The only truly alien planet is Earth. - UniCA Eprints - Università degli ...

In the manner of the figure of the Ancient Mariner, Ransom violates the bond between humankind
and nature by his refusal to sacrifice any of his remaining store of water to revive a dying swan. Like that of
the Mariner, Ransom’s crime represents an assertion of the ego-mind against the claims of creature-kinship,
the bond of man and nature, and thus constitutes a denial of love and compassion. Also in common with the
Mariner, Ransom endures a long penance of which drought and thirst are central elements. For both the
Ancient Mariner and Ransom the unconscious is the source of ultimate salvation; and for both voyagers
absolution is signified by the falling of rain. Finally, both the Mariner and Ransom enact archetypal patterns
of guilt and expiation, attaining through their suffering and atonement the status of redemptive figures” 225 .
A questo proposito ricordiamo che Ballard contribuisce alla raccolta di brevi saggi The
Pleasure of Reading (London, Bloomsbury, 1992), curata da Antonia Fraser, con un articolo nel
quale commenta dieci opere, tra le quali proprio la “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Il poema
romantico è senza dubbio un’influenza importante in Ballard, che echeggia più volte nella sua
narrativa 226 .
L’influenza del testo di Coleridge riaffiora per esmpio nei racconti “Storm-bird, Stormdreamer”
(1966), “Tomorrow is a Million Years” (1966) e “Cry Hope, Cry Fury” (1966). Nel
primo il protagonista uccide dei giganteschi uccelli marini mutanti, per travestirsi poi come loro,
spinto dal rimorso, e venire infine ucciso da una donna che vuole vendicare l’uccisione del marito e
del figlio da parte di quegli uccelli. Nel secondo Glanville è uno psicopatico che ha ucciso la moglie
ma nel suo stato allucinato continua a vederla e a parlare con lei; ma la sua punizione non sembra
portarlo alla redenzione. Nel terzo Melville, altro personaggio dal nome evocativo, riesce invece ad
espiare la sua colpa grazie al potere purificante dell’amore 227 .
In The Crystal World (1966) l’opera evocata è L’isola dei morti (1880) di Arnold Böcklin, il
cui senso di desolazione funebre ben si presta a richiamare l’atmosfera tetra, a tratti funerea, a
dispetto delle luci dei cristalli della foresta, che caratterizza le terre colpite da una sorta di lebbra
225 Ibid.
226 «The whole of Ballard’s fiction is haunted by echoes of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, and it is
particularly appropriate that in The Drought images of dead and dying birds abound. It is as though man’s future state is
the same as that of the Mariner marooned in the doldrums after killing the albatross. […] The Mariner is evoked again
in the short story “Storm-bird, Storm-dreamer” (1966), where the protagonist lives on board a stalled ship rather like
Ransom’s at the opening of The Drought. He slays the gigantic mutated sea-birds with his machine gun, then suffers a
slow remorse which eventually leads him to dress in feathers and take to the sky himself – only to be shot down in turn
by a woman whose husband and child have been killed by the birds.» D. Pringle, Earth is the Alien Planet, op. cit., pp.
23-24.
227 «An allusion to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” casts Glanville in the role of the Mariner whose
punishment for his heedless, selfish act of violence is undertaken by the female spirit known as “the Nightmare Life-in-
Death”. Like that of the Mariner, Glanville’s crime may be seen to represent a denial of the primary reality of the
unseen world and a transgression against his own deepest nature, though unlike the Mariner’s there is no indication
given here that Glanville’s sufferings will refine him or lead him to greater moral and metaphysical awareness. The
character of the retribution visited upon both the Mariner and Glanville is the same, however, a living death. […] In
this instance the Mariner figure, Robert Melville, succeeds in expiating his guilt through love, while it is the witch
figure of Nightmare Life-in-Death, Hope Cunard, who remains trapped in a living death of illusion.» G. Stephenson, op.
cit., p. 86.
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