Ted Hughes as Shepherd of Being

222 Pages·1989·19.82 MB·English

by  Craig Robinson (auth.)

TED HUGHES AS SHEPHERD OF BEING
Ted Hughes as
Shepherd of Being
CRAIG ROBINSON
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20359-8 ISBN 978-1-349-20357-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20357-4
©Craig Robinson 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-43616-5
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1989
ISBN 978-0-312-03202-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robinson, Craig, 1954--
Ted Hughes as shepherd of being/Craig Robinson.
p. em.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-03202-9 :$35.00 (est.)
1. Hughes, Ted, 1930-- -Criticism and interpretation.
I. Title.
PR6058.U37Z85 1989
821'.914---dc20 89-32802
CIP
To my family
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
A Note on the Texts Used
X
Introduction: Hughes and Heidegger 1
Part I
1 The Hawk in the Rain, 'The Burning of the Brothel' and
Lupercal 13
Part II
2 Wodwo, the Radio Plays, and Crow 33
Part III
3 An Approach to Gaudete 73
4 Cave Birds: The Background and a Reading 95
5 The Moortown Sequences 147
Part IV
6 Nature and History: River, 'The Head', Remains ofElmet,
Flowers and Insects 199
Bibliography 212
Index of Hughes' Works 215
General Index 219
vii
Acknowledgements
My greatest debts are to those mentioned in my dedication, but I
also owe special thanks for their generous help and guidance over
many years to Keith Sagar and to Richard Dutton; and to the
following: Frances Arnold, J. B. Beer, Adrian Cunningham, the
late John Fisher, Terry Gifford, Igor Hajek, Derek Hyatt, Graham
Eyre, the B. W. Lloyd Charitable Trust, Roy Matthews, Gerard
O'Daly, Dusan Puvacic, Neil Roberts, Valery Rose, Felicity Rosslyn,
Annie Schofield, A. C. H. Smith, and the staffs of the BBC Written
Archives Centre at Caversham Park, Reading, the National Sound
Archives in London and the University Library at Lancaster.
The author and publishers would like to thank the following who
have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material:
Faber and Faber Ltd and Olwyn Hughes Literary Agency, for
the extracts from poems by Ted Hughes included in Moortown:
'Prometheus on his Crag', 'Seven Dungeon Songs', 'Adam and the
Sacred Nine', and 'The Skylark came'; for extracts from poems
included in Crow: 'Crow' s Account of the Battle', 'Criminal Ballad',
'Truth Kills Everybody', 'Snake Hymn', and 'Littleblood'; for
extracts from poems included in Gaudete: 'Prologue', 'Mrs Holroyd',
'I hear your congregations ... ', 'Having first given away ... ',
'The Sea Grieves ... ', 'What will you make of half a man ... ', 'I
watched a wise beetle', 'What steel was it the river poured', and
'Every day the world gets simply'; for extracts from poems included
in The Hawk in the Rain: 'Egg-Head' and 'The Conversation of the
Reverend Skinner'; for the extract from 'November' in Lupercal;
and for the poems 'Stations', 'Mountains' and 'Full Moon and
Little Frieda' from Wodwo.
Faber and Faber Ltd and Viking Penguin Inc., for the extracts from
Cave Birds: An Alchemical Cave Drama, by Ted Hughes, © 1978 by
Ted Hughes.
Olwyn Hughes Literary Agency, for permission to quote uncollec
ted extracts from Ted Hughes' writings: from the first version of
viii
Acknowledgements ix
the 'Myth and Education' essay, Sagar and Tabor C240, 'Children's
Literature in Education'; from the review of Emily Dickinson's Poetry
by Charles R. Anderson, published in the Listener, 70:394, 12
September 1963, Sagar and Tabor C145; from the review of Vagrancy
by Philip O'Connor in New Statesman, 66:293, Sagar and Tabor
C144; from 'Dogs: a Scherzo'; from the essay 'A Reply to My
Critics', Books and Issues, 1, nos 3--4 (1981); from the Crow record
sleeve, Sagar and Tabor H9/F8; from the second interview with
Ekbert Faas, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe, p. 214; from
the introductory comments to a number of pieces in Cave Birds
broadcast on Radio 3, 23 June 1975; from poem 44, Orts (Rainbow
