CHAPTER III
NATURE
Nature is the principal theme of Hughes's poetry and
his approach to it is refreshingly original.
He views
it as comprising white as well as black powers, and
accepts it with its paradoxical qualities of benevolen
and malevolence.
The natural world depicted in his
poems comprehends the concrete and palpable perceived
through the senses.
It is peopled by animals, birds,
fishes, landscape and the elements, all palpitating
with life.
Hughes is strikingly different from both
Wordsworth and Tennyson in that we do not find in them
any acceptance of the violent forces of nature.
The
present chapter accordingly attempts to bring out what
i
distinguishes Hughes as a poet of nature through an
analysis of the salient features of his nature poetry.
Wordsworth viewed nature as ’
’
Kind" ('Strange
Fits of Passion') that "never did betray / The heart
84
that loved her" ('Lines') and was
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
( 'Lines')
He saw o n l y benevolence in nature and his relationship
with it was purely filial.
Even in the weird passages
of The Prelude (as in 11. 329-33) where the poet hears
. . . among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguished motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf that they trod,
he presents nature as a teacher.
The poet apprehends
that nature wants to chastise him and is at his heels
because he has stolen a bird.
Such chastising is only
done by mothers who are the best of teachers.
He
believes that books are less instructive "Than Nature's
Self, which is the breath of God" (The P r e l u d e , 11.
219-22).
Thus nature for him is divine— a goddess who
only creates but does not destroy.
With its benign
qualities it offered him refuge from "the fretful stir /
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world" ('Lines').
Nature in its dark aspect is, of course, presented
in Tennyson's poetry, but not approved of.
Nature, as
85
seen by him, is "red in tooth and claw" (In M e m o r i a m ,
LVI, 1. 15) lending "such evil dreams" (in Kemoriam,
LV, 1. 6) and "caring for nothing" (In Memor i a m , IVI,
I. 4);
is a monster . . . a discord" (In Memoriam,
LVI, IX. 21-22).
This view of nature in Tennyson was
mainly fostered by Hallam's premature death; it
represents a protest rather than a conviction.
While
the poet is aware that nature embodies both forces of
life and death— "I bring to life, I bring to death"
(In M e m o r i a m , LVI, 1. 6), at the same time he does not
approve of its malevolence:
For nature is one with rapine, a harm no
preacher can heal;
The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the
swallow spear'd by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a
world of plunder and prey.
(Maud, LV, 4)
Living in,an age of conflict between religion and
science, Tennyson was in a dilemma as an intellectual,
his melancholy intensified by Hallam's untimely death.
His confusion was later resolved in favour of religion
and God; now nature seemed to him "like an open book /
No longer half-akin to brute" (In M e m o r i a m , last poem,
II. 132-33).
86
Hughes’
s response to nature is a balanced one
and not one-sided, which we do not find in Wordsworth
nor in Tennyson (who cannot come to terms with violence
in nature).
He recognizes its paradoxical qualities
of meekness and aggression, represented by both hawk
and mouse, jaguar and fox, wolf and rabbit, pike and
salmon.
Nature, as he sees it, accommodates the prey
as well as the predator; this reminds us pf Shelley* s
vision of the West Wind which both destroys and
preserves.
It is the tension between the two
antithetical forces of preservation and destruction
signified by ’
food-chain' that helps maintain the
ecological balance of the world.
absorbed in "tearing off heads—
Thus Hughes's hawk
/ The allotment of
death" ('Hawk R o o sting1 in L u p e r c a l ) checks the
proliferation of vermin, which would otherwise lead
to ecological imbalance.
The pike are "Killers
from the egg" ('Pike' in L u p e r c a l ).
In the poem of
this title the narrator keeps three pikes
. . . behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: fed fry to them—
Suddenly there were two. Finally one.
The extreme voracity of the pikes reduces their number
87
to just one.
Their cannibalism is vital for the
survival of the aquatic life: it regulates and controls
their number, thus preserving the much needed balance
in nature; judged from this point of view,
destruction could be seen as a complementary virtue
of nature.
Hughes attained reputation as a nature poet
with his animal poems.
His interest in animals is
traceable to his childhood days when he would collect
mice at the time of threshing
. . . snatching them from under the sheaves
as the sheaves were lifted away out of the
stack and popping them into my pocket
till I had thirty or forty crawling around
in the lining of my coat.l
He would collect toy animals:, model them in plasticine
and copy photographs of animals from "a thick
green-backed animal book" that his aunt had presented
to him on his fourth birthday.
2
He also acted as a
retriever to his brother who shot "magpies and owls
and rabbits and weasels and rats and curlews."
His
1 Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making ( 1967; rpt.
London: Faber and Faber, 1978), p. 15«
p
•5
I b i d . , pp. 15-16.
''ibid., p. 16.
88
attitude towards animals changed significantly by
the time he reached his fifteenth yearj now he felt
that by catching animals he was "disturbing their
lives," and began to look at them "from their own
point of view."4
For this reason he began observing
them closely and kept some of them as pets.
The
animal that he could not keep as a pet was the fox«
5
In this context, it is pertinent to mention that
Hughes's family moved to and settled at Mexborough
when he was seven.
There one day, while peering
cautiously into a hollow carved out by the Dearne to
discover its contents, he came face to face with a
fox just "nine inches away."
6
The fox ran away but
the abruptness and the closeness of the meeting
implanted the experience firmly in his uncosncious
and it materialized years later in the form of the
poem— 'The Thought-Fox1; this was his "first animal
7
poem."
Hughes had another experience with a foxy
creature while he was studying at Cambridge, as
recorded by W. S. Merwin:
4Ibid.
5Ibid., p. 19c
cl
7
Keith Sagar, "Hughes and his landscape," p. 8.
Ted Hughes, Po et ry in. the M a k i n g , p. 19.
89
At Cambridge he set out to study English
Literature. Hated it. Groaned having to
write those essays. Pelt he was dying of
it in some essential place. Sweated late
at night over the paper on Dr. Johnson
et all.— things he didn't want to read.
One night, very late, very tired, he went
to sleep. Saw the door open and someone
like himself come in with a fox's head. The
visitor went over to his desk, where an
unfinished essay was lying, and put his
paw on the papers, leaving a bloody mark;
then he came over to the bed, looked down
on Ted and said, 'You're killing us,' and
went out the door.8
Hughes took due notice of this admonition and
switched over from English Literature to Archaeology
and Anthropology.
This shift proved conducive to
his creative abilities as a poet and enabled him to
'catch' the fox that had eluded him for so long, and
he wrote his first ever "animal” poem 'The Thought-Fox1.
It dawned on him that writing poems and capturing
animals were similar experiences, and he realized
that with him "the two interests have been one
Q
interest."
