence, it keeps reliving
it, and is ultimately “entrapped” by it (69).
That the Mariner is “entrapped” by his traumatic experience on the sea is made clear by
his constant urge to retell his whole story to random people. But he is also specifically entrapped
by the mother figure, and this has serious consequences for his redevelopment. When he meets
the parental figures Death and Life-in-Death, the Mariner has just attempted to re-enter the
symbolic order of expression by sucking his own blood and performing a symbolic speech act.
Entering this order would allow him to constitute himself as an independent subject, since
crossing from the semiotic order to the symbolic order overlaps with crossing from the Freudian
pre-oedipal stage (of maternal dependence) to the oedipal stage (of becoming a subject). In this
newly entered stage, he would “come to view [him]self as self and the father and the mother as
separate selves” (Murfin 228). However, because of its traumatic nature, this development does
not fully take place. The Mariner is on the boundary of entering the symbolic order when he
shouts “A sail! a sail!” (153), and he is on the boundary of seeing his parents as separate selves
when he meets Death and Life-in-Death, but the problem is that these events are downright
terrifying. For his speech act he has to suck his own blood, and meeting the ghastly parental
figures Death and Life-in-Death is obviously not a nice experience either. Because these events
Biesbrouck 60
are so horrifying, the Mariner’s mind fails to fully grasp what is happening, and therefore his
development is not completed. The experience traumatizes the Mariner and he gets stuck in the
developmental stage: mother Life-in-Death wins his soul (1817:195, gloss). The latter is crucial,
because it prevents him from truly leaving the pre-oedipal stage and the semiotic order. Instead
of having fully entered the order of subjectivity, the Mariner, through his trauma, has become
stuck in the boundary-stage. As someone who has failed in the process of becoming an
independent subject, he remains trapped in a liminal stage where he continues to be dependent
on his womb-like surroundings and mother Life-in-Death.
3.2.3. Linguistic Isolation
A second central element in the Mariner’s traumatic journey is his linguistic isolation. His
experience is not traumatic solely because of the events themselves, but also because the
Mariner, being within the semiotic order, cannot communicate about these events with his
crewmates. At first the crew spoke “only to break / The silence of the Sea” (105), then because
of the drought they “could not speak more than if” they “had been choked with soot” (131-132),
and eventually they cannot even “laugh, ne wail” (150). When the Mariner is bereft of his
speech faculty, this is especially terrifying because it disables him from expressing his
sufferings and being consoled by the social other. As Nadia Sels writes, human beings have
“[t]he urge to communicate [their] suffering, not in order to ask help, but as a goal in itself” (8).
In fact, when someone experiences a “pain that can never find an adequate symbolical
expression”, then this pain becomes “truly ‘unbearable’” (8), and for the Mariner this is
certainly the case.
In that sense, revisiting the preverbal semiotic stage is traumatic, and the result, again,
is that the Mariner gets “entrapped” in this stage. When he returns to his homeland, he regains
his speech faculty and hereby re-enters the symbolic order. However, because of his traumatic
Biesbrouck 61
entrapment, he has not entirely left the preverbal semiotic order. Even though the extradiegetic
Mariner is constantly talking to the wedding guest, his symbolic speech contains many
characteristics that are associated with the semiotic. His story, having the form of a ballad,
matches the description of the semiotic as involving musical effects such as rhythm and
intonation (Kristeva 133-136). The fact that he feels his heart burning every time he tells his
tale (1817:589) can be related to his bodily drives. And moreover, “[t]he Mariner’s dreamlike
tale, though told and heard,” “represent[s] the semiotic” in the sense that it consists of “a series
of disjointed, emotionally charged images” and is “virtually nonsensical” (Williams 1117). In
other words, the form, way of narration, and structure of the Mariner’s tale show that, because
of his trauma, he has failed to fully break with the semiotic order. This is critical for his agency,
because the semiotic is linked with a “continuous relation to the mother” (Kristeva 136). In that
sense, the Mariner’s being stuck in the semiotic order of expression further emphasises his
being stuck in a stage of dependence on the mother, or his soul being won by Life-in-Death.
In sum, the Mariner is subjected to an experience that renders him dependent on his
surroundings. His sea-faring journey, which corresponds to Bodkin’s archetypal rebirth pattern,
takes him to a womb-like realm, and he psychologically regresses into the preverbal semiotic
order. Since both this womb and semiotic order are linked to a full dependence on the mother,
this significantly limits the Mariner’s agency and leaves him completely at the mercy of Mother
Nature. Furthermore, this experience is so overwhelming that his mind fails to grasp what is
happening, becomes traumatized, and therefore remains stuck in this experience. Revisiting the
womb horrifies the Mariner, because in his paradoxically disconnected state of dependence he
does not get the maternal care that he is supposed to get. And moreover, the parental figures
Death and Life-in-Death are so terrifying that they prevent the Mariner from crossing to the
oedipal stage of subjectivity. As a result, he remains stuck in the pre-oedipal stage of
dependence on mother Life-in-Death who wins his soul. In addition, also his regression into the
Biesbrouck 62
semiotic order is traumatic and therefore keeps him from fully re-entering the symbolic order
of expression. This means that when we remember the Mariner as a boundary-crosser, he is
ultimately also one who fails to cross boundaries. He cannot truly cross from womb to world,
from pre-oedipal to oedipal, or from semiotic to symbolic, but in each case gets stuck in the
boundary phase. Because his psychological experience of being reborn and redeveloped is
traumatic, he fails to cross the border to the realm of agentive subjectivity and gets stuck in a
liminal stage of dependence on Mother Nature.
