N.A. Petrova
Difficulty genre definition poems (like any other genre in the process of development) can be explained by the constant renewal and mobility of the genre canon. In eras of historical change, the formation of a new worldview, new varieties of already established genres arise; the genre's own content, accumulated in the process of its evolution, enters into a dialogical relationship with the content of historical time. “That is why the genre is able to ensure the unity and continuity ... of the development” of literature.
Genetically, the poem has an epic nature. The romantic worldview radically rethinks the relationship between the world and man. A person ceases to feel himself only as an object of influence of circumstances - fate, chance, fortune - but recognizes himself as an active subject of life, its creator and transformer. N. Fry notes that before the era of romanticism, everything that existed was imagined as created by God, but now the role of the creator was assigned to man, and, in contrast to creation, “madeness,” the concept of an organic, self-developing world was developed, perceived by human consciousness in all its dynamic integrity. The poet is the embodiment of vital activity (“ The ideal person V modern conditions“Only a true poet, a universal artist can consider himself,” wrote F. Schlegel). The poet, extremely objectified, hidden behind a self-developing narrative, in the classical epic, in the romantic poem, strives for self-disclosure through identifying himself with the hero or “I”-narrative. The poem acquires features characteristic of the lyrical genre of literature - centripetal structure, focus on the spiritual life of a person. The formation of a new lyric-epic type of poem begins.
Concentrating attention on the life of consciousness leads to a weakening of the role of the plot in the plot construction of the poem. Fable and non-fable narration represent two simultaneously developing sides of the literary process. The necessity and need to capture any event in the cultural memory of mankind requires a plot organization of the work; understanding the causes and consequences of this event can realize itself in non-fabular forms. Recreation and comprehension are inherent in each individual literary work, but the general attitude (in in this case given by romantic aesthetics) emphasizes one or another aspect. A romantic poem is formed not without the influence of the ballad with its narrative organization and the ode, in which the event is only a pretext for an emotional reaction.
In a romantic poem, the plot may be absent (Blake), dotted (Byron's Oriental Poems), expanded and full of twists and turns (Coleridge) - in any case, it is of secondary interest. External Events- only a background for activity romantic hero, signs of his spiritual activity. Coleridge - not only a poet, but also a theorist of Romanticism - formulates this with sufficient certainty: "In looking at the objects of nature, I rather sought ... a symbolic meaning for something within me that had always existed, than observed something new." In Shakespeare's plays, he highlights moments close to romantic aesthetics, noting that their plot is interesting only to the extent that it allows the characters to reveal themselves. The conflict and event in a romantic poem are transferred to the sphere of consciousness of the subject, who can be a “collective personality”, a representative of the era, embodying the objective integrity of universal human consciousness (“let him go with a collective name, a bandage around a full sheaf”), in which case the poem will retain the epic dominant (in a work of mixed generic nature we can only talk about the predominance of any of the generic principles).
Most often the plot is epically oriented romantic poem associated with the motif of travel, easily amenable to allegorical reinterpretation as a “journey of the soul”, similar to it, which organizes Dante’s “Comedy”. Coleridge defines allegory “as the use of a certain set of characters and figures, realizing themselves in appropriate action and circumstances, for the purpose of setting forth in a mediated form some moral categories or speculative ideas ... in such a way that the eye or imagination constantly sees the features of difference, and the mind guessed the similarities; and all this, ultimately, must be so intertwined that all the parts form a single whole.”
Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a work of such an allegorical plan, combining a series of events " symbolic system and moral teaching. It is stylized as a medieval ballad, but is not actually a ballad. Researchers consider the “Tale” to be more of an epic poem, indicating that Coleridge, who first included it in the collection of “Lyrical Ballads,” was inclined towards this point of view. K.X. Abrams notes the epic mania of this time, from which Coleridge did not remain aloof. The epic attitude is explained by the desire to create a universal work that embraces the entire integrity of the cultural consciousness of the era. Dante turns out to be a guide in this sense too. Schelling called Dante a model, “for he expressed what a poet of a new era must do in order to concentrate in one poetic whole the entirety of the history and education of his time, that is, the only mythological material that was at his disposal.” In the trichotomy of Dante's poem, Schelling saw “a general type of contemplation of the universe,” uniting “nature, history, art.” The ballad retains the meter and stanza, which are not always strictly consistent, the mystical, “terrible” nature of the event, the interrogative sentences that drive the transition story, the abrupt development of the action, the narrator’s lack of distance from the story telling event, the introduction of dialogue and the dramatic depiction of emotions. The Sailor's story itself is a ballad, but it is included in a broader context, organized according to a different genre principle - an epic poem. The switching is carried out by a complex system of imagery that reveals the absolute meaning of phenomena (“A poem is a picture of life, depicting what is eternally true in it,” Shelley), repeated repetition of the plot scheme and the storytelling event itself, and a change in the relationship between the author and the hero. The development of a ballad into a poem can be traced in the very structure of the work.
The plot of "The Tale" is organized around the story of crime - punishment - redemption. This plot outline coincides with Schelling's trichotomy and Hegel's judgment on the development of the epic plot. In a romantic poem, the conflict is conceptualized as the disintegration of the integral unity of the world and man, the separation of human consciousness from the world whole, which threatens the integrity of consciousness itself, the resolution of the conflict is the return of man to the world and to himself.
