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CHAPTER: 3

Metaphysical and Literary Introspections in Other Natural and Geological Phenomena

Ted Hughes’ poetic vision is not limited to the animal order alone. It

also deals with other natural and geological elements of the universe.

Hughes, like other poets of Nature, is greatly preoccupied with a landscape

which is of autobiographical importance. What makes him different from

others is “. . . the freshness and sharpness of his psychological penetration of

the features of that landscape, bringing them very close to us while at the

same time showing us the distance between us and that landscape.”1 The

landscape in Hughes’ poetry is extremely violent, irrational and nihilistic in

opposition to the harnessed and tamed landscape of Movement poetry which

was quite popular during that time as pointed out earlier. Owing to post-

modern ideologies, Hughes chiefly deals with the life of instinct and blood or

the predatory energies which he marked not only in the animal world but also

in other natural and geological phenomena. Hughes associates predatory

energies with the life-force, or what Schopenhauer calls the Will to Live. His

main concern is to bring about a reconciliation between the human and the

non-human world. Man, having been cut-off from the life of instinct and blood

which the brutes exemplify, is so conscious of his vulnerability that he hardly

dares to come in contact with the violent energies of the cosmos. The poetry

Hughes wrote suggests that man should identify with his own predatory

animal energies which endow him with a life-force to face the violent but vital

forces of the cosmos. In other words, Hughes advocates a Dionysian force

which suggests one’s frenzied participation in life in the presence of the

destructive forces of Nature.

In the first book, The Hawk in the Rain, various aspects of the natural

and geological world appear in poems such as ‘Wind,’ ‘October Dawn’ and

‘Roarers in a Ring.’ In a significant poem entitled ‘Wind,’ Hughes exploits the

power of the wind as an elemental energy or a nihilistic force which can

disrupt life. “The wind is representative of all those natural forces we try to

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shut out of our lives, which, if let in on our sense would leave us blind,

floundering or mad.”2 The first stanza depicts how the wind violently shakes

the house, the woods, the hills, and the fields: This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet

(The Hawk in the Rain: ‘Wind,’ 40)

The reverberating sounds of violence are brilliantly conveyed by the use of

forceful verbs such as “crashing,” “booming,” “stampeding” and “Floundering.”

The use of alliteration in “black-blinding” suggests chaos and confusion in the

dark depth of the stormy night. The “house” is presented as a “storm-tossed

ship”3 which is “far out at sea all night.” The house, in this poem, does not

simply suggest a safe and secure place of habitation but is used as a symbol

of a rationally organized world where man lives in a given culture of

pretensions and illusions. Simultaneously it also signifies the restrained and

disciplined world of Movement poetry as opposed to unrestrained, irrational

forces outside the house. Hughes himself says about his rejection of the

pretentious attitude of the Movement poets who seek to escape from reality

that is violent into a world that is sheltered, cozy and confined: One of the things those poets had in common I think was the post-war mood of having had enough…enough rhetoric, enough overweening push of any kind, enough of the dark gods, enough of the id, enough of the Angelic powers and the heroic efforts to make new worlds. (…) The second world war after all was a colossal negative revelation. (…) it set them dead against negotiation with anything outside the cosiest arrangement of society. They wanted it cosy. (…) They were like eskimos in their igloo, with a difference. They’d had enough sleeping out. Now I came a bit later, I hadn’t had enough. I was all for opening negotiations with whatever happened to be out there.4

The second stanza depicts the natural forces during the day: . . . then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

(The Hawk in the Rain: ‘Wind,’ 40)

The “Blade-light” suggests very sharp and striking light which keeps moving

“like the lens of a mad eye.”

In the third stanza, the persona’s reluctant attitude is revealed when he

dares to come out but prefers to scale “along the house-side as far as / The

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coal-house door.” The “house-side” and “coal-house door” stand for a rational

and materialistic world. An extreme sense of chaos and confusion is

conveyed by the violent visual imagery, forceful verbs and anthropomorphism:

“The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope, / The fields quivering,

the skyline a grimace, / At any second to bang and vanish with a flap . . .” The

hills are metaphorically presented as a tent held with a “guyrope.” It reinforces

the vulnerability of everything in the physical world. The transience of physical

existence is highlighted in the lines: “The wind flung a magpie away and a

black- / Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly . . .”

In the last two stanzas, the wind as an irrational and nihilistic force

violently shakes the house: . . . The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note That any second would shatter it. Now deep In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought, Or each other. We watch the fire blazing, And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on, Seeing the window tremble to come in, Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

(The Hawk in the Rain: ‘Wind,’ 40)

Two sets of words, “hills-wind” and “fire-house” are used repeatedly in the

poem and present a contrast. The “wind” and the “hills” are the elemental

forces of Nature blindly striving against each other. On the other hand, the

“house” and the “fire” symbolize a safe and secure domestic atmosphere. But

the situation here is ironical. The very root of domestic existence is shaken

forcefully by external forces. The wind in this poem also “. . . recalls the ‘great

wind’ that blows in through the ‘crack’ in primitive cosmologies.”5 The house,

in this poem, also stands for the Lacanian notion of the symbolic order which

has no relationship with anything real and the “window” stands for the “crack”

which needs to be open to have an access to the real that lies beyond the

symbolic order. Man, who is so engrossed in his complacent way of life, dares

not to open the window to look at the vital energies essential for life: The I - speaker is reluctant to budge from the sheltering centrality of the house-side, a kind of axis mundi around which the poet’s images and metaphors are oriented: in this the poem’s speaker displays the kind of resistance to ‘opening negotiations with whatever happened to

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be out there’ that Hughes identifies in the post-war poetry of the Movement . . .6

‘October Dawn’ is a poem about the month of October which

announces the forthcoming ice-age. Although October is a pleasant month

with a starlit sky and beautiful flowers, Ted Hughes highlights its vulnerability

by comparing it with marigold, a solitary flower which blooms in a frosty age.