Biesbrouck 63
4. The Mariner’s and His Author’s Places in the Cosmos
In the previous chapters it was shown that the Mariner’s cosmic structure renders him dependent
on his surroundings to the extent that he is the trickster’s antithesis, and that this is because he
is going through a psychological rebirth and redevelopment. This leads to the question why the
author depicts the Mariner in this way, which will be answered in this fourth chapter. It will
explain that the radical difference in agency between the Mariner and the trickster is related to
the radical difference between the minds of their creators.
4.1. The Death and Revival of Animated Nature
4.1.1. Seeing Faces in the Clouds
As a first step in explaining why Coleridge did not give his Mariner the trickster’s agency, and
instead made him face his dependence on Mother Nature, this subchapter will analyse in what
way the tricksters’ creators had a different concept of nature than Coleridge. In order to do this,
it will draw on Guthrie’s insight that human beings are determined to see nature as animated
and ruled by deities.
In his innovative book Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion, Guthrie explains
that we regularly misinterpret things as animate and anthropomorphic,
because, when we see something as alive or humanlike, we can
take precautions. If we see it as alive we can, for example, stalk it
or flee. If we see it as humanlike, we can try to establish a social
relationship. If it turns out not to be alive or humanlike, we
usually lose little by having thought it was. This practice thus
yields more in occasional big successes than it costs in frequent
little failures. In short, animism and anthropomorphism stem
from the principle, “better safe than sorry” (5).
Biesbrouck 64
For instance, “it is better for a hiker to mistake a bear for a boulder than to mistake a boulder
for a bear” (6). Consequently, because the human brain usually goes for the safest bet, hikers
do regularly misinterpret boulders as bears, but not the other way around. Another example is
our strong inclination to misinterpret things as (human) faces. Because faces are so important
in our lives, we recognize them very easily, even too easily. We see them in things that do not
have actual faces. For instance: clouds, cars, houses, or even pieces of fruit can be seen as
having faces, as long as they have features that can be interpreted as a mouth and two eyes,
even if this interpretation is a really big stretch. In Ernst Gombrich’s words, “[w]henever
anything remotely facelike enters our field of vision, we are alerted and respond” (Guthrie 103).
Because of our perceptual strategy, our brain perceives animated beings everywhere in nature,
even when they are not there.
And the consequences of this perceptual strategy do not stop at mistaking things for
faces or bears. As a result of seeing nature’s parts as animated, it also becomes relatively easy
to see the whole of nature as “alive, sentient, and purposeful” (Guthrie 173). In fact, we may
even see it as “humanlike, by seeing gods there”, which is indeed exactly what “religion[s] [and
mythologies]” do (177). This means that, in Guthrie’s theory, our perceptual strategy causes us
to see nature as animated and ruled by gods.
This has far-reaching effects for the way we deal with the world. If we see the world as
animated and governed by divine spirits, then it is important for us to have a good relation with
this world and its spirits, as this could make them benevolent to us. On the other hand, such a
god-ruled nature also means that nature and its gods can be challenged, that it is possible to
deceive the gods and to steal things from them in order to improve our own situation. Especially
for the creators of trickster myths, believing23 in an animated nature meant that an agentive
23
It must be acknowledged here that “believing” is a delicate word that requires caution. To take the example of
the ancient Greeks, “anyone with the slightest historical background” would say that “of course they believed in
Biesbrouck 65
trickster like Prometheus can make humanity’s life easier by stealing fire from the gods. This
is particularly important when we see literature as expressing “a powerful, secret wish” of the
“artist” as Otto Rank did (Murfin 223), or if we see myths as the “distorted vestiges of the
wishful phantasies of whole nations” as Sigmund Freud did (Freud 427). It leads to the
conclusion that the depiction of tricksters as beings who are able to challenge the cosmic order
might stem from their creators’ own desire to be able to challenge the god-ruled cosmos.
4.1.2. Re-Animating the Faces in the Clouds in the Eighteenth Century
The world-view held by the creators of trickster myths is crucial in a discussion of the Mariner’s
lack of agency, because its difference with Coleridge’s world-view is part of the reason why
the Mariner does not have the trickster’s agency. Unlike the creators of trickster myths,
Coleridge must have been in serious doubt about the existence of nature’s god(s). By the time
that he started writing The Rime, industrialization and eighteenth-century science had alienated
many people from the animated and god-infused nature, and Coleridge was indeed one of those
alienated people. It is well-known that he was very interested in, and had read a lot about, the
their myths” (Veyne 128-129). Yet, as Paul Veyne argues, it is also important to bear in mind that there are different
“modalities of belief—belief based on word, on experience, and so on” (xi). Plus, the ancient Greeks had “their
own way of believing in their mythology or being skeptical of it, and their way only appears to resemble our own”
(3). Nevertheless, it remains true that the ancient Greeks, and presumably also the other cultures that brought forth
mythologies, on some level did believe that their nature was animated by divine spirits. As Artemidorus and
Pausanias said about the ancient Greeks, the “majority of the public . . . believe[d] what the tragedies sa[id] about
Prometheus, Niobe, and Theseus” (48). And in fact, these people even had important ceremonies that celebrated
the gods of nature. For instance, during the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were “the greatest of all ancient Greek
religious festivals” (Keller 29), they celebrated “Demeter and Persephone, mother and daughter nature goddesses”
(27). So, in any case, “believing” in a god-infused nature seems to have been more evident for them than it was
for Coleridge, who was, as we will see, threatened to be alienated from this nature by science.
