Exhibit: Analyzing the Rime with Doré's Engravings
The darkness of Doré's engravings carries some Romantic uncertainty about the meaningfulness of suffering, but the Christian symbolism clearly reframes the Mariner’s great mistake and subsequent suffering as ultimately the the opportunity for his redemption and future mission to the Wedding Guest.
Shooting the albatross is a ‘felix culpa’, a latin phrase which means ‘happy fault’ and refers to the eating of the apple by Adam and Eve (a mistake as arbitrary and mysterious as the shooting of the albatross) as ultimately the best thing that happened to mankind, because it occasioned the need for Christ, the Redeemer, to enter history for man’s salvation.
Coleridge’s poem recasts the Christian salvation story through the Mariner’s voyage in way which reaffirms its understanding of grace and of the mysterious necessity of sin to salvation, but the poem, accompanied by Doré’s dramatic, dark engravings, also newly points out the strangeness of the tale in a distinctively modern and Romantic fashion.
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