This provides the rationale behind his
dictum that poems like animals.have a life of their
own and "nothing can be added to them or taken away
8 Quoted in The Art of Ted H u g h e s , p. 8.
^Ted Hughes, Poetry in the M a k i n g , p. 15.
90
without maiming and perhaps killing them."1^
Hughes had realized early in his life that
animals are victims of man's vagaries and ruthlessness.
This accounts for his special concern and love for
animals.
In fact, the whole world of nature, in
his view,— animals, birds, fishes and landscape and
even the elements— is the victim of man's violence.
In this he can be compared with John Clare in whose
poem 'Badger' hunters catch a badger and "bait him
all day with many dogs" until "kicked and torn and
beaten out he lies / And leaves the hold, and
crackles, groans, and dies."
Keith Sagar's
observation that animals in Hughes are "by nature,
victims"11 is appropriate.
The jaguar in 'The Jaguar'
(The Hawk in the R a i n ) is
. o « hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills
of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the
ear—
He spins from the bars.
10Ibid„
^ " H u g h e s and his landscape," p. 7.
91
In 'Second Glance at a Jaguar' (Wo d w o )
He's wearing himself to heavy ovals,
Muttering some mantrah, some drum-song of
murder
To keep his rage brightening, making his
skin
Intolerable, spurred by the rosettes, the
cain-brands,
Wearing the spots off from the inside,
Rounding some revenge. . . .
t
Both these jaguars have been caged to be looked at
and poked with sticks and such like appliances by
spectators.
The macaw in 'Macaw and Little Miss' is
also caged "In a cage of wire-ribs / The size of a
man's head."
The bull in 'The Bull Moses' (L u p e rcal)
has been subdued b,y passing "a ring of brass through
his nostrils."
There is "The wolf with its belly
stitched full of big pebbles" in 'February' (L u p ercal).
In 'Strawberry Hill' (Lupercal) we discover "nailed
to a door / The stoat with the sun in its belly."
There is the mention of "North America / Killing the
last of the mammoths" in 'Fourth of July' (L u p e r cal).
In 'November' (Lupercali) we learn that
The keeper's gibbet had owls and hawks
By the neck, weasels, a gang of cats, crows:
Some, stiff, weightless, twirled like dry
bark bits
92
In the drilling rain.
Some still had their
shape,
Had their pride with it; hung, chins on
chests,
Patient to outwait these worst days that
beat
Their crowns bare and dripped from their
feet.
There is in 'Sunstroke' (L u p e r c a l )
. . . 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 otter has been reduced "To this long pelt over
the back of a chair" ('An Otter' in L u p e r c a l ).
The
pig in 'View of a Pig' is dead as a result of "The
gash in its throat."
In 'Coming down through Somerset'
(M o o rtown) there is a "killed badger / S p r a w l e d
with helpless legs."
The salmon in 'The Morning
Before Christmas' (R i v e r ) are deprived of their eggs
and milt. .
Man's violence does not even spare the
landscape.
Earth is
. . . invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out into the sun,
After the frightful operation.
('March Morning Unlike Others' in Mo ortown)
93
Now "She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun / To
be healed" ('March Morning Unlike Others').
It is
tortured by man who is inflicting wounds on it
through nuclear blasts and is stripping it of its
vegetation.
In 'Wind' there are
The woods crashing through darkness, the
booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the
window.
The wind sets "the fields quivering" ('Wind').
In
'New Year exhiliration1 (Moortown)
. . . the whole landscape
Is imperilled, like a tarpaulin
With the wind under it.
Even the "outcrop stone is miserly / With the wind"
('StillLife' in W o d w o ).
At times we find "The
landscape moving in sleep" ('Still Life') involuntarily
to brace itself for the routine bullying of wind and
rain.
Sometimes it "dances gravely" to the "unfurling
. . . gesture" of the "fern's frond" ('Fern' in W o d w o ).
Trees are forced to "cry" an "incomprehensible cry"
('A Wind Flashes the Grass' in W o d w o ) by the "wind."
Then they "thunder in unison" ('A Wind Flashes the
Grass') to scare the wind.
Wind and rain "humble
94
these hills" ('Crow Hill* in Luper c a l ) out of
frustration.
Nuclear experiments, chemical warfare
and senseless felling of trees by man, pollute the
atmosphere.
As a result of this the elemental forces
of nature like wind and rain are polluted too— their
chemical composition is disturbed, which has changed
their behaviour.
The atmosphere made poisonous everyday,
could lead to extirpation of life on our planet if
the pollution is not stopped soon.
Hughes has firm
faith in the capability of trees purifying air naturally.
Gifforjcind Roberts write in this connection:
He wrote 'The Last Migration' for a book
whose royalties were donated to the Fauna
Preservation Society; he has written a
knowledgeable review of Max Nicholson's
The Environmental Revolution and a letter
t o The Times Educational Supplement
suggesting that schools encourage
children to plant trees.12
In his interview published in the Guardian
(23 Match 1965) Hughes said that the animals in his
pdems are "living the redeemed life of «joy."^
But
this does not apply to the majority of the animals
1 2 Ted H u g h e s : A Critical Study, p. 19.
■^Quoted in ibid., p. 66.
95
in his poems because they are mostly victims, as
shown earlier— the two jaguars are caged, the bull
is captive and the weasels, wolves, owls, cats, crows
have been killed; he has caught them in his poems
in their victimhood*
With the exception of the fox
('The Thought-Fox') and the pike ('Pike') animals in
Hughes's poems are not portrayed in their natural
habitat.
These creatures, the pikes and the fox,
could be thought of as living the "redeemed life of
joy" as they have been made immune to harm by the
printed word.
It is Hughes's compassion for the victim
animals that stimulated him to write poems about them.
Thus his intense sympathy for the fox makes him
reverse the earthly scene in his poem 'A Moon-Man Hunt'
(Poetry in the M a k i n g , p. 116).
Here things are
qpite the opposite of what they are on earth.
Foxes
in "red jackets" go on a "man-hunt" to kill "That
menace, the noble rural vermin, the gentry" who have
been perpetrating violence on them for so long.
However, getting emotionally involved with his poetic
subjects sometimes gives rise to faultiness in his
poems.
This is particularly noticeable in the earlier
96
Hughes, i.e. up to Lupercal.
The poem 'The Jaguar*
is a case in point.
The Jaguar
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the
sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire,
or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller
with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun.
The boa-constrictor's
coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares
mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying
enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of
his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the
ear—
He spins from the bars, but there's no cage
to him
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wilderness of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of
his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
97
The poem begins with a graphic description of
the afternoon scene in a zoo,14 depicting cages as
seeming "empty" and "tiger and lion" as lying "still."
Against this picture of passivity and ennui is
juxtaposed the ever active image of a jaguar
. . . hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills
of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. . . .
The restlessness of the jaguar is so intense (because
its freedom has been curbed) that he is continuously
in motion and "spins from the bars" endlessly.