The epic plot scheme is repeated many times in the poem, but the nature of the conflict changes, it gradually switches to the plane of spiritual existence. In the "Tale", in essence, there are two events - the storm and the murder of the Albatross. The first is not provoked by human actions; here he is dependent on the play of nature. The change of her states is natural, the suddenness of the danger and the mysticism of salvation give the incident a mysterious coloring, as is typical of a ballad. The murder of Albatross is also not motivated, but it is an act of conscious human will that requires retribution. Retribution is accomplished in a cyclical alternation of losses of harmony and insights, practically incomplete and incomplete. Incompleteness is fundamental; it is associated with the understanding of harmony in romantic aesthetics, in particular in Coleridge.
When characterizing romantic art, it is customary to talk about its inherent two-worlds (and even “three-worlds” - I.F. Volkov proposes to highlight the subjective world of the romantic hero), the opposition of the due, ideal world to the existing, unacceptable. The statement of the split is not the final position of the romantics; it is accompanied by the desire to overcome discord and synthesize opposing principles. Two worlds - the real and the transcendental - exist simultaneously, only the poet and those to whom the “supernatural” has been revealed see the absolute in the ordinary, and the idea of the whole in the particular. The “ideal poet,” according to Coleridge, is the one “who creates an atmosphere of harmony in which spirit and reason merge.” The task of bringing these worlds together was posed in “Lyrical Ballads” (“a cycle of poems of two kinds” - fantastic, seemingly reliable, and everyday - open to a sensitive heart). Harmony in the understanding of the romantics is not something established once and for all, but eternally becoming; its stability is ensured by the balance of opposite principles, the antinomy of which is not removed by synthesis - “the absolute synthesis of absolute antitheses” (F. Schlegel). The impossibility of the final formation of harmony explains the plot incompleteness of the Tale; at any moment of the poem, the dynamics of transition manifest themselves (“All parts of the whole must be consistent with the main functional parts.” Coleridge): antagonisms that balance each other are transformed” (Coleridge), loss and restoration of harmony are embodied in a system of figurative oppositions.
The sailor sets sail from his “father’s house” (lighthouse, church, house) and returns to it. “The sea” is contrasted with home as a world of strange incidents that tear a person out of the real space-time continuum. Accurate landmarks (movement of the sun, counting of passing days), detailed description the suffering of the heroes, the storm, the calm (N.Ya. Berkovsky spoke of “romantic naturalism”) are designed to give authenticity to this fantastic world. Concreteness turns out to be illusory: the ship either freezes in the middle of a frozen sea, then rushes at incredible speed, changes direction, obeying higher powers, and returns as if the voyage had lasted years; the time of the Sailor's wanderings after the death of the ship is also uncertain and, obviously, endless; he himself is not subject to the influence of time (his age at the beginning of his voyage is unknown, he is forever old). The ship moves first south, then north, towards the equator (the life-saving line of balance between the two poles). The South Pole is the kingdom of ice and darkness, deprivation of life, sending misfortunes. The spirit of the South Pole causes a storm, but it also demands revenge for the Albatross, who kept the ship from destruction. The figurative oppositions in Coleridge's poetics are morally ambivalent. The albatross is a bird of good omen; it appears at night to protect sailors from the Spirit of “darkness and snow,” but is perceived by them from polar opposite positions - either as a good “mistress of the winds” or as a “bad bird of darkness.” The opposition of symbols is not absolute; their ethical content is revealed in the process of plot development.
The main opposition of the poem, which includes all symbolic characteristics, is the opposition of rest and movement. The concept of peace is clearly associated with death: the murder of the Albatross is followed by calm - “the silence of dead waters”, the death of sailors. The concept of movement seems to be connected with life: the wind - “revived air” - brings the Sailor and the ship back to life. At the same time, the storm - continuous movement - threatens death; the frantic movement of the ship, drawn by good spirits, cannot be endured by a person (the Sailor loses consciousness, he comes to his senses when the movement slows down). Sea creatures, “generated by Calm,” evoke the contempt of the Sailor, but after loneliness and suffering, they, generated by the “Great Calm,” awaken love in him and lead to salvation. Extremes are equally unacceptable, each of them - dead chaos or unstoppable movement - is complete in itself, finite and therefore disastrous. The symbol of harmony is the month and the stars - “being at rest, but always moving”, bringing “quiet joy”.
If the loss of harmony is accompanied by the disappearance of any elements, abilities, opportunities, then their restoration is their acquisition. These processes occur in stages, echoing the closure of the plot ring of the poem. Albatross is a good sign, the ship of Death is a bad omen (the meaning of both is not immediately clear); the wind dies down, the sailors fall dead - the air “comes to life”, “heavenly spirits” move into the dead bodies; dryness, thirst, inability to pray are replaced by rain and prayer. Each member of the opposition must find its own countermember. From this point of view, the connection between the Spirit of the South Pole and the Albatross becomes clear. With the murder of the Albatross, the balance between good and evil is disrupted; The spirit seems to split into two, trying to combine both principles in itself: it thinks about revenge, but continues to drive the ship towards the equator. When the ship reaches the equator, the Spirit retires to the pole, but his demons explain the meaning of the act and the punishment assigned. The confrontation subsides gradually; when the Sailor experiences love, “heavenly seraphim” appear on the ship, the disturbed harmony is restored, and the Sailor can return home.
Oppositional couples are drawn together by a love that embraces the whole world (for Dante, love was also the prime mover of the universe):
The powerful Spirit loved that bird,
Whose kingdom is darkness and snow.
And we preserve the life of a bird, he himself,
A cruel man.
