I couldn’t sleep (again!); so, I did what I usually do – find a story or poem that will bring my wandering thoughts to rest. Tonight, I chose to read the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner“. Whenever I read and struggle to comprehend the meaning of this unusual and very complex poem by Samuel Coleridge, I imagine Emmanuel Kant’s “noumenal world” struggling to bring some sort of universal understanding (and blind acceptance) to the mysticism of our (unknowable) past by creatively applying his version of science as a link to faith to explain the unexplainable. Like Kant, the mariner struggles with “evidence” (offered as side notes) that is bizzare and often contradictory. This “evidence” ultimately finds an end without ever having to justify or explain the means, (Death or Death in Life).

I find much of the story to be no more than a Vicar’s son struggling to shed a world that he has been led, by strong influences, to believe exists. He struggles in order to reconcile the mystically familiar noumenal reality others tell him about (and force him to accept on faith) that may exist, and that causal reality which his mind proves over and over does exist.

By retelling his story over and over again, the Mariner finds moments of peace (and perhaps dreams free of nightmares) with each retelling. However, so relentless is the convenience of fantasy and shifting facts to explain away his failures and “crimes” against the collective (the crew), he is loath to give such “freedom” up. He is conflicted with having to believe the unbelievable and apply it to his daily life. As that world combats the world of his senses, of his understanding of a causal reality, the peace brought about by his unburdening is soon followed by, and replaced with, more self-doubt and painful sadness. Yet, he continues to carry such burdens and repeat his penance because doing so is his duty, if not his choice.

He wants to be free of his nightmarish existence and so he repeats telling his story as he is compelled to do under his penance obligation to “Death in Life”. Even in his lucid periods of relief, he can’t keep his mind from returning to a past built upon fantasy and wimsical philosophy. He is overwhelmed with self-loathing and doubt because he has been taught that his world is unknowable, and that he, like everyone before him and those who will come after him, will never be able to live free of fear and doubt. His faith is so strong that he refuses to trust what he can prove to be true and knowable. Life in Death’s dark, unknowable world will rule over all, until Death wins her role of the dice. Only then will she allow fate to pull us into the light of Death.

How else can one ever be free in a world where there is no free will, no free choice, no natural rights and no need for understanding beyond our duty to live and to serve others until we are relieved of our burden by Death’s beneficence? That is the world of Emmanual Kant and this is the world most “enlightened” people have come to accept. Praise be to the mind altering drug industry and to alcohol producers everywhere for providing a temporary means for souls such as the Mariner to find mercy from “Death in Life”.

This is a difficult work to decifer. How do you interpret its purpose and meaning? There are all sorts of attempts to break the code, so to speak, but none hold up to scrutiny for long – so, what harm can there be in my offering my own…or in you offering your’s?