Samuel Coleridge "The Tale of the Old Mariner". Doré and Wilson

And first published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Earliest literary adaptation of the legend of the Flying Dutchman. Freely translated into Russian by N. S. Gumilyov in 1919.

Plot

... After sailing from the port, the main character's ship got into a storm, which carried him far to the South, to Antarctica. An albatross, considered a good omen, appears and takes the ship out of the ice. However, the sailor kills the bird with a crossbow, without knowing why. His comrades scold him for this, but when the fog that enveloped the ship clears, they change their minds. But soon the ship falls into a dead calm, and the sailor is accused of bringing a curse on everyone.

Days after days, days after days
We are waiting, our ship is sleeping,
Like painted water
Drawn is worth it.

Water, water, one water.
But the vat is upside down;
Water, water, one water
We don't drink anything.

In the end, he sees in the water around the ship sea creatures, which he used to call only “slimy creatures”, and having begun to see, he blesses them all and all living things in general. The curse disappears, and as a sign of that, the albatross breaks from his neck:

At that moment I could pray:
And finally from the neck
Breaking off, sunk Albatross
Into the abyss like lead.

Rain pours from the sky and quenches the sailor's thirst, his ship sails straight home, disobeying the wind, led by the angels who have inhabited the bodies of the dead. Having brought the sailor home, the ship disappears with the crew in a whirlpool, but nothing is finished yet, and Life-in-Death makes the sailor wander the earth, telling his story and its lesson everywhere as an edification:

He prays, who loves everything -
Creation and creation;
Then that the god who loves them
Above this creature is a king.

Meaning

"The Poem of the Old Sailor" is considered the starting point for the development of English Romanticism. It is notable for its deliberately archaic language and ingenious use of nearly every language known to early XIX centuries of poetic devices, including complicated alliteration and even cacophony ( With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape…). Examples from The Old Sailor are often given in English-language prosody manuals.

Responding to the complaints of the first reviewers regarding the complexity of the language, sometimes obscuring the meaning of the poem, Coleridge revised the text for subsequent editions of the Lyric Ballads. In addition, he provided the work with lengthy comments.

references

In 1925, based on the poem, the feature film The Old Sailor was staged.

Based on the poem, with quotes from it, the English metal band Iron Maiden wrote a 13-minute song "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in 1984, which was included in the Powerslave album. The song retells the plot of the poem in full and quotes two fragments from it as verses.

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An excerpt characterizing the Tale of the Old Sailor

Pierre looked at her carefully.
“Yes, and nothing else,” Natasha confirmed.
“Not true, not true,” Pierre shouted. - It's not my fault that I'm alive and want to live; and you too.
Suddenly Natasha put her head in her hands and began to cry.
What are you, Natasha? - said Princess Mary.
- Nothing, nothing. She smiled through her tears at Pierre. - Goodbye, it's time for bed.
Pierre got up and said goodbye.

Princess Marya and Natasha, as always, met in the bedroom. They talked about what Pierre said. Princess Mary did not express her opinion about Pierre. Natasha didn't talk about him either.
“Well, goodbye, Marie,” said Natasha. - You know, I am often afraid that we do not talk about him (Prince Andrei), as if we are afraid to humiliate our feelings, and forget.
Princess Mary sighed heavily, and with that sigh she acknowledged the truth of Natasha's words; but in words she did not agree with her.
– Is it possible to forget? - she said.
- It was so good for me today to tell everything; and hard, and painful, and good. Very well, - said Natasha, - I'm sure that he definitely loved him. From that I told him… nothing that I told him? – suddenly blushing, she asked.
- Pierre? Oh no! How beautiful he is,” said Princess Mary.
“You know, Marie,” Natasha suddenly said with a playful smile, which Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long time. - He became somehow clean, smooth, fresh; just from the bath, you understand? - morally from the bath. Truth?
“Yes,” said Princess Marya, “he won a lot.
- And a short frock coat, and cropped hair; for sure, well, for sure from the bathhouse ... dad, it happened ...
“I understand that he (Prince Andrei) did not love anyone as much as he did,” said Princess Mary.
- Yes, and he is special from him. They say that men are friendly when they are very special. It must be true. Doesn't he really look like him at all?
Yes, and wonderful.
“Well, goodbye,” Natasha answered. And the same playful smile, as if forgotten, remained on her face for a long time.