Biesbrouck 66
scientific developments of his day (Holmes 151, McKusick 380, Adair 48-49). The problem
was that even though Coleridge was very interested in scientific insights, these were also
extremely troubling for him. “The world, as the scientists explained it, was . . . alien and
terrifying” to him because it was governed by a “ruthless and, apparently, impersonal force”
that “was difficult to reconcile with a personal God” (Adair 49). In fact, he “hated and feared
the disconnected meaningless universe of the mechanical philosophy and longed to be certain
of some spiritual power which would give unity and significance to the whole” (45).
Furthermore, as Raimonda Modiano observes, Coleridge “was a serious Christian in the 1790s
or later on,” but because of “the assaults on orthodox Christianity that came from various
philosophic, religious, and scientific quarters”, he often felt his “faith slipping away from him”
(190). This indicates that Coleridge’s view on nature was strongly influenced by the scientific
developments of his day, and that therefore the religious view of nature as animated and ruled
by gods could no longer be taken for granted.
Arguably, this is the reason why Coleridge did not depict the protagonist of The Rime
as someone who can challenge the divine cosmic order. There was simply a much greater need
to be fulfilled. He did not desire to change the animated divine order like the tricksters’ creators
did, but longed to establish that there actually is such an animated divine order. In the
Newtonian scientific view, the world is “a mechanism set in motion and left to run its course
by an uninvolved God”, “matter is inert”, and nature is “well ordered but largely uninhabited”
(Guthrie 57). In other words, the world is but “a mechanism”, and God only its “great
watchmaker” (Gérard 413). It is partly as a counter-reaction to this view of the world as inert
and largely uninhabited that Romantic authors like Coleridge attempted to re-animate nature in
their poetry. As Guthrie argues, English Romanticism, as “a reaction to Newtonian
mechanism”, is full of “animism”, to the extent that it can be seen as the “zenith” of animism
in “Western Literature” (57). In this light, it would have made little sense if Coleridge depicted
Biesbrouck 67
his Mariner as someone who successfully changes the cosmic order. The poet was concerned
with something much more urgent: re-animating the nature that science had declared dead.
That The Rime is indeed a counter-reaction to the scientific view on nature, and tries to
re-animate the inert nature of the eighteenth century, becomes clear when we consider the many
examples of animated nature (the “faces in the clouds”) in the Mariner’s universe. In the poem,
general natural phenomena seem very alive, and anthropomorphization is the rule rather than
the exception. Ice “growl[s]”, “roar[s]”, and “howl[s]” (59). Stars “rush” (1817:203), “dance[
]” and “hurr[y] about” (319, 317). And there is also the “STORM-BLAST” which seems
conscious and is much more agentive than the Mariner. It is referred to by the personal pronoun
“he”, strikes the mariners with his “wings”, “chase[s]” them (1817:41-44), and even “play[s]”
them “freaks” (47). In addition to that, the sun and the moon too are described as particularly
human-like. Like the storm-blast, both have gendered personal pronouns, as the sun is referred
to as “he” (30), and the moon as “she” (267). Furthermore, the sun “peers[s]”, can “fix[ ]” the
mariners’ ship “to the ocean”, has a “broad and burning face”, and is even compared to “God’s
own head” (178, 398, 172, 93, emphasis added). The moon, on her turn, “cl[i]mb[s]”,
“sojourn[s]”, has her “appointed rest”, a “native country” and a “natural home[ ]” (211,
1817:267, gloss). These examples show that the natural elements of the Mariner’s universe are
very anthropomorphic and therefore infused with life. In that sense, Coleridge’s depiction of
the natural elements in The Rime revives the dead elements of the “great watchmaker’s”
universe.
Of course, Coleridge did not only want to re-animate nature’s separate elements. He
also felt the need to re-animate nature as a whole. As Jerome J. McGann argues, the “early
documents” of Romantic literature show “a repeated concern to achieve various types of
harmonies, systems, and reconciliations” and “the feeling that the condition of harmony has to
be returned to, that the idea of unity has to be recovered or reborn” (40, emphasis in original).
Biesbrouck 68
This was certainly the case for Coleridge. In 1797, he wrote in a letter to his friend John
Thelwall:
I can at times feel strongly the beauties you describe, in
themselves and for themselves; but more frequently all things
appear little, all the knowledge that can be acquired child’s play;
the universe itself! what but an immense heap of little things? I
can contemplate nothing but parts, and parts are all little! My
mind feels as if it ached to behold and know something great,
something one and indivisible. And it is only in the faith of that
that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns, give me the sense
of sublimity or majesty! (“To Thelwall” 228, emphasis in
original).
This illustrates that Coleridge desired the presence of an overarching harmony in nature that
animates the whole rather than just its parts.
The Rime fulfils this wish. After all, the poem does more than blowing life into nature’s
separate elements. It shows a view of nature in which not only the parts are revived, but also
nature as a whole. Nature’s parts are not animated as individual parts, but as parts of the
harmonious unity to which they belong. As the first chapter of this paper has elaborately
discussed, this harmonious unity is the “One Life”. Importantly, such a view of nature as
regulated by the One Life limits human agency in the poem, because it means that people can
only act as long as their acts are in harmony with the whole. Anyone who challenges this cosmic
order (e.g. by shooting its Albatross), is expelled from it until he or she is reformed. In that
sense, the animated universe that Coleridge portrays is much more rigid than the one that the
tricksters’ creators depict. That this limits human agency in the poem, is not really problematic
for the author. Coleridge’s poem is not at all concerned with demonstrating humanity’s ability
Biesbrouck 69
to change the divine order. Rather, it is an expression of the much more urgent desire to revive
the divine harmony of the nature that science had proclaimed dead. Such a Romantic wish could
only be fulfilled by endowing nature with an animated force that unifies everything into a strong
harmonious whole.
