WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.500 welcome back to the deep dive today we are standing 00:00:02.500 --> 00:00:05.879 at the edge of a very steep very jagged cliff 00:00:05.879 --> 00:00:09.759 looking down into the life of a giant and i don't 00:00:09.759 --> 00:00:12.859 use that word lightly we're talking about a man 00:00:12.859 --> 00:00:16.609 who um physically and metaphorically just loomed 00:00:16.609 --> 00:00:19.190 over the entire landscape of 20th century literature. 00:00:19.510 --> 00:00:22.989 We are talking about Edward James Hughes. Ted 00:00:22.989 --> 00:00:25.530 Hughes. Better known to the world of course as 00:00:25.530 --> 00:00:28.070 Ted Hughes. A literary titan. I mean there really 00:00:28.070 --> 00:00:30.589 isn't another word for it is there? He is a figure 00:00:30.589 --> 00:00:35.250 who casts this shadow that's so long and so complex 00:00:35.250 --> 00:00:38.130 that it touches almost every corner of modern 00:00:38.130 --> 00:00:40.710 English poetry. You just can't walk through the 00:00:40.710 --> 00:00:42.770 library of the last 50 years without bumping 00:00:42.770 --> 00:00:44.850 into him. You really can't. We're talking about 00:00:44.850 --> 00:00:47.990 a man who was poet laureate to Queen Elizabeth 00:00:47.990 --> 00:00:50.770 II, a man who the critics, and you and I have 00:00:50.770 --> 00:00:52.929 a massive stack of them in our notes today. A 00:00:52.929 --> 00:00:54.990 mountain of them. Frequently ranked as one of 00:00:54.990 --> 00:00:57.109 the very best poets of his generation. Some even 00:00:57.109 --> 00:00:59.009 say one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. 00:00:59.090 --> 00:01:02.109 We'll stop. And there is always this huge heavy 00:01:02.109 --> 00:01:04.689 but when you bring up the name Ted Hughes, he 00:01:04.689 --> 00:01:07.790 had it. He is a man whose name is practically 00:01:07.790 --> 00:01:09.930 impossible to say without immediately thinking 00:01:09.930 --> 00:01:12.950 of someone else. Sylvia Plath. Right. It's this 00:01:12.950 --> 00:01:15.810 dual legacy, isn't it? That's the hook that grabs 00:01:15.810 --> 00:01:18.549 everyone, whether they read poetry or not. It's 00:01:18.549 --> 00:01:20.870 the thing that turns a literary biography into, 00:01:20.950 --> 00:01:24.409 well, into a tabloid sensation. It does. On one 00:01:24.409 --> 00:01:27.790 hand, you have this poet of the wild. The man 00:01:27.790 --> 00:01:31.209 who saw nature as this brutal, beautiful battleground, 00:01:31.349 --> 00:01:33.810 a place of, you know, tooth and claw. And on 00:01:33.810 --> 00:01:36.250 the other hand, you have the husband, the man 00:01:36.250 --> 00:01:38.290 inextricably linked in the public imagination 00:01:38.290 --> 00:01:41.670 to the suicide of his first wife, who just happens 00:01:41.670 --> 00:01:44.769 to be one of the most beloved, analyzed and dissected 00:01:44.769 --> 00:01:47.010 poets of all time. And that creates a tension 00:01:47.010 --> 00:01:49.329 that just dominates almost every single discussion 00:01:49.329 --> 00:01:51.769 about him. You really can't escape it. You have 00:01:51.769 --> 00:01:54.920 the work, which is. It's undeniable. It's energetic. 00:01:55.159 --> 00:01:58.280 It's violent. It's primal. It physically impacts 00:01:58.280 --> 00:01:59.939 you when you read it. It's like being hit by 00:01:59.939 --> 00:02:02.120 a gust of wind or a handful of wet earth. Yeah. 00:02:02.180 --> 00:02:04.079 And then you have the life, which was marked 00:02:04.079 --> 00:02:07.599 by just extreme tragedy. frankly, intense public 00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:09.979 vilification. He was a man who spent his career 00:02:09.979 --> 00:02:12.740 trying to capture the raw energy of animals, 00:02:12.800 --> 00:02:15.620 of the wind, of the moors. But in the public 00:02:15.620 --> 00:02:18.819 imagination, he became this character in a tragedy 00:02:18.819 --> 00:02:21.699 he couldn't control. He became a villain to some, 00:02:21.860 --> 00:02:24.780 a tragic figure to others, and a mystery to almost 00:02:24.780 --> 00:02:26.900 everyone. And that's our mission today, really. 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:29.099 We've got this massive stack of sources here 00:02:29.099 --> 00:02:31.439 to help us navigate this. We've got biography 00:02:31.439 --> 00:02:33.819 details, literary criticism that breaks down 00:02:33.819 --> 00:02:36.550 his meter and his myths. We've got information 00:02:36.550 --> 00:02:38.930 on the archives held at the British Library and 00:02:38.930 --> 00:02:41.770 Emory University, which contain thousands of 00:02:41.770 --> 00:02:44.110 letters and drafts. And we have the grim accounts 00:02:44.110 --> 00:02:47.270 of his controversial tenure as the executor of 00:02:47.270 --> 00:02:49.710 Plath's estate. Exactly. It's a complex web of 00:02:49.710 --> 00:02:52.069 sources because his life was a complex web of 00:02:52.069 --> 00:02:54.750 events. I mean, there's very little middle ground 00:02:54.750 --> 00:02:56.469 in the source material we've been looking at. 00:02:56.530 --> 00:02:58.870 People tend to either revere him as this sort 00:02:58.870 --> 00:03:02.810 of shamanistic genius or revile him as a patriarchal 00:03:02.810 --> 00:03:05.050 monster. And we want to try to look past that, 00:03:05.090 --> 00:03:07.750 past the tabloid sensation. It's just so easy 00:03:07.750 --> 00:03:10.330 to get stuck on the gossip, the he said, she 00:03:10.330 --> 00:03:12.930 said of the 1960s, the feminist backlash, the 00:03:12.930 --> 00:03:15.590 movies. But we want to understand the writer 00:03:15.590 --> 00:03:18.870 and the man. We're exploring how his childhood 00:03:18.870 --> 00:03:21.270 in Yorkshire, his fascination with shamanism, 00:03:21.289 --> 00:03:24.009 and yes, those personal tragedies forged a poetic 00:03:24.009 --> 00:03:27.689 voice that was brutal, energetic, and just. Yeah. 00:03:27.770 --> 00:03:30.289 Completely distinct. Right. We want to understand 00:03:30.289 --> 00:03:33.379 the genesis of poems like Like the Thought Fox, 00:03:33.659 --> 00:03:36.199 which is just a master class in creativity. We 00:03:36.199 --> 00:03:38.180 want to understand the controversy of the burned 00:03:38.180 --> 00:03:41.099 journals. I mean, why would a writer who knows 00:03:41.099 --> 00:03:43.639 the value of words better than anyone destroy 00:03:43.639 --> 00:03:46.620 writing? Such a huge question. It is. And we 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:48.919 want to understand the silence he kept for decades, 00:03:49.219 --> 00:03:51.319 a silence he finally broke with birthday letters 00:03:51.319 --> 00:03:53.860 just before he died. It is a heavy task, but 00:03:53.860 --> 00:03:56.219 a necessary one, I think. So let's start at the 00:03:56.219 --> 00:03:58.780 very beginning. To understand Hughes, you have 00:03:58.780 --> 00:04:00.699 to understand the landscape that made him. You 00:04:00.699 --> 00:04:02.960 just can't separate the man from the mud. You 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:05.240 have to go to the cradle of the Moors. Mithelmroid. 00:04:05.960 --> 00:04:08.680 Mithelmroid, West Riding of Yorkshire. He was 00:04:08.680 --> 00:04:12.860 born there on August 17, 1930. One Aspinall Street. 00:04:13.139 --> 00:04:15.259 Just the sound of that place named Mithelmroid. 00:04:15.800 --> 00:04:17.560 It sounds like something out of a saga, doesn't 00:04:17.560 --> 00:04:19.420 it? It really does. It sounds hard. It has this 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:21.740 heaviness to it, like a stone dropping in water. 00:04:21.899 --> 00:04:24.420 And it was. I mean, he was raised among the local 00:04:24.420 --> 00:04:27.079 farms of the Calder Valley and on a Pennine moorland. 