The Ancient Mariner, the Wandering Jew and Anti-Selfconsciousness

7/23/2019 The Ancient Mariner, the Wandering Jew and Anti-Selfconsciousness

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The Ancient Mariner Interpreted as a "Wanderer"

By Julian Scutts

On the "Centrifugal" and "Centripetal" aspects of a haunting figure

Coleridges Mariner interpreted as a Wandere r

In w hat sense may the Ancient Mariner be meaningfully descr ibed as a Wanderer?This question might strike one as odd in view of the fact that the word w anderer appearsnow here in the text of this poem. Even so, no less notable a critic that Geoffrey H. Hartmanhas described the Mariner as the Wanderer or Wandering Jew. 1 If w e agree that everypoem must be treated w ithin the context of literary tradition, the fact that the poem elicits thecritics use of the word Wanderer carries w ith it an authority w e should not lightlydismiss. The w ord Wanderer has both a centrifugal and centripetal aspect. In one senseof the w ord a w anderer deviates f rom a path or itinerary. In another sense he f inds his goalintuitively in a journey of self - discovery. Cain and Ahasuerus are w anderers w ho havelost their bearings. The Prodigal Son or the Pilgrim discover their destination through a

process of trial and error according to the established educational principle of learning bydoing. Thus, the apparent contradiction posed by tw o distinct kinds of w anderer iscapable of resolution if w e admit that a higher form of w andering subsumes andtranscends its lesser or partial aspect. Let us then consider Coleridges Ancient Mariner inthe light of the centrifugal and countervailing centripetal implications that inhere in the wordWanderer.

I. The Fusing of Archetypal Figures associated with the Wanderer

The concept of w andering has roots in religious thought concerning divine pow er, guidanceand punishment. Wandering might therefore be defined w ith reference to its traditional

connections w ith the w andering f igures of the Bible, legend and classical mythology. In thecourse of time these have blended together in w estern literature. Geoffrey H. Hartman`sopinion that the motif of the Wandering Jew underlies the f igure of the Ancient Mariner, Cainand other w anderers in Romantic literature is intuited rather than supported by detailedevidence or argument in his Essay ''Romanticism and Consciousness''. View ed historically,the legend of the Wandering Jew is a post-biblical invention inspired by the Church'snegative attitude to Jewry. It echoes nevertheless the motif of exile from the Promised Landand the biblical motif of w andering incorporating the figure of Cain (the biblical Cain was notonly a w anderer in a pejorative sense but the founder of civilisation).If a study of the w andering motif is to be based on w hat on might term a vocabulary oftraditional w andering f igures derived f rom the Bible, mythology and legend, w hat tests areto be applied to ensure the appropriate categorisation of ''Wanderer'' figures in Romanticliterature? The entire exercise of categorising and labelling types of w anderer figures w illprove to be of little value unless the phenomenon of ''introversion'' is taken into account.Throughout the development of literature, and particularly at periods of great historical

change, the factor of ''introversion'' plays a major role in influencing the manner in w hichw riter treated culturally transmitted material. In the Romantic Period this factor noticeablyinfluenced the manner of radically recasting w andering f igures derived from periodssubject to a predominant religious influence. Originally this story of Lutheran inspirationserved to illustrate the dire consequences of transgressing against religious injunctions.Faust sold his soul to the Devil and w ent to Hell; there is little in the manner of the narrator'streatment of the story to suggest that anyone should feel sorry for him. Marlow 's Faust,though he also goes to Hell in the end, acquires the dignity of a tragic hero. Goethe's Faust,w ho avoids Hell altogether, becomes the hero of a divine comedy. Changes in theevaluation of content lead to formal changes in the story itself .To the extent that ''transgressing'', albeit as the prerequisite of repentance, is a Synonym of''w andering'' in one of its principal senses, Goethe's Faust reflects the new positivesignificance w ith w hich Goethe and the Romantics invested the w ord ''Wanderer'' and allthat became associated w ith it in their minds. Faust, like the Ancient Mariner, becomes theProdigal Son. How ever, if Faust and the Ancient Mariner is a Cain or Ahasuerus turned

