The Iowa Review
Volume 3
Issue 3 Summer
1972
The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill
Jon Silkin
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Silkin, Jon. "The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill." The Iowa Review 3.3 (1972): 108-128. Web.
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Article 42
The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill
Jon Silkin
1
The
word
criticism
strict stanzaic
iambic,
whatever
has
in
'formal'
the
recently
associates
often
ideas
with
to
has
poet
run more
It may
say.
the other
way,
used
be
as
a means
metrical
concerning
form and rhyme, and the containment
by these devices
approvingly,
of
implying
since
or,
a
that
of
current
the
poet
using
these forms has little to say, and that his sensibility and imagination are insensi
tive, that the courage a poet needs in order to articulate what ought essentially to
be his way of exploring life is absent. As corollary to this, it is implied that only
is new
what
can
structure
in
and
sensitively
honestly
this,
engage
it
since,
is
we
are in the midst of such
argued,
changes that only those forms originated by
the poet in co-operation with his constantly changing environment can adequately
in the tormenting life so many
express the new (as well as the past and hidden)
are forced to live.
The second position is persuasive, providing one keeps in mind the counter
caveat
balancing
that
every
defined
more-or-less
position
the
provides
grounds
bad work; but even if the second position seems to account for a
share
of low-tension poetry, it is arguable that the position has helped
greater
into existence poetry that might not otherwise have got written ( vide Alvarez
writing of Plath and citing Lowell1 ). On the other hand one might ask what there
for much
a
is in such
position
and the Hughes
is however
There
tion
constraints
of
cerns
of
for Hill,
whose
so
contrasts
work
strongly
with,
say,
Ginsberg,
of Crow.
the writer
another
of
way
tensions
with
and
and
his
sensibility,
defining
those
'formal',
forms
as he
which
themselves
or
involves
evolved
she worked
One
these.
the
by
origina
the con
say
might
that a co-existing condition of the material evolving its forms involved, for this
kind of formal writer, a productive impediment, a compacting of certain forms of
speech,
refracting
the material
into
a mode
of
and
compression
close
conjunction
not normally found in speech, and which, probably, could not be found there.
Such a definition, however, would
imply that the mode of response, which
could be brought to conscious active thought, was habitual to such a writer. The
important to such a poet as Hill, and in
question of conjunction is especially
I
have
been
these
definitions,
trying to illustrate both a general type and
making
identify
a
particular
writer.
Such formality bears with its own problems.
are continuous, and one way of apprehending
consider
Formality
the
variety
of
forms;
to
consider
of the first sort occurs with Hill's
The payments
this condition
the
restlessness
early poem
on such a premium
in Hill's work is to
within
the
variety.
'Genesis',2 although
here
108
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it seems
that
the
iambic
formal
line,
and
stanza,
are
section,
to
used
that
express
already stylized conception of earth's creation; and that the formality while
representing such stylization is already at odds with the central theme of the poem
There is no bloodless myth will hold
to a lesser
and
extent
the
with
sub-theme's
concession
And by Christ's blood are men made
Hill's
with
'argument
in
difference
form
between
this
say
means
formal
in the poem, but,
visible
embryonically
over
himself
free.
and
one might
'In memory
(and
poem
is
expressiveness
for the moment,
of
already
consider
the
Fraser'?a
Jane
poem he has had trouble with) and 'September Song';3 between that, and the un
rhymed sonnets of 'Funeral Music'4 and between all these and the prose hymns
(canticles) of Mercian Hymns.
Restlessness of forms is not something one would normally associate with Hill's
work, but this is probably because the voice is unusually present and distinct.
Sometimes it becomes over-distinctive,
and this is usually the result of the formal
means
into mannerisms.
degenerating
Even
a voice
so,
cannot
itself
more
provide
than a spurious unity, and to put on it work that is beyond its proper capacity
a fraction of Hill's work. This 'mannered' and
produces the strain that exists in
'mild humility' however ismore often disrupted by the variety of forms. Is it im
aginative
or
experimentation,
an
to
inability
one
find
and
embracing
therefore
am
controlling mode? It could be argued that such unity is undesirable, but I
suggesting that for a poet such as Hill, unity of form, as of thought and response,
are
important. This is why we have such apparently absolute control within each
poem (or form) but such variety of form over the spread of his work so far.
Each
of
fragment
absoluteness
able nature of the matter
so,
it reflects
and
the
a
represents
and response
on-going
to
concession
pragmatic
to it in each poem. One
between
struggle
form,
the
is glad
intract
that it is
and
expressiveness,
the
even when it is
scrupulous attention Hill usually gives to his material,
struggling
as
so
an
to
retain
existence
attention
that
(in life) independent
oppressive
against
of his
own.
Hill's
use
2
of
and
language,
choice
has
of words,
been
noticed,
often,
one
to
feels,
the detriment of his themes. One sympathizes with the reviewers. The compressed
language is intimately bound up with what it is conveying. This is true of many
but
poets,
true
to
an
unusual
degree
with
Hill.
It
is
true
in
sense.
another
The
an
language itself is unlike most other writing current, and coupled with this is
on
to
is
self-conscious
the
of
the
This
the
part
poet
unusually
pointing
language.
not because he wishes to draw attention to it for its own sake, but because the
an instance
language both posits his concerns, and is itself, in the way it is used,
of them. Moreover, his use of language is both itself an instance of his (moral)
concerns, and the sensuous gesture that defines them. It is therefore difficult to
contact with the language.
speak of his themes without coming first into necessary
Hill's use of irony is ubiquitous, but is not, usually, of the non-participatory
sort. It articulates the collision of events, or brings them together
and mandarin
out
of
concern,
needed,
and
used.
109
Criticism
and
for
this
a more
or
less
regular
and
simple
use
of
syntax
is
Undesirable
you
A
concentration
victim.5
camp
and
tability
murderous
for
untouchable
been,
Even
the
in
'play'
the
as
'deported'
the victim;
if the
in some
which,
were
latter
of
the
it was?even
senses,
'born
subtitle
the natural event of birth is placed,
ported 24.9.42' where
man
have
you may
were
not.
simply, beside
same
the
de
the hu
inevi
and
order
here
-
19.6.32
wit
zeugmatic
is fully employed. The irony of conjuncted meanings
between
'undesirable'
on
a
sexual
both
desire
and
and
which
'untouchable',
racism)
(touching
exploits
similar ambiguity but reverses the emphases, is unusually dense and simple. The
confrontation is direct and unavoidable,
and this directness is brought to bear on
the reader not only by the vocabulary, but by the balancing directness of the
syntax.
stanza
This
one
contains
of Hill's
its too frequent use, and because
here) a too evident irony:
Not
or
passed
dangerous
these words
over
because
words?dangerous
sometimes
unleash
of
not
(though
forgotten
at
the proper
time.
correct 'as calculated' by the
'Proper' brings together the idea of bureaucratically
logistics of the 'final solution' and the particular camp's timetable; it also contrasts
the idea of the mathematically
'correct' with the morally intolerable. It touches,
too, on the distinction between what is morally right, and what is conventionally
and incidentally brings to bear on the whole
the way in which the
acceptable,
is
to
used
cloak
the
One
often
conventionally
morally unacceptable.
acceptable
of Hill's grim jokes, deployed in such a way that the laughter is precisely propor
tionate
situation
tinues,
to
the
that
needs
of
the wit
ironic
becomes
It
exposure.
mannered.
is when
But
here
the
it does
irony
not.
is
excess
in
So
the
the
of
poem
con
remorselessly.