00:04:27.500 --> 00:04:30.339 This isn't the rolling, gentle, green English 00:04:30.339 --> 00:04:32.920 countryside of a Jane Austen novel where people 00:04:32.920 --> 00:04:35.379 have picnics on the lawn and discuss marriage 00:04:35.379 --> 00:04:38.459 prospects over tea. No, not at all. This is rugged 00:04:38.459 --> 00:04:41.240 country. It's industrial and agricultural caught 00:04:41.240 --> 00:04:44.180 in this very specific. Gritty intersection. You 00:04:44.180 --> 00:04:46.800 have the high, wild moors on one side, and then 00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:48.939 the soot -stained factories down in the valley. 00:04:49.199 --> 00:04:51.220 Stark, it feels like a place where you have to 00:04:51.220 --> 00:04:54.040 fight to exist. It is. And Hughes claimed his 00:04:54.040 --> 00:04:56.759 first six years shaped everything. That's such 00:04:56.759 --> 00:04:59.220 a strong statement for a writer to make, that 00:04:59.220 --> 00:05:01.360 the die was cast before he was even seven years 00:05:01.360 --> 00:05:04.120 old. He grew up amidst the harsh realities of 00:05:04.120 --> 00:05:06.680 working farms. He saw the cycle of life and death 00:05:06.680 --> 00:05:10.050 every single day. Nature wasn't a pastoral idol 00:05:10.050 --> 00:05:12.790 for him. It wasn't about cute lambs frolicking 00:05:12.790 --> 00:05:15.329 in a field. It was a place of survival. It was 00:05:15.329 --> 00:05:18.389 mud, blood, and struggle. It was elemental. So 00:05:18.389 --> 00:05:20.310 you have this little boy running around this 00:05:20.310 --> 00:05:22.850 harsh landscape, but there's another shadow hanging 00:05:22.850 --> 00:05:25.250 over this household, wasn't there? A shadow from 00:05:25.250 --> 00:05:27.490 a little further away. The First World War. Yeah, 00:05:27.490 --> 00:05:29.269 and I think this is a detail that gets overlooked 00:05:29.269 --> 00:05:31.449 a lot when people talk about Hughes because the 00:05:31.449 --> 00:05:34.410 Plath drama just overshadows everything. But 00:05:34.410 --> 00:05:38.100 his father... William Henry Hughes was a veteran. 00:05:38.300 --> 00:05:40.879 A survivor, really. And that word survivor carries 00:05:40.879 --> 00:05:43.079 so much weight here. It's not just that he came 00:05:43.079 --> 00:05:46.079 back. It's that he came back when almost everyone 00:05:46.079 --> 00:05:48.540 else didn't. Right. William Henry Hughes was 00:05:48.540 --> 00:05:51.040 a joiner of Irish descent. But during the Great 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:53.639 War, he enlisted with the Lancashire Fusiliers. 00:05:53.839 --> 00:05:57.079 He fought at Ypres. Ypres. I mean, that's synonymous 00:05:57.079 --> 00:06:00.480 with the absolute horror of trench warfare, gas 00:06:00.480 --> 00:06:03.399 attacks, mud, total destruction. That is the 00:06:03.399 --> 00:06:05.360 definition of hell on earth for that generation. 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:09.399 It is. And he was one of only 17 men from his 00:06:09.399 --> 00:06:11.639 regiment to return from the Dardanelles campaign. 00:06:11.879 --> 00:06:15.439 17. Just 17. Imagine the ghostliness of that, 00:06:15.519 --> 00:06:17.139 being one of the few who made it back to your 00:06:17.139 --> 00:06:19.639 hometown when an entire generation of your neighbors 00:06:19.639 --> 00:06:22.120 just... Didn't. You walk down the street and 00:06:22.120 --> 00:06:24.199 every house you pass has a black ribbon on the 00:06:24.199 --> 00:06:27.300 door except yours. That is a staggering statistic. 00:06:27.519 --> 00:06:30.399 It almost feels statistically impossible. It 00:06:30.399 --> 00:06:32.699 does. And there's this incredible story, this 00:06:32.699 --> 00:06:36.240 almost miraculous anecdote that Hughes grew up 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:38.810 hearing about his father. We call it the paybook 00:06:38.810 --> 00:06:40.829 story. Oh, I love this detail. It's the kind 00:06:40.829 --> 00:06:43.189 of family myth that becomes foundational for 00:06:43.189 --> 00:06:45.250 a child, isn't it? The kind of story that gets 00:06:45.250 --> 00:06:47.430 told at every Christmas until it just feels like 00:06:47.430 --> 00:06:50.250 a legend. Lay it out for us. So his father was 00:06:50.250 --> 00:06:53.230 in the thick of it. The bullets are flying. The 00:06:53.230 --> 00:06:57.230 chaos is absolute. And at one point, he was hit. 00:06:57.310 --> 00:07:00.149 A bullet struck him directly in the chest. Which 00:07:00.149 --> 00:07:02.029 should be the end of the story. A chest wound 00:07:02.029 --> 00:07:03.850 in World War I was usually a death sentence. 00:07:03.970 --> 00:07:07.329 It should be. But he had his paybook. You know, 00:07:07.350 --> 00:07:09.350 the little thick booklet soldiers carried that 00:07:09.350 --> 00:07:12.329 recorded their payments identification in his 00:07:12.329 --> 00:07:14.589 breath pocket. The bullet hit the book and lodged 00:07:14.589 --> 00:07:17.269 in it. It didn't penetrate his heart. That little 00:07:17.269 --> 00:07:20.290 book literally saved his life. That's cinematic. 00:07:20.389 --> 00:07:22.509 It's like something out of a movie, but it was 00:07:22.509 --> 00:07:24.810 real life for his father. I mean, if he had moved 00:07:24.810 --> 00:07:27.610 that book to his pants pocket, Ted Hughes never 00:07:27.610 --> 00:07:30.730 exists. Exactly. But think about the psychological 00:07:30.730 --> 00:07:33.910 weight of that on a child. Hughes's imagination 00:07:33.910 --> 00:07:36.329 was just filled with these stories of Flanders 00:07:36.329 --> 00:07:38.990 Fields. He describes it later in his poem, Out. 00:07:39.550 --> 00:07:42.649 Before he even began writing, his internal world 00:07:42.649 --> 00:07:45.790 was populated by death and survival. He was living 00:07:45.790 --> 00:07:47.569 in the aftermath of a massacre, essentially. 00:07:47.769 --> 00:07:50.769 He knew that his very existence depended on a 00:07:50.769 --> 00:07:52.910 thick booklet in a pocket stopping a piece of 00:07:52.910 --> 00:07:56.009 lead. That creates a very specific view of fate 00:07:56.009 --> 00:07:58.750 and chance. It makes the line between life and 00:07:58.750 --> 00:08:01.509 death feel incredibly thin. It makes life feel 00:08:01.509 --> 00:08:03.550 fragile. It makes death feel like a constant 00:08:03.550 --> 00:08:06.170 neighbor, someone who lives just next door. Exactly. 00:08:06.730 --> 00:08:09.490 He absorbed the silence of his father, the trauma 00:08:09.490 --> 00:08:11.930 that hung in the house. It wasn't spoken about 00:08:11.930 --> 00:08:14.430 constantly, but it was there. The no man's land 00:08:14.430 --> 00:08:16.410 wasn't just in France, it was in the living room. 00:08:16.490 --> 00:08:18.790 It was in the long pauses at the dinner table. 00:08:19.449 --> 00:08:22.889 And that theme of survival, of life and death 00:08:22.889 --> 00:08:24.990 being right next to each other, seems to just 00:08:24.990 --> 00:08:27.629 bleed into his hobbies, too. He wasn't just sitting 00:08:27.629 --> 00:08:29.529 around reading nursery rhymes. He was up there 00:08:29.529 --> 00:08:32.169 in the muck. He was a hunter. He loved fishing, 00:08:32.370 --> 00:08:35.330 swimming, picnicking with the family. But specifically, 00:08:35.450 --> 00:08:38.730 he was fascinated by capturing things. Capturing. 00:08:38.730 --> 00:08:41.610 That's a key word for him. It is. In his book 00:08:41.610 --> 00:08:44.269 Poetry in the Making, he recalled being fascinated 00:08:44.269 --> 00:08:47.889 by animals. He collected and drew toy -led creatures. 