PERFECT LIGHT a poem about innocence (Ted
Hughes)
Leen Moelker
Perfect Light
There you are, in
all your innocence,
Sitting among
your daffodils, as in a picture
Posed as for the
title: ‘Innocence’.
Perfect light in
your face lights it up
Like a daffodil.
Like anyone of those daffodils
It was to be your
only April on earth
Among your
daffodils. In your arms,
Like a teddy
bear, your new son,
Only a few weeks
into his innocence.
Mother and
infant, as in the Holy portrait.
And beside you,
laughing up at you,
Your daughter,
barely two. Like a daffodil
You turn your
face down to her, saying something.
Your words were
lost in the camera.
And
the knowledge,
Inside the hill
on which you are sitting,
A moated fort
hill, bigger than your house,
Failed to reach
the picture. While your next moment,
Coming towards
you like an infantryman
Returning slowly
out of no-man’s-land,
Bowed under
something, never reached you –
Simply melted
into the perfect light.
Ted Hughes[1]
Guidelines.
The English
poet Ted Hughes and the American author Sylvia Plath married in 1956. Sylvia
suffered from manic-depressions, and although Ted had been advised not to marry
her, he did it secretly.
The
situation worsened very soon after the marriage. Sylvia became a suspicious
women without reason to be jealous. She saw in every handsome young woman her
rival. Ted was a tall, very handsome and clever man who had a lot of success.
They moved
several times to another house to experience quietness (Ted his preferable
surroundings) or rumour in the city (Sylvia’s favourite place to be). They have
got two children, Frieda and Nicholas. Sylvia visited a psychiatrist but
nothing could help her to overcome her mental sickness.
At the end
after a lot of problems – Ted fell in love with other women, Sylvia remained
angry about the lack of her happiness and success – Sylvia tumbled in a deep
crisis. After giving many signals by means of her poetry, she committed suicide
in 1963.
It is
necessary to notice, generally speaking, the (literary) public judged Ted as
being guilty of Sylvia’s death. Ted kept silence about his version of the
relationship with his former wife. Accidentally, all that happened in the
Sixties, and the uprising feminism needed a hero. As a matter of fact Sylvia
became the feminist example of a victim of men’s manipulations. Ted (a most famous poet at that time) became
the devil himself who mistreated his wife by lying and cheating on her.
Thirty and
five years after Sylvia her death, Ted created
eighty-eight poems in which he looks back on that very period with Sylvia, and
which collection he called Birthday
Letters. Besides, he enclosed in a safety
box a number of secret letters and important documents about Sylvia. Not to be
opened before 2023.
The poem, Perfect Light, an
interpretation.
‘There you are,
in all your innocence,
Sitting among
your daffodils, as in a picture
Posed as for the
title: ‘Innocence’.
This
sentence is divided into three verses and presents the object of the lyrical subject.
He sees somebody sitting on the ground, among a field of daffodils. It seems
like a picture for him, a human figure surrounded by and against a background of yellow
flowers. It is an ordinary image that people connect immediately with terms
like vulnerability, beauty, goodness and
loveliness. The lyrical subject however gives this ‘painting’ the title Innocence. Why is it that the
presentation begins with qualifying ‘you’ as innocent? Is this to affirm the
general meaning about such images, or is it to underline a kind of avowal and
does the poet implicitly plead guilty? Does he say sorry?
Context
1961,
August 31 Ted and Sylvia moved to their new home in North Tawton, Devonshire.
Sylvia was pregnant with
Nicholas who would be born in 1962, January 17. To their great surprise, in the Spring of 1962 thousands
of daffodils coloured their new but long existing garden yellow. Many pictures had been
taken of the daffodils including of Sylvia with their children.
‘Perfect light in
your face lights it up
Like a daffodil.
Like anyone of those daffodils
It was to be your
only April on earth
Among your
daffodils.’
In this part we get some information about the human
figure. Like all daffodils need the sun to lift up their ‘faces,’ also this figure
needs a perfect light on its face to be able to show its beauty and to
emphasize its vulnerability and loveliness.
But then, something like a
dramatic prediction follows in the words
It
was to be your only April on earth. What is going on?
Context
Ted and Sylvia
loved their Green Court at North Tawton in the region of the daffodils. Their garden produced all they needed and
they felt strong together and self-supporting. There was much to do on that
huge country-seat but Sylvia didn’t matter. She was happy with her two children
and invited many friends and family members to come over. Among them David and
Assia Wevill. David was a Canadian poet and a well known translator and
professor. Ted fell in love with Assia and betrayed Sylvia which caused, people
say, her death 1963, February 15.
Indeed, it was the only one April of the year 1962, this figure would be
able to enjoy the daffodils. She had not seen the daffodils before in 1961
(property not bought yet) and not in 1963 because she died in February.
Fig.1 Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498-1500,
marble,
St. Pieter, Rome. (Foto Internet)
‘In your arms,
Like a teddy
bear, your new son,
Only a few weeks
into his innocence.
Mother and
infant, as in the Holy portrait.’
The
‘picture’ has got more details now. What we see is a mother with a baby in her
arms. Just a few weeks old, the baby is qualified by the words ‘into his
innocence’ and he looks like a teddy bear. Like the mother also the child exists
into innocence. This is recalling what the poem is actually going about:
INNOCENCE. Looking back to the sixties the poet could feel badly about the
irreversibility of his former behaviour and decisions. And feeling guilty, he
could only see mother and child as holy. Hence the comparison with
Michelangelo’s Pietà. Like Jesus was
innocent, yet murdered, so the mother was innocent and dead.
