The laughter of foxes, second edition a study of ted hughes (liverpool university press liverpool english texts studies

THE LAUGHTER OF FOXES LIVERPOOL ENGLISH TEXTS AND STUDIES General editors: JONATHAN BATE and BERNARD BEATTY This long-established series has a primary emphasis on close reading, critical exegesis and textual scholarship Studies of a wide range of works are included, although the list has particular strengths in the Renaissance, and in Romanticism and its continuations Byron and the Limits of Fiction edited by Bernard Beatty and Vincent Newey Volume 22 1988 304pp ISBN 0-85323-026-9 Literature and Nationalism edited by Vincent Newey and Ann Thompson Volume 23 1991 296pp ISBN 0-85323-057-9 Reading Rochester edited by Edward Burns Volume 24 1995 240pp ISBN 0-85323-038-2 (cased) 0-85323-309-8 (paper) Thomas Gray: Contemporary Essays edited by W B Hutchings and William Ruddick Volume 25 1993 287pp ISBN 0-85323-268-7 Nearly Too Much: The Poetry of J H Prynne by N H Reeve and Richard Kerridge Volume 26 1995 224pp ISBN 0-85323-840-5 (cased) 085323-850-2 (paper) A Quest for Home: Reading Robert Southey by Christopher J P Smith Volume 27 1997 256pp ISBN 0-85323-511-2 (cased) 0-85323-521-X (paper) Outcasts from Eden: Ideas of Landscape in British Poetry since 1945 by Edward Picot Volume 28 1997 344pp 0-85323-531-7 (cased) 0-85323541-4 (paper) The Plays of Lord Byron edited by Robert F Gleckner and Bernard Beatty Volume 29 1997 400pp 0-85323-881-2 (cased) 0-85323-891-X (paper) Sea-Mark: The Metaphorical Voyage, Spenser to Milton by Philip Edwards Volume 30 1997 227pp 0-85323-512-0 (cased) 0-85323-522-8 (paper) The New Poet: Novelty and Tradition in Spencer’s Complaints by Richard Danson Brown Volume 31 1999 304pp 0-85323-803-0 (cased) 0-85323-8132-8 (paper) THE LAUGHTER OF FOXES A Study of Ted Hughes KEITH SAGAR LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS First published 2000 Second revised edition published 2006 by LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge Street, Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2000, 2006 Keith Sagar The right of Keith Sagar to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A British Library CIP Record is available for this book ISBN 1-84631-011-3 ISBN-13 978-1-84631-011-9 Typeset by Northern Phototypesetting Co Ltd, Bolton Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow Contents Epigraph Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations A Timeline of Hughes’ Life and Work, by Ann Skea vi ix xiii xiv xv Chapter One The Mythic Imagination Chapter Two From Prospero to Orpheus 36 Chapter Three The Evolution of ‘The Dove Came’ 87 Chapter Four From World of Blood to World of Light 104 Appendix The Story of Crow 170 Select Bibliography Index of Works by Ted Hughes General Index 181 189 193 THE HEALER by Mark Hinchliffe For Ted Hughes – A Thanksgiving Hearing your voice awakened me, unblocked my ears, as if I had been underwater up to that moment, and suddenly surfaced to an island of wonderful sounds, and now the fox keeps walking out of the darkness into my head A class of children, held by The Iron Man, acted the story One barely able to read, who hardly spoke, jumped on the desk and switched the blackboard light on and off to be the Iron Man’s eyes He held chalk between his fingers, and crawled around the floor as he