Symbolic Spatial Form in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the problem of god

Abstract

Exclusive pairings of images or events in the Mariner's monologue generate two imaginatively spatial patterns unnoticed till now. One consists of three pairings, the other consists of nine. The focus of the smaller pattern is the killing of the Albatross; that of the larger, the blessing of the water snakes. The latter focus is central to the poem and, since blessing is synonymous with love, implies fundamental metaphysical goodness. It, therefore, challenges the dominant view among contemporary critics that the supernaturally inhabited universe of the poem is morally unintelligible. That view betrays inability to read the poem as romance. It also reduces most of the poem to delusion and, therefore, insignificance. These critics object to the Mariner's ‘penance’, an objection undermined by theological possibility and minimised by the Mariner's attitude to his suffering. The symbolism of the large pattern of pairings establishes the meaning of the poem as moral and religious without being exclusively Christian. Its terms are broader, containing varieties of paganism, an inclusiveness conforming to the cultural–philosophical ‘system’ by which the poet believed he could reduce ‘all knowledges into harmony’.