Coleridge’s Mariner

A few minutes before eight o’clock in the evening on Friday, March seventh, 1794, William Wilkins watched the western sky from Castle Hill in Norwich, England.  His hope was, on the advice of a friend, to be able to spot the planet Mercury as the sun set below the horizon. The Reverend Samuel Vince kept correspondence written by Mr. Wilkins regarding these events in which Wilkins states that he was unable to see Mercury due to clouds on the horizon. What Wilkins’ letters mysteriously describes, however, is the odd appearance of a light, like a star within the dark part of the moon:  

I was very much surprised; for, at the instant of discovery I believed a star was passing over the moon, which on the next moment's consideration I knew to be impossible. I remembered having seen, at some periods of the moon, detached lights from the serrated edge of light, through a telescope; but this spot was considerably too distant from the enlightened part of the moon; besides, this was seen with the naked eye. I was, as it were, rivetted to the spot where I stood, during the time it continued, and took every method I could imagine to convince myself that it was not an error of sight; and two persons, strangers, passed me at the same time, whom I requested to look, and they (maybe, a little more ignorant than myself) said it was star. I am confident I saw it five minutes at least; but as the time is only conjectural, it might not, possibly, be so long. (Wilkins, Letter I).

What is most revealing about Mr. Wilkins’ account is not the nature of its contents, but rather the fact that it describes in detail an event which Coleridge wrote into his Ancient Mariner: 

With never a whisper in the Sea
Off darts the Spectre-ship; 
While clombe above the Eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright Star
Almost atween the tips. (1798, 34).  

When James Dykes Campbell edited The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1896, he added to Coleridge’s previously unpublished note in Lyrical Ballads: “But no sailor ever saw a star within the nether tip of a horned moon.” (Wallen, 34).  In his 1993 experimental edition of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, Martin Wallen includes a note containing a discussion of the aforementioned letter by William Wilkins to the Reverend Samuel Vince.  Editors and publishers have been attracted to the significance of this phase of Coleridge’s poem – and his notes about it.  

In Coleridge’s second revision of the Mariner, published in 1800, the following changes appear between the original two stanzas of the published 1798 text:

With never a whisper on the main
Oft shot the spectre-ship;
And stifled words and groans of pain
Mix’d on each murmuring lip
And we look’d round, & we look’d up,
And fear at our hearts, as at a cup,
The Life-blood seem’d to sip
The Sky was dull, and dark the night,
The Helmsman’s face by his lamp gleam’d bright
From the sails the dews did drip
Till clombe above the Eastern Bar
The horned Moon, with one bright Star
Within its nether Tip. (1800, 35).

Coleridge leaves the reader with an indelible image of the crescent moon and a star between its tips. Coleridge’s first published rendering of the poem features a star “almost” between the tips.  But in subsequent publications the star is “within” the nether tip.  Coleridge has focused a great deal of attention on this image. Wallen’s arrangement of the text in his 1993 experimental edition further clarifies this. This segment marks a turning point.  We see the poem take a dramatic turn here as the Spectre-ship is introduced.  By the close of the next stanza – some four lines away, all but one of the mariners are dead.

The crescent moon with a star between its tips has been used as a mystical symbol for millennia. This symbol has adorned flags in the Persian Arab-Muslim world for over a thousand years as the symbol of Islam.  Indeed, I shall argue that in addition to Islamic symbolism, Coleridge employs the techniques of Sufi (Islamic) mystical poets in the rendering of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by focusing on the imagery and importance of birds, specifically the Albatross, and by manipulating the common theme of the pilgrimage to theorize that Love is the highest and most blessed state human beings may seek.

