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Rhetoric and Violence in Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and the Speeches of Enoch Powell

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Rhetoric and Violence in Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and the Speeches of Enoch Powell Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/camqtly/article/XXIX/1/1/332345 by guest on 27 September 2021 Rhetoric and Violence in Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and the Speeches of Enoch Powell Still, I'm convinced that shaping, voicing, are types of civic action.1 SINCE THE 1950S GEOFFREY HILL'S POETRY has addressed itself to the matter and the morality of history as poetry as perceived through densely allusive, ambiguous language and a complex subjectivity that often reflects upon the poem's and poet's own status. The recent publication of Geoffrey Hill's long poem Theiriumph of Love gives occasion for us to re-evaluate the scope and nature of his work. The poem's splenetic outbursts, its frequent recourse to the imagery and tone of Old Testament prophecy, arid its forthright addresses to the politics and mores of the twentieth century, though partly prefigured by 1996's Canaan, may suggest that Geoffrey Hill is no longer quite the poet that many have thought him to be. But it also repeatedly returns to the themes and historical subject-matter that have dominated Hill's poetry. Thus, readers unfamiliar with Hill's earlier poetry may be slightly puzzled by these somewhat peculiar lines: But Fairfield repels my imperium, and always did. Its complex anarchy of laws would have defeated Athelstan, let alone Ine. High swine-pasture it was, long before Domesday; and will be again, albeit briefly, at the flash of Judgement. Let it now take for good a bad part of my childself. I gather I was a real swine.2 Those who have read the brief biography supplied with the book will know that Geoffrey Hill attended Fairfield Junior School, and those who 1 Geoffrey Hill, The Triumph of Love (Harmondsworth 1999) p. 36. 2 Ibid. 42. ©The Editors, The Cambridge Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 1 2000 2 THE CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY remember their Anglo-Saxon history may recall that Athelstan, who was king of England (AD 924-39), and Ine, who was king of Wessex (AD 688- 726), were both famed as law-givers. Still, the phrase 'repels | my imperium', with its grand Latin, seems an odd and rather pompous way of describing the village where Hill spent much of his childhood. Moreover, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/camqtly/article/XXIX/1/1/332345 by guest on 27 September 2021 though the reader might be aware of the imperial stylings and Latin titles of kings such as Athelstan, the reason for describing Fairfield in the terms of an unruly Anglo-Saxon kingdom are neither explained nor properly established, save perhaps in an implicit parallel between the foundations of England and of Geoffrey Hill. But this passage is not so much recalling Hill's boyhood as it is an earlier book-length work which portrayed it inj ust such terms. Mercian Hymns was published in 1971, and therefore stands at a point roughly equidistant between Hill's attendance at Fairfield Junior School and the present day. It juxtaposes the doings of the author's savage and precocious childhood with the reign of King Offa, who ruled Mercia from AD 757 to 796. While portraying both king and child as 'real swine', the sequence finds much to be admired in the achievements of Offa and draws particular attention to his fine coinage. In a work full of conscious, and sometimes grimly humorous, anachronism, the eighth-century monarch is not only 'King of the perennial holly-groves' but also'overlord of the M5' and the proud possessor of a maroon sports car (CP105).3 Although Hill's readers may have now become familiar with its effects, the sequence of thirty prose poems shows a change in Hill's poetic as marked as that oiThe Triumph of Love. The rigid, usually iambic, metres and formal polish evident in so many of the poems in For the Unfallen (1959) and King Log (1968) are now broken. In their place is a rhythmical prose influenced by Anglo- Saxon and early Welsh verse and a modernism which appears to owe more to the examples of David Jones and Ezra Pound than toT. S. Eliot and Allen Tate. The book's highly paratactic language encompasses an even greater range and ambiguity of tone than Hill's earlier verse, while its diction relentlessly veers between the demotic and the learned, the Anglo- Saxon and the Latinate. Mercian Hymns is also, though less obviously than Theiriumph of Love, a poem that concerns itself with modern Britain and its political life. In his essay 'Redeeming the Time' Geoffrey Hill reflects upon these extravagant words: 'Here I stand the Factory King, declared King by the 3 All references to Mercian Hymns are to Geoffrey Hill, Collected Poems (Harmondsworth 1985), hereafter referred to in parentheses in the text as CP followed by the page number. The titles of the poems may be found in the index (pp. 8-9) and in the'List of Hymns' in Geoffrey Hill, Mercian Hymns (London 1971), which, unlike Collected Poems, is unpaginated. RHETORIC AND VIOLENCE 3 most contemptible enemies of the Cause, \brkshire is mine! (Cheers) Lancashire is mine! (Cheers) All Christendom is mine! (Cheers) WE WILL HAVETHEBILL .. .'