Prodigal Son, in w hat sense can he be identif ied w ith the former? In a poetic context afigure such as Coleridge's Mariner is not a flat Personification of an idea (though a poemmay take its inception from a germinal idea).It incorporates a nexus of associations the development of w hich may of ten be traced backto earlier w orks by the poet. For this reason it may prove enlightening to consider how themotif of the w anderer as exemplified in the figure of Cain had found expression in one ofColeridge's w orks w ritten before he composed The Anc ient Mariner. In the Prefatory Note
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of The Wanderings of Cain, Coleridge recalls Wordsw orth's thinly veiled dissatisfactionw ith the Second Canto of The Wanderings of Cain, which they had agreed to w rite incollaboration.

I hastened to him (Wordsw orth) w ith my manuscript- that look of humorous despondencyfixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent mock- piteous admission offailure struggling w ith the sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the w hole scheme -w hich broke up in a laugh and The Ancient Mariner w as w ritten instead.2

Is the connection betw een the abandonment of this joint project and genesis of The Rime ofthe Ancient Mariner merely coincidental? The follow ing evidence suggests that theWanderings of Cain and The Ancient Mariner are thematically related and that the latter w asborn of Coleridge's failure to complete the former. This being so, The Rime of the AncientMariner may be directly associated w ith the word ''to w ander,'' not only to the idea ofw andering. Cain and his son Enos in The Wanderings of Cain stray onto a dismal plain notunlike the infernal sea described in The Ancient Mariner. Here they encounter a Shape ''embodying the spirit of Abel. It is as a ''Shape'' that the ship bearing Life-in-Death firstappears to the Ancient Mariner (line152). Cain, like the legendary Wandering Jew, vainlyw ishes f or his ow n death. Coleridge's Cain, incorporating attributes of the Wandering Jew,anticipates the Ancient Mariner, w ho combines characteristics of both Cain and Ahasuerus,in as far as his cruel slaying of an innocent creature is analogous to Cains fratricide Hecommits an act of sacrilege like Ahasuerus in the medieval legend. The motif of theCrucif ixion is evoked by a Repetition of the w ord ''cross'' in association w ith the Albatross

and its death (of ''At length did cross an Albatross'' in line 63, ''With my cross-bow / I shotthe Albatross'' in lines 81 and 82). The image of Death-in-Life and Death playing dice forpossession of the dead also underlines this motif. The conventional symbolism associatedw ith Cain and Ahasuerus accounts for much, but not everything, that happens in the storytold in the Ancient Mariner. Both Cain and Ahasuerus are traditionally eternal w anderersw ith no prospect of finding their destination. The Ancient Mariner differs from them in thathe is f inally released from the curse that has befallen him and "returns to his ow n country".He incorporates the f igure of the returning w anderer pre-eminently represented by Ulyssesand the Prodigal son. In both cases, "w andering" f inally proves a beneficial experience. Itspunitive function is outw eighed by its ultimate rew ards, the w idening and enrichment ofexperience and the education that derives not f rom theory and precept but f rom subjectionto the process of trial and error. The Wanderer sets out a fool, a prey to folly and itsconsequences. He becomes w ise, even sly like Ulysses, as a consequence of hisexposure to experience. As w e may conclude from the stories of Saul and Ulysses,w andering in the biblical and Greek classical traditions establishes the prior condition for

the Wanderer's enjoyment of a favoured status accompanied by pow er and responsibility.In that story w hich reveals the most generous attitude to w andering, the Prodigal Sonbetters his elder brother, w ho never ventures f rom his father's house, to become fit to takepossession of his patrimony. Understood as the Prodigal Son, the Ancient Mariner seems togain few tangible benefits f rom his harrow ing experiences. These, however, allow him togrow spiritually and morally and give him an authority that the reluctant hearer of his storycannot w ithstand. The w edding guest becomes a sadder and w iser man, w hile the

Ancient Mariner, in becoming a prophet - implicitly a poet - reveals a truth, evident in manygreat w orks of literature, that the traveller's misfortune is the narrator's opportunity.Wandering journeys in biblical tradition constitute a Paradox. On the one hand, we may inferfrom them that w andering, especially long periods of w andering such as that of theIsraelites in the desert of Sinai, is the consequence of transgression or the erringproclivities of the human heart. On the other, the experience of w andering ultimately provesbeneficial, for it supplies the opportunity of moral grow th and education \ and may evensecure much greater benefits than those attained by "elder brothers" adhering to the path

of rectitude.

