The Gloss and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” - Ways of Reading

Dear Reader, I suggest you first read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” before continuing with this essay.

The Mariner gazes on the serpents in the ocean, Gustave Dore, 1876

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down and still somehow

It's cloud illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all

-  Joni Mitchell 

To gaze at an empty box is to imagine it is filled with the invisible. If it were full, there would be nothing to add, for there would be nothing to imagine. Similarly, if a literary text were to be truly alive, there must be empty pockets left within to serve the imagination of the reader. To make matters more profound, to call a text good beyond doubt would suggest that it be limitless. In Derrida’s account, this eternal expansion of the text is an inborn faculty of language. “Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique” (qtd. in Singh), criticism here implying the enrichment of a text, the expansion of its meaning, rather than a blunt evaluation of its aesthetic qualities.

It is necessary that a text be inexhaustible for it to be exemplary of the essence of the act of reading, and writing, for that matter. For Wolfgang Iser, what constitutes the unfolding of any literary work lies in the “field of play” (280) between the imagination of the reader and the text itself. I would call it a play, too - a sort of hide and seek; an indication that the game is being played well would be that the moment the reader catches what he has been searching for, the searched for then transforms into a strange new thing the reader had not thought of before. In essence, the reader should never stop searching because the text should never give an exhaustive answer. Such a statement contains in itself quite clearly, I believe, the idea that the text can only expand if the reader keeps reading. That is the only way the text can reveal itself in its entirety, an entirety which lies in the impossibility of it being fully grasped, because it keeps reinventing itself through the reader’s continuous and incomplete attempts at filling the holes of the unwritten: “it is the unwritten part that gives us the opportunity to picture things” (288). Without this gap, I agree with Iser, we simply would not be able to use our imagination. 

In 1789, Samuel Taylor Coleridge published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in his and William Wordsworth’s joint collection of poems Lyrical Ballads. Throughout his life, Coleridge produced at least eighteen versions of the poem to account for the criticism it received for its peculiar and archaic language, obscure imagery, moral ambiguity, and the incoherence of the seemingly logical resolution against the backdrop of the many supernatural elements. In 1817, Coleridge added a marginal gloss - a straightforward, prosaic annotation on the side of the integral text to provide the long-sought clarification for the reader. For example, one reads: 

It is an ancient Mariner,                                                 

And he stoppeth one of three. 

'By thy long beard and glittering eye, 

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? (lines 1-4)

The gloss explains: “An ancient Mariner meeteth three gallants bidden to a wedding feast, and detaineth one.” Without this simplification, the reader would not possibly be able to figure out where the Mariner is and who that “he” is, who is “one of three.” Except, the next stanza follows: 

 The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,

 And I am next of kin; 

 The guests are met, the feast is set:

 May'st hear the merry din.' (lines 5-8)

How improbable is it to assume that the reader may be able to guess correctly that there is a Mariner, he is at a wedding, and he stops someone who is also attending? (How important is it that the reader knows exactly where they are in the story?) The gloss suggests (or answers in accordance with external suggestions?) that there is hardly any chance to figure out the scene, that there is no indication of the premises, hence, it must interfere. Here is another clarifying example:

 With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, 

 Agape they heard me call:                                                               

 Gramercy! they for joy did grin,                      A flash of joy; 

 And all at once their breath drew in, 

 As they were drinking all. (lines 162-166)

Wendy Wall describes this doubled form as a “labyrinthine reading experience which accentuates the act of interpretation” (179). Instead of the poem being the labyrinth and the gloss the side of it which, if held on to, leads to the exit, it is the poem and the gloss that obscure the path to the end line. This means that the gloss fails to fulfill its function as a clarifier, and I believe Coleridge knew that very well, but he still added it for a reason. It is a double-edged sword because the text then risks not being understood by those towards whom it is intended. I agree with Gerard Genette that many paratextual elements, many notes left from the author to the reader, “are addressed [only] to certain readers” (263). The gloss as a clarifying tool is Coleridge’s address to the passive reader; the gloss as an instrument of defamiliarization of the integral text is intended for the reader in action. 

The stanza above is a good example of what Wall thinks to be the true function of the gloss - “to tear down form, to erase structure” (181) as opposed to simplify. Because, really, nothing is added to the better understanding of the scene. The so-called clarification line, “a flash of joy,” is redundant when next to the integral “they for joy did grin.”

