Symbols and Symbolism in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner :: Rime

Symbols in The Rime of the antique Mariner   A close interlingual rendition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner will reveal that the Ancient Mariner-who is at once himself, Coleridge and all humanity-having sinned, both incurs punishment and seeks redemption or, in other words, becomes uneasily aware of his relation to the God of Law (as symbolized by the Sun), and in his sub-consciousness earnestly entreats the forgiveness of the God of Love (represented by the Moon-symbol).   ... For Professor Lowes, while he has break a Coleridge of amazing intellectual grasp ... stops short on the border line of purely imaginative experience. In his long study of The Ancient Mariner, he seems to miss the essential allegory.... when all is said, his unsparable book is content to be a review of Coleridges intellectual and creative relation to his available sources in books, in conversations and in his life history, not (save on occasion as supplying a casual argument) to arti culate part with part in the poetic excogitation as a whole ....   ... There is nowhere here or elsewhere in the book The Road to Xanadu a hint of the history puke the Mariners glittering eye, a suggestion of the poets bold transfer of the glitter in the perfectly seamens eyes (Death) to those of the Mariner (Life-in-Death). The poet introduces the Mariner abruptly and repetitively as bingle with a glittering eye. A similar emphasis is given to the epithet bright-eyed (as in the penultimate stanza of Part VII) and when the fearful question, Why lookst thou so?, is asked, our thoughts revert to that sinister glitter. Now consider this stanza in Part III   One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each move his face with a ghastly pang, And cursed me with his eye, and these stanzas also from Part IV The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away. An or phans curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high But ohl more horrible than that Is a curse in a dead mans eye Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die and these again from Part VI All stood together on the deck, For a charnel-dungeon fitter All fixed on me their stony eyes, That in the Moon did glitter.