Pierre could not sleep for a long time that day; he walked up and down the room, now frowning, pondering something difficult, suddenly shrugging his shoulders and shuddering, now smiling happily.
He thought about Prince Andrei, about Natasha, about their love, and then he was jealous of her past, then he reproached, then he forgave himself for it. It was already six o'clock in the morning, and he kept walking around the room.
“Well, what to do. If you can't live without it! What to do! So it must be so,” he said to himself, and, hastily undressing, went to bed, happy and excited, but without doubts or indecisions.
“It is necessary, strange as it may seem, no matter how impossible this happiness is, everything must be done in order to be husband and wife with her,” he said to himself.
A few days before this, Pierre had appointed the day of his departure for Petersburg on Friday. When he woke up on Thursday, Savelich came to him for orders to pack things for the journey.
“How to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is in Petersburg? – involuntarily, though to himself, he asked. “Yes, something long, long ago, even before this happened, for some reason I was going to go to Petersburg,” he recalled. - From what? I will go, maybe. What a kind, attentive, how he remembers everything! he thought, looking at Savelich's old face. And what a nice smile! he thought.
“Well, you still don’t want to be free, Savelich?” Pierre asked.
- Why do I need, Your Excellency, will? Under the late count, the kingdom of heaven, we lived and we don’t see any offense with you.
- Well, what about the children?
- And the children will live, your excellency: you can live for such gentlemen.
“Well, what about my heirs?” Pierre said. "Suddenly I'll get married ... It might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.
- And I dare to report: a good thing, Your Excellency.
“How easy he thinks,” thought Pierre. He doesn't know how scary it is, how dangerous it is. Too soon or too late… Scary!”
- How would you like to order? Would you like to go tomorrow? Savelich asked.
- Not; I will postpone a little. I'll tell you then. Excuse me for the trouble, ”said Pierre, and looking at Savelich’s smile, he thought:“ How strange, however, that he does not know that now there is no Petersburg and that first of all it is necessary that this be decided. However, he certainly knows, but only pretends. Talk to him? What does he think? thought Pierre. No, sometime later.

- (Coleridge, Samuel Taylor) SAMUEL TAYLOR COLRIGE (1772 1834), English poet, philosopher, literary critic. He was born on October 21, 1772 in the town of Ottery Saint Mary (Devonshire) and was the youngest of ten children of D. Coleridge, parish priest ... ... Collier Encyclopedia

- (Coleridge) (1772-1834), English poet and literary critic. Representative of the "lake school". In the poems "The Tale of the Old Sailor" (in the collection "Lyric Ballads", 1798, together with W. Wordsworth), "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" (both 1816) the theme ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

The Old Mariner The Ancient Mariner Genre Romance Director Chester Bennet Henry Otto Starring Clara Bow ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Peak. Peake, Mervyn Mervyn Laurence Peake Date of birth: July 9, 1911 (1911 07 09) Place of birth ... Wikipedia

Peake, Mervyn Mervyn Laurence Peake (eng. Mervyn Laurence Peake; July 9, 1911 November 17, 1968) English writer, poet, playwright and artist. M. Pick is known primarily as the author of three books about Titus Groan, often combined with the title ... ... Wikipedia

The Ancient Mariner Genre Romance Director Chester Bennet Henry Otto Starring Clara Bow ... Wikipedia

"Coleridge" redirects here; see also other meanings. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Little Dorrit (TV series). Little Dorrit ... Wikipedia

