Theodore Roethke and Archetypes

Every now and again you find a poem that seems anachronistic or a very early precursor to a movement that takes shape later. Theodore Roethke's "Night Crow" is a good example: it seems so much like a Deep Image poem that it could be caught lurking in the Robert Bly section of the library:

When I saw that clumsy crow
Flap from a wasted tree,
A shape in the mind rose up:
Over the gulfs of dream
Flew a tremendous bird
Further and further away
Into a moonless black,
Deep in the brain, far back.

Roethke's poem examines a moment in which perception, cognition, and the attribution of meaning are all tangled up. The event itself, the crow lifting into flight, sparks a process in the imagination that seems to escape the conscious mind and burrow into the dark recesses of the unconscious: "A shape in the mind rose up." The poem relies on the associations of crows with doom and darkness. The vagueness of "a shape" fits with the collective unconscious in which crows are creatures of darkness. The ambiguity of movement is also operating on a very sophisticated level: the "tremendous bird" flies further away, and yet seems to be entering into the brain. Moving away and yet moving in. That situation describes the unconscious, which is somehow fundamental in terms of our drives, and yet it is the repressed, further away from the ego or our conscious selves. The speaker's experience allows sudden access to the unconscious rather than providing a careful and reflective consideration. This might be the sudden appearance of the Shadow, alien and yet familiar. The poem establishes threads of connection and spaces of distance at the same time, suggesting our complicated relation to the constructed self.

C. G. Jung and the Unconscious

I put Jung on my reading list because I felt that I would need to confront his concept of archetypes in order to fully consider poetic images. I should have focused on his theoretical works rather than his biography. That being said, I gained some insights about the man behind concepts. In the early part of "Memories, Dreams, Reflections," one is immediately struck by how seriously Jung takes his dreams. Many of his anecdotes are preceded by dreams, and he understands his experiences through his interpretations of these dreams.

It's a bit off-putting at first. But later, he begins explaining his perspectives on the unconscious. He writes that "nowadays most people identify themselves almost exclusively with their consciousness, and imagine that they are only what they know about themselves" (300). He argues that a scientific perspective -- one which only recognizes as real only that which can be proven -- is dangerously myopic, in fact, "the disease of our time" (300). Scientific rationalism may work on the level of the intellect, but the emotions operate on a different level.

Regarding life after death, Jung insists that "we must not forget that for most people it means a great deal to assume that their lives will have an indefinite continuity beyond their present existence" (301). While many of us might be quick to condemn feelings that are generated by unsubstantiated beliefs, Jung suggests that these assumptions are important because they are experienced as important. Furthermore, Jung isn't content to simply accept these beliefs. He insists that we must dig underneath them, not to debunk them, but to understand them. He doesn't recommend blindly trusting the unconscious; instead we must work to make the unconscious conscious. He summarizes his argument thusly: "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being" (326).