The love bequeathed by God is comprehended by the Sailor through suffering, loneliness, half-death (sleep, fainting), it contributes to his return home, to people, to the world, but the penance assigned by the Spirit does not end with his return. By folk beliefs, the bird is the embodiment of the soul, Coleridge has direct and indirect ( souls of the dead the sailors fly away with the same whistle as the arrow that killed the Albatross) indicating the possibility of such an interpretation of the symbol. He who kills the Albatross loses his soul, is alienated from the world, and finds himself entirely in the power of the transcendental (Death, Life-in-Death - the forces of death are also paired). The restoration of harmony turns out to be at the same time a search for the soul, a restoration of subjective integrity. This process is marked by an allusion to Dante’s hell, purgatory, and paradise, through which the soul passes and which it carries within itself. “Dead ice” and the darkness of the pole, “the copper horizon” and the bloody sun, “seven days” (like the seven deadly sins) among the dead sailors, and after prayer and blessing of all living things, sleep (“Or did I die in a dream? Or as a disembodied spirit became And paradise opened to me?”) - “a swarm of bright spirits”, “sounds of sweet prayers”, heavenly seraphim and music of the heavenly spheres. The theme of spiritual rebirth is also reinforced by the change of seasons that slips through the comparisons (April, June - this is not conveyed in translation).
The sailor, who came into contact with the supernatural and survived (he was won by Life-in-Death from Death), unites two worlds, the real and the transcendental. He is the bearer of the transcendental in real world(like “night”, it wanders from edge to edge). The violation of world harmony remains in him a recurring “agony of the soul,” which can only be resolved by telling a story, teaching about the need for love, community, and prayer. The story is repeated many times in the same situations: from the three people who met him - the Helmsman (or Pilot, in Russian translations: Kormshchik for Gumilyov and Fisherman for Levik), his son and the Hermit - the Sailor chooses the “holy father”; of three young men hurrying to wedding feast, one Marriage Guest.
At the level of the hero, the poem ends with a plot - a return: plot completion, the storytelling event is projected into an endlessly unfolding world whole, devoid of temporal characteristics (except for the cyclical change of day and night, where the night contributes to gradual insight - “And yet others - smarter, sadder - Woke up in the morning "). At the level of the author, the poem is completed didactically and also through the process of repeated storytelling. The theme of the poem is already revealed in the epigraph, the series of events is reproduced in the “Summary”, which precedes the poem (and stylized as the expanded titles of medieval short stories), the Sailor’s story to the Guest is accompanied by a commentary (actually also a retelling in the margins of the poem). II.Ya. Berkovsky believed that Coleridge marginalized the plot, leaving “lyrically meaningful” in the text, and saw in this a romantic liberation from the contours that limit the free manifestation of life. This is unlikely to be the case. The sailor as a narrator is not distanced from the event of the story; each time he again experiences the “agony of the soul,” recording both the facts and the emotional reaction as a chronicler. In his story there is no place for reflection or comprehension; moral assessment is introduced by supernatural forces (demons); but the Sailor’s involvement in two worlds functionally brings him closer to the poet (R.P. Warren sees in Albatross the embodiment of poetic power, ruined by the poet himself - the Sailor). The “I” narrator (the Sailor) and the moralizing commentator are separated in Coleridge’s poem from different interrelated texts. The commentary is distanced from the event of the story both by its temporal and evaluative position. The Sailor only reports the murder of the Albatross, his state at that moment is conveyed by the Guest’s question, and in the marginalia it is explained that the Albatross was “a beneficent bird that brings happiness.” The sailor conveys the different reactions of the sailors to the murder; the commentator concludes that in this way they “joined his crime.” The sailors are punished by death, their death is part of the retribution assigned to the Sailor, but they do not become heroes of the story; the Sailor is the only bearer of conscious will among them.
The rapprochement of the narrators' positions begins at the end of the fifth part, after the Sailor hears the conversation of the Demons; the final moral message refers to the conclusion of the Sailor's story. As soon as the story is completed, the “agony of the soul” is resolved, the narrators are separated again - outside of this state, the Sailor is deprived of prophetic power (“And the Old Sailor wandered, - The burning gaze went out”). The Sailor has listeners to whom his word is addressed (for the Hermit - confession, for the Guest - instruction), the listeners of the commentator are not subjectively expressed. Moral instruction as absolute truth (limiting the romantic concept of the world order to divine decree and grace) results in a direct appeal to the reader. The moral conclusion of the poem is summed up by the last gloss. Thirty-three years after writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge remarked “that its chief and only defect was the so open imposition upon the reader of a moral idea as the spring or cause of action in a work based on the imagination.”
Key words: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, criticism of the work of S.T. Coleridge, criticism of the works of S.T. Coleridge, download criticism, download for free, English literature of the 19th century, romanticism, leucists, Lake school
The Old Mariner meets three young men invited to a wedding feast, and keeps one.
Old Man Sailor, he is alone
Of the three, he held it with his hand.
"What do you want, with fire in your eyes,
With a gray beard?
The groom's door is open,
And he is my relative;
There are already people, the feast is already underway,
A merry ringing can be heard."
But the old man holds everything:
"Wait, there was a ship there..."
"Let the greybeard liar go."
The old man let him in.
The Wedding Guest is enchanted by the eyes of the old navigator and is forced to listen to his story.
He fixed his burning gaze on him.
He listens to him like a child,
The Sailor took possession of him.
The Wedding Guest sat down on the stone
And he hung his head;
And I started with fire in my eyes
Tell the old man.
"The ship is sailing, the crowd is screaming,
We are happy to leave
And the church and home,
Green hills.
The sailor tells how the ship sailed south in good winds and calm weather until it approached the Equator.
Here is the sun to the left of the wave
Rising on high
Lights up on the right side too
Descends into the wave.