This month is presented as a “premonition” of an approaching ice-age. The

imagery communicates the threat of impending violence: The lawn overtrodden and strewn From the night before, and the whistling green Shrubbery are doomed. Ice Has got its spearhead into place.

(The Hawk in the Rain: ‘October Dawn,’ 41)

The use of words such as “overtrodden”, “strewn” and “doomed” depict a

picture of decay and destruction. The lawn is crushed and scattered. After a

series of partial rhymes the poem ends with a full final rhyme (heart/start)

which suggest a determined tone warning about the forthcoming “fist of cold”

which “Squeezes the fire at the core of the heart, / And now it is about to

start.” Commenting on the technique of the poem, Keith Sagar says: . . . it is not in these dramatic mammoths and sabre-tooths that the poem’s power lies so much as in that relentless rhythm, that ruthless march of monosyllables, and the stark finality of that last full rhyme after so many half-rhymes. And all that weight falling on the word ‘start’! No one since Hopkins had used rhythm and rhyme so powerfully.7

‘Roarers in a Ring’ is another poem in which elements of Nature have

been highlighted. The poem begins with the image of snowfall which covered

the moorland like “a white / Running sea.” A beautiful simile is used to present

the landscape which is cold and hostile: “The moor foamed like a white /

Running sea.” In such a frosty night, a starved fox is out searching for its prey

and stares at the “inn light” with predatory eyes. The fox, like other animals in

Hughes’ poetry, represents the Will to Live. The farmers, in contrast, are

“living images of their deaths.” The title ‘Roarers in a Ring,’ satirically

suggests their limitation and confinement. They laugh in order to rid

themselves of the fear that they feel:

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. . . if they did not Laugh, they must weep. Therefore the ale went round and round. Their mouths flung wide The cataract of a laugh, lest Silence drink blood.

(The Hawk in the Rain: ‘Roarers in a Ring,’ 42)

The images that occur later in the poem are those of the “moor” and the

“moon” which are highlighted with the use of a simile and an alliteration: “The

moor looked like the moon.” The “Moon” is generally associated with the

White Goddess. The moorland, which is clothed with snow, is also a

manifestation of the White Goddess. Here, the Goddess manifests herself

through instinctive life as well, which is represented by the fox in this poem.

On the other hand, the roaring farmers refuse to identify with this life of

instinct and impulse and hence reject the White Goddess. The roots of their

existence are, therefore, badly shaken: While the world under their footsoles Went whirling still Gay and forever, in the bottomless black Silence through which it fell.

(The Hawk in the Rain: ‘Roarers in a Ring,’ 43)

The poem is a satire against man who refuses to identify with the natural

energies, the instinctive ways of the animals, and the White Goddess.

The second book, Lupercal, presents other natural and geological

aspects in poems such as ‘Mayday on Holderness,’ ‘Crow Hill,’ ‘Pennines in

April,’ ‘To Paint a Water Lily,’ ‘Fire-Eater,’ ‘Relic,’ ‘Snowdrop’ and ‘Sunstroke.’

The poem ‘Mayday on Holderness’ depicts a will-driven predatory

world of Nature and that of human beings. It moves from a geographical

observation towards a realization of the greater tension at work in the

universe. It is worth noting that simple geographical aspects of Nature in

Hughes’ poetry exhibit an instinct of hunger which is an expression of the Will

to Live. In this poem, the North Sea engulfs everything and is a manifestation

of this instinct of hunger: From Hull’s sunset smudge

Humber is melting eastward, my south skyline: A loaded single vein, it drains The effort of the inert North—Sheffield’s ores, Bog pools, dregs of toadstools, tributary

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Graves, dunghills, kitchens, hospitals. The unkillable North Sea swallows it all. Insects, drunken, drop out of the air.

(Lupercal: ‘Mayday on Holderness,’ 11)

The speaking persona of the poem identifies his own body as the food

apparatus – “mute eater” which can swallow everything. Animals and men are

defined primarily as killers. Appropriate use of figurative language, alliteration

and a hyperbolic tone do this effectively: As the incinerator, as the sun,

As the spider, I had a whole world in my hands. Flowerlike, I loved nothing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What a length of gut is growing and breathing— This mute eater, biting through the mind’s Nursery floor, with eel and hyena and vulture, With creepy-crawly and the root, With the sea-worm, entering its birthright.

