Discuss Hughes’ use of Dreams and occult Symbolism

Ted Hughes is a highly symbolic and mythical poet who dreams and
animal imagery have been traced with symbolic notes. Almost each
and every thing mentioned in Ted’s poetry is symbolic. A symbol is
an object which stands for something else as Dove symbolizes
Peace. Similarly, Blake’s tiger symbolizes creative energy; Shelley’s
wind symbolizes inspiration; Ted Hughes’s Hawk symbolizes terrible
destructiveness at the heart of nature. There is a difference
between an image and symbol, the former evokes a picture and the
latter has wide range of connotations. Hughes’ poetry permeates
with animal imagery which serves as a symbolic purpose. Ted’s
poem ‘Thought-Fox’ is the best example of symbol.
“I imagine the midnight moments’ forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness”
The Thought-Fox describes, in an indirect or oblique manner, the
process by which a poem gets written. What a poet needs to write
a poem is inspiration. A poet waits for the onrush of an idea
through his brain. And, of course, he also needs solitude
(loneliness) and silence around him. Solitude and silence are,
however, only contributory circumstances. They constitute a
favourable environment, while the poem itself comes out of the
poet’s head which has been invaded, as it were, by an idea or
thought. The idea or thought takes shape in his head like a fox
entering a dark forest and then coming out of it suddenly. The fox
embodies the thought which a poet expresses in his poem. The fox
here serves as a symbol. Hughes’s sensibility is pagan in the original
sense; and his poetry is as suggestive of the lair as it is of the
library. He feels greatly attracted by ancient mythologies, Oriental
as well as Western, though he makes use of those ancient myths for
his own purpose. He certainly does not believe literally in the
ancient myths, but he finds a great value in them and, throughout
his poetry, tries to show his readers where the value of these
ancient myths lies.
 “As if we flew slowly, their formations
Lifting us toward some dazzle of blessing”
As a poet, Hughes believes that he must make “secret flights” to go
back in time in order to be able to probe his own mind through his
knowledge of the past consciousness of the human race. He
believes that the principal method of making such secret flights is
through dreams which provide an insight into the unconscious mind
and which have a collective meaning when they have mythical
contents. Hughes invests his poem with a dream-like quality
because dreams reveal the unconscious mind just as the
shamanistic procedures do that. The Thought-Fox is a dream-like
poem, a reverie on a cold winter’s night. The same is the case with
the poem called ‘That Morning’. What is even more remarkable is
his ability to adjust his style to the purpose. Sometimes, as in “The
Thought-Fox” he can convey his meaning and tone through the use
of diction. At other times, he uses animals as symbols; but his
symbols are occult and perceived only through senses. This occult
symbolism is pronounced in the following lines:
The subjects he prefers to write on are, however, several: man in
relation to the animal world, man and nature, war and death.
Hughes’s animal poems are among the best in his work, and among
the finest in the whole range of English poetry. The imagery in
these poems has its own appeal. The imagery in these poems is at
once graphic and realistic; and the language which Hughes has
employed in describing the various animals shows a striking
originality and felicity. The emphasis in this imagery is on the
vitality or energy of the animals concerned and also on the
violence, the fierceness, and the cruelty of most of those animals.
The Thought-Fox is also partly an animal poem, in which the poet’s
inspiration is compared to a fox making a sudden and silent entry
into his head. In this case, instinct replaces intellect. In the poem
‘Chaucer’ Ted says:
“You declaimed Chaucer
To a field of cows”
Where the image of ‘cow’ symbolizes the so-called critics and those
scholastic critics whose only purpose is to find faults with or find
pleasurism in literature. The cows have similar resemblance to the
Hawk. In the poem ‘Hawk Roosting’ the poet does not praise the
hawk so much as he denigrates man by comparison. The hawk is
here seen as vastly superior to man who is unable to accept Nature
for what it is and, instead, tries to tame it by giving it philosophical
names. Elsewhere, cows are the symbol of nature and the purity
one may wish to enjoy:
“Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges
with their warm wreaths of breath”
Thus, he uses images, metaphors and realistic imagery for a
symbolic purpose; but purpose seems to be more and more occult.
Alliteration and syntax structure are one of the devices for Ted to
achieve the purpose. The paradoxical situations are in the hawk
are also vividly presented. Hughes’s technique of writing poems
includes one very striking and highly commendable quality which is
to be found in almost every poem that he wrote. This quality is the
structural unity of his poems. Almost every poem by him is well-
knit, compact, and self-sufficient as the poems discussed above.
