TED HUGHES AND SYLVIA PLATH

TED HUGHES AND SYLVIA PLATH

(liceus/cgi-bin/ac)

(1930-1998)

(kirjasto/thughes)

(1932-1963)

(sylviaplath.de)

Ted Hughes is tragic. He made his wives die. He had three women in his life. His merit was to be a good poet. He was very strict with his poetry. Why did Sylvia and the other women commit suicide? They may answer us through their poetry.

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath met in Cambridge and they were married in a short time. They spent their honeymoon in Spain. He loved Spain, but she did not. He was a very attractive and successful man. The problem with them starts at the very beginning. He had the problem with women. The two women both killed themselves.

He lost them and he started to think what happened with him. What had he done?

On the other hand, Sylvia Plath is a very close and interior poet. We can read her through her poetry, because she explains through it her feelings and her personal situation in life. She reads poems to learn from other poems.

(Class-notes)

In this paper what we will try to do is a comparative analysis between two poems written by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

                                      CROW´S NERVE FAILS

                           Crow, feeling his brain slip,

Finds his every feather the fossil of a murder.

Who murdered all these?

These living dead, that root in his nerves and his blood

Till he is visibly black?                                                          5

How can he fly from his feathers?

And why have they homed on him?

Is he the archive of their accusations?

Or their ghostly purpose, their pining vengeance?

Or their unforgiven prisoner?                                              10

He cannot be forgiven.

His prison is the earth. Clothed in his conviction,

Trying to remember his crimes

Heavily he flies.

(poetryconnection/Ted_Hughes)

                                       THE BEAST

He was the bullman earlierm

King of the dish, my lucky animal.

Breathing was easy in his airy holding.

The sun sat in his armpit.

Nothing went moldy. The little invisibles                             5

Waited on him hand and foot.

The blue sisters sent me to another school.

Monkey lived under the dunce cap.

He kept blowing me kisses.

I hardly knew him.                                                                10

He won’t be got rid of:

Memblepaws, teary and sorry,

Fido Littlesoul, the bowel’s unfamiliar.

A dustbin’s enough for him.

The dark’s his bone.                                                              15

Call him any name, he’ll come to it.

Mud-sump, happy sty face.

I’ve married a cupboard of rubbish.

I bed in a fish puddle.

Down here the sky is always falling.                                     20

Hogwallow´s at the window.

The star bugs won’t save me this mouth.

I housekeep in Time’s gut-end

Among emmets and molluscs,

Duchess of Nothing,                                                              25

Hairtusk´s bride.

(angelfire/plath/beast)

First of all, we have to mention that the first poem is written by Ted Hughes but he does not appear as the first person who talks, but the poem narrates it as 2^nd person.

On the contrary, Sylvia Plath´s poem writes her poem as 1^st person, so it is more personal.

The way that the poems are written is different since Plath´s poem is more direct, precise and clearer. She has written it in three complete paragraphs with little pauses because she knows what she wants to say and to put into words.

On the other hand, Ted Hughes writes slowly, two lines after three ones, or only one… He is less clear than Sylvia Plath.

Ted Hughes’s poem says that he feels “his brain slip” (line 1). The author says that how can he survive to this “How can he fly from his feathers?” (line 6). He also recognizes that “he cannot be forgiven” (line 11). He has left himself alone without his wife and now he recognizes what he has done, all the faults and errors he has committed in his life, “His prison is the earth. Clothed in his conviction, Trying to remember his crimes” (lines 12-13).

In the other poem, Sylvia does not care about saying what she thinks about him and that all people know that neither. She insults him above all in the last paragraph, because she feels depressed and sad, “He was the bullman earlier” (line 1), “my lucky animal” (line2), “a dustbin’s enough for him” (line 14), “happy sty face” (line 17), “I’ve married a cupboard of rubbish” (line 18), “Hogwallow´s at the window” (line 21)…

She detests and hates him for what he has done, so she has this feeling with regard to him.

In short, the two poems talk about what has happened, what he has done, and how they feel. We perceive when a man or a woman writes because of his/her style of writing. In the case of Sylvia Plath she is all the time complaining on what he has done to her. So, they do not express equally, she is complaining and insulting him and he is lamenting himself. And there are different ways to seeing reality. He has committed some errors that at the end, she could not continue being with him and decided to commit suicide. Then, we talk about two different literatures; the masculine literature and the feminist literature.

After all, we can deduce that she knows what to say, what to reproduce in words; her feelings with regard to him. She feels extremely bad and depressed and it seems that she has regrets of having been with him.

And he seems not to know very well what he has to do, he feels bad by all the things he has done in his life and he only recognizes that he will not be forgiven.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(http://www.liceus.com/cgi-bin/ac/pu/0450.asp

"Rosa Eva Fernández Conde" Universidad Oviedo Visited on May 6, 2006).

(http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/thughes.htm

Visited on May 6, 2006).

(http://www.sylviaplath.de/

Last Modified: 19 Feb 2004 Anja Beckmann

Visited on May 6, 2006)

(Notes taken in class)

(http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Ted_Hughes/18558

Visited on May, 6, 2006).

(http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/beast.html

Visited on May 6, 2006).