Psychedelic Regrets in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Part 5

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextapps for free appetizers for life. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:33 Wes: Okay, so, welcome to part five of our discussion of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I think we are ready to start from line 347. I would give you a summary of what we talked about just before this, except that it's been quite a while since we did our second recording, parts three and four. How long has it been, Erin? 0:59 Erin: 20 years? No, at least three weeks. Possibly a month. 1:06 Wes: Yeah, we had a break. I was sick with COVID so we had some delays. So, in any case, what we're going to do is we're just going to jump right in and we'll be recollecting what we said previously as on the Fly. And we'll join it up that way. 1:22 Erin: How fun for listeners. Okay. 1:25 Wes: On the fly, Just like the albatross. 1:27 Erin: That's exactly. 1:29 Wes: All right, so I'll let you. If you want to read. 1:33 Erin: Okay, so we're at line 347. Sometimes a dropping from the sky I heard the Lavrock sing. Sometimes all little birds that are how they seem to fill the sea and air with their sweet jargoning. And now. Twas like all instruments now like a lonely flute. And now it is an angel song that makes the heavens be mute. It ceased. And yet the sails made on a pleasant noise till noon. A noise like of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June, that to the sleeping woods all night singeth a quiet tune. Listen, O listen. Thou wedding guest, Mariner, thou hast thy will. For that which comes out of thine eye doth make my body and soul to be still. Never sadder tale was told to a man of woman born sadder and wiser. Thou wedding guest, thou' LT rise tomorrow morn. Never sadder tale was heard by a man of woman born. The mariners all returned to work as silent as before the mariners all gan. Pull the ropes. But look at me than old. Though thought I I am as. Thought I, I am as. Sorry, thought I, I am as thin as air they cannot me behold. Yeah. Beforn and than old. That's really like. That's a joke that I make when 2:53 Wes: I. I mean, beforn. How to rhyme anything, by Coleridge. Makeup, words and syntax. I don't think he. He would have any problem with orange. 3:10 Erin: Like a man. Woman. Boring. Yeah. 3:13 Wes: And I ate an orange. It was the biggest orange I'd never had a. Anyway, sorry. 3:25 Erin: Okay. So my edition glosses Lavrock as a. As a lark. It says that it's associated with song. I have an edition that has notes in the back. So then I very badly, like just quickly gloss them by hand. And sometimes I get it wrong. Okay, so Lavrock, in my edition it says lark, a songbird associated with the dawn as a land bird. Its sound like that of the hidden brook suggests that the mariner is dreaming of being ashore. So this is a section that really interests me. Especially the stanza that starts. It ceased. I just like this. A noise like of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June. I'm just interested in this idea that he is obviously dreaming of fresh water. And we. We talked about this. I remember in previous episodes. It's coming back to me a little bit. I suppose I find it interesting that he's dreaming of water at all. I suppose it makes sense because he's still hearing water regularly. But the sort of complexity of dreaming of a hidden brook while one is on a ship after a long sea voyage is intriguing to me. 4:27 Wes: Yeah. I'm trying to recall what has just happened before. So what's just happened before is that a strong wind reached the ship. The dead men gave a groan. Uprose started working this ghastly crew. Including his nephew for some reason. 4:45 Erin: Yeah. Who randomly has been on the ship 4:48 Wes: the whole time just to make things even more spooky. And I quake to think of my own voice. How frightful it would be. So that was that weird moment when it seems like we're asked to think of the world of the living from the perspective of the world undead. And to see the world of the living as something spooky from their perspective, I think. And then it's the zombie crew, Right. Who are making the sweet sounds that are rising up slowly through their mouths and their bodies. The sounds are darting to the sun. Which is reminiscent of an earlier scene where I think the souls flew out like arrows. And we were discussing how it is that they flew away like arrows and now they're back to dart around like sounds or as sounds. Sounds come back. They mix. They're dropping from the sky. I heard the. So sometimes a dropping from the sky. I heard Lavrock sing. So what's happening here? Is he comparing them to birds or now or is he actually hearing the birds? 