Farid ud-Din Attar, an early Sufi poet, wrote The Parliament of the Birds near the end of his life in the late twelfth century.  This work is, by all accounts, a masterwork in early Persian mystical poetry. In the poem, a Hoopoe leads a group of her fellows on a quest to find their king, who is called Simurgh.  The birds appear excited to be about the business of finding their true leader, but when they realize to what extent they will be required to participate, each of the birds makes a short speech, a plea to remain behind.  The Nightingale speaks first, “The journey to the Simurgh is beyond my strength; the love of the rose is enough for the Nightingale [for me]” (27).  The Nightingale is the first of many birds who present their cases to the Hoopoe.  The Hoopoe tells each of the birds stories which settle their minds by clearly distinguishing between what it means to prefer what one already has over the possibility of what one might have – or hope to have.  The Hoopoe goes on to explain to her companions that the journey will take them across seven valleys.  She names all the valleys – the seventh being that of death:  “Last of all comes the valley of Deprivation and Death, which it is almost impossible to describe” (138). The poem ends when the birds realize that after traveling together they themselves form the leadership – or Simurgh.  The collective consciousness, or body as a whole, are the King – are God.  Coleridge’s Mariner tells us that the Mariner was cast adrift in the still seas for seven days.  The parallels between Attar’s and Coleridge’s work are quite clear.  In each, birds are used to represent human beings. Attar utilizes the Hoopoe, a sacred bird in the East, to represent a spiritual leader, or teacher.  Coleridge uses an Albatross to represent the sacrifice of Christ on a Roman cross.  Attar depicts a spiritual journey as seen through the conversation of birds.  Coleridge depicts a spiritual journey as seen through the eyes of a man who has killed a bird and been made to wear it around his neck:

Ah wel-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young;
Instead of the Cross the Albatross
About my neck was hung. (1798, 24).

The idea that the Albatross is substituted for a cross, which traditionally hangs about the necks of Christians as a symbol of the redeeming death of Christ, indicates a change in direction in Coleridge’s poem.  He has obviously asked his audience to look beyond traditional Christian imagery to discover the hidden meaning in the death of a simple sea-bird.  It is here that Coleridge raises the question in the minds of his audience: Why did the mariner kill the albatross?  This is intentional.  Coleridge uses a bird which is not typically seen as significant in any way – and he has made a direct comparison between it, and Christ himself.  Coleridge asks his audience to consider the moral status of all non-human creatures, and this implies the significance of the creatures themselves.  Attar’s poem teaches that it is this group, or congregation, which constitutes the leadership of a religious body.  In short, both Attar and Coleridge have placed human beings and animals on a level playing field with none bearing more significance than any of the others.  Both poets have used seemingly insignificant birds to make ambitious comparisons to similar qualities inherent in human beings.  Coleridge uses the number seven to demarcate the number of days the Mariner drifts alone on the sea.  This symbolic number foretells of an even longer journey, a pilgrimage of sorts, in which the Mariner will daily wander the Earth telling his tale.  Likewise, Farid ud-Din Attar’s seven valleys represent the daily quest for the path of righteousness. Coleridge uses the word “Lavrock” (1798, 55) as yet another comparison of birds and spirit beings.  Lavrock is, in the subsequent revisions of Coleridge’s text, changed to “sky-lark” (1800 / 1817, 55) and compared directly to the song of angels which the Mariner hears during his trance.  But the word “Lavrock” itself is a common term for any of a group of birds. This symbolic juxtaposition of birds, angels, the number seven, and the pilgrimage finds its origins in Attar’s Sufic poetry.  

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner focuses on the importance of Love of all creatures.  In the poem however, none of the mariners seem to realize they have “loved” the Albatross when it first appears – and yet this unconscious act brings about a common good:

At length did cross an Albatross,
Through the fog it came;
And an it were a Christian Soul,
We hailed it in God’s name
The Marineres gave it biscuit-worms,
And round and round it flew:
The Ice did split with a Thunder-fit;
The Helmsman steer’d us thro’ (1798, 14).

The mariners hail the Albatross in God’s name.  They recognize it as a living being, and subconsciously recognize its significance.  What none of them seem to gather, however, is that this acceptance is the very act that splits the ice, giving clear passage to the ship, allowing the Helmsman to steer through to clear waters.  Coleridge allegorizes the recognition of the Albatross as Love.  The mariners clearly do not understand, however, that their actions, whether conscious or unconscious, are the engines of an even more significant outcome.  When the Ancient Mariner kills the albatross, his fellow mariners are not aware of any wrong-doing at all.  But eventually come to be troubled, then gladdened by the fact that the Mariner has killed the Albatross.  Their wavering between ideas of right and wrong eventually brings them to hang the Albatross about the Ancient Mariner’s neck when the seas calm and the sails drop down.  It is here that Coleridge stalls the action of the poem to include yet another remarkable image – an image of an image, in fact:

All in a hot and copper sky
The bloody sun at noon, 
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, ne breath, ne motion,
As idle as a painted Ship
Upon a painted Ocean (1798, 21).

