The Moon as a symbol of God in Coleridge

The Moon as a symbol of God in Coleridge

Even in literature we can find a religious function of the Moon. In particular the romantics who had a spiritual vision of nature: for example Wordsworth had a pantheistic view of nature, which is his starting point.

In "The rime of Ancient Mariner" (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge appears the Moon as divine help to find forgiveness and with his positive function is in opposition to the still, punishing Sun, symbol of divine justice and revenge.

"The moving Moon went up the sky

And nowhere did abide;

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside

Her beams bemocked the sultry main

Like April's hoar-frost spread;

But where the ship's huge shadows lay,

The charmed water burnt alway

A still and awful red."

We find here the personified satellite illumining everything but the ship. All became more beautiful:

"Beyond the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes:

They moved in tracks of shining white,

And when they reared, the elfish light

Fell off in hoary flakes."

Illuminating natural elements, the Moon makes them visible to the mariner who can, finally, recognize the beauty of nature and pray God to have forgiveness by him.

The poem is in the form of a traditional romantic ballad; we find most of the characteristic of tradition such as repetition, which gives musicality, archaic words, rhymes, stop fraises, supernatural elements, alternation of direct speech and narration, violent dead. In addiction to this, traditional elements we find some innovation for the ballad form such as the description of the setting, the morality and the length.

It is divided into seven parts and narrates the story of a journey told by the Ancient Mariner, begun immortal, to a wedding guest, who has only a functional role. The journey of the ship is related, by some critics, to the journey of the soul that, after a sin has to arrive to the forgiveness of God: the Mariner killed the Albatross, the good omen, arousing the divine anger. Starting from now the man had to pass through a period of purification, obtained by sufferance: all his companion die and he remain alone on the ship without anything to drink and to eat. After have prayed he obtained the divine forgiveness and had to go around the world telling his story in order to teach how to pray to others.