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| Engraving of a Nightingale by Thomas Bewick, The History of British Birds, 1797. |
Hello Romanticists,
On Thursday we will continue our discussion of Lyrical
Ballads by looking at some of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
contributions. The two poems we’ll examine will feel very
different. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner might remind you
of fairytales: it is a tale of adventure with supernatural elements, set in a
quasi-fantastic land. In addition, in the frame narrative, the poem is
transmitted orally by the mariner in ballad stanza (quatrains of alternating
tetrameter and trimeter, or variations thereof), and its artificially archaic
language gestures toward the distant origins of folklore. By contrast,
“The Nightingale” is domestic rather than fantastical, conversational (as the
subtitle indicates) rather than narrative, and spoken by a version of Coleridge
himself in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter).
Nonetheless, both poems focus on the problems of
communication. The speaker in each is in some way isolated, struggling to
express ideas or connect with others. The mariner is certainly a more
extreme case, but you might consider the ways in which the speaker of
“Nightingale” similarly imposes his words on the people and world around him.
You might also wish to pursue links between one or
other poem and the works we have already read. In what ways does
“Nightingale” embody the poetic theories of the “Preface”? Does it speak
“the real language of men”? Or merge intense emotion with meditation?
Or you might pursue the links between Mariner and
the folklore we have read. What do your studies of fairytales allow you
to recognize about the poem? How, for example, do series and repetition
work in the poem?
Please enjoy the embedded avian images. Also
feel free to check out the edition of Mariner engraved by Gustave Doré; a
link is in the sidebar.
Happy reading,
Prof. M.
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| Gustav Dore's engraving of the albatross, 1877. |
Most of the language of The Nightingale embodies Wordsworth's "real language of men", but Coleridge does occasionally lapse into more ornate phrasing. The poem's title describes it as "conversational", although there is only one speaker. Presumably, he addresses the reader, who never gets a chance to respond. The Nightingale does maintain a conversationalist tone, though, flowing in mostly casual language as the speaker moves from idea to idea. Occasionally, Coleridge chooses a word that would be out of place in a casual conversation, like "verdure" or "vernal". When he reaches the bit about the maiden in the castle (a very folklore-esque section), Coleridge uses a lot of archaic conjugations, like "dwelleth" and "hath". These word choices inject a bit of fairytale appeal without completely ruining the everyday tone of the greater poem.
ReplyDeleteColeridge sets up the poem to flow naturally from an invitation to sit down to a discourse on why poets shouldn't impose their thoughts on nature. Nothing feels forced - it's as if the speaker happened to hear a nightingale, which reminded him of Milton's line, and then it occurred to him that the quote was misapplied. It's very different from the more staged approach of classical poetry, where the speaker sets out to prove something from the start.
In line with his and Wordsworth's radical approach to poetry, Coleridge writes a poem about the conceits common in classical poetry. He attempts to strip away the meanings poets have attributed to nature, pointing out that "in nature there is nothing melancholy" (15). A true Romantic, Coleridge asks us to just let nature into our spirits (without calling on the muses). He ends the poem by deferring to the inborn wisdom of children, another Romantic concept.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in some ways reminded me of the fairytales we read, though it didn't quite fit the pattern completely. The storyline itself is… fantastical, to say the least. It’s the impossible tale of a man who should have died, but didn’t, having experienced some sort of heavenly intervention. (Not to mention the side-story wedding guest, who is rude at first, then is magically spellbound/hypnotized into listening, and then is said to have changed into “a sadder and wiser man” by the time morning comes.) The mariner takes the place of the hero, who goes on a long journey which, miraculously, ends well – for him, at least.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, though, this fairytale-like poem does not have the good vs. bad part of the story. Instead, good and bad are mixed into one. The mariner does not begin as the hero, but rather as the villain; he is the one who killed the albatross, seemingly without reason. This is the impetus for the moral of the story. The mariner is made to see how his actions were wrong, he is made to suffer, and he is made to realize and eventually to tell over the idea that just as G-d loves all His creatures, men should love all of G-d’s creatures as well. Aside from the moral that the mariner is forced to tell, another moral can be seen: anyone can repent. As in many of the fairytales we read in class, this moral doesn’t quite cover all the bases. It’s very nice that the mariner was able to repent, but why did the rest of the crew die when they did very little wrong?
Linguistically, the poem resembles fairytales in that there is a fair amount of repetition. For example, “The wedding guest he beat his breast” is repeated, and oftentimes the mariner’s speech is often echoed by those with whom he is speaking. A line that is especially emotional to the mariner gets repeated as well, such as “Water, water, everywhere” and “how glazed each eye.” This seems different than the repetition in most fairytales, however. It seems to me as if the repetition is not for the sake of furthering the story or even for memorization purpose, but rather for characterization. We see what is important to or emotionally straining for the mariner through the lines he chooses to repeat.
The nightingale:
ReplyDeleteI feel that the nightingale presents a shift from the earlier poems we read from Lyrical Ballads. The earlier poems like Idiot Boy, and The Thorn, were borderline silly, and used a rhyme scheme to keep the flow. The poems were playful in a way, and a bit ridiculous. The vocabulary was also super basic, and didn’t even ring of sophisticated, complicated phrasing.