As
estimated,
sufficient,
you
to that
One feels the little quibbling movement
As
estimated,
you
died.
Things
marched,
end.
in
died.
as, without wishing to verbalise it, Hill points to the disturbing contrast between
the well-functioning
timetable and what it achieved. "Things marched" has the
tread of pompous authority, immediately, in the next line, qualified by the pain
so much energy was needed, and released, for
fully accurate recognition that just
'Sufficient' implies economy, but it also implies a conscious
the extermination.
un
qualification of the heavy, pompous tread of authority. The quiet function of
more
its
fulfilled
One
also
programme, perhaps
pretentious machinery
lethally.
notices
here
now
the
lineation
gauges,
exactly,
the flow
and
retraction
and impulse, and how this exact rhythmical flow is so much a part of
It is speech articulated, but
delivery of response and evaluation.
verse Hne-ending, a formal control of
convention
via
the
of
provides,
of sense emphasis, by locking with, or breaking, the syntactical flow.
110
of
meaning
the sensuous
the lineation
rhythm, and
Thus in the
stanza
third
the
the
as
confession,
is broken
syntax
it were,
of the
the
by
lineation
poem's
at
exactly
source
(partial)
those
at which
parts
is most
painful:
( I have made
an
elegy for myself it
is true)
slightly awkward break after 'it' not only forces the reading speed down
The
in
pace,
word-by-word
an
itself
to
approximation
the
the
of
pain
to a
but
confession,
emphasises the whole idea. By placing emphasis on the unspecifying pronoun Hill
is able to say two things: that the elegy was made for himself (at least, in part)
in
mourning
'it' may
also
since
But
all
I have
but
do,
one
another
is also
to the whole
refer
also
an
made
on
elegy
a
an
in detailed fact; both for someone other than myself.
the difficulty of the poet, who wishes, for a variety
monstrousness
such
of
but
events,
has
condition.*
as we
true
imaginatively,
Thus he is able to point to
of reasons, to approach the
about
compunction
own
for myself,
elegy
True
event.
'true'
one's
with
commiserating
I have made
event;
so. He
doing
tactfully
touches for instance on the overweening
ambition of the poet who hitches his
talent to this powerful subject, thereby giving his work an impetus it may not be
fully entitled to, since, only the victim, herself, would be entitled to derive this
kind of Ibenefit'. But he also modestly pleads, I think, with 'it/is true' that what
a
a proper
ever the reasons for his writing such an
elegy,
regard for the victim,
true and unambitious feeling, was present and used. I hope enough has been said
here to point to Hill's use of irony at its best, and to indicate that the tact with
which
uses
he
tent
his
operates with
The
language.
a convention
is not
language
immersed
to remain
an
in, but
which
the
of
employment
The
scrupulousness.
theme
of manners
active
he
is
like the pity,
scrupulousness,
con
inertly
as
convention
it co
is in the
it.
permeates
3
as it has affected English
In pointing to the importance of the Imagist movement
and American poetry, one is of course considering how central the image has be
come
is
strange
in common.
elements
certain
of
for
and
the writing,
about
this
is that
instrument
hermetic
The
and
of Pound's
Stramm,
Eliot's
See
of,
considering
unrelated
considered
the
images
valuable
are
also
no
5 of
'Funeral
of
poems
earlier
ora
a variation
nobis'
Seraphs who descend
Ill
Criticism
sake.
earlier
In
clear
the
has
century
and
poetry.
poets
ap
had certain formal
period
image,
expressionist
indicated,6
as well
as
seemingly
poetry
as the
the poem disdains the use of syntactical connec
image the whole burden of expressive meaning
one finds this pre-occupation with the image in
feels that sometimes the syntactical connections
Music',
pro
Ungaretti's
use
the hard,
Hamburger
When
'Ora,
twentieth
movements
in modes which
poems
for its own
as Michael
used,
only needful flesh of the poem;
tions, thereby placing upon the
and impulse. To a lesser extent
Lorca; although even here one
*
the
apparently
ignorant of each other were writing
parently
as an
in
both
What
of
we
this
idea:
chant
it is not
to pity but ourselves.
are used to lay stress on the image thereby placing on it a similar labour. The im
and
age becomes that point at which an ignition of all the elements of meaning
response
takes
is, not
that
place;
do
only
the
meaning
and
their
get
impulses
ex
occurs even
are given their
principal impetus. This
pressed, but at that point
with the hard clear image calmly delivered. Hill has been both the innocent par
taker and victim in this. He has used and been used. This is partly because of
course the age as it were reeks of such practice. But with Hill one also feels that
the choice has been made because he has come to recognize that the use of the
it
the intensity he wishes to express. Through
image can properly communicate
he can express the intensity, but fix it in such a way that it will evaluate the
concerns of the poem it is embedded in without its intensity over-ruling the other
parts. The intensity finds in its own kind of formality its own controlling expres
sion.
At
same
the
existence.
unmodest
the
time,
It can
as artifact
image
be
but
regarded,
has
it
a
perhaps
is also useful.
and
satisfactory
Curiously
not
enough,
although the impression of imagery in Hill is, in my mind at least, strong, check
ing through the poetry, one is surprised at how controlled is the frequency of the
kind of imagery I am thinking of. There are many instances of images used to
represent
events.
creatures,
objects,
it
But
is as
though
the
image
whereby
one
a
object is enriched by the verbal presence of another, combined with it, and
a creation were
as so
such
third thing made?as
recognised
potentially
though
use it
powerful, and so open to abuse, that he was especially careful to
sparingly.
And he is, rightly, suspicious of offering confection to readers who enjoy the local
richness without taking to them the full meaning of the poem, which is only sus
ceptible
to
patience
and
a care
Anguish
it is as
for what
a whole
bloated by the replete scream
I could cry 'Death! Death!'
To
exacerbate
But
refrain.
Lifting
To
sniff
thing.
suave
that
For
I am
the
says
as much:
. . .
as though
power;
circumspect,
the spicy lid of my
at
He
tact
myrrh.7
images have a richness, but here he is not so much reproaching himself for
that, although he implies such a possibility, but rather for the perhaps evasive
The
caution
which
is characterized
by
'tact'.
