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Xerox University Microfilms INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The Wlowing explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1.The sign or "target" for pages ^parently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. 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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Aitor, Michigan 46106 74-21,971 FIXMER, Clyde H., 1934- THE ELEMENT OF MYTH IN JAMES DICKEY'S POETRY, The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1974 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOFiA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE ELEMENT OF MYTH IN JAMES DICKEY’S POETRY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY CLYDE FIXMER Norman, Ok1ahoma 1974 THE ELEMENT OF MYTH IN JAMES DICKEY’S POETRY APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter I. Of Myths and Visions . ...................... 1 II. The Reclamation of King J a m e s ................ 33 III. Encounters in the Ancient W o r l d ............. 57 IV. Into the Dickey Cosmos ...................... 83 V. Great Shimmering Walls of Words ............. 126 Chapter I Of Myths and Visions My interest in James Dickey's uses of mythology was prompted by the titles of some of his poems. A look at the table of contents of his Poems: 1957-1967 revealed to me that he had perhaps written a dozen or so poems concerning Biblical and classical mythology. Such titles as "Sleeping Out at Easter," "The Vegetable King," "Walking on Water," "The Heaven of Animals," "The Magus," and "Approaching Prayer" appeared to indicate that the poet had more than a passing interest in the mythological. It was not, however, until I had read his complete published poetry that I realized the extent of his debt to mythological sources. I was also interested in a poet who writes a love poem with lines such as these in it: "Like the dead, I have newly arisen," "No thing that shall die as I step/ May fall, or not sing of rebirth," "Elsewhere I have dreamed of my birth,/ And come from my death as I dreamed," "Once more I come home from my ghost," and "The dead have their chance in my body." These lines are all from Dickey's poem "Into the Stone," which is the title poem of his first collection. The poem describes the thoughts of a man as he goes to meet his lover. Yet the context in which these lines appear is of little help to the reader. Here is the first stanza: On the way to a woman, I give Myself all the way into moonlight. Now down from all sides it is beating, The moon turns around in the fix Of its light; its other side totally shines. Like the dead, I have newly arisen. Amazed by the light I can throw. Stand waiting, ray love, where you are. The poem appears to be describing a man who has been spiri­ tually "resurrected" by the power of love. In this way of viewing the poem, then, the line "Once more I come home from my ghost" is certainly explainable, as well as the lines "Elsewhere I have dreamed of my birth,/ And come from my death as I dreamed." Even these lines— "No thing that shall die as I step/ May fall, or not sing of rebirth"— may be explained as descriptive of the apparent suspension of time which lovers often speak of. Yet what of the line "The dead have their chance in my body"? Here is this line's context: I take my deep heart from the air. The road like a woman is singing. It sings with what makes my heart beat In the air, and the moon turns around. The dead have their chance in my body. The stars are drawn into their myths. I bear nothing but moonlight upon me. I am known ; I know my love. The reason that the dead can have their chance in the poet's body is not apparent from the context of this poem but is readily apparent, as we shall see, when viewed in relation to the poet's overall vision. While I was in the process of reading Dickey's poetry, 3 I read as well his then recent book SeIf-Interviews in which the poet states that he was working both "semi-consciously and quite consciously toward mythologizing my own factual experience.'’^ In the same book Dickey also states that "the ancient Biblical and Greek myths are always reclaimable if O you can bring something new to them.He cites Yeats’s poem "Leda and the Swan" as an example of this process of reclama­ tion and then states that the "ancient myths are always access­ ible if you have the poetic power to bring that kind of re- 3 newal to them." Elsewhere in Self-Interviews Dickey says that his poem "The Vegetable King" is his answer to Eliot's use of the Osiris myth"^ and his "Walking on Water" portrays a sort of "junior Christ. These admitted attempts to mythologize his own experi­ ences are, as Wallace Stevens might have said, "merely in­ stances." The facts are that Dickey has attempted this myth­ ologizing on a rather large scale. My study, then, has been an attempt to discover just how extensive Dickey’s uses of mythology have been, whether or not he has indeed mytholo­ gized his own factual experiences, whether or not he has brought anything "new" to these myths, and to what extent his poetic vision has been shaped by his uses of mythology. With reference to the extent of the poet’s uses of myth­ ology, I have found that of the one hundred and eleven poems in Dickey’s collected poems, at least seventy-five are mytho­ logical in one sense or another.® In some of these poems, for example, the narrators become mythological figures. In 4 other poems, the narrators remain human but are compared to mythological figures. The poems themselves, especially the earlier ones, are the poet's versions of a number of Bibli­ cal and classical myths, or parts of these myths, some of which are well-known and some not so well-known. In addition, Dickey has drawn upon several other mythological sources for figures and myths. Cne of these sources is what may be called folklore, and another is legend.? Involved in any study of this kind, of course, is a certain amount of "source- hunting.” Some of Dickey's sources are quite obvious; others are not so obvious. Part of my study has been a kind of lit­ erary sleuthing, and I believe that I have found a number of Dickey’s sources in the writings of several anthropologists whose works the poet read with much interest during his last two years of college.& With reference to Dickey's attempt to mythologize his own factual experiences, we have his statement that in "The Vegetable King" he tried to mythologize his own family.® There are a number of other poems as well which he talks about in Self-Interviews as having been based upon his own family experiences. One is "The String," another, "In the Tree House at Night." In addition to poems about his family, Dickey has written several poems based upon his experiences in World War II and the Korean War, and he talks about these 10 poems in Self-Interviews. However, we also have Dickey's statement that personal experience, for him, includes any­ thing he has ever experienced in any mannerFor example, 5 Dickey believes that even those experiences which he has imagined are his own factual experiences. Still, the situa­ tion is not hopeless, for the poet has written enough about himself that it is possible to point out at least some of the factual experiences in his poems and to infer them in others.
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