On the other hand, the Nightingale adopts a more serious tone. There is no rhyme, which removes a playful aspect, and also, the topic itself, if one is familiar with Greek mythology, has hints of seriousness. In connecting back to the preface of lyrical poetry, and the guidelines used to create the compilation such as sticking to “the real language of men”, I find that The Nightingale has both sides of the coin in it.
Some high-brow language can certainly be found in the poem, such as “dwelleth”, and “and hark, the nightingale….” As well as many other examples. And, as the note on the bottom points out to us, he quotes Milton, who is certainly a high-brow writer, and they even make reference to Philomel, which is the Greek mythology story relating to the nightingale.
Yet, there are aspects that make this poem part of the “real language of men”. Coleridge writes about regular people, people that he knows. He makes nod to his own son, Hartley, and to Wordsworth and his sister, and ends the poem with a sort of personal prayer for his own son “his childhood shall grow up…”
Overall, this poem is much more sophisticated than the ones we’ve read so far from Lyrical Ballads.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner seems to have somewhat of a religious element amid all the supernatural workings of the poem. The albatross rescues the mariner and his crew from the ice field, and is then shot and killed. This idea of a persecuted savior points to religious and Christian ideas. I don’t know much about Coleridge, but maybe this symbolism can be better understood with a knowledge of his stance on religion. Another religious element is evident at the end of the poem, where the mariner tells the Wedding Guest to say his prayers and to love others. To me, it was unclear how this moral connects to the mariner’s experience. It also doesn’t seem to fit with the supernatural phenomenon of the poem. Overall, I was a bit confused as to how the religious and supernatural elements of the poem coexist and fit together.
ReplyDeleteAs a lyrical ballad, this poem seems to lean more towards the ballad end of the spectrum. While there are definitely lyrical aspects (such as in the conjuring up of emotions like panic, despair, and fear), I feel that as a narrative, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is essentially a ballad. Interestingly, the mariner himself can be regarded as an embodiment of a ballad: he is effectively a traveling story, since he is intent on sharing his experience with everyone he meets.
The Rime of the Mariner does what a lot of fairytales do, by meshing different mythologies and ‘modernizing’ them for contemporary audiences. In doing so, the mythological or religious symbols become attainable for the modern/everyday man. Coleridge takes bits and pieces of mythology and symbolism from Greek and Roman myth and combines it with Christian scripture to create a modern horror/fantasy story. Similar to the way a fairytale may combine religious and Arthurian traditions
ReplyDeleteInterspersed throughout the poem are mentions of casual domestic images, such as the sound of bridal tune starting. This was reminiscent of the juxtaposition of elements of real life (red riding hood bringing food to her grandmother or the little children playing ball) with horror or fantasy (the wolf, or Merlin). By bringing the fantastical into the realm of the realistic, both Coleridge and the authors of the fairytales, can attract a less educated audience and engage them in conversations about morality or religion. The Rime of the Mariner achieves this by placing the sailor’s story into such a normative setting; the effect is creepier and more engaging and compelling than an essay on the repercussions of rash actions. It can, therefore, reach a wider audience.
Both this poem and fairytales use similar tropes such as life, death, and rebirth, as well as dead men rising upon completion of task
Furthermore, the moral of this poem is very unclear, despite the illusions to the original sin, the death of the sailors seems to be more a matter of luck than anything else, after all, Death wins them in a game of dice. Therefore, despite the “He prayeth well, who loveth well”(part 7) the moral of the poem does not seem as clear cut as this may sound. Similarly, some fairytales have unclear morals, despite the author's insistence to the contrary.
First of all, I really like Miri’s comment on the Ancient Mariner. I was also trying to figure out what the moral of the story was – like Perrault’s morals, the cute little message at the end just didn’t seem to cut it. Also, like in the Blackbeard story, there was so much in the story that was not explained, nor is easily explainable (at least to me). The biggest question I have is about the outer frame of the story – why a wedding? Why is the hapless listener a wedding guest? That’s the only detail we get about him. It does make for nice contrast, a wedding and this morbid tale happening simultaneously, but you get the feeling that there has to be some depth to it, some reason why a wedding is the place for such a tale. I, for one, cannot figure it out.
ReplyDeleteTurning to the Nightingale, I love the hypocrisy of the speaker. He complains about annoying poets projecting their own melancholy onto nature, even as he happily projects his own happy-go-lucky attitude on literally everything in sight. This is, it turns out, his whole mission, as outlined in the Preface and repeated in the poem. The goal was to see the beauty and meaning in everything, or, as he says, to “make all nature lovelier” – from the humble, sad nightingale down to Wordsworth’s idiot boy. In addition, by writing in a “conversational” tone, with more common language, they hoped to be more natural. By making their poems “like nature!” they hope to “share in nature’s immortality” which is not a mundane but a “venerable thing”. Though the speaker essentially does to the nightingale what he accuses other poets of doing to it, he feels he is more accurately portraying nature. Nature, according to him, is not something dark which man should impose upon, but something beautiful which should subsume man. This is why nature, and natural people, and natural language is fitting for poetry. The child at the end is also a part of this picture. Children can either be seen as base creatures who must be trained in goodness, or (as Coleridge evidently would see them) as natural and pure, closer to the ideal than adults. He uses the same imagery – enchanted by the moonlight, eyes glittering – for the nightingale and for the child, suggesting that both are natural beings who, while some would see them as base and/or tragic, are actually beautiful and pure.