Crow

I’m reading the Ted Hughes biography by Jonathan Bate.  I’m ashamed to say I knew next-to-nothing about him before starting it, further evidence of the rickety foundations of my undergraduate degree in English, as L is fond of pointing out.  In any case, the book is well done, and Hughes’s life certainly provided no dearth of drama.  Ted Hughes the man was as epic as his poetry.  Over the weekend we stumbled across an audiobook of his reading Tales from Ovid, and his deep northern burr gives one chills.

Dude’s personal life was a major-league mess, though.  His bouncing around between women – marrying one one day, then motoring up to Devon to spend a week in bed with another one the next – is exhausting and almost farcical.  Of course, his larger-than-life sexual energy was central to his mythical persona: as Erica Jong, who only barely escaped becoming one of his conquests, put it, “He was fiercely sexy, with a vampirish, warlock appeal.  He reeked of virility.  He was a born seducer and only my terror of Sylvia’s ghost kept me from being seduced.”  One could cut him some slack and say that he never recovered from Sylvia Plath’s suicide, but that would ignore the fact that his romantic adventures were already in full swing by then, as well as the extent to which they may have contributed to it.    

But really, there’s no slack to be cut, because “judging” Ted Hughes is a waste of time.  If you're worried about karmic justice, it seems that his suffering was at the very least in proportion to his transgressions.  Engaging in self-righteous nit-picking would also make you lose sight of his art, which was by any measure extraordinary.  There’s a lesson here for those lining up to boycott H.P. Lovecraft, or Juno Diaz, or Kanye West, for that matter.  Don’t read or listen to them if you choose, but judging artists on their human failings is fraught with hypocrisy.  More importantly, it prevents you from seeing the humanity (and your humanity) which their work illuminates.