Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

express the conditions of sinners, penitents, and the righteous. As for Coleridge’s three poems, we don’t even know if he wanted to express hell in the first, purgatory in the second, and paradise in the third, though it is not impossible that he felt that way.
    The first poem, which would correspond to the
Inferno
, is“Christabel.” He began it in 1797, picked it up ten or fifteen years later, then finally abandoned it because he could not think up an ending. The plot, anyway, was difficult, and if the poem has endured—you will find it in every anthology of English literature—if the poem “Christabel” has endured it is thanks to its musical qualities, its magical atmosphere, its feeling of terror, rather than the vicissitudes of its plot. The story takes place in the Middle Ages. There is a girl, the heroine, Christabel, whose sweetheart has left her to join the Crusades. And she leaves her father’s castle and goes to pray for the safe return of her lover. She meets a beautiful woman, and this woman tells her that her name is Geraldine, and that she is the daughter of a friend of Christabel’s father, a friend who is now feuding with him. She tells her that she has been stolen, kidnapped by bandits, that she has managed to escape, and that is why she is in the forest. Christabel takes her to her house, brings her to the chapel, tries to pray, but she cannot. Finally, the two share the same room and during the night Christabel feels or sees something that reveals that the other woman is not really the daughter of her father’s old friend but rather a demonic spirit that has taken on the appearance of the daughter. Here, Coleridge does not specify how she reaches this conclusion. This reminds me of whatHenry James said regarding his famous story—you probably know it, maybe you’ve seen a movie version of it—
The Turn of the Screw
. 7 James said that there was no need to specifically name evil, that if in a literary work he specified it—if he said that a character was a murderer, or incestuous, or a heathen, or whatever—this would weaken the presence of evil, that it was better for it to be felt as a gloomy ambiance. And that is what happens in the poem “Christabel.”
    The next day, Christabel wants to tell her father what she felt, which she knows to be true, but she is not able to because she is under a spell, a diabolical spell, that prevents her. The poem ends there. The father goes in search of his old friend. Some have conjectured that when Christabel’s sweetheart returns from the Crusades, he becomes the
deus ex machina
, the one who resolves the situation. But Coleridge never found an ending, and the poem has endured—as I said—because of its music.
    We now come to the most famous of Coleridge’s poems. The poem is called “The AncientMariner.” Even the title is archaic. It would have been more natural to call it “The Old Sailor.” And there are two versions of the poem. It is unfortunate that the first version has not been anthologized by editors, and can be found only in specialized works, because Coleridge, who knew English deeply, decided to write a ballad in an archaic style, a style that was more or less contemporaneous with Langland orChaucer; but then as he continued it, he wrote in a very artificial way. That language came to be a barrier between the reader and the text, and so in the version that is usually published, he modernized the language, I think with good reason. Coleridge also added some notes written in exquisite prose, which are like a commentary, but a commentary that is no less poetic than the text. 8 Coleridge did finish this poem, as opposed to his other works.
    It begins with a description of a wedding. There are three young people on their way to church to attend the ceremony, when they meet up with the ancient mariner. The poem begins, “It is an ancient Mariner, / And he stoppeth one of three.” “
Es un viejo marinero y detiene a uno de los tres
.” Then the mariner looks at him, touches him with his hand, his fleshless hand, but most important is the mariner’s gaze, which has a hypnotic force. The mariner speaks and begins by saying, “There was a ship, there was a ship, said he.” 9 Then he forces the guest to have a seat on a rock as he tells him his story. He says he is condemned to wander from place to place, and condemned to retell his tale, as if to carry out a punishment. The young man is desperate; he sees the bride and the