The
helpless condition and the impotent rage of the
jaguar are depicted admirably.
Then the analogy between
the jaguar's "cage" and the "visionary's cell" is
introduced in the last four and a half lines of the
poem, which is by implication
also an analogy between
the jaguar and the visionary. Here we notice
a
sudden shift in the tenor of the poet's account of the
jaguar.
The earlier accent on the helpless rage of
the animal changes to admiration for its energy and
freedom.
Here, obviously, the argument of the poem
does not sustain its rigour.
What follows is an
elaboration of the analogy between
the jaguar and
the
14 Hughes worked as a zoo attendant for some time.
See The Art of Ted H u g h e s , p. 9.
98
visionary.
The concluding lines convey in effect
that for the jaguar the cage gets transformed into
a world comprehending vastness.
Just as the
visionary, through the flights of his imagination,
makes light of his confinement, the j aguar1s stride
as "wilderness of freedom" holds the cage to
ridicule.
However, pursuing another line of argument,
the reader also perceives an inherent contradiction
in the analogy: the cage frustrates the jaguar by
restricting its freedom, whereas the cell for the
visionary is a means of achieving salvation.
Hughes has said about his poems— 'The Jaguar'
and ’
A Second Glance at a J a g u a r 1:
I prefer to think of them as first,
descriptions of a jaguar, . . .
A jaguar
. . . is a symbol of m a n ’
s baser nature
shoved down into the id and growing
lccannibal murderous with deprivation, . . . ■
?
H u g h e s ’s statements about his poems are not very
explicit and straightforward; they may even mystify
the reader.
1 fi
Hughes’
s account of ’
The Jaguar' as
•^"Ted Hughes and Crow," p. 8.
■j £
*
Jonathan Raban calls "Ted Hughes and Crow"
a "marvellous peace of myth-making." See his The
Society of the Poem (London: George G. Harrap & Co.
Ltd, 19717, p. 1537
99
the description of a jaguar holds true of the poem
only until the analogy is brought i n . . The analogy
raises the animal to the level of a visionary,
transforming it into something larger than life, thus
lending it the character of an abstraction.
As a
symbol of "man's baser nature shoved down into the
id and growing cannibal murderous with deprivation"
(to use Hughes's own words) the comparison of the
jaguar with a visionary is absurd.
Through the
analogy the poet seems to suggest that though the
jaguar is physically captive, its spirit is free.
Similarly, in the two poems— 'The Bull Moses'
and
'An Otter' the poet instead of
purpose
to consistent description,
restricting
his
invests the animals,
for a while, with what looks a symbolic significance
and then reverts to physical description.
Each poem
begins with a realistic description of the animal—
its subject:
. . . the warm weight of his breathing,
The ammoniac reek of his litter, the
hotlytongued
Kash of his cud, steamed against me.
Then, slowly, as onto the mind's eye—
The brow like masonry, the deep-keeled neck.
( 'The Bull M o s e s ' )
100
Underwater eyes, an eel's
Oil of water body, neither fish nor beast
is the otter:
Four-legged yet water-gifted, to
outfish fish;
With webbed feet and long ruddering
tail
And a round head like an old tomcat.
( 'An O t t e r ' )
But soon the poet switches to the powers of the self,
what is known as atmashakti in the parlance of
Hinduism.
The Bull Moses embodies the "locked black
of . . . powers" and the otter signifies the "self . . . /
Attendant and withdrawn."
However, the poems may not
be called pure symbolic poems.
One would tend to
agree with Charles Chadwick who believes that a
symbol "stands alone, with the reader being given
little or no indication as to what is being symbolised."1^
In the poems under reference this is not in evidence.
We sense that the two animals represent something
other than themselves: the bull is an embodiment of
the spiritual energies of the self; the otter
represents the "self . . . / Attendant and withdrawn"
which reminds us of the distinguishing quality of a
karma y o g i .
17
Thus the two poems are essentially
Symbolism (1971; rpt. London: Methuen & Co.
Ltd, 1978), p. 2.
101
concerned with the self or the atman which is at the
basis of Hughes's personal religion.
18
It does not
follow from the above discussion that it is a flaw in
Hughes to use animals as metaphors for his religious
quest.
Such poems have an intrinsic value in relation
to Hughes's religious belief, but they correspondingly
do not portray the animals in all their physicality.
Hughes has, however, written some poems which
merit attention as what one could call pure animal
poems, in which he-remains tied to the actual
description of the creatures— 'The Thought-Fox,'
'View of a Pig' and tike.'
In these poems he achieves
remarkable detachment and concentration which
enable him to capture the animals living, as is very
well illustrated by 'Pike.'
Pike
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the eggjr the malevolent aged
grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
18This aspect of Hughes's poetry is being
taken up in the next chapter.
102
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.
In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads—
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching
upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds
The jaws hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.
Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: fed fry to themSuddenly there were two. Finally one
With a sag belly and the grin it was born
with.
And indeed they ^pare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long,
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb—
One jammed past its gills down the other's
gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks—
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.
A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them—
Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast
103
But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,
Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath n i g h t ’
s darkness had freed,
That rose slowly towards me, watching.
The poem is divisible into two sections in
view of its concern with two distinct thCough related
themes.
The first one consists of seven quatrains and
its subject is pikes, appropriate to the title.
The
second comprises four quatrains, woven round the
narrator's fishing experience of a particular day,
which could be detached from the poem without in any
way impairing its unity.
The poem begins with the physical description
of baby pikes that are "three inches long, perfect /
Pike in all parts."
They are "Killers from the egg"—
a detail which seemingly looks out of place, a
digression into the nature of the fish while its
physical appearance is being described.
But the detail
is crucial to the poem as we shall discover in the
course of its analysis.
Then the poet sketches the
natural habitat of the pike where they are "A
hundred feet long": pike grow to a large size and are
104
relatively big when seen in relation to the small
creatures of the waters.
They are to be found "under
the heat-struck lily pads" or "Logged on last year's
black leaves, watching upwards."
Then the narrator recounts an experience from
his personal life.
He kept three pikes of the size
of "three inches, four, / And four and half" in a
fish-tank "Jungled in weed."
All of a sudden one of
the pikes disappeared and soon another also vanished,
leaving "Finally one / With a sag belly and the grin
it was born with."
When we are still wondering about
the two vanished pikes the narrator comes out with a
statement which has a shocking suddenness about it:
"And indeed they spare nobody'1— the reader asks
himself in wonderment— who "spare nobody"?
Immediately^the phrase "Killers from the egg" flashes
across his mind.
The two phrases get connected
instantaneously and we get an explanation: the two
pikes have fallen prey to their cannibalistic
voraciousness.
explanation:
This is corroborated by the narrator's
105
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long,
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb—
One jammed past its gills down the other's
gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks—
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.