(Lupercal: ‘Mayday on Holderness,’ 11)

It is the Will to Live which guides every action. The birds watch over the eggs

and participate in procreation since their progeny too has to function as

predators. The love of the laughing couples is rooted in the sexual impulse

which is, to quote Schopenhauer, “nothing less than the composition of the

next generation.”8 The following lines substantiate it: “There are eye-guarded

eggs in the hedgerows, / Hot haynests under the roots in burrows. / Couples

at their pursuits are laughing in the lanes.” Towards the end, the imagery

becomes more violent with the memory of war which disturbs the comfort of

“motherly summer”: The North Sea lies soundless. Beneath it Smoulder the wars: to heart-beats, bomb, bayonet. “Mother, Mother!” cries the pierced helmet. Cordite oozings of Gallipoli,

(Lupercal: ‘Mayday on Holderness,’ 12)

The predatory rage and madness or the Will to Live is exhibited not only by

“The expressionless gaze of the leopard, / The coils of the sleeping

anaconda, / The nightlong frenzy of shrews . . .” but also by the men fighting

in the battle field. Thus, Hughes’ poetry, which appeared in the post-modern

period, seems to equate violence with a greater reality, a Dionysian fury for

life or the Will to Live. Leonard M. Scigaj refers to the element of Surrealism in

this poem: “. . . the “coils of the sleeping anaconda” attend a nightmare vision

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of destruction and anticipate the surrealism of the Sixties . . .”9 By adopting a

Surrealist mode, Hughes’ poetry rejects logic and order and celebrates chaos

and violence.

The poem ‘Crow Hill’ presents human beings in relation to the

elemental energies. The farmers are living in the midst of violent

surroundings: The farms are oozing craters in Sheer sides under the sodden moors: When it is not wind it is rain, Neither of which will stop at doors: One will damp beds and the other shake Dreams beneath sleep it cannot break.

(Lupercal: ‘Crow Hill,’ 14)

Words such as “beds” and “Dreams” metaphorically, suggest the domestic

comforts of human life which are shaken by the violent forces of Nature.

Neither wind nor rain stops “at doors”; they intrude into the human world.

In the second stanza, the farmers are seen drawing vitality from the

wild energies: “Between the weather and the rock / Farmers make a little heat

. . .” Animals such as cows and pigs also exhibit great strength: Cows that sway a bony back, Pigs upon delicate feet Hold off the sky, trample the strength That shall level these hills at length.

(Lupercal: ‘Crow Hill,’ 14)

Living with “blowing mist” and walking along “the ridges of ruined stone,” they

resist death in a strong manner. The cows with the “bony back” and the pigs

with “delicate feet” are capable of enacting the Will to Live. They,

hyperbolically, even “Hold off the sky.”

In the last stanza, the poet talks about the “arrogance of blood and

bone” in the face of death and destruction: What humbles these hills has raised The arrogance of blood and bone, And thrown the hawk upon the wind, And lit the fox in the dripping ground.

(Lupercal: ‘Crow Hill,’ 14)

The use of words like “blood” and “bone,” which are highlighted by the use of

alliteration, suggest physical existence which can be done away with by the

violent forces of Nature. The hawk too is hacked by the wind. The important

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thing about the animals is that they do not easily give up; they forcefully resist

death. Hughes relates animal vitality, which is exhibited by their predatory

rage and frenzy, with the universal processes of creation and destruction, life

and death. One has to accept this creative-destructive tension and must get

committed to it since one is himself a part of this cycle. In the words of Terry

Gifford and Neil Robert, Hughes advocates “. . . the necessity of ‘the war

between vitality and death’ [. . .] in the wider context of a creative-destructive

universe.”10

‘Pennines in April’ presents a geographical description of the valley

which stretches between Lancashire and Yorkshire where Hughes lived

during his childhood. Keith Sagar familiarizes us with this place: . . . there are parts of England with every bit as much character as anywhere over the borders – for example, that stretch of the Pennine moors and valleys between Lancashire and Yorkshire which has Haworth at its northern edge and the Calder Valley running through the middle of it, from Todmorden to Halifax. It was once part of the ancient kingdom of Elmet, ‘the last British Celtic kingdom to fall to the Angels’ according to Ted Hughes, who was born there, and who celebrates its Celtic and more recent past in Remains of Elmet.11

The poem begins with a description of the Pennines and presents the valley in

a captivating moment of vitality: If this country were a sea (that is solid rock Deeper than any sea) these hills heaving Out of the east, mass behind mass, at this height Hoisting heather and stones to the sky Must burst upwards and topple into Lancashire. Perhaps, as the earth turns, such ground-stresses Do come rolling westward through the locked land.

(Lupercal: ‘Pennines in April,’ 25)

As the above lines demonstrate, forceful language is used to depict the

landscape as extremely dynamic and energetic but violent. In Hughes’ poetry

“The violence is caught in a moment which crystallizes it, but in which it is still

heavingly alive.”12 This moment of violence, which is also regarded as a

moment of vitality or energy or the life-force, is represented in this poem by

the hills which are “heaving out / Of the east” and “Hoisting heather and

stones to the sky.” The use of verbs such as “heaving,” “Hoisting” and “burst

upwards” suggest, at the metaphorical level, a forceful upward movement of

the unconscious natural energies of man which are now rising forcefully and

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even violently from a state of repression. In the landscape of the poem,

natural energies which were in barrels are now . . . heaving slowly and heave To your feet and surf upwards In a still, fiery air, hauling the imagination, Carrying the larks upward.

