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A review by theanitaalvarez
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Gustave Doré, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
5.0
My first encounter with this very long poem was in my Literary Theory course. I read it before the class, suffered through the analysis and was lucky enough so that it wasn’t asked in the final. And my story with Coleridge’s famous poem would’ve ended there, but it was in the syllabus of one of the classes I’m taking this semester.
So, I decided to take another shot at it. And to actually try to enjoy it.
I did.
It’s not an easy read, mind you. There’s a lot of details to pay attention to, so I’d recommend to read it more than once, just to appreciate it in its amazingness. Coleridges manages to create music with his words, and the world of the Ancient Mariner is full of magic in all its forms.
The story here is relatively simple. The Ancient Mariner singles out a guy from a wedding party and tells him that he’ll tell the guest his story. At first, the boy seems to think that the Mariner is someone deranged and tries to get rid of him, but when he looks at him, the guest is immediately drawn to him, as the Mariner is somewhat bewitching, in a horrid and creepy way.
The Mariner’s story begins with him and his crew facing a mysterious fog. Suddenly, an albatross (a bird considered to be a good omen), appear. The Mariner promptly shots it down. At first, the crew is horrified before such a sacrilege, but they forgive him easily enough when the fog disappears.
But the calm is short-lived, as soon the ship enters some sort of demonical place, where horrible things happen and Death itself appears to take their souls. After playing a game of dice with another creepy spirit (Life-in-Death), Death wins all the crew’s souls, except the Mariner’s. Life-in-Death gets the Mariner and decides to give him a fate that’s worse than death: he has to go around the world and tell his story to people who need to listen to it.
The scenes with Death and Life-in-Death are probably among the creepiest things I’ve ever read. And they gave me shivers and all that, despite showing a highly unlikely thing. There’s also a moment in which the dead crew looks at the Mariner with hate in their eyes and curse him silently. As creepy as it gets.
I’m really glad that I decided to read this again, because it was actually a great read. If you can, you should check out Richard Burton’s reading of it, because that’s actually very good and captures the musicality of this poem quite well.
So, I decided to take another shot at it. And to actually try to enjoy it.
I did.
It’s not an easy read, mind you. There’s a lot of details to pay attention to, so I’d recommend to read it more than once, just to appreciate it in its amazingness. Coleridges manages to create music with his words, and the world of the Ancient Mariner is full of magic in all its forms.
The story here is relatively simple. The Ancient Mariner singles out a guy from a wedding party and tells him that he’ll tell the guest his story. At first, the boy seems to think that the Mariner is someone deranged and tries to get rid of him, but when he looks at him, the guest is immediately drawn to him, as the Mariner is somewhat bewitching, in a horrid and creepy way.
The Mariner’s story begins with him and his crew facing a mysterious fog. Suddenly, an albatross (a bird considered to be a good omen), appear. The Mariner promptly shots it down. At first, the crew is horrified before such a sacrilege, but they forgive him easily enough when the fog disappears.
But the calm is short-lived, as soon the ship enters some sort of demonical place, where horrible things happen and Death itself appears to take their souls. After playing a game of dice with another creepy spirit (Life-in-Death), Death wins all the crew’s souls, except the Mariner’s. Life-in-Death gets the Mariner and decides to give him a fate that’s worse than death: he has to go around the world and tell his story to people who need to listen to it.
The scenes with Death and Life-in-Death are probably among the creepiest things I’ve ever read. And they gave me shivers and all that, despite showing a highly unlikely thing. There’s also a moment in which the dead crew looks at the Mariner with hate in their eyes and curse him silently. As creepy as it gets.
I’m really glad that I decided to read this again, because it was actually a great read. If you can, you should check out Richard Burton’s reading of it, because that’s actually very good and captures the musicality of this poem quite well.