pieced himself together Later he wrote: ‘I aket as the Iron Man we had the lit on and off then I fell off vi The Healer the besg I had chars on top of me it look riyel then I got togeser a gen I lad in the fiver three tames and the jogen lad in the sun three tames he give in I wan I was singing in the sky’ And Ariel sang to me, Crouched on his shoulders At Lumb Bank you read your journal poems about sheep, lambs, cows, ravens, death, births Persephone walked across the room, and sang into my ear of Spring’s return You stand over the pool, draw pictures with your staff you lift them out, shimmering rainbows, mirrors they are food and drink, they are our parents, our children the pictures change, and we are changed A caged jaguar sends his spirit into vii viii The Healer a dancing boy who seeds the wasteland A burning fox melts into the laughter of foxes You stand over the pool, and every third thought is healing how to heal, every third thought is living, how to live And you bury your books deep into the body of England, where they are carried by rivers, emerging again, looking all around, rubbing their eyes, looking for places to sink their roots, like the piper’s lost children, like leaves stretching from a green head PREFACE Ted Hughes is, I believe, the greatest British writer of the second half of the twentieth century, and the latest addition to the great tradition of Western Literature which includes, among many others, Homer, the Greek tragic poets, Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Whitman, Hopkins, Yeats, Lawrence, Eliot and the post-war East European poets In accordance with Eliot’s dictum that every new great writer added to the tradition changes the tradition, Hughes has changed the way we read all these writers, not only those on whom he has actually written In the first chapter I try to describe the mythic nature of Hughes’ imagination, and to claim great importance for the healing power of such imagination at the threshold of a new and dark millennium This seems to me necessary because criticism, before it can undertake anything else (if there is anything else it is qualified to undertake), must first reach the point of being able to actually read the work – read it, that is, not in terms of some prior expectations or critical theory, but in terms of what we can divine of the author’s own inner idea of what he or she is after Every creative writer has a unique imaginative context, a matrix of psychologically or spiritually active imagery, for example, and can write living poems only out of it To become an adequate reader one must approach the work, in Hughes’ words, ‘with the cooperative, imaginative attitude of a co-author’, enter as deeply as one can the writer’s imaginative world Otherwise it is time wasted to read that author at all Hughes’ imaginative world was deeply mythic, in the sense of both drawing on the body of myth we have inherited and spontaneously creating new myths, or new expressions of the primal myths This is the theme of my first chapter Hughes began to receive in the last year of his life some long overdue recognition, in the form of glowing reviews, awards and massive sales Nevertheless, even in the obituaries, the media kept to their own agenda, in which sex, suicide and guilt are far more interesting ix 182 Select Bibliography sixth, ‘Crow Rambles’, is