SOURCE: “The Phoenix and the Turtle: A Jungian Interpretation,” in Shakespeare Yearbook, Vol. 2, Spring, 1991, pp. 187-192.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1962, McCully offers an overview of The Phoenix and Turtle, and examines the spiritual meaning of the poem.]

Shakespeare's poem about the phoenix and the turtle has been said to be one of the least understood poems in the English language. English poets themselves have wondered at its beauty while feeling baffled by its enigma. Perhaps all spontaneous flowing-over of truth and beauty creates its own aura of mystery and escapes the many-holed net of reason. Henry Simon has stated that no one is absolutely sure what the poem is about, though its general theme is clear enough (290). He referred to this theme as celebrating the death of a man and woman who were ideally mated. He stated that the problem is, Who were the couple, and what were the conditions of their death?

The present author does not lay claim to being a Shakespeare scholar, but perhaps a fresh look at the poem may be a worthwhile enterprise. We know little enough about the essences of spiritual union and love. The meaning of the poem seems to have more to do with an allegorical coniunctio spirituum than with a memorial to any specific persons. Who these people may have been and what the conditions were are not our concern here. Jung has noted that the rebirth and transformation that follow the coniunctio take place in the hereafter, i.e., in the unconscious—which leaves the problem hanging in the air (459). This helps us set the stage for the mystery of the poem at hand.

First, an attempt will be made to look at the verses themselves before a general or overview interpretation can be suggested. The allegorical nature of the poem, set within the world of birds, suggests that the author was familiar with bestiaries. Further, the choice of the “soaring spirit” as the symbolic vehicle implies mystical bent in the meaning of the poem. As example, Avicenna, the eleventh-century Persian philosopher, employs the same vehicle of the bird in certain cycles of his Visionary Recital. T. H. White has a note on “The Phoenix and the Turtle” in A Book of Beasts which he has edited. White observed that neither Shakespeare nor Chaucer seems to have been interested in bestiaries, while the author of the poem appears to have been a student of the bestiaries (128). He suggests that the phoenix is in the first verse, the chaladrius in the second, and that medieval notions concerning the peculiarities of certain other birds appear throughout the threnody.

The first five verses set the prologue for the requiem, the next eight verses describe the qualities peculiar to the union of the phoenix and turtle, while the last five verses, the funeral song itself, include the implicit meaning of the allegory.

A description of the symbolic qualities ascribed to the phoenix and the turtle may be appropriate before the look at the individual verses. The phoenix (probably a purple heron) takes its name from its reddish purple color (“phoeniceus”) and it is called the bird of Arabia. It lives beyond five hundred years, and when it sees signs of age in itself, it builds itself a funeral pyre of spice branches, turns its body toward the rays of the sun, flaps its wings, and sets fire to itself. On the ninth day afterwards, it rises from its own ashes. Turtur, the turtle dove, is a shy creature, taking her echoic name from her cooing. She is known for her constancy in matrimony. When her mate dies, she never breaks the bonds of chastity.

The first verse seems to have to do with passing along the news that the requiem is to be held, so that other birds worthy to be present may assemble. The phoenix is deceased, and it seems not in keeping with the spirit of the poem to assume that the bird of the first verse is the phoenix. Only one member of the species is said to make itself known at any one time. Perhaps the reference is to the cinomolgus, the cinnamon-bird, an Arabian bird often associated with the phoenix, whose characteristic is to nest in the very highest cinnamon tree. The highest tree is solitary, standing alone apart from others; it is an advantageous spot from which to sound a clarion call to assemble. As White has suggested, the next verse appears to refer to the chaladrius (a bird of pure white, perhaps the white wag-tail of Ireland or a phalarope). This bird predicts the outcome of a sickness: whether death or health will prevail. This harbinger of mortality, without a speck of black, who speaks of darkness, but knows it not, is especially excluded from the assemblage. The third verse further clarifies those birds not welcome or not qualified to keep the strict sanctity of the obsequy. The fourth designates the swan as priest, whose surplice (outer vestment of white) and fame as chanticleer in time of death, and as one who dives into the darkness of the depths, represent its proper requisites for the holy position. Next, special attention is given to the crow, whose sable color is fit mourning garb, who lives thrice as long as man, whose qualities as pathfinder guide the harbingers of spring, and who has the alchemical connotation (Jung 220) as symbol of transformation (as, darkness into light).