Hughes has the ability to capture the reality of things in words; and
he has displayed this ability in his poem ‘The Though-Fox’ and ‘Full
Moon and Little Frieda’.
Conclusively, it is established that Ted Hughes’ is a highly symbolic
poet who uses an individual style and technique. Although, his
symbols are occult, yet they are unique and cinematic. Especially,
the symbolic use of Hawk and that of Fox gets so much stamped on
the mind of the reader that it is difficult to forget it. No wonder
that his poetry, like the poetry of every modern poet, is a tough nut
to crack, because the modern poet tends to be more subtle and
more elusive in the expression of his ideas than the traditional poet
(like Thomas Hardy). But otherwise too, poets are the seers, sages,
philosophers, and Magi of the world, and their techniques of
expression, like their modes of thought, are often complex,
involved, intricate, and sometimes even baffling and bewildering. In
any case, Hughes’s work has considerably enriched English poetry
and enlarged its scope and its bounds

Discuss the major themes and subject matter of Ted

Hughes’ poetry
Ted Hughes is a very important modern British poet. As a poet, he
commands full individual technical superiority over most of his
contemporaries. He understands modern sensibility and
contemporary issues; but writes in his own perspective. He creates
before us worlds which delight and instruct us and elevate us
emotionally, intellectually and esthetically. Unlike some modern
poets so believe that a poem should not mean but be, Ted Hughes
is profoundly concerned with the subject matter of his poetry.
The major theme of his poetry is of course man, that is, the
question of human existence, man’s relation with the universe,
with the natural world and with his own inner self. He is awfully
serious about this last aspect of the problem of being, namely, the
problem of human consciousness. His subjects range from animals,
landscapes, war; the problem posed by the inner world of modern
man, to the philosophical and metaphysical queries about the
status of man in this universe. His moods and methods of
presentation reveal a similar variety. Ted Hughes says about his
vigor and vitality (usually associated with violence):
“Any form of violence—any form of vehement activity-
invokes the bigger energy. To accept the energy, and find
method of turning it to good. The old method is the only one. My
poems are not about violence but vitality. Animals are not violent;
they are so much more completely controlled than me”
The main theme in his poetry is this energy which has to be turned
into a positive force. Violence is misunderstood in his poetry. Most
of Hughes’s poetry can be said to be an attempt to negotiate with
these energies as we see his argument in the case of Hawk. This
poem is often criticized on the ground that the hawk is a
mouthpiece of fascism. What is forgotten, however, is Hughes’s
assertion that the Hawk symbolizes “Nature thinking.” Secondly,
the point of view in this poem is the hawks; that is to say, the hawk
is as mortal and part of creation as any other creature, violent or
timid. Right from his childhood, Ted Hughes has been interested in
animals. When his parents lived in the Calder valley, Ted Hughes
had a chance to see the world of the animals from close quarters.
Hughes learnt the first lesson that animals were by and large
victims. The wild world of the animals was at the mercy of the
ordered human world. Yet, as Hughes realized and emphasized in
his poetry, the human world was fascinated by the world of the
animals because it had pushed into the unconscious what the
animal world still possessed: vat, untapped energies. As depicted in
‘That Morning’:
“Two gold bears came down and swam like men…
Eating pierced salmon off their talons”
Here, the untamed natural impulses have been beautifully
externalized as the two bears representing the two visitors to the
lake. He writes violence chiefly of savage animals, but violence also
in human nature. Indeed, violence is one of the dominant themes in
Hughes’s poetry; and for this reason he has often been regarded as
a poet of violence. But these poems of violence by Hughes are
certainly genuine poetry; and we certainly enjoy reading them. And
it is not only the sadistic persons among us who would appreciate
these poems. Even the normal reader can find a certain degree of
pleasure in them, especially because they are perfectly realistic,
and very vivid, in their depiction of brutality and cruelty. But not
violence alone but treats nature in a unique way as in:
“A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and
the clank of a bucket –”
Nature is one of the most prevalent scenes in his poetry. In a way
Hughes’s poetry continues the tradition of nature poetry. But unlike
Wordsworth who found Nature a “nurse, guide and guardian,” and
Tennyson who found Nature “red in tooth and Claw” Hughes tries
to take both the Wordsworthian and Tennyson approaches to
Nature. In poems like “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Hughes can
describe Nature to continue the Wordsworthian tradition, but in
poems like “Hawk Roosting” the “That Morning” Hughes recognizes
the powerful, vital, violent and predacious Nature without
commenting on it. It doesn’t mean that he copies their style. One
of the causes underlying Hughes’s greatness as a modern poet is his
maturity and originality of style. Hughes has experimented with
several different styles, ranging from the Wordsworthian and ‘their
metaphysical to that of the modern East European poets. In each
case, he has made the style his own as in ‘Thought-Fox’.