in Moortown as ‘Life is Trying to be Life’ Prometheus on his Crag (Rainbow Press, 1973) Contains three poems not in Moortown Season Songs (US edn Viking, 1975; Faber, 1976, 1985) The English edn omitted ‘The Defenders’ and added ‘March Morning Unlike Others’, ‘Icecrust and Snowflake’, ‘Apple Dumps’, ‘A Cranefly in September’ and ‘Two Horses’ The, 1985 edn omitted ‘The Stag’ and ‘Two Horses’ and added ‘He Gets up in Dark Dawn’, ‘A Swallow’, ‘Evening Thrush’, ‘A Dove’, ‘Barley’, ‘Pets’ and ‘Starlings Have Come’ Moon-Whales (US edn Viking, 1976; Faber, 1988) The English edn omits six poems Gaudete (1977) Cave Birds (1978; US edn Viking, 1979) Moon-Bells (Chatto, 1978) A Solstice (Sceptre Press, 1978) Orts (Rainbow Press, 1978) Only 14 of these 63 poems are in Moortown The Threshold (Steam Press, 1979) Adam and the Sacred Nine (Rainbow Press, 1979) Contains five poems not in Moortown: ‘Awake!’, ‘All This Time His Cry’, ‘He Had Retreated’, Light’, ‘Bud-tipped Twig’ Remains of Elmet (1979) Contains 21 poems not in Elmet or Three Books Moortown (1979) Under the North Star (1981; US edn Viking) River (1983) Contains 12 poems not in Three Books What is the Truth? (1984; also as vol of the Collected Animal Poems, 1995) Flowers and Insects (US edn Knopf, 1986) Ffangs the Vampire Bat and the Kiss of Truth (1986) Moortown Diary (1989) Tales of the Early World (1988; US edn Farrar Strauss and Giroux (FSG), 1991) Wolfwatching (1989; US edn FSG, 1991) Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (1992; US edn FSG, 1992) Rain-Charm for the Duchy and Other Laureate Poems (1992) The Iron Woman (1993; US edn Dial Books,1995) Three Books: Remains of Elmet, Cave Birds, River (1993) 182 Select Bibliography 183 The Remains section omits 21 poems and adds four The River section omits 12 and adds 13 Winter Pollen (1994; US edn Picador, 1995) Contains most of Hughes’ important essays and reviews New Selected Poems (1995) The Dreamfighter (1995) Difficulties of a Bridegroom (1995; US edn Picador) Contains most of Hughes’ short stories Wedekind’s Spring Awakening (1995) Collected Animal Poems: The Iron Wolf, What is the Truth?, A March Calf, The Thought Fox (1995) Lorca’s Blood Wedding (1996) Tales from Ovid (1997; US edn FSG) Birthday Letters (1998; US edn FSG) Racine’s Phedre (1998) The Oresteia of Aeschylus (1999; US edn FSG) The Alcestis of Euripedes (1999; US edn FSG) Books, Periodicals and Tapes with Important Uncollected Contributions by Hughes ‘Context’, in London Magazine, February 1962 The Poet Speaks (XVI): Ted Hughes Talks to Peter Orr (British Council, 1963) A duplicated document ‘The Rock’, in Writers on Themselves (BBC, 1964) ‘Myth and Education’, in Children’s Literature in Education (1970) (‘Myth and Education I’) This is different from the essay of the same title in Winter Pollen and elsewhere The Art of Sylvia Plath, ed Charles Newman (Faber, 1970) Contains Hughes’ ‘The Chronological Order of Sylvia Plath’s Poems’ Orghast at Persepolis, by A.C.H Smith (Eyre Methuen, 1972) Contains outlines of Orghast by Ted Hughes Worlds, ed Geoffrey Summerfield (Penguin, 1974) Contains ‘The Rock’ Ted Hughes and R.S Thomas (Norwich Tapes, 1978) Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, by Sylvia Plath (Faber, 1977) Contains Hughes’ foreword 183 184 Select Bibliography Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe, by