.4 The 'feverish' oratory is that of the nineteenth-century Tory, Anglican, and Agrarian Richard Oastler. Geoffrey Hill, who elsewhere has professed himself to be an admirer of Oastler, writes that Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/camqtly/article/XXIX/1/1/332345 by guest on 27 September 2021 'Oastler's words are decidedly unfortunate', and notes how: Phrases redolent of heroic Protestantism ('here I stand','enemies of the Cause') and presumably chosen for that reason, are degraded into a mummer's rant. The 'classic'oration of a tribune of the people suffers a grotesque 'transformation', 'soiled' by the outflow of a fractured tradition. A rooted man, faced by the uprooted, by a floating population of the new proletariat, is unable to prevent his own words floating.5 Hill's essay goes on to explore how the changes in society evinced by the language of Oastler's speech may be traced in the literature of the nineteenth century. 'Redeeming the Time' was published in 1972. Given that Mercian Hymns was written between 1968 and 1971, it is not unreasonable to posit some connection between the political upheavals in the first of these years and the upheavals in Geoffrey Hill's verse. On 16 January 1968 Denis Healey had announced the government's decision to withdraw from all its East of Suez commitments. This announcement that, in Larkin's words, 'we are to bring the soldiers home | For lack of money', like the devaluation which precipitated it, signalled a new and reduced status for what was now undeniably a post-imperial Britain.6 It was natural that both English poetry and English political rhetoric should respond to and reflect such changes and seek both to redefine a national identity and find a language with which to do so. Less predictable was the outburst of a Tory tribune rather different from Oastler and the nature of Hill's poetic engagement with both him and his speech. On Saturday, 20 April 1968 at the annual meeting of the West Midlands Conservative Political Centre at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham, before an audience of press, television crews, and eighty-five Conservative worthies, Enoch Powell delivered a speech on immigration. It was to prove not only the most controversial speech of his career but also of post-war British political history. The speech was a curious mixture of anecdotes 4 Quoted in Cecil Driver, Tory Radical: The Life of Richard Oastler (New York 1946) p. 197. Cited in Geoffrey Hill,'Redeeming the Time', in The Lords of Limit: Essays on Literature and Ideas (London 1984) pp. 84-103: 85. 5 'Redeeming theTime', p. 85. 6 Philip Larkin, 'Homage to a Government', in Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London 1988) p. 171. 4 THE CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY from his constituents, of questionable statistics, of populist assertion and of classical allusion which, although it did not greatly differ from Conservative policy on immigration and race relations, was, in its poetic predictions of civil strife and its implied sympathy for the racialist views of constituents, to prove explosive. On the Sunday night Edward Heath, the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/camqtly/article/XXIX/1/1/332345 by guest on 27 September 2021 leader of the opposition, dismissed Powell from his post as defence spokesman in the shadow cabinet. Heath informed reporters that he had told Powell that he considered the speech to have been 'racialist in tone, and liable to exacerbate racial tensions'.7 With the exception of a few outspoken right-wingers, politicians of all parties condemned Powell's speech, as did all but two of the national newspapers. Jeremy Thorpe, then leader of the Liberal Party, and others talked of prosecuting Powell for incitement to racial hatred. TheTimes was particularly vehement in its criticism. Its editorial dubbed it 'an evil speech', while elsewhere in its pages connections were made between Powell and both Oswald Mosley and Colin Jordan, the leader of the National Socialist Party.8 Meanwhile it was evident that Powell's speech had gained considerable popular support. On the Tuesday, the London dockers, traditionally staunch Labour supporters, went out on strike in support of Powell. Opinion polls were to suggest that they were by no means alone in their sympathy. Powell's speech had chimed with the fears, and no doubt the racial prejudice, of a sizeable proportion of the British public. On the Monday night, in an interview with Robin Day, Edward Heath enlarged upon the reasons for his decision to sack Powell: I dismissed Mr.
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