This description is a fine piece of evocative
poetry and exemplifies H u g h e s ’
s keen and detached
observation and his skill with the word.
The
stillness of the eyes of the two dead pikes choked
by each other "One jammed past its gills down the
other's gullet" whose movement has been arrested by
death, is conveyed with a striking effect through the
simile of a "vice": just as a "vice locks" and holds
its object in stillness, in the same manner death has
arrested the iron glare in the eyes of the dead fish.
The pupils in their eyeballs have shrunk and become
insensitive to light because of their lifelessness.
Hughes describes this with the metaphor of a film.
He sees the pupils of the dead fish as jelly-like
things that have congealed and shrunk because of
cooling; death usually leaves a body cold.
The
language is characterized here by fusion of the real
and the imaginative.
Phrases like "Two, six pounds
106
each, over two feet long,11 "dead in the willow-herb,"
"One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet”
describe factual details accurately.
hand, the verse "as a vice locks—
On the other
/ The same iron
in this eye / Though its film shrank in death"
appeals more to the reader's imagination than his sense
of.fact.
Achieving effects such as these
demonstrates Hughes's linguistic resourcefulness and
accomplishment.
In the second section the narrator recounts
his experience of fishing in a pond "fifty yards
across" and "as deep as England," and of the feelings
it evoked in him.
The immense size of the pikes in
the pond instills fear in the narrator, who does not
dare to cast his net or line (whichever he fished
with) "past nightfall."
But being an inveterate
angler,
. . . silently cast and fished
With my hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The third stanza of this section evokes the ever
cautiously watchful cndition of an angler w Tk > is at
once fascinated by the immense pikes in the pond and
107
afraid of there too.
The excited state of mind of the
angler who watches keenly "For what might move, for
what eye might move'1 is very accurately rendered
here.
This is a fine animal poem by Hughes with its
qualities of total concentration and accurate
portrayal of the subject, justifying the poet's claim
that it is one of his "prize catches." 19 It must be
20
based on the poet's personal experience,
yet there
is no trace in it of any personal involvement.
The
use of the perso/^r)l pronouns "we',' "I" and "my" only
serves to lend credibility to the description of the
pikes and the angler.
The intrusion of the narrator
in the last nine lines of the poem heightens the
effect of "For what might move, for what eye might
move."
The lines "But silently cast and fished /
With the hair frozen on my head" introduce an element
of eeriness into the silent and hushed atmosphere of
the last three quatrains.
The phrase "hair frozen on
19
^Poetry in the M a k i n g , p. 21.
20
Hughes is "a very keen angler for pike."
See Poetry in the M a k i n g , p. 21„
108
ray head" helps to make the effect of the succeeding
line "For what might move, for what eye might move,"
more intense.
The effect, thus achieved, is that
of an eeriness that holds the reader spell-bound as
it were.
The evocative effect of the language is
such that the reader also almost strains with the
narrator to catch a glimpse of "what might move, • . .
what eye might move."
The last four quatrains of the poem could be
interpreted as symbolic in nature.
The phrase "as
deep as England" referring to the pond in the ninth
quatrain, gets spontaneously connected with another
phrase "dream / Darkness beneath night's darkness" in
the last quatrain; together they suggest the p o e t ’
s
mind, an interpretation made valid by the choice of
the word "pond."
The last four stanzas are
thoroughly symbolic since no direct mention is made
at any point of "what is being symbolised," which is
only suggested.
The act of fishing is described in
terms which suggest working of. the human mind and the
operations of creative imagination.
Alljthis is made
possible through controlled and selective use of
language adequate to the poet's purpose.
The poem as
109
a whole is characteristic of Hughes's commitment to
21
"capturing" animals alive in his poems— a thing not
seen in Lawrence, who was also drawn to animals; he
invariably paints his creatures as almost unearthly.
This view is corroborated by Terry Gifford and Neil
Roberts who maintain that animals in Lawrence are
"impenetrably alien." 22
Hughes's later poetry (after L u p ercal) is
absolutely free from the small artistic flaws that
we noticed here and there in his early poems.
Here
he emerges as a thorough nature poet by virtue of the
absence of any personal involvement with his
subjects.
This is quite evident in the later works
Remains of E l m e t , Moortown and R i v e r , which deal with
nature and show the poet to advantage: he is in full
command of Doth the medium and the power of
observation.
Nothing significant in the animals or
the natural scenes he portrays escapes his eye.
poems now gain in richness, resulting from total
concentration on the things observed.
21
See Poetry in the M a k i n g , p. 17.
2 2 See Ted H u g h e s : A Critical S t u d y , p. 62.
The
110
Hughes is much attached to his landscape.
In
a radio interview in 1961 he said that his family*s
moving of house to Mexborough, whe he was eight
. . . really sealed cff my first seven years
so that now my first seven years seem almost
half my life. I've remembered almost
everything because it was sealed off in
that particular way and became a sort of
subsidiary brain— another subsidiary
brain for me.23
This landscape of his birth-place was "imprinted on
his soul."24
Hughes's deep attachment with it has
its origin in his early childhood as his interest in
animals.
Here is how he describes Scout Rock:
This was the memento mundi over my birth:
my spiritual midwife at the time and my
godfather ever since— or one of my
godfathers. From my first day, it
watched. If it couldn't see me direct,
a towering gloom over my pram, it
watched me through a species of periscope:
that is, by infiltrating the very light
of my room with its particular shadow.25
('The R o c k ')
Hughes sees the landscape, of which Scout Rock is
2 ^Quoted by Keith Sagar in "Hughes and his
landscape," p. 4o
24Keith Sagar, ibid.
2 5 Ibid., p. 8.
Ill
just a part, as invested with life. To him it is an
2c
animal, a "huge animal."
It is benign, docile and
patient, even if it is victim of both human and
non-human aggressive forces: it is "invalid, dropsied,
bruised" ('March morning unlike others') but it does
not complain.
Nor does it squirm under pain "but lies
back, wounds undressed to the sun / To be healed"
( 'March morning unlike others').
Hughes has full faith
in the self-healing powers of his landscape and
through his intimate relationship with it knows that
"She is not going to die" ('March morning unlike
others') but will survive the battle between the good
and the evil forces of nature.
Landscape is the main
subject of Remains of Elmet.
The theme of life and death, preservation and
destruction, progress and decay, having a direct
bearing on nature, informs Remains of E l m e t .
note to
In his
the book (reproduced on p. 69) Hughes
gives us information about Elmet— its progress and
inevitable decay.
26 Ibid.
T , .j
Hughes's sense of history and his
112
awareness of the changing economic scene in Britain
are very much evident here.
He was particularly
sensitive to the ravages wrought in Elmet (including
the Calder valley).
What remains of Elmet is a
classic example of the way natural forces work.
In
the cosmic plan of nature life and death, creation
and destruction, progress and decay are complementary
processes.