Higher, higher every day
Floats above the mast..."
Then the Guest hit himself in the chest,
He heard a bassoon.
The wedding guest hears music; but the Sailor continues his story.
The bride has already entered the hall,
And she's sweeter than roses
And the heads of a cheerful choir
He bows before her.
And just like that, with flames in the eyes,
Said the Sailor.
The ship is carried away by a storm to the South Pole.
But then a storm overtook us, it was
Powerful and angry
He twisted the headwinds
And he took us south.
Without a mast, nose under water,
As if fleeing from threats
Behind him is a hurrying enemy,
Jumping suddenly
The ship was flying and the thunder was roaring,
And we sailed south.
And fog and snow greeted us
And the evil cold
Like an emerald, they float towards us
There are masses of ice all around.
A land of ice and a frightening roar, where nothing living is visible.
Sometimes between snow cracks
The gloomy light will flash:
Neither man nor beasts, -
There is only ice everywhere.
From here the ice, from here the ice,
Above and below,
It crackles, breaks, rattles.
Like sounds in a heavy sleep.
Finally a large sea bird called the Albatross flies through the snowy fog. She is greeted joyfully and hospitably.
And finally Albatross
He flew to us from the darkness;
As if he were a man,
We treated him.
He took food from our hands.
Circled overhead.
And with thunder the ice cracked, and behold
The helmsman led us out.
And so the Albatross turns out to be a good omen and accompanies the ship returning to the north through the fog and floating ice.
And the kind south wind rushed us along,
Albatross was with us,
He flew off to play and eat
On the ship's bow.
In the damp fog on the mast he
Slept for nine evenings
AND white month he beamed at us
From white clouds."
The Old Mariner, violating hospitality, kills the bird that brings happiness.
- The Lord is with you, gray-haired sailor,
You're shaking like it's freezing!
How do you look? - "With my arrow
Albatross was killed."
Part two
"Here is the sun on the right from the wave
Rising on high
In the darkness, and on the left side
The depth also goes away.
And the good south wind rushes us along,
But Albatross died.
He doesn't fly to play or eat
On the ship's bow.
The comrades scold the Old Sailor for killing the bird that brings happiness.
I've done a hell of a job
It was a work of evil.
I heard: "You killed the bird,
What the wind brought;
Unhappy, you killed a bird,
What the wind brought."
But when the fog clears, they justify his action and thereby join in his crime.
When will a ray of sunshine
The ocean is on fire
I heard: "You killed the bird,
Sending the fog.
You were right, you killed the bird,
Sending the fog."
The wind continues. The ship enters the Pacific Ocean and sails north until it reaches the Equator.
The foam is white, the wind is blowing,
Behind us the ripples are growing;
We were the first to enter the space,
Those silent waters.
The wind died down and our sail hung,
Those silent waters.
The ship suddenly stops.
One 18th century traveler spoke in his book about a strange man. It was the captain's assistant, already elderly and always thoughtful. He believed in ghosts. When they were caught in storms along the way, he claimed that this was retribution for the death of an albatross, a huge white bird of the gull type, which he shot as a joke. Using this story, Coleridge created his immortal poem.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772, died in 1834. He was the son of a poor village priest, and in his adolescence he showed such brilliant abilities that the school where he studied sent him to the university at its own expense, and this happened very rarely . But he spent only two years at the university - 1791-93 - the years of the most violent explosion of the Great French Revolution. The university authorities suspected the young man Coleridge of sympathizing with the ideas of the Republicans; he was forced to leave the university and became a soldier in a dragoon regiment.
Living in the barracks, he, like our poet Gabriel Derzhavin, his contemporary, wrote letters to illiterate soldiers, and in return they did his work in the stables. Four months later, his friends released him from the barracks, and then he began to engage in literary work, which was greatly facilitated by his acquaintance with Robert Southey, the most talented poet of that time. Together with Southey and several other young men, Coleridge started a trip to America to found an ideal socialist colony there, but something prevented him from realizing this idea, and he devoted himself entirely to literary activity, writing the revolutionary tragedy “The Fall of Robespierre,” which was not successful English public, gives lectures, publishes a newspaper.
A strong influence on Coleridge, as on all literature of that era in general, was the famous poet Wordsworth, who taught his contemporaries that for poetry, painting and art in general there is nothing unworthy of attention, and that a street boy rolling around a muddy pond in a dirty trough, for for a true poet, a subject as significant as the campaign of Alexander the Great in Persia.
Coleridge was one of the most talented in that group of poets who founded a new poetic school in England called “Lake School”. The closest predecessors of this school were content with descriptions, reasoning, stories, often brilliantly presented, but always superficial. Their poetry either entertained or taught the reader, but did not touch or shock. Their topics were poor, their choice of words limited, and they seemed to know no more about life than those they addressed.
The Lake School poets, Coleridge and his friends, Wordsworth and Southey, came out in defense of two closely related demands - poetic truth and poetic completeness. In the name of poetic truth, they abandoned conventional expressions, false beauty of language, too lightweight themes, in short, everything that slides across the surface of consciousness without exciting it and not satisfying the need for something new. Their language was enriched with a variety of folk sayings and purely colloquial expressions, their themes began to concern that eternal in the soul of a person that affects everyone and in all eras. In the name of poetic completeness, they wanted their poems to satisfy not only the imagination, but also the senses, not only the eye, but also the ear. You see and hear these poems, you are surprised by them and rejoice, as if these are no longer poems, but living beings who have come to share your loneliness.