(Lupercal: ‘Pennines in April,’ 25)

The larks too are metaphors for the unconscious natural energies which are

now carried “upward” towards man’s conscious existence. The poem captures

a big moment which hauls up “the imagination” of man by making him

conscious of the suppressed energies and bringing them to the surface in a

forceful manner.

In ‘To Paint a Water Lily,’ the unconscious repressed life of human

beings is metaphorically represented by the simple and beautiful natural sight

of the lily. This is highlighted by Dennis Walder: “As in the ‘stilled legendary

depth’ of the pound in ‘Pike,’ there is here once again an unnameable horror

approaching from below, primitive, strange, rising to the surface of

consciousness.”13 The simple natural setting of the water lily evokes dreadful

feelings. Ted Hughes uses “powerful, hyperbolic metaphors”14 such as that of

the dragonfly which appears violent when it “eats meat” or when it “bullets by”

or “stands in space to take aim.” But man sees only the beautiful colours of

the flies which seems that the “battle shouts” and “death-cries” which are

arising from the depth of man’s unconscious mind are “inaudible” to him.

Hughes, in this poem, invites man to . . . Think what worse Is the pond-bed’s matter of course; Prehistoric bedragonned times Crawl that darkness with Latin names, Have evolved no improvements there, Jaws for heads, the set stare,

Ignorant of age as of hour— (Lupercal: ‘To Paint a Water Lily,’ 29-30)

The pond’s depth and darkness symbolize the unconscious mind of man

which is inhabited by the violent energies of “Prehistoric bedragonned times.”

Those primitive violent energies which man ignored for a long time are now

coming to the surface to disturb the beautiful natural setting of the water lily.

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The poet, like a painter, is painting a water lily which is “deep in both worlds”

half submerged in the primitive darkness of the unconscious mind of man and

half visible to the world of light and consciousness. The lily is not “trembling”

while meeting the horror at “her root.”

The poem presents a mysterious world through the brilliant fusion at

the level of the pictorial and the verbal. Ted Hughes uses the “old heroic

Anglo-Saxon verse form, the four-beat alliterative line”15 in this poem. It

consists “of thirteen octosyllabic couplets”16 which rhyme aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff,

gg, hh, ii, jj, kk, ll, mm.

Natural phenomena attracted Hughes immensely. In the poem ‘Fire-

Eater,’ Hughes presents how one’s life, death and rebirth are affected by

natural forces. Creation and destruction or life and death are affected or

governed by the stars in this poem: “The stars are like materialized fires, the

gods making themselves visible to men. We give them the names of gods.

These gods gave life, and they snuff it out as easily as swallowing the tiny

spark which is the life of a gnat.”17 The gnat’s light is devoured by the “star’s

mouth” and its skin is burned like that of Mary and Semele: The death of a gnat is a star’s mouth: its skin, Like Mary’s or Semele’s, thin As the skin of fire: A star fell on her, a sun devoured her.

(Lupercal: ‘Fire-Eater,’ 33)

Both Virgin Mary and Semele were “devoured” by divine forces but this

devouring or consummation also brought in fertility and renewal of life. Virgin

Mary, according to Christian belief, was impregnated by the Spirit of God in

the form of a dove. The result of this was that she gave birth to Jesus Christ.

Hence fertility was assured and life was renewed. Semele, a Greek mythic

figure, was loved by Zeus who was “The Father of gods and men.”18 On

Semele’s insistence, Zeus appeared to her in his most glorious form

“surrounded by lightning and thunder”19 which resulted in Semele’s

consummation by “celestial flames.”20 Zeus took the unborn child from

Semele’s womb and attached it to his own thigh till the child was born as

Dionysus. The myth of Semele is generally associated with fertility, vegetation

and renewal of life:

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When the earth has been made fertile by life-giving rains it must, in order that its products may reach maturity, endure the bite of the sun which burns and dries it up. Only then do its fruits develop and the golden grapes appear on the knotty vine. This seems to be the meaning of the myth of Semele who was normally considered to be the mother of Dionysus.21

Dionysus symbolizes life, an ever-living fire. He dies and is reborn. Life is

recycled in this way. In the second half of the poem, the speaking persona

does not humbly surrender to the divine powers but boastfully claims “to be

himself a fire-eater”22 capable of managing whole constellations but inspite of

his resolve he is subject to the same forces of creation and destruction as the

slug and the tree: My appetite is good Now to manage both Orion and Dog

With a mouthful of earth, my staple. Worm-sort, root-sort, going where it is profitable.

A star pierces the slug, The tree is caught up in the constellations. My skull burrows among antennae and fronds.

