Those whom the Crystal Age has passed by, who feel nervous at the words "feel your pain" and are reluctant to get in touch with their inner child, might progress no further than the blurb on the dustjacket of Robert Bly's new book. Referring also to co-author Marion Woodman, the blurb begins: ". . . two wise teachers guide us through the rich metaphorical world of an ancient folk tale to explore the possibility of a new relationship between masculine and feminine". Uh-oh.
But one soldiers on because the promise of a new relationship is always tantalising. Also it will be interesting to chart any developments in the thinking of the man who brought the world Iron John some years back, heading into the forest to beat his chest and holler the new empowerment for men who felt undermined by the advances of women towards equality.
In the introduction to this new work, Bly and Woodman tell us of their belief in a "new paradigm, a realignment of the masculine and feminine, that contemporary men and women are endeavouring to achieve as we move toward the new millennium." However, this promise is not fulfilled in the text. What we get is a parsing and analysis of an old Russian folk tale, The Maiden Tsar. In this the handsome son of a rich merchant is tricked by his jealous stepmother into losing his true love, the beautiful and divine maiden tsar. Through a triptych of encounters with bad old mothers, in which the young man has to display his wit and caution, he eventually makes his way back to her, but only after she eats an egg which contains her love for him. (No doubt it sounds better in Russian).
Bly and Woodman both tell their interpretations of this tale and its eternal mythic message. Along the way the occasional interesting point is made - for example, Bly's assertion that society everywhere is becoming more juvenile, and that the only true adults left on the planet are the Eskimos, because their lives are totally controlled by limitations which they accept.
But such themes are tossed aside to pile on more quotes from Hindu poets, Lorca, the song On Top of Old Smokey and whatever the two wise teachers were having themselves. Towards the end of his part of the book, Bly writes of "Woody Allen [who] has concretized recently the spiritual in the form of a young woman." Wha'? Could Bly be referring to Allen's current wife and former adopted daughter, SoonYi? If so, then "concretized" is a new word for an old activity.
Woodman takes a rather more disciplined approach. She is a Jungian analyst by trade and her 150 pages demonstrate this approach to the fable. The hero's situation, she writes, "reflects the status of much of the human race at the end of the twentieth century," in that he has to cope with the struggle to accept the feminine in life, and . . . "If we conduct dialogues with our inner cast of characters, we just might become whole human beings."
Although, as she acknowledges, much of her argument could be termed "psychobabble" by sceptics, Woodman's contribution is much more coherent and valuable. Bly was presumably needed for that Iron John glamour; but the book would have been better without him, at least in his "let-me-entertain-you" mode with a bibliography of inner-voyage writing.
Early in the book, rather recklessly, Bly writes: "I know of one man who found a book by James Hillman in a Goodwill dumpster, and it moved his whole life into psychology and mythology." Well, if psychology and mythology does it for you, I wish you well. Perhaps you will get them from The Maiden King, should you come across it in the Irish equivalent of a Goodwill dumpster, where I will have placed it.
Angela Long is an Irish Times journalist