CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE MYTH IN THE POETRY OF CHARLES SIMIC'S DISMANTLING THE SILENCE, RETURN TO A PLACE LIT BY A GLASS OF MILK, AND WHITE A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English by Jordan Douglas Jones May 1986 The Thesis of Jordan Douglas Jones is approved: Arthur Lane, PhD Benjamin Saltman, PhD Arlene Stiebel, PhD, Chairperson Committee on Honors California State University, Northridge ii ABSTRACT MYTH IN THE POETRY OF CHARLES SIMIC'S DISMANTLING THE SILENCE, RETURN TO A PLACE LIT BY A GLASS OF MILK, AND WHITE by Jordan Douglas Jones Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English Charles Simic in the poetry of his books Dismantling the Silence, Return to a Place Lit By a Glass of Milk, and White uses myth to reach beyond the autobiographical to the archetypal and thus negate the importance of the author. In these poems, the poetic vocation mirrors the vocation of the· shaman as it has been elucidated by Mircea Eliade. Both poet and shaman allow universal forces to work through them. Simic also discusses the myths of the origins and the return to the origins of objects and works of art; as well as the dangers one must encounter when allowing uni­ versal creative principles to work through one during the creation of art. An~ther aspect of myth which can be seen here is the Romantic concept of Einfuhlung, or loss of ego/ iii object distinction. The author describes his union with particular natural objects. Simic also shows us the mythic transformation of "profane" objects into "sacred" ones. Finally, Simic's poetry can be viewed within the context of what Robert Bly has termed "leaping poetry." Specifically, his nee-surrealist use of the "dark atmos­ phere" of the folklore of his Yugoslavian homeland as well as its -tone of command and its concern with origins links him with two contemporary Yugoslavian poets: Vasko Popa and Ivan V. Lalic. Ultimately, Simic's poetry is concerned with allowing impersonal, U?iversal, and mythic realities to present themselves. iv MYTH IN THE POETRY OF CHARLES SIMIC'S DISMANTLING THE SILENCE, RETURN TO A PLACE LIT BY A GLASS OF MILK, AND WHITE. by Jordan Douglas Jones In re-envisioning objects, in animating them, Charles Simic is essentially involved in making the pro­ fane once again sacred. We can see this in his books Dismantling the Silence, Return to a Place, Lit By a Glass of Milk, and White. Eliade, in The Sacred and The Profane, defines the sacred as "the manifestation of some­ thing of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural 'profane' world" (11). Simic, in his poems, is able to elevate common objects to the level of the sacred. He also evokes the external sacred time of the creation of these objects, as well as that of the poetic act itself. 1 2 Speaking of Ted Hughes, Ekbert Fass has written: his role as poet remains that of a visionary witness who, as Carl Jung puts it, "can only obey the apparently alien impulse within him and follow where it leads, sensing that his work is greater than himself, and wields a power which is not his and which he can·not command" (19). In the poetry of Charles Simic, there is a similar recogni­ tion of the fundamental unimportance of the author. In the Introduction to his translations of Ivan V. Lalic's poems, Simic notes that "we can do little but great things can be done through us" (9). Simic's use of myth creates a poetry which reaches beyond the merely autobiographical to the archetypal. I intend to examine this employment of myth in the three books mentioned above first as it re­ lates to the definition of the poetic vocation; second, as it relates to myths of origins and of returns to ori­ gins; third, as it relates to the Romantic concept of Einfuhlung, or loss of ego/object distinction; fourth, as it involves "profane" objects and makes them "sacred"; and finally, as it can be viewed within the context of what Robert Bly has termed "leaping poetry," as illustrated by the neo-surrealist writers of Latin America and Europe (especially those of Simic's native Yugoslavia). In the poem "The Bird," Simic's persona is called "From an apple tree I In the midst of. sleep" (Return to· a Place 4). This is a metaphor for the shamanic, 3 religious, or poetic calling. It is, in fact, illuminat- ing to view the vocation of the poet in these religious and mythical terms when considering Simic's work. Shaman- ism is the "technique of ecstasy" (Eliade, Shamanism 4) which was practiced by certain "primitive" societies. ULtimately, the shaman is one who has been called to "re- nounce