((Lupercal: ‘Fire-Eater,’ 33)

The sea is often represented as a big eater in Hughes’ poetry as

exemplified in ‘Mayday on Holderness’ and ‘Relic.’ The poem ‘Relic’ presents

the sea as a devourer which has devoured “crabs” and “dogfish.” The bones

are scattered at the “sea’s edge.” The sea, which sustains as well as engulfs

life, represents primitive forces of life and death, creation and destruction at

work in the universe. The title of the poem, which “carries a religious

resonance”23 itself “suggests a celebration of that universal fact of death.”24

No “camaraderie” can work out in the dark depth of the sea where “Nothing

touches but, clutching, devours.” It denies the possibility of human values

such as love, harmony, friendship and comradeship in a world which is all the

time driven by the conflicting forces of Nature. The poem uses words such as

“clutching” and “devours” to suggest the instinct of hunger which is a

manifestation of the fierce struggle for existence or the Will to Live. This

struggle is focused on the universal processes of life and death, creation and

destruction: . . . And the jaws, Before they are satisfied or their stretched purpose

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Slacken, go down jaws; go gnawn bare. Jaws Eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach: This is the sea’s achievement; with shells, Vertebrae, claws, carapaces, skulls.

((Lupercal: ‘Relic,’ 44)

Body organs are highlighted in this poem to present the conflict between life

and death. The jaws which eat are themselves to be eaten. The “jawbone”

which once has eaten others has itself become “a cenotaph.” The use of

words such as the “cenotaph” and the “Relic” show that Hughes’ imagination

is . . . here rooted in the memory of war, a war we are obliged by annual ceremonies at the Cenotaph not to forget, but which in Hughes is a reminder of the darker, hidden memory of the instinctual drives which are so cruelly apparent in the midst of battle.25

Another factor which is highlighted in the poem is “Time” which “eats its tail”

yet “thrives.” This presents the theme of rebirth or regeneration in the poem.

According to Leonard M. Scigaj, “. . . the tail-eating Uroboros serpent of

alchemy affirms the possibility of spiritual rebirth in nature”26 and stands for

time. Hence, the poem presents the cycle of life, death and rebirth in the world

of Nature as well as in the human world.

Nature’s violent face is again highlighted in the poem ‘Snowdrop.’ The

poem presents the biting and freezing winter when life almost comes to a halt:

“Now is the globe shrunk tight / Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart.”

But “Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass, / Move through an outer

darkness.” The weasel and the crow exhibit a strong sense of vitality or the

life-force in the face of the extreme violence of Nature. This vitality is also

revealed by the snowdrop who, despite her frailty and vulnerability, “pursues

her ends, / Brutal as the stars of this month,” whose “pale head” shows a

metallic strength. She is not weaker than the weasel and the crow in her fight

for survival. Words such as “weasel”, “snowdrop,” and “pale head” also refer

to the White Goddess who is described as “a lovely, slender woman with a

hooked nose, deathly pale face, lips red as rowan-berries, startlingly blue

eyes and long fair hair.”27 She may “transform herself into sow, mare, bitch,

vixen, she-ass, weasel, serpent, owl, she-wolf, tigress, mermaid, or loathsome

hag.”28 A sense of vitality, which is marked not only in the animals like the

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weasel and the crow, but also in the tiny “snowdrop,” is a reflection of the

Goddess. Richard Webster observes: . . . the feminine snowdrop – a little incarnation, almost, of the White Goddess – is located within that world of frozen and sleeping vitality which is created by the poem, a vitality which can only be preserved, it would seem, if it is encased within a hard, metallic, evolutionary will.29

The poem ‘Sunstroke’ presents violence in ordinary activities. The

poem begins with an image of the grass cutting machine which is,

hyperbolically, presented as a big eater: “Frightening the blood in its tunnel /

The mowing machine ate at the field of grass.” This expresses damage and

destruction in the world of vegetation. The second couplet presents imagery

of war and violence which is again man-made: “. . . Through a red heat / The

cradled guns, damascus, blued . . .” The speaking persona’s “eyes had been

glared dark” to view reality which is violent. The guns “blued” and “flared”

frightening the speaker. He feels that some “molten embers” have entered his

“head.” The next couplet again depicts how the plants are destroyed. The

“saw” is working on “the clover . . . / Till the blades bit ─ roots, stones, ripped

into red . . .” The colour red stands for bloodshed and violence. The speaker,

unable to resist violence, is in confinement with his “lungs” suffering the

unpleasant smell of paraffin. Lying “on a sack” in an “engine-shed,” he is

frightened to hear heavy rain outside. He takes refuge “Under the ragged

length of a dog fox / That dangled head downward from one of the beams, /

With eyes open, forepaws strained at a leap.” The presence of the life-force in

the dog fox encourages him to continue living no matter how adverse the

circumstances may be. The life-force present in both man and beast asserts

itself so that the struggle for survival may continue.

The natural and geological elements continue to receive attention in

Ted Hughes’ third collection of poetry entitled Wodwo. Different natural and

geological phenomena are present in a number of poems such as ‘Thistles,’

‘Still Life,’ ‘Cadenza,’ ‘Fern,’ ‘A Wind Flashes the Grass,’ ‘Sugar Loaf,’

‘Mountains,’ and ‘Pibroch.’

