Coleridge and the Mariner’s blessing
A reading and a reflection: how the turning-point of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner — the unbidden blessing of the water-snakes — opens a door from guilt into grace, and why Malcolm returns to it every Epiphany.
YouTube embed · 16 : 9
Transcript
Lightly edited for reading. Timestamps link to the video.00:00
Welcome back to the library. I want to begin today not with a thesis but with a single moment — the moment everything in the poem turns.
01:24
The Mariner has done a senseless, motiveless thing; he has killed the albatross, and the whole creation seems to hang dead around his neck. And then he sees the water-snakes.
03:10
… and he blesses them unawares. That word — unawares — is the hinge. Grace arrives before he has decided to be good.
05:38
There is a reason Coleridge gives this to us at the turning of the year, in the season of light…