Only through death and decay are
further creation and progress possible.
Mutation is
the outcome of c(«kth and decay:
Before these chimneys can flower again
They must fall into the only future, into
earth.
( 'Lumb Chimneys’ in Remains of E l m e t )
Hughes has a very optimistic vision of life and sees
"earth" as the "only future."
The complementary
processes of nature go on working silently, steadily
and surely:
The hills went on gently
Shaking their sieve.
('When Men Got to the Summit' in Remains
of Elmet-)
Thus Elmet becomes a symbol of the functioning
of natural forces which is essentially amoral.
Civilizations spring up with the help of nature:
113
The great adventure had begun—
Even the grass
Agreed and came with them
And crops and cattle.
('Hill Walls' in Remains of E l met)
But man has not maintained his rapport with nature.
He has alienated himself from it and has tried to
annihilate it both in and outside himself through his
slavish dependence on machines.
This has ended "The
great adventure" leaving "No survivors" ('Hill Walls')
but only "the hulk, every rib shattered" ('Hill W a l l s ')the "hulk" that was the settlement.
Man's indifference
to and disregard of the benign forces of nature have
had disastrous consequences:
The hills were commandeered
For grave-mounds.
( 'First Mills' in Remains of E l m et)
Man has himself invoked the destructive energies of
the universe by following "A religion too arcane"
('Grouse Butts' in Remains of E l m e t )
Dedicated to the worship
Of costly beautiful guns.
('Grouse B u t t s ' )
The "acid rain fall-out / From M a n c h e s t e r ’
s rotten
lung" ( 'The Canal's Drowning Black' in Remains of E l m e t )
114
has affected the elements adversely and torn
. . . the skin off earth
Earth bleeds her raw true darkness
A land naked now as a wound
That the sun swabs and dabs.
( 'Where the Millstone of Sky' in Remains
of E l m e t )
Consequently earth has become a "a fierce magnet / Of
death" ('The Sheep went on Being Dead' in Remains of
E l m e t ).
She is the "Mourning Mother / Who eats her
children" ('The Big Animal of R o c k ’in Remains of E l m e t ).
The picture of earth given here is essentially
different from that in 'The Hawk in the Rain' and
'The Rain H o r s e . '
In 'The Hawk in the Rain' earth
pursues man with the "hab^Lt of the dogged grave" and
tries to swallow him alive.
In 'The Rain Horse' "the
ankle-deep clay drag^|7" at the protagonist (p. 54).
On the other hand in such poems from Remains of E l m e t ,
as 'The Sheep Went on Being D e a d ' and 'The Big Animal
of Rock' earth swallows her children only when they
are dead.
As a compassionate mother she receives her
dead children back to provide room for her new-borns.
Natural forces do not operate just mechanically but
purposefully in accordance with the cosmic plan based
115-
on the principle of balance.
Man has debased himself by alienating himself
from nature.
This has in effect led to the
divorce between human nature and external nature.
But nature does not foresake man; it "Holds the
land up again like an offering" ('The Trance of L i g h t 1
in Remains of E l m e t ) for him to accept.
A
quintessential poem of Remains of Elmet is 'Hill W a l l s . '
Hill Walls
It set out—
Splendours burst against its brow
Broke over its shoulders.
The hills heeled, meeting the blast of space.
The stone rigging was strong.
Exhilirated men
Cupped hands and shouted to each other
And gre^stronger riding the first winters.
The great adventure had begun—
Even the grass
Agreed and came with them,
And crops and cattle—
No survivors.
Here is the hulk, every rib shattered.
A few crazed sheep
Pulling its weeds
On a shore of cloud
116
The poem is about the processes of progress
and decay in nature and their equal role in the
scheme of. the universe.
When settlements came up
in the valley, nature showered "Splendours" on it. .
The "hills" defended the settlements against the
adverse forces of nature, providing, as it were,
"rigging" to a ship on its journey.
Living in close
contact with helpful nature "Exhilirated men" tamed
malevolent forces and "grew stronger riding the
first winters."
The "great adventure" of the men
"had begun," which was ultimately a success:
Even the grass
Agreed and came with them,
And crops and cattle.
But now there are "No survivors" and only "the hulk,
every rib shattered"— the remnants of a civilisation
that was and
. A few crazed sheep
Pulling its weeds
On a shore of cloud.
The poem is strikingly condensed and the
vocabulary used is precise and appropriate.
Hughes
gives an account of the beginning of a civilisation,
its progress and inevitable degeneration, through
117
the perfectly apt and sustained metaphor of a ship.
The civilisation in the beginning was strong as a
newly built ship "set out" on its iirst voyage.
"rigging was strong."
Its
Once the men "grew stronger"
they started ignoring nature.
Their hubris invoked
the destructive forces of nature that shattered the
ship of the civilisation.
Hence "No survivors,"
only the "hulk, every rib shattered."
The phrase
"The great adventure had begun" goes well with a
ship as the metaphor of the poem.
There is an
implied tension in the poem between the bright and
dark powers of nature invoked in their turns by man
himself.
There is also a dismalness in the
atmosphere of the majority of the poems of the
collection, including the present poem.
The
dismalness is in keeping with the thematic thrust
of the w o r k — destruction as an inevitable phenomenon
of nature.
The nature poems in Moortown project Hughes's
vision in its totality, embracing both malevolence
and benevolence in the universe.
They are from a
verse journal that Hughes maintained while farming
in Devon and demonstrate his special skill in
painting word-pictures and faithfully rendering the
objects observed by him.
Here man and animal are
both troubled by the adverse forces of nature, viz.
death, cold, rain and snow.
Nature, as befits its
amoral character, is impartial to both.
Although
most of the poems are "more directly autobiographical,
yet we see in them an artistic distancing of a
high order.
The poems are conspicuous for their
concrete visual imagery, as, for example, we notice
in 'Dehorning.'
Dehorning
Bad-tempered bullying bunch, the horned cows
Among the unhorned. Feared, spoilt.
Cantankerous at the hay, at assemblies, at
crowded
Yard operations. Knowing their horn-tips'
position
To a fraction, every other cow knowing it
too,
Like their own tenderness. Horning of
beliies, hair-tufting
Of horn-tips. Handy levers. But
Off with the horns.
So there they all are in the yard—
The pick of the bullies, churning each other
Like thick fish in a bucket, churning their
mud.
One by one, into the cage of the crush: the
needle,
?7
Terry Gifford and Neil Roberts, Ted H u g h e s :
A Critical S t u d y , p. 243.
119
A roar not like a cow— more like a tiger,
Blast of air down a cavern, and long, long
Beginning in pain and ending in terror—
then the next.
The needle between the horn and the eye,
so deep
Your gut squirms for the eyeball twisting
In its pink-white fastenings of tissue.
This side and that.