4.1.3. Animated Nature as a Teacher
The Romantic need for a revival of animated nature (rather than for a trickster-like disruption
thereof) is also often expressed by depicting nature as a teacher, and the human subject as its
pupil. As Holmes remarks, in Lyrical Ballads “almost pedagogic importance was given to
nature as a moral and educative force, so that the ‘child of nature’ – whether young or old –
becomes in some sense the human ideal of the collection” (190).
In The Rime, originally the first poem in the volume, this is quite clear. As this paper
has shown, the Mariner is first dissonant with nature, then undergoes a spiritual rebirth and
redevelopment in which he realizes his dependence on this nature, and as a result of this he
eventually becomes a harmonious “child of nature” that preaches the One Life’s moral. His
close confrontation with nature, despite being traumatic, changes him from a dissonant
(shooting albatrosses) to a harmonious (blessing water-snakes) part of the cosmos. This shows
that, in The Rime, being subjected to the educative force of nature, horrifying as it may be for
the Mariner, makes one a better person.
This need to be educated by nature, rather than by science, is also illustrated in two other
poems by Coleridge that were published in Lyrical Ballads: “The Dungeon” and “The Foster
Mother’s Tale”. In “The Dungeon” Coleridge “argued that even a condemned criminal could
be reformed most effectively, not by imprisonment in a cell, but by releasing him into the
countryside and treating him as a ‘distempered child’ to be healed by nature’s ‘ministrations’”
(Holmes 190). The poem is about a man who was “a dissonant thing” until he was subjected to
Biesbrouck 70
the “soft influences” of nature’s “sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets”, and its
“melodies of woods, and winds, and waters” (22-26). After being confronted with these beauties
of nature, his “angry spirit healed and harmonized” (29). Just like The Rime, “The Dungeon”
depicts nature as having an educative force. Hereby it stresses humanity’s need to be
reconnected and harmonized with the beauties of nature, rather than its need to challenge the
divine natural order.
As we have seen, such a need to be reconnected with nature partly stems from the
alienation that was caused by eighteenth-century science, and this can be further illustrated by
means of an analysis of “The Foster Mother’s Tale”. This poem appears in the same volume as
“The Dungeon” (Lyrical Ballads) and is a fragment from the same play (Osorio), but is also its
reversal. Whereas “The Dungeon” illustrates the need to be in harmony with nature by showing
a positive reconnection, “The Foster Mother’s Tale” demonstrates this need by showing a
negative disconnection. It is the story of someone who was connected with nature at birth, but
got disconnected from this nature by learning from books (quite possibly science books). At
birth, he was “wrapt in mosses”, and even though he “never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead,”
he “knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes, / And whistled, as he were a bird himself”
(24-32). But as the boy “read, and read, and read” (42),
. . . his brain turned—and ere his twentieth year,
He had unlawful thoughts of many things:
And though he prayed, he never loved to pray
With holy men, nor in a holy place— (43-46)
Moreover, he confesses of “heretical and lawless talk” until he is “cast into” a prison “cellar”
(55-59). In this poem, “learning” from books seems to be a bad thing that corrupts people and
disconnects them from nature. This further illustrates that, in Coleridge’s poetry, the ideal
teacher is not a book, but nature itself. Once again, it shows that Coleridge’s main concern when
Biesbrouck 71
he first published The Rime was not challenging nature’s divine order, but advocating a
reconnection with it. In his poetry, nature is not portrayed as indifferent, dead, and inert, but as
a teacher-like animated force with which human beings have to be in harmony if they do not
want to become corrupted.
To summarize, part of the reason why the protagonist in The Rime lacks agency in
comparison with the trickster, is that the creators of the Mariner and the tricksters had very
different concepts of nature, and therefore also very different concerns. While Prometheus’,
Loki’s, Coyote’s, and other tricksters’ creators on a certain level believed that their nature was
governed by a divine order of gods and likely desired to challenge that order, this was much
less evident for Coleridge. Eighteenth-century science had taken the life out of nature, and one
of the main aspirations of the Romantic authors was to re-animate this nature. In The Rime, this
re-animation takes the form of anthropomorphizing the wind, sun, moon, stars, and other natural
elements, but it is also manifested by means of the One Life force with which the Mariner needs
to be in harmony. Furthermore, the ideal human subject is not someone who is enlightened by
(science) books, but someone who is educated by the harmonizing forces of nature. Nature is
no longer inert and godforsaken, but its parts are animated, its whole is animated, and it even
acts as a teacher. That this quite limits the Mariner’s powers to change the cosmic order is only
a small sacrifice if it means that the whole of nature can be revived. In short, Coleridge’s poem
is not about challenging the animated cosmos like trickster stories are, because it has a much
greater concern: re-animating it.