Coleridge himself says that the “grandest efforts of poetry are when the imagination is called forth, not to produce a distinct form, but a strong working of the mind” (qtd. in Wall 181). That is, he believed the function of poetry was to be a catalyst for new ideas, to give space for the exploration of “the virtual dimension of the text, which endows it with its reality” (Iser 284). But by adding the gloss, Coleridge is taking more space (in the realm of the imagination and on the physical page), rather than freeing it for the reader to come up with their own conclusions. In effect, the passive reader would be prompted to think even less about what they are reading, and the active reader is at danger of being tricked into becoming passive.

From a purely optical angle, the gloss delays and confuses the reading process before it has even begun. How should one read The Rime? The integral text first, then the clarifying notes, or vice versa? Or should one go back and forth between the two? In any case, the flow of the natural reading process (left to right, up to down) is interrupted by deliberately “leading the eye out, and encouraging the reader to concentrate on the context rather than the text” (Maclean 273). The gloss becomes a distraction, like a black dot on a white canvas, gaining all the attention despite taking such a small amount of space. 

To understand this concept better, one may turn to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. “Every image embodies a way of seeing” (10) because “seeing comes before words” (7). The way one visually perceives the poem and the gloss together will inevitably influence the way one reads and understands, imagines, The Rime. If the poem and the gloss are seen (literally seen and understood) as inseparable, that is, the poem needs the gloss to maintain its substance, then the gloss becomes not an addition to the meaning, but acts as the meaning itself. Without it, one could not possibly make sense of the poem. But if that were the case, then the gloss must have reinvented itself from a paratext to a part of the main text, thus holding more or equal power to the entity it is supposed to be subordinate to.

Genette’s observation on the function of the paratext suggests why this cannot be the case: “If an element of the paratext can appear at any moment, it can equally disappear, definitively or not, through the decision of the author or through outside intervention” (264). If the gloss can disappear at any time, which is safe to assume, given that it was added after many other editions, to make it an integral part of the main text would mean that Coleridge has not only added to the main text, but he has also written a new text. But because the gloss is marginal in its definition, one must assume the main text does not need it to contain its essence. The essence of the main text is the main text in relation to the reader. Genette calls the paratext a “threshold” - the liminal space between the text and the reception of the text, “or the term Borges used about a preface - a ‘vestibule’ which offers to anyone and everyone the possibility either of entering or of turning back” (261). If one chooses to turn back, the scope of the margins, that is, the space left for the imagination, remains as it is - the space around the main text. But if one chooses to enter, then the gloss acts as a magnifier and a multiplier, it adds a new margin within the old one, it adds more space within the space already existing - this must mean that there is more room for interpretation, new rooms for the imagination to explore, lying in a dimension beyond the linear space of the page. 

I agree with Sarah Dyck that the gloss sometimes appears to act as an autocrat demanding “the reader to accept the views of the author” (596). Lines 79 to 81 read:

 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! 

 From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—  

 Why look'st thou so?'—'With my crossbow 

 I shot the Albatross.

The gloss proclaims: “The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.” Readers from both of the aforementioned categories want to know why the Mariner kills the Albatross - finally, in 1817, an answer was given. Because the Mariner is “inhospitable,” he must have killed the bird because that is just part of his nature. By calling the Albatross “a bird of good omen,” the gloss asserts that the bird is inherently good; then, to kill something good would be an act of evil. Evil acts assume an impending punishment. Is this justification satisfactory? I doubt it. The passive reader may tap themselves on the shoulder - ‘I knew it! The Mariner was simply a bad person,’ but I, as I am sure many others as well, am not satisfied. I ask then, what made the Mariner evil? 

Christopher Stokes proposes that the answer lies within Coleridge’s attitude towards the notion of guilt. In 1789, the same month he finished The Rime, Coleridge wrote to his brother, George (qtd. in Stokes 13): 

I believe most stedfastly [sic] in Original Sin; that from our mothers' wombs our understandings are darkened; and even where our understandings are in the Light, that our organization is depraved, & our volitions imperfect.

Stokes says that Coleridge admits original sin “as a mystery guilt” (20). It is a mystery because it is impossible to return to the origin. Just because the origin cannot be comprehended, going back to Biblical references, for the sake of making connections, still finds the conclusions deficient. The explanation yet again fails to exhaust the question. I do not think Coleridge ever intended to add the gloss as an explanation of The Rime. But it is possible that his personal views left a deeper mark on his writings than he was aware of. Essentially, the failure of Coleridge’s gloss mirrors his belief in man’s inherent faults. The gloss can never clear away the shadows of “our darkened understandings” because it is a work of man, and man, as a reader and a writer, is always guilty of misunderstanding. It is only natural, then, that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner reads like a boulder up Sisyphus’s back, which has probably been the experience of writing it as well. It most certainly occupies the realm beyond the painted veil - it speaks as if from the other world while incapable of bringing its readers there. The ballad is a recount of an ancient tale of “trial and punishment” (Barr 876) - like the Mariner, the reader will forever be convicted of committing a crime against virtue, but he will never know what exactly is his fault. 

