Tag: frieda hughes

Inspiration/

Ted Hughes on ‘the problem with writing directly of recent experiences’

Frieda Hughes

I’ve just finished reading The Letters of Ted Hughes (Faber 2007 edited by Christopher Reid). There is so much in this book that I’ve found illuminating and inspiring. Yes, there were quite a few detailed accounts of fishing trips which I couldn’t quite get into, and I’m sorry to say a fair bit of the erudition of Ted’s letters to fellow writers and his publishers did rather go over my head. But it’s an extraordinary window into his personality. I really felt for him as regards the whole Sylvia Plath ‘fantasia’ as he called it, there’s such a strong sense of him boxing himself into a corner from which there was no escape until he published ‘Birthday Letters’.

Towards the end of the book, Ted writes to his daughter Frieda, who has sent him some of her poems to critique. We don’t get to read his comments on the poems themselves, but his summary comments were, as always, very interesting. In particular, here’s something that really rang a bell for me:

The problem about writing directly of recent experiences is – the memory is simply too unfinished. And the feelings are still too engaged in the real situation. They are too painful and unresolved to say anything about. You can try – but they, those attempts to express those feelings, will always seem shallow, one-sided, exaggerated, false etc.

At the same time, they will find expression through some image that seems to have nothing to do with them – ie where you can deal with them because they are disguised. So your attempts to express the feeling of an experience directly, in the terms of the experience, will be blocked, false, cramped etc and yet if at the same time you wrote a story about witches and demons, or mechanical dogs, it would be full of wild feelings and and you would feel the release. The emotions of a real situation are shy, but if they can find a mask they are shameless exhibitionists. So – look for the right masks. Cast about and experiment. A feeling is always looking for a metaphor of itself in which it can reveal itself unrecognised.

When you find yourself writing directly about something that preoccupies you with rage etc – just remember that. A metaphor provides the escape route.

I love that – “a feeling is always looking for a metaphor.”

Books/

Lovely example from Ted Hughes’ letters

Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid

Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid

It is now 1974. At least, that’s how far I have got with Ted Hughes’ letters, through which I’m getting a stronger impression of him than I think I’ve ever got from another source. Perhaps that’s not surprising, as he valued his privacy. And in the letters, there’s a clear sense of his growing frustration at how journalists, commentators and Plath biographers were representing his life.

Weird to think that in 1974 (or thereabouts) I was slouching my way through Dr Upadhayay’s English lessons, reading ‘View of a Pig’ and not even giving a thought to who the poet was, assuming he was long dead rather than a man of forty-something very much in the land of the living and with a daughter the same age as me.

As you might expect in the book there are letters to friends, publishers, other writers and family, sometimes talking (or not talking) about the same events. From about 1971 these included letters to his children. In a particularly charming one of November 1973 Hughes wrote to his daughter Frieda at boarding school, giving her advice for an English project she’s clearly asked him about. It’s a wonderful letter, bursting with life, full of detailed advice, fun and enthusiasm. He tells her firstly to seek out a copy of PLUTARCH’S LIVES (his capitals, and underlined three times): “While telling about Antony, Plutarch tells all about Cleopatra. You must read that. It’s quite short. In the same book, there’s also a life of Julius Caesar, but in that Plutarch gives only a couple of paragraphs to Cleopatra. But you must read those 2 paragraphs.”

Then there are his tips for writing up her material as a play or screenplay: “break up the story into scenes. As many as you like. You can write the scenes as you like – as you go along – in any order – you can fit them together at the end. If you write it as a film you can add bits all over the place. Describe lilies on the Nile. Caesar shooting a hippopotamus etc.” By the time I’d finished this letter I was ready to go find ‘Plutarch’s Lives’ and write a play myself. It all sounded so brilliant.