The poem ‘Thistles’ presents, through hyperbolic metaphors and

symbols, the violent outburst of ferocity and bloodshed from the forgotten

past. This is metaphorically highlighted through the thorny plants such as the

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thistles. These thistles are capable of fighting against “the rubber tongues of

cows” and “the hoeing hands of men.” They spike and pierce “the summer air”

and make harsh sounds under a “blue-black pressure.” The thistles represent

a “revengeful burst / Of resurrection” of something violent from the depth of

man’s unconscious: . . . a grasped fistful Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up From the underground stain of a decayed Viking. They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects. Every one manages a plume of blood. Then they grow grey, like men. Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear, Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

(Wodwo: ‘Thistles,’ 147)

The poet uses the thistles as a metaphor to deal with the bloody past i.e., the

vengeful “Viking” – “the Scandinavian pirate and raider of the 8th-11th

century.”30 This is also affirmed by John Lucas that “The Thistles become a

metaphor for England’s Viking inheritance: weaponry and warriodom.”31 The

“revengeful burst” of the warriors and “feud” amongst them is a reality which

was once suppressed under rational and moral obligations. The offsprings of

these “decayed Viking” are now slowly raising their head. This suppressed

reality is represented as coming out in the open from the deep recesses of the

unconscious, to the conscious mind of man through such ordinary and familiar

plants like the thistles. It is this aspect which Dennis Walder highlights: . . . Hughes’s vision transforms them into ‘a grasped fistful/Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost’, as the archaic, repressed memory of Viking invaders ‘Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground’, looms into focus. This is what, apparently, lies beneath the everyday surface of life: a vengeful reality which demands to be remembered.32

The violent energies, as exemplified by Scandinavian warriors, are inevitably

present in the blood of mankind. The poet apparently deals with the plant but

it is actually man who is the focus of attention here.

The poem ‘Still Life’ is concerned with the impermanence of physical

existence on one hand and affirms the power of the life-force on the other.

Life’s impermanence is presented in this poem through the stone. “Here

Hughes takes stone as the most perfect, most self-sufficient of substances,

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giving nothing of itself, eternal, itself the measure of the transience of all other

things.”33 The stone is attributed anthropomorphic characteristics throughout

the poem: Outcrop stone is miserly With the wind. Hoarding its nothings, Letting wind run through its fingers, It pretends to be dead of lack. Even its grimace is empty, Warted with quartz pebbles from the sea’s womb.

It thinks it pays no rent, Expansive in the sun’s summerly reckoning. Under rain, it gleams exultation blackly As if receiving interest. Similarly, it bears the snow well.

(Wodwo: ‘Still Life,’ 147)

Although the stone apparently presents a still life, it exhibits power and

endurance like that of the horses that figure in the poem ‘The Horses’ in The

Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes. The stone puts up with the ravages of the

wind, the rain and the snow. But this strong and powerful stone will meet its

end at the hands of a fragile harebell. The harebell, which itself is vulnerable,

contains “. . . the power which made the sea, which made the stone, and will

ultimately . . . break the stone.”34 The harebell too, . . . trembles, as under threats of death, In the summer turf’s heat-rise, And in which-filling veins Any known name of blue would bruise Out of existence –sleeps, recovering, The maker of the sea. (Wodwo: ‘Still Life,’ 148)

This is a manifestation of the life-force or the Will to Live which is part of the

processes of creation and destruction in geological phenomena.

The poem ‘Cadenza’ presents a violinist who is caught in extremely

violent surroundings. In Hughes’ poetry, violence is a result of the struggle

between the contradictory forces of life and death, creation and destruction.

This is presented in this poem by powerful images. The poem begins with a

description of the condition of the violinist in the face of violence: “The

violinist’s shadow vanishes.” The image of “The husk of a grasshopper,”

which “Sucks a remote cyclone and rises,” manifests the Will to Live or the

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life-force which is needed to survive in the face of the creative-destructive

energies. Another image is that of a female character who is highlighted in

this poem through the use of alliteration: “The full, bared throat of a woman

walking water, / The loaded estuary of the dead.” The poem presents a

similarity between the “full, bared throat of a woman” and the tidal mouth of

the river which is “loaded” with the “dead.” The woman here is a reflection of

the White Goddess who is as furious as the “loaded estuary of the dead.” The

“throat” and the “estuary” stand for the instinct of hunger which is an

expression of the Will to Live. Hence, the Goddess manifests herself through

the furious instinct of hunger or the Will to Live. Hughes not only accepts the

reality of a will-driven predatory world but adopts a positive attitude towards it

by associating it with vigour and vitality. The vitality is thus caught in the midst

of death, destruction, war and violence. Terms like “Sucks,” “swallows” and

“mouth” are repeatedly used in the poem to reinforce the instinct of hunger

which is inherently present in the world. The violinist, who deliberately ignores

this instinct does not dare to confront the threatening but vital forces of

Nature: “Blue with sweat, the violinist / Crashes into the orchestra, which

explodes.” The violinist “sweats” when he is exposed to the water which

carries a “coffin,” the outrageous clouds “full of surgery and collisions,” the

sea which swallows “wings and flings” and a bat “with a ghost in its mouth.”

The poet reveals a grasshopper which is better adjusted to the violent

surroundings. The metaphorical force of the language with hyperbolic

overtones and brilliant sound patterns effectively communicates meaning in

this poem.

‘Fern’ is a poem which is concerned with fertility and growth in the

world of Nature. This is presented by an image of the fern which is powerfully

drawn, with alliterative force: Here is the fern’s frond, unfurling a gesture, Like a conductor whose music will now be pause And the one note of silence To which the whole earth dances gravely.

