Edward James Hughes

Edward James Hughes

Edward James Hughes is one of the most outstanding living British poets. In 1984
he was awarded the title of the nation's Poet Laureate. He came into prominence
in the late fifties and early sixties, having earned a reputation of a prolific,
original and skilful poet, which he maintained to the present day. Ted Hughes
was born in 1930 in Yorkshire into a family of a carpenter. After graduating
from Grammar School he went up to Cambridge to study English, but later changed
to Archaeology and Anthropology. At Cambridge he met Sylvia Plath, whom he
married in 1956. His first collection of poems Hawk in the Rain was published in
1957. The same year he made his first records of reading of some Yeats's poems
and one of his own for BBC Third Programme. Shortly afterwards, the couple went
to live to America and stayed there until 1959. His next collection of poems
Lupercal (1960) was followed by two books for children Meet My Folks (1961) and
Earth Owl (1963). Selected Poems, with Thom Gunn (a poet whose work is
frequently associated with Hughes's as marking a new turn in English verse), was
published in 1962. Then Hughes stopped writing almost completely for nearly
three years following Sylvia Plath's death in 1963 (the couple had separated
earlier), but thereafter he published prolifically, often in collaboration with
photographers and illustrators. The volumes of poetry that succeeded Selected
Poems include Wodwo (1967), Crow (1970), Season Songs (1974), Gaudete (1977),
Cave Birds (1978), Remains of Elmet (1979) and Moortown (1979). At first the
recognition came from overseas, as his Hawk in the Rain (1957) was selected New
York's Poetry Book Society's Autumn Choice and later the poet was awarded
Nathaniel Hawthorn's Prize for Lupercal (1960). Soon he became well-known and
admired in Britain. On 19 December 1984 Ted Hughes became Poet Laureate, in
succession to the late John Betjeman. Hughes has written a great deal for the
theatre, both for adults and for children. He has also published many essays on
his favourite poets and edited selections from the work of Keith Douglas and
Emily Dickinson (1968). Since 1965 he has been a co-editor of the magazine
Modern Poetry in Translation in London. He is still an active critic and poet,
his new poems appearing almost weekly (9:17)