The next eight verses extoll the qualities of the love-unity of phoenix and turtle with exquisite beauty. These lines speak with succinct clarity, and they weave a bond between the two lovers of the most delicate gossamer, yet strong as steel. The transformation achieved by the quality of their love is the miracle of unison without the loss of individuality, a new distillation which defied all the adjectives whose limitations were that they ordinarily applied to separateness.

The poet makes clear that the phoenix represents the love symbol, the feminine principle, whereas the turtle, a constancy symbol, is masculine. This choice for symbols will be discussed below. In the ninth verse, the poet says that “the turtle saw his right, flaming in the phoenix's sight.” “Right” may be taken at face value, or it may refer to “rite,” while also it may mean that the unity enabled the turtle to “see his right,” meaning right side, his becoming fully aware of the other in himself. It would then follow that “either was the other's mine.” Verse ten begins with “Property was thus appalled.” Property refers to individuality, but more; making the other one's own property becomes out of the question for the pair. They were neither two nor one, each was neither's property, but both belonged. This synthesis, the quality of mysterium coniunctionis was the true goal and outcome of their love, and it became something reason could never explain, much less define.

The last five verses are the funeral song itself. All the matchless, rare qualities ascribed to the two now lie in ashes. Instead of being immortal and chained to an unending cycle, through love with the turtle, the phoenix no longer has to forever seek in life, but finds, in mystical death. The love the two found was so great that the immortal is willing to die to become at one with the mortal. Now, together, they find eternity, nirvana. They have given up renewing by becoming eternally renewed in each other, only thus is the real truth and beauty defined. In unity, they both become symbols of constancy and love, a symbolic example for all who concern themselves with truth or beauty.

Legendary phoenix-like birds are found in many cosmogonies. The Western phoenix probably stems from the benu, the sacred purple heron of Egyptian myth. “Benu” is a name derived from a verbal stem signifying “rise up” (Neumann 240-41) and has symbolic connection with the male spiritual principle. The benu was associated with the “primeval hill,” the first place to emerge from the primordial flood, and this hill, as well as the phoenix, was associated with the sun (as the creative male principle). Both Osiris, ruler of eternity, and Ra, the Sun God, were associated with the phoenix. Neumann pointed out that while the creative principle of the spirit is experienced as “self-generated” (as was the phoenix), it has been genealogically derived from the primeval unconscious, born of the feminine. Adler (92) quotes Neumann to relate “phoenix” to the positive side of the Great Mother, while Jung (193) speaks of the phoenix as a symbol of the self, the “liberated soul” associated with the “total man” or anthropos.

Phoenix birds in other mythologies are associated with creation, birth and rebirth, and the sun. To the ancients of Central America, Quetzalcoatl was the sun in a previous incarnation of the world. “Feng Huang,” the Chinese phoenix, symbolized the sun as well as the yang or active principle. He was considered the emperor of all birds and a symbol for “inseparable fellowship” and marriage (Williams 319).

The turtle dove is less complex, being a symbol of constancy and fidelity in marriage. This constancy is entirely focused on the female turtle dove in the animal lore of the time of the poem. Baynes has remarked that the latent presence of the feminine principle is indicated by the dove (823). The fourth-century Christian philosopher Gregory of Nyssa, described an image of the “wings of the dove” as a primary symbol of the Holy Spirit, whereby our nature “transforms itself and moves on without bound or ultimate term toward no limit” (Campbell 399).