Coleridge has painted a picture of a picture to introduce one of the most striking sequences of events in all of English Literature.  The hanging of the albatross about the Mariner’s neck is well known. It has come to signify the carrying of a burden. What then is the burden represented by Coleridge in this imagery?  I argue here that the burden is Love.  The Ancient Mariner, after realizing his mistake – and fearing for his life - tries to pray but cannot. When he is finally able to pray, it seems to be an accident, but nevertheless, the weight about his neck, the albatross, drops into the sea. Coleridge illustrates the Mariner set adrift on the sea with “a million million slimy things” (1798, 39, 240).  We are given clear indication that the issue of Love is increasingly important to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s character, the Mariner. In a metaphysical sense, the Mariner is aware in his depths that his predicament is somehow a result of his grievous misunderstanding of the true nature of Love. Coleridge has illustrated that when the Albatross appears and is well treated, the ice splits, allowing the Helmsman to steer the ship through. This is a fine parable by any standard. The Albatross as a representative of Love, of God – appears to test the mariners. The ship, as a representative of the body and soul in combination begins to feel the effects of the Mariner’s deeds. The Helmsman, as a representative of the guiding Spirit of God-in-man, or the Holy Spirit, is able to operate and make changes only when Love is realized. The appearance, and the events surrounding the Albatross may be the single most significant, if not prophetic event(s) in all of English Literature. Thus, Love – in its hidden or unconscious forms, is of primary significance in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And we are the better for it.

Before his death in 1273, Jalaluddin Rumi, a student of Attar’s, composed his Mathnawi. These ghazals are a study in focus and one of the primary meditations on Love in the Islamic world. The Mathnawi is filled with bird imagery and well developed metaphors containing allegories of ships, seas and birds. His poems were not titled, but Coleman Barks has rendered translations of these works in such a way as to extract key phrases from the verses and head the poems with those lines.  “Say I am You” (Rumi, 275) begins with the declaration, “I am dust particles in sunlight – I am the round sun...”  Rumi’s dealings with identity in his poetry work directly with Coleridge’s ideas of identity.  We are connected, both Rumi and Coleridge argue, to all life – indeed, to all things.  We are intricate details in the workings of nature.  In “Say I am You”, Rumi goes on to compare himself to a ship – “Mast, rudder, helmsman and keel, I am also the coral reef they founder on...  Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.” (Rumi 275).  Rumi is able to use dust particles, ships, oceans and birds to convey a sense of identity.  He points his words at all of humanity.  His use of the imagery associated with birds occurs frequently in the form of parrots (trained parrots represent the ego – the voice that wants to be heard), doves (silence), the hoopoe (wisdom), and the nightingale (longing, love).  Rumi uses impossible scenarios to hide versions of the truth that are slow in their gradual unfolding.  Birds speak freely with men.  Ships are symbols for the insignificance of the body – and the power of the sea, the sea representing the Divine presence. The sun is compared to dust particles.  Rumi uses frames in his imagery that bounce back and forth between miniature and immense states of matter.  Coleridge is able to operate in this same vein, and thereby challenge the perception of his audience to a contest of perception.  Coleridge’s mystical treatment of ships, birds, and the sea bears a striking resemblance to Rumi’s methods.  

As I have considered here, this kind of metaphysical focus is not some otherworldly, obscure connection to ephemeral events in the ether of the consciousness of mankind.  Indeed, I seek not to define Mysticism or Romanticism, but to illustrate the metaphysical concepts oozing from the Romanticism of the day via comparison of Coleridge’s work with those who wrote in similar strata before his time. To this end, William Hazlitt’s essay, “My First Acquaintance with Poets”, is convincing in characterizing Coleridge as a man consumed by the study of metaphysics, if not mysticism itself. Hazlitt paints Coleridge as a replacement, called to the pulpit of a Unitarian church to fill-in for the author’s father. And Hazlitt speaks of the sermon Coleridge delivered in the Winter of 1798: “And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and philosophy had met together. Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion.” (Hazlitt, 2).  This is, perhaps, an apt description of Persian mystical poetry.  Poetry and philosophy meeting together – under the eye and sanction of Religion.  Hazlitt tells a tale of Coleridge’s days living near him and the conversations they shared.  He leaves an interesting comment about a visit Wordsworth made, and says that “I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister.”  (Hazlitt, 10).  Hazlitt continues by  portraying Coleridge as someone almost wild who wants to experience things as they are:  “A thunderstorm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running out bare-headed to enjoy the commotion of the elements...” (Hazlitt, 10).  It is clear that Coleridge made an indelible impression on Hazlitt, and that his impression is founded in Coleridge’s seeking communion with his surroundings and his efforts to teach others of these connections. “He held the good town of Shewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, “fluttering the proud Salopians, like an eagle in a dove-cote”; and the Welsh mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sound since…” (1).