- (Coleridge) Samuel Taylor (1772 1834), English poet and critic. In the poems The Legend of the Old Sailor (in the collections Lyrical Ballads, 1798, together with W. Wordsworth), Christabel and Kubla Khan (both 1816) themes of the fatal disunity of people, ... ... Modern Encyclopedia

Books

Coleridge - Poems, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The fate of Coleridge the poet was paradoxical. For a long time he experienced the rapid flowering of his work, covering not much more than one decade at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this…

“The Poem of the Old Sailor” tells about supernatural events that happened to a sailor during a long voyage. He tells about this much later to a random interlocutor, whom he distracted from the wedding procession. After sailing from the port, the ship of the protagonist got into a storm, which carried him far to the South, to Antarctica. An albatross, considered a good omen, appears and takes the ship out of the ice. However, the sailor kills the bird with a crossbow, without knowing why. His comrades scold him for this, but when the fog that enveloped the ship clears, they change their minds. But soon the ship falls into a dead calm, and the sailor is accused of bringing a curse on everyone.

As a token of his guilt, the corpse of an albatross was hung around his neck. The calm continues, the team suffers from thirst. Eventually a ghost ship appears, on board which Death plays dice with Life-in-Death for the souls of the ship's crew. Death wins everyone except the protagonist, who goes to Life-in-Death. One by one, all two hundred of the sailor's comrades die, and the sailor is tormented for seven days by seeing their eyes full of eternal damnation. In the end, he sees in the water around the ship sea creatures, which he used to call only “slimy creatures”, and having begun to see, he blesses them all and all living things in general. The curse vanishes, and as a token, the albatross falls from his neck.

“The Tale of the Old Sailor” tells about the connection of the human visible world with the spiritual invisible. In the strange story of the sailor, one can see a parable about the relationship of man with God and the state of mankind before the coming of Christ and after He was crucified. Coleridge emphasizes the connection with the Bible with a parable style of narration and glosses that comment on the text, like commentaries that accompany the text of Holy Scripture in the margins. The old man's story is a story about a sea voyage, a romantic odyssey for a lonely soul.

The story consists of seven parts. Based on the plot of the Legend, the compositional division can be imagined as follows: the beginning of the path, the commission of a sin (killing an albatross). punishment for sin, atonement. It is also worth taking into account the structure of the work - “a story within a story” (an old sailor meets a wedding guest and tells him his story).

The Marriage Guest is a person who can understand the spiritual essence of the Sailor's story, a person whose soul can enter into marriage union with the Truth, God Himself. The Tale of the Old Sailor should open the door to the Kingdom of Heaven for the reader (the Wedding Guest), in the sense that he must abandon earthly wisdom and turn to heavenly wisdom, in union with which he can find salvation.

The Sailor's story unfolds against the background of wedding music sounding from the Bridegroom's house, which directly gives the earthly wedding a high spiritual sound of its heavenly counterpart. The Sailor himself later unwittingly blesses the water snakes, which frees him from power. dark forces. Thus, both the Wedding Guest and the Sailor operate under the influence of spiritual forces that differ from each other.

An old man stops three young people going to a village wedding in order to tell them the tragic story of his life, and through it - to connect them to the spiritual awareness of human life.

In Coleridge's poem, the wise Navigator, with his story, replaces the fun at the earthly wedding feast for the listener with eating the fruits of divine wisdom - that is, the wedding feast in the house of the Heavenly Father. At the same time, the Mariner directly calls his chosen listener the Marriage Guest, who has no other name. The Marriage Guest is an allegorical character. The sailor “finds” three young men on the road, but chooses, stops only one of them, the “chosen one” (“many are called, but few are chosen”).

The journey of the ship marks the main spiritual epochs in the development of mankind: people joyfully begin their journey, but soon a storm overtakes them, and they find themselves frozen in a country where there is nothing alive. The storm is described with the help of a number of personifications: he is a terrible tyrant who unexpectedly seizes the ship and drives it with his wings (there is an image of a huge terrible bird). So, people find themselves in the hands of the enemy, who drives them into the valley of death, where ice and the roar of the wind surround them. The symbolism of the scene is also obvious: humanity, under the power of dark forces, finds itself on the wrong path and comes to a dead end.