5:54 Erin: Well, it's hard to tell because he's close to shore now. Right. He's drawing closer and closer. So. Yeah. And then the Lavrock song also is transfigured, right? Because it's. Sometimes it's like all instruments, then it's like a lonely flute, then it's an angel song. If it is in fact the Lavrock, then that Lavrock itself is being transformed into several different iterations, which none of which really make sense for the sounds of a single bird, but they also don't make sense as like zombie song. I don't know. 6:27 Wes: Yeah, it's yet again a really creative and surreal kind of picture we get here. Again, it'd be interesting to see an animation of this, but the sort of sounds rising up from the zombie crew and modulating in various ways, changing in various ways, becoming a flute, becoming an angel song. It sounds like the birds are part of it, are just. It's as if the. The sweet sounds have. Or sound like birds or they've become that. I think things are undergoing a metamorphosis. So it's unclear what's what with all these quick, rapid transformations. I think that's the. In a way, the defining effect of the poem is this lack of any firm boundaries between things, the quickness with which they transform one into the other and. And sort of lack of boundary as well between life and death and the kind of count. The counterintuitive quality of having this undead zombie crew that suddenly produces all these beautiful sounds. But. Yeah. What do you think? 7:30 Erin: Yeah, I think you're right to point out the connection between all these things. The part that you're pointing us to, the. I quake to think of my own voice. How frightful it would be. You know that in itself. Right. Is an imagined voice. And of course, like, you know, it's part of the mystery of the poem. I suppose that, like, we keep coming back to this idea that we would like to see an animation of this, I think because so much is described here, or so much feels like this poem is kind of bursting its own seams or its own boundaries. Or maybe it also feels just so unruly and kind of strangely indefinite in the way that it's put together. And maybe like, you know, Coleridge has continued tinkering with this over time is, you know, Coleridge maybe also gets this feeling from the poem. Right. And continues to have to play with it. But there's so much that needs to be filled in by our own imaginations. Or by Coleridge's own, like, glosses that he puts on. On the poem in later editions, or the things that he changes to try and sharpen it. And so I think it's just. It's. Yeah, so it's kind of too much. You know, there's too much in this poem. I mean, the fact that we're on part five in this discussion indicates, right, that this is too much and maybe a bit too long. But I'm thinking about, too, about this hazy boundary that you're discussing, the relationship between this sound, which is indeterminate, which we can't. We can't really picture or understand what it is that he's. That he's talking about, and the indeterminacy of who is the. Who is the zombie and who isn't. Also in the passage I just read aloud, right, he thinks. The mariner thinks to himself, I am as thin as air, they cannot me behold. So it's as though he's the. He's the ghost. He's the one who is actually the zombie. And that makes more sense than this ghost crew, right? Because he's the one who's been inflicted or afflicted rather, with life in death, right? Whereas they were able to just die and be done with it. He's actually the one who was created to be a zombie. So he's the one who. Who worries about his own frightfulness, the sound of his own voice. Whereas the zombie crew is associated actually with stability, I would say a bird associated with dawn, with instruments or a flute or angel song. So all of these things are like humans working with some kind of nature, like, in terms of instruments. You know, the instruments are being operated or animate by a human in order to be played, but it's a natural kind of operation or animation of the instruments. Same thing, obviously, with the lonely flute. And then the angel song kind of explodes that. So it's more supernatural. But I think of an angel playing a harp, right? That is what I think of when I think of angel song, maybe singing, but also the harp as well, right? And then the stability of this idea of, like, the leafy month of June, so sort of the height of summer, a place that has greenery and water, is kind of a more stable environment in terms of it being ecologically more hospitable to humans, you know, stable for humans, I mean, versus the environment that he's just been in. You know, I don't know how to draw all that together, but it just. It just heightens maybe the zombie, like, quality of him and his guilt and his isolation, which makes him something particularly undead even in comparison with the animated bodies of this ghost crew, which is just such a bizarre, you know, exploding of that binary. Or, you know, I hesitate to call it a binary because it's not like, oh, right, you know, there's the ghost crew and the Mariner, like the two basic categories we could put people in. But, you know, of that. Of that boundary that you're talking about, 11:12 Wes: if this is merchant marine. Hades, Merchant marine version of Hades, then. And he's the living human being who's making his visit to Hades. And yes, he is the. He is the odd one out. And we could see that from their perspective. Again, him as the. As the spooky one, him as the strange one. So he's been inserted into this world by death in life. 11:40 Erin: Is that the one life or life and death? 