Judging from bibliography, Ted Hughes has received a lot of attention from
scholars and literary critics both in the USA and Britain. However, most of
these works are not available in Lithuania. Hence my overview of Hughes'
criticism might not be full enough. The few things I have learned from reading
about Ted Hughes could be outlined as follows. Some critics describe Hughes as "
a nearly demonic poet, possessed with the life of nature", "a poet of violence"
(4:162), his poetry being "anti-human" in its nature (12:486). According to Pat
Rogers, his verse reflect the experience of human cruelty underlying the work of
contemporary East European poets such as Pilinszky and Popa, both admired by
Hughes. Hughes' concern with religion gave inspiration to his construction of
anti-Christian myth, which was mainly based on the famous British writer and
critic Robert Ranke Graves' book The White Goddess (1948) and partly on his own
studies of anthropology (12:486). Speaking of his early poems, the critics note
that at first they were mistakenly viewed as a development of tradition of
English animalistic poetry (6:414) started by Rudyard Kipling and D.H. Lawrence.
G. Bauzyte stresses that Hughes is not purely animalistic poet, since in his
animalistic verse he seeks parallels to human life (4:163). In I. Varnaite's
words, "nature is anthropomorphised in his poems" (5:61). Furthermore, G.
Bauzyte observes that Hughes' poetics are reminiscent of the Parnassians and in
particular Leconte de Lisle's animalistic poems. She points out, however, that
the latter were more concerned with colour, exotic imagery and impression, while
Hughes work is marked by deeper semantic meaning. His poetical principals are
fully displayed in the poem Thrushes - "spontaneous, intuitive glorification of
life, akin to a bird's song or Mozart's music" (4:162). The four main sources of
Hughes's inspiration mentioned are Yorkshire landscape, where he grew up as a
son of a carpenter, totemism studied by the poet at Cambridge and theories of
Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer (4:161, 6:414). The main themes, as singled
out by I. Varnaite, are: nature, the world of animals, man, the relationships
between man and nature (5:61). Hughes often defies traditional poetical cannons,
imploring stunning contrasts and surreal imagery (4:162). He was also noted for
his language and laconism of style. According to V. A. Skorodenko, Hughes uses
contrasting images, unexpected free associations and "sometimes vulgar words"
(6:416). I. Varnaite describes Crow and it sequels as "repetitive, sometimes
too naturalistic and even vulgar" (5:62). Like Hughes's animals, man is also
cruel and predatory already in his early poetry (5:62). As I. Varnaite put it,
to Hughes, "the most admirable beings are the most ferocious and violent ones."
Similarly, the critic Edwin Muir points out the ferociousness of Hughes'
imagery by calling it "admirable violence" (9:9).This might be an argument in
favour of those, who see some fascist tendencies in Hughes's verse (4:63, 5:62).
G. Bauzyte observes that in his negativism, Hughes is close to the American poet
Emily Dickinson. In his Manichaean vision of the world darkness often prevails
over light, cold over warmth, hatred over love (4:163). Speaking of predecessors,
Hughes is said to be kindred to Dylan Thomas in the way that they both
celebrate the natural and their images are taken from the nature (6:414). Hawk
in the Rain, for instance, has the feel of D. Thomas's and M. Hopkins poetry,
where the man becomes the joining link between the earth and the "fulcrum of
violence", the hawk figuring in the poem, thus responding to the Thomas poetical
credo "the man is my metaphor" (4:163). The critics also note differences
between the two poets. By contrast with Thomas, Hughes's world is indifferent
to suffering and pain it is filled with (6:415) and, while Thomas is purely
anthropomorphistic, in Hughes's work, the human being is viewed as a part of
animalistic world. For Hughes, there is no great difference between a man and a
beast, inasmuch as stoicism and rational will are the only qualities
distinguishing people from animals and enabling them to resist the universal
chaos. In the opinion of A. Skorodenko, Hughes's concept of the world fully
unfolds in his books published in the seventies Crow, Cave Birds and Gaudete!,
where he collaborated with the American sculptor Leonard Baskin, who drew the
pictures, which inspired the poems. Hughes' vision of the world in those cycles
approach the quality of a myth. Blood there figures as the ultimate metaphor and
goes through all stages of life - from the archetypal pulsation in primal unity
to its complete opposite, Littleblood. The principal idea in the latter books
is that blood rules the world, the governing motif for all actions being sexual
drive to ensure the output of offspring. Along other new tendencies, V. A.
Skorodenko also observes a shift in the poets outlook reflected in the poems
written in the eighties, where the man is no longer metaphysically solitary as
in the earlier books, but "becomes a part of nature and through it of the whole
of Universe" (6:417). I. Varnaite points out the influence of Arthur
Schopenhauer's philosophy on Hughes's verse. According to her, "many poems
translate a number of Schopenhauer's theses into the language of modernistic
poetry" (4:61). Robert Stuart interprets Hughes' works in the light of
Nitzscheanism, while other critics find some of Hughes' poems being under
Heidegger's influence (ibid.). I. Varnaite also notes that the poet's
worldoutlook is a complex one and cannot be one-sidedly simplified to one
philosophical school. Among possible influences she mentions folklore, myths and
religions other than Christianity. However, drawing parallels between Hughes's
work and Schopenhauers's philosophy, she writes that, to both of them, "animate
and inanimate nature have the same essence and contain the element of the Will
of the Universe". I.Varnaite concludes with the statement that "Hughes is a
nihilist" speaking of "inner emptiness, the dead universe, bleakness, the
nothing, nothingness, brutal will..." and his vision of future seems to be no
more optimistic than the present and past (4:67).

Bibliography

1. Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes Selected Poems. London: Farber and Farber Ltd., 1962.

2. Ted Hughes. Lupercal. London: Faber and Faber, 1985.

3. Ted Hughes. The Hawk in The Rain. London: Farber and Farber, 1986.

4. XXa. Vakarø Europos Literatûra. II dalis (1945-1985). Vilnius: Vilniaus
Universiteto leidykla, 1995.

5. Literatûra Nr 36 (3). Vilnius: ISSN 0202-3296, 1994.

6. Anglijskaya Literatura 1945-1980 (ed. by Saruchanyan, A. P.). Moscow: Nauka,
1987.

7. Anglijskaya Poeziya v Russkich Perevodach. XX Vek. Moscow: Raduga, 1984. -
848 p.

8. Ivasheva, Valentina Vasiljevna. Literatura Velikobritaniji XX Veka. Moscow:
Visshaya Shkola, 1984.

9. Walder, Dennis. Ted Hughes. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1987.

10. Walder, Dennis. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Great Britain: The Open
University Press, 1976.

11. Stuart, Robert. English Poetry 1960-1970. England: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.

12. The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature (ed. by Rogers, Pat).
New York: University Press, 1990. - p. 486-489.

13. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (ed. by Ousby, Ian). USA:
Cambridge University Press, 1991. - p. 484-485.

14. Hopkins, John. Guide to literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: University
Press, 1994. -775 p.

15. Lotman, Jurij Michailovich. Struktura Chudozhestvennogo Teksta. Moscow:
Isskustvo, 1970.