Then the first one anaesthetised, back in
the crush.
The bulldog pincers in the septum, stretched
full strength,
The horn levered right over, the chin pulled
round
With the pincers, the mouth drooling, the eye
Like a live eye caught in a pan, like the
eye of a fish
Imprisoned in k i r .
Then the cheese cutter
Of braided wire, and stainless steel peg
handles,
Aligned on the hair-bedded root of the horn,
then leaning
Backward full weight, pull-punching
backwards,
Left right left right and the blood leaks
Down over the cheekbone, the wire bites
And buzzes, the ammonia horn-burn smokes
And the cow groans, roars shapelessly, hurls
Its half-ton commotion in the tight cage.
Our faces
Grimace like faces in the dentist's chair.
The horn
Rocks from its roots, the wire pulls through
The last hinge of hair, the horn is heavy
and free,
And a water-pistol jet of blood
Rains over the one who holds it— a needle jet
From the white-rasped and bloody skull-crater.
Then tweezers
Twiddle the artery nozzle, knotting it enough,
And purple antiseptic squirts a cuttlefish
cloud over it.
Then the other side the same. We collect
A heap of horns. The floor of the crush
Is a trampled puddle of scarlet. The
purple-crowned cattle,
120
The bullies, with suddenly no horns to fear,
Start ramming and wrestling. Maybe their
heads
Are still anaesthetised. A new order
Among the hornless. The bitchy high-headed
Straight-back brindle, with her Spanish
bull trot,
And her head-shaking snorting advance and
her crazy spirit,
Will have to get maternal. What she's lost
In weapons, she'll have to make up for in
tits.
But they've all lost one third of their
beauty.
The poem opens with an image of the
Bad-tempered bullying bunch, the horned cows
Among the unhorned,
who know "their horn-tips* position / To a fraction."
The image unfolds the whole scene of how the horned
cows have been torturing the "unhorned" ones with
their horns.
The knowledge of the precise position
of the tips of their horns even "To a fraction," has
made the "bullying bunch" so proud and arrogant that
they try them even at one another.
The commotion in
the herd of the "bullying bunch," who try to horn one
another, is conveyed through a single-word image
"churning."
The image is highly functional in the
poem; its cinematic quality demonstrates Hughes's
remarkable economy and selectiveness in the use of
121
language.
Experiencing of pain by the cow at being
injected with an anaesthetic "between the horn and
the £ye" is brought out with the help of an
extraordinarily live image of "the eye,ball twisting /
In its pink-white fastenings of tissue."
The image
renders the helplessness of the cow very vividly.
The
evocative power of the image is reinforced by
another image to the same effect:
The bulldog pincers in the septum, stretched
full strength,
The horn levered right over, the chin pulled
round
With the pincers, the mouth drooling, th6 eye
Like a live eye caught in a pan, like the
eye of a fish
Imprisoned in air.
The helplessness of the cow, manifesting itself in
the rolling of her eyes, is highlighted by the use of
a double simile— "Like a live eye caught in a pan" and
"like the eye of a fish / Imprisoned in air."
The
images used are drawn mostly from the world of
sensory experience.
The next image of "water-pistol
jet of blood" that "Rains over the one who holds" the
torn horn— "a needle jet / Prom the white-rasped and
bloody skull-crater," accurately evokes the picture
122
of blood rushing out through "the artery n o z z l e ”
created by the torn horn.
The two phrases
"water-pistol jet” and ”
a needle jet” convey with
graphic precision and cinematic effect the sudden
gushing out of blood in a fine stream through the
opened up artery.
The imagery of the poem is taken largely from
medical science, especially from surgery, viz. f,the
need l e , ” "pincers,” "septum,” "ammonia," "blood,"
"white-rasped and bloody skull-crater," "tweezers" and
"antiseptic,,"
This is perfectly in keeping with the
subject of the poem, which is dehorning of bullying
cows, a surgical practice.
The poem under discussion epitomises Hughes's
vision of nature.
Here the poet accepts both the
forces of benevolence and malevolence in nature, in
unambiguous terms.
He writes:
The bitchy high-headed
Straight-back brindle, with her Spanish
bull trot,
And her head-shaking snorting advance and
her crazy spirit,
Will have to get maternal. What she's lost
In weapons, she'll have to make up for in tits.
But they've all lost one third of their
beauty.
123
The horned cows represent nature in miniature, which
both preserves and destroys.
They are endowed with
the two contrary powers of nature in the shape of
their horns and tits.
Hughes would not like to see
nature divested of either of these forces; it would
make nature lose its beauty, just as the cows,
divested of their horns, have lost it.
Another significant poem in this collection
that exemplifies Hughes's remarkable creativity as a
poet— the ability to create poetry out of the blend
of fact and imagination, is 'Coming down through
Somerset,'
Coming down through Somerset
I flash-glimpsed in the headlights— the high
moment
Of driving through England— a killed badger
Sprawled with helpless legs. Yet again
Manoeuvred lane-ends, retracked, waited
Out of decency for headlights to die,
Lifted by one warm hindleg in the world-night
A slain badger. August dust-heat, Beautiful,
Beautiful, warm, secret beast. Bedded him
Passenger, bleeding from the nose. Brought
him close
Into my life. Now he lies on the beam
Torn from a great building. Summer coat
Not worlfch skinning off him. His skeleton—
for the future.
Pangs, handsome concealed. Plies, drumming,
Bejewel his transit. Heatwave ushers him
hourly
124
Towards his underworlds. A grim day of flies
And sunbathing. Get rid of that badger.
A night of shrunk rivers, glowing pastures,
Sea-trout shouldering up through trickles.
Then the sun again
Walking like a torn-out eye. How strangely
He stays on into the dawn— how quiet
The dark bear-claws, the long frost-tipped
guard h a i r s !
Get rid of the badger today.
And already the flies.
More passionate, bringing their fiends, I
don't want
To bury and waste him. Or skin him (it is
too late).
Or hack off his head and boil it
To liberate his masterpiece skull. I want
him
To stay as he is. Sooty gloss-throated,
With his perfect face. Paws so tired,
Power, body relegated.
I want him
To stop time. His strength staying, bulky,
Blocking time. His rankness, his bristling
wildness,
His thrillingly painted face.
A badger on my moment of life.
Not years ago, like the others, but now.
I stand
Watching his stillness, like an iron nail
Into a yew post. Something
Has to stay.
The poem opens with a factual account of how the
narrator came upon a "killed badger" while "driving
through England":
I flash-glimpsed in the headlights— the
high moment
Of driving through England— a killed badger
Sprawled with helpless legs.
The narrator waits "Out of decency for headlights
125
to die" and picks up the dead badger "by one warm
hindleg."
A few lines later the narrator observes—
"Brought him close / Into my life."
The run-on verse
lines "Heatwave ushers him hourly / Towards his
underworlds" are an excellent example of packing as
much meaning into words as possible.