11:43 Wes: Life and death. I always get that backwards. So he's in this intermediate state and of course they're, you know, the zombie crew is undead. So in some sense they are in that intermediate state as well. But he's on one side of the line and they're on the other. So maybe you could, you know, there's the dead, there's the undead and maybe there's the undead. Maybe. Maybe that's what he is. And it's like thesis, antithesis, synthesis. I mean, although for him, the synthesis will be a return to life. Interestingly enough, it's the voices of the zombie crew that kind of lead us there. You know, they're pleasant. They sound like instruments and birds and even an angel. And then we get. It turns to the noise that the sails are making. So those. It sounds like, you know. And now it is an angel song that makes the heavens be muted. It's as if an angel comes in and it's. Ah. And then everything is silent. Everyone else shuts up. Then things are quiet enough to hear the sails. And somehow they sound like a hidden brook, which is a very odd sort of sound for sails to be able to make sure. I mean, I can hear the ruffling of the sails. Right. But how does the ruffling of the sails become a sound of the brook? The water is supposed to be underneath the boat, not in the sails. If the water's in the sails, you're in trouble, normally. So, yeah, we're transformed into this very pastoral woodland scene. But in any case, yeah, he's getting to where he's going by way of this middle realm of life and death, or death and life. How do I remember that. How do you remember which one is which? 13:32 Erin: I don't know. Life in death. It's Linda Lind, Life and death. 13:40 Wes: Okay, so he's got. 13:41 Erin: Yeah, so he's got this matter of life and death. Remember in Arrested Development? Matter of land. When. Anyway. 13:50 Wes: Yeah. Let's hope he's not navigating like Buster navigating. 13:56 Erin: The blue part is the land. You made me realize, like, I was kind of thinking of the. The leafiness because we get the leafy month of June and the brook as being all kind of like part of the sound created by the sails. But it is singled out to be. Just grammatically, it is just the brook that's making the sound. But wouldn't it be the wind through the leaves? That would sound like the sails rather than the brook? Right. So there's a kind of transposition there as well. Like, if. If anything would sound like the wind in the sails, it would be the wind through the branches with the leaves which are catching the. You know, a leafy sound is like a sound of branches with leaves on them. I'm also thinking about, oddly enough, like, the phrase production for use kind of came. Came into my head from our. His Girl Friday episode because I was just thinking about, you know, the instruments, this idea that I haven't really developed. It just kind of came into my head. But, you know, the animated quality, right, of an instrument that you have to breathe into it. These ghost zombies, you know, they've come in and sort of re. Breathed life into their corpses and reanimated them. And of course, you know, your focus on the sails makes me think of that as well. I know that's something we talked about in previous episodes, about the ship kind of working with natural processes also being determined by human intervention at the same time. And, like, one skill at sailing a ship. But there is something that's kind of like this similar kind of kind of property. If we think of an instrument as being something that is animated by wind, the same thing is true, obviously, of sails and of a ship in terms of the fact that you can assign. You could say that, like, you know, as. As Coleridge does at times in this poem, that God or the gods are kind of blowing, right? It's their. It's their sort of instrument that they're blowing into the sails in order to make the ship go. And we talked about the superstitious quality of that, Right? Assigning. Assigning a sort of consciousness behind inanimate elements of nature. But I'm just thinking about that in Relationship to this is really out there. So, I don't know. Bear with me. But I guess I'm thinking about that in relation to the bow and arrow with which he shot the albatross, and whether or not there's a sort of like, this is where I'm getting the glimmerings of production for use. Maybe you could see where I'm going with that. I'm going kind of far afield here. But I'm just thinking about this in relationship to the bow and arrow as being something that seems like more of a violation in terms of the arrow moving maybe against the wind, or if we can draw a larger conclusion here with all of these various instruments being animated by humans, nature, what have you, if there's something we could tie together. 