Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s iconic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was drafted between the fall of 1797 and spring of 1798, and subsequently published in late 1798 in William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (Coleridge and Textual Instability 60). The Ancient Mariner saw eighteen revisions at the hands of the poet, each, alongside its respective changes, producing a slightly altered version. With each edition, Coleridge carefully considered readers’ imaginations, their interpretations, and the critical reception of the text, ultimately producing a complex textual history. In an attempt to introduce what he saw as added clarity, Colerdige made what many critics deem “harmful changes” that “mangle” the poem (Empson 27).
Our archival website, Rimes of the Ancyent Marinere argues in favour of “the most authoritative version of a work [as] the earliest rather than the latest.” (“The Multiple Versions of Coleridge’s Poems: How Many ‘Mariners’ Did Coleridge Write?” 127). Thus, of the eighteen known versions of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, we chose to use the first edition, the 1798 original, as our base text. Where preserving the poem as unobscured by his alterations and providing a blank slate for a reader’s interpretation is concerned, the “earliest” version of The Rime of Ancient Mariner has the most scholarly authority.
There are three voices in the poem: the Mariner, Coleridge, via the gloss, and the reader. This archive focuses on Coleridge’s later alterations, particularly the marginal gloss, added in 1817, that created a series of “interacting ‘languages’” between verse, gloss, and reader (Wall 179). The 1817 Sibylline Leaves edition and texts published thereafter featured “fifty-eight explanatory and sometimes interpretive glosses in prose…printed in the margins beside and beneath the verses.” (Coleridge and Textual Instability 61). The marginal gloss was added to “counter criticism that the poem was obscure and lacked a clear narrative glue.” (180). Many critics argue these fifty-eight additions to be an unnecessary “summary” of the poem, only introducing more “obscurity…[and] subverting [its] true meaning,” (Wall 179). These critiques have been carried into a contemporary setting as many of the editions published both online and in print bearing a date post-1817 omit the interpretative gloss; The Poetry Foundation’s free-to-access 1834 version of the poem is entirely absent of the fifty-eight glossary changes.
We feel it is important to recognize the “experiment” of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as it was conveniently referred to as by Wordsworth in the original Advertisement for Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth 10). Understanding the experimental nature of the poem makes the various alterations over eighteen editions in the author’s lifetime so intriguing; Coleridge believed in “the text as a process rather than a static form.” (Wall 181). Appropriately reflecting Coleridge’s creative process, this archive focuses on the accumulation of alterations over the thirty-six years between the Mariner’s initial publication and Coleridge’s death in 1834. We argue in favour of the authority of the first, “earliest” (Stillinger 127) version of a text with an emphasis on changes reflected in the forthcoming editions. After all, it is important to consider the fact that the Mariner’s account is an oral one: “there is no reason to believe that each version the Mariner has told is identical to the others” (Wallen 180). Thus, our comparisons lie in the base text, the 1817 edition reflecting the fifty-eight marginal glosses, and the 1834 edition to reflect Coleridge’s final changes to the text.
One notable glossary change imposes upon the reader’s initial understanding of the Albatross, whose death provokes the ancient Mariner’s entire gloomy ordeal. Observe:
“God save thee, ancyent Marinere!
“From the fields that plague thee thus–
“Why thou’st look so?”–with my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross. (81-86).
The corresponding gloss of the 1817 edition reads, “The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.” (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Seven Parts 81-86). Based on the 85 lines that preface the sacrilegious event, the reader has, thus far, merely understood the Albatross to be a bird the sailors “hailed in God’s name” (70)–a symbol of religion as defined by them, not by religion. Thus, the Albatross is simply a regular, helpful companion–a pet, almost–that “did follow…every day, for food or play” (75-76). As David Pirie notes, the addition of the gloss prematurely reveals the bird’s holiness to the reader by defining it as a “good omen” (81-86): “the preceding stanzas demonstrate how impossible to tell whether [the Albatross] is of good or bad omen”
Coleridge’s motive in adding a gloss was to present the reader with a clear understanding of the plot so they may easier navigate the poem. Realistically, the glosses both underestimate and hinder first-time readers from drawing their own interpretations of the text. The 1798 version is absent of all changes, glossary or otherwise–which are also traced in the Rimes of the Ancyent Marinere; Coleridge leaves interpretation up to the reader’s imagination. later “mangl[ing]” the poem with his fervent changes (27). Although Wordsworth “pointedly ascribed the work to a single author” (Coleridge and Textual Instability 61), Ancient Mariner is largely a collaborative work. Collaboration between Wordsworth and Coleridge is obvious, but a correspondence between Coleridge and his audience—his strong consideration for its interpretations, as reflected in the many editions—is clearly at play. Thus, we have stripped the poem of its added interpretation and presented the reader with a base text cleansed of the multiple voices that influenced the alterations to the text.
Rimes of the Ancyent Marinere provides the reader with a clean slate; a blank canvas for them to portray their own interpretations of the obscure and endearing text. While beneficial to an overall understanding of the text, the gloss is inarguably intrusive to a first-time read-through; Coleridge’s ideas are imprinted on the reader–and this was never Coleridge’s intention. A passionate experimenter on the bounds of imagination, Coleridge never intended to impose a limit on the range of interpretation for his art:
The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit and absolute principle of any one important subject has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. Our guide will, indeed, take us the shortest way, will save us many a wearisome and perilous wandering…But he cannot carry us on his shoulders. We must strain our sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet. (The Friend 33).
The reader “must strain” their “sinews” as their guide as strained theirs (33); we believe in an initial reading “sans epigraph, sans gloss, sans everything, except the plot…and imagery” (“The Multiple Versions of Coleridge’s Poems: How Many ‘Mariners’ Did Coleridge Write?” 143), followed by the supplementary summary the gloss provides. The gloss “cannot carry [readers] on [its] shoulders;” to endure a reading of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner–to take the “shortest” (33) route of interpretation–alongside the marginal notes is to gloss over much of the meaning that makes a reading of the poem so enjoyable.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Coleridge’s Verse: A Selection. Edited by William Empson and David Pirie, Faber, 1972.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “On the Communication of Truth and the Rightful Liberty of the Press in Connection with It.” The Friend; A Series of Essays, Gale and Curtis, 1812, pp. 33-48. Archive.org.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Seven Parts. Coleridge Corner, 1817.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Marinere, in Seven Parts.
Stillinger, Jack. “The Multiple Versions of Coleridge’s Poems: How Many ‘Mariners’ Did Coleridge Write?” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 31, no. 2, 1992, pp. 127–146. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25600948.
Stillinger, Jack. Coleridge and Textual Instability. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Wallen, Martin. “Return and Representation: The Revisions of ‘The Ancient Mariner.’” The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 17, no. 3, 1986, pp. 148–156. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24040729.
Wall, Wendy. “Interpreting Poetic Shadows: The Gloss of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’” Criticism, vol. 29, no. 2, 1987, pp. 179–195. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23110341.
Wordsworth, William. “Advertisement.” Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems. J. & A. Arch, 1798, pp. 10-16. Archive.org. https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadswi00word/page/n9.