4.2. The Existential Need for a Connection with an Animated Nature
4.2.1. The Horrors of Cosmic Contingency
Now that it has been established that poems such as The Rime illustrate Coleridge’s desire to
re-animate nature, we can turn to the question where such a desire comes from. Arguably, it
stems from the human need to believe that we have a preordained place in the cosmos, and that
Biesbrouck 72
this anthropomorphic (and preferably benevolent) cosmos cares about what we do. In Sels’
words, human beings have “the implicit mythical idea . . . that the world, when it comes down
to it, should love and cherish” them (12). For this reason, Blumenberg “calls man ‘das gewollt
sein wollende Wesen’, ‘the being that wants to be wanted’” by its cosmos (12). Accordingly,
one of humanity’s greatest horrors is “contingency”, which is “the absolute opposite of this: the
total indifference of reality towards us and towards our suffering” (12). Sels goes on, saying
that “[t]he thought of the indifference of the world is so oppressive to us that we even prefer
the image of a world that is purposefully threatening and hostile – for this at least allows for the
notion of a relation, and therefore also a possible reconciliation” with it (12). If this is the case,
then humanity’s most important need is not to challenge the cosmos, but first and foremost to
have an actual relationship with that cosmos. One of its greatest horrors, on the other hand, is
the total lack of such a relation, and the consequent utter contingency or purposelessness of
humanity’s existence within the universe.
This fundamental human fear of cosmic contingency is a major theme in The Rime. As
Modiano argues, “the very uncertainty concerning the ruling deity in [the] world . . . represents
the greatest source of . . . existential perplexity and suffering” in Coleridge’s poem (205). If
there is no deity in the world, then there can be no overarching power that cares about what
human beings do. The world would be completely indifferent towards the Mariner’s sufferings.
And there are in fact several instances that illustrate this existential problem of cosmic
contingency in the poem.
A first example can be found in one of the glosses, which states that the Mariner, after
his disconnection from the One Life, “[i]n his loneliness and fixedness . . . yearneth towards
the journeying Moon and the stars that still sojourn” because these, unlike him, have “their own
natural homes” within the cosmos (1817:267, gloss). As Adair notes, this passage “expresses
not only [the Mariner’s] personal loneliness but [also] a deeper philosophical awareness of
Biesbrouck 73
man’s place in the cosmos. The moon and stars pursue their appointed paths in the heavens”
but the Mariner as a human being is “left outside, an eternal wanderer in a universe where he
has no assured place” (92).
Another example that demonstrates the fear of cosmic contingency in Coleridge’s poem
is that, after shooting the Albatross, the Mariner finds himself “As idle as a painted Ship / Upon
a painted Ocean” (113-114). Of course, this situation is problematic because it prevents the
Mariner from moving forward. But there is also a much greater, existential problem to be found
in this passage. The Mariner’s ship is “as a painted Ship / Upon a painted Ocean”. It is as if
God created (or indeed painted) the Mariner and his cosmos, and then left them, literally
godforsaken. This is reminiscent of the view of God as the “great watchmaker” (in this case a
“great painter”), which the Romantics dreaded so much (Gérard 413). And the lines that follow
the passage further illustrate why such a godforsakenness is so problematic. The Mariner
laments: “Water, water, every where, / Ne any drop to drink” and “The very deeps did rot”
(117-119). In the absence of God, the water imagery which conventionally represents life is not
life-supporting24. It is not only undrinkable, but also rotting, which is arguably – for human
beings at least – the opposite of life-supporting. This shows that being expelled into the Invisible
Realm, separated from the One Life, is horrifying for the Mariner because it confronts him with
a godforsaken universe where humanity has no place and human life cannot be sustained.
But perhaps the most important example that illustrates the dreadfulness of cosmic
contingency in The Rime is Life-in-Death as the devouring mother figure. As chapter 3.2.2. has
shown, this traumatic figure is described as a terrifying apparition whose “flesh makes the still
air cold” (200), and there are good reasons for this. According to Sels, “[t]he cultural image of
24
Notably, the water imagery becomes life-supporting again after the Mariner reconnects with the One Life by
blessing the water-snakes (289). When the Mariner “awoke it rain’d”, and he remarks “Sure I had drunken in my
dreams / And still my body drank” (302-306).
Biesbrouck 74
the parent is . . . inextricably and paradoxically connected with the problem of contingency and
the absolutism of reality” because “the very fact of having parents is a reminder and proof of
the fact that we ourselves hat no choice or control over our coming into being” (12).
Furthermore, “[h]ere also lies the origin, according to Blumenberg, for the archetype of the
devouring mother: she embodies contingency itself because she could just as well have made
the choice not to keep her child” (12). Life-in-Death indeed answers to this description of the
“devouring mother”. She too is a maternal figure (Williams 1121) who is strongly associated
with humanity’s cosmic contingency. It is only because she won him in a dice game with Death
that the Mariner is still alive. This proves that he himself “had no choice over [his] coming into
being”. Life-in-Death, like the devouring mother, “could just as well have made the choice not
to keep her child” and have killed the Mariner instead. In this way, the horrifying mother figure
Life-in-Death embodies the arbitrariness of human existence.
These three examples; the Mariner’s “yearn[ing] towards the journeying Moon and the
stars” (1817:267, gloss), his terrors of being “As idle as a painted Ship / Upon a painted Ocean”
(113-114), and his confrontation with the horrifying mother figure, illustrate that The Rime is
strongly occupied with humanity’s fear of cosmic contingency. Not surprisingly, these
instances all occur after the Mariner is disconnected from the One Life (by shooting the
Albatross) and expelled into the Invisible Realm. Because this realm has no ruling deity or One
Life, the Mariner’s experience within this realm makes him realize the contingency and
purposelessness of an existence within a godforsaken world. It confronts him with the fact that
his existence within this realm is not preordained and that therefore his human life has no certain
place or purpose.
Biesbrouck 75
4.2.2. Undoing Cosmic Contingency
Yet, the Romantic power of The Rime lies in its message that people can find a place and
purpose in the cosmos, by being in harmony with its One Life. The Mariner only experiences
his godforsakenness and cosmic contingency when he is in the Invisible Realm, disconnected
from nature’s One Life. And the didactic moral of the poem is that such a disconnection can be
undone, that the disconnected subject can reconnect with the cosmos’ One Life and hereby once
again become part of its harmonious whole.