Fig.2 Innocent Girl in the
bulb-field near Sassenheim, (Foto
Ada Markusse) 2012, April 8.
‘And beside you, laughing
up at you,
Your daughter,
barely two. Like a daffodil
You turn your
face down to her, saying something.’
The
picture is now completed with a third figure, a girl, who was born 1960, April
1st (barely two). Mother and
daughter looked at each other. The daughter looked up to her mother like the
daffodils to the sun. The mother is looking down, like the daffodils in the
evening shadow. She is saying something. What did she say? Was it about happy
feelings, she tried to share? Was it about bad compulsive thoughts she has all
the time? The
lyrical subject cannot hear this because ‘the words were lost in the (silent)
camera.
‘Your words were lost in the
camera.
And
the knowledge,
Inside the hill
on which you are sitting,
A moated fort hill,
bigger than your house,
Failed to reach
the picture.’
Then, we have to be alerted by the extreme position
of the next verse. It is put out of the centre of the text of the poem where we
read something about the knowledge. This must have a special meaning. The
knowledge of what? Of the lost words? If
we ignore the next two verses, we read: the knowledge ‘failed to reach the
picture.’ This knowledge can refer to a
complexity of notions. Facts, reminiscences, experiences, decisions,
difficulties, behaviours, routines and education are some elements of our
knowledge.
What is the meaning of “And the knowledge inside
the hill on which you are sitting?“ Can
knowledge be ‘in the hill’? A hill is an area of land that is higher than that
surrounds it. Maybe we have to read that the knowledge remains where it is now.
Into the inner world of the mother. This particular hill is a ‘moated fort
hill’ which means, that the hill is not a friendly place in the landscape but a
fort hill to defend the inhabitants from intruders. And to keep things under
ones own. That’s why the hill is isolated from its surroundings by a huge
ditch. So we can now read this sentence as follows:
And the knowledge (of the unbearable tensions, of
the fears for the future, of the deep despair, of losing control, of not being
a successful poet, of being cheated on by love ones) cannot be read from the
picture. It seems to be a happy family but in fact we see a tormented and
isolated mother who is not able to receive help.
‘While
your next moment,
(146)Coming towards
you like an infantryman
(147)Returning slowly
out of no-man’s-land,
Bowed under
something, never reached you –
Simply melted
into the perfect light.’
‘Your next moment’ is coming towards you like an infantryman.’ What does it mean? The ‘next moment’ is an
expression based on the fact that there is a present moment. Normally these two
moments are very different from each other. These moments mostly change rapidly
and suddenly. An easy explanation is possible if we ignore the comparison with an infantryman (146,147),
then we read: “While your next moment coming towards you, (it) never reached
you.” For there was no next year, no April, no Spring with daffodils that ever would
spread their yellow colours and exhale
their odours towards this present happy family.
A little more difficult is to explain that
strange comparison between ‘the next moment’ and an infantryman, a soldier.
Normally an infantryman make war or make
peace, that depends on his orders. In this poem ‘your next moment” conduct itself as an infantryman. To bring
war? To get peace? It is unclear. That’s
why the infantryman returns out of no-man’s-land.
A no-man’s-land is an area at the edge of the
battle-field where none of the opponent armies has any control. It is a place
where the fighting has temporarily stopped or kept free of hostilities.
Literarily used, is it also a place where different things don’t fit into
either the present moment or into the
next moment.
I’m
wondering which kind of ‘infantryman’
is approaching slowly the – unattainable- fort hill?. Will it be another happy
moment? Or just an unhappy experience?
Entering the region with the moated fort hill it
(= the next moment) is impossible to go forward. There’s a huge blockade to overcome. Will there be no
other moment?
(He/she/it) bowed
under something. What is bowing on him? In accordance with the Cobuild English Dictionary (page 187) I
learned that when someone is bowed by something, this means, that he/she is made
unhappy and anxious by it, and lose hope. It is clear that this moment bows to
the inevitable thoughts and strivings, belonging to a compulsive obsessive
mind. And that is why it could never develop to the level of a happy moment.
Is that next moment somewhere visible yet? The
poem says, it melted into the perfect light and this happened before it could
reach its destination. Obviously the lyrical subject does not use the word
‘light,’ but he calls it ‘perfect light’. The word ‘perfect’ means that the
object does not have any marks, lumps, cracks or damage in it. A perfect light
is like an aura above the Holy Family by whom we remember the word ‘innocence’
in this poem and the notion of the ‘Holy Family.’ These words emphasize, together with the word ‘perfect,’
the pureness of the object and its
cleanness of sin.
Let us summarize this analysis.
A lyrical subject describes what it sees:
On a sunny day, a mother and her two children
are sitting in a garden, surrounded by daffodils. Mother and daughter like
daffodils too, laughing and chatting to each other in the sun. It is like a
picture with the title Innocence. It ís a picture, because we read their words are lost in the camera.
Also the knowledge of what is really going on with this family fails to reach
this very picture.
As all events end, this temporary moment will be
replaced by another. But it is unclear which kind of moment this will be. Will
it bring prosperity? Will it bring misery? Like in a no-man’s-land,
expectations are neither good nor bad. This next moment, the poet say, has been
bowed under something and has never reached the object. A huge blockade of
compulsive thoughts prevent it from improving and developing to another moment
of happiness.
In this poem the poet remembers his wife at a
moment of heartfelt happiness. He admit she is
innocent, perfect and pure and, while enlightened by a perfect light, he
pities mother and children who are waiting for their next( happy) moments which
will never reach them.
Middelburg, 2016 July 28th
