Poetic Musings - The Rime ...

July 02, 2007

In a mood swing today, that generally happens when i am not working and hence my brain is at its creatively worst, i decided to surf through famous ballads from yonder years, and read through two amzingly interesting pieces of poetry.

The first was Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The last rememberence i have of this megascribe was some very long exceprt in my English class 10 syllabus that spaced out over 3-4 pages (pretty huge by standards then for a poem, when the mind of an average Joe schoolkid was barely mugging up 2-3 paragraphs).

Today i read the entire seven parts of the poem, and realized that back then we had gone through just two !!
I feel a little hard done now, seeing that the charm of the poem lies in reading it completely, and more importantly, understanding each and every line with its obscure connotation. The way Coleridge lays out bare the horror of crimes the human society indulges in and the casual attitude with which it behaves towards such an outrage, really chills my bones. Given that some of the passages were written by Coleridge under the influence of opium, it is not far from the feeling and mysticism that he must have felt while induced in a pyschedlic state, especially the passages that describe the fiendish passing away of the sailors and the whispers of the lost souls across the ocean.

It is difficult to elaborate the devilry in my modest words. The subtle interplay of archaic wordings and the amazing Mariner centric poem, that so cleverly invloves the other sailors, the listner, the wedding entourage, even the albatross, and yet so easily does not draw the focus away from the protagonist (or rather should i say the antagonist) throughout the entire poetry. The journey, the pain and the suffering, the joy of forgiving and being forgiven, the penance, and finally the salvation - it is indeed a ballad - complete.

I leave it up to the curious reader to explore this on his own. All i can do is mention a few lines from the poetry which impressed upon me the most and helped me trace the contour of the darkest thoughts in Coleridge's mind.


"Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink."

"And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so:
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow."

"An orphan's curse would drag to Hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is a curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die."

And finally the lines that i heard in this video below which made me revisit the poem ...



"Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach."


I shall continue my poetic musings in my next post
Cheers !!