In this paper, the author analyzes the poem Love the Wild Swan by Robinson Jeffers. There are already numerous analyses of this poem available written by different authors but in this paper, the author focuses on one theme only and that is the archetypal theme. It is important to note that archetype-based analyses are important in that they enable one to know how the readers and patrons of a particular work of literature relate to the said work—often based on human experiences as a result of their interactions with various archetypal characters such as the hero, mother figure, innocent youth, mentor, doppelganger, scapegoat, villain, the journey, the initiation, good versus evil, and the fall, among others.
For starters, it would be easy to sense different kinds of emotions in Jeffers’ work in Love the Wild. In fact, the emotions were so numerous it is easy to decipher how some of them are conflicting. For one, he wrote a poem that says “I hate my verse, every line, every word” at the beginning yet his readers and patrons could see him still continuing to write poem after poem. There is some irony in this poem. It would appear that Jeffers was experiencing a certain form of internal conflict or even an episode of anxiety as he thought his work was not good enough to be read by people; a period of self-doubt perhaps.
Another interpretation that one can generate from the poem is that Jeffers was admitting defeat, as if he discovered something about the things that writing a poem and using this practice to express himself cannot do; that his craft, no matter how adept at it he grew to become. This is not atypical of artists and poets. They are highly emotional people. They often use their work as an avenue to express themselves to other people. He used certain objects such as the blades of glass and the beauty of feathers, their lightweight yet elegant characteristics, as a symbol of one of the greatest flaws he thought he had as a poet. He thought that no matter how elegant his diction is and how concise and creative most of his work were, they still lacked substance, as if the subjects he chose still do not reflect the level of complexity of the presentation that he tried to deliver.
It is important to note that Robinson Jeffers’ life was not entirely perfect. A lot of his poems were written as a narrative and epic. Today, he is often associated with misanthropy and inhumanism—mainly because of how he often criticize man and man’s actions in a philosophical way in most of his works. This can be seen as one of the reasons why he was writing with irony and with such disdain for his works, even though a lot of people, at least in modern times, loved and appreciated them largely because of their philosophical and eye-opening qualities. These are things that a reader of his work such as Love the Wild Swan must know before actually embarking on writing an analytical piece.
Considering these information, it would only be logical to think that the Wild Swan in the title of the poem Love the Wild Swan is him. This essentially makes the predominant archetype in this poem his journey. This means that him, as the narrator and main character (because most of his works are in narrative form after all) in the poem, outlines a journey that may be physical and or emotional so that people could understand his personality, the nature of the world, or in this case, his passion. This may be similar to how Marquez (1) wrote A very old man with enormous wings.
Love the Wild Swan may then be considered as a work that lets the people get into his head. Specifically, it could be that the goal was to let his readers know how much he thinks of himself as a poet; how he is so passionate about nature—which is also one of the evident observations; his ideological allegiances; and in the latter part of the poem, his gratitude for the ability to sense and appreciate the beauty of nature and share it in the form of poems, as evidenced by the part where he said “at least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can hear the music, the thunder of the wings; Love the wild swan” .
Works Cited
Jeffers, Robinson. "Love the Wild Swan." (1935): 1. Print. 08 June 16.
Marquez, Gabriel. "A very old man with Enormous Wings." NDSU (n.d.): https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/MarquezManwithWings.htm. Web. 08 June 16 .