A similar paradox attaches to adventure stories w ith no overt claim to carry ing morallesson. Adventure stories commonly tell of exciting events set in motion by an unforeseenmisfortune w hich thrusts the unw ary traveller into a domain he would not have voluntarilyentered. As both a moral allegory and adventure story, Robinson Crusoe presents a doubleparadox. How ever much Crusoe laments w hat he considers to be his ''s inful'' urge tow ander, he both as man of ac tion and narrator derives immense benef its f rom hismisfortune. As the narrator of his adventures, Crusoe embodies the figure of thew anderer-speaker w ith its ancient precedents in such f igures as Ulysses and Moses (inrabbinical tradition Moses is not only seen as a participant in the events described by thePentateuch accounts but also as the (human) author of the narrative itself, a Levite, adivinely inspired poet; indeed, some of the most lyrical passages in the Pentateuch are

attributed to Moses as dramatic speaker). 3 The greater part of the Odyssey is occupied bypassages attributed to Ulysses as the principal dramatic speaker in the text. The most''fantastic'' or improbable events ref erred to in the body of the text are those w hich Ulysseshimself relates. The w orld described by Ulysses is primarily a mythical w orld occupied bysuch beings as the Cyclops and Circe. Prolonged, uninterrupted, monologues revealpatterns similar to those informing dreams and dreamlike states of mind. Travellers (insideand outside literary context) are known for their ''tall stories'', the absolute veracity of


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w hich may be called into question if moral criteria are applied, hence the highly ambivalentstatus of the w anderer-speaker as w itness, entertainer and suspected liar (viz. the milesgloriosus in classical times and the Baron von Mnchhausen). He is thus alienated fromsociety, set apart from fellows, burdened by the exceptional nature of w hat he has to telland the compulsion to recount his story. Both as a poet-visionary and as a traveller he is anoutsider.

2. Dualism and Dichotomies: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Metaphor equating the poet with an alienated traveller f inds its basis both inunawareness of the effects travel may have on an individual's psychology and in thepicture of the believer as an alien travelling homew ard in the Bible and religious w ritings (cf .I Peter; 2,11). The poet like the believer is conscious of a fundamental divide between thephysical w orld and a transcendent reality beyond it. Baudelaire's concept of the dualitybetw een ''Spleen'' and ''Ideal'' is greatly inf luenced by the concept of the duality betw eenthe flesh and the spirit in religious thought (cf. 2 Corinthians; 4,16,5,10). Fundamentally thesame duality underlies anc ient mythical accounts of demigods w andering the earth. In TheEpic of Gilgamesh the exact proportions of the hero's divine and human constituency aregiven.

O Gilgamesh, lord of Kullab, great is thy praise. This was the man to w hom all things w ere

know n; this w as king w ho knew all countries of the w orld. He w as w ise, he sawmysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. Hew ent on a long journey, was w eary, worn-out w ith labour, and returning engraved on astone the w hole story. When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body.Shamash the glorious sun endow ed him w ith beauty, Adad the god of the storm endow edhim w ith courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others. Tw othirds they made him god and one-third man. 4

The Ancient Mariner incorporates aspects and characteristics of the archetypal wanderersof antiquity. Like them he is subject to the overriding influence of higher pow ers oftenidentified as the planets in the original sense of the w ord (the seven w anderers - the sun,the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn). The movements of the ''cold earthw anderers'' participate in cosmic movement. As the follow ing quotation makes clear,Gilgamesh's mother holds Shamash (the Sun) accountable for her son's impulse to w ander:

O Shamash, w hy did you give this restless heart to Gilgamesh, my son; w hy did you giveit? You have moved him and now and now he sets out on a long journey to the land ofHumbaba, to travel an unknow n road and fight a strange battle 5

In no reading of The Anc ient Mariner can one overlook the relationship betw een the Mariner,the Wanderer, and the higher pow ers represented by the sun, moon, the albatross and thew ind. This relationship forms w hat can be pictured as a vertically oriented polarity betw eenthe horizontal plane of the earth and the region of the sky w hich, together w ith the manypolarities and parallels contained in the poem, contributes to its dense and complexstructure. The slaying of the albatross, w hich combines associations w ith Christ, the Holy

Spirit, and the poetic genius in one symbol, signals the loss of the modern (sentimental)poet's sense of being harmoniously at one w ith his source of inspiration. With no certaintyof an objective correlative to the Wanderer's innate divinity, the Mariner is exposed to theheady and terrifying experience of solipsistic isolation. What brings him (or ratherColeridge) the means of breaking out of his despair and isolation is the discovery of themind's inherent objectivity in thought, language and poetic expression. On a symbolic level,the Mariner experiences a transition from death to a new life. In this light w e shouldconsider another aspect of the Mariner's aff inity w ith the archetypal w anderers ofantiquity.The Mariner, like Gilgamesh, Ulysses and Aeneas, enters the nether realm of death. Thesun, traditionally a symbol of life and regeneration, represents stasis and death inColeridges poem. Apollo, the sun god, w as not only the god of poetry in classical myth, butalso the bringer of pestilence. The colours displayed by Life-in-Death - red, yellow andw hite carry associations both w ith the sun and the plague. In a manner consistent w ith along poetic and religious tradition the sea in The Ancient Mariner combines associations

w ith death and the renew al of life, as in the story of the Flood and the exodus of theIsraelites through the Red Sea.In Goethe's ''Wanderers Sturmlied'' the central symbol of w ater is supported by allusions tothe (classical) deluge myth. Water, traditionally a symbol of God's creative pow er becomesan image symbolising the flow of poetic utterance in the poetry of Goethe and theRomantics. The association of death and water, implicit in biblical accounts of the Flood andthe drow ning of Pharaoh's men in the Red Sea, is evident in passages in Shakespearean


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drama. The nightmarish element in The Ancient Mariner is also found in Clarence's dream inRichard III. In Ariel's song describing the skull and skeletal remains of drow ned man, therelics of death appear as things of beauty. The idea of an aesthetic transformation ofdeaths destructive and deforming effects later finds fuller expression in Baudelaire's ''LeMauvais Mone In The Ancient Mariner the nightmare quality pervading the poem belies thefact that the events described in the narrative reflect Coleridge's success in achieving asaesthetic resolution of the tensions to w hich he w as subject w hen w riting the poem. Theoutw ard events The Anc ient Mariner formally devolve on moral issues. He commits a sinand incurs guilt. How ever, the course of events ref erred to in The Ancient Mariner do notreveal the outw orking of justice according to any normally recognised criteria.One critic is notew orthy in his attempt to explain the poem's apparent illogical nature.Edw ard E. Bostetter points out in his essay "The Nightmare World of 'The Ancient Mariner' ",the subtitle given to the poem in the edition of The Lyrical Ballads published in 1800 was ''APoet's Reverie''. 6 In the eighteenth century the reality of the unconscious mind w asbecoming recognised as a principle governing not only General human psychology but alsothe process of literary creation. The use of imagery and symbolism in poetry reflected thischange, w ith the result that the poem resists reduction to tidy explication or exegesis. Whilepolysemy is a characteristic of poetry in all ages, a new aw areness of the nature andoperation of the subconscious mind affected the formal organisation of poems such as The