The
self-questioning
exposes
further
re
cessions of self-doubts and questions, themselves seen to be faintly absurd. There
are other examples, however, of the kind of image I am describing:
Bland vistas milky with
Jehovah's calm?8
and
cleanly
maggots
tomilk9
112
churning
spleen
a
from
concentration
another
for
poem
Robert
victim,
camp
we are dying
to satisfy fat Caritas,
jaws of stone10
Wiped
and
from
the
those
Faustus:
Dr.
earlier
and
Desnos;
A way of many ways : a god
Spirals in the pure steam of blood.11
is noticeable
What
disparate
the moment
of
sense
of
More
sudden
Outrage
often
at
or
in often
combine
intolerable
that has behind
it a
situation.
that
are
images
elements
the
issuing from a disgust
judgements
this
the
when
expansion,
and produce
antipathy
in which they combine
occurs at its fullest in
about these images, chosen for the way
is their ferocity. Their expressiveness
elements,
of
combinations
'abstract',
and
adjectives
nouns,
whose conjunction is ironically disruptive, but with a similar moral evaluation in
tended. Thus in one of Hill's best shorter poems, 'Ovid in the Third Reich', we
his
confront
again
concern
obsessive
justly
with
or
its mutilation,
and
innocence,
the context of human barbarism:
impossibility, within
Too near the ancient troughs of blood
is no
Innocence
The
notion
of
way
as
to
as
innocence
a defence
it is linked with
lineage; but here
in a very
weapon
suggest
earthly
weapon.12
earthly
against
the more
literal
sense.
Of
an
has
corruption
ancient
a
'weapon', and in such
combative
use
what
is innocence
in such
a context? And: if it is of no use on earth, what is its use? Are we right to think
of a condition as useless because inoperative on earth? And if thus inoperative,
can
so valued
it be
in
a
context?
'heavenly'
near
Hovering
the
phrase
'earthly
substance, a little
weapon' is the phrase (no) 'earthly good' with its worn-through
restored by Hill's regenerative irony. In these two lines Hill returns of course to
the
consideration
'Genesis'
of
There is no bloodless myth will hold.
'Ovid'
(The
poem suggests to me an Eichmann-like
figure?not Eichmann?with
whom the reader in his ordinariness and banality is invited to identify, thus be
ing asked to make the connection with that other aspect of Eichmann, his evil.
Ovid's
guilt?in
There
exile
may
case we
are
many
seen
be
sully
to
an
examples
form (the device which
parallel
our
innocence?already
of these
inability,
sullied.
'abstract'
has built into it a moral
or
113
Criticism
with
)
combinations,
judgement).
fastidious trumpets
into the ruck13
Shrilling
to associate
reluctance,
often
Thus
zeugmatic
in
and
my
and,
at
funeral
the
of
And
from Mercian
again
a scene
relish,
the
where
zeugma
punning
the
successive
ad
by the former:
was
He
light, bread, filth14
Offa,
King
jective suffers qualification
love
wounds,
justice,
Derisive
defunct.
were
They
perfunctory.15
the man who
Hymns,
has
imagined, with
ambiguous
torture
of
strolled back to the
his lips and hands. He
wiped
car, with
souvenirs
discreet
for
. . .
consolation
'Discreet' is not an image precisely, but it produces an image of a man hiddenly
guilty, voyeur upon his own imagination, which is however discreet in that it is
secret. It has not tortured another's flesh.
In those instances, where Hill's intensity is released, I have tried to show that
it is through images, of several kinds, that the sudden evaluative expansion oc
curs.
Hill
has
in a more
more
response,
tinuous
But,
of
visualization.
but
narrative,
sometimes
tensities,
in
concerned
earlier
the
are released
judgement?all
is the moment
been
recently
way.
gradual
a
conjunction
rich,
meaning
the intense
especially,
at that sudden moment
has
Hill's
sensuously
to accumulate
work
poetry
of
imagistic
and
nearly
more
A
impulsions.
always
response
evaluation,
of expansion which
consisted
often
and
scrupulously
of,
con
not
conjunction
evaluative.
in
of
4
The
imagistic
course
ered
related
a
as
Victorian
principles
tempt
impulsion
to
re-action,
the
in Hill's work,
narrative
of
question
out
developed
as both
of
an
antipathy
discursiveness.
for
poetry. That was not the sum of its antipathies,
and
to enact,
the
practice,
rather
than
that
assert,
is of
imagistic and image-making,
and
the
Imagism,
discursive
consid
nature
of
but it is clear, from the
constituted,
among
Imagism
a
to
It wanted
response.
other
cut
from
an
things,
it those
at
di
lutions of response which had rendered a verse that was vaguely descriptive of
states of feelings, and it found a method.
It found in the image a pure answer.
That is, it found in the image something that could not be adulterated. An image
did not attempt to explain; it rendered the verbal equivalent of what was seen,
and the more it rendered exactly what it saw, the better. Clearly his kind of anti
dote was needed in English poetry and we are still receiving its benefits. Yet the
difficulty lay in that by nature, the hard, clear image, untroubled by a discursive
reflectiveness, had little or no valency. It could only accommodate other images,
it could not accommodate
perhaps of different intensities and implications, and
the syntax of argument or narrative. And despite what its claim implied, it could
connections of any kind: Imagism had to select very care
hardly accommodate
its
its being diluted.
and
methods
could not easily be used without
fully indeed,
114
to dilute its purity would have been to have
And. at that stage in its development,
it gained in intensity it lost in its capacity to cope
annulled its impetus. What
a
with
of
range
experience.
This is immediately apparent when we consider Imagism in relation to the war.
This is not the place to speak in detail of, for instance, Aldington
and Herbert
Read, but, briefly, I should like to instance two very different poems by Read?
to
'The Happy Warrior
and 'The End of a War'16. In the first Read manages
make
war
his
of
an
experience
render
of
to make
is, he manages
That
poem.
set of
Imagist
a
very
'syntax'
Imagism
particular
a set of
to render,
and
But
by
arguments.
implication,
once
not be
could
the poem
Moreover,
done,
repeated.
to
careful
responses
is one
instance,
this
for
relies,
its
the
combat,
which,
read
deepest
poem 'The Character of the Happy
ing, on its being correlated with Wordsworth's
Warrior' of which it is also a criticism. But the fact that it needs, finally, this cor
relation with a poem that is anything but imagistic places Read's poem in a spe
cial relation to Imagism. Nothing
like this that I know of in Imagist poetry had
been done before, and one suspects that Read found his necessities out of what
he
called
war's
'terrorful
and
In his autobiography,
inhuman
events'.
The Contrary Experience,
Read wrote:
I criticised [the Imagists] because in their manifestoes
they had renounced
the decorative word, but their sea-violets and wild hyacinths tend to become
as decorative as the beryls and
I also accused them of
jades of Oscar Wilde.
that
lacking
We were
ful
aesthetic
selection
trying to maintain
and
inhuman
which
is the
most
artist's
an abstract aesthetic
. . .
duty.
peculiar
ideal in the midst
of terror
events.17
There is of course a skeletal narrative structure in The Happy Warrior' but poems
could hardly be written like that of any length and complexity. In his subsequent
'war poems', those composing Naked Warriors
(1919), we see Read introducing
to enervate
imagistic
are much
diluted
elements
by
imagistic
In other
had
Read
relied,
words,
poetry.
to render
and
elements
intensity
expressiveness,
the
but
narrative,
the
a way
in such
it, and
as he had
to, upon
of
but
the collision
as
the
the
two modes produced compromise. By the time Read came to write The End of a
a solution; he
War
pushed the narrative
(published 1933) he had worked out
outside
the
poem,
setting
the
scene
and
describing
the
events
of
the
episode
in a
prefacing prose argument which, though essential to the reading of the poem, is
in ambiguous relationship to it, and without any relationship to it structurally.
