The Mundane and the Sublime Theme Analysis

The idea of the sublime is an important Romantic idea. In modern times, the word “sublime” usually refers to something especially breathtaking or beautiful. But as demonstrated by the strange beauty – both terrible and wonderful – that Coleridge presents in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Romantic idea of the sublime isn’t confined to just beauty, but rather suggests an overwhelming awe, and is often connected to nature. In the poem, for instance, the natural world is filled with beautiful yet horrible sights and events. The storm, which drives the ship to the pole, is incredibly powerful and majestic at once. The ice, snow, and giant, ship-high glaciers that the Mariner encounters in the pole are at once incredibly beautiful, eerie, and dangerous. The sublime then can be seen as the intersection of beauty and terror, awe and horror. Thus the sublime, like nature, must be approached with the right attitude. If we approach it and only appreciate its beauty, we risk falling prey to its danger, and if we approach the sublime only with fear of its horror, we mistakenly forget the awe that God’s creations should rightly inspire. And the poem makes it clear that experiencing the sublime can transform, just as it transforms both the Mariner and the Wedding Guest through the Mariner’s story.

The poem does not only find the sublime in nature, however. As described by the Mariner, it is also possible to see the act of prayer as sublime, as a spiritual, powerful act within a bounded, mundane civilization. In this view, both praying and appreciating nature involve both the beauty and overwhelming awe of connecting to God, of seeing past the mundane moments of daily life in civilization to the sublime.

In contrast, it is possible to see the Mariner’s killing of the Albatross as an attempt to assert the mundane over the sublime, or to force what is sublime (an uncanny, flying animal appearing out of the fog) to become mundane (a dead bird).