The lines give
a condensed account of the gradual decaying of dead
flesh and of the journey of the dead badger's soul to
Hades.
The poem is taut with tension between the
transitoriness of the body of the "slain badger" and
the narrator's aesthetic sense, who wants the "slain
badger" to "stop time."
stay as he is.
The narrator w^ants "him / To
Sooty gloss-throated / With his perfect
face," so that he could go on appreciating its
beauty forever.
Indifferent to badger's death, he
is just interested in its
. . . strength staying, bulky,
Blocking time. His rankness, his bristling
wildness,
His thrillingly painted face.
The tension between the narrator's love for beauty and
the short-lived beauty of the dead badger is made
more pronounced by the refrain— "Get rid of the badger"
126
which has the same aplitude of urgency as that of
"HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" in The Waste L a n d .
The
tension is reinforced with an increased amount of
urgency by adding the word "today" in the refrain
cited above, in the 23rd line of the poem.
It is
sustained throughout the poem by juxtaposing the
narrator's sense of fact, of the transitoriness of the
dead badger's body, and his aesthetic sense which
makes him brood on the badger's beauty and its
ineluctable decomposition.
The two poems— 'Dehorning1 and 'Coming down
through Somerset' are of seminal importance in Hughes's
poetic oeuvre, in that they give the reader an
insight into his vision of nature and that of beauty.
Hughes sees beauty in the horns of the cows and feels
that by losing them "they've lost one third of their
bea u t y . "
He would not like to see them divested of
their "weapons."
The poet thus sees the beauty of the
cows in their "weapons," i.e. their horns.
Likewise,
he sees beauty in the "fangs" of a badger.
In
'Grouse Butts' he sees "guns" as "beautiful."
His
idea of beauty, 'as the two poems show, is remarkably
original and novel.
His honesty in accepting even
violence and things signifying violence as beautiful
127
lends a special quality to his vision of beauty.
His
perception of "flame-beauty" in the fish ('Creation
of P i s h e s 1 in R i v e r ) and "dracula beauty" in a
"Damselfly" ('Last Act' in R i ver) is characteristic
of the poet as alive to the beauty of living forms in
the animal kingdom and accounts for his love of creatures.
The nature goddess in Gaudete (P. 104), has
A face as if sewn together from several faces.
A baboon beauty face,
A crudely stitched patchwork of faces.
The description of the goddess's beauty with the help
of an unusual collocation— "A baboon beauty face" is
striking: it reveals the poet's perception of beauty
in all nature; what may appear ugly to us is in fact
beautiful in relation to the working of nature because
nature's job is to maintain cosmic harmony, and
harmony itself is beautiful.
That is why Hughes
describes a jaguar as a "beautiful, powerful nature
spirit."
28
'
His vision of the beautiful is firmly
rooted in his love of nature.
In his London Magazine
interview (p. 8), Hughes said: "When Christianity
2 8 "Ted Hughes and Crow," p. 8.
128
kicked the devil out of Job what they actually kicked
out was Nature . • . and Nature became the devil."
Thus Hughes accepted what Christianity discarded;
what was the devil for Christianity was nature for him
despite the fact that it signified the so-called
demonic forces.
In fact, Hughes's vision of nature
in its totality is closely related to his vision of
beauty.
R i v e r , Hughes's latest book for adult readers,
is a continuation of his belief that nature's job is
to continue life interminably, irrespective of what
man's attitude towards it is.
River is an archetypal
symbol of continuity of life.
Like air water is
essential for the sustenance of life.
River is a
world in itself, teeming with aquatic life.
It is a
"Primitive, radical / Engine of earth's renewal"
('Four March Watercolours' in River).
responsible for renewing life on earth.
As such, it is
Not only
that, it is also
. . . A solution
Of all dead ends— an all-out evacuation
To the sea. All debts
Of wings and fronds, of eyes, nectar, roots,
hearts
Returning, cancelled, to solvency—
Back to the sea's big re-think.
('Four March Watercolours')
129
Thus we see that River as a symbol stands for
reconciliation between man and nature.
In the jaguar
poems, Hughes's acceptance of the brute force of nature
was qualified to the extent that the poems "captured"
the animals not as they live freely but as "caged."
As the poet maintains, man has to learn how to control
the destructive energies of nature and direct them to
29
good ends.
'The Jaguar* could be interpreted to
convey that man, instead of taming brute forces, has
incited them to grow "cannibal murderous with
I
deprivation," to use Hughes s own words. In River
man is seen to have succeeded in realizing, a fruitful
relationship with the savage forces of nature.
Man
and beast are shown co-existing in a state of harmony:
Then for a sign that we were where we were
Two gold bears came down and swam like men
Beside us. And dived like children.
And stood on deep waters as on a throne
Eating pierced salmon off their talons.
('That Morning* in R i v e r )
They are reconciled by the rivec that is "a god, and
inviolable / Immortal" ('River1 in R i v e r ) .
2^Ibid., p. 10
130
The book ends on a note of affirmation with
the annunciation of a universal idea:
Only birth matters
(‘
Salmon Eggs* in R i v e r )
Birth and death are essential natural phenomena—
indispensable to life.
However, it is only "birth"
that is of chief importance; it is sacred as the
determining principle of life.
Only through birth
is death possible: only that dies which is born.
In
the poems included in River Hughes writes of the
subject--River— with religious devotion.
He has
observed it and the creatures it contains, especially
salmon, with steady concentration and arrived at
valuable insights, which the poems reveal to the
reader on close examination; we meet with concrete
and marvellously life-like images in them.
The very
first poem of the collection ’
The Morning Before
Christmas' bears this out.
The Morning Before Christmas
Buds fur-gloved with frost. Everything had
come to a standstill
In a brand new stillness.
The river-trees, in a blue haze,
Were fractured domes of spun ghost.
Wheel-ruts frost-fixed. Mid-morning, slowly
131
The sun pushed dark spokes of melt and sparkle
Across the fields of hoar. And the river
steamed—
Flint-olive.
By the salmon-ladder at the
weir—
The sluice cut, the board exit lifted—
The cage drained slowly. A dead cock fish
Hung its head into the leaf-dregs. Another
Sunk on its side, seemed to pincer-lock
The cage wire with its kipe. Already
They were slinging the dead out, rigid in
the net,
Great, lolling lilies of fungus, irreplaceable—
Eggs rotten in them, milt rotten. Nothing
So raggy dead offal as a dead
Salmon in its wedding finery. So
After their freakish luck in the lottery—
Their five thousand to one against survival—
Dead within days of marriage. Three, four,
five.
Then a hen fish— ten pounds— lurching alive.
Rough grip and her head in an armpit.
Now the thumb and the finger kneading her
belly.
The frost-smoking sun embellishes her
beauty,
Her red-black love-paints, her helpless,
noble mask.