00:08:48.660 --> 00:08:51.659 But it went beyond toys. His older brother, Gerald, 00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:54.320 was a gamekeeper. Right. Now, a gamekeeper isn't 00:08:54.320 --> 00:08:56.840 an animal rights activist. A gamekeeper manages 00:08:56.840 --> 00:08:59.259 the land for hunting. So Ted was literally the 00:08:59.259 --> 00:09:02.460 retriever. Yes. When Gerald shot magpies, owls, 00:09:02.460 --> 00:09:05.039 rats, curlews, Ted would go get them. He was 00:09:05.039 --> 00:09:06.960 handling the dead bodies of these animals from 00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:09.659 a very young age. He wasn't shielded from the 00:09:09.659 --> 00:09:12.220 violence of the natural world. He was a participant 00:09:12.220 --> 00:09:15.039 in it. He knew the weight of a dead bird. He 00:09:15.039 --> 00:09:17.539 knew the smell of it. He knew what his eyes looked 00:09:17.539 --> 00:09:19.139 like when the light went out of them. There's 00:09:19.139 --> 00:09:21.039 a progression here that I find fascinating, and 00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:23.659 it's crucial to understanding his art. He starts 00:09:23.659 --> 00:09:25.960 by capturing animals, physically hunting them, 00:09:26.080 --> 00:09:29.299 retrieving them, and then over time, that impulse 00:09:29.299 --> 00:09:32.220 shifts. It shifts to poetry. This is the evolution 00:09:32.220 --> 00:09:34.259 of capturing. Right, from the physical to the 00:09:34.259 --> 00:09:36.559 metaphorical. And this is key to understanding 00:09:36.559 --> 00:09:39.899 his entire poetic philosophy. He realized that 00:09:39.899 --> 00:09:42.860 capturing a metaphorical animal in a poem was 00:09:42.860 --> 00:09:45.980 actually better, more potent than killing a real 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:48.299 one. How so? Well, when you kill a fox, it's 00:09:48.299 --> 00:09:51.639 dead. It's static. It decomposes. It loses its 00:09:51.639 --> 00:09:55.200 spirit. But if you capture it in a poem, it lives 00:09:55.200 --> 00:09:57.940 forever. It has a permanent energy. It can be 00:09:57.940 --> 00:10:00.179 released into the reader's mind over and over 00:10:00.179 --> 00:10:02.740 and over again. This leads us directly to the 00:10:02.740 --> 00:10:06.179 thought fox, doesn't it? It does. This is arguably 00:10:06.179 --> 00:10:09.769 his most famous. Early poem. It was written later, 00:10:09.830 --> 00:10:12.110 when he was in London, but it's a vivid recollection 00:10:12.110 --> 00:10:14.669 of that Yorkshire landscape. The setting is intimate. 00:10:14.769 --> 00:10:16.350 He's sitting alone at night trying to write. 00:10:16.529 --> 00:10:19.110 The window is starless. The clock is ticking. 00:10:19.309 --> 00:10:22.470 The page is blank. And then he senses something. 00:10:22.690 --> 00:10:26.090 He imagines or summons a fox. Cold delicately 00:10:26.090 --> 00:10:28.909 is the dark snow. I love that imagery. Dark snow. 00:10:29.029 --> 00:10:31.750 It's so contradictory, but so evocative. It makes 00:10:31.750 --> 00:10:34.230 you feel the cold. The fox moves through the 00:10:34.230 --> 00:10:36.549 darkness, through the snow, touching twig and 00:10:36.549 --> 00:10:40.409 leaf. It's wary. It's a lame shadow. But it's 00:10:40.409 --> 00:10:42.529 coming closer. And eventually, with a sudden 00:10:42.529 --> 00:10:45.570 sharp hot stink of fox, it enters the dark hole 00:10:45.570 --> 00:10:47.990 of the head. And the poem ends with that line. 00:10:48.169 --> 00:10:50.669 The page is printed. I get chills every time 00:10:50.669 --> 00:10:52.549 I read that. It's like the act of writing is 00:10:52.549 --> 00:10:54.809 a shamanistic summons. He's calling the spirit 00:10:54.809 --> 00:10:57.409 of the animal into his mind. The fox isn't just 00:10:57.409 --> 00:10:59.429 a subject he's looking at. It's a force that 00:10:59.429 --> 00:11:01.929 enters him. It's possession. He has captured 00:11:01.929 --> 00:11:03.889 the fox without hurting it, and now it lives 00:11:03.889 --> 00:11:07.580 on the page. And that's the aha moment regarding 00:11:07.580 --> 00:11:10.039 his creative process. He's not describing the 00:11:10.039 --> 00:11:12.960 fox, he's manifesting it. This connects to his 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:15.659 love of fishing, too. Hughes viewed fishing as 00:11:15.659 --> 00:11:18.720 an almost religious experience. He did. He learned 00:11:18.720 --> 00:11:20.419 a lot about wildlife from a friend's father, 00:11:20.580 --> 00:11:23.659 a gamekeeper at the Crick Hill Estate. But fishing? 00:11:24.200 --> 00:11:26.480 Fishing was special. It wasn't just a sport for 00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:29.139 Hughes. It was a connection to the primal world 00:11:29.139 --> 00:11:32.399 beneath the surface. You cast a line into the 00:11:32.399 --> 00:11:35.419 dark water. the unconscious, and you wait to 00:11:35.419 --> 00:11:38.240 see what live thrashing thing you can pull up 00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:40.600 into the air. That's exactly how he approached 00:11:40.600 --> 00:11:43.919 poetry. The poem is the fish, the mind is the 00:11:43.919 --> 00:11:45.960 water. You have to be patient, you have to be 00:11:45.960 --> 00:11:48.360 quiet, and you have to be ready to wrestle with 00:11:48.360 --> 00:11:50.700 whatever bites. So you have this boy from the 00:11:50.700 --> 00:11:53.500 Moors, obsessed with animals and death, deeply 00:11:53.500 --> 00:11:55.240 connected to the land, and then he goes off to 00:11:55.240 --> 00:11:57.100 university, and not just any university, Cambridge. 00:11:57.379 --> 00:12:00.179 Pembroke College, Cambridge. He won an open exhibition 00:12:00.179 --> 00:12:02.720 in English. This was a big deal for a boy from 00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:04.740 his background. That feels like a bit of a culture 00:12:04.740 --> 00:12:07.220 clash, doesn't it? The wild boy of Yorkshire 00:12:07.220 --> 00:12:09.820 meets the ivory tower, the tweed jackets, and 00:12:09.820 --> 00:12:13.240 the sherry parties. And he felt it. He did his 00:12:13.240 --> 00:12:15.879 national service first, in the RAF, where he 00:12:15.879 --> 00:12:17.820 spent a lot of time reading Shakespeare and watching 00:12:17.820 --> 00:12:20.820 grass grow in East Yorkshire. Literally. Literally. 00:12:20.860 --> 00:12:23.139 He was a ground wireless mechanic in an isolated 00:12:23.139 --> 00:12:25.580 spot, which gave him plenty of time to read. 00:12:25.940 --> 00:12:28.700 But when he got to Cambridge in 1951 to study 00:12:28.700 --> 00:12:32.059 English, The reality set in. He hated it. He 00:12:32.059 --> 00:12:35.080 felt stifled. He famously described literary 00:12:35.080 --> 00:12:39.220 academia as a terrible, suffocating maternal 00:12:39.220 --> 00:12:42.080 octopus. Maternal octopus. That is quite the 00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:45.259 image. Sticky, clinging, dragging you down. It 00:12:45.259 --> 00:12:48.279 is. He felt that the academic dissection of texts 00:12:48.700 --> 00:12:51.059 The Leavis -style dismantling, as it was called 00:12:51.059 --> 00:12:54.320 then, named after the famous critic F .R. Leavis, 00:12:54.360 --> 00:12:56.259 who dominated Cambridge English at the time, 00:12:56.320 --> 00:12:59.159 was destroying his creative impulse. Right. He 00:12:59.159 --> 00:13:01.039 said he had a talent for it, even a sadistic 00:13:01.039 --> 00:13:03.799 streak for dismantling texts. But he realized 00:13:03.799 --> 00:13:06.080 it was a foolish game that was deeply destructive 00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:08.740 to himself. He felt like he was killing the poetry 00:13:08.740 --> 00:13:11.460 by analyzing it to death. He was dissecting the 00:13:11.460 --> 00:13:13.620 animal instead of letting it live. So he made 00:13:13.620 --> 00:13:16.139 a move, a pivot. He didn't drop out, but he changed 00:13:16.139 --> 00:13:19.080 lanes. In his third year, he transferred. He 00:13:19.080 --> 00:13:21.840 switched his major to anthropology and archaeology. 