16:39 Wes: You're reminding me that I think the ancient Greek word for bow and life are the same or similar bios, as in bio, like biology. But I'm not sure I'm helping your point here. 16:51 Erin: No, that's great. I mean, like life. Life itself here, it seems to be, to me, is the. Also like the violated. Sorry, the violatory thing, like the. The mariner's life is, you know, as you suggested, like the thing that kind of violates the scene in the same way that his arrow, you know, violated the albatross. So now he's, you know, he's still the thing out of place or the thing that has, like, the forward momentum that. That is capable of, like, going against the grain in this. Maybe in the similar way. Yeah, he's. 17:23 Wes: You're comparing him to the arrow? 17:25 Erin: Yeah, to the arrow or to the. To the bow. Either way, like something that can either set, you know, send out things that are going to forge their own path or go against, you know, the prevailing winds or whatever the case may be. Something that's transgressive in some way from the norm, if not transgressive in and of itself. 17:45 Wes: Yeah. So maybe the question is, what's driving the ship at this point? Because as I recall, there was an upsurge of wind, and then that went away at some point. And it's not the wind, per se, that's been driving the ship, which is one of the odd things about having the zombie crew work the ship as if they're. So back at 320, strong wind reached the ship. Then it dropped down like a stone. Dead men gave a groan. And then the ship moves on. Yet never a breeze blew up. And I don't think we've gotten a breeze back, despite the fact that we get this comparison of sails making this noise like a brook, which is suggestive of them ruffling in the wind. But there is no wind. So what's driving the ship? I think maybe you were suggesting his life force was one of the options. I think you suggested several. 18:41 Erin: Yes, though we also get the answer in the next stanza, I think. All right, 18:48 Wes: before we go there, let me say one more thing. I was thinking, as you're talking about two, about. Well, the other ancient Greek association here is pneuma, I think, having to do with the wind, but it's also the soul or the spirit. So I think there is an association between wind and spirit or soul. And the ships are of course live or die by whether or not there's a wind. And it's a terrible thing to go down to the equator or wherever it is, there's no wind and be stuck in the doldrums. Right. It's a life or death situation. And as we've talked about before, there's this acute dependency on nature and natural conditions. One's fate is tied more closely to that on the ship in this little microcosm, this little world that might end or continue on once fate is tied to natural conditions more acutely than is typical. And in this case, at the point where he's doing the life and death thing, he's been severed to some extent from those natural conditions. And the question, it's no longer something natural that's running the ship. It's a little unclear to me what's running the ship. You know, life force, death force, the music, even the. Or maybe the sails are running themselves. Maybe it's just metaphor that's running the ship. Maybe, maybe it's the spirit of poetry that pushes all of this along the ship as well as the, as well as the poem. Maybe the, the wind here is just the, the figurative itself somehow. But yeah, tell me how, how we get the answer here in the next stanza. 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That's because I'm far more inclined just to do takeout or delivery rather than meal plan. Go to the grocery store, get all the fresh ingredients, do the prep work, do the cooking. I might have done that sometimes, but not on the same consistent basis. HelloFresh made it much easier to consistently prepare healthier, fresh meals for myself. Some of my favorite recipes include Hearty Steak and Potatoes, Balsamic Chicken Rustico, and Lemony Shrimp risotto. Go to hellofresh.com subtextapps for free. Appetizers for life. One appetizer item per box while subscription is active. That's free Appetizers for [email protected] subtextapps that's HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. 