An uncanny rime

(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel T Coleridge)

I wanted to write a little about how boundaries and thresholds of language in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are uncanny. In this text anything definite is lost, sureties are indistinguishable.

An uncanny feeling arises when the equator transports the sailors into another realm. As the sun rises and dips into the sea, so a change occurs.

The storm is both beautiful and terrifying, the ‘wonderous cold’ is a submissive fear to the elements. The sublime is uncanny. At once terrifying and beautiful, fear and desire work against and with each other to draw you in and push you away.

The ship is suspended in a state of limbo, in a liminal space, at an in-between time of day (sun and moon are the same size) when nothing can be for certain.

The enigma of repetition creates a pace and rhythm but it also creates a stasis in the action.

The tautology used throughout the poem ‘day is day’ and ‘words words words’ does something to these words to make them peculiar. The effect of repetition just makes the words seem odd, or not right in some way, especially when read aloud.

Day after day, day after day
We stuck, nor breath nor motion
As idled as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean

This is my favourite line. And in it shows in perfection the uncanny.

The beauty of the imagery clashes with the reality of the sailors dangerous situation in a barren ocean. And the repetition of painted has the effect of making the reader imagine a painting within a painting within a painting. The language drags the narrative into repetition, beauty and stasis conflicting with the fear of the sailors.

Though these blacken lipped men are dehydrated to madness, surround by an oily witching sea and sucking their own blood; Coleridge makes the scene a glittering, wavering, chimerical painting, an uncanny picture.

Throughout the narrative there is always a linguistic wavering, an uncertainty to commit to one solid idea or image. For example, the transsegmental shifts across the boundaries of words, refuse to commit. The line ‘a sail, a sail’ is an example of this shifting. When read, the line sounds like it can mean either a ship sail or an attack (an assail). Notably either is applicable to the line and meaning. But what does he mean?

This is a circular prose where the end meets the beginning. Coleridge depicts a nightmarish world, a real dream, characterised by the disharmony between action and emotion.

In a savage sea where vivid images of burnt men drinking there own blood pervade the text, there is a strange beauty in the rhythm of lines and an odd wonderment at the scenes described. This conflict reaching sublime heights generates a powerful sense of the uncanny and a fearfully beautiful tale.