00:13:21.960 --> 00:13:25.019 Okay, let's unpack this. Why is that switch so 00:13:25.019 --> 00:13:27.360 important for the listener to understand? Why 00:13:27.360 --> 00:13:29.740 does it matter that he studied bones and tribes 00:13:29.740 --> 00:13:32.419 instead of sonnets? Because it moved him away 00:13:32.419 --> 00:13:35.820 from the polite, genteel tradition of English 00:13:35.820 --> 00:13:38.039 literature. You know, the drawing rooms and the 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:41.100 social manners and toward folklore, shamanism 00:13:41.100 --> 00:13:44.620 and myths. He started reading about totems, about 00:13:44.620 --> 00:13:46.960 ancient cultures, about how tribal societies 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:49.940 viewed the spirit world. This is where he gets 00:13:49.940 --> 00:13:52.500 the tools to build his later mythology. He's 00:13:52.500 --> 00:13:56.120 not trying to be a polite English gentleman poet. 00:13:56.259 --> 00:13:59.000 He's trying to tap into something older, something 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:01.899 closer to the bone. He's learning how shamans 00:14:01.899 --> 00:14:04.200 and other cultures interacted with the spirit 00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:06.370 world. He's trading Jane Austen for the witch 00:14:06.370 --> 00:14:09.250 doctor. Effectively, yes. And that education 00:14:09.250 --> 00:14:11.210 gave him a completely different framework than 00:14:11.210 --> 00:14:13.529 his peers. While they were worrying about rhyme 00:14:13.529 --> 00:14:15.710 schemes, he was worrying about how to summon 00:14:15.710 --> 00:14:18.529 rain. And it's while he's at Cambridge, amidst 00:14:18.529 --> 00:14:20.970 this intellectual rebellion, that the most significant 00:14:20.970 --> 00:14:24.629 meeting of his life happens. February 25th, 1956. 00:14:25.309 --> 00:14:27.549 The launch party for the St. Bothol's Review. 00:14:27.980 --> 00:14:30.480 This is a legendary night in literary history. 00:14:30.600 --> 00:14:32.820 The kind of night biographers dream about. It 00:14:32.820 --> 00:14:35.419 is. Hughes had four poems in this review. He 00:14:35.419 --> 00:14:38.159 was there with his friends, celebrating. And 00:14:38.159 --> 00:14:40.919 enter Sylvia Plath. She was there on a Fulbright 00:14:40.919 --> 00:14:43.399 scholarship. Right. She was studying at Newnham 00:14:43.399 --> 00:14:46.500 College, Cambridge. But she wasn't just a student. 00:14:46.539 --> 00:14:48.299 She was already an accomplished writer. She had 00:14:48.299 --> 00:14:50.539 published extensively in the U .S., won multiple 00:14:50.539 --> 00:14:53.360 awards. And she went to that party specifically 00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:56.309 to meet Hughes. Oh, really? She'd read his work 00:14:56.309 --> 00:14:58.669 in the review. She recognized the power in it. 00:14:58.750 --> 00:15:01.169 She wanted to know the man behind those poems. 00:15:01.350 --> 00:15:03.929 She hunted him down. In a way. And the interaction 00:15:03.929 --> 00:15:06.169 was electric. It was instant, intense, mutual 00:15:06.169 --> 00:15:08.330 attraction. There are accounts of this meeting. 00:15:08.429 --> 00:15:10.470 Plath wrote about it in her journals. It was 00:15:10.470 --> 00:15:12.549 physical. It was loud. It was violent in its 00:15:12.549 --> 00:15:15.070 intensity. Violent. She bit him on the cheek, 00:15:15.190 --> 00:15:18.210 drawing blood. She bit him. Yes. It was a mark 00:15:18.210 --> 00:15:20.870 of ownership or recognition. It wasn't a polite 00:15:20.870 --> 00:15:23.450 handshake. It was two predators meeting in the 00:15:23.450 --> 00:15:26.049 wild. It set the tone for everything that followed. 00:15:26.250 --> 00:15:28.970 It was passion, but it was a dangerous kind of 00:15:28.970 --> 00:15:31.289 passion. We hear so much about the end of their 00:15:31.289 --> 00:15:33.549 relationship, but the beginning sounds like a 00:15:33.549 --> 00:15:36.330 whirlwind romance. It was incredibly fast. They 00:15:36.330 --> 00:15:38.350 met in late February. They didn't meet again 00:15:38.350 --> 00:15:42.970 for a month. But then, on June 16, 1956, just 00:15:42.970 --> 00:15:45.279 four months after that first meeting, They were 00:15:45.279 --> 00:15:49.139 married. June 16, Bloomsday. Exactly. In honor 00:15:49.139 --> 00:15:51.620 of the Irish writer James Joyce and his novel 00:15:51.620 --> 00:15:53.779 Ulysses, that tells you everything about how 00:15:53.779 --> 00:15:55.940 seriously they took literature. It wasn't just 00:15:55.940 --> 00:15:58.039 a job. It was their religion. They married on 00:15:58.039 --> 00:16:00.440 the day celebrating literature. Plath's mother 00:16:00.440 --> 00:16:02.740 was the only guest at the wedding. And in those 00:16:02.740 --> 00:16:04.919 early days, it wasn't a tragedy. It was a partnership. 00:16:05.100 --> 00:16:07.480 I think people forget that. It was a period of 00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:09.840 avid mutual support. We have to remember that. 00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:11.740 It wasn't all doom and gloom from the start. 00:16:11.899 --> 00:16:14.850 They lived in Cambridge, then America. They were 00:16:14.850 --> 00:16:18.370 both writing furiously. Plath typed his manuscripts. 00:16:18.629 --> 00:16:21.049 In fact, she submitted his collection, The Hawk 00:16:21.049 --> 00:16:23.529 in the Rain, to a competition run by the Poetry 00:16:23.529 --> 00:16:25.950 Center in New York. She did. So she was instrumental 00:16:25.950 --> 00:16:28.889 in his first big break. Absolutely. She believed 00:16:28.889 --> 00:16:31.129 in his genius. She was his biggest champion. 00:16:31.269 --> 00:16:34.230 The prize was publication by Harper. It won. 00:16:34.549 --> 00:16:37.269 And it gained widespread critical acclaim. He 00:16:37.269 --> 00:16:39.909 won a Somerset Maugham Award. Suddenly, Hughes 00:16:39.909 --> 00:16:41.850 wasn't just a student with potential. He was 00:16:41.850 --> 00:16:44.700 a star. And the critics noticed something different 00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:46.559 about him immediately, didn't they? It goes back 00:16:46.559 --> 00:16:48.179 to that sound we talked about. They did. They 00:16:48.179 --> 00:16:50.740 noted his style was distinct. At the time, there 00:16:50.740 --> 00:16:53.220 was a movement called The Movement. Very rational, 00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:56.139 ironic, understated poetry. Philip Larkin was 00:16:56.139 --> 00:16:58.059 the face of it. It was very English, very contained. 00:16:58.519 --> 00:17:01.240 Hughes blew that out of the water. While others 00:17:01.240 --> 00:17:04.240 were using genteel, latinate sounds. Words derived 00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:07.480 from Latin. Very flowery, very smooth, very intellectual. 00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:10.740 Hughes was using hard -hitting trochees and spondees. 00:17:11.279 --> 00:17:13.940 Prochees and spondees. Okay, for those of us 00:17:13.940 --> 00:17:15.880 who haven't brushed up on our poetic meter lately, 00:17:16.119 --> 00:17:18.059 what does that actually sound like? Think of 00:17:18.059 --> 00:17:20.559 a drum. It sounds like Middle English. It sounds 00:17:20.559 --> 00:17:24.279 like Beowulf. It's percussive. A trochee is a 00:17:24.279 --> 00:17:27.099 stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:30.799 D -U -M -D -A. A spondee is two stressed syllables. 