The Tree of the Doves. Christopher Merrill

town, where we could stop for tea, and the watery quality of the light on the long stretch of road that took us through paddy fields and rubber plantations made me thirstier yet.

      “Water, water everywhere,” Eddin said. “Nor any drop to drink.”

      It was not unusual for him to invoke The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to describe a situation. Coleridge’s tale of an ill-fated sea voyage was a touchstone for Eddin, and there was something in his manner that reminded me of how the Mariner buttonholes the Wedding-Guest to tell his story of sailing on a ship toward the South Pole, through mist and snow and ice, until the Albatross appears, bearing good luck, it seems. For the ice entrapping the ship splits apart, the helmsmen finds a passage through, and a south wind pushes them onward, with the Albatross following—to the delight of the crew—until the day that the Mariner inexplicably shoots it with his crossbow, setting in motion a tragedy he is condemned to “teach” to strangers like the Wedding-Guest.

      His shipmates all agree that killing the bird was “a hellish thing,” since it brought a fair breeze. Yet when the breeze keeps blowing they convince themselves that the Albatross actually brought the fog and mist, and so they justify its sacrifice until the ship enters the Pacific, where at once it is becalmed, the sun parching every tongue, the water burning “like a witch’s oils,” death-fires dancing in the rigging at night. The sailors hang the Albatross around the Mariner’s neck to ward off its avenging spirit. Then a ghost ship arrives bearing a Spectre-Woman and her Death-mate to slay the crew, two hundred men in all. Only the Mariner is spared, and for a full week he lies on deck surrounded by the dead: a ghastly scene capped by the appearance of weirdly beautiful water-snakes coiling and swimming, leaving tracks like flashes of golden fire. “A spring of love gushed from my heart,” he tells the Wedding-Guest, “and I blessed them unaware”—the prayer that frees him of the yoke of the Albatross, which sinks “Like lead into the sea.”

      Into a deep sleep he sinks, and when he is roused from a dream of buckets filling with dew his thirst is slaked by rain, the wind rises, and his dead shipmates return to their positions, a ghostly crew to sail him home. Now he falls into a trance, in which he hears two voices discussing the penance that he has done—and his obligation to do more. He prays to wake, the ship enters the harbor, and at the sight of crimson shadows rising from the depths he turns to see the deck littered once more with corpses, atop each of which is a man in white: a band of seraphs signaling to the land. A boat approaches with three figures onboard, splitting the bay, and when the ship, like the Albatross, “went down like lead,” they fetch the Mariner from the water. His first words cause the Pilot to faint, and when he takes up the oars the Pilot’s boy concludes that he is the Devil. Only the praying Hermit possesses the wits to ask: “What manner of man art thou?”

      The Mariner recounts the story of his crime and punishment, the telling of which frees him momentarily from the agony that in the future will periodically overcome him, forcing him to travel from land to land until he chances upon someone like the Wedding-Guest, who “cannot choose but hear.” It is true that the Wedding-Guest’s reactions to his story are like unto what many feel before the sublime: indifference gives way to impatience and anger, then to fear and fascination and finally, perhaps, to gratitude. Who can bear to hear such an awful tale? Yet we yearn for its truth with the desire of the parched sailors who dream of slaking their thirst, which is why The Rime of the Ancient Mariner endures in the imagination, like Coleridge’s other dream work, Kubla Khan.

      The poem defies rational analysis, demanding that readers surrender to its musical and mysterious logic, which carries them into a supernatural world, where a different set of rules applies—no less stringent than what we imagine governs daily life. Told in the popular form of a ballad, which is rooted in oral tradition, the narrative unfolds at a brisk pace, luring the ear from rhyme to rhyme, dramatizing the strangest events in what seems to be an inevitable sequence. The willing suspension of disbelief : this phrase, coined by Coleridge to justify in the name of a larger truth the fantastic elements in his poem, is a useful formula for explaining the structure of belief, which depends upon giving oneself over to a story that can both enchant and explain the meaning of one’s walk in the sun. The more implausible the tale, the more rigorous the writer must be to make it believable: In the beginning was the Word. . . . And the formula applies not just to poetry and religion but to every aspect of experience. We want to believe, hoping against hope that what we believe is true: that our beloved feels as we do; that our calling is the right one; that our time here below matters. Most of our decisions—to attend a particular school, a house of worship, a film; to marry, take a job, raise children; to travel to one place instead of another; to vote for someone; to launch a war; to negotiate for peace; to make a record of our deeds—are predicated on hope, however misguided, for ourselves and our families, for our tribe and country, for posterity and the planet, for God.

      The willing suspension of disbelief leads some to clarity, others to blind faith. In Coleridge’s waking dream lie truths of a philosophical and religious order—that we are judged and punished for our actions; that prayer and love are intertwined; that expiation requires confession, a story—that a fanatic can translate into a nightmare. But clarity and faith need not be at odds, as writers in every religious tradition make plain, and an idea shared by most faiths—that vision is always partial—can instill the humility required for the marriage of clarity and faith: one theme of Coleridge’s poem. He strikes a balance between what he knows and what he does not know, leaving unexplained certain crucial matters, beginning with the Mariner’s decision to kill the Albatross. Why did he commit the crime? The poet lets the reader imagine that the Mariner is afflicted by some anxiety, the only relief for which is to kill the bird that in sea lore carries the souls of lost sailors. Nor does he explain how the Mariner’s silent blessing of the water-snakes restores him to human society, what compels him to stop certain strangers to tell his tale of guilt and redemption, or why the Wedding-Guest stays to listen. We cannot presume to understand everything, he seems to say, and therein lies hope for our salvation.