Ekbert Faas (Black Sparrow Press, 1980) Contains two major interviews and several prose pieces not in Winter Pollen The Reef, by Keith Sagar (Proem Pamphlets, 1980) Contains introduction by Hughes on simplicity in poetry The Way to Write, by J Fairfax and J Moat (Elm Tree Books, 1981) Contains foreword by Hughes The Achievement of Ted Hughes, ed Keith Sagar (Manchester University Press, 1983) Contains 30 uncollected poems William Golding: The Man and his Books, ed John Carey (Faber, 1986) Contains Hughes’ essay ‘Baboons and Neanderthals: A Rereading of The Inheritors’ The Paris Review, 134, Spring 1995 Hughes interviewed by Drue Heinz The Guardian, July 1997 Contains Hughes’ article on hunting: ‘The Hart of the Mystery’ The Daily Telegraph, 31 October 1998 Hughes interviewed by Eilat Negev Wild Steelhead and Salmon, Winter 1999 Hughes interviewed by Tom Pero Extract reprinted in The Guardian, January1999 Critical Studies Bentley, Paul, The Poetry of Ted Hughes: Language, Illusion and Beyond (Longman, 1998) Bishop, Nicholas, Re-making Poetry: Ted Hughes and a New Critical Psychology (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991) Dyson, A.E., ed., Three Contemporary Poets: Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes and R.S Thomas (Macmillan, 1990) Faas, Ekbert, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe (Black Sparrow Press, 1980) Gammage, Nick, ed., The Epic Poise: A Celebration of Ted Hughes (Faber and Faber, 1999) Gifford, Terry, and Roberts, Neil, Ted Hughes: A Critical Study (Faber and Faber, 1981) 184 Select Bibliography 185 Hirschberg, Stuart, Myth in the Poetry of Ted Hughes (Barnes and Noble, 1981) Moulin, Joanny, Ted Hughes: La Langue Rémunerée (L’Harmattan, Paris 1999) —— ed Livre Ted Hughes: New Selected Poems (Editions du Temps, Paris 1999) Robinson, Craig, Ted Hughes as Shepherd of Being (Macmillan, 1989) Sagar, Keith, The Art of Ted Hughes (Cambridge University Press, 1975; extended edn 1978) —— Ted Hughes (Profile Books, 1981) —— ed., The Achievement of Ted Hughes (Manchester University Press, 1983) —— ed., The Challenge of Ted Hughes (Macmillan, 1994) Scigaj, Leonard M., The Poetry of Ted Hughes (University of Iowa Press, 1986) —— Ted Hughes (Twayne, 1991) —— ed., Critical Essays on Ted Hughes (G.K Hall, 1992) Skea, Ann, Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (University of New England Press, Australia, 1994) Stella, Maria, L’Inno e L’Enigma: Sagio su Ted Hughes (Bibliotheca Ianua, Rome, 1988) Uroff, Margaret, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (University of Illinois Press, 1979) Walder, Dennis, Ted Hughes (Open University Press, 1987) West, Thomas, Ted Hughes (Methuen, 1985) Other Books Cited Attar, Farid Ud-din, The Conference of the Birds (Penguin, 1984) Bachelard, Gaston, Water and Dreams (Dallas, 1983) Baring, Anne, and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess (Viking, 1991) Beer, John, Blake’s Visionary Universe (Manchester University Press, 1969) Blake, William, Complete Writings, ed Geoffrey Keynes (Oxford University Press, 1971) Bly, Robert, Interview in Roger Housden, Fire in the Heart (Element, 1990) Brown, Norman O., Life Against Death (Wesleyan University Press, 1970) Campbell, Joseph, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton University 185 186 Select Bibliography Press, 