Ted Hughes and Crow (Continued)

by Ann Skea

The poem, "Theology"(Wodwo p.l49), introduces into Hughes' published poetry his own interpretation of the Biblical God. This imperfect, fatherly figure, however, had appeared already in How the Whale Became and other Stories (22), a book of children's fables somewhat similar to Kipling's Just So Stories (23). There, Hughes depicted God as a friendly character who manufactured the creatures of the earth out of clay which was then baked in the ovens of the sun ("How the Tortoise Became", HWB p.53). Yet this God is not responsible for all creation. The whale, for example, grows quite of its own accord in God's "little back garden" ("How the Whale became", HWB p.23). Also, unknown to God, a demon with creative powers of its own lives in the middle of the earth where it manufactures the bee and tricks God into breathing life into it ("How the Bee became", HWB p.60). From these children's stories, came the God of the poem "Logos" in Wodwo (24), who is also the fallible, almost human God of the Crow poems which Hughes had begun writing in 1966.

In Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, Hughes, for the first time, wrote a sequence of poems within a framework which took the form of a folk–mythology of his own construction. Through the quasi–human figure of Crow, he continued his own journey of exploration into the human psyche and, at the same time, his handling of the death/rebirth theme in his poetry began to be more complex. It took on the aspect of a quest, a Shamanic journey to the underworld, which Hughes believed to be the basic theme in many folktales, myths and narrative poems (25).

The poems included in Crow are part of a large number of poems which make up a "vast folk epic" (26) which tells the story of Crow. Hughes began this story at the suggestion of American artist, Leonard Baskin, who wanted an accompanying text for some of his anthropomorphic bird engravings. Amazingly, Hughes once said that he began Crow as children's story (27): but the eventual development of Crow's character, the sardonic, sometimes gruesome humour of the poems, and Hughes' sophisticated and heretical manipulation of Biblical stories, has made Crow very much a bird for adults. Speaking on the BBC before the publication of Crow Hughes explained something of the Crow story and the nature of Crow:

More details of the Crow story were given by Hughes at his poetry reading at the Adelaide Festival in 1976 (29):

An argument develops between God and his Nightmare about the adequacy of Man as a creation. "God is very defensive of Man. Man is a very good and successful invention and given the materials and situation he's quite adequate." But whilst God is arguing with his nightmare, Man has

The Nightmare plunges back to "ferment and gestate in matter" and a little embryo begins. That is how Crow was created. As a creation which is better than Man, Crow is a failure, for Hughes also said that "maybe [Crow's] ambition is to become a man." However, Hughes made it clear that the actual Crow story is "not really relevant to the poems as they stand:  . . .I think they have a life a little aside from it. The story brought me to the poems . . . (it) was a sort of machine that assembled them" (30). He went on to say:

This allegory of the folktale prince and his choice of horse is an interesting one, for it shows Hughes deliberately adopting the "wretched, black, horrible, little nothing" (31)(which is Crow as God sees him when he first appears), as his vehicle and "mask" for his new poetic journey.

Crow comes complete with all the mythological and folk–loric accretions which crows have gathered through their long existence, and, of course, all the natural characteristics of the crow species. Some of these attributes Hughes adverted to in his BBC talk when he said:

In a letter to A1an Bold (33), he also wrote:

Hughes, therefore, makes it clear that Crow has many characteristics in common with Man. Also, given the cheeky, interfering, amoral, destructive and sometimes constructive personality which emerges through the medium of Crow's "life and songs," plus Hughes' own predilection for mythological archetypes, the comparison of Crow with the Trickster figure common in many mythologies is natural (34).

Paul Radin, an authority on the Trickster Cycles of the North American Indians, describes Trickster as being:

Here is the counterpart of Hughes' Crow, who, laughing, singing and eating, displays his supreme egotism by "Flying the black flag of himself" ("Crow Blacker than Ever", C p.69) through the havoc and horror which he has helped to create.