(Wodwo: ‘Fern,’ 153)

The fern, “unfurling” its feathers, is compared with a conductor’s music “To

which the whole earth dances gravely.” This is a dance of life and growth in

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Nature. Hughes presents the fern’s “frond” as “the plume / Of a warrior” who

dances while returning to his “kingdom.” Vision of war and violence in Hughes’

poetry is generally associated with survival. The warrior in this poem has won

the battle against death, hence Hughes foregrounds the plume on his head as

his crowning glory. The poem affirms the necessity of the struggle for survival.

In Ted Hughes’ poetry violence is essential for survival. This is again

reinforced by the poem entitled ‘A Wind Flashes the Grass.’ An intense sense

of violence is suggested at the very outset of the poem: “Leaves pour blackly

across.” Vegetative life in Hughes’ poetry manifests a Dionysian impulse or

the Will to Live. The personae present in the poem are trying to maintain their

hold on earth but are “pierced afresh by the tree’s cry.” They are not able to

comprehend the “cry” coming out from “the boughs” of the tree, “the wind,”

and “the rock”: And the incomprehensible cry From the boughs, in the wind Sets us listening for below words, Meanings that will not part from the rock. (Wodwo: ‘A Wind Flashes the Grass,’ 153)

The “Meanings” of the “cry,” be it from the tree or the wind or the rock refer to

the fearful struggle for survival in a world where the antagonistic forces of

creation and destruction blindly strive against each other. These urges are

manifested in the leaves pouring “blackly,” the trees, the boughs and the wind

crying. Since the Will is ‘incomprehensible’ to man, he “grows anxious” when

he sees violence: The trees thunder in unison, on a gloomy afternoon, And the ploughman grows anxious, his tractor becomes terrible, As his memory litters downwind And the shadow of his bones tosses darkly on the air.

(Wodwo: ‘A Wind Flashes the Grass,’ 153)

Both the trees and the ploughman respond differently to the creative-

destructive forces of Nature. The ploughman is worried but the trees, on the

contrary, show vitality or the life-force, which Hughes presents as “the oracle

of the earth,” in the face of the destructive forces. The “twigs” too are

vulnerable but have the courage to stand up to the negative forces present in

the universe.

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Geological elements are again projected as predators in another poem

entitled ‘Sugar Loaf.’ The poem presents the predatory impulse in the water,

which can devour the hill. Hughes locates Will or volition in the “trickle” of the

water which “. . . cutting from the hill-crown / Whorls to a pure pool here, with

a whisp trout like a spirit.” The ferocity of the Will is manifested by the water

which is “wild as alcohol.” In Hughes’ poetry, a strong instinct of hunger is not

only reflected in the predatory advances of creatures like the hawk, the jaguar

or the pike but also by natural phenomena like the water when it engulfs the

hill: “I see the whole huge hill in the small pool’s stomach.” The hill, when it is

engulfed by the water is compared to a sugar loaf, which can be easily

engulfed by the “small pool’s stomach.” Hence, volition or the Will to exist is

furiously and actively present even in a “small pool” which engulfs the hill as

easily as it can engulf a sugar loaf. Entrapping, catching and engulfing

actually focus on the struggle for survival. The hill, being a part of the creative-

destructive processes of the universe, will have to meet its end. It does not

suspect its impending destruction at the hands of the water. Hence, the poem

depicts a Schopenhauerian vision of a predatory and antagonistic world

where Every grade of the will’s objectification fights for the matter, the space, and the time of another. Persistent matter must constantly change the form, since, under the guidance of causality, mechanical, physical, chemical, and organic phenomena, each striving to appear, snatch the matter from one another. 35

‘Mountains’ is another poem which presents the conflict amongst the

different phenomena of Nature. In this poem, the stones or the mountains are

subject to creation and destruction, life and death. Beautiful natural images

and elements of anthropomorphism are used throughout the poem. The

stones acquire a human personality and possess a “Finger,” a “shoulder,” and

an “eye.” They are the epitome of strength or force which has enabled them to

survive since “yesterday and the world before yesterday.” The strong

enactment of the Will to Live is manifested through the very “power” and

“presence” of the mountains. Despite having “their faces lit with the peace / Of

the father’s will and testament,” they face the threat of destruction as they are

themselves part of the creative-destructive processes at work in the universe.

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Acquiring a human personality, the stones have to go through pleasure and

pain, life and death: “Wearing flowers in their hair, decorating their limbs /

With the agony of love and the agony of fear and the agony of death.”

The poem ‘Pibroch,’ which is “perhaps the ultimate expression of

Hughes’ vision of the world in Wodwo,” presents an extremely antagonistic

predatory world of Nature. This antagonistic world is brilliantly suggested by

the poem’s title ‘Pibroch’ which “. . . denotes a set of variations for bagpipes

on a traditional dirge or martial theme. Music thus becomes an analogue of

sorts for the functioning of the mysterious but fundamental dynamic that

preoccupies Hughes in this poem.”36 The “variations” in the music are

analogous to Schopenhauer’s notion of conflict amongst different phenomena

such as the sea, the stone, the wind and the tree. This concept of conflict or

antagonism stands in opposition to the bourgeois’ illusions like, harmony,

compassion, love and peace. Bourgeois’ adherence to the life of illusions and

pretensions is cul-de-sac in the Schopenhauerian notion of a will-driven world

of killing and hunting or a Dionysian world of madness and frenzy. Different

symbols are used to present antagonism amongst different phenomena.