Suddenly eggs
Squirt, in a liquid loosening— spatter
Into the kitchen bowl. A long,
deep-kneading
Oily massage— again and again. Then the
fish
Drop-slung, head down, ponderous jerk-shake,
and up
For another milking. And now, gentler,
An artful, back-of~the-f:ingers,
cheek-stroke-dainty
Feathering along her flank sets the eggs
spurting—
She tries to writhe and shiver a real
mating.
The pink mess deepens in the bowl, and her
belly
132
Starts to bag empty.
Still t h ere’
s more.
Amazing
Finally the wealth of eggs. Then a cock—
Brindled black and crimson, with big,
precious spots
Like a jeweller's trout— gapes his hook
And releases a milk-jet of sperm
Under a skilful thumb, into the treasure.
A little is plenty. He goes back into the
net
And into the river— to wait
For his next violation. A stirring
Now of eggs and milt, to a vital broth.
Then they're set aside. Another hen-fish
Comes wagging weakly from the prison.
Four fish only, forty-odd thousand eggs.
The hard frosts this last week
Brought the fish on, ripened them, but killed
Five with sudden death-bloom. Six
Kicking strong, clean, green, unripe, refused
To yield an egg to the handling. They go
Free above the weir— gloom-flag dissolve
Under the whorled, sliding, morning-smoking
Flat of the pool above. With luck
In natural times, those six, with luck,
In five years, with great luck, might make
nine.
That's how four kitchen plastic bowls
Employ eight grown men and keep them solemn.
Precarious obstetrics. First, the eggs clot,
Then loosen. Then, lovingly, the rinsings,
The lavings, the drainings, the rewashings—
A few eggs trundle clear and vanish
Into the white crash of the weir.
A world
Wrought in wet, heavy gold. Treasure-solid.
That morning
Dazzle-stamped every cell in my body
With its melting edge, its lime-bitter
brightness.
A flood pond, inch-iced, held the moment of
a fox
In touch-melted and refrozen dot-prints.
133
The poem is about man's violation of nature:
he obtains "eggs" and "milt" from salmon by
artificially inducing sexual orgasm i n .the fish.
It
opens with a photographically vivid image of "Buds
fur-gloved with frost."
The "Buds" are seen as the
hands of small children and the "frost" as white
fur mittens.
The narrator moves on to describe the
men*s search for salmon:
. . . By the salraon-ladder at the w e i r —
The sluice cut, the board exit lifted—
The cage drained slowly.
They busy themselves in "Slinging the dead out"
until "a hen fish— ten pounds— lurching alive" is
found.
With the finding of the hen fish the main
subject of the poem is introduced.
The hen fish is
held in a "Rough grip" with "her head in an armpit."
By "kneading her belly"— "A long, deep-kneading / Oily
massage— again and again"
Suddenly eggs
Squirt in a liquid loosening— spatter
Into the kitchen bowl.
After the first "milking" the fish
Drop-slung, head down, ponderous jerk-shake
and up
134
For another milking. And now, gentler,
An artful, back-of-the-fingers,
cheek-stroke-dainty
Feathering along her flank sets the eggs
spurting—
She tries to writhe and shiver a real mating.
The language is suggestive of the sexual act.
The
images of "A long, deep-kneading / Oily massage" and
"An artful, back-of-the-fingers, cheek-stroke-dainty
Feathering along her flank" evoke love-making.
But
the love-making is one-sided, as the other party is
least involved in it.
The fish only feels that
something unusual is happening to it and "She tries
to writhe and shiver a real mating"— she tries but
cannot in the absence of its partner.
Not only has
the female fish to undergo the experience of
"Precarious obstetrics," the male too has to, who
eventually "releases a milk-jet of sperm / Under a
skilful thumb, into the treasure0"
The language is
suggestive not merely of the sexual act but of rape.
After being thus exploited, both fish are released
"into the river" until their "next violation."
What
purpose does this "Precarious obstetrics," this
"violation" serve?
It fills "four kitchen plastic bowls"
to "Employ eight grown men and keep them solemn."
The poem depicts man in unfavourable terms, showing
135
him as not only irreverant but mean and selfish, who
can do anything to gratify his desires.
In Hughes's earlier works, for example in such
poems as 'The Hawk in the Rain,* 'Wind,' the short
story titled 'The Rain Horse' and the play titled
'The Wound,' natural forces are shown in conflict with
man.
They torture him and try to thwart his every
effort.
In 'The Hawk in the Rain* the elemental
forces— rain, wind and clay try to destroy him: the
rain "hacks /his7 head to the bone," the "banging
wind" dents his eyeballs, and the earth tries to
swallow him alive "With the habit of the dogged brave."
The wind in 'Wind' intimidates the inhabitants of a
house who "grip { t h e i v j hearts and cannot entertain
book, thought, / Or each other."
The horse in
'The Rain Horse,' embodying the spirit of the place
where the protagonist was born, attacks him because
he foresook the birthplace for so long and also
because, having become urbanized, he no longer can
adjust himself to the present surroundings.
Earth too
is against him and tries to swallow him alive
(Wodwo, p. 54).
As against this animals are least affected by
136
the forces of nature.
The hawk
Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.
His wings hold all creation in a weightless
quiet,
Steady as a hallucination in the streaming
air.
( 1The Hawk in the Rain *)
The horse runs easily in mud and rain "with an
immensely supple and powerful motion" (Wodwo, p. 52).
Man’
s present plight is a thing of his own doing; he
has spurned nature and thereby debased his own nature.
It is a pity that he does not accept the greatness
of nature, although all the time it reveals to him
his own insignificance in the cosmic scheme.
The
Faustus-like figure in 'Meeting' (The Hawk in the R a i n )
finds his image reduced almost to insignificance when
he looks into the "square-pupilled" eye of a goat
that "set forefeet firm on a rock / Above."
He feels
as if some "gigantic fingers took"
Him up and on a bare
Palm turned him close under an eye
That was like a living hanging hemisphere.
Animals score over man because of "their
single-mind-sized skulls" ('Thrushes' in L u p e r c a l ) and
consequently because of their single-purposeness.
Man
137
has to learn from nature that essence of life is
No indolent procrastination
No head-scratchings,
('Thrushes 1)
but action»
In his earlier poetry, Hughes, having lost faith
in Christianity, turns to nature in search of an
alternative faith.
In poems like 'The Bull Moses'
and 'An Otter' his deliberate use of natural symbols
towards this end does not indicate any positive
advance in that direction.
But in Wodwo his use of
natural symbols shows a greater assurance which
attains force and intensity with R i v e r .
Here we
notice definite signs of his progression towards the
faith he is in search for— a personal religion based
on nature and on the powers of the self.
In the
chapter that follows, we will further examine Hughes's
quest for this religion and discuss its salient
fe a t u r e s .