As a start in illustrating this, we must once again look at the Mariner’s alienation from
nature, which is represented by his act of shooting the Albatross. It is an act that that is not
motivated by any natural instinct25, and through this act the Mariner even attacks the natural
order. The result of this is indeed that he becomes still further alienated from nature. As the first
chapter of this paper has shown, shooting the Albatross causes the Mariner to be expelled into
the Invisible Realm in which he is completely disconnected from the One Life, or, nature’s
benevolent harmonizing force. Consequently, he can no longer benefit from its wind and rain.
This makes him realize how dependent he actually is on nature, but it also makes him aware
that now, in the Invisible Realm, nature is completely indifferent towards his personal suffering.
In his own words, he is “all alone . . . on the wide wide Sea” and there is no “Christ” to take
“pity” on his “soul in agony” (234-237). The Mariner, through his alienation, becomes painfully
aware of the contingency of his own existence within the Invisible Realm.
However, the fact that the Mariner is further alienated from nature after shooting the
Albatross might ultimately mean that his human existence is not contingent at all.
Paradoxically, when the cosmos expels the Mariner into the Invisible Realm where his existence
does not matter, it punishes the Mariner, and is therefore not completely indifferent towards
25
We have seen that it is likely motivated by “original sin” (Adair 47). But even if we see this original sin as an
instinct, it is not a natural instinct. It is a sin precisely because it goes against the One Life’s natural order of things.
Biesbrouck 76
him. Arguably, the greatest possible horror for the author was not the severe punishment for
acts of cosmic dissonance (being expelled into the Invisible Realm), but the idea of not being
punished for these acts. Such a lack of punishment would prove that the cosmos is utterly
indifferent towards us as human subjects, and therefore we would have no assured place or
purpose within that cosmos. But luckily, the Mariner is punished. After his act of alienation,
the world can be seen as “purposefully threatening and hostile” (Sels 12) towards him, since it
then subjects him to the Invisible Realm where the One Life no longer cares about him, and
where he cannot benefit from the wind or rain. Even though this terrifies and even traumatizes
him, this is a good thing, because it means that there is at least a sort of “relation, and therefore
also a possible reconciliation” with the cosmos (12).
The point of the Mariner’s experience is that he does reconcile with this cosmos, by
blessing the water-snakes. Contrary to shooting albatrosses, blessing water-snakes seems to be
a good thing in the Mariner’s universe. Whereas the first act led to a separation from the One
Life (in the Invisible Realm), the second one leads to a reconnection with this One Life (in the
Visible Realm). As chapter 1.1. has illustrated, it leads to the fact that the Mariner can benefit
from nature’s laws again, as the wind starts blowing again, and it starts raining again. The reason
why blessing the water-snakes is so virtuous, is that it symbolizes that the Mariner’s attitude
has changed from dissonant with nature to harmonious with nature. And the vital point in The
Rime is that this new attitude26 gives him a place within the cosmos. He has evolved from acting
without motive (arbitrarily shooting Albatrosses) to acting with motive (blessing water-snakes
as following the One Life ideology), meaning that he has acquired an instinct, a way of being
in the world. In that sense, being reformed into someone who is in harmony with the One Life
is a positive thing for the Mariner, because it means that his existence is no longer without
guidance, no longer “contingent”.
26
The fact that the Mariner blesses the water-snakes “unaware” (287) indicates that the act is attitudinal.
Biesbrouck 77
Importantly, this depiction of the Mariner’s reformation might tell us something about
the author’s own desire for such a reformation. If trickster stories can be seen as the unconscious
expressions of their creators’ desire to challenge their cosmic order and to improve their
situation in nature27, then perhaps The Rime is an expression of Coleridge’s Romantic desire to
re-animate this nature and thereby restore humanity’s place within the cosmos. In this reading,
the Mariner shooting the Albatross represents humanity’s alienation from nature by eighteenthcentury industrialization and science. And accordingly, the Mariner blessing the water-snakes
represents the Romantic ideal of humanity reconnecting with this nature after realizing its
dependence on it. Ultimately, this reading shows that Coleridge’s depiction of the Mariner as
going through a psychological rebirth and redevelopment might be linked to his own
psychological needs. He too may be yearning to be reborn and redeveloped as a child of Mother
Nature28. He, like his mariner, is in a state of alienation from nature (a mechanical, scientific,
view of it) and longs for a (Romantic) reconnection with it.
27
See chapter 4.1.1. in the present paper.
28
It might be objected here that this rebirth and redevelopment is depicted as utterly traumatic (as chapter 3.2. has
illustrated). As such, it might seem odd that the author would want to go through the same process. However, what
makes the Mariner’s experience so horrifying, is not the actual rebirth and redevelopment in themselves (being
reformed into a child of nature after blessing the water-snakes), but the phase that leads to this (being within the
womb of nature after shooting the Albatross). In this phase, the Mariner is in a miserable state, because he is aware
of his dependence on his surroundings, while he is also disconnected from them. After his rebirth and
redevelopment, he is reconnected with these surroundings and hence no longer as miserable. In this bigger picture,
being reborn and redeveloped is a positive thing. Arguably, Coleridge already finds himself within the first phase—
the state of disconnection. He too is horrified in a sense, because he too – through eighteenth-century science –
has become disconnected from the nature on which he is so dependent. In this way, it does make sense that he
could be yearning for the rebirth and redevelopment that would reconnect him with his environment.
