“For according to the outward man, we are in this world, and according to the inward man, we are in the inward world . . . . Since then we are generated out of both worlds, we speak in two languages, and we must be understood also by two languages.” The dichotomy suggested in this quotation from Jacob Boehme, the 17th century German mystic, which Robert Bly used as an epigraph to The Light Around the Body might, as well, define Bly as a person and as a poet, since he himself is similarly bifurcated in terms of the “inward” and “outward” worlds of his life and the “two languages” paralleling these “two worlds” that are so vividly represented in his work. Indeed, although Bly has always kept clearly in mind and often graphically de

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First published 08 January 2001

Citation: Davis, William V.. "Robert Bly". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 January 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=457, accessed 9 February 2010.]