Hill is clearly a poet having little in common with Read, but he has, I think,
similar problems engaging him. 'Genesis' for instance is held together by using
days of the week as a means of tabulating impulsions in sequence. The sequence
of days is important to the poem structurally, and through it Hill tries to initiate
an
image
of
back to God's
ence so much
115
growing
consciousness.
Yet
it
is
only
a
proper
sequence
as
it refers
six days of work. The poem itself does not have narrative coher
as a sequence of formularizations;
in his subsequent work Hill
Criticism
and to a lesser extent,
this kind of stylization,
abandoned
the incipient narrative
structure.
With
'Funeral
the
Music',
one
at
that
note,
prose
time
the
preceded
poem,
stands in similar elucidatory relation to it as Read's 'Argument' does to 'The End
of a War'. Less perhaps, or perhaps less in Hill's mind, for the note has, in King
Log itself, been placed at the end of the book, and separate from the poems, as
though Hill were determined, with such a gesture, to make Tuneral Music' un
needful
of
any
elucidatory
material.
The
not
do
poems
form
a narrative
sequence,
in
into some deliberately
(of Towton)
although they lead through the battle
at
cost
in
and
excoriation.
the
both
spiritual
complete attempt
evaluating
physical
Evaluation ismade partly by reference to a supposed, or possibly supposed, after
if anywhere be
the ideals of an exemplary spiritual life would
life, in which
found; partly by reference to this, or to eternity, yet into which no sense of hu
man evaluation
can be extended with
the certainty of finding corroborative
:
'echoes'*
If it iswithout
we
when
Consequence
If it is not,
all
vaunt
are
echoes
and
or
suffer,
same
the
In such eternity. Then tell me, love,
How that should comfort us?18
Even supposed notions of an after-life, with its spiritual absolutes, are insufficient
here since the first of the unrhymed sonnets opens in platonic supposition; that is,
the platonic structure throws into ambiguity the question as to whether we are to
suppose an after-life is to be believed in; does this by supplanting the idea of an
after-life with its own metaphysical
scheme. I am indicating here that in Hill's
structure,
developed
tion itmight
his
of
and
sequences
he meets
poems,
longer
the
works
problem
that
without
fulfill in his work. Fearful
usefully
of
work,
extended
sullying
that
of
compression,
demand
some
conceding
of sacrificing
correspondingly
a func
to narrative
the imagistic purity
a dramatic
imparing
or
enactment,
mimesis of psychological
impulsions, he prefers to accumulate intensities rather than
involve them in accumulating and continuous action. This may partly be due to the
that by dramatic mimesis
introduces to the
preference Hill shows for writing
reader
the
internal
battle
impulsions
and
of Towton,
rather
than
action.
dramatic
its murderousness,
is not
Thus
encapsulated
in
'Funeral
as
Music',
dramatic
ac
tion, but brooded on after the event, thereby allowing the external state of the
field and the state of the mind experiencing and responding to it to meet. It is
the doubts, the beliefs half-held with a conviction of personal
the self-questioning,
and the state of the spirit, that interest Hill, rather than the
motives
the
honesty,
narrative.
these things too have their form of col
action
of
Nevertheless,
shaping
lision with other minds, and through action, alter and are altered. And they could
also, I feel, build a narrative unity that Hill has only tentatively, if at all, used.
One
*
of
the most
Compare with
116
interesting
and
moving
aspects
of
'Funeral
the first stanza of 'Ovid in the Third Reich'.
Music'
is its
plain
ness. The
to
images in the following passage
the
colour-up
posedly
of the
nor
passage,
or make
enlarge
is
more
do not fabricate, either a local richness
an
there
over-arching
the events
significant
and
image
the
to
employed
to
responses
sup
those
observer-participant:
'At noon,
As the armies met, each mirrored the other;
Neither was outshone. So they flashed and vanished
And all that survived them was the stark ground
Of this pain. Imade no sound, but once
I stiffened as though a remote cry
Had
heralded
name.
my
It was
. . .'
nothing
Reddish ice tinged the reeds; dislodged, a few
Feathers drifted across; carrion birds
Strutted upon the armour of the dead.19
An Ecclesiastes-like
consideration of vanity moves in these first lines, located in
the ironic flashing of the armies mirrored in each other's armour. But they do not
see themselves; they see only the flash of their own
they are,
pride by which
each of them, dazzled. Yet with an honesty that compels a grudging kind of ad
we
mission,
are
also
told
was
theirs
that
a kind
of
sad
'glory':
was
'Neither
out
shone'. But this is also qualified by the other idea inherent in the phrase?that
neither had more pride, nor was more capable of victory; what is impending is
not the surfeiting of pride but its extinction in the futility of combat. If they mir
ror
each
other's
mirror
also
they
pride
each
other's
The
destruction.
strutting
carrion birds confirm this judgement.
Yet impressive as this is as narration implicated with judgement, and pity, there
is also a turning inwards and sealing off from the outward visible of all this in
this pain.' The ground is at once the actual
the ambiguous 'the stark ground/Of
on each other; it is also, because of the dis
ground where soldiers inflicted pain
position of the syntax, a kind of personification where the ground itself becomes
absorbed in the huge lingering tremor of pain. This serves to incarcerate the
and
perhaps
to release
him
reader,
think,
ised
that
the writer
results
there
more
this by resuming
ognize
in
pentameter,
these
a
from
in an
also,
pre-occupation
than
response
it also
but
fails,
response,
inescapable
so internal
has been
where
the event
event
itself.
The
lines,
and
the
throughout
but as a framework within
unifying
his supple impulses and retractions of rhythm:
though
a remote
second
line
the expectations
117
Criticism
begins
with
a
slow,
of the pentameter
regular
pentameter;
are reduced
not
Hill
merely
a
can make
cry
Had heralded my name. Itwas nothing
Reddish ice tinged the reeds; dislodged,
Feathers drifted across.
The
serves
to rec
sense of the
The
and around which
function
'. . . as
sequence,
seems
passage
its re-creation of the desolate battlefield.
I
a few
after
the
in the foreshortened
word
'name',
remainder of
the
line,
the
exactly
reducing
the
of
expectations
in
person
the
as
poem
his
feel
is extended. The other
In the next line the pentameter
ings are disappointed.
on the surface of the battle-field.
events
is
voice
minute
describing
speaking
isolated, and mirrors the dis
'Dislodged' in its participial form, is syntactically
connectedness
the
of
a bird,
from
feathers,
on
falls
emphasis
'few'
and
thus
or
some
serves
to re-create
the
sensuously
stillness
of
the
its own
no
from
3 of
the
of
the
sound
on earth, but is earth.20
is like nothing
Which
lines,
reflects
but
plume,
is
battle-field which
These
martial
from the living. In the little halting move
the line-break emphasises,
the temporary
also the disconnectedness
of the dead
ment at the end of the line, which
serve
sequence,
to
the
pre-resonate
irony
situation, where the dead are unearthly
(because of the possibility of the dead
an after-life) but are for us no more than the earth they have been re
having
duced to by human action. Seen in this way,
'Funeral Music
is, among other
a consideration
things,
tinuation
an
of war
where
to use
war',
of state policy by other means'. The
examination
of
a
pride,
self-examination
Clausewitz's
sequence
the
of
'is a
strategy
con
is at once an elegy of pity,
responses
to
appropriate
this
in human living. It is all these in relation to the question as to
apparent
in earthly life; and whether
whether
there exists
suffering has any meaning,
some ideal
in
is perhaps
which
which
and/or
platonic
spiritual system
suffering,
the only state during which we are innocent, can have a meaningful
and positive
constant
place.
