The 1798 Poem That Was Made for 2020
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is taking on new meaning during the coronavirus pandemic.
Wrapping up one of his recent panoramically authoritative surveys of our altered landscape, inner and outer, my Atlantic colleague Ed Yong put it like this: “In the classic hero’s journey—the archetypal plot structure of myths and movies—the protagonist reluctantly departs from normal life, enters the unknown, endures successive trials, and eventually returns home, having been transformed. If such a character exists in the coronavirus story, it is not an individual, but the entire modern world.”
To be at sea, mid-story; storm-threatened or becalmed; to be adrift, disoriented, at the mercy of incomprehensibly avenging forces that somehow (and you know this, you this) contain the secret of who you are … We’ve got a poem for that.
