The thing about The
Dream Songs is that some of them really are from dreams. Here is a go
at interpretation of this dream. There is nothing specific in the poem to set
it in B.’s bed in Ireland, or even the mental hospital, but since it’s bracketed
by so many others set there, that seems likely enough.
The golden heroine is possibly a symbolic representation of
his wife, Kate, but there are other possibilities, which may include his genius
or his muse, or a more generalized female figure standing for Woman, his mother, or
possibly even his anima, an embodiment of the male psyche’s collected female
characteristics. In Jung’s archetype theory, a man’s anima (or for women, her
animus, the female anima’s male counterpart) is connected to our creative
abilities, and she is one of the archetypes arising from the broader collective
unconscious. In the dream the golden heroine may even be some combination of
all of these. The image of her surrounded by bears is terrifying, though, and
his spirit flees. Bears are what he’s afraid of—critics, a disapproving public,
maybe, or even just violent, rich, ignorant, American people. She’s not dead—but
it matters that he considers this. If she had been, he would have left her and
the vows fractured by her death behind without a second thought. The vows could
be marriage vows, but they’re also his artistic discipline. But even the
possibility of her living presence changes the emotional tone of his leaving.
He shouldn’t but he’s too afraid, he must. He hates the terrifying, violent,
loathsome bears that accompany her. The implication is that there is something
in her presence that he shouldn’t be running from. But they are like the sabre
toothed tiger, gorging on a mastodon. Here, the dream turns sharply (as dreams
almost always do); he gets into the psyche of the predator: The tiger, a
predator, wonders about his prey, and realizes he can never be their friend
because it is his role to be their enemy. Like Frederick (Fr.) Rolfe, who was
an openly gay British writer, the tiger must certainly have attracted
scores of enemies. No matter. He must kill them, and to kill them he must see
himself as their dominator, their superior. This is the real point, I think. But
how can he—master as he sees himself, like the tiger—administer his affairs
without the attention and support of the people over whom he must be seen as
lord? It’s a conundrum—while he’s superior to them, he also depends on them, and
dependence implies subservience. He needs people to hire him—to teach and give
readings in their institutions, and he needs them to buy his books—in order to
make a living, which puts him at their mercy. But this is contingent on their
recognition of his artistic superiority. He’s got to have people recognizing his
genius, but at the same time he has to prove his genius to get people to hire
him. So who is the servant? The movement of fearing the bears, moving from
bears to the tiger, and then his association with the tiger at the end is an
interesting one, and it’s marked by the same conundrum. While he fears the
bears, ultimately he is one. He also doesn’t want to be one of their victims. He
is having trouble, I think, admitting that he’s one of the rabble of ignorant, savage
Americans he holds in such contempt. But the female, whether she is mother, sexuality, creativity, or something else, remains the queen.
This DS is a winner: fluid, vivid and engaging.
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