Biesbrouck 78
In sum, the reason for the difference in agency between the Mariner and the trickster
lies partly in the different world-views and the consequent different psychological needs of their
creators. Seeing their nature as animated, the tricksters’ creators interpreted the natural order as
ruled by gods, and could therefore be concerned with challenging this natural order and its gods.
This was much less the case for Coleridge, because eighteenth-century science had spread
serious doubts about whether there actually were such gods. As a result, he did not desire to
challenge the divine natural order, but rather to establish that there actually is one. This is part
of the general Romantic counter-reaction to the scientific view of a dead and inert nature. And
such a counter-reaction psychologically makes sense. Human beings have the existential need
for an assured place and purpose in the world, and this need can only be fulfilled if this world
is animated and cares about them. As a counter-reaction to the Newtonian view of nature,
Coleridge’s poem illustrates the horrors of a nature that does not care about its creatures. But it
also offers a Romantic alternative to this view, by showing the possibility of a reconciliation
with nature. Through the Mariner’s evolution from shooting to blessing nature’s creatures, it
makes clear that the only way for someone to have a place and purpose in the universe is by
being (re)connected with his or her environment. When this person is in harmony with nature,
he or she has a cosmic guideline to follow (the One Life ideology that we must love all God’s
creatures), and his or her existence is therefore no longer “contingent”. Considering this, it is
only logical that Coleridge did not depict his Mariner as someone who challenges the divine
order. The scientific view on nature had already challenged it way too much, and had even
proclaimed it dead. The author’s most urgent need, then, was to restore the belief that
humanity’s existence was not utterly without guidance. Hence, The Rime shows that it is better
to have a rigid divine order than to have no divine order at all. And we could even go as far as
to say that the Mariner’s psychological rebirth and redevelopment into someone who is more
in harmony with nature reflects the author’s own psychological need for such a reformation.
Biesbrouck 79
Conclusion
At the beginning of this paper, it was pointed out that Wordsworth, Coleridge’s friend, regretted
that The Rime has several “great defects”, of which two are that the Mariner “has no distinct
character” and that he “does not act, but is continually acted upon” (Lyrical Ballads 263).
However, a detailed study of the Mariner’s relation with his cosmic structure makes clear that
his lack of “distinct character” and his inability to “act” are much more than two simple
“defects” of the poem. As this paper has argued, they are the logical consequences of the poem’s
main concern: portraying a strong spiritual system in which the human subject is reharmonized
with nature. And even more importantly, a look at Coleridge’s historical background has
revealed that he had good reasons to depict the Mariner and his cosmos in this way. It is part of
his Romantic attempt to revive the nature that science had proclaimed dead.
As a first step in illustrating this, the present paper has considered in what ways the
Mariner’s lack of agency is a result of the world-view that his author depicts. In order to do
this, it focused primarily on Coleridge’s concept of the “One Life”, a spiritual force that
harmonizes everything in nature. It was shown that the universe of The Rime is dominated by
this One Life force and that therefore the Mariner’s agency is quite limited. This can already be
gathered from the poem’s main narrative, which indicates that being dissonant with the One
Life is a horror (being expelled into the Invisible Realm), whereas being in harmony with it is
a bliss (being allowed to stay within the Visible Realm). But also a consideration of the wind
and weight motif and the Hermit have helped to illustrate this. The wind and weight motif
makes clear that, in The Rime, human beings can only benefit from nature’s wind if they are in
harmony with the One Life. Hence, they can only move in the direction that this force dictates.
And the Hermit further highlights this need for cosmic harmony in the sense that he, as a “holy
Man” (621) who is in complete harmony with the One Life, functions as the poem’s role model.
From these examples, it is clear that the divine One Life system in the Mariner’s cosmic
Biesbrouck 80
structure strongly pushes its particles towards a certain unity, and that therefore the Mariner’s
lack of agency is inseparably linked to the world-view that his author depicts.
As a next step, this paper further illustrated the Mariner’s lack of agency by comparing
him with the mythological trickster figure. Since both The Rime and trickster myths are about
the power relations between a human-like subject and his or her cosmic order, such a
juxtaposition proved to be particularly revealing. It demonstrated that, despite their numerous
similarities, the Mariner and the trickster are each other’s antithesis. More specifically, it made
clear that even though they both are boundary-crossers, guides of souls, eternal travellers, and
messengers from the gods, they are each other’s opposite where agency is concerned. For
instance, whereas the trickster can penetrate into the realm of the gods, the Mariner only ends
up being expelled from the One Life. While the trickster leads to a change in the cosmic order,
the Mariner leads to an affirmation of this order. And whereas the trickster sometimes manages
to bring language to humankind (Hyde 76), the Mariner fails miserably at this even after sucking
his own blood. This striking opposition regarding agency was also confirmed by a comparison
between the Mariner and two specific tricksters: Prometheus and Loki. The Mariner’s story
essentially has the same narrative structure as Hesiod’s Prometheus myth (an act of hubris,
punishment, an attempt to undo that punishment, and further punishment involving the arrival
of a femme fatale), but it deviates from the Promethean structure at the point of agency. For
instance, whereas Prometheus can catalyse change in his cosmic structure by bringing fire to
humankind, it is outside the Mariner’s power to bring back the wind or rain. And similarly, the
Mariner’s story corresponds to the myth of Loki killing Baldr in the sense that both are about
an attempt to harm the cosmic order by means of nature’s joints. However, whereas Loki
manages to harm and reform the divine order, the Mariner ends up being reformed himself.