5
Sebastian
Arrurruz
('The
of
Songbook
Sebastian
as
was,
Arrurruz')
now
we
who has bewilderedly
survived into the
know, not an actual poet (1868-1922)
twentieth century, but an invention that may have perplexed critics searching
for the original work.
The
lack
of
sion regarding
of
the
poems
to
poetry.
on
the
of
the
poet
themselves.
The
a
may
poems
towards both
In
'silence'
necessary
sense
the
the
poem,
refer
obliquely
both of himself
the oblivion
certain attitudes
and
use
makes
poem
information
by
(discontinued)
or
group,
are
Arrurruz
relationship
is Hill's
The
'original'.
own
apprehen
and is thus a wry part
and his work,
composed
the
surrounding
to Arrurruz's
also
with
records
But
Mauberley.
of
his mistress
where
Pound is using himself, both for what he feels himself to be kin to as a poet, and
to in the effete and vulgar English
for what the figure stands in contradistinction
culture, Hill's Sebastian
(the saint pierced with arrows) is more separate from
the poet who has shaped him.
Arrurruz (arrowroot) is a man pierced by the arrow (another's pr?dation upon
his
relinquished
wife);
the
arrow
remains
rooted
in
him.
He
is
also
a man,
and with the incising gift
the root of an arrow, himself equipped, organically,
of the poet. Though both these, in the poem, are laconically expressed, and sur
vive increasingly on the wryly self-regretful memory of what once obtained. But
118
this double image, of potency, and the quite powerful if intermittent observation
of it, serves to illustrate, among other things, the fate of The Poet surviving
a bardic
eras. The
vigour unimpeded
original potency may have had
through two
by a self-conscious and mocking observation of its impulsions; but the later work
of Arrurruz
we
that
In
phasis.
as
recollecting
these
are
offered
we
poems
a considerable
presents
have,
initially,
in
shift
a man
so much
not
em
and
temper
passion
expressing
it:
Ten
without
years
so it
For
you.
. . .
happens.
long-lost words of choice and valediction.21
The
The energy is not in the passion itself, but re-located in the stare the recollects it,
and which is itself observed. Arrurruz's writing is at once more complex than it
the auto-biographical
was, and, significantly, more difficult to achieve. Whatever
as he
references may amount to, Hill is clearly defining the poet's difficulties
an
encounters
The
those
more
and
self-conscious
less
bardic.
and
man,
middle-aging
it. Yet
knows
his
are
struggles
one.
a defeated
of
once
is at
that
and modern.
scrupulous
a
is of course
Arrurruz
not
environment
is
attention
'One
cannot
I can
one
lose what
for
So much
that
abrasive
I want.
lose what
not
has
gem.
I want
possessed.'
you.22
first line is between inverted commas because it is a line from a poem he is
in
writing or has perhaps recently completed. Either way the line is embedded
The
commentary
an
by
more
older,
self-conscious,
the first of four that constitute
to serenade
contrasting
which
coplas
poems.
Some measure
these
definitions
form
form
simple
neither
nor
a serenade,
course
traditional
is of
also
of Hill's
with
the man.
of
'songs', perhaps
are
They
the beloved.
The
complex.
unironic
and
unself-regarding
part
the poem?are
stance
the
are
irony here may
of
the
lyrically
be obtained
by
Arrurruz's
present
but
allusive,
unlyrical,
therefore
accumulated
popular,
it has
and
used
often
poems,
popular
is
'Coplas?this
somewhat
and
to
itself the energy of those poems which have earlier filled the form. But like so
much else in the twentieth century, the traditional form has broken down. Or
not
rather,
so much
that we have
Much
of
as become
broken
lost the ability
centres
this
in
the
phrase
and
inappropriate;
to use the form. We
'abrasive
have
gem'.
not
this,
entirely,
but
lost spontaneity.
It
is abrasive
because
it is a
reminder of what he has lost. It is a gem because it is a lyrical utterance faceted
and cut like a jewel. Hill however uses 'gem' to bring in other, colloquial mean
ings.
does,
Thus
mean
gem
it
can mean,
ironically
a real
and
beauty,
but
self-contemptuously.
the
poet
The
can
also,
and
self-contempt
certainly
arises
here
from
not only his awareness of his having lost his wife to another, but of how his line
of poetry untruthfully renders in lyrical terms a considerably unlyrical event. Ar
our awareness the discontinuity between the two ways of
rurruz
brings to his and
119
Criticism
at
looking
or
cising
an
such
and
event,
consolatory
two ways
the
sweetness
to be
got;
born; and is replaced by the unparadoxical
I can
of Arrurruz's
paradox
and unironical
I want.
lose what
I want
is
poem
elegi
still
lack of consolation:
you.
there is already a modification
But in the second of the coplas
is no
it. There
about
of writing
the
of the harsh tone:
Oh my dear one, I shall grieve for you
For the rest of my life with slightly
one.
dear
oh my
cadence,
Varying
The tone of this first line softens that of the previous coplas' ending. He is it
seems back in the convention
of elegizing
the lost one. But the phrase 'with
Is the irony conscious
cadence'
the
whole
with
mockery.
tinges
slightly/Varying
on Arrurruz's part, or is it reserved for the reader's inspection only? It hardly
matters.
how
The
absurd
ginning
to write
a
such
of
monotony
the irony qualifies
into clarity
poetry
on
feeds
that
is
poetics
such
not dissolve the passion, a crucial point for the poems
the half-truth.' Michael Hamburger wrote of H?lderlin
understand
even be
is perhaps
awareness.
ironic
we
and
rendered,
situation. He
the whole
Yet
the
irony
can
that follow: 'Half-mocking
in Reason and Energy:
Even before his enforced separation from Susette Gontard he had felt that
his fate would be a tragic one. . . . Now he had to lose his last support
against the sense of personal tragedy. As he had foretold in 1798, all that
remained was his art and the quite impersonal faith that sustained his art.
. . .What H?lderlin did not know when he wrote this
poem is that long
after
his
heart
had
tinue; that the music
So
with
dilapidating
the
age,
prevent
in
Arrurruz,
nor
indeed
he
a
now
Not
way.
his
says,
"mellow
would
song"
the
event
in his
by
mimesis,
life,
nor
with
now
his
wife,
his
with
musing,
temperament,
into oblivion. One might
placing
at
the
con
escort him down.
increasing
irony on his loss, seeing that the earlier way of writing will
his gentle decline
degenerate,
as
died,
of his strings would
reader's
nothing
therefore
disposal
an
fit neither
it seems
can
expect the poems
irreversable
to
picture
of disintegration,
among a flickering irony. This does not occur. What Arrurruz
could not have foreseen, since he was engaged in it, was that his ironically truth
ful examination of the events in his life, including his poetry, would revitalise his
art. For I take it that the succeeding poems of the 'Songbook' are not only made
of Arrurruz speaking but of his writing. If so, there is no failure, but rather, re
generation.