1972) —— The Masks of God (Primitive Mythology, Occidental Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Creative Mythology) (Souvenir Press, 1973–4) —— Myths to Live By (Souvenir Press, 1973) Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus (Hamish Hamilton, 1955) Carey, John, ed., William Golding: The Man and his Books (Faber and Faber, 1986) Carlyle, Thomas, ‘Characteristics’ in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th edn, vol 2, (1979) Castaneda, Carlos, Tales of Power (Hodder and Stoughton, 1974; Penguin, 1976) Conquest, Robert, ed New Lines (Macmillan, 1956) Finnegan, Ruth, ed The Penguin Book of Oral Poetry (Penguin, 1978) Frazer, J.G., The Golden Bough, abridged edn (Macmillan, 1957) Graves, Robert, The White Goddess (Faber, 1961) Harner, Michael J., Hallucinogens and Shamanism (Oxford University Press, 1973) Havel, Vaclav, Living in Truth (Faber, 1987) Jung, C.G., Aion (Collected Works vol ii) (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959) —— Psychological Types (Bollingen, 1974) —— The Spirit of Man (Collected Works vol 15) (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966) Kerényi, C., The Gods of the Greeks (Thames and Hudson, 1951) —— Prometheus (Pantheon, 1963) Laing, R.D., The Politics of Experience (Penguin, 1967) Lawrence, D.H., Apocalypse, ed Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980) —— Complete Short Novels, ed Keith Sagar and Melissa Partridge (Penguin, 1982) —— Phoenix (Penguin, 1978) —— The Rainbow, ed John Worthen (Penguin, 1981) —— Study of Thomas Hardy, ed Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 1985) —— The Symbolic Meaning, ed Armin Arnold (Centaur Press, 1962) Levi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology, (Penguin, 1963) Lorca, Federico Garcia, ‘The Theory and Function of the Duende’, in Lorca, ed J.L Gili (Penguin, 1960) Lowell, Robert, Foreword to Ariel, by Sylvia Plath (Harper and Row, 1966) 186 Select Bibliography 187 Matthiessen, F.O., The Achievement of T.S Eliot (Oxford University Press, Galaxy edn, 1959) Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy (Anchor, 1956) —— A Nietzsche Reader, ed R.J Hollindale (Penguin, 1977) Plath, Sylvia, Collected Poems, ed Ted Hughes (Faber, 1981) —— Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, ed Ted Hughes (Faber 1977) —— The Journals of Sylvia Plath, ed Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough (Dial, 1982) —— Letters Home, ed Aurelia Schober Plath (Harper, 1975) Ponge, ‘The Silent World is Our Only Homeland’, in Beth Archer, The Voice of Things (McGraw-Hill, 1974) Redgrove, Peter, The Black Goddess (Bloomsbury, 1987) —— The Moon Disposes: Poems, 1954–1987 (Secker and Warburg, 1987) Stein, Walter, ed Peace on Earth: The Way Ahead (Sheed and Ward, 1966) Stevenson, A., Bitter Fame (Viking, 1989) Thomas, Dylan, Collected Letters, ed P Ferris (Macmillan, 1985) Von Eschenbach, Wolfram, Parzival (Vintage Books, 1961) 187 INDEX OF WORKS BY TED HUGHES Acrobats 111 Actaeon 143 Adam 136–7 Adam and The Sacred Nine x, 12, 28, 90–4, 129, 133, 136–8 Alcestis (Euripides) 85–6 The Ancient Heroes and the Bomber Pilot 110 And Owl 137 And the Falcon Came 136 And the Phoenix 137 Apple Tragedy 177 April Birthday 133 As I came, I saw a wood 142 Bawdry Embraced 110 The Bear 161 Birth of Rainbow 135 Birthday Letters x, xii, 69–84 passim