Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

musicians enter the church, he hears the music, but “the Mariner hath his will,” and he tells his story, which obviously happens in the Middle Ages. 10 It begins with a ship, a ship that sets sail and sails south. This ship sails to the Antarctic and is surrounded by icebergs. All of this is written in a uniquely lively manner; each stanza is like a painting. The poem has been illustrated. In the
Biblioteca Nacional
, there is a copy, one by the famous French engraver GustaveDoré. These Doré illustrations are admirable, but lack a certain harmony. The same is true about Doré’s illustrations ofDante’s
Divine Comedy
. Because every line of Dante’s, or every line of Coleridge’s, is vivid. Whereas Doré, like a proper romantic, a proper contemporary of Hugo, preferred the Bacchic qualities—the undefined, gloomy, and mysterious. Now, mystery is not at all missing from Coleridge’s work, but each of the stanzas is clear, lively, and well drawn, as opposed to the chiaroscuro the illustrator indulged in.
    The ship is surrounded by icebergs, and then an albatross appears. This albatross makes friends with the sailors; he eats out of their hands, and then a wind rises to the north and the boat is able to make headway. The albatross accompanies them and they arrive, let’s say, in Ecuador, more or less. And when the narrator reaches this point in the story, he cannot continue. The young man says, “
Que Dios te salve de los demonios que te atormentan
.” [“God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends that plague thee thus!”] Then the ancient mariner says, “With my cross-bow I shot the Albatross.” “
Con mis arbaleses maté al albatros
.” 11 Now we have an offense, an offense that has been committed out of a kind of innocence; the mariner himself does not know why he did it, but from that moment on, the winds cease to blow, and they enter a vast area of dead calm. The ship stops, and all the sailors blame the narrator. He wore a cross around his neck, but they force him to wear the albatross instead. Undoubtedly, Coleridge had but a vague idea of what an albatross was, imagining it much smaller than it really was.
    The ship is becalmed, and it does not rain: “Water, water, every where and not a drop to drink.” “
Agua, agua por todas partes y ni una gota para beber
.” And everybody is dying of thirst. Then, they see a boat approaching, and they think it will rescue them. But when it comes close, they see that the ship is the skeleton of a ship. And on this ship are two fantastical characters: one is death and the other is something like . . . something like a kind of red-haired harlot. It is “Death in Life.” And the two play dice for the lives of the sailors. Death always wins, except in the case of the narrator, whom the red-haired woman, Death in Life, wins. They can no longer speak because their throats are so parched, but the sailor feels the others staring at him; he believes they think he is guilty of their deaths, of this horror surrounding them, and then they die. And he feels he is a murderer. The ship—that ghost ship—sails away. And the sea becomes rotten and filled with snakes. These snakes swim in the dark waters; they are red and yellow and blue. And he [the narrator] says, “The very deep did rot,” “
el absimo estaba pudriéndose
.” He sees those horrible creatures, the snakes, and he suddenly feels a beauty in those infernal beings. As soon as he feels that, the albatross falls from his neck into the sea, and it begins to rain. He drinks in the rain with his whole body, and then he is able to pray, and he prays to the Virgin. And then he speaks of “gentle sleep that slid into my soul.” Before that, to say that the ship was still, he says, “As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.” Then it starts to rain. The mariner feels that the ship itself is drinking in the rain. Then when he awakens from that dream—that dream that means the beginning of his salvation—he sees a host of angelic spirits entering the dead bodies of his companions, who help him sail the ship. But they do not speak, and so the ship sails northward and returns to England. He sees his native village, the church, the chapel; a boat comes out to greet him, and he disembarks. But he knows he is condemned to wander the earth forever, telling his story, telling it to whomever he comes across.
    In this ballad, “The Ancient Mariner,” two influences have been found. One is a