00:17:31.349 --> 00:17:33.710 D -U -M -D -U -N -D -A. So instead of a flowing 00:17:33.710 --> 00:17:35.890 river, it sounds like rocks banging together. 00:17:36.049 --> 00:17:39.470 Bam, bam, bam, bam. It felt ancient and modern 00:17:39.470 --> 00:17:41.809 at the same time. It cut through the politeness 00:17:41.809 --> 00:17:44.630 of 1950s poetry like a knife. It sounded like 00:17:44.630 --> 00:17:46.529 the Yorkshire Moors. It's the sound of boots 00:17:46.529 --> 00:17:48.750 sucking out of the mud. Exactly. It's physical 00:17:48.750 --> 00:17:50.670 language. It's language that has weight. So they 00:17:50.670 --> 00:17:52.670 are the golden couple. They move to America, 00:17:52.769 --> 00:17:55.109 where he teaches at UMass Amherst. They meet 00:17:55.109 --> 00:17:57.250 the artist Leonard Baskin, who becomes a lifelong 00:17:57.250 --> 00:17:59.269 collaborator. Then they come back to England 00:17:59.269 --> 00:18:02.190 in 1959. They have children, Frida and Nicholas. 00:18:02.450 --> 00:18:05.130 They buy a house in Devon, Court Green, in 1961. 00:18:05.490 --> 00:18:08.170 It sounds perfect. On the surface. But we know 00:18:08.170 --> 00:18:10.480 now. from biographies and later from birthday 00:18:10.480 --> 00:18:12.859 letters, that there were chasms of difference 00:18:12.859 --> 00:18:15.599 between them. Plath had a history of depression 00:18:15.599 --> 00:18:18.160 and suicide attempts that she didn't fully reveal 00:18:18.160 --> 00:18:21.299 to him until later. Her mental health was precarious, 00:18:21.359 --> 00:18:23.839 but they were trying. They were building a life, 00:18:23.940 --> 00:18:26.400 planting a garden, raising children. And then 00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:29.660 came 1962, the summer of 1962. This is where 00:18:29.660 --> 00:18:31.119 the story turns. This is the beginning of the 00:18:31.119 --> 00:18:34.200 tragedy. Hughes begins an affair. With Asia Weevil. 00:18:34.599 --> 00:18:36.380 She had been subletting their London flat with 00:18:36.380 --> 00:18:38.500 her husband, David Weevil, who was also a poet. 00:18:38.599 --> 00:18:42.359 It's a tangled web. Asia was charismatic, beautiful, 00:18:42.579 --> 00:18:45.779 and worldly. The affair was the catalyst. It 00:18:45.779 --> 00:18:48.240 shattered the domestic life they had built. Under 00:18:48.240 --> 00:18:50.720 the cloud of this affair, Plath and Hughes separated 00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:53.680 in the autumn of 1962. And this leads to that 00:18:53.680 --> 00:18:56.160 terrible winter. One of the coldest winters in 00:18:56.160 --> 00:19:00.019 British history. The big freeze of 1963. The 00:19:00.019 --> 00:19:02.799 snow was feet deep. Plath moves back to London 00:19:02.799 --> 00:19:05.180 with the two children, Frida and Nicholas. The 00:19:05.180 --> 00:19:07.940 pipes are freezing. There's severe frost. She's 00:19:07.940 --> 00:19:10.359 isolated. It was a brutal time physically and 00:19:10.359 --> 00:19:12.259 emotionally. She was writing the aerial poems 00:19:12.259 --> 00:19:15.000 at this time, waking up at 4 a .m. to write before 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:17.839 the kids woke up. It was a creative explosion 00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:21.180 fueled by rage and sorrow. And on February 11, 00:19:21.420 --> 00:19:25.380 1963, Plath takes her own life. She places her 00:19:25.380 --> 00:19:27.980 head in a gas oven while her children are asleep 00:19:27.980 --> 00:19:30.539 in the next room. She had carefully taped up 00:19:30.539 --> 00:19:32.220 the door to their room to protect him from the 00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:34.619 gas, leaving mugs of milk and bread for them. 00:19:34.759 --> 00:19:37.839 Where was Hughes? He was in London. But he wasn't 00:19:37.839 --> 00:19:39.859 with her. He was with his lover at the time, 00:19:39.940 --> 00:19:43.440 Susan Alliston. That detail, knowing he was with 00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:45.779 someone else while this was happening, it adds 00:19:45.779 --> 00:19:49.079 such a layer of guilt to the narrative. And Hughes 00:19:49.079 --> 00:19:50.759 was devastated. Yeah. To be clear about that. 00:19:50.920 --> 00:19:52.619 Whatever the state of their marriage, this was 00:19:52.619 --> 00:19:55.019 a cataclysmic event for him. He wrote poems like 00:19:55.019 --> 00:19:57.640 The Howling of Wolves and Song of a Rat immediately 00:19:57.640 --> 00:20:01.460 after expressing this raw animal grief. And then 00:20:01.460 --> 00:20:04.539 he went silent. Right. Poetically silent for 00:20:04.539 --> 00:20:07.480 three years. He focused on broadcasting, essays, 00:20:07.599 --> 00:20:10.480 reviews, anything but his own poetry. He couldn't 00:20:10.480 --> 00:20:13.000 access that part of himself. But silence in his 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:15.339 poetry didn't mean silence in the public sphere. 00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:18.460 Because now he had a new role. He wasn't just 00:20:18.460 --> 00:20:21.279 the grieving husband. He was the literary executor. 00:20:21.400 --> 00:20:23.579 And this is where the controversy really ignites. 00:20:23.579 --> 00:20:25.819 This is what defines the next 30 years of his 00:20:25.819 --> 00:20:29.519 life. As her widower, he controlled her estate. 00:20:29.759 --> 00:20:32.940 He controlled her words. He owned the copyright 00:20:32.940 --> 00:20:36.099 to her genius. And he made some choices that 00:20:36.099 --> 00:20:38.660 people are still angry about today. He oversaw 00:20:38.660 --> 00:20:40.720 the posthumous publication of her manuscripts, 00:20:41.019 --> 00:20:44.380 including Ariel in 1965. This is the book that 00:20:44.380 --> 00:20:47.440 made her a legend. But he edited it. He changed 00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:49.480 the order of the poems from what she had intended. 00:20:49.799 --> 00:20:52.099 How so? She ended her manuscript with a note 00:20:52.099 --> 00:20:54.819 of hope, with bees flying in spring. He ended 00:20:54.819 --> 00:20:57.079 his version with death. And he left poems out. 00:20:57.240 --> 00:21:00.119 He did. He omitted poems like The Jailer and 00:21:00.119 --> 00:21:02.259 The Rabbit Catcher. These are powerful poems. 00:21:02.559 --> 00:21:04.619 Well, those poems depicted themes of domestic 00:21:04.619 --> 00:21:08.049 abuse and rape. They were incredibly harsh. arguably 00:21:08.049 --> 00:21:10.769 directed at him. His defense later was that they 00:21:10.769 --> 00:21:13.650 were personally aggressive. He said he omitted 00:21:13.650 --> 00:21:15.710 them to protect the children. He didn't want 00:21:15.710 --> 00:21:17.589 them growing up reading their mother describing 00:21:17.589 --> 00:21:20.369 their father as a jailer. He felt a duty to his 00:21:20.369 --> 00:21:22.750 children that superseded his duty to literature. 00:21:23.369 --> 00:21:25.490 But to the feminist critics emerging in the late 00:21:25.490 --> 00:21:27.950 60s and 70s. To them, this looked like censorship. 00:21:28.210 --> 00:21:30.150 It looked like the patriarch silencing the woman 00:21:30.150 --> 00:21:32.069 even after death. It looked like he was trying 00:21:32.069 --> 00:21:34.630 to curate her legacy to protect his own reputation. 00:21:34.970 --> 00:21:37.809 They felt he was sanitizing her anger to make 00:21:37.809 --> 00:21:39.970 himself look better. And then there's the journal. 