The poets of the Lake School willingly left London and lived in the provinces, in Kezik, on the shores of the famous lake, which they often sang and from which they took their name. Already in those days, the whole of central England was a vast garden, where neat villages with ancient bell towers stretching into the pale blue sky were scattered among groves and waters, pastures and fields.
Everything violent, everything heroic in English life was concentrated by the sea, in port cities, from where ships departed every week for distant colonies, taking away either swearing and swearing, or arrogant and cold, strong-cheeked and muscular people. These were alien to the poets of the "Lake", the time of their chanting was... went with Byron. Coleridge and his friends fell in love with peaceful nature not so much for its own sake, but because of the opportunity to comprehend with its help the human soul and the secret of the universe. They sought the real lake, of which Kezik was only an external expression, in the depths of their spirit and, looking into it, they comprehended the connection between all living things, the closeness of the invisible and visible worlds, infinitely joyful and genuine love. Something similar was familiar to our sectarians, as can be seen from their songs. Something similar can be seen in the works of modern Russian poets.
Coleridge's "The Poem of the Ancient Mariner" is rightly considered the best poetic creation of the Lake School. It is written in the meter of English folk ballads, with repetitions also in folk spirit. This, as it were, brings it closer to the reader who wants to sing it, as the poems that served as its model were once sung. Repetitions by emphasizing the most significant places hypnotize us, infecting us with the intense excitement of the narrator. Rhymes, sometimes appearing in the middle of a line, ringing in a short meter, like bells, enhance the magical music of the poem.
The old man, the hero of the poem, of course, comes from the depths of the country. For the sin of which every hunter is guilty, he suffers from repentance all his life. In the seas, where Byron's heroes amuse themselves with battles and the love of beautiful savages, he sees only spirits, sometimes threatening, sometimes forgiving. But how wise all this is in its apparent simplicity, what depth of thought in this view of a person as a lost child! After all, each of us at least once in our lives was lonely, like the old sailor, as lonely as perhaps
There is only God
and everyone, having read this poem, will feel, like a wedding guest, that he too is “deeper and wiser”
I woke up in the morning.
The first translation of this poem into Russian was made in the fifties by F. Miller, the second in the nine hundredths by Apollo of Corinth.
Ballads of Robert Southey
One English literary historian touchingly said about Southey: “There was not a single poet who wrote so well and so much and at the same time was so unknown to the public.” This is true of the West. In our country, thanks to the translations of Zhukovsky and Pushkin, the name Southey is much better known than in his homeland.
Robert Southey was born in 1774 in Bristol into the family of a poor textile merchant.
He owes his upbringing to his maternal aunt, Miss Tyler, in whose house he became addicted to reading and became acquainted with art, thanks to frequent meetings with local actors. He was expelled from high school for a harsh article about the education system published in a magazine published by students. Then you stayed for two years? at Oxford University, but learned little from there, being mainly involved in rowing and swimming. During the same period of his life, he met and became friends with the poet Coleridge,* who was two years older than him. Both young men, keen French Revolution, they started to build a socialist republic in America, where the first place would be given to poets, but lack of funds prevented them from starting to implement their intention. At the same time, Southey wrote the revolutionary poem "Wat Thayaer",** which appeared in print only many years later. Under the influence of the activities of Napoleon, whom Southey considered the enemy of freedom, he began to appreciate the English order and soon became an ardent supporter of church and state, which caused Byron's sharp enmity towards him.
In England there is an ancient custom of choosing from among the poets a poet laureate (crowned with laurels). In 1813, at the insistence of Walter Scott, Southey was chosen as such a poet. From then on he lived immersed in his books and manuscripts, and died in 1843, leaving behind him 109 volumes of his works and one of the largest private libraries in England.
Southey is called the most typical representative of the "Lake School", *** like Coleridge - the brightest and Wordsworth - the deepest. Of the series of slogans posed by this school, Southey drew most attention to historical and everyday truth. Exceptionally educated, he willingly chose distant eras and countries foreign to him as themes for his poems, and sought to convey the feelings, thoughts, and everything characteristic of them. little things of everyday life, taking the point of view of his heroes. For this he used all his wealth folk poetry and was the first to introduce into literature its wise simplicity, variety of meters and the powerful poetic device of repetition. However, this was precisely the reason for his non-recognition, because the nineteenth century was interested primarily in the personality of the poet and did not know how to see their creator behind the magnificence of the images. For us, Southey's poems are a whole world of creative fantasy, a world of premonitions, fears, and mysteries that the lyrical poet talks about. speaks with anxiety and in which the epic finds a peculiar logic, only in some parts in contact with ours. No moral truths, except perhaps the most naive ones taken as material, can be derived from this creativity, but it endlessly enriches the world of our sensations and, thus transforming our soul, fulfills the purpose of true poetry.
The history of literature knows two types of ballads - French and German. A French ballad is a lyrical poem with a certain alternation of repeated rhymes. The German ballad is a short epic poem, written in a somewhat elevated and at the same time naive tone, with a plot borrowed from history, although the latter is not necessary. Southey's ballads belong precisely to this type.
*See World Literature Issue No. 19: Coleridge, "The Ancient Mariner's Poem."
** Wat Tyler - Chief revolutionary movement in England at the end of the fourteenth century, who was a blacksmith.
*** About the Lake School, see issue No. 19 of World Literature.
Ticket No. 18 The Legend of the Ancient Mariner S.T. Coleridge: plot, composition, images and ideas
Plot
“The Poem of the Ancient Mariner” tells the story of supernatural events that happened to a sailor during a long voyage. He tells about this much later to a random interlocutor, whom he distracted from the wedding procession. After leaving the port, the protagonist's ship was caught in a storm, which carried him far to the South, to Antarctica. An albatross, considered a good omen, appears and leads the ship out of the ice. However, the sailor kills the bird with a crossbow, without knowing why. His comrades scold him for this, but when the fog that shrouded the ship clears, they change their minds. But soon the ship falls into a dead calm, and the sailor is accused of bringing a curse on everyone.
