The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ( The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ) is a ballad , which in 1798 by the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was written. It was published in the Lyrical Ballads collection and is considered the beginning of English Romanticism . The ballad had a great influence on the English language, which is why a. can be recognized by numerous quotes from the ballad, which have entered the English language as proverbs.
Table of contents
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is about an old sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. He stops a man who is on his way to a wedding and starts telling him his story. The man initially reacts with fear and impatience, but eventually succumbs to the fascination of the report.
The actual narrative begins with the ship leaving port. The ship keeps going south until it gets to Antarctica. An albatross who leads the crew and ship out of the ice desert is seen by the sailors as a divine messenger, but the seafarer kills the albatross with his crossbow. The sailors are initially angry that the albatross was shot, but when they reach warmer regions, they change their attitude towards the seafarer.
When the wind subsides and they are stuck because of the calm, the anger of the sailors boils up again. They decide that as a punishment the seafarer has to wear the dead albatross around his neck ("Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung "). In the midst of this lull, another ship suddenly appears. On board this ghost ship are death ("Death") and, in female form, life in death ("Night-mare Life-in-Death") and both begin to roll the dice for the ship's crew. While death wins the crew, life in death gets the seafarer, whom it regards as far more valuable.
The entire crew dies, the seafarer lives, but has to see the curse of death in the eyes of his dead comrades for days and nights. The curse is finally lifted when the seafarer sees the marine animals and realizes their true beauty. He begins to praise her ("a spring of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware"). Then the dead albatross falls off his shoulder (the curse is lifted) and the dead crew rises, driven by good forces, and takes the ship back to home. When the seafarer is already sighting the port, the ship sinks and only the seafarer remains.
He is rescued by the harbor pilot, his son and a hermit, who is still in the boat and hears his confession. The navigator returns to land and from then on, wandering across the earth, proclaims his story to everyone.
interpretation
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is often seen as an image of sin and forgiveness; This is supported by numerous allusions within the ballad (such as the resurrection of the seafarer). It is also assumed that the ballad contains autobiographical traits. At the time of writing the ballad, Coleridge felt very lonely, which he complains in many letters and can therefore be compared with the loneliness at which the seafarer in the ballad almost desperately. The story itself could have been inspired by the voyages of James Cook , who a few years earlier had just explored the southern reaches of the earth, because one of Coleridge's mentors William Wales was an astronomer on Cook's flagship.
reception
The poem was initially rejected when it was published, it was found difficult and often criticized for its use of archaic words. It was also felt to be not romantic enough, which is ironic insofar as Coleridge in particular shaped this style significantly in England. However, in 1815 Coleridge was compelled to revise the poem and add some explanations.
In the course of time this has changed completely: The meaning of the ballad in English culture and language is comparable to that of Schiller's Glocke in the German-speaking area in terms of its affiliation to the literary canon, its popularity and the frequency of allusions and parodies .
In many English books there are allusions to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner such as B. by Douglas Adams The Electric Monk or Bram Stoker's Dracula . This material was also often used in music. B. on the album of the same name, released in 1975 by David Bedford , or on the album Powerslave by Iron Maiden in the form of an almost 14-minute musical retelling, with the ballad often being recited exactly. Also on their album Dark Passion Play , the Finnish metal band Nightwish mentions an Ancient Mariner in a sea of sand in the track Sahara and an albatross in the track The Islander ("The albatross is flying .." and "Light at the end of the world." .. ").
Even Donald Duck is not spared memorizing and reciting. To win a voyage, Donald has to recite the last stanza. In the German translation by Erika Fuchs , this becomes a slightly parodic new poem:
Woe to me wicked, that I shot
the fateful Albatross!
Three times woe that I hit!
For this fate hits me!
literature
- Humphrey House: S. T. Coleridge's "The Ancient Mariner" . In: Willi Erzgräber (ed.): Interpretations Volume 8 · English literature from William Blake to Thomas Hardy . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1970, pp. 38-66.
Web links
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . Text in Project Gutenberg
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . Audiobook (Jane Aker) in Project Gutenberg
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , Audiobook (Kristin Luoma) at LibriVox
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Curse of the Albatross (Original: The not-so-ancient Mariner ) In: TGDD 71 (1982) / Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 312 (1966)
- ↑ The new poem was then expanded into a complete poem as fan fiction : http://forum.donald.org/read.php?1,5897,5902#msg-5902