In
poem
5 Arrurruz
can
to,
respond
deprivation:
I find myself
Devouring
verses
of
stranger
And exile. The exact words
120
passion
or write,
a
poem
of
genuine
Are fed into my blank hunger for you.23
A hunger that may not be fed; therefore blank. The crucial word however for
the poet is 'exact'. The gaze has caught its truth. The reward is exactness, and its
pain. Similarly in 'A Song from Armenia':
do
Why
Your
I have
mouth,
as a lizard,
Deft
even
to relive,
and
hand
your
like a sinew
now,
running
of water.24
me
over
The emphatic, simplified movement of the song has returned, but this time filled
with rich, painful memories,
constantly re-awakened. And admitted into his con
sciousness by the wry ironic truthfulness with which the mind regards such ex
perience. It is not the distancing irony of the man who can afford irony because
he is detached, but an irony created in pain. The relationship may have ceased,
but the pain does not get subsumed in distance. There are two final twists to the
'life', both occurring in the second of the prose poems which concludes the se
quence:
Scarcely speaking: it becomes as a
Coolness between neighbours. Often
There is this orgy of sleep. I wake
To caress propriety with odd words
And enjoy abstinence in a vocation
Of
new-almost-meaningless
despair.
reverses the ironic vitality I have noticed,
a
'Orgy of Sleep' oddly
suggesting
a
in
inwards
life.
transcribed
caressed
The
of
sexuality gets
dying
'propriety*.
Yet the last word is despair. The registration is in the end one of feeling.
Is there a further irony in that Arrurruz, caught up with an exact sense of it,
can
no
longer
earlier more
Arrurruz
this
experiences
as both
an
a distant
tures'.
As
make
out
poems
might
two
often
temptations.
of and
and neutered
happens,
his
because
pain
I think not;
seem
expression
it
of
rhetorical mode?
to have
One
a
is
been
to
the
to his
succumbs
to neither
threat.
As
a
earlier
experience.
irony from his pain. This
Arrurruz
equipment
one can
to his
succumb
response
his
although
The
latter gets
to an
belonged
imagine
saint,
latter-day
inexact
other
that for
he
rhetoric,
is
suggested
to create
in 'Pos
temptation.
6
the Arrurruz sequence, the thirty prose poems that make up Mercian
a central figure from whom the poems depend, in this instance King
have
Hymns
... in the years AD
as Hill tells us, Offa reigned over Mercia
Offa. Historically,
times he was already becoming a creature of
757-796. During earlier medieval
is
not
the gloss
entirely helpful in that the reader does not find
legend. However
a historical reconstruction of the King and his domain. Interleaved with a recon
As with
121
Criticism
struction
some
of
of
the
acts
Kings
are
and
passages
whole
with
concerned
poems
the contemporary and representative
figure Hill makes of himself. Why not? Ad
thwarts any attempt by the reader to keep his or
ditionally, the poem deliberately
her imagination safe in the past. The King himself, although rooted in the past, is
to be 'most usefully . . . regarded as the presiding genius of the West Midlands',
and thus threads "his" way in and out of his past and our present. Hill makes
quite sure we get this by offering, in the first Hymn, a description of the figure
as
the riven sand
King of the perennial holly-groves,
stone: overlord of the M5: architect of the his
toric
and
rampart
ditch.
. . ,25
the historic facts of Offa the King are relevant, if tangled, and we
Nevertheless
should look at them. Entangled with them however are Hill's references them
selves: (i) Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader
(1950, pp. 170-80) and (ii) The Latin
prose hymns or canticles of the early Christian Church; The Penguin Book of
Latin Verse, (1962, pp. xvii, lv).
The interested reader will not be glad to discover that although there is a
in Anglo-Saxon,
group of Hymns
quoted by Sweet, these texts are interlineally
Latin
from
the
taken
the Vulgate, of which these are literal and ap
with
placed
not
parently
always
accurate
Moreover
translations.
it has
been
that
suggested
these translations embody no sense of the haeccity of the Mercian domain, or of
the Anglo-Saxon world at large. That is, they were probably intended as instruc
tional texts for the teaching of Latin. Moreover
the two Vulgates are themselves
the relevant Biblical references being
of course translations from the Hebrew,
made
The
by
first
joke, Hill's
is
Saxon
reference
pointing
concerned,
homogeneity
did
The
whose
rule,
at
Sweet
second
the
head
then
of
than
each
translation
Anglo-Saxon
that,
elaborate,
no more,
as far
by
that stems of course from a geographical
reign may
reference
is
or may
not have
as
apparently
witnessed
the
these
Latin).
heavy-witted
as the
Anglo
Mercian
a
dialect,
area over which
"Te
oblique:
the
(from
some
from
apart
indicates
Hymns
a
sanctioned
homogeneity
suggests
to the Mercian
King Offa
translations.
Deum",
a
in
canticle
rhythmical prose, has been used in Christian worship from the fourth century to
the present day. ... As the Jewish psalter was the sole hymn-book of the early
church, it is not surprising that the "Te Deum" is characterized throughout by the
ancient Hebrew poetry.'26 As it happens, there
parallelism which is the basis of
use
no
in Hill's poems other than those
to
Hebrew
be
of
appears
parallelism
contact
have crept into our speech and
traces which,
with
the
Bible,
through
left there residually a few emphatic forms. Yet checking, in fact, through the
and Luke (which
relevant Biblical passages in Isaiah, Deuteronomy,
Habakkuk,
are the original texts for Sweet's Mercian Hymns)
I found, almost by accident,
and by linking my apprehension of rhythm in these English passages with the
phrase
quoted
to follow
obliquity.
122
earlier?'the
"Te
Deum",
the point of the references,
a
canticle
and even
in
rhythmical
to give grudging
prose'?I
assent
began
to their
It is helpful to remember that much of the Old Testament is, in the Hebrew,
poetry, and that in rendering the translations in English of the Authorized Ver
sion, what
these
offer
us
is, precisely,
'rhythmical
prose'.
it is not
Moreover
merely
rhythmical prose, but prose versions of poetry, although rendered, one feels,
partly through the repetitions of parallelism, with emphatic and subtle rhythms.
