Obsessional

Now approaching the end of Letters of Ted Hughes, having reached the final decade of the poet's life. Struck by just how much of an obsession his ideas about the tragic equation he saw as underlying Shakespeare's work, as outlined in considerable detail in his extraordinary work Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, became in the letters over the years. And what strange but compelling ideas they are.

To be honest, I have never managed a 'linear' reading of the Goddess book, finding Hughes's detailed outline of his thesis somewhat overwhelming, though I've found it a great text to dip into. But following the development of the ideas in the letters is quite different. You get a powerful sense of the growth and expansion of the thesis as if TH is working things out as the various letters are written in something akin to real time. It's obvious that this is something that has to be explored and worked through for the writer, and that doing so releases a creative energy.

Hughes is not writing a version of literary criticism in the letters concerning Shakespeare, or in his finished work. He's writing something deeply imaginative and personal and necessary to himself, the value of which lies in the reader's readiness to surrender to the force of his imaginative engagement to expand their own range of response.