These symbols are the sea, the stone, and the tree. To begin with, The sea cries with its meaningless voice Treating alike its dead and its living, Probably bored with the appearance of heaven After so many millions of nights without sleep, Without purpose, without self-deception.

(Wodwo: ‘Pibroch,’ 179)

The sea, which strives aimlessly and meaninglessly, is a manifestation of a

blind force – the Will which stands in contrast to “the appearance of heaven.”

Here “heaven” refers to the “logos that betokens a moral code and a coherent

technology.”37

The stone is another symbol which presents an aimless life

“imprisoned / Like nothing in the Universe.” Hughes presents the illusions and

pretensions of human beings through the stone which “occasionally” becomes

“Conscious of the sun’s red spot” and dreams of itself as “the foetus of God.”

Dwight Eddins opines: The rock’s occasional “dream” that it is “the foetus of God” is yet another ironic subversion of the divine logos, a process continued by the wind that rushes over it as a parody of the divine afflatus. This

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spiritus associated with the “blind” stone and “able to mingle with nothing” negates any hope of communion with the First Cause and of cosmic orientation amid the mere “fantasy of directions” that its arbitrary shiftings represent. Once again we are faced with an analogue of the invisible, boundless, aimless will.38

The tree, another manifestation of the Will to Live, too struggles to survive:

“Drinking the sea and eating the rock / A tree struggles to make leaves . . .” It

drinks “the sea” and eats “the rock,” and in this way makes its own survival

possible. This is the universal condition of all forms of life which is “. . . neither

a bad variant nor a tryout. / This is where the staring angels go through. / This

is where all the stars bow down.” Here the “angels” and the “stars” often

associated with divinity are subject to the same laws since Hughes denies the

very concept of God and are forced to “bow down” to “an absolute irrationality

at the very core of things.”39

There are other creative writers who have been influenced by the

Schopenhauerian philosophy. Bernard Shaw, for example, exploits creatively

the concept of the Will to Live or the life-force in a number of his texts such as

his famous play Man and Superman. The Will to Live is a powerful concept

and can be used imaginatively by creative writers.

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References 1. Grant, Allan. “Ted Hughes: Hawk Roosting, An Otter.” Criticism in

Action: A Critical Symposium on Modern Poems. ed. Maurice Hussey.

London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1969, 101. 2. Sagar, Keith. The Art of Ted Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1975, 28.

3. Ibid., 27. 4. Faas, Ekbert. Interview with Ted Hughes. “Ted Hughes and Crow.”

London Magazine. 10. 10 (January 1971) 10-11.

5. Bentley, Paul. The Poetry of Ted Hughes: Language, Illusion and

Beyond. London: Longman, 1999, 9.

6. Ibid., 9. 7. Sagar, Keith. The Art of Ted Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1975, 27. 8. Edman, Irwin. ed. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. New York: Carlton

House, 1928, 341. 9. Scigaj, Leonard M. “The Ophiolatry of Ted Hughes.” Twentieth

Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal. 31. 4 (Winter

1985): 382. 10. Gifford, Terry, and Neil Roberts. Ted Hughes: A Critical Study. London:

Faber & Faber, 1981, 75. 11. Sagar, Keith. “Hughes and His Landscape.” The Achievement of Ted

Hughes. ed. Keith Sagar. Manchester: Manchester University Press,

1983, 3. 12. Rawson, C. J. “Ted Hughes: A Reappraisal.” Essays in Criticism: A

Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism. 15. 1 (July 1965): 78.

13. Walder, Dennis. Ted Hughes. England: Open University Press, 1987,

37.

14. Ibid., 37.

15. Ibid., 38. 16. Ibid., 37. 17. Sagar, Keith. The Art of Ted Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1975, 56.

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18. Aldrington, Richard, and Delano Ames. Trans. The Larousse

Encyclopedia of Mythology. London: Chancellor Press, 1997, 99.

19. Ibid.,105.

20. Ibid.,105.

21. Ibid., 157. 22. Sagar, Keith. The Art of Ted Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1975, 56. 23. Walder, Dennis. Op. cit., 38.

24. Ibid., 38.

25. Ibid., 38.

26. Scigaj, Leonard M. Op. cit., 382. 27. Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. New York: Vintage Books,

1959, 12.

28. Ibid., 12. 29. Webster, Richard. “The thought-fox’ and the poetry of Ted

Hughes.” Critical Quarterly. 26. 4 (Winter 1984): 41.

30. Elliott, Julia. ed. Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus. New York: Oxford

University Press, 2006, 864. 31. Lucas, John. Modern English Poetry – From Hardy to Hughes: A Critical

Survey. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1986, 196.

32. Walder, Dennis. Op. cit., 26. 33. Sagar, Keith. The Art of Ted Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1975, 68.

34. Ibid., 69. 35. Eddins, Dwight. Ted Hughes and Schopenhauer: The Poetry of

the Will. Accessed on December 10, 2009, from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_1_45/ai_54895477. n. pag.

36. Ibid., n. pag.

37. Ibid., n. pag.

38. Ibid., n. pag.

39. Ibid., n. pag.