22:37 Erin: Yeah. Okay, here we go. Till noon we silently sailed on yet never a breeze did breathe Slowly and smoothly went the ship moved onward from beneath under the keel Nine fathom deep from the land of mist and snow the spirit slid and it was he that made the ship to go the sails at noon left off their tune and the ship stood still Also the sun right up above the mast had fixed her to the ocean but in a minute she gained stir with a short uneasy motion. Backwards and forwards half her length with a short, uneasy motion. Yep. 23:11 Wes: Yeah, let's just stop there for a second because we actually. Yeah, we jumped over a little bit. Never a sadder tale was told, all that stuff. 23:18 Erin: Right. I know. I was. 23:19 Wes: I. I just wanted to mention. Just bring that up quickly because. Is it really that sad? It's actually not that sad. 23:28 Erin: Well, I don't know. I mean, that's a great point. I mean, I think it's as a cautionary tale to think that you could be punished so much for a relatively small crime. I think that's. 23:41 Wes: I mean, he's just had the flutes and the angel song and all. I mean, he said it's been pretty good. 23:48 Erin: That's true. 23:50 Wes: So I think. Yeah, let's bookmark that or bookmark that and try to think about what makes this a sad tale other than the fact that it's Spooky. Right. If that's what that means, then okay. Although I would say it's not the spookiest tale either. But it's more surreal than spooky. Right. I think the fact that it's so surreal works against any of these characters straightforward characterizations. And that's why it's odd to hear it called sad to me. 24:24 Erin: Well, I think, you know, in saying cautionary tale, maybe I was being smarter than I realized there because I think that this is more about the reception than it is about the actual tale itself. Like that there's something in the transmission of the tale that is sad. So he says never a sadder tale was told. And then later never sadder tale was heard. And then the, the repetition of sadder and wiser thou wedding guest. So this is about his moral edification, you know, this is about changing him as a person and making him sadder. It's about the idea that he will be initiated into this knowledge, which is about, I think, the inexculpability. That's not a word of, of this, of this guilt of the Mariner that will then awaken the wedding guest to a kind of deeper understanding of what 25:17 Wes: it's like to be married. 25:19 Erin: What it's like to be married. 25:20 Wes: Hey, you want to know what it's like to be married? Here it is. Or novel starts with shooting the albatross, which is a metaphor for the wedding night. And then after that it's all here we go. 25:37 Erin: Right? Yeah, but yeah, so I think there's something. It's sad for the wedding guest to be bummed out when he meant to be, you know, doing jello shots with his friends inside. Yeah, yeah, but you know what I mean, like it's about the transmission and it's about the fact that the mariner is saddled with this. That's what makes it so sad is that he saddled with it and he has to go and spread the bad news to everybody. He's like the anti evangelist or something. Like instead of, you know, oh, here I'm going to tell this story about eternal, you know, about how I'm going to spread the good news about eternal life. He's spreading the bad news about how much life sucks. So that's, that's the sad part. But, but I think your, your point is well taken that like this isn't a particularly sad story. I think you're right. I never even thought. I always believe what poems tell me. Like this is a true story. Right. But I. 26:29 Wes: Anyway, so they sail on slowly and smoothly went the ship. Okay. And so you, as you mentioned, we get the answer from the land of mist and snow. The spirit slid. Slid like a snake. 26:42 Erin: Oh, it's icy. It's from the land of snow. 26:44 Wes: He's sledding. Sliding rosebud. 26:49 Erin: There we go. 26:50 Wes: So he's making the ship go. That is interesting. Slid. So, okay. But as soon as sails at noon left off their tune. Okay. So the sails are continuing to make their own music. And. And there's that quality of the music running. So it's as if the, you know, instead of wind, we get spirit and music. 27:08 Erin: And no sooner do we identify the ship mover than it's gone. And the ship is standing still now. 27:15 Wes: Right. 27:16 Erin: Without ever being told that the spirit left or where it went or if it was just being thrown into the fire with rosebud. 27:23 Wes: It's very up and down the story. Yeah, Never was enough. More up and down story told. All right, so the. This is. The. This stanza I really like. It's one I've referred to actually several times in our conversation where you get this image of the sun being directly above the mast and fixing her to the oceans if the sunlight is coming down, pinning the ship to the ocean. And I think we had started much earlier, we had gotten that image of the ocean of the ship being something like a painting. Right. And very static. And then she stirs again, a short, uneasy motion. 