The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of my favorite Romantic era poems. I think it's important to note that the version we read fro class is one of a few different versions that Coleridge published/revised throughout his life time. One of the earlier versions is "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" (published in the 1798 version of Lyrical Ballads) which features a more archaic language than the 1817 version we read for today. There's also a version published in 1800 (Scroll/use the search function to find page 151, where the poem starts) which differs slightly from the version we read today (I didn't re-read all three versions for class at the time of this post). Each version has its own various eccentricites, and each version also I think delivers a slightly different level of impact for the overall political/societal message that Coleridge has interwoven into the narrative.
Edit: Added Links to other versions; modified for clarity.
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ReplyDeleteI think one of the interesting things about the Romantics is that a lot of them have multiple versions of the same poem floating around. One of the things that comes up when we analyze poems is the issue of authorial intent. What did the poet want us to get from the poem? Authorial intent is important, especially when you think about how adamant Wordsworth was about making sure people realized who the narrator of “The Thorn” was. It’s also interesting that both Coleridge and Wordsworth continued to revise their work throughout their lives, even though it wasn’t always for the better.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Coleridge first published “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with archaic spellings. I guess it would have been to create that ancient quality, but why ancient in the first place? In chapter 14 of Biographia Literaria, Coleridge says that for Lyrical Ballads, he was to write about the supernatural as every human “from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency.” The archaic language does two things. It hearkens back to an ancient time and belief in supernatural things was more prevalent in ancient times. But it also suggests something primordial, like we’re not just examining the Mariner, but human nature as well.
Nice observations! I love the point about the archaic words--if this is a technique is to put us as readers in a different time and place, what is the point of the modernization in the 1800 version? And what about the notes along the side of the page? If this is taking us away from the more primordial, perhaps Coleridge has become interested in making the poem comprehensible to modern readers? This the raises another question: in making the poem more comprehensible does he deflate the effects of the supernatural?
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