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Robert Bly's Folly

© Linda Sue Grimes

Robert Bly's folly is apparent in the following so-called translation:

Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates;
the new love opens them.

The sound of the gates opening wakes
the beautiful woman asleep.

Kabir says: Fantastic! Don't let a
chance like this go by!

The Tagore-Underhill translation follows:

The lock of error shuts the gate, open
it with the key of love:

Thus, by opening the door, thou shalt
wake the Beloved.

Kabir says: 'O brother! Do not pass
by such a good fortune as this.'

Bly's version has transformed the meaning from God-union to sexual union. Yogic philosophy claims that intense love for God awakens the soul and aids it in its search for God-union. The Tagore-Underhill translation has retained this spiritual significance. "The lock of error" signifies the human mistaken belief that he is separate from God. Therefore, "love" opens the "gate" of separation. By opening the gate, the devotee awakens the "Beloved"-capitalized because it refers to God. Because the yogi's goal is to awaken his desire for God, Kabir as the yogi-guru admonished his follower not to pass by such good fortune as can be found by unlocking his heart of love to God.

In Bly's version, the poem promotes a sexual opportunity. Few readers, I suggest, can pass by "iron gates" without their calling to mind Andrew Marvell's "Coy Mistress." And we have little doubt about what Marvell's speaker was seeking with his coy mistress. More importantly, "Beloved" of the Tagore-Underhill version becomes "the beautiful woman asleep." I argue that this kind of misrepresentation is a prototypical example of what T. S. Eliot meant when he claimed that Eastern influence on the West had come through "romantic misunderstanding." After transforming the Supreme Being into a beautiful woman, Bly has the yogi-saint cry: "Fantastic! Don't let a change like this go by!" This is an abomination, revealing an ignorance that would be funny if it weren't so utterly misleading.

What Bly has actually accomplished in his "translation" career amounts to a large body of plagiarism of the original translators' works. In addition to plagiarism instead of actual translation, Bly has misrepresented, distorted, and vulgarized the works of poets, whose works he obviously has not understood.

An old adage claims that a fool who persists in his folly becomes wise; Robert Bly's folly does not allow for such growth. For fifty years, he has churned out poem after poem, book after book that qualify as the tawdriest poetastry that po-biz has to offer.