the simple human condition and become a more or less pliant instrument for some manifestation of the sac- red" (23). As Simic has said: Like the primitive man in an animistic universe, the poet claims a common and essential ground where everything has its root and correspon- dence. This is what haunts: a realm where magic is possible, where chance reigns, where metaphors have their supreme logic ("Composi- tion" 149). These mysterious, ecstatic, and shamanic conceptions of the poetic vocation can be traced back to the Romantic poets. When Keats cries out in his famous letter to Benjamin Bailey, "O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!" (Keats 1: 185), he not only illustrates the Romantics' position relative to "consequitive reasoning," he also shows us that they believed poets are receivers .;~- of inspirations greater than their own mental capacities could concoct. The poet, for the Romantics, is a mystic. The connection between these Romantic theories and shama- nic realities has been clearly pointed out by Ted Hughes, 4 himself a creator of poetry which deals with myth, in a review of Mircea Eliade's Shamanism: The initiation dreams, the general schema of shamanic flight, and the figures they (the sha­ mans) encounter, are not a shaman monopoly: they are, in fact, the basic experience of the poetic temperament we call "romantic." .... The shamans seem to undergo, at will and at pheno­ menal intensity, and with practical results, one of the main regenerating dramas of the human psyche: the fundamental poetic event (Faas 15). The poet is a "technician of the sacred" to whom the sac- red manifests itself; we will return to this idea later. According to Eliade, in his book The Sacred and the Profane, one significant pattern of interest in mythology is the idea that there once was a sacred time of origins, and that this sacred time can be recaptured or returned to with the aid of a shaman (68). Much of Simic's poetry seems to be concerned with these primeval origins. For him, "the poem is the place where the origins are allowed to think" ("Composition" 151). And he says in his Intra- duction to Lalic 's poems that in order "to renew 'itself poetry must return to its origins from time to time .•.. In the deepest sense the possibilities that allow us to create belong to· our ancestors" (9). As a mythographer and shamanic character, the poet steps aside, allowing 5 his origins to express themselves. In his poetry, Simic concentrates on the origins of objects (forks, spoons, shoes, axes) as well as on the origins of the poetic act itself. Both sets of myths of origins imply the existence of a 'sacred time' which may or may not be recaptured. In his poem "Fork," he makes a leap from the violent appearance of the fork to its possible origins: "This strange thing must have crept I Right out of hell" (Dis­ mantling the Silence 55). Continuing to speculate, he says that "It resembles a bird's foot I Worn around the cannibal's neck." The fork, then, has its origins in an animistic world-view which precedes that of western civili­ zation. Within the context of western culture, there can also be myths of origins. In his. poem "Brooms," Simic presents a more complex genesis: In this and no other manner Was the first ancestral broom made: Namely, they plucked all the arrows From the bent back of Saint Sebastian. They tied them with a rope On which Judas hung himself. Stuck in the stilt On which Copernicus Touched the morning star ... 6 Then the broom was ready To leave the monastery (Return to a Place 22). The associational leaps here, from the origins of Christi- anity to the origins of science and back, denote a strug- gle for meaning within the complex western tradition. Later in the poem we find that "The secret teaching of brooms" . says: the bones end up under the table . Bread-crumbs have a mind of their own. The milk is you-know-who's semen. The mice have the last squeal (23). Here Simic begins to yoke "elements together in a surreal process" which "creates a tone very similar to folktales and folklore" (Behm 91). The roots of the poem in its folkloric "'dark atmosphere' of wonder and mystery joined· with a sense of the ominous" (Behm 92) can be seen to lie in myth, which Joseph Campbell has defined as a "linguis- tic system .•. by which the unknown speaks to the knowing mind by way of a metaphor." Perhaps the best place to view the communication of unknown origins through metaphor in the poetry of Charles Simic is his poem "Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right ·~~· Hand" (Dismantling the Silence 52-53).