“The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed”
He can convey his meaning and tone through the use of diction. As
in the above extract, as soon as the thought-fox springs into action,
the vowels are short: “brilliantly, concentratedly.” The action
reaches its climax in the last line which is virtually monosyllabic:
“And the page is printed.” The poem thus shows a fine blending of
vowels and consonants so as to provide a fusion of sense and
sound. At other times, he uses animals as symbols. In each case,
there is a remarkable mastery over the medium, whether it is to
depict a scene, portray an animal, tell a story, or present a one-
sided vision as that of Hawk. Even the theme of violence is handled
with the lexical entities. Ted Hughes is primarily concerned with
material reality not simply the reality of a superficial urbanity but
the one that governs larger questions of life and death, Nature and
the animal world, and above all, the inner world of man as in ‘Full
Moon and Little Frieda’:
“A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk”
Instead of shutting his eyes to the metaphysical and spiritual
questions about life, Hughes tries to go to their bottom. He brings
round that blood can be spilled as mercilessly as milk and water.
The reality is depicted in the ‘boulders’ troubles of life. Like Blake
he shows a fourfold vision which progresses from knowledge of the
surfaces seen from a singular and therefore one-sided perspectives
to the mature philosophic perspective which goes to the heart of
the matter. He finds a close kinship between the ambivalent but
powerful forces within man and the inscrutable and terrible
working of the world of Nature. Equally remarkable is the fact that
Hughes has treated of many modern concerns, like war and
violence, with an awareness which is lacking in many of his
contemporary poets. His poetry evokes a concentrated imaginative
awareness of experience in a specific emotional response through
language that he chooses and arranges for its meaning, sound,
rhythm and a purpose.

---------++++++++--------++++++
Anylisis by little farida and moon
The change of atmosphere in the poem Full Moon and Little Frieda
is controlled by Ted Hughes to create a dramatic atmosphere. With
carefully chosen words, Hughes builds up tension and brings it up to
climax.
Tension is built up as a foundation for the astonishing ambience
later in the poem. By closely describing stationary, unnoticeable
things, the poet is able to create the suspense which helps to
amplify the climax. A spider’s web is “tense for the dew’s touch”
which presents the stillness of life and gives an idea that the
environment is very shrunken up as if in anticipation for a shock.
The imagery of a pail full of water adds to the idea of anticipation
that it is “still and brimming” which portrays the expectation of an
event about to happen. A pail is used well as imagery because when
the water is full up to the brim, the water toppling perfectly
visualizes the tense climate of the poem. Also the “mirror” suggests
stillness. A “tremor” is all a pail needs to tip out its content and
thus foreshadows some action. Moreover, the help of the
repetition of “A” in the beginning of the sentences, the listing tone
embellishes tension. In the first two stanzas of the poem the build-
up of tension is clearly noticeable.
While the previous stanzas were devoted to creating a strained
mood, the third stanza reveals a completely different scene and yet
perfects the building of the most intensified atmosphere. “Cows
going home” insinuates a normal routine, a shot of an everyday life
and that everything is normal despite all the tension that has been
built up. The “lane” suggests an un-spoilt “pail” because lanes
connote evenness and uniformity which contrasts to the spilling of
water. The uniformity is emphasized by “balancing un-spilled milk”,
careful not to spill and break order. Moreover, the sameness is
exemplified by a metaphor of “warm wreaths of breath” in which
the wreaths connote evenness and arrangement. Also the
alliteration of “warm wreaths” holds some significance as it is a soft
pronunciation and does not have any accents. This reinforces the
idea of tranquility which is an anticlimax to amplify the actual
climax of the poem. While the climax is magnificent, grand and
stunning, the anticlimax holds values for its antonymic behaviour. A
“dark” atmosphere is adopted to hide what is coming shortly, the
climax, and is given a sinister tone to add to that effect. The “dark
river of blood” insinuates hardship and ominousness which is
supported by “many boulders” to add to the idea of hardship.
However, these boulders can be seen differently as stepping stones
to help cross the “dark river of blood”. This ambiguity is used nicely
to create a confusing, chaotic atmosphere which will be broken
heroically. Furthermore, the whole stanza is a case of enjambment;
reading the lines separately will give different meanings
aforementioned, and reading it as a whole gives a contrasting idea.