00:21:40.190 --> 00:21:43.450 The infamous burned journal. Yes. This is the 00:21:43.450 --> 00:21:46.210 hardest one for scholars to swallow. Hughes admitted 00:21:46.210 --> 00:21:48.809 to destroying Plath's final journal. The one 00:21:48.809 --> 00:21:50.549 that detailed their last few months together. 00:21:50.869 --> 00:21:53.799 The maroon -backed ledger. He burned it. destroyed 00:21:53.799 --> 00:21:56.259 it. He claimed he did it to protect their children, 00:21:56.480 --> 00:21:59.359 Frida and Nicholas. He didn't want them to ever 00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:02.000 read the painful details of that time, the breakdown 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:04.619 of the marriage, the despair. But later, in a 00:22:04.619 --> 00:22:07.220 letter to The Guardian in 1989, he said something 00:22:07.220 --> 00:22:11.200 fascinating. He wrote, The fantasia about Sylvia 00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:14.000 Plath is more needed than the facts. That is 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:16.740 a loaded statement. The fantasia is more needed 00:22:16.740 --> 00:22:19.549 than the facts. It suggests he felt the public 00:22:19.549 --> 00:22:21.750 had already created a myth, the fantasy of St. 00:22:21.809 --> 00:22:24.029 Sylvia and the demon Ted, and the messy truth, 00:22:24.250 --> 00:22:26.390 which might have been even more painful or complex, 00:22:26.710 --> 00:22:29.190 wasn't worth preserving in the face of that overwhelming 00:22:29.190 --> 00:22:32.230 desire for a story. He felt he couldn't compete 00:22:32.230 --> 00:22:35.950 with the myth. Exactly. But to historians, destroying 00:22:35.950 --> 00:22:38.809 the final words of a genius is considered a cardinal 00:22:38.809 --> 00:22:41.690 sin. It's burning history. And the backlash was 00:22:41.690 --> 00:22:44.769 fierce. Fierce is an understatement. It was vitriolic. 00:22:45.180 --> 00:22:47.299 Activists claimed he murdered her. They would 00:22:47.299 --> 00:22:49.819 show up at his readings chanting murderer. It 00:22:49.819 --> 00:22:52.519 was a trial by public opinion and he had no defense. 00:22:52.880 --> 00:22:55.200 There was that poem by Robin Morgan, right? Arraignment. 00:22:55.220 --> 00:22:57.940 It accused him directly. It linked him to the 00:22:57.940 --> 00:23:00.660 battery and rape themes in Plath's work. Hughes 00:23:00.660 --> 00:23:02.960 actually threatened to sue for libel and the 00:23:02.960 --> 00:23:05.519 poem was suppressed in some editions. But the 00:23:05.519 --> 00:23:07.640 sentiment was out there. He was the villain of 00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:10.019 the story. It got so bad that people would travel 00:23:10.019 --> 00:23:13.200 to Plath's grave in Hepton's stall. And vandalize 00:23:13.200 --> 00:23:15.759 it. They would chisel the name Hughes off the 00:23:15.759 --> 00:23:19.079 gravestone, repeatedly, leaving only Sylvia Plath. 00:23:19.140 --> 00:23:21.799 They wanted to erase him from her history, just 00:23:21.799 --> 00:23:23.759 as they felt he had tried to erase parts of her 00:23:23.759 --> 00:23:26.460 work. It became a battleground. He would have 00:23:26.460 --> 00:23:28.700 the stone repaired, and they would deface it 00:23:28.700 --> 00:23:31.920 again. It's a war over memory. A war over who 00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:34.640 owns the narrative. And then, as if this story 00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:37.059 couldn't get any darker, history repeats itself. 00:23:37.500 --> 00:23:41.680 1969, six years after Plath. Is you evil. The 00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:43.660 woman Hughes left Plath for. They had stayed 00:23:43.660 --> 00:23:45.640 together, on and off. They had a daughter together 00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:49.359 named Shura. On March 23, 1969, Aisha Weevil 00:23:49.359 --> 00:23:52.380 took her own life. And the method? Gas asphyxiation. 00:23:52.660 --> 00:23:55.579 The same way Plath died. But even more tragically, 00:23:55.680 --> 00:23:58.240 she killed her daughter Shura as well. She gave 00:23:58.240 --> 00:23:59.980 the child sleeping pills and turned on the gas. 00:24:00.180 --> 00:24:03.660 That is horrific. It is unspeakable. And for 00:24:03.660 --> 00:24:06.900 the public, this cemented the narrative. Hughes 00:24:06.900 --> 00:24:09.980 wasn't just a bad husband. He was seen as a destructive 00:24:09.980 --> 00:24:13.920 force, a blue beard figure, two women, dead by 00:24:13.920 --> 00:24:17.220 the same method in his orbit. It seemed to confirm 00:24:17.220 --> 00:24:19.740 the darkest suspicions about him that he was 00:24:19.740 --> 00:24:21.799 a man who destroyed the woman who loved him. 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:23.819 So how do you write poetry after that? I mean, 00:24:23.839 --> 00:24:26.220 how do you create art when your life has become 00:24:26.220 --> 00:24:29.220 this gothic horror story? You reinvent the universe. 00:24:29.299 --> 00:24:31.740 You create Crow. Crow. This is one of his most 00:24:31.740 --> 00:24:34.240 famous and most divisive works. It came out in 00:24:34.240 --> 00:24:37.400 1970 right in the shadow of all this death. Crow 00:24:37.400 --> 00:24:39.660 is unlike anything else in English poetry. It's 00:24:39.660 --> 00:24:41.859 a cosmology. It was written during his relationship 00:24:41.859 --> 00:24:44.220 with Weevil and published after her death. It 00:24:44.220 --> 00:24:46.420 is dedicated to the memory of Aisha and Shura. 00:24:46.660 --> 00:24:49.049 Crow is a character. A trickster, a survivor, 00:24:49.309 --> 00:24:52.609 an alter ego. It's not a nice bird. No. It's 00:24:52.609 --> 00:24:54.809 apocalyptic. It's bitter. It's cynical. Well. 00:24:54.990 --> 00:24:57.309 But it's also weirdly childlike. There's a specific 00:24:57.309 --> 00:25:00.829 poem, Crow Blacker Than Ever, that captures this 00:25:00.829 --> 00:25:03.250 perfectly. Do you have it there? I do. Listen 00:25:03.250 --> 00:25:06.069 to this imagery. When God, disgusted with man, 00:25:06.230 --> 00:25:08.690 turned towards heaven, and man, disgusted with 00:25:08.690 --> 00:25:11.750 God, turned towards Eve, things look like falling 00:25:11.750 --> 00:25:15.559 apart. But Crow... Crow nailed them together, 00:25:15.720 --> 00:25:18.640 nailing heaven and earth together. So man cried, 00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:21.779 but with God's voice. And God bled, but with 00:25:21.779 --> 00:25:25.220 man's blood. Exactly. Crow grinned, crying, this 00:25:25.220 --> 00:25:27.619 is my creation, flying the black flag of himself. 00:25:27.980 --> 00:25:30.680 Wow. It's like he's saying the universe is broken, 00:25:30.839 --> 00:25:33.380 God is bleeding, and this ugly black bird is 00:25:33.380 --> 00:25:35.140 the only thing holding it together with a rusty 00:25:35.140 --> 00:25:37.519 nail. That's it. He moved away from standard 00:25:37.519 --> 00:25:40.539 nature poetry into something much darker, a surreal, 00:25:40.599 --> 00:25:43.900 totemic cosmology. He was trying to find a myth 00:25:43.900 --> 00:25:45.819 that could contain the violence he had experienced. 00:25:46.099 --> 00:25:48.160 He couldn't write pretty poems about flowers 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:50.799 anymore. He needed a monster to explain the world. 00:25:50.839 --> 00:25:52.740 He needed a survivor who could eat anything, 00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:56.269 endure anything. That was Crow. And this brings 00:25:56.269 --> 00:25:58.390 us back to his view of nature in general. We 00:25:58.390 --> 00:26:00.670 talked about the moors earlier. But Hughes's 00:26:00.670 --> 00:26:02.750 animals, the hawk, the jaguar, the crow, they 00:26:02.750 --> 00:26:04.809 aren't cute. They aren't Disney characters. They 00:26:04.809 --> 00:26:07.329 are absolutely not cute. They are Darwinian. 