Robert Bly – A Visionary of Our Time
By Mohajer Ansari
CA
Robert Elwood Bly died on Monday, November 21, 2021 in Minneapolis. He was 94 years old, and was one of the greatest poets and activists of our time. In 1966, Bly co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War, and went on to lead much of the opposition to that war among writers. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body in 1968, he contributed the prize money to the Vietnam War Resistance. Mind you, he had spent two years in the US Navy after graduating from high school in 1944. Boy, in today’s toxic culture, we need to redefine patriotism in this country!
But his best-known work is his book of prose, Iron John: A Book About Men – an international bestseller. It is a transformational text of the mythopoetic men's movement that Bly started. Iron John spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. It was relevant then, still is and will remain so for several decades, because of his keen insight into what truly separates a man from a boy.
Much of Bly's prose writing focused on what he saw then as the particularly troubled situation in the American society. Surprisingly, many males find themselves in the same situation today, as if time has stood still. He ascribed this abject failure to be, among other things, a result of the decline of traditional fathering which left young boys unguided through the stages of life leading to maturity. He theorized that in contrast to women who are better informed by their bodies, men needed to be actively guided out of boyhood and into manhood by their elders. In Pre-modern cultures there existed ‘men's societies’ where older men would teach young boys about these gender-specific issues. As modern fathers became increasingly absent, this knowledge gradually ceased to be passed down the generations. Thus, also stopped the full and successful transition of boys to men. Bly pounds on the ‘Absence of Father’ theme throughout his writing, which according to him is the mother of many of the phenomena of depression, juvenile delinquency and lack of leadership and morality in business, politics and society.
Bly theorized that men of his generation were half-adults, trapped between the transient state of boyhood and maturity, where they found it hard to become responsible in their work as well as leaders in their communities. Eventually they become weak or absent fathers themselves. This caused this behavior to be passed down to their children. In his 1997 book, The Sibling Society , Bly argued that a society formed of such weak and ill-prepared men was inherently problematic as it lacked creativity and a deep sense of empathy.
The image of half-adults is further reinforced by popular culture (successfully enforced by a barrage of sitcom TV shows) which portrays fathers as naive, hollow, overweight and emotionally co-dependent. Historically, this represents a drastic shift from a traditional patriarchal model. The outcome was disastrous. It led to the creation of ‘soft males’ who lacked the outwardly directed strength to revitalize the community with assertiveness and a strength.
Bly’s prophecy should ring a bell! Look around and you will not be deprived of the sight of broken homes, destroyed marriages, abusive relationships, fatherless children, drug-infested neighborhood, alcohol abuse, youth dying of drug overdose, depression, suicide and many more societal ills.
Bly for the past 10-15 years had been busy in other ways – meaningful ways, worthwhile ways. For example, he - among other things – has been translating the poetry of great poets such as Hafiz and Rumi into English. He was even invited to read his poem at the grave of Hafiz Shirazi in Iran. He is very much intoxicated by the Sufi thoughts of Jalaluddin Rumi.
More than a decade ago, in an interview with Bill Moyers, he said: The Muslims have a great literature and fantastic poets. Rumi and Hafiz have been the guiding light, Rumi especially, of American poetry for the last several years. But also, it seems to me that if we're doing so much attack upon the Muslim world, criticizing the Muslim world so much, we should be able to give thanks for the genius that is there.
It appears apt that the politicians in this highly polarized country who are busy dividing their own people along color and ethnic lines within the land and strategizing wars all across the globe on one pretext or the other, ought to pick up Iron John: A Book About Men and learn a thing or two about becoming men. Perhaps, there still is time to save this country or whatever is left of it!