28:07 Erin: I like how that repetition kind of performs that pawing horse that's, you know, moving back and forth. I didn't notice that really until I read it aloud just now. 28:16 Wes: Right, good point. Alright, so do you want to continue figure out how. 28:20 Erin: Yeah. 28:21 Wes: What's going on with the ship again? 28:23 Erin: Then like a pawing horse let go. She made a sudden bound. It flung the blood into my head and I fell into a swound. How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare. But ere my living life returned, I heard and in my soul discerned two voices in the air. Is it he? Quoth one, is this the man by him who died on cross? With his cruel bow he laid full low the harmless albatross. The spirit who bideth by himself in the land of mist and snow. He loved the bird that loved the man who shot him with his bow. The other was a softer voice. As soft as honey dew, quoth he, the man hath penance done, and penance more will do. 29:05 Wes: It flung the blood into my head. She may. Okay, so she made a sudden bound. So we get this image of the Ship taking off like a horse or a carnival ride. So violently. Yeah. That the blood goes into his head and he falls into a swound. It is a swound. 29:25 Erin: It's a swoon, but it has to run. 29:27 Wes: He's swooning, and it's. 29:29 Erin: It's a swoon where you fall to the ground. 29:33 Wes: So he's in a fit on the ground, having a seizure. Don't put a stick in his mouth. Call 91 1. I. Okay. So then he discerns the two voices by him who died on cross. Is this the man by him who died on cross? What is that? 29:48 Erin: I don't know. And that. 29:51 Wes: Are they just swearing by Christ? Is that by, you know, like, by God? By. By Christ. He is the one. 29:58 Erin: You would think, though, that would be Scottishized if it was a. If it was an oath, right? Because I. You know, he. He violates the meter countless times. So he could have just said, by him who died on the cross. 30:13 Wes: Yeah. You get two unstressed syllables. On the cross. By him who died on the cross. Died on cross. Yeah. Very strange. With his cruel bow. So, okay, this is the guy who killed the albatross. The spirit in the land of the mist and snow loved the bird that loved the man who shot him with his bow. Did we know that the albatross loved him? 30:34 Erin: Yes. Well, I think. I think I mentioned this much, much earlier, like, maybe in the first episode, because I was most taken by these lines as a cipher to kind of understand the rest of the poem. Like, I think. I think I recalled this at the moment when he actually does shoot the albatross. And when we talked about whether or not this was such a terrible crime, but, you know, did the Mariner know? I don't know. Does this provide some, like, belated context for. Was there a friendship montage where he and the albatross were, like, sitting on the ship, you know, laughing and having fun? We were not privy to this until this moment. Right. 31:15 Wes: If we make an animation of this, there's got to be that montage. That's awesome. 31:18 Erin: Right? Yeah. You know, walking along on the deck 31:22 Wes: together, laughing, playing deck croquet, doing the spaghetti thing. Have the same piece of spaghetti in their mouth. Anyway. 31:35 Erin: Yeah. So I think I talked about it then, but at this point, what strikes me is the chain of associations that this grammatical structure sets up. Yeah. Degrees of separation here. And they all knew Kevin Bacon. Yeah. 31:52 Wes: This looks very much like a Christian allegory at this point. Right. He sacrifices the bird that loved him. Where does penance fit in do we do penance for having killed Christ? Not really, right? 32:07 Erin: No, not really. I mean, you know, so penance is for sin. When we sin, then we have to do penance. Whether or not this is a sin has been kind of an open question throughout this entire poem. Right. Like, the idea is that Christ, in a way, does the penance for you. Yeah, yeah. So it's not the kind of endless atonement that seems to be on display here with this idea of like the, you know, the. The parable of the wandering Jew. Or even I think of like La befana in Italian. I'm thinking of this just because it was just epiphany and Christmas, of course. Right. But like, in Italian folklore, there's a similar kind of figure who. This is the old woman who is always cleaning, coming along to each house, waiting for the Christ child to come. Right. And is never, never has the Christ child come into the house. Like, that's the whole point of La Befana. So. And I think there's a similar kind of figure in other European folklore as well, so. Or she gives. No, no, she's cleaning. Well, there's thing with cleaning and then she's delivering gifts. But she's like the magi. But she's always leaving gifts for children in anticipation that that will be the Christ child. But, you know, so she does this eternally. Right. So anyway, the idea of like eternal having something you can't expiate, that you have to keep atoning for forever, is kind of the opposite of the whole point of Christianity. 