Ancient Mariner. The attempts to imitate the synthesising operation of the mind in creatingimages dur ing dreams or dreamlike mental conditions encouraged w hat might be termed athickening or clustering of poetic imagery. Over and above their function of recalling ideasand stimulating a mental picture, images assume a function analogous to that of motifs inmusic - that is, they are to be appreciated as elements of structure, uniquely defined bytheir context w ithin the organic w hole constituting a poem. The free mode of musicalassociation often characterises literary w orks concerned w ith the liberation of mind and

spirit f rom subjection to the exigencies of the material world, and w ith the ultimate freedomassociated w ith the idea that physical death releases the soul from its material limitations.To the extent that death is considered to be both the ultimate negation of physical life andthe passage to spiritual liberation and fulfilment, it is a negation that affirms its apparentantithesis. The concept of w andering w ith its manifold associations w ith death, transition,interrelated movements of mind and body etc. implies not only epic subject matter but also aprinciple of organisation impelled by a principle like that identified by Goethe in his theoriesconcerning polarity (viz Steigerung) that at once poses and reconciles contraries. GermanRomanticism w as inaugurated by Friedrich Schlegel's call for a new form of poetry, whichhe referred to as Universalpoesie, that w as to reconcile Classicism w ith modernity. 7William Blake also strove to reconcile dualities, though in a manner that accorded w ithreligious mysticism rather than by a frontal intellectual assault.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is typically Romantic in expressing an intense concern w ithpolaric relationships. Primarily for this reason it is characterised by a strong ironic elementexemplified in what is probably the most celebrated line in the poem: ''Water, w atereveryw here / Nor any drop to drink.'' (121,122). The motif of polarity is enhanced byreference to the geographic poles and the ''Polar Spirits'' (Gloss to lines 393 - 405).

A number of the polaric oppositions found in the poem are based on tradition. Traditionalsymbols are treated so as to accord w ith the aesthetic purposes of a Romantic poet. Justas the sun carries predominantly negative associations, the moon the token of CelestialMarys healing influence, carries those that are unambiguously positive. (Lines 292 -296).The figure of Mary as intercessor is assigned an analogous role in the depiction of Faust'sentry into Heaven at the end of the dramatic action in Faust II. Those w ho directly associatethe use of symbols originating in religious traditions w ith confessions of faith shouldenquire w hy tw o Protestant poets should aw ard Mary such great significance. In The

Ancient Mariner the Queen of Heaven and Death-in-Life form an antithetic pair analogous tothat formed by Circe and Penelope in The Odyssey or the Whore of Babylon and the Brideof the Lamb in the Book of Revelation.

3. The Return of the Prodigal Son, or the Poet's quest to Reconcile Polarities andTensions

The Ancient Mariner is a poem which contrasts antipodes and opposites, w hile at the sametime inducing a number of such antitheses to merge into one figure or symbol. For thisreason it is impossible to equate the Mariner w ith the Wandering Jew or the f igure of Christalone, though elements connect w ith both are part of the Mariner's composition. The figureof Ahasuerus is itself highly ambivalent, for Ahasuerus is a co-suff erer w ith Jesus. InGoethes poetic fragment ''Der Ew ige Jude'' the Wandering Jew is little less than atransf iguration of Jesus. As w e noted elsew here, the poets of the Romantic period freely

availed themselves of religious symbols identify ing Jesus w ith the poetic imagination, Maryw ith the poet's anima or true identity and the Passion w ith the process of literary and poeticcreation.Of all w anderer figures the Prodigal Son is perhaps the most inclusive - and therefore themost apt - designation of the Ancient Mariner. Remembering that The Ancient Marinerreveals Coleridge's desire for an aesthetic rather than a purely intellectual resolution of thetensions to which he was subject w hen writing the poem, as in his life generally, we w ill


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note some striking similarities betw een the language of the New Testament and that ofPlotinus w hen referring respectively to the Prodigal Son and Jupiter. In his treatise ''On theIntellectual Beauty'' Plotinus refers to Jupiter as one w ho returns to his father's house.