00:26:07.509 --> 00:26:09.990 Look at hawk roosting. The poem is written from 00:26:09.990 --> 00:26:11.789 the hawk's point of view. It's arrogant. The 00:26:11.789 --> 00:26:13.890 hawk says, I kill where I please because it is 00:26:13.890 --> 00:26:17.250 all mine. It says, there's no sophistry in my 00:26:17.250 --> 00:26:19.910 body. My manners are tearing off heads. Tearing 00:26:19.910 --> 00:26:23.250 off heads. It's pure power. No morality. It is. 00:26:23.549 --> 00:26:26.549 Hughes believed that we, as modern humans, suffer 00:26:26.549 --> 00:26:29.410 from a dualistic split in our psyche. We separate 00:26:29.410 --> 00:26:31.450 ourselves from our animal nature. We pretend 00:26:31.450 --> 00:26:33.589 we aren't violent. We pretend we aren't driven 00:26:33.589 --> 00:26:37.069 by instinct. His goal with these poems wasn't 00:26:37.069 --> 00:26:39.890 just to describe a bird. It was to heal that 00:26:39.890 --> 00:26:42.410 split, to force us to look at the violence and 00:26:42.410 --> 00:26:44.769 beauty of the world without flinching. To accept 00:26:44.769 --> 00:26:47.589 the hawk inside us. Exactly. Because if we deny 00:26:47.589 --> 00:26:50.630 it, it comes out in other worse ways like war. 00:26:51.130 --> 00:26:53.910 But here is the paradox of Ted Hughes. He wasn't 00:26:53.910 --> 00:26:55.630 just writing nightmares, he was also writing 00:26:55.630 --> 00:26:58.250 for children. And this is a side of Hughes that 00:26:58.250 --> 00:27:00.349 people often forget, or they don't connect it 00:27:00.349 --> 00:27:02.950 to the tragedy, the Iron Man. Yes, or the Iron 00:27:02.950 --> 00:27:05.430 Giant, as movie fans might know it from the animated 00:27:05.430 --> 00:27:08.250 film. I grew up watching that movie. I had no 00:27:08.250 --> 00:27:10.130 idea it was written by Ted Hughes until much 00:27:10.130 --> 00:27:12.730 later. And the origin of that story is heartbreaking. 00:27:13.250 --> 00:27:15.769 He wrote it specifically to comfort his children, 00:27:16.009 --> 00:27:18.670 Frida and Nicholas, after their mother's suicide. 00:27:19.069 --> 00:27:22.240 Really? Yes. Think about the story. It's about 00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:26.079 a giant who is broken apart. He falls off a cliff 00:27:26.079 --> 00:27:29.019 and shatters. And he has to pull himself back 00:27:29.019 --> 00:27:31.359 together piece by piece. An ear here, a hand 00:27:31.359 --> 00:27:33.880 there. Right. It's about a monster finding a 00:27:33.880 --> 00:27:36.059 place in the world. It's a story of reconstruction 00:27:36.059 --> 00:27:39.880 and healing. It stands in such stark contrast 00:27:39.880 --> 00:27:42.579 to Crow. It shows his range. He could channel 00:27:42.579 --> 00:27:44.660 that darkness, but he could also offer this incredible 00:27:44.660 --> 00:27:47.019 tenderness and hope for his children. He was 00:27:47.019 --> 00:27:49.480 trying to give them a myth of survival, a way 00:27:49.480 --> 00:27:51.440 to put themselves back together. And he didn't 00:27:51.440 --> 00:27:53.700 stop there with children. He served as the president 00:27:53.700 --> 00:27:56.099 of the charity farms for city children, established 00:27:56.099 --> 00:27:58.400 by his friend Michael Morpurgo. What was the 00:27:58.400 --> 00:28:01.200 goal there? He wanted kids from the city to experience 00:28:01.200 --> 00:28:03.720 the mud and the reality of the farm, just like 00:28:03.720 --> 00:28:06.069 he did in Mithomroid. He believed the connection 00:28:06.069 --> 00:28:08.769 to the land was vital for the human soul. He 00:28:08.769 --> 00:28:10.910 didn't want nature to be an abstract concept 00:28:10.910 --> 00:28:13.089 for them. He wanted them to get their hands dirty. 00:28:13.589 --> 00:28:16.509 So we move into the later years. He has remarried 00:28:16.509 --> 00:28:19.930 to Carol Orchard in 1970, a nurse. They stay 00:28:19.930 --> 00:28:22.210 together until the end, finding a stability he 00:28:22.210 --> 00:28:25.809 lacked before. And then in 1984, the establishment 00:28:25.809 --> 00:28:29.230 calls. The Poet Laureate. He succeeds John Betjeman, 00:28:29.390 --> 00:28:32.089 but he wasn't the first choice, was he? No, Philip 00:28:32.089 --> 00:28:34.819 Larkin was the preferred nominee. Larkin is another 00:28:34.819 --> 00:28:37.859 giant of British poetry, famous for his glum, 00:28:37.859 --> 00:28:40.940 witty verse. But Larkin declined. He had writer's 00:28:40.940 --> 00:28:43.279 block, his health was failing, and he felt he 00:28:43.279 --> 00:28:45.740 had lost his creative momentum. He famously said 00:28:45.740 --> 00:28:47.500 he wouldn't be any good at it, so Hughes took 00:28:47.500 --> 00:28:49.440 the mantle. It seems like an odd fit. The wild 00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:52.140 man of the Moors, the shaman, the man with the 00:28:52.140 --> 00:28:54.420 scandalous past, writing poems for the queen. 00:28:54.700 --> 00:28:57.259 It was a bit awkward. He wrote poems for royal 00:28:57.259 --> 00:28:59.859 occasions, collected in rain charm for the duchy. 00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:02.720 They aren't generally considered his best work. 00:29:02.880 --> 00:29:06.420 It's hard to bring that raw crow energy to a 00:29:06.420 --> 00:29:08.880 royal wedding or a christening. You can't exactly 00:29:08.880 --> 00:29:11.359 write about tearing off heads at a royal baptism. 00:29:11.680 --> 00:29:14.220 You really can't. But he took the role seriously. 00:29:14.339 --> 00:29:17.420 He used the platform to advocate for things he 00:29:17.420 --> 00:29:19.559 cared about. Particularly river conservation. 00:29:20.099 --> 00:29:22.539 The fishing. Again, it always comes back to the 00:29:22.539 --> 00:29:26.339 water. In 1994, alarmed by the decline of fish 00:29:26.339 --> 00:29:29.160 and rivers local to his Devonshire home, he became 00:29:29.160 --> 00:29:31.279 a founding trustee of the West Country Rivers 00:29:31.279 --> 00:29:33.960 Trust. He wasn't just a figurehead. No, he was 00:29:33.960 --> 00:29:36.660 active. He saw the decline of fish populations 00:29:36.660 --> 00:29:39.579 as a sign of environmental collapse. He understood 00:29:39.579 --> 00:29:41.680 that if the rivers are dying, the land is dying. 00:29:41.819 --> 00:29:44.160 He was an environmentalist deeply connected to 00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:46.859 the local ecosystem long before it was a mainstream 00:29:46.859 --> 00:29:50.220 celebrity cause. But while he was being the laureate, 00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:53.230 he was also diving deep into the esoteric. He 00:29:53.230 --> 00:29:55.450 wrote this massive prose work called Shakespeare 00:29:55.450 --> 00:29:58.869 and the Goddess of Complete Being. 1992. This 00:29:58.869 --> 00:30:01.369 book, well, it had a mixed reception. He was 00:30:01.369 --> 00:30:03.529 obsessed with Robert Graves as the white goddess. 00:30:03.829 --> 00:30:06.609 He believed there was this single overarching 00:30:06.609 --> 00:30:09.509 mythic structure to all great poetry, the great 00:30:09.509 --> 00:30:12.839 goddess, the cycle of birth and death. And he 00:30:12.839 --> 00:30:15.259 tried to apply that to Shakespeare's entire canon. 00:30:15.400 --> 00:30:18.420 That sounds ambitious. It was monumental. Some 00:30:18.420 --> 00:30:20.119 people thought it was an important original appreciation. 