As a sign of his guilt, the corpse of an albatross was hung around his neck. The calm continues, the team suffers from thirst. Eventually a ghost ship appears, on board of which Death plays dice with Life-in-Death for the souls of the ship's crew. Death wins everyone except the main character, who goes to Life-in-Death. One by one, all two hundred of the sailor's companions die, and the sailor suffers for seven days, seeing their eyes full of eternal damnation. In the end, he sees sea creatures in the water around the ship, which he previously called nothing more than “slimy creatures,” and, having regained his sight, blesses them all and all living things in general. The curse disappears, and as a sign of this, the albatross falls from his neck.
Rain pours from the sky and quenches the thirst of the sailor, his ship sails straight home, not obeying the wind, led by angels who have inhabited the bodies of the dead. Having brought the sailor home, the ship disappears along with the crew in a whirlpool, but nothing is finished yet, and Life-in-Death makes the sailor wander the earth, telling his story and its lesson everywhere for edification.
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" tells the story of the connection between human beings visible world with the spiritual invisible. IN strange story The sailor can be seen as a parable about man's relationship with God and about the state of humanity before the coming of Christ and after He was crucified. Coleridge emphasizes the connection with the Bible through the parable style of narration and glosses that comment on the text, like the interpretations that accompany the text of the Holy Scriptures in the margins. The old man's story is a story about a sea voyage, a romantic odyssey of a lonely soul.
Composition
The story consists of seven parts. Based on the plot of the Legend, the compositional division can be imagined as follows: the beginning of the journey, the commission of a sin (killing an albatross), punishment for sin, atonement. It is also worth taking into account the structure of the work - “a story within a story” (an old sailor meets a wedding guest and tells him his story).
Images, ideas
The Marriage Guest is a person who is able to understand the spiritual essence of the Sailor's story, a person whose soul can enter into a marriage union with the Truth, God Himself. The Ancient Mariner's Tale should open the door to the Kingdom of Heaven for the reader (the Wedding Guest), in the sense that he must abandon earthly wisdom and turn to heavenly wisdom, in union with which he can find salvation.
The Sailor's tale unfolds against the background of wedding music sounding from the Groom's house, which directly gives the earthly wedding the high spiritual sound of its heavenly counterpart. The Sailor himself later also unwittingly blesses the water snakes, which frees him from the power of dark forces. Thus, both the Wedding Guest and the Sailor act under the influence of spiritual forces that differ from each other.
An old man stops three young people going to a rural wedding in order to tell them the tragic story of his life, and through it, connect them to the spiritual awareness of human life.
In Coleridge's poem, the wise Mariner with his story replaces the joy of the listener at the earthly wedding feast with eating the fruits of divine wisdom - i.e. wedding feast in the house of the Heavenly Father. At the same time, the Sailor directly calls his chosen listener the Wedding Guest, who has no other name. The Wedding Guest is an allegorical character. The sailor “finds” three young men on the road, but chooses and stops only one of them, the “chosen one” (“many are called, but few are chosen”).
The ship's journey marks the main spiritual eras in the development of mankind: people joyfully begin their journey, but soon a storm overtakes them, and they find themselves frozen in a country where there is nothing alive. The storm is described using a number of personifications: he is a terrible tyrant who unexpectedly captures the ship and drives it with his wings (the image of a huge scary bird appears). So, people find themselves in the hands of the enemy, who drives them into the valley of death, where ice and the growling wind surround them. The symbolism of the scene is also obvious: humanity, under the power dark forces, finds itself on the wrong path and reaches a dead end.
Cold, snow, blizzard, ice traditionally embody a cold, cruel heart, danger and death. This symbolic series is rooted in folklore.
Jesus Christ is both God and man; The albatross behaves both like a bird and like a person. At the same time, answering the question of why Albatross was killed is even more difficult than understanding why Christ was crucified. Both in the Bible and in Coleridge's poem, the death of the Savior is shrouded in mystery; not everything in it is accessible to logical understanding. The sailor himself does not understand why he killed the bird: he behaves as if “someone controls his will,” but this “someone” is clearly an evil force reigning in the ice. In the Sailor and the crew of the ship one can see an analogue of the Jerusalem crowd, which first greeted Christ upon entering Jerusalem, and then, a few days later, shouted with the same enthusiasm: “Crucify him! Crucify!
Likewise, the team first accepts Albatross with great joy, feeds him by hand, plays with him. With the appearance of the bird, the ice moves apart and clears the way for the ship to the north. The contrast between the two cardinal directions is also symbolic: the ship finds itself captive in ice at the south pole, i.e. below on the cartographic vertical, which symbolizes the bottom, the underworld of the spiritual world; The albatross takes the ship to the north, i.e. upward (both on the map and in the spiritual dimension).
And then, unexpectedly for himself, the Sailor kills the savior bird. The hero himself admits that he has committed a “hellish thing”, he is horrified by what he has done. The crew's reaction to the killing of the bird reveals the people's pragmatic attitude towards the savior. At first, the sailors are outraged by what they have done, because a bird has been killed, which brought with it the breeze that brought the ship out of captivity in the ice. But as soon as the fog envelops the ship, the sailors sharply change their attitude towards the murder: now the Albatross is a bird that brought the fog in which nothing can be seen, which means its murder was justified. The team just as quickly changes its attitude towards the savior, just as the Sailor did before them, and even earlier - the residents of Jerusalem.
