Robert Bly Deep Image Interpretation Of Poetry At Jung's Theory Of The Unconscious

As the founder and the forerunner of American New Surrealism and Deep Image poetry, Robert Bly (1926-) attempts to break through American poetic tradition by writing poetry against the main stream which emphasizes the importance of the inner world exploration rather than outer world. Bly’s representative poetry collections like Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962), anti-war poetry The Light Around Body (1967), and the long sequent poems Sleeper Joining Hands (1973) have shown from different aspects his successful experiments on poetry writing. Bly is a consistent approver of Jung’s notion that the only way for one’s inner world to be highlighted is to place it under the background of archetype. Therefore, Bly devoted himself to the exploration of one’s self-development within psychological region by creating deep images. Meanwhile, with a deep anxiousness about the spiritual civilization of the modern people, he attaches the features and meanings of archetypal images to deep images in hope of evoking the losing trueness of the modern men. Eventually, Bly and the poets of deep image school have established their unique position in literary circles and became a major force to American literature during1950s and1960s by their remarkable notice on surrealistic psychology, especially the unconscious world. What’s more, by using an original and fresh method on image creating, Robert Bly has exerted a profound influence on the later generations.Generally speaking, deep image poetry developed under the influence of modern psychologist Freud and Jung’s unconscious theory. It is unquestionable that the Deep Image School differs from Imagism. Besides emotions and reasons, it pays closer attention to the deeper level of psychology and unconscious, which, according to Bly, is the indispensable element in image creating. Bly’s definition on image is grounded on Jung’s imagination of the constant interaction between conscious and unconscious,For this reason, most deep images in Bly’s poetry possess a characteristic of leaping, which suggest a secret relation in the world we perceived. Whether in the pastoral poems with freshness and vast, or in the ironic and radical political poetry, Bly skillfully builds up a connection between the unconscious of the poet and that of the reader by leaping deep image.Compared to other theories, Jung’s collective unconscious theory is the most influential one to Bly’s poetry. The collective unconscious is primarily composed of the archetypes which contains the collective experiences and wisdom from ancient people. The rich forms of archetypes resulted in the basic style of archetypal images in literature. Since almost every original form of archetypal images in literature can be found in nature, thus deep images in Bly’s poetry are usually highlighted as archetypal images through the description of outer world. Such as the frequently appeared archetypal image "darkness","feminine/mother consciousness","shadow and death" and etc. in Silence in Snowy Fields, The Light Around the Body, Sleepers Joining Hands.What’s more, Jung’s view of nature in unconscious theory also provides Bly with great inspiration. Jung insists that human beings are not the governor of the universe, there are spirits all around the world which is called the natural spirit. For the human spirit originated from the nature and the universe, there is no doubt that the human spirit should be a part of the natural spirit which is resulted from the correlation between nature and different generations. To be more specific, Jung holds that collective unconscious is also formed from nature and universe, and ultimately affect all the human actions and activities. In Bly’s poetry, the personification, in a large sense, reflects Jung’s viewpoint of animism. Different from traditional personification, Bly gives life and conscious to all the living things, for instance, the prairie, the lakes, the trees which have the same spirits as human beings do. By adding spiritual elements, Bly makes it possible to leap from the outer world to the inner psychic world.From present studies on Bly’s deep image poetry, the main focus of critics and scholars is on its distinctive poetic technique, the images, and the themes. Though, more and more researches take the unconscious element for the major concern, on the whole, they are in lack of systematic and deeper exploration with a specific unconscious theory. Anyhow, Bly’s deep image poetry needs comprehensive investigation on the level of unconscious. This dissertation tries to make a concentrated effort to the study on the deep images and its relationship with Jung’s unconscious theory. There are in total five chapters, among which, the first two chapters are general overview on Bly’s deep image poetry and the deep images in it. And the following two chapters are served as the core of the dissertation which penetrates into the typical deep images like darkness, the shadow, the anima, and etc in Bly’s works in different periods and the subtle relation with Jung’s unconscious theory is also analyzed in detail.