It is as if the exterior device of line ending, and all those devices contingent on
this convention, have been discarded (not entirely true of Mercian Hymns); what
is left, in the main, however, is the inherent structure itself, depending more than
ever upon the rhythmical arrangement of the words. Greater stress may
get laid
on word-choice,
These
ticles,
hopeful
now
a
and
attempts
the
offer
point
is
attention
closer
at describing
of
the
charged,
references,
since,
the
upon
perhaps,
a prose poem,
meaning.
but in particular Hill's
without
falling
back
on
can
a de
scription of his own method of writing, they allow the reader to pick up, in the
best possible way, through example, the kind of poetry he is writing in Mercian
Hymns. Moreover,
although the Mercian dialect and the Anglo-Saxon
language
have little to do with the structure of the Hymns, and no comparison with the
us in a
reading of Hill's poems, I suggest that
Anglo-Saxon will profitably help
the Anglo-Saxon Mercian Hymns act as a historical filter for Hill. That is, they
remind us that the Biblical transmissions which reach us additionally passed, for
whatever
reason, through the Mercian dialect, and that however indistinct the
is
now, and however restricted King Offa's jurisdiction may have been,
locality
Biblical contact was made via Mercia, which is also Offa's and Hill's locality.
As for the relevance of the Bible to King Offa, and both these to the character
32 may help:
of Offa in Hill's poems, verse 21 from Deuteronomy
They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have pro
voked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with
those which are not a people: I will provoke them to anger with a foolish
nation.
In Hill's
:
eighth poem
The mad
are
predators. Too often lately they harbour
us. A
against
souls. Abjure
I know.
Today
law.
novel
heresy
exculpates
all maimed
it! I am the King of Mercia,
and
. . .
I name them; tomorrow I shall express the new
I dedicate
my
awakening
to this matter.
It is useful to remember that while all of chapter 32 of Deuteronomy
consists of
God's words, Moses speaks them. They have the backing of God, but are vested
in the Moses' temporal authority. Of course, Moses, the prime leader of Israel in a
to cope with, not least of all the comically
tight situation had much
frequent
But we recall that Moses was an autocratic ruler
the
Israelites.
of
backsliding
and, in this, had adequate sanction from the God of the Old Testament, who was
123
Criticism
jealous and wrathful. Curiously, those passages of the Bible translated into Anglo
Saxon stress, perhaps by accident, this aspect of God: provided we obey Him we
shall find Him loving and protective: but should we not, we shall discover his
wrath
and
useful
reminder,
The
punishments.
in
that
nature
autocratic
more
probably
such
of
anarchic
a God
was
that
the
period,
perhaps
nature
a
and
power of the Anglo-Saxon King was not unlike that of the Hebrew God.
an Introduction27
in Beowulf:
examines
R. W. Chambers
the
interestingly
character of King Offa II as well as the legends surrounding his supposed an
cestor Offa I. He points to the shuffling of the deeds of the King onto his Queen
the monks
by
of
St Alban's
as
a
way
of
their
exonerating
benefactor
of
crime.
Chambers speaks explicitly of 'the deeds of murder which, as a matter of history,
us to link the autocratic
did characterise
[King Offa II's] reign.' History helps
nature of God with King Offa, and to see what Hill has done with this in his
Mercian
Hymns.
Finally,
The
I should quote
conduct
of
government
the same difficulties
from C. M.
rests
Sisson's Epigraph
upon
the
same
for Mercian
foundation
and
Hymns:
encounters
as the conduct of private persons.
quotation goes on to suggest that the technical aspects of government
frequently used to evade those moral laws which apply alike to individuals
The
are
and
governments.
question of the private man and his public actions is one that Hill has
such a figure as a king the
already worked in 'Ovid in the Third Reich'. With
to
in
the
direct
ratio
of
the
power
king and his abuse of it.
question multiplies
History suggests that Offa was a tyrant. In no 7 ('The Kingdom of Offa'), a part
of Offa's childhood, we have
The
Ceolred was his friend and remained so, even after
the day of the lost fighter. . . .
Ceolred let it spin through a hole
in the
classroom-floorboards.
. . .
After school he lured Ceolred, who was sniggering
with fright, down to the old quarries, and flayed
him.
he continues with his play, alone. One cannot mistake the ferocity, or the
not set out to establish the figure
egocentric peace of mind following it. Hill does
of a tyrant, since the sequence does not have that kind of narrative structure or
intention. Yet in Offa's adult Ufe the poems reproduce a similar ruthlessness to
that of the child. Thus in dealing (in no 10) with forgers of the realm's coinage:
Then
struck with account
[the King's moneyers']
able tact. They could alter the king's face.
124
Exactness
ation
. . .
failed.
in the long ditch; one eye upstaring.
Swathed bodies
to presume,
is safe
It
to deter imitation; mutil
of design
if that
the
here,
king's
anger.
'Safe' underlies the irony and helps us to refer back to his 'moneyers' who, alone,
were free to alter, that is, flatter, the face. One is reminded of the monks rewriting
the Life of King Offa their benefactor, by putting on his Queen the murder of
But the flattery tactfully (via Hill) points to the
his vassal King Aethelbert.
not
if
cruelty. Of course we see here the attempt to establish in
King's severity,
the kingdom the idea of money available only through productive work, and an
attempt to establish a concept of lawfulness. Yet one is also aware of the naked
word
gestion
moneyers',
that the
as
to
opposed
is, out
King
of
the more
'good
neutral
substance',
words
making
money.
the
with
available,
There
are
sug
many
is finally in the poem against Offa, there
qualifications here, and if the judgement
are mitigations.
In poem 14, Offa assumes the role of powerful business man:
reports and men, he put pressure on the
Dismissing
it to a crest.
blistered
wax,
He
threatened
male
factors with ash from his noon cigar.
The effect is one of humour, and opulence. The ritual 'noon' cigar suggests the
sense
power of a minor potentate. The power has its reserves; yet in the obvious
the vulgarity isminiature; he threatens with 'ash.' But ash, we recall, is what the
concentration
were
victims
camp
built-in moral
device. Men
(the line-split [male/factor]
emphasises
is light and has humour; but it engages
are
There
other
touches
of
to. One
reduced
are dismissed
opulence,
notices
the
the
with
zeugma,
as easily and
as reports
thoughtlessly
this by means of the pun). The touch
the reader only to repel him.
of
a more
private
kind,
connected
even
the contemporary man rather than a king. He has been driving (in no
17) through the beautiful 'hushed Vosges'. Some accident occurs with or between
me if it involves himself, as an adult, with these cyclists,
cyclists. It is unclear to
or himself as a child with another cyclist, or whether Hill is merging both possi
is more important is the implied lack
bilities. In a sense it hardly matters. What
more with
of
compunction,
overtakes
was
whoever
to
blame
for
the
accident.
The
car
'heartlessly'
all this and
the high valleys
He lavished on
.
its haleine..
more delicate if exotic French for 'breath', Hill is
By using, it would seem, the
able to draw attention to the discrepancy between the beauty of the country he
travels through, and the linked 'heartlessness' of the pollution and lack of con
cern for the accident. The French word is beautiful, but cold, and lacks com
punction
125
in its erasure
Criticism
of
concern.
in no
Again
18, we
return
to the
of
problem
the
with
cruelty,
contingent
prob
lem of the enjoyment of it:
At
a visitation
Pavia,
He
dungeon.
of
shut
his
some
sorrow.
Boethius'
. . .
eyes.
