The killing of the Albatross

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Is the longest major poem written in 1797-1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads.

It recounts the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story.

Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.

In September 2003, a commemorative statue, by Alan B. Herriot of Penicuik, was unveiled at Watchet harbour.

Inspiration for the poem :

• Critics have also suggested that the poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic.

The poem may have been inspired by James Cook's second voyage of exploration of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean.

According to Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wordsworth's sister were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset.

The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until Judgement Day .

• Bernard Martin argues in The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of John Newton.

Coleridge's comment

The thought suggested itself that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, incidents and agents were to be supernatural, and the excellence aimed [...] by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. [...] For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life. In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest [...] for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. ... With this view I wrote the Ancient Mariner.

Version of the poem

The first published version of the poem was in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The second edition of this anthology in 1800 included a revised text, requested by Coleridge.

The 1802 and 1805 editions of Lyrical Ballads had minor textual changes. In 1817 Coleridge's Sibylline Leaves anthology included a new version with an extensive marginal gloss.The last version he produced was in 1834.

Is as an “allusion to the fragmentary and widely scattered state in which the poems have been long suffered to remain”. The Sibyls, had the power of prophecy and would write their predictions on leaves. The inscribed leaves would then be left by the Sibyl at the mouth of the cave where she dwelt. If they were not quickly collected by the person who had consulted her, the wind would scatter the leaves and their meaning, already obscure and open to multiple interpretations.

More recently scholars look to the earliest version, even in manuscript, as the most authoritative but for this poem no manuscript is extant.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE POEM

THE STRUCTURE

- The text is in short ballad stanzas that are usually four or six lines long, but some reach as many as nine lines in length

- The meter is only sometimes structured

- The odd lines are usually in tetrameter while the even lines are in trimeter

-The rhyme scheme is usually either ABAB or ABABAB but there are some alterations, for instance some stanzas rhyme ABCCB or ABAAB

FIGURES OF SPEECH

THE LANGUAGE

THE LANGUAGE

RHETORICAL QUESTION:

“What manner of man art thou?”, “That signal made but now?” and “Is this the hill? Is this the kirk?”

ENJAMBEMENT:

“Laughed loud and long, and all the while

His eyes went to and fro.”

METAPHOR:

The entire poem is an extended metaphor for a supernatural theme, an allusion to Christ’s death and sacrifices through the Mariner’s life and adventure. Albatross is a metaphor for a mental burden or curse. In “spring of love gushed from my heart” is ‘spring of love’ is a metaphor for love and attraction.

PERSONIFICATION:

“The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right, Went down into the sea.”

SIMILE:

“Every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my crossbow”

In the "Lyrical Ballads" Coleridge texts are invested precisely with a function: the call to healing, revelation, and rebirth after the tear in the human soul created by the supernatural.

The tangible and concrete representation of this so-called supernatural, that does not corrupt the ordinary world to subvert the laws but it looks like the other side of the coin, which is essential to the existence of creation and revealed every time the view is moved by recovering the faculties of intuition and imagination,

"living force agent and the foundation

of all human perception (...) repetition

in the finite mind of the eternal act of

Creation": an active form, indeed the

highest, knowledge - and not in vain

reverie

To Wordsworth is instead given the task to find and show the charm of daily life, of a life apparently still and empty. Despite the considerable artistic differences (and temperament) of the two co-authors, the

"Lyrical Ballads" have some success already in the first edition of 1797, selling without difficulty five hundred copies printed the following year and, especially, finding widely reported in newspapers journalists who report excerpts. If Wordsworth sees reconfirmed his popularity, Coleridge instead passes in the second floor.

Despite his masterpiece, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" open collection (which ends in perfect balance with "Tintern Abbey", Wordsworth), his contributions arouse some suspicion for a common taste anchored in forms and, above all, widespread and, in some ways, less disturbing, that does not call into question the very nature of the world.

That, however, Coleridge makes no secret of wanting to do.

From 1810 until his death in 1834, Coleridge lived in Highgate, in the hills of Hampstead, north of London. There, he was assisted by two doctors who helped him to alleviate the physical and mental suffering, although they never managed to heal him completely. It was at Highgate that he began to write for intervallia insaniae (with continuous intervals between a state of hallucination and mental clarity), the Biography literaria, sort of critical autobiography - literary and medley of thoughts, considered a masterpiece of the genre.

The poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge moves in a world

transfigured from intuition, imaginative strong tension,

which recovers, in a world of rationality and incapable of

grasping the essence of the world, the lost integrity between

the man and the universe. Hence the prominence of the

feminine, of the night, the medieval-like environments, the

lunar connotation and introspective in his work, looking for a

higher-level system where the solar way and logical-discursive

does not grasp that the causal links, apparent and also,

incidental existent.

The objects, the fierce light of science "fixed and

inanimate", reverberate life to a higher consciousness,

to mystical contemplation, the innocent look

humble, cursed or tramp: elected by vocation,

choice or blame to go beyond the veil appearance to

walk along the paths illuminated by the

flickering light of the moon and the stars, in which the

boundaries between the self and the Universe,

letting the two worlds come into contact. It is not

so much the break as the revelation of the supernatural

underlined to the everyday reality, ignored and

split, after the Enlightenment age, to common experience.

And it is suffering due to this tear that the

human being is called to heal, in a process of

detection and rebirth, refinement and discovery.

Nature as a blessing

Coleridge has a very deep relationship with nature, in some poems he praises the breathtaking beauty, the

ability to persuade the mind and the human body helpless witness to show him. The nature of the poet's divinity, the personification of God on earth, nature is a superhuman spirit that governs feelings.

Here Coleridge tells of how, just observing the wonders of nature, he has learned about the love and a sense of pity. This poem "To Nature", a praise more than anything else, shows the importance of the figure of nature in the poetry of Coleridge and current romance.

CULTURE AND STORY

Albatross Symbolism In The Maori Culture

In the Maori culture, the albatrosses were held in high esteem.

In some of the Maori myths, it was also mentioned that there was an albatross who was a demi-God and the ancestor of their tribe.

Albatross Symbolism In The Native American Culture

The Albatrosses have a mixed symbolism in the Native American tribes.

CULTURE AND

STORY about ALBATROSS

THE STORY OF AWARUA AND REREROA

The story dates back to over a thousand years when there lived a water monster or a Taniwha on the harbor of Porirua, named Awarua.

Awarua had a heavy body with small wings, and although he was a fierce and skilled hunter, he couldn’t fly. Awarua had a friend named Rereroa, who was an albatross, that she met everyday.

THE STORY OF ALBATROSSES AND WHISKEY JACKS

Once, some men from a Native American tribe

moved closer to the water bodies in order to observe the birds that inhabited these areas.

Two birds caught the attention of these men in particular; one of them was a Whiskey Jack, and the other was an Albatross.

The lesson we can learn from the story is that no matter how pretty you appear on the outside, you will not be liked by others if you’re ugly on the inside.

DREAMING OF ALBATROSS

DREAMING OF AN ALBATROSS

What does it mean?

• A Flying Albatross:

Expanding creativity

• Feeding An Albatross:

Boost your partner’s ego

• A Flock Of Albatrosses:

You will make friends with well-respected people who are in society

• Killing An Albatross:

Surrounded with struggles and challenges

• Becoming An Albatross:

Related to your love life

• An Albatross On A Boat:

Positive interpretation

• Hearing An Albatross:

Someone around you who is lying to you

• A Dead Albatross:

Simbol of vulnerability

CONCLUSION

"Albatross as a Spirit Animal"

• ALBATROSS TOTEM

Known for their navigation skills, the albatross totems enter your life when you seem to have lost your way.

• ALBATROSS SYMBOLISM IN THE AFRICAN CULTURE

Albatross is the bird of the sea, and since most of Africa is covered in desert, they are a rare sight in these regions.

The whole purpose of an albatross’s life is to keep flying; unlike the other birds, they don’t tether themselves to any kind of earthly connection and lead an independent life.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the longest as well as one of the most praised works of the English Poet and Critic, S.T. Coleridge.

In the poem, the shipmates of the Mariner hang the corpse of the dead albatross around his neck as a symbol of his guilt and penance.

Therefore, the symbolism of the albatross has been used in the poem as a metaphor for a burden that is not physical but mental or psychological in nature.