33:37 Wes: Exactly. 33:38 Erin: Yeah. 33:39 Wes: Well put. Well, that is a sad tale. Maybe it is the saddest tale after all. 33:44 Erin: See, I told you. When it's about guilt, it's sad. 33:48 Wes: Right. 33:50 Erin: Catholics feel like this is the story of their faith, but it's actually not Catholic guilt. Jewish guilt. 33:55 Wes: Yeah. Right. Okay. And we had been reading early on, we had been reading the Killing of the Albatross as a way of rebelling against dependency upon nature. And of course, being, as we've mentioned before, being a mariner and being on the. On the sea, on a. On a boat, that makes us more acutely dependent on nature, in particular on the. On the wind, but on other circumstances as well. And to kill off the albatross is to. Is to say, yeah, I'm not going to depend on you anymore. I don't want to have to depend on you. How does that fit in with this idea that the main role of the bird now is to have been something loved by the spirit from the land of Mist and snow. What does that mean? I mean, in a way, I. I guess the albatross comes from that land right down in Antarctica, I think. And so, you know, that's the actual geographic origin of the albatross. And then we get the idea that, that it is loved by its, you know, ecological niche in a way, that that niche is kind of an animated and values this animal. 35:10 Erin: The word dependency, you know, that you use and that we, We've used in previous episodes. I'm thinking too about this chain of dependency that love sets up here. Like, you know, as I said, literally, grammatically, but also just this idea that, like there is a. A strange kind of emotional dependency that is created in relationship, which seems like that's a kind of a uniquely human. Right. Sort of dependence. And yet here it's established ecologically, as you're saying. 35:41 Wes: So the niche loves its species. It's an interesting idea. You know, the. Evolutionarily, the niche has a role in producing the species. So in a way it's like a parental. You could see it as a parental figure. Right. It's a formative force and it's something that links the physical environment to the phenotype of the animal, to the very form of the animal. And the very form of an albatross obviously is linked to not just the land, but to the. To the wind itself, which is important. And it can be obviously seen as a representation of the wind as, as, as well, but it's. But paradoxically, it's also an ungainly creature. 36:18 Erin: Sure. And it's also marked, of course, evolutionarily by predation. Right. Like there's an interdependence, I think, evolutionarily speaking, between the. The predator and the prey in terms of their sort of like co evolution. So I suppose it makes sense that it links back up to the. The albatross's predator in a, In a strange relationship of, of dependency in this way. Like, like it's, it's following him. He's violated the, the ecosystem. He's not part of it and he's made the stain on it or he's. He's removed something from it that has caused the, you know, the Jenga tower to fall, apparently. Right. But I think like, there's also within evolution itself this idea that you evolve as part of a system and that involves the thing being eaten, trying to escape being eaten and the thing doing the eating, trying to become a better killer. Right. Of the, the things it wants to eat. That too is kind of like marked in probably in Some way in the form of the albatross itself. 37:20 Wes: Who would be. 37:20 Erin: Do we talk about the natural predator of the albatross in. 37:25 Wes: Yeah, I just, you know, the only one I know, I know of is through the. Our Planet, the David Attenborough stuff. 37:33 Erin: Right, right. 37:34 Wes: They have a great little section on albatrosses and tiger sharks are their natural predators because they. They know to go. You know, they know when the juvenile albatrosses are having their first flights and often are falling into the water, and the tiger sharks migrate all the way there to wait around so that they can eat the ones that fall in the water. I know of no other natural predator for the albatross except that now there is invasive species like cats and dogs and stuff that eat albatross eggs, you know, and from a little search online, I didn't find anything else. So not many real predators, at least of the adult, you know, of the adult birds, so. 38:17 Erin: So they're at the top. 38:19 Wes: Yeah. I wouldn't think of them as an apex. What are. What are they eating? Apparently, the. The maggots from biscuits on sailor ships. 38:29 Erin: The offerings of the spirit of the Land of Mist and make sacrifices to the albatross. 