HELP:Coleridge, the rime of the ancient mariner

[Chloe Chen]

Could someone tell me that how Coleridge expressed about a sense of occult powers and unknown modes of being in order to impress upon reader in "the rime of the ancient mariner"?

[sybilline]

First, through the narrative structure. A mystery surrounds the mariner. His name, time and place of departure of his voyage remain unknown, which creates a distance between his story and his discourse. The same tecnic is used with the couple formed by the mariner and the wedding guest. The spell of the mariner's glittering eyes seem to maintain the two characters in a kind of intemporality, which announces the presence of something beyond human powers.
What is more obvious is the use of the surnatural, through the fantastic appearance of the spectre woman and the marvellous metamorphosis of the water snakes.
As you can see, narrative structure (and prosody), fantastic and marvellous reveal the presence of occult forces, some of them in the deepest layers of the psyche and others confirming the presence of the divine power of love through nature, upon things of nature and human beings. Good luck.

[bootlegger]

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner encompasses an absurd entanglement of religious and "occult" figures. It is unclear whether it is a direct technique of Coleridge's or not, but what the reader experiences is a juxtaposition of wholly gothic figures such as "Life-In-Death", a femme fatale who appears to gamble on the salvation or damnation of the mariner with an uncomfortable sense of blasé; the polar spirits, who seem sympathetic to the plight of the mariner, but still instill a sense of mystery and unease into the dialogue with their phantasmagorical abilities to steer a ship without wind; and finally recurrent references to the Virgin Mary of christian ideology, and God as a sun, bringing terrible torment and thirst.
The other expression of occult powers beside the main characters is the possession of the dead crew members by "spirits" who propel them to complete their tasks on the ship, and the persona of the mariner, who appears to have "other-wordly" powers, who can hold the wedding-guest in a hypnotic stare, and is condemned, as in ancient magical mythology, to tell his tale as pencance for all of eternity.