On seeing the stanza as one sentence, it is deducible that this
stanza denotes Hughes’ rough past. Although Hughes went through
various hardships and suffering, he managed to balance the “milk”
and be with his daughter. Therefore, figuratively the “milk” could
be his daughter which is an example of metonymy. Would he have
spilt it on his course, he wouldn’t have his daughter with him at the
point of writing. Hughes creates the most intense anticlimax before
the pinnacle of the poem.
In contrast to the third stanza, the fourth stanza is the site of
climax. This shock which the poet has to present is helped with the
use of several punctuations and words. “Moon” is repeated three
times to emphasize the presence and each is followed by
exclamation marks to supplement the unexpected action. The word
“suddenly” adds to the shocking effect. Simile is used to create a
pertinent imagery to describe the shock “like an artist gazing
amazed at a work” which depicts the surprise. This surprise is
because of the fact that the little Frieda is so innocent and pure
such that she cries out “moon” as if it was a scientific breakthrough.
It is almost as if the moon is jealous of her purity, because moon
itself connotes purity and is quite taken back to find a more
innocent person which is suggested by the repetition of “amazed”
which shows the extreme consternation of the moon. The last
stanza finishes off the poem without proper ending to the climax by
which creates a reverberation of the climax and also leaves an
ambiguous notion. With the uses of exclamations, repetitions and
simile, the climax is successfully managed to finish the poem
without dissatisfaction.
Hughes creates the astonishing climax by focusing on the anticlimax
which is built up from the beginning, which in the end builds up the
climax itself. By closely describing objects linked with movement
and intensifying the moment just before the climax, the poet built
up tension and used it effectively to hit the climax with full power.
-------------------+++++++++++++++++---------------------------------

Concepts of Nature in Ted Hughes’ poems "Hawk

Roosting" and "February 17th"
To call Ted Hughes (1930-1998) a nature poet, should not
be considered pejorative. It simply means that nature is a
frequent subject in his poetry. However, while a great
many of his predecessors expressed nature as the idyllic,
romantic, and peaceful opposite of a denatured and
technological world, Hughes highlighted the darker and
more realistic aspects of nature by putting its
murderousness in the foreground. Thus, the recognition of
violence and aggression in nature became one of Hughes’
dominant themes in numerous of his poems. Yet, looking
at his work, we can state a significant change when it
comes to describing nature. With Terry Gifford’s analysis
of Hughes’s poetry in mind, two different concepts of
nature can be traced which may be called ‘anti-pastoral’
and ‘post-pastoral’ (Gifford 1994: 131pp). While a lot of his
early works reveal a militant opposition to any Arcadian
descriptions of nature, Hughes later on creates his post-
pastoral poetry in which he reconnects ‘our own natural
energies with those at work in the external natural world’
(Gifford 1994: 129). Such classification of poetry as
suggested by Gifford should not be an end in itself; instead,
it ought to be relevant to all contemporary readers who
take an interest in clarifying for themselves ‘which writing
is likely to raise the most useful questions for our time’
(Gifford 2012: 69).
In the following, I will devote myself to Terry Gifford’s
classification of Ted Hughes’s poetry and illustrate whether
or not it can be regarded as appropriate when it comes to
the poet’s concept of nature. In order not to remain in pure
theory, I will concentrate on Hughes’ poems Hawk
Roosting and February 17th which can be referred to as
palpable examples either of Hughes’ anti-pastoral or post-
pastoral reference to nature. For a better understanding, I
will initially define the terms ‘anti-pastoral’ and ‘post-
pastoral’ as used and understood by Gifford, before I will
prove them in the concepts in Hawk Roosting and
February 17th by also clarifying the different effect that
Hughes’ approaches to nature necessarily have on the
reader. At the end, I will come to a conclusion in which I
briefly state the results of my investigation.
Definitions of terms and concepts
Before using the perceptions ‘anti-pastoral’ and ‘post-
pastoral’ in his essay, these terms ought to be defined,
initially. It is clearly apparent in the first place that both
terms are used to mark, more or less, a strong opposition
to poetry that is referred to as ‘pastoral’. Pastoral writings
usually represent an idealised, often nostalgic, and mysti-
eyed image of reality (Gifford 2012: 49-59) by using
illusions or romanticisations in order to expose the best
sides only of (life in) nature and by concealing its brutality
and its arbitrariness (Williams 1973: 30). In this way,
pastoral concepts aim at making the ‘Industrial Man [look]
away from technological Wasteland to an older and better
world’ (Barrell and Bull 1974: 423).