He willed the instruments of
Iron buckles
violence to break upon his meditation.
over them; the men
rennet
flesh
leaked
gagged;
the body.
stooped, disentangled
car,
strolled back to the
his lips and his hands. He
He wiped
with
souvenirs
discreet
for
and
consolation
philosophy.
im
irony emerges. Boethius wrote his De Consolatione
Philosophiae while
man
visits
at
tourist
Pavia
the
the
with
Pavia.
Still
the
of
prisoned
previous poem,
The
the
conscious,
intention
formal
of
with
commiserating
Boethius'
obscene
death,
at the man who could console himself with philosophy at such
and of wondering
a stage in his life. He wills himself to
tortured, perhaps
imagine the philosopher
out of a dutiful compunction, but finds that, secretly, a part of liim relishes the
are here. The
scene. 'He
wiped his lips and his hands'. Both relish and guilt
are
souvenirs
secret.
because
discreet
He
his
practises
enjoyment
on
no
man's
flesh. Yet there is a sense in which he is guilty, certainly, of unclean thoughts.
and
The contrast between the cerebral and touristic appreciation of philosophy,
the
voyeur's
of
appreciation
is notable.
cruelty
'Flesh
but, in his relish, participator.
blood curdles under the extremity of
as if itself incontinent.
controllably,
The buckles restrain the victim, and
What
is remarkable
here,
however,
Rather,
he
is not
only
voyeur,
leaked rennet over them' is horrifying; the
the suffering; the blood is said to leak, un
The wracked body becomes
truly pitiful.
perhaps muffle his cries; they also choke.
is that
the
scene
and
its
relishing
are
admitted
to. Admitted
to, but hardly confessed. It is not so much a release from guilt as a
on
the thought and its stimulation. And this judgment is as valid for
judgment
the tourist as for the king:
I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much upon the damned.28
One should be careful to avoid the impression that there is relish in Hill's re
as
creation of cruelty. The pity is not sprinkled carelessly over the Hymns,
some kind of reward to the reader, but it is present, and, in particular,
in the
finely intimate and tender no 25:
I speak this inmemory of my grandmother, whose
childhood and prime womanhood were spent in the
nailer's
126
darg.
And
It is one
thing to celebrate the 'quick forge', another
to cradle a face hare-lipped by the searing wire.
insight is crucial to the tender pity.
The
self
caused
has
it
endure
ness
It is one thing to celebrate
first maturity,
the sound
of
Even
the mutilation.
vowel
long-drawn
of
the
of
The
experience.
Ruskin's
letter,
which
the
expresses
'darg'
The poem does not indulge
bour.
in one's
in melancholy.
man
is said
begins
the
'nailer's
nature
on
'brood'
the
it
the
darg',
flow?
experience.
touches on the harsh
text
Ruskin's
on
reflections
of
of
work
a rather rapid syllabic
reductive
It consistently
to
with
the dignity
when
especially
the
phrase
isolated on a line of its own and following
phrase
the
to
another
labour,
a Worcestershire
concerning
nail
la
fac
tory, is concerned with the immorality and hypocrisy of usury. Hill is suggesting,
I imagine, that his grandmother's
labour, with that of others, borrows money
from her employer, and his profit on that represents his interest.
One has to finish. Offa dies and one is left with not so much the figure of a
an
but
man,
and
comfort,
area,
'presided
changing,
over'
and
by
filled,
a
ruler
on
balance,
an ethos
and
more
with
more
distress
more
cruel,
than
harsh,
than severely just. Capricious,
light, but capable of some consistent authority.
One may feel that the work as a whole is perhaps too inconclusive. On the other
hand, as Lawrence abjured the novelist, Hill finally refuses to tip the balance by
putting his own thumb in the scales. He is concerned with how things are (and
an evaluation of that), not firstly upon how they
ought to be; although that
also
perhaps
emerges.
Number 27 is not the last of
verse elements, and to suggest
their end, contrive to echo their
an absurd
King Offa
composition
He
The contrast
living. There
The
comic
was
the Hymns but I should like to indicate its di
how the entire set of poems, as they draw to
diversity within this one poem. At the funeral of
of mourners, from all ages, attends:
defunct.
They
were
perfunctory.
is not only between the finality of death and the continuity of the
is an absurdity contingent on death, but this is not entirely it either.
element
here
between
mediates
the
two
and
both
eases
and
recog
as Hill suggests, the more
the sharpness of the dividing line. Additionally,
man who has died, the more absurd the situation, and
and
the
public
dignified
nises
the more
susceptible
to
since
hypocrisy,
those
intimate,
mourning
connections
not, properly, exist. The pun joins the living recognitions with the dead
finally, and for good. Then follows a last stanza of
only to distinguish
nature mirrors the uprooting of the man. But
in
which
ordinary beauty,
in the largeness of the event death is seen to touch every creature. It is the
ler:
Earth
Thor,
127
Criticism
lay for a while,
butcher
of
the ghost-bride
strawberries,
and
the
of livid
shire-tree
do
man,
extra
even
level
red in the arena of its uprooting.
dripped
'Butcher
are
of
carries
strawberries'
the
right
to
order
possible,
than
other
but
simply
compress
I have
not,
Hill's,
the
as much
these
with
except
given
title of
in.
be found
may
Alvarez,
'Sylvia Plath:
American
New
Review,
1971, pp. 26-27
York,
2 For
the Unf?llen,
nos. 3, 11
as
books
references,
page
the
the volumes
poems
1 A.
in
A Memoir'
12,
1959;
London,
New
also
3
King Log, London, 1968
4
King Log
5
'September Song* (King Log)
6 Michael
Energy,
6a pp.
7'Three
The
pathos.
innocent
fruits
Hamburger,
London,
1957,
17-18.
Baroque
Reason
pp.
and
219-222;
Meditations'
(2)
are a
Mockery
of Angels'
(King
Log)
15No 27 (Mercian
Hymns)
16 "The
Warrior,"
Happy
Naked
War
riors, Herbert Read ( 1919); "The End of
aWar," The End of aWar, Read ( 1933 )
17 Herbert
rience,
Read,
London,
1963,
The
p.
Contrary
176
Expe
18 'FuneralMusic' (8)
(King Log)
19 'FuneralMusic' (7)
(King Log)
20 'FuneralMusic' (3)
(King Log)
21
(King Log)
8 'Locust
Songs' (3 ) (King Log)
9'Domaine Public (King Log)
10 'FuneralMusic' (2)
(King Log)
11For the
Unf?llen
12 from
King Log
13 'FuneralMusic* (2)
(King Log)
128
of
14 'Men
Notes
In
amount
on.
remarked
'The
Songbook
of
Sebastian
Arrur
ruz' ( 1 ) (King Log)
22 'The
Songbook' (2) (King Log)
23The
Songbook' (5) (King Log)
24 'The
Songbook' (9) (King Log)
25Mercian
Hymns, London, 1971 ( 1 )
26 Edited
by Frederick Brittain, The
Book
Harmonds
of Latin Verse,
Penguin
worth,
1962,
pp. xvi-xvii
27 R. W.
In
Chambers,
Beowulf/an
see
1932,
troduction,
pp. 31
Cambridge,
40
28"Ovid
Log)
in The Third Reich,"
(King