Cold, snow, blizzard, ice traditionally embody a cold cruel heart, danger and death. This symbolic row is rooted in folk art.

Jesus Christ is both God and man; Albatross behaves both like a bird and like a person. At the same time, answering the question of why the Albatross was killed is even more difficult than understanding why Christ was crucified. Both in the Bible and in Coleridge's poem, the death of the Savior is shrouded in mystery, not everything in it is accessible to logical understanding. The sailor himself does not understand why he killed the bird: he behaves as if “someone owns his will”, but this “someone” is clearly evil force reigning in the ice. In the Mariner and the ship's crew, one can see an analogue of the Jerusalem crowd, which first greeted Christ at the entrance to Jerusalem, and then, a few days later, shouted with the same enthusiasm: “Crucify him! Crucify!”

Likewise, the team, at first accepts the Albatross with great joy, feeds him from his hand, plays with him. With the appearance of the bird, the ice moves apart and frees the way for the ship to the north. The opposition of the two sides of the world is also symbolic: the ship finds itself in ice captivity at south pole, i.e. below on the cartographic vertical, which symbolizes the bottom, the underworld spiritual world; Albatross, on the other hand, takes the ship to the north, that is, up (both on the map and in the spiritual dimension).

And then, unexpectedly for himself, the Sailor kills the bird-savior. The hero himself admits that he committed a "hellish thing" (hellish thing), he himself is horrified by what he has done. The reaction of the team to the killing of the bird reveals the pragmatic attitude of people towards the savior. At first, the sailors are indignant at what they have done, because a bird has been killed, which brought with it a breeze that brought the ship out of confinement in the ice. But as soon as the fog envelops the ship, the sailors dramatically change their attitude towards the murder: now the Albatross is a bird that brought the fog, in which not a single light is visible, which means that its murder was justified. The team is just as quickly changing its attitude towards the savior, as the Mariner did before them, and even earlier - the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The image of a repentant thief is universal and is a symbol of any repentant sinner. And since there is no person who would live his life and not sin, the image of a repentant sinner can be applied to any person. Old Sailor wanders around the world, telling the story of his crime to people. After the killing of the bird, a whole series of changes followed in nature and in the state of the ship. A bloody sun appeared in the sky, everything suddenly froze and stopped, as if life itself had stopped, as if the whole universe had died with the death of the Albatross.

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Ticket number 18 The legend of the old sailor S.T. Coleridge: plot, composition, images and ideas

Plot

"The Poem of the Old Sailor" tells of supernatural events that happened to a sailor during a long voyage. He tells about this much later to a random interlocutor, whom he distracted from the wedding procession. After sailing from the port, the ship of the protagonist got into a storm, which carried him far to the South, to Antarctica. An albatross, considered a good omen, appears and takes the ship out of the ice. However, the sailor kills the bird with a crossbow, without knowing why. His comrades scold him for this, but when the fog that enveloped the ship clears, they change their minds. But soon the ship falls into a dead calm, and the sailor is accused of bringing a curse on everyone.

"The Tale of the Old Sailor" tells about the connection between the human visible world and the spiritual invisible. In the strange story of the sailor, one can see a parable about the relationship of man with God and the state of mankind before the coming of Christ and after He was crucified. Coleridge emphasizes the connection with the Bible with a parable style of narration and glosses that comment on the text, like commentaries that accompany the text of Holy Scripture in the margins. The old man's tale is a story about a sea voyage, a romantic odyssey for a lonely soul.

Composition

The story consists of seven parts. Based on the plot of the Legend, the compositional division can be imagined as follows: the beginning of the path, committing a sin (killing an albatross), punishment for sin, redemption. It is also worth taking into account the structure of the work - “a story within a story” (an old sailor meets a wedding guest and tells him his story).