The Black Beast 125 The Blue Flannel Suit 63 Bride and Groom 125, 143, 163, 179 The Bull Moses 45 Cave Birds xi, 12, 13, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 91, 129, 136, 141–5, 151, 163, 166, 171 Caryatids I 49 Caryatids II 48 Childbirth 77 A Childish Prank 175 Child’s Park 79 A Chinese History of Colden Water 169 Cock-Crows 153 The Contender 130 Criminal Ballad 124 Crow xii, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20, 27, 29, 56, 91, 122–30, 143, 145, 150–1, 162, 170–80 The Crow Came 137 Crow Hill 39, 110 Crow Paints Himself into a Chinese Mural 178 Crow Sickened 178 Crow Tyrannosaurus 99 Crow’s First Lesson 175 The Deadfall 50, 146, 149 The Dove Came x, 90–103, 137 A Dream 77 Eagle 158 Earth-Numb 28, 91 Egg-Head 16, 108–9 18 Rugby Street 74 Elmet 29 Epiphany 50, 60–2 Euripides’ Alcestis 85–6 Examination at the Womb Door 174 189 190 Index of Works by Ted Hughes The Horses 110 How Water Began to Play 179 The Howling of Wolves 119 Existential Song 121 Fallgrief ’s Girl-friends 53 February 17th 135 Fishing Bridge 72 Five Autumn Songs 133 Flounders 71 Football at Slack 155–6 For the Duration 31 Foxhunt 147 Fragment of an Ancient Tablet 129, 177 Freedom of Speech 72 Fulbright Scholars 74 Full Moon and Little Frieda 118, 120 I said goodbye to earth 122, 152 In the little girl’s angel gaze 126 The Iron Man 171 It is All 153–4 Karma 105 A Kill 174 The Knight 23 Gaudete xi, 12, 18, 20, 25, 27, 91, 129, 144–5, 150, 158, 163–5, 171 Ghost Crabs 120 The Golden Boy 102 Go Fishing 115, 162–3 The God 69, 78, 80–1 Gog 82 A Green Mother 141–3 The guide 108 The Gulkana 162 The Hanged Man and the Dragonfly 22–4 The Hawk in the Rain 53, 105–10 The Hawk in the Rain 105–6, 117–18, 156 Hawk Roosting 13, 114–16 The Head 149–51 High Sea-Light 154 His legs ran about 143 A Horrible Religious Error 176 The Lamentable History of the Human Calf 143 The Last of the 1st/5th Lancashire Fusiliers 31 The Life and Songs of the Crow xii, 26–7, 125, 170–80 Lineage 274 Lines About Elias 31 Littleblood 178–9 Long Screams 152 The Long Tunnel Ceiling 39 The Lovepet 125, 143, 179 Lovesong 125, 143, 179 Lupercal 26, 110–17 Macaw and Little Miss 110 Mayday on Holderness 26, 112 Milesian Encounter on the Sligachan 156, 161–2 The Minotaur 71 A Moon Man-Hunt 147 Moortown xi, 28, 91, 133–40 Moortown Diary 133–40 Mount Zion 154 Willow Street 72 190 Index of Works by Ted Hughes 191 River 160 The Rock 36–9, 152 Roe-deer 139 Notes for a Little Play 177 Notes on the Chronological Order of Sylvia Plath’s Poems 65 November 110 October Salmon 165 On catching a 40 lb pike 44 On the Slope 120 Open to Huge Light 154 Orghast 129–30, 143 Orghast: Talking Without Words 61 Orpheus 84–5 An Otter 59 Otto 83 Ouija 63, 75 The Owl (Birthday Letters) 54, 73 The Owl (Adam and the Sacred Nine) 137 Pennines in April 39, 110 Photostomias 113, 131 Pibroch 104–5, 118 Pike 44–5, 76, 114 A Pink Wool Knitted Dress 74 Platform One 31 Poetry in the Making 44–5, 58–9, 99 Prometheus on his Crag 12, 23, 25, 28, 91, 93–4,129–36 Rain Charm for the Duchy 164, 170 Ravens 135, 140, 173, 179–80 Recklings 120 Red 79 Remains of Elmet xi, 13, 28–9, 151–6 Revenge Fable 122 River xi,xii, 29, 31, 144, 156–68 St Botolph’s 71 Salmon Eggs 165–6 Season Songs xi, 133, 135, 140 iii, 171–2, 180 Secretary 110 Selected Poems (1982) 105 Setebos 76 Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being 