The image of the repentant thief is universal and is a symbol of any repentant sinner. And since there is no person who would live life without sinning, the image of a repentant sinner can be applied to any person. The Ancient Mariner wanders around the world, telling the story of his crime to people. After the killing of the bird, a number of changes followed in nature and in the condition of the ship. A bloody sun appeared in the sky, everything suddenly froze and stopped, as if life itself had stopped, as if the entire universe had died with the death of the Albatross.
SamuelTaylorCOLERIDGE
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Source: Poetry of English Romanticism. M., 1975.
THE TALE OF THE ANCIENT SAILOR
IN SEVEN PARTS
“Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quamvisibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omniam familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? Quae loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanut, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati enterea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.” - T. INurnet. Archeol. Phil., p, 68.
SUMMARY
About how the ship, having crossed the Equator, was carried into the country by storms eternal ice at the South Pole; and how from there the ship proceeded to the tropical latitudes of the Great or Pacific Ocean; and about strange things that happened; and how the Ancient Mariner returned to his homeland.
PART ONE |
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The Ancient Mariner meets three young men invited to a wedding feast and stops one of them. | Here is the Ancient Mariner. Out of the darkness Live! The wedding feast is in full swing, He holds it with a tenacious hand. |
The Wedding Guest is enchanted by the Ancient Mariner's eyes and is forced to listen to his story. | He holds with a burning gaze, And, subdued, he sits down “There is noise in the crowd, the rope creaks, |
The sailor says that the ship sailed to the south, and there was a fair wind, and a calm sea, and then they approached the Equator. | And the sun on the left rose, The sun is getting higher every day, |
The Wedding Guest hears wedding music, but the Sailor continues his story. | The bride entered the hall, fresh, The Wedding Guest rushed there, |
A storm takes the ship to the South Pole. | “And suddenly from the kingdom of winter blizzards Like from chains, from slave bonds, Here the fog fell on the ocean, - |
A land of ice and frightening noise, where there is not a single living creature. | In the midst of whiteness, blinded, Where there is ice on the right and ice on the left, |
And suddenly a large sea bird called the Albatross flew through the snowy fog. She was greeted with great joy, like a dear guest. | And suddenly, drawing a circle above us, He flew to us, from our hands |
And listen! The albatross turned out to be a bird of good omens. He began to accompany the ship, which headed back to the north through the fog and floating ice. | A fair wind rose from the south, Only the day will pass, only the shadow will fall, |
The Ancient Mariner, breaking the law of hospitality, kills a beneficent bird that brings happiness. | “How strange you look, Sailor, |
PART TWO |
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And on the right bright sun disk The wind rushes us, but it won’t fly away |
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The Mariner's companions scold him for killing the bird of good omens. | When I committed the murder |
But the fog cleared, they began to justify the Sailor and thereby joined in his crime. | When the luminary of the day rose, |
The wind continues. The ship enters the Pacific Ocean and sails north until it reaches the Equator. | And the breeze played, and the shaft rose, |
The ship suddenly stops. | But the wind died down, but the sail lay down, Hot copper sky And the plain of waters will not splash, " |
And revenge for the Albatross begins. | There is water all around, but how it cracks And it seems that the sea began to rot, - Winding, spinning, it lit up all around |
They are haunted by the Spirit, one of those invisible inhabitants of our planet who are not the souls of the dead or angels. To learn about them, read the learned Jew Josephus and the Constantinople Platonist Michael Psellus. There is no element that is not inhabited by these creatures. | And the Spirit that pursued us And everyone is looking at me |
The sailors, having fallen into despair, want to put all the blame on the Ancient Mariner, as a sign of which they tie a dead Albatross around his neck. | And every glance curses me. |
PART THREE |
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Bad days have come. Larynx |
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The Ancient Mariner notices something strange in the distance above the water. | But suddenly I'm at the dawn of something At first it seemed like there was a spot Spot? Fog? Or a sail? - No! |
And when the mysterious spot approaches, he discerns a ship. And at a great price he frees his speech from the captivity of thirst. | Not a cry from our black lips, They look, but their gaze is empty* |
Ray of joy; | But I was heard |
And again horror, for what ship can sail without waves and wind? | “Friends (I shouted) someone’s bark! |
He sees only the outline of the ship. | The sunset was burning in the west |
And the ribs of the ship turn black, like prison bars before the face of the setting Sun. | And suddenly (Lord, Lord, listen!) Floating! (I thought, turning pale) And what kind of bars are there all of a sudden? |
Only the Phantom Woman and her assistant Death, and no one else is on the ghost ship. | There is only one woman there. |
As is the ship, so are the shipmen! | Bloody mouth, sightless gaze, |
Death and Life-and-in-Death play dice, and they bet on the crew of the ship, and she (the second) wins the Ancient Mariner. | The bark was approaching. Death and Death |
There is no twilight after sunset. | The sun went out - at the same moment |
And the Moon rises. | And we look, and there is fear in our eyes, |
One by one | And one after another all around And expressed a silent reproach |
his comrades fall dead. | There were two hundred of them. And without words |
And Life-and-in-Death begins to exact punishment on the Ancient Mariner. | And two hundred souls left their bodies - |
PART FOUR |
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The Wedding Guest is frightened, thinking that he is talking to the Phantom. | “Let me go, Sailor! Yours is scary I'm afraid of your bony hands, |