Images, ideas

The Sailor's story unfolds against the background of wedding music sounding from the Bridegroom's house, which directly gives the earthly wedding a high spiritual sound of its heavenly counterpart. The Sailor himself later unwittingly blesses the water snakes, which frees him from the power of dark forces. Thus, both the Wedding Guest and the Sailor operate under the influence of spiritual forces that differ from each other.

An old man stops three young people going to a village wedding in order to tell them the tragic story of his life, and through it - to connect them to the spiritual awareness of human life.

In Coleridge's poem, the wise Navigator, with his story, replaces the joy of the listener at the earthly wedding feast with the tasting of the fruits of divine wisdom - i.e. wedding feast in the house of the Heavenly Father. At the same time, the Mariner directly calls his chosen listener the Marriage Guest, who has no other name. The Marriage Guest is an allegorical character. The sailor “finds” three young men on the road, but chooses, stops only one of them, the “chosen one” (“many are called, but few are chosen”).

Cold, snow, blizzard, ice traditionally embody a cold cruel heart, danger and death. This symbolic row is rooted in folk art.

Jesus Christ is both God and man; Albatross behaves both like a bird and like a person. At the same time, answering the question of why the Albatross was killed is even more difficult than understanding why Christ was crucified. Both in the Bible and in Coleridge's poem, the death of the Savior is shrouded in mystery, not everything in it is accessible to logical understanding. The sailor himself does not understand why he killed the bird: he behaves as if "someone owns his will", but this "someone" is clearly an evil force that reigns in the ice. In the Mariner and the ship's crew, one can see an analogue of the Jerusalem crowd, which first greeted Christ at the entrance to Jerusalem, and then, a few days later, shouted with the same enthusiasm: “Crucify him! Crucify!"

Likewise, the team, at first accepts the Albatross with great joy, feeds him from his hand, plays with him. With the appearance of the bird, the ice moves apart and frees the way for the ship to the north. The opposition of the two sides of the world is also symbolic: the ship is trapped in ice near the South Pole, i.e. below on the cartographic vertical, which symbolizes the bottom, the underworld of the spiritual world; Albatross, on the other hand, leads the ship to the north, i.e. up (both on the map and in the spiritual dimension).

The image of a repentant thief is universal and is a symbol of any repentant sinner. And since there is no person who would live his life and not sin, the image of a repentant sinner can be applied to any person. The Old Mariner roams the world, telling the story of his crime to people. After the killing of the bird, a whole series of changes followed in nature and in the state of the ship. A bloody sun appeared in the sky, everything suddenly froze and stopped, as if life itself had stopped, as if the whole universe had died with the death of the Albatross.

Samuel Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, another translation of The Old Sailor's Poem. A poem by the English poet Samuel Coleridge "The Tale of the Old Sailor", written in the years 1797-1799 and first published in the first edition of "Lyrical Ballads". The earliest literary adaptation of the legend of the Flying Dutchman. Freely translated into Russian by N. S. Gumilyov in 1919.

Samuel Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Illustrated by Gustave Doré.

Coleridge by Andrew Lang.
Published 1898 by Longmans, Green, & co. in London, New York.
Illustrated by Patten Wilson. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Samuel Coleridge "The Tale of the Old Mariner". Artist Patten Wilson.