1, 5–6, 18–20, 144–5, 151, 168 The Shot 73 Six Young Men 106 The Skylark Came 136 Skylarks 110, 119–20 The Sole of a Foot 103, 137 Soliloquy of a Misanthrope 53 A Solstice 148, 150 The Song 136 Song for a Phallus 177 Song of a Rat 119 Song of Woe 121–2, 136 A Sparrow Hawk 117 Spring Nature Notes 133 Still Life 118 Strangers 156 Strawberry Hill 112 Suttee 69, 79 The Swift Comes 137 Tales from Ovid x, 85 The Table 78 That Morning 105, 167–8 Theology 121 The Thought-Fox 89 Three Books 29 191 192 Index of Works by Ted Hughes The Threshold 148 Thrushes 115 Tiger-psalm 8, 158–9 To Paint a Water Lily 112–14 Totem 72 The Trance of Light 154 Truth Kills Everybody 178 Two 41, 146, 150 Under the Hill of Centurions 156, 166 The Unknown Wren 137 View of a Pig 113–4 The Vintage of River is Unending 156 Visit 70 Warriors of the North 111 West Dart 156 What is the Truth 92, 106, 140 The Wild Duck 136 Wind 51, 107–8, 154, 163 A Wind Flashes the Grass 119 Wodwo 13, 14, 26, 29, 117–121 Wodwo 97, 117–18, 120, 130, 163 Wolfwatching 31 Wuthering Heights 54 192 GENERAL INDEX Adams, Norman 155 Acheson, Dean Aeschylus xii, 16, 20, 33 Aristophanes 33–4 Attar, Farid Ud-din Auden, W H Brook, Peter 124 Brown, Norman O 116 Buddha 8, 158 Bachelard, Gaston 114 Baring, Anne and Jules Cashford The Myth of the Goddess 4, 33, 107, 132, 166–7 Baskin, Leonard xii, 13, 123, 131, 170 The Hanged Man 22–4 Beckett, Samuel 111, 120, 124, 136, 140–1 Bentley, Paul 35 Bible, the 93, 102–3 Bishop, Nicholas 13, 127, 163 Blake, William ix, 8, 11, 29–30, 93–7, 101, 115, 121–4, 129, 143, 146, 153, 162 Jerusalem 94 Milton 141, 143 Vala 122, 141–2 A Vision of the Last Judgment 135 Bly, Robert 136 Boehme, Jacob 96, 137 Border Ballads 52, 107 Bradshaw, Graham 13 Broadsheet 48 Brontë, Emily 39, 42, 54 Campbell, Joseph 17, 31–2, 167–8 Cambridge 45–8, 53 Camus, Albert 130–1 Carlyle, Thomas 112 Carson, Rachel 16 Castaneda, Carlos 51–2, 108 Chequer 48 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor ix,xii, 17, 35, 56, 135 ‘The Ancient Mariner’ 16, 18, 20, 26, 99 ‘Kubla Khan’ 87 Conference of the Birds, The Crehan, A S 52 Douglas, Keith xii Eckhart, Meister 138 Eliot, T S ix,xii, 2, 21, 29 The Four Quartets 21, 93, 98, 140, 157, 160 ‘Journey of the Magi’ 62 The Waste Land 12 Eschenbach, Wolfram von 138–9, 150 Euripides xii, 33 Alcestis 85–6 The Bacchae 16, 18, 20, 33 193 194 General Index Faas, Egbert 39, 113–14, 126 Farrar, Walter 40, 54 Fisher, John 43 Frazer,George 99 Freud,Sigmund 116, 177 Godwin, Fay 28–9 Golding, William xii, 16, 20 Graves, Robert 11, 14 Grimm, the brothers 62 Gustavsson, Bo 13, 31 Hardy, Thomas 12, 72 Havel, Vaclav 15 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 20 Heaney, Seamus 1, 35 Heller, Joseph Hirschberg, Stuart 13 Hitler, Adolf 116 Holloway, John 120 Holy Grail, the 24 Homer ix, 118 Hopkins, Gerard Manley ix, 17, 20, 87, 93, 111 Hughes, Gerald 38–43, 50, 99, 145–9 Hughes,Olwyn 43 Huws, Daniel 48–51 Icarus 79, 83 Isis 13, 93, 116 Job 24, 116, 124, 141 Johnson, Samuel 45 Jung, C G 7, 11, 17, 32–3, 67, 72, 80, 82, 136, 138 Kafka, Franz 12 Keats, John ix, 157 Kerenyi, C 15 Kipling, Rudyard 42 Larkin, Philip Laing, Ronald 130 Lawrence, D H ix, 5–7, 12, 16, 17, 34, 46, 59–61, 74, 97, 137–9, 145, 166, 168 Leavis, F R 46 Levi-Strauss, Claude 35 Locke, John 30 Lorca, Federico Garcia xii, 11, 14–5, 22–3, 