While such pastoral concepts distort the historical,
economic, and organic tensions between humans and
nature (Gifford 1994: 130), the ‘anti-pastoral’ way of
relating to nature is marked by the correction of any
idealisation ‘by presenting counter evidence that
emphasises the opposite features in a gritty realism’
(Gifford 2012: 59). Consequently, the characteristics of
anti-pastoral literature is bound to be summed up as
perfectly the opposite of those of the pastoral: Anti-
pastoral authors depict an unidealised and unattractive
image of nature by stressing tensions, disorder,
hasrshness, and inequalities in the natural world (Gifford
2012: 60). Nature ceases to be the idyllic and romantic
counterpart of the modern and technological life and is
displayed as a brutal environment where merely the fittest
can survive.
In 1994, Terry Gifford offered the term ‘post-pastoral’ for
writings about nature that outflank the subdivision into
pastoral and anti-pastoral (Gifford 1994: 134-140; (Gifford
2012: 61-68). Initially, he related the term solely to Ted
Hughes’ poetry, but later on he also applied it to different
kinds of literature. Gifford’s alternative term to Leo Marx’s
‘complex pastoral’ (Marx 1964) can be traced in writings
which feature a) tensions between pastoral and anti-
pastoral elements showing a dynamic process in nature; b)
the contradiction between divineness and intraworldliness
as confrontation between all beings as animals and gods at
the same time; c) the direct responsibility for the
management of nature; d) the fact that outer processes in
nature reflect inner processes of humans and culture; and
e) the interchangeability of images which means that
animal life, culture, human life, landscape and weather are
all parts of an interactive whole that can be expressed by
interchanging images (Gifford 1994: 134-140).
Even though Terry Gifford admits that rarely all aspects of
anti-pastoral or post-pastoral elements can be expected to
be found in a poem (Gifford 1999: 150), the subdivision
into these terms remains helpful for a better understanding
of poetry dealing with nature because the presence of these
elements betray the poet’s relation to the world.
The anti-pastoral concept of nature in Hawk Roosting
According to Terry Gifford, Ted Hughes’ anti-pastoral
concept of nature is rather obvious in his earlier animal
poems such as Hawk Roosting published in 1960 in his
collection Lupercal (Gifford 1994: 133). To illustrate that, it
has to be asked which anti-pastoral aspects Hughes utilises
in this poem and which effect such presentation of nature
is likely to have on the audience.
In the previous chapter, anti-pastoral concepts are defined
as unidealised depiction of nature as a sphere of tensions,
disorder, and inequalities where merely the fittest can
survive (Gifford 2012: 60). And indeed, Ted Hughes uses
deeply realistic images in order to represent nature as an
environment of pessimistic realism and brutality. The cold
and unvarnished language violates any pastoral concept of
natural harmony. Nature appears to consist only of
predators and prey and apparently repeats nothing more
than this permanent and unsettling subdivision into
hunter and hunted (L-24). The poem is written in 1st
person to create the impression as if the hawk were
speaking. His tone of voice is arrogant, proud, boastful,
self-confident and shows that he considers himself the best
of creation (L-10). His whole existence solely revolves
around hunting and killing (L-16). Wilderness, death, and
dominance are permanently recurrent isotopies in this
poem that disenchants nature completely by reducing it to
a place that seems to be owned by the most brutal and
ruthless creatures who take for themselves the right to kill
what they please (L-14). Even though there seems to be a
natural order for the conservation of species, it is merely a
biological one which makes the readers concerned because
they may consider this order a disorder in comparison to
that of human beings. In Ted Hughes’ poem, nature is not
the idyllic place of pastoral writings any longer. Instead,
Hughes composes a cynical concept of nature by, on the
one hand, using romantic images of creation (L-10) and, on
the other hand, destroying these images altogether when
he unmasks this creation as no more than a brutal bunch of
prey and predators (L-12).