00:30:20.539 --> 00:30:23.480 Others dismissed it as idiosyncratic. Basically, 00:30:23.680 --> 00:30:26.059 Hughes projecting his own shamanistic belief 00:30:26.059 --> 00:30:28.880 system onto Shakespeare. And Hughes himself thought 00:30:28.880 --> 00:30:31.640 writing it hurt him. He did. He later suggested 00:30:31.640 --> 00:30:33.980 that the time spent writing that prose, that 00:30:33.980 --> 00:30:36.799 analytical heavy prose, was directly responsible 00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:39.240 for a decline in his health. He believed that 00:30:39.240 --> 00:30:41.960 writing poetry released energy, but writing prose 00:30:41.960 --> 00:30:44.509 consumed it. He felt he had exhausted his vital 00:30:44.509 --> 00:30:47.529 force on that book. And then in 1998, just months 00:30:47.529 --> 00:30:50.049 before his death, he drops a bomb. Birthday letters. 00:30:50.210 --> 00:30:52.970 After 35 years of silence, after refusing to 00:30:52.970 --> 00:30:55.630 discuss Plath, after burning the journal, after 00:30:55.630 --> 00:30:58.190 the grave vandalism, he publishes a collection 00:30:58.190 --> 00:31:00.730 explicitly addressing their relationship. It 00:31:00.730 --> 00:31:03.009 was a literary sensation. I mean, you have to 00:31:03.009 --> 00:31:04.690 understand, people had been waiting for this 00:31:04.690 --> 00:31:06.930 for decades. They assumed he would never speak. 00:31:07.089 --> 00:31:09.589 And suddenly here it was. It wasn't defensive. 00:31:09.849 --> 00:31:12.950 It wasn't angry. It was tender. It won the Whitbread 00:31:12.950 --> 00:31:16.029 Prize. It did. It's a conversation with her ghost. 00:31:16.210 --> 00:31:19.130 He addresses her directly as you throughout the 00:31:19.130 --> 00:31:21.250 book. He revisits their meeting, their marriage, 00:31:21.390 --> 00:31:23.509 the tragedy. He admits his own bewilderment. 00:31:23.630 --> 00:31:26.369 He describes the chasms between them. It was 00:31:26.369 --> 00:31:29.029 his way of reclaiming the narrative, not by fighting 00:31:29.029 --> 00:31:31.670 the critics, but by speaking to her. It broke 00:31:31.670 --> 00:31:33.950 the dam. And there is even one more poem discovered 00:31:33.950 --> 00:31:37.250 much later. Last letter. Discovered in the British 00:31:37.250 --> 00:31:40.210 Library Archives in 2010, it details the three 00:31:40.210 --> 00:31:42.420 days leading up to her suicide. What does it 00:31:42.420 --> 00:31:44.819 say? It describes what happened. The frantic 00:31:44.819 --> 00:31:47.279 driving between London and Devon. The confusion. 00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:50.339 The moment of the news. Carol Ann Duffy, the 00:31:50.339 --> 00:31:52.359 poet laureate at the time, called it his darkest 00:31:52.359 --> 00:31:55.279 poem. She said it was almost unbearable to read. 00:31:55.640 --> 00:31:57.740 It shows that he was replaying those final moments 00:31:57.740 --> 00:32:00.359 in his head for his entire life. He never really 00:32:00.359 --> 00:32:03.019 escaped that weekend in 1963. It was a wound 00:32:03.019 --> 00:32:05.539 that never closed. So let's bring this to a close. 00:32:05.980 --> 00:32:08.740 The final days. He was appointed to the Order 00:32:08.740 --> 00:32:11.099 of Merit. by Queen Elizabeth II just before he 00:32:11.099 --> 00:32:13.400 died. That is the highest honor in the land, 00:32:13.500 --> 00:32:16.099 a personal gift from the sovereign. It was the 00:32:16.099 --> 00:32:19.019 establishment finally embracing him fully, acknowledging 00:32:19.019 --> 00:32:21.559 his greatness despite the controversy. And he 00:32:21.559 --> 00:32:25.839 died in 1998. October 28, 1998. He suffered a 00:32:25.839 --> 00:32:27.559 fatal heart attack while undergoing treatment 00:32:27.559 --> 00:32:31.000 for colon cancer in London. At his funeral, Seamus 00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:33.480 Heaney, another Nobel Prize winner, a fellow 00:32:33.480 --> 00:32:36.259 poet, and a close friend gave the eulogy. What 00:32:36.259 --> 00:32:39.200 did he say? He described Hughes as a tower of 00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:42.079 tenderness and strength. He said, by his death, 00:32:42.180 --> 00:32:44.700 the veil of poetry is rent and the walls of learning 00:32:44.700 --> 00:32:47.619 broken. A tower of tenderness and strength. That's 00:32:47.619 --> 00:32:50.240 beautiful. A contrast so sharply with the monster 00:32:50.240 --> 00:32:53.099 image from the tabloids. But the tragedy didn't 00:32:53.099 --> 00:32:55.779 end with his death. No. The lingering shadows. 00:32:56.589 --> 00:32:59.410 His son, Nicholas Hughes, the little boy who 00:32:59.410 --> 00:33:01.130 was sleeping in the next room when Plath died, 00:33:01.369 --> 00:33:03.490 the boy for whom The Iron Man was written. What 00:33:03.490 --> 00:33:05.430 happened to him? He became a marine biologist. 00:33:05.569 --> 00:33:08.490 He moved to Alaska. He studied fish again, the 00:33:08.490 --> 00:33:10.349 connection to the water, just like his father. 00:33:10.750 --> 00:33:13.309 But he suffered from depression. And in 2009, 00:33:13.529 --> 00:33:16.309 he took his own life. It's just... It's too much 00:33:16.309 --> 00:33:18.829 tragedy for one family. It feels biblical. It 00:33:18.829 --> 00:33:21.109 really is. It's a Grecian tragedy in modern times. 00:33:21.410 --> 00:33:23.589 And we should mention Carol Hughes, his widow. 00:33:23.769 --> 00:33:26.269 She married him in 1970 and stayed with him until 00:33:26.269 --> 00:33:29.289 the end. She defended his name. She broke her 00:33:29.289 --> 00:33:32.109 own silence in 2013 to publish a memoir. She 00:33:32.109 --> 00:33:33.609 was the one who had to live through the storm 00:33:33.609 --> 00:33:36.529 of public hatred alongside him for over 40 years. 00:33:36.789 --> 00:33:39.430 So what does this all mean when we look at the 00:33:39.430 --> 00:33:42.309 stack of sources, the biography, the poems, the 00:33:42.309 --> 00:33:45.849 scandals? What is the takeaway? I think we have 00:33:45.849 --> 00:33:47.910 to go back to the thought fox. The fox entering 00:33:47.910 --> 00:33:50.390 the dark hole of the head. Hughes spent a lifetime 00:33:50.390 --> 00:33:53.450 trying to capture the raw energy of nature. He 00:33:53.450 --> 00:33:55.430 wanted to bring the fox, the hawk, the crow onto 00:33:55.430 --> 00:33:58.309 the page. He succeeded in that. The page is printed. 00:33:58.589 --> 00:34:00.670 His work stands as some of the most powerful 00:34:00.670 --> 00:34:02.609 in the English language. But there's a question 00:34:02.609 --> 00:34:06.329 that remains. Yes. I wonder if his greatest struggle 00:34:06.329 --> 00:34:08.889 wasn't with nature, but with his own narrative. 00:34:09.420 --> 00:34:12.260 He tried to capture his own life, his own truth, 00:34:12.420 --> 00:34:15.840 in the face of a public that preferred the fantasia. 00:34:16.099 --> 00:34:18.440 They wanted the villain. They wanted the monster. 00:34:18.639 --> 00:34:21.159 And in birthday letters, he finally tried to 00:34:21.159 --> 00:34:23.679 capture the reality of his grief. It's a provocative 00:34:23.679 --> 00:34:26.320 thought. Hughes spent his life as the hunter, 00:34:26.480 --> 00:34:29.460 capturing animals in verse. But in the end, was 00:34:29.460 --> 00:34:32.320 he the one being hunted? Was he the fox and the 00:34:32.320 --> 00:34:36.139 public the hounds? That is the question. And 00:34:36.139 --> 00:34:37.860 maybe the answer is in the poems. We'll leave 00:34:37.860 --> 00:34:39.559 you with that. If you haven't read Crow or Birthday 00:34:39.559 --> 00:34:41.500 Letters, go pick them up. Decide for yourself. 00:34:41.659 --> 00:34:43.579 Don't just read the headlines. Read the poems. 00:34:43.739 --> 00:34:46.119 The page is printed. Thanks for listening to 00:34:46.119 --> 00:34:47.619 The Deep Dive. We'll see you next time.