Press); from the story 'The Head', published in Saturday Night
Reader (London, 1979) edited by Emma Tennant, pp. 81-99; from
Writers, Critics and Children (p. 92) the second version of the 'Myth
and Education' essay, Sagar and Tabor B78; and from the Foreword
to 'Children as Writers', Sagar and Tabor B74.
Laurence Pollinger Ltd and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc./Random House,
Inc., for the extracts from John Crowe Ransom's 'Persistent Explo
rer' in Selected Poems, Third Edition Revised and Enlarged, copyright
1927 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and renewed 1955 by John Crowe
Ransom.
A Note on the Texts Used
The following list gives details of the editions of Hughes' works
cited in the text. The place of publication is in all cases London.
Unless otherwise stated, the publisher is Faber and Faber, and the
text chosen is the first English trade edition.
Beauty and the Beast, in The Coming of the Kings (1970).
Cave Birds: An Alchemical Cave Drama (1978).
Cave Birds, broadcast, BBC Radio 3, 23 June 1975.
A Choice of Emily Dickinson's Verse (1968).
A Choice of Shakespeare's Verse (1971).
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1970).
Difficulties of a Bridegroom (unpublished; broadcast, BBC Third
Programme, 21 January 1963).
Dogs: A Scherzo (unpublished; broadcast, BBC Third Programme,
12 February 1964).
Eat Crow (Rainbow Press, limited edition, 1971).
Flowers and Insects, Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders (1986).
Gaudete (1977).
The Hawk in the Rain (1957).
The Iron Man (1968).
Lupercal (1960).
Moortown (1979).
Orghast (unpublished; performed 1971).
Poetry in the Making (1967).
Remains of Elmet (1979).
River (1983).
Season Songs (1976).
Selected Poems 1957-1981 (1982).
Seneca's Oedipus (1969).
Wodwo (1967).
X
Introduction:
Hughes and Heidegger
This book attempts to trace the main stages, so far as they are
reflected in the chronology of his trade editions, of Ted Hughes'
pursuit of a redefinition of human maturity in our time. It looks at
his criticisms of some of the available, orthodox models of thinking,
feeling and action, at his sense of what they ignore or exclude,
and at the progression of artistic strategies Hughes has developed
to describe and engender the creative conjunction of excluder and
excluded. The progression is as interesting as the thought itself,
and all references are therefore to the first English trade edition of
Hughes' works (see p. ix); the book is divided into four parts
corresponding to phases in Hughes' development. Quotation has
been kept to a necessary minimum.*
The approach varies. Gaudete, Cave Birds and Moortown form the
core of an achievement as substantial as that of any English
born poet since Wordsworth, and the chapters treating these are
relatively full. Those dealing with prior volumes are preliminary,
highlighting themes and images which are to be caught up and
modified in the denser, richer structures of the works of the later
1970s. The closing chapter examines some of what Hughes has
written outside and after the core achievement, in its light.
Hughes has been severally placed in literary history: in opposition
to the Movement, in relation to the new importance of the North
and the provinces in cultural life since the Second World War, on
one side or other in the feud between Modernism and traditional
ism; but perhaps the most profitable placing is in relation to the
Romantic, and especially Blakean, struggle for liberation from the
excesses of Enlightenment rationalism. To place him in this context
is to see him not as a throwback to a finished era, nor yet as simply
another exemplar of an eternal struggle between two universal
tendencies, Classicising and Romantic, but as a figure who might
• Quotations from works not by Hughes are taken from the editions specified in
the Bibliography. Page references given following or otherwise in association with
such quotations relate to the same editions.
1