Hawk Roosting creates very severe an effect on the reader
who is likely to notice very soon that the hawk may be
understood as a metaphor of humans. The hawk shows
clearly human characteristics in his reflecting on the past
and the future (L-10 and L-24), in his thinking (L-4), his
concluding (L-7), his claiming (L-14), and his showing
consciousness (L-2). As humans do, he refers to himself as
superior: it is not nature but himself who is ‘going to keep
things like this’ (L-24). However, the hawk is more than
just a metaphor of humans; he rather serves as a mirror in
which humans are forced to recognize their beastlike
nature. Human beings dominate the world, as does the
hawk in this poem, and think of themselves as the
sophisticated pride of creation. But this assumed
sophistication is merely imaginary and therefore has to be
unmasked as a ‘falsifying dream’ (L-2). In the end, humans
are nothing more than simply predators that have the
power and the willingness to take lives. Like animals, they
live out the struggle for a survival of the fittest by
permanently striving for ascendancy. By giving his hawk
human characteristics and making him speak in 1st person,
Hughes does not let the reader feel superior to this
creature, but crosses out any comfortable distance between
humans and wild creatures. Even with our ‘sophistery’ (L-
15), we are hardly any better than the hawk. All civilization
is just an illusion and has failed completely in changing the
brute human nature in us which is still that of wild beasts
using each opportunity to kill what they long to because it
is all theirs (L-14). Yet, unlike the hawk, humans do not
simply kill out of livelihood and nature, but also out of
pleasure and proof of superiority. Nature here is exposed
as the dark side of human psyche.
In Hawk Roosting, Hughes formulates a deeply pessimistic
and disenchanting image of nature as a place where
predators dominate their prey. The animalistic nature of
humans is harshly unmasked. We can trace all elements of
an anti-pastoral writing that are suggested by Terry
Gifford. Thus, nature ceases to be an idyllic counterpart of
human life and is represented as an unidealised sphere
where the weak and the meek get killed.
The post-pastoral concept of nature in February 17th
When we take a look at Ted Hughes’ work twenty years
after the publication of Hawk Roosting, we notice a
remarkable shift in his poems that can be labeled as shift
from anti-pastoral to post-pastoral concepts of nature. The
poem February 17th is quite good an example to be
examined in this respect. In the following chapter, it has to
be asked, whether Terry Gifford’s classification of Ted
Hughes’ later poetry as post-pastoral can be proved there
and which impact such depiction of nature might have on
the reader.
All characteristics of the post-pastoral approach described
by Gifford can indeed be traced in Hughes’ poem February
17th (Gifford 1994: 134-140). First of all, the tension
between pastoral and anti-pastoral elements as a dynamic
process in nature is rather obvious and creates a disturbing
atmosphere. The natural brutality of a lamb’s birth shows
dramatically the rigour of what untouched life in (our
romantic imagination of) nature can look like. Here we
find anti-pastoral approaches that unmask nature in its
cruelty and in the simultaneity of life and death. While
nature is shown in a pastoral manner as the idyll and peace
of birth, it is also illustrated in its lethal haphazardness.
The romantic image of a lamb’s ‘safe landing’ (L-20 and L-
45) is juxtaposed with the cruel manner in which it gets
born in the end (L-12 and L-45). As suggested by Gifford,
these tensions between pastoral and anti-pastoral elements
are exploited as contradiction between divineness and
intraworldliness which means as confrontation between all
beings as animals and gods alike. In February 17th, the ewe
represents the divine nature in every creature. She is
godlike in her being capable of giving birth. But at the
same time, she is a creature of intraworldliness and
therefore beastlike because the lamb that was supposed to
be born was ‘[s]trangled by its mother’ (L-12). What is
brought out, in the end, of that divine creature is merely a
dead body with a head that is hacked off (L-45). It is only
man’s intervention into this disastrous process of giving
birth that rescues the ewe’s life and shows dramatically the
responsibility for the management of nature that the
shepherd feels obliged to. The relationship between human
being and animal is produced in the powerful urgency of
an action with which, despite the bestiality of it, the
shepherd is trying to save his sheep’s life. As for Terry
Gifford, outer processes of nature reflect inner processes of
humans and culture in post-pastoral writings so that they
are parts of a whole. In February 17th, the concept of
nature seems indeed less transcendental than in any
pastoral writings. The ewe, suffering from its painful
circumstances, is almost entirely tangible and
understandable to the shepherd. In their mutual struggle
for the birth which is to safe the mother’s life they are
acting as parts of an interactive whole. And even though
both of them fail eventually to give birth to a healthy
newborn, the two of them succeed in rescueing the ewe.
Both are parts of the same outcome which is lucky and
tragic at the same time. Human and animal life becomes
one for a terrific moment. The struggle for life is expressed
in interchanging images. The shepherd and his sheep form
a unity, ‘a to-fro futility’ (L-36), in the dynamic process of
pushing against each other in their dependence on each
other.