But the Ancient Mariner, having convinced him of his bodily life, continues his terrible confession. | “Do not be afraid, Marriage Guest, - alas! Alone, alone, always alone, |
He despises the creatures born of Tranquility, | Death took two hundred lives, |
and is angry that they are alive, while so many people died. | If I look into the sea, I see rot I look at the heavens, but no I want to fall asleep, but it’s a terrible burden |
He reads his curse in dead eyes. | The sweat of death glistened on their faces, Fear the orphan's curse - |
And in his loneliness and in his torpor he envies the Moon and the Stars, which are at rest, but are always moving. Everywhere the sky belongs to them, and in the sky they find shelter and shelter, like desired rulers whom they eagerly await and whose arrival brings quiet joy. | And the bright moon floated by The water sparkled in their rays, |
In the light of the Moon, he sees God's creatures born of great Tranquility. | And there, behind the shadow of the ship, Wherever there was no shadow, |
Their beauty and happiness. | Oh, the happiness of living and seeing the world |
He blesses them in his heart. | I saw the mercy of heaven - |
And the spell ends. | And the soul dropped the burden, |
PART FIVE |
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Oh, sleep, oh, blessed sleep! |
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By the grace of the Most Pure Mother the Ancient Mariner is refreshed by the rain. | I dreamed that the heat was weakening, My tongue is wet, my mouth is fresh, I get up - and it’s so easy for my body: |
He hears some sounds and sees a strange movement in the skies and in the elements. | But the wind rustled in the distance, And the air came alive above! And the wind howled and the sails The depths of the clouds opened up like a thunderstorm, |
Life is infused into the corpses of the ship's crew, and the ship rushes forward; | They sighed, stood up, wandered off, And the wind died down, but our brig sailed, My brother's son stood |
but not human souls, not demons of the earth or the middle sphere of air, inhabit them, but heavenly spirits, blessed spirits sent through the intercession of the saints. | "Old man, I'm scared!" - “Listen Guest, And that’s all, leaving work at dawn, And every sound floated around - The lark trilled But everything fell silent. Only sails And until noon our brig sailed, |
Obedient to the heavenly powers, the lonely Spirit of the South Pole leads the ship to the Equator, but demands revenge. | Under the keel, in the dark depths, The disk hung at the zenith of the Sun And like a struggling horse, |
Demons obedient to the Spirit of the South Pole, invisible inhabitants of the elements, talk about his vengeful plan, and one of them tells the other what a long and difficult penance the Polar Spirit, now returning to the south, has assigned to the Ancient Mariner. | I don't know how long I lay there “Here he is, here he is,” said one, “ The powerful Spirit loved that bird, |
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"Don't be silent, don't be silent, |
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“Look, how a slave stands before the lord, |
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The sailor lies unconscious, for a supernatural force is pushing the ship north faster than human nature can withstand. | “But what, without wind and without waves, “Before him the air is open again |
The supernatural movement slowed. The sailor woke up, and the penance assigned to him was resumed. | I got up. We were at full speed It's like I'm their undertaker The death fear froze in the eyes, |
The frantic running stopped. | But the punishment is over. Clean So the traveler, whose deserted path And here is a silent, light breeze He played in my hair So fast and light, the ship sailed, |
And the Ancient Mariner sees his homeland. | Am I dreaming? Is this our lighthouse? Shocked, I burst into tears! The whole coast is dressed in moonlight, And the hill and the church are so bright The sand was white from the light, |
Heavenly spirits leave dead bodies | In crimson robes a host of shadows |
and appear in their own radiant form. | Not far from the ship - There were corpses lying, but I swear And each seraph with his hand Yes, everyone waved to me And I heard a conversation A fisherman and his son were sitting in it. And the third was the Hermit there, |
PART SEVEN |
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Forest Hermit | The hermit lives in the forest He prays three times a day, The canoe was approaching, and the Fisherman |
the ship approaches in amazement. | “You’re right,” the Hermit answered, “ Like dead leaves in the forest, “What fear! - muttered the Fisherman. The shuttle sailed, but I couldn't |
Suddenly the ship goes down. | Thunder struck in the abyss, water |
The Ancient Mariner is rescued and lifted into the Fisherman's boat. | Stunned when the blow I opened my mouth - the fisherman fell, I took the paddle, but there's a baby And I'm back in my homeland again, |
The Ancient Mariner begs the Hermit to listen to his confession. | “Listen, listen, holy father!” |
And here retribution overtakes him. | And here I am, caught in a snare, |
And constant anxiety makes him wander from one place to another. | But from then on, on time I wander like night from end to end What a noisy feast, however! O Wedding Guest, I have been to the seas And may this feast be wonderful, Go with everyone to the bright temple, |
And by his own example he teaches people to love and honor every creature that the Almighty created and loved. | Farewell, farewell, and remember, Guest, When you pray for them And the old Sailor wandered off, - He walked insensitive, deaf |
“I readily believe that there are more invisible beings in the universe than visible ones. But who will explain to us all their multitude, character, mutual and family ties, distinctive features and properties of each of them? What are they doing? Where do they live? The human mind has only glided around the answers to these questions, but has never comprehended them. However, without a doubt, it is pleasant sometimes to paint in your mind's eye, like in a painting, an image of something greater and better world: so that the mind, accustomed to the trifles of everyday life, does not close itself in too tight a framework and is not completely immersed in small thoughts. But at the same time, we must constantly remember the truth and observe due measure, so that we can distinguish the reliable from the unreliable, day from night.” - T. Barnett. Philosophy of antiquity, p. 68 (lat.)»