The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring, God engendering a universew ithin himself in a painless labor and -rejoiced in w hat he has brought into being, proud ofhis children - keeping all closely by him, for the pleasure he has in this radiance and intheirs. Of this of fspring-all beautiful, but most beautiful those that have remained w ithin-onlyone has become manifest w ithout; from him (Zeus, sovereign over the visible universe), theyoungest born, w e may gather, as from some image, the greatness of the Father and of the

brothers that remain w ithin the Father's house 9

We need not here broach questions concerning Plotinus's indebtedness to the concept ofChrist as the visible expression of the Father. It is enough to note that the strikingconvergence of New Testament verbal imagery and that of Plotinus w as recognised byEuropean thinkers and poets from the age of the Renaissance onw ards and w as f ullyconsistent w ith a symbiosis of the Biblical and Greek classical images concerning themovement of persons and objects.Both Plotinus in ''On the Intellectual Beauty'' and Dante in ''The Letter to Can Grande dellaScala'' identified the goal of the soul's journey the union of the soul w ith its divine sourceand ground of being, God or ''the One.'' Though Dante identifies the beatific vision, theconsummation of the Christian pilgrimage journey, with a supreme expression of beauty,Plotinus equated the Good and the Beautiful in a manner that orthodox religious might

consider questionable, if not outright dangerous. The Plotinian notion that the act ofcontemplation creates an ontological unity embracing the contemplator and thecontemplated f inds an obvious parallel in w hat John Keats termed "negative capability" andother expressions of Romantic strategies to comprehend some relationship between thepoet represented as observer and the objects of his contemplation.Let us now consider the f igure of the Ancient Mariner as an expression of poetic"w andering" motivated by an impulse to reconcile contraries and resolve the conundrum ofthe Wander-Poet"s dual identity rooted in the poet's - here Coleridge's - biography and theprocess of creating poetry.. In terms of symbols derived from religious traditions, how is thefigure both Ahasuerus and the Prodigal Son? And if the Ancient Mariner is in some sensethe Prodigal Son, in w hat sense has he gained? If w e equate gain w ith any purely tangiblebenefits enjoyed by the Mariner at the end of the poem, w e might suppose very little. AsEdw ard E. Bostetter points out, the Mariner himself f inally remains alienated from the worldand society and produces alienation in those he meets. As a repentant sinner he show sfew signs of joy any more than Coleridge, as a private individual w ith an aff inity w ith the

Prodigal Son, could rid himself of the mental anguish in w riting poetry understood as ameans of self-therapy. In a parallel instance, David Holbrook treats ''Fern Hill'' as anexpression of Dylan Thomas' psychological ''schizoid'' condition. 10 Writing' Fern Hill'' didnot secure any lasting cure of Thomas' mental ailment, but is it any less great a poeticachievement for that? The gain, w hether w e are speaking of ''Fern Hill'' or The Rime of the

Ancient Mariner is the poetic achievement itself . A great hindrance to an objective criticalapproach to The Ancient Mariner stems f rom the very w ealth of extra-literary topics andthemes that are readily associated w ith it - e.g. neo-platonic philosophy, Calvinist theology,the effect of drugs on the consciousness, and so on. However interesting and enlighteninga discussion of such topics may be, it does not itself provide a basis for assessing The

Ancient Mariner as a poetic achievement. Bostetter goes so far as to deny the possibilitythat the poem is at all accessible to logical analysis. The density and complexity of thepoems imagery and structure render the w ork intractable to paraphrase. Thus he rejectsWarrens contention that the poem derives its unity from the neo-platonic concept of ''OneLife''. 11 This, Bostetter concedes, furnishes the ''moral tag'' w hich Coleridge gave to The

Ancient Mariner, but in his view, the ostensible message of the poem is belied by poet'snightmare vision of a w orld become the playground of malign forces. Bostetter departsfrom objective internal criticism when he inveighs against the allegedly unfair dealings ofGod w ith human beings or takes to task the ruling pow er in the universe as presented inThe Anc ient Mariner, when speculating whether the Mariner has gained at the end of hisharrow ing experience. He writes:

The Mariner's act may have been a sin, but it made him important to God and men alike; inthis sense he w as rew arded rather than punished. 12