39, 51, 131, 152 Lowell, Robert 56–7, 64, 68 Mayne, Pauline 42–3 McLeod, Miss 42 Melville, Herman 20, 33, 37, 109, 113, 115, 123–4 Mexborough Grammar School 42–3 Myers, Lucas 49 Negev, Eilat xi, 40 New Lines 120 Newton, Isaac 8, 30 Nicholson, Max Nietzsche, Friedrich 157 Oedipus 177 Orchard, Carol 133–4 Orchard, Jack 134 Orpheus 84–6 Osiris 13, 24, 69, 77, 144 Ouija board 59, 63, 74–5 Ovid x,xii Owen, Wilfred 83 Paris Review x, 39, 57, 89, 146 194 General Index Pilinszky, Janos 21, 128, 164 Phaeton 79, 82–3 Plath, Aurelia 63, 71, 73, 76, 81 Plath, Otto 37, 41, 54, 67–83 passim Plath, Sylvia x,xi, 13, 18, 36–86 passim, 120, 146 ‘Ariel’ 83 Ariel 64–83 passim The Bell Jar 67 ‘Circus in Three Rings’ 55 Colossus, The 75 ‘Conversation Among the Ruins’ 50 ‘Daddy’ 65 ‘Dialogue Over a Ouija Board’ 74 ‘Elm’ 67, 77–8 ‘Epitaph in Three Parts’ 48 ‘Faun’ 73 ‘Full Fathom Five’ 76 Full Fathom Five 75 ‘Hardcastle Crags’ 55 ‘The Hermit at Outermost House’ 66–7 ‘I thought that I could not be hurt’ 47 Journals 47, 55, 58, 66, 75, 76 ‘Lady Lazarus’ 65 Letters Home 47 ‘Lorelei’ 76 ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ 65 ‘Mussel Hunter’ 76 ‘Ocean 1212–W’ 36–7 ‘Poem for a Birthday’ 67, 69 ‘Pursuit’ 64 ‘The Queen’s Complaint’ 52 ‘Sheep in Fog’ 68–9, 82–3 ‘Spinster’ 55 195 ‘The Stones’ 67, 71 ‘“Three Caryatids without a Portico” by Hugo Robus’ 48–9 ‘Strumpet Song’ 55 ‘Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea’ 55 Ponge, Francis 163–4 Popa, Vasco 21, 122–4, 128 Porter, David 13 Prometheus 12, 15, 17, 24, 85–6, 130–5, 171 Prouty, Olive Higgins 63, 79 Pushkin, Alexander xii Racine, Jean xii Rainbow Press 94 Ramsay, Jarold 13 Rand Corporation Redgrove, Peter 14 Robinson, Craig 134 Ross, David 48 St Botolph’s Review 53 Sassoon, Richard 53 Scigaj, Leonard 13, 139, 156 Seneca 177 Sexton, Ann 56–7 Shakespeare, William ix–xii, 12, 16, 18–20, 43, 56, 134 Antony and Cleopatra 24–5 Hamlet 16 King Lear 18, 124, 129–30 Macbeth 16 Measure for Measure 16 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 16, 166 Richard III 116 The Sonnets x,xi, 57 195 196 General Index The Tempest 16, 67, 73–77, 83 Venus and Adonis 16 Shelley, Mary 96 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 34 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 16, 20 Skea, Ann 13, 28–9, 154 Socrates 8, 143, 158 Sophocles 12, 16, 20, 33, 177 Sorescu, Martin xii Southwell, Robert 80, 83 Stein, Walter Swift, Jonathan 16 Sweeting, Michael 13 Swinbume, Algernon 87 Tennyson, Alfred 14, 50, 160 Thomas, Dylan 87–8 Tolstoi, Leo 12 Vonnegut, Kurt Wedekind, Frank xii Weissbort, Daniel 48 Whitman, Walt ix, 19, 137 Williamson, Henry 42–3, 150 Wordsworth, William ix, 6, 13, 17, 104, 111, 112, 135, 141 Yeats, William Butler ix, 8, 17, 20, 157 196 ... classes The Genesis of The Dove Came”’ is reprinted from The Challenge of Ted Hughes, by kind permission of Macmillan The reprinting of the poem from the Rainbow Press edition of Adam and the Sacred... works that received most of the belated acclaim, Birthday Letters and Tales from Ovid, are not part of the main body of Hughes achievement, since, splendid as they are of their kind, neither allowed... confessional mode in poetry, came to see it as of great value, particularly as autotherapy, the claim that Birthday Letters is the summit of his achievement is as absurd as it would be to claim that the