38:35 Wes: Yeah. So there's. There's something here about the violation of the killing of the bird as the killing of. Of one that loved you and. But also the killing of one that was loved by the land, so to speak, or loved by the. The larger environment, the milieu. One of my favorite words. So, so let's, I mean, maybe explore this analogy. The. The spirit of the land loves the bird, the bird loves the man. If we were to take that analogy seriously. Right. We would try to figure out the way in which the bird is in some similar relation to human being as the land of mist and snow is to the bird. But it's hard to figure that. I can't think of anything. How is that. How is the bird a formative influence on man or a. Something analogous to an ecological niche for man, except insofar as it does that symbolically. Right. If it's a symbol of good luck, for instance. Right. 39:38 Erin: I mean, I'm. I'm totally convinced by that. I think. Symbolic reading. I. I was just thinking, you know, quite literally, if we argued, if we had to say in purely practical terms why the bird would love the man, it would be because the mariner was probably the predominant one feeding it the biscuit worms. Right. I'm serious. 39:57 Wes: Right. 39:58 Erin: Because that would be the only way 39:59 Wes: the bird did love the one who fed it tasty treats. 40:02 Erin: Well, yes, well, yes, just like my cat. And that would be exactly right. And that would be the thing that would cause the bird to come back over and over again to be trained to tell you train an animal. Right. And that, that I think fulfills on the most basic level the analogous relationship you're talking about, which is that, you know, the ecosystem between the. The land of mist and snow and the bird is such that the bird performs the function to keep the ecosystem going by eating the things that without the albat maybe would go. Would get out of control or would. Right. Like there's a mechanism there to keep everything in balance, which depends upon the predation of the albatross on whatever it is that they eat. So then the mariner reverses that equation, right, by instead of like feeding the albatross, which apparently seems to be the natural order of things, is instead feeding on, or wants to feed on the albatross. Going back to my original theory, right, that he killed the albatross to eat him. I don't know. So I'm. I mean, maybe that's. That makes sense or stupid to mention, but it's just. 41:03 Wes: No, no, you know, literally I'm just. Yeah, I'm trying to. Reading of this, but no, I. That makes sense. I'm trying to fit it into the larger reading of. The real crime here is to try and transcend natural and formative conditions, I think, which is what hubris is. Is about, right? So Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost, one of the. The fun thing about that rebellion is he's trying to rebel against the groundwork of his own being, Right. He realizes that it's like trying to, you know, it's like standing on a stool and say, I'm going to get you stool, because I don't like depending on you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to be number one. No, you can't be number one. You're. You're on the stool, right? So we can't be our own foundations. We have to be dependent. There is some, you know, whether you believe in God or not, there is some ultimate ontological foundation and we can't pretend that we are first. And the killing of the bird in a way is, I think, psychologically motivated by and at the very least symbolic of wanting to rid oneself of any conditions of existence. Wanting to become the unconditioned, so to speak, which is to say God a God unto oneself. In that sense, we do get some parallel to the killing of Christ. And the idea is that These conditions that determine us, you know, and whether it's parents or nature or whatever you want to think about this, these formative conditions, they are fickle in a sense, and they saddle us, right? The crimes of the father are visited on the son and they saddle us, say, in the case of parents with all sorts of hang ups and trauma. But there's something very natural, you know, that relationship always by nature includes some aspects of love. Even if you just want to think about that in the sense in which it's constructive. Right. It builds us, it makes us who we are, it synthesizes us, which is a loving act. We are, we are reproduced from those forces. So to rebel against our dependence on nature is to really, in the end, to rebel against love itself. And that again, that's. That's sad. And, you know, maybe. Maybe he's right. Saddest tale. 43:15 Erin: I love that. That's great. 43:16 Wes: Okay, so we will stop there and then we will do the sixth and final section. Is it the final? 43:24 Erin: I hope so. 43:25 Wes: No, we got seven. But we are really gonna have to. We're gonna promise we'll finish because we are gonna definitely finish. So we. You may just hear us read the poem and say, that's nice. All right, so we'll. Yes, we'll continue from section six and the sixth and final part of our recording on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Thank you. 43:52 Erin: Okay, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.