Frances Ferguson says this sense of judgement comes from the fact that the Mariner has no freedom whatsoever to direct his fate - he is constantly being “acted upon” (618) by Nature, God, the gods, et cetera. Similarly, one may assume, the reader is being acted upon by the gloss, tilting the nose of their ship in an unknown direction, inevitably stilled within an impasse. The shipmen cannot survive without the breath of the wind, the reader cannot break through the lines without the guidance of the gloss. But, I think, it is within the very lines of The Rime that one can be assured this is not true. The Mariner is saved not by the wind, but by something else - we cannot ever be sure what it was (and more importantly, why) that saved him. Likewise, the reader can only be saved if he chooses to keep dwelling in his imagination - that is the place where all is alive, even if it is silent most of the time. Ferguson asks, “Is the deficiency [to understand] in the text or in the reader?”(634). Neither - that which leads to the workings of the mind cannot be deficient. But one must first recognize that the understanding of The Rime is a process; it is within the short moment when the Mariner stops and blesses the sea creatures, but it is not the blessing per se. 

Coleridge himself is part of this eternal process, he is probably the best reader of The Rime there is for each revision is the result of his own rereading. Coleridge is also acted upon by his creation, and this will always be an endless cycle. He rereads, then rewrites, never able to produce a final version because there is no final version of any literary work. It lives so long as the reader is alive. So far, there has always been someone who reads The Rime. 

The gloss of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a paratextual element makes visible the fact that “aspects [of a text] that are often viewed as arbitrary are nevertheless inscribed into our readings of literary works” (Claes 199). Though I may wish to read the integral text separately from the gloss, I must know that the very existence of the gloss makes this wish impossible. Its presence only, even if I never read what it says, suggests that there is something I am probably not seeing, something else I must pay attention to. The gloss stares at me and demands I pick a side. I must choose what type of reader I am going to be in relation to Coleridge’s work. There is no way out, for even my lack of action is a choice made. The choice is not one regarding the ending I want to reach, we have already established that the end is infinite. Just like I could continue writing for thirty more pages, or I could have chosen to end at the third. The beauty of the text lies in the knowledge that after this page, there always comes another. No gloss can explain this better than a man, curled up below a candlelight, reading a well-known story as if for the first time. 

Works cited

Barr, Mark L. “The Forms of Justice: Precedent and Gloss in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’” ELH, vol. 78, no. 4, 2011, pp. 863–89. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41337557. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.

Berger, John. Ways of seeing. Penguin Classics, 2008.

Claes, Koenraad. “Supplements and Paratext: The Rhetoric of Space.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 2010, pp. 196–210. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25732104. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.

Coleridge, S.T. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817). Coleridge Corner. inamidst.com/coleridge/mariner/1817.

Dyck, Sarah. “Perspective in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 13, no. 4, 1973, pp. 591–604. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/449802. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.

Ferguson, Frances. “Coleridge and the Deluded Reader: ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’” The Georgia Review, vol. 31, no. 3, 1977, pp. 617–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41397504. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.

Genette, Gérard, and Marie Maclean. “Introduction to the Paratext.” New Literary History, vol. 22, no. 2, 1991, pp. 261–72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/469037. Accessed 6 Apr. 2025.

Iser, Wolfgang. “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” New Literary History, vol. 3, no. 2, 1972, pp. 279–99. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/468316. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.

Maclean, Marie. “Pretexts and Paratexts: The Art of the Peripheral.” New Literary History, vol. 22, no. 2, 1991, pp. 273–79. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/469038. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.

Singh, Pallavi. “Derrida’s Structure, Sign and Play - Summary and Analysis.” Literature and Criticism, 2024, www.literatureandcriticism.com/structure-sign-and-play.

Stokes, Christopher. “‘My Soul in Agony’: Irrationality and Christianity in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 50, no. 1, 2011, pp. 3–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23056004. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

Wall, Wendy. “Interpreting Poetic Shadows: The Gloss of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’” Criticism, vol. 29, no. 2, 1987, pp. 179–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23110341. Accessed 6 Apr. 2025.