This poem is central to Coleridge's legacy. A traveler going to a wedding feast is suddenly stopped by an old man who attracts attention with his unusual appearance and hypnotic gaze. This is an old sailor who has committed a serious crime and is forced by command higher powers redeem him with a story about his act. During a long voyage, he killed the sacred bird albatross and thereby brought terrible punishments on himself and his comrades. The crew of the ship perishes in torment, the sea begins to rot, along which the dead ship, inhabited by ghosts, floats.
Only one old sailor remains alive, but he is haunted by visions. The traveler is shocked by the story of the old sailor; he forgets the wedding feast and all the cares of life. The story of the old sailor reveals a secret to the traveler, surrounding a person in life. In The Tale of the Old Sailor, the romantic critique of urban civilization is carried to its extreme limit. The business city world seems as dead as a graveyard; the activity of its inhabitants is illusory, that Life-in-Death, the image of which is one of the most powerful in the poem. Full of deep meaning for Coleridge and admiration for nature as a "harmonic system of Movement." The killing of an albatross, which breaks this harmony, takes on a symbolic meaning in the poem.
This is a crime against Life itself. In the philosophical and poetic context, the punishment that comprehends the Sailor is understandable: having willfully violated the great harmony of being, he pays for this by alienation from people. At the same time, the meaning of that episode of the "Tale" becomes clear, where the Navigator resurrects with his soul, admiring the bizarre game of sea snakes. Some artistic dissonance is the instructive lines of the finale of the work. To convey the tragedy of loneliness, Coleridge makes extensive use of "suggestive" techniques: allusions, omissions, fleeting but meaningful symbolic details. Coleridge was the first of the English romantics to introduce into "high" poetry a free, "wrong" tonic meter, independent of the count of syllables and subject only to the rhythm of stresses, the number of which fluctuates in each line.

"I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible beings in the universe. But who will explain to us all their multitude, character, mutual and family ties, features and properties of each? What are they doing? Where do they live? The human mind has only skimmed over the answers to these questions, but has never grasped them. However, there is no doubt that it is pleasant sometimes to draw to your mind's eye, as in a picture, an image of a larger and better world: so that the mind, accustomed to the little things of everyday life, does not close itself in too narrow limits and does not plunge entirely into small thoughts. But at the same time, we must constantly remember the truth and observe due measure, so that we can distinguish the reliable from the unreliable, day from night.
- Thomas Barnet. Philosophy of antiquity, p. 68 (lat.)

Where did it all start?
The reason for the creation of this poem may have been the second exploratory expedition of James Cook (1772-1775) South Seas and the Pacific Ocean. Former mentor Coleridge, William Wayles was an astronomer on Cook's flagship and was in close contact with the captain. On his second expedition, Cook repeatedly went beyond the Antarctic Arctic Circle to see if the legendary southern continent existed.
Critics have also suggested that the inspiration for the poem may have been Thomas James' voyage to the Arctic. Some critics are inclined to believe that Coleridge used James' description of hardship and suffering in creating The Old Mariner's Tale.

According to William Wordsworth, the idea for the poem arose during walking tour Coleridge, Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy through the Quontok Hills in Somerset in the spring of 1798. The conversation turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading at the time, " Trip around the world across the Great South Sea" (1726), written by Captain George Shelvock. In the book, a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley, shoots a black albatross:

"We have all noticed that since we approached the southern straits of the sea, we have not seen a single fish, not a single seabird, except for the inconsolable black albatross, which accompanied us for several days until Hatley, (my second captain) did not notice in one of his attacks of melancholy that this bird was constantly hovering near us, and did not imagine, judging by its color, that this must be an omen of some kind of misfortune ... After several unsuccessful attempts, he shot the albatross, not doubting that after that the wind will be favorable to us."

During a discussion of Shellock's book, Wordsworth suggested to Coleridge the following development of the plot, which basically boiled down to the patron spirit: "Suppose you picture how a sailor killed one of these birds while sailing into the South Sea, and how the patron spirits of these places took over burden to avenge the crime." By the time the trio had finished their walk, the poem had taken shape. Bernard Martin states in the article "The Old Mariner and true story that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of the Anglican clergyman John Newton, who suffered a near-death experience aboard a slave ship.

The poem may have been inspired by the myth of Ahasuerus, or the Eternal Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until the Day of Judgment for mocking Christ on the day of the crucifixion, as well as the legend of the Flying Dutchman.

The poem received mixed reviews from critics, and the publisher once told Coleridge that most of the books were sold to sailors who thought it was a naval songbook. In later years, Coleridge made some changes to the poem. In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800, he replaced many archaic words.