Idries Shah, one of Afghanistan’s most prolific modern writers, offers a valuable insight into any potential connection between his native metaphysics and those brought out by Coleridge.  He has published volumes upon volumes of works about the Persian mystical poets in Farsi, Spanish, and English.  His work with the Sufi poetry of Attar and Rumi is well known in America today.  What is most important about Shah’s book, The Sufis, is that he is able to illuminate these poets’ work with translations and commentaries which make quite clear the Sufi techniques with imagery in poetry and their influence on English thought.  He has this to say in a chapter devoted to Attar:  

(Quoting Attar)

‘To abandon something because others have misused it may be the height of folly; the Sufic truth cannot be encompassed in rules and regulations, in formulas and rituals – but yet it is partially present in all these things.’

These words are attributed to Fariduddin the Chemist, a great illuminate and author, and an organizer of the Sufis.  He died over a century before the birth of Chaucer, in whose works references to Attar’s Sufism are to be found (Shah, 104).

In Shah’s discussion of the works of Jalaluddin Rumi, he states, “Chaucer’s use of the phrase, ‘As lions may take warning when a pup is punished...” is merely a close adaptation of Udhrib el-kalba wa yata’ addaba el-fahdu (‘Beat the dog and the lion will behave’)  (Shah, 116).  Idries Shah speaks a good deal about the play between words and images in Rumi’s work.  Shah goes on to add this comment to his analysis of Rumi’s work:

Like many Sufis cast in a theological atmosphere, Rumi first addresses his followers on the subject of religion.  He stresses that the form in which ordinary, emotional religion is understood by organized bodies is incorrect.  The Veil of Light, which is the barrier brought about by self righteousness, is more dangerous than the Veil of Darkness, produced in the mind by vice.  Understanding can come only through love, not by training by means of organizational methods.” (Shah 118).

Like Rumi, Coleridge clearly attempted to speak to his readers on the subject of religion. His ideas come through his Ancient Mariner “loud and clear” when we look closely at the fact that the Mariner is detaining one man – on his way to a wedding.  Clearly a reference to the parables of Christ, Coleridge speaks, from the very beginning of the poem – until the end of the poem – as the Mariner asks for forgiveness:

‘O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy Man!’
The Hermit cross’d his brow –
‘Say quick’ quoth he, ‘I bid thee say
‘What manner of man art thou?’ (1798, 86).

The Mariner has come to the end – the end of the beginning of his pilgrimage and knows that he must now give out his confession.  As is offered in Coleridge’s poem, the Mariner still gives this confession – to this day.

What Samuel Taylor Coleridge has done with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is to develop an Eighteenth-Century Romantic idea of Mysticism through his poetry.  Throughout the text of this poem, we find examples - parallels of Sufic methods of teaching.  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner acts as an extended metaphor for the act of living and teaching which has been utilized by Sufi mystics seeking to impact mankind directly by appealing to both conscious and unconscious thought processes.  Coleridge succeeded in showing that Western Literature is quite capable of operating on higher planes by sharing the ideas and techniques of the Sufi mystics.  By focusing on the imagery and importance of birds, specifically the Albatross, and by manipulating the common theme of the pilgrimage to theorize that Love is the highest and most blessed state human beings may seek, Coleridge has impacted Western thought significantly.  His Ancient Mariner exists in the halls and minds of the West, as a proof of sorts – not that his work is influenced by the Sufis, but that mankind is aware of things beyond objective reality which shape and mold our lives.  


Works Cited

Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Trans. S.C. Nott. Ed. Delian Bower. London: Continuum, 2000.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Ed. Martin Wallen. New York:  Station Hill Literary Editions, 1993.

Hazlitt, William.  “My First Acquaintance With Poets.” The Essays of Blupete. Ed. Peter Landry. 2001. 9 April 2003

Rumi, Jalaluddin.  Mathnawi. The Essential Rumi. Trans. Coleman Barks. Ed. John Moyne. A.J. Arberry. Reynold Nicholson. New Jersey: Castle Books, 1997.

Shah, Idries.  The Sufis. London:  Octagon Press, 1977.

Wallen, Martin.  Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner: An Experimental Edition of Texts and Revisions 1798-1828. New York:  Station Hill Literary Editions, 1993.

Wilkins, William.  Letter to Reverend Samuel Vince.  17 April 1794.  Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society Of London, Vol.84.