Ultimately, this comparison has proven to be useful because it illustrates that Coleridge and the
tricksters’ creators were both occupied with the same issue: our relation with the cosmic order.
Biesbrouck 81
But, more importantly, this study also shows the radical differences between their concepts of
this order. While the tricksters’ creators depicted a “weakened spiritual system” (Hyde 189),
Coleridge’s is a rigid one that will not bend. In other words, while trickster myths represent a
possibility of changing the cosmos, The Rime highlights our dependence on that cosmos.
After this paper established that the Mariner is dependent on his surroundings to the
extent that he is the trickster’s antithesis, it moved on to the question why this is the case. From
an exploration of the Mariner’s psychology it became apparent that part of the answer lies in
the fact that he is going through a mental rebirth and redevelopment. It was argued that his seafaring journey takes him to a womb-like realm and that he hereby regresses into a pre-oedipal
developmental stage that is characterized by the use of the semiotic mode of discourse. These
observations are of vital importance in an analysis of the Mariner’s lack of agency, because
both the womb and the semiotic mode are strongly associated with a dependence on the mother
(Kristeva 136). Hence, they explain why the Mariner is so dependent on his surroundings, or,
Mother Nature during his journey on the sea. Apart from that, it was also rewarding to have a
look at the traumatic nature of his experience. As trauma theory explains, when an event is too
overwhelming, the mind fails to grasp what is happening at the moment of perception and
therefore gets stuck in the experience (Laub 69). This indeed proved to be the case for the
Mariner. The return to the maternal womb and the semiotic order was so horrifying and
overwhelming that he remains mentally entrapped in this regressive stage. The mother figure
Life-in-Death has won his soul, and the Mariner’s ballad indicates that he has never truly left
the semiotic order. He has not managed to re-enter the realm of subjectivity, but instead finds
himself stuck on the boundary stage of re-entrance, trapped in a liminal space where he is still
dependent on his surroundings. This means that the point of Coleridge’s poem is not to portray
someone who actively challenges his cosmic order, but someone who is reborn and redeveloped
as a person who is permanently aware of his dependence on Mother Nature.
Biesbrouck 82
Most important of all, an analysis of the author’s historical background illuminated that
his depiction of the Mariner’s rebirth and redevelopment in nature could very well voice his
own desire for such a reconnection with nature. For Coleridge, eighteenth-century science had
spread serious doubts about humanity’s place and purpose in the universe, because it had
declared the whole cosmos a dead and soulless mechanism (Adair 45, Guthrie 57, Gérard 413).
Arguably, this is why he did not make the Mariner someone who changes the cosmic order like
the trickster does. His Romantic reaction to the alienating scientific world-view was not to
challenge the cosmic order further, but to revive it, and to depict humanity as being reconnected
with it. In The Rime, this is done by re-animating nature’s parts (anthropomorphizing the natural
elements) as well as its whole (infusing it with the One Life), and by portraying nature as a
teacher who puts the human subject through a rebirth and redevelopment. Remarkably, a
consideration of Blumenberg’s idea that humanity is “das gewollt sein wollende Wesen” (Sels
12) reveals that this Romantic reaction is psychologically motivated. Human beings have an
existential need for a preordained place and purpose in the cosmos (12), and when science
declares this cosmos dead and soulless, this results in major existential fears. After all, it means
that there is no overarching power that cares about what we do. In The Rime, these fears are
voiced through the Mariner’s realization of his cosmic contingency after he becomes alienated
from nature and its One Life by shooting the Albatross. But Coleridge’s Romantic poem also
provides an antidote against this alienation from nature, and shows that it is possible to be
reharmonized with it. In the poem, this is symbolized by the Mariner’s act of blessing the watersnakes. By doing so, he reconnects with the One Life and realizes his need to be in harmony
with nature. As a result, his existence is no longer without guidance, no longer “contingent”.
This reformation of the Mariner is particularly important, because it can be seen as representing
the author’s own desire for such a reformation. The act of shooting the Albatross can easily be
read as the eighteenth century who “murder[s] to dissect” nature (Wordsworth, “The Tables
Biesbrouck 83
Turned” 28), and the act of blessing the water-snakes as the Romantic Movement’s attempt at
reviving this nature and being reconnected with it. In that sense, Coleridge’s poem is an
expression of the Romantic longing for a return to the pre-Enlightenment view on nature, and
represents the author’s own desire for humanity’s rebirth and redevelopment as a “child of
nature” (Holmes 190).
Thus a study of the Mariner’s relation with his environment illustrates that his lack of
“distinct character” and his inability to “act” are part of a much greater concern that is raised
by Coleridge’s poem; humanity’s place and purpose within the cosmos. They are part of the
author’s attempt at portraying a strong and animated cosmic structure that gives humanity an
actual guideline of how to live. The Rime, like trickster myths, depicts our relation with the
cosmic order. However, Coleridge’s poem is also critically different from these trickster myths
in the sense that its focus is not on our ability to change the natural order, but rather on reviving
and reinforcing the spiritual system that had been put in ruins by science. It advocates a spiritual
rebirth and redevelopment for humanity, hoping that this could lead to a restoration of its
relation with nature, and undo the fear of cosmic contingency. The Mariner’s agency, then, is
only a small price to pay, because it leads to an invaluable existential comfort: the feeling that
humanity can in fact have a preordained place and purpose in a world that cares about its
existence. In that sense, the main concern of The Rime continues to be relevant today, because,
after all, “[t]he world, as the scientists explained it”, was not only “alien and terrifying” for
Coleridge, but “in our own day, has become more fearful still” (Adair 49).
Biesbrouck 84
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