One can hardly do justice to the pow er and mystery of The Ancient Mariner if one treats the

poem as one that is ''about'' a great idea or about the Mariner. Coleridge's choice of themew as determined by the need to create a poem ''of pure imagination, as Bostetter puts it, -to w rest beauty f rom the raw material afforded by nightmare visions and hallucinations.Here it is important to consider the incident that marks the turning-point of the poem, w hichis reached w hen the Mariner in a trance- like state (''unaw are''), blesses the w ater snakeshe sees by the light of the moon. The aspects of the sw imming snakes that deeply aff ectthe Mariner are their motion and their beauty. The motion of the snakes symbolises andepitomises the principle of motion both in external nature and in the poetic mind. As earlier


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discussions have suggested, Goethe, Schiller and the Romantics equated motion w ith avital force in nature and all life. Beauty meant for Schiller and Keats the reconciling principlethat should - and f inally w ould - reconcile humanity's moral and aesthetic strivings. TheMariner's visual encounter w ith the water snakes poses the counterpoint of his act of killingthe albatross, an act that likew ise sprang f rom subconscious impulses. It is ironic thatsnakes should provide the Mariner w ith the occasion at w hich he was granted relief f romthe curse that had befallen him and his crew , in view of the role ascribed to the Serpent inthe story of Eden, though Moses had brazen serpents raised in the w ilderness as a meansof curing those about to die from snakebite. An allusion to this incident recorded in thePentateuch w ill not appear out of place if w e accept The Ancient Mariner as the product ofa merging of basic allegorical journeys rooted in biblical and ancient Greek writings.

To conclude my argument, the "Wanderer", incorporating and merging the motifs ofAhasuerus and the Prodigal Son, reflects not only Coleridge's concern w ith the AncientMariner as a dramatic character, his psychological make-up etc., but also, and perhapsmore fundamentally, the very processes that mould and inform the poem in its entirety.Rilke came as c lose as did any other w riter w e have considered to establishing a clearconnection between the figure of the Prodigal Son and the artist's quest to mould languageaesthetically in the last pages of Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (TheSketchings of Malte Laurids Brigge). The figure of the Prodigal Son is here a metaphor thatilluminates the process of artistic creativity. The artist's ''return to God'' is not to beunderstood in purely religious terms, as w hen it is applied to descriptions of mysticalexperience. It entails the labour involved w henever artists and poets express an inwardvision in a external medium thanks to - not despite of - the latter's resistant nature. In thepoet's case this medium is language. (See the conclusions draw n by Hans DietrichBorchert, a critic concerned w ith the figure of the Prodigal Son in Rilke in: ''Das Problem desVerlorenen Sohnes'' bei Rilke). 13

ANNOTATIONS

1. Geoffrey H. Hartman, "Romanticism and 'Anti-Self-consciousness"', Romanticism andConsciousness, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1970), 46 - 56.

2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Prefatory Notes on The Wanderings of Cain, 1828. The w ordscited are found at the end of the f irst paragraph of the Prefatory Note.

3. Luther noted the lyricism of the song of Moses and the Israelites in the fifteenth chapterof Exodus. Psalm 90 is traditionally attributed to Moses.

4. The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated in English by N.K. Sanders (Harmondsw orth: PenguinClassics, 1960) p. 59.

5. Ibid., 73.

6. Edward E. Bostetter, "The Nightmare World of "The Ancient Mariner" in: Other Poems, ed.Alan R. Jones and William Tydeman (Tiptree, 1973) pp. 185 - 199.

7. Friedrich Schlegel, 116th "Athenum"-Fragment. 1798 - 1800.

8. From the English translation of The Enneads, revised by B.S. Page, 1956 in "On theIntellectual Beauty" reprinted in Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (New York:Harcourt Brace Vovanovich, 1971), p. 112.

9. Ibid., p. 112.

10. David Holbrook, The Code of Night (London: Athlone Press, 1972).


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11. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, w ith an Essay by Robert Penn Warren (New York,1946).

. 12. "The Nightmare World..", p. 193.

13. Hans Heinrich Borcherdt, "Das Problem des 'Verlorenen Sohnes bei Rilke", Worte undWerte / Bruno Markw ardt zum 60. Geburstag, ed. Erdmann and Alf ons Eich

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