The question arises as to why the poet chose the turtle dove to be masculine and the phoenix to be feminine. Constancy was clearly associated with the female of the turtle dove species in bestiary lore. It would be fruitless to speculate about what the poet had in his conscious mind in this regard. A possible factor related to the choice of gender may be found in the use of “turtur” as symbol. A turtle itself (tortoise) is associated with the phoenix and cosmogony in certain myths. Tortoise and phoenix are among the “four sacred creatures” of China, and the tortoise appears with the phoenix in representations of P'an Ku, the legendary architect of the universe. It was considered to be a symbol of longevity, composed of both yin and yang. The marking on the back of a tortoise was said to have inspired the legendary Fu Hsi to evolve the Pa Kua, the basis for the Book of Changes (Ch'u Chai xxi). Vishnu raised the earth from the bottom of the ocean in his incarnation as a turtle (Jung 147). Later, Vishnu divided his essence into male and female. The Iroquois Indians believed that the earth rested on the back of a turtle. The turtle, as well as the dove, can represent a chastity symbol. Baynes has quoted a passage from the Bhagavad-gita in which a man confirmed in spiritual knowledge is likened to the tortoise, who “can draw in all his senses and restrain them from their wonted purpose” (656). Whether dove or turtle, in either case, constancy is possible through restraint of instinct.

These early symbolic tracings may seem irrelevant to the poem at hand. There is no question but that the poet meant turtle dove, that phoenix symbolized love and was feminine, and the dove symbolized constancy and was masculine. The point has been to lay down certain archetypal patterns which may have been related and which support the implication that phoenix and turtle transcend external individual characteristics; “married chastity” points to the irrelevance of gender in the match (even in his most serious moments the poet manages a Puckish twinkle).

The poem has a strong quality of the spiritual alongside the earthiness in its description of the marriage of immortal bird to mortal one. The bestiaries included moral admonishments and analogies with Christian beliefs in association with the ancient and often pagan characteristics attributed to animals. The larger, spiritual meaning of the poem may have been that man is constant with God, who is the “great Love.” The immortal is the great collective, and the mortal is the perishable, conscious individual. These two seeming opposites merge into the new individual, the unity of phoenix and dove. One is reminded of the two birds in the Svetasvatara-Upanishad who dwell on the same tree (the body), the one being the cosmic soul, the other the individual soul (Roer 294). The merging of the one into the other (the final goal of Hindu thought) makes possible the kind of soaring on wings of liberation which was so beautifully etched by Gregory of Nyssa. In studying the Persian mystics, Corbin has concluded that several visionary recitals using the bird as symbol represent “symbolic vision which makes the soul appear to itself, and beyond it, the Self that is more than itself, that envelops and contains it” (182). Attar's mystic epic “Language of the Birds” (written some four hundred years before the poem of this study) contains what may be a striking parallel to the poem at hand. In this epic, after a long and perilous quest, the birds came face to face with the “eternal bird” (Corbin notes that this bird is feminine in Aramaic, a probable connection with the Holy Spirit Jesus referred to as “my mother”). What each bird found was the mystery of its own self, “a self that overflows its terrestrial and exiled ego, its little empirical and conscious ego, a Self that is its whole being, so near and yet so distant, so much it and yet so much another that to meet it is to experience the joy of being two in one” (Corbin 203).

Whatever else the poet may have intended, the essence seems to have been the transcendent mystery of spiritual union and mystical death. It is the union of mortal and immortal, cosmic and individual love, in which both vehicles of the symbol, phoenix and turtle, become constant, mortal, and immortal, the distillate of truth, beauty, and love.

Works Cited

Adler, Gerhard. The Living Symbol. New York: Pantheon, 1961.

Baynes, H. G. Mythology of the Soul. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1940.

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: Viking, 1959.

Chai, Ch'u. The Story of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Washington Square Press, 1961.

Corbin, Henry. Avicenna and the Visionary Recital. New York: Pantheon, 1960.

Jung, C. G. Psychology and Alchemy. New York: Pantheon, 1953.

Neumann, E. The Great Mother. New York: Pantheon, 1955.

Roer, E. The Twelve Principal Upanishads. Vol. 1. Madras: Theosophical House, 1931.

Simon, H. W. Sonnets, Songs, and Poems of William Shakespeare. New York: Pocket Books, 1952.

White, T. H. The Bestiary. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons (Capricorn edn.), 1960.

Williams, C. A. S. Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives. New York: Julian Press, 1960.