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Tyranny and Redress: the Poetry of Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill And

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Tyranny and Redress: the Poetry of Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill And TYRANNY AND REDRESS The Poetry of Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney STEPHEN JAMES PhD University College London 1996 ProQuest Number: 10018658 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10018658 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract My thesis is concerned with ways in which poems respond to and participate in acts of control. The opposition presented in the title - between abuse of authority and correction of injustice - indicates my thematic focus on the works of Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney: I explore how each of them treats artistic expression as the manifestation of either violative or ameliorative impulses. The dissertation comprises four main chapters. In the first of these I detail the etymological connotations of the words 'tyranny' and 'redress'. I also analyse a range of twentieth-century poems which suggest links between state control and authorial control. My three subsequent chapters focus on the careers of Lowell, Hill and Heaney respectively. In Chapter Two I explore Lowell's preoccupation with the aggressive energies which he detects in society, in himself, and in poetic language. His work demonstrates some of the ways in which poetry can conspire in the abuses it warns against. The link between rhetorical and actual savagery is at the heart of Hill's concerns. In my third chapter, I show how, by being alive to the dangers of authoritarian artistry. Hill endeavours to overcome them in his poems. Heaney's verse is the subject of Chapter Four. I discuss the balance in his work between refractory and reparatory impulses. Whether facing up to or facing away from the political problems of his nation, Heaney, it is argued, advances a concept of poetry as a means of redressing callous words and deeds. 3 A brief conclusion draws these three authors together by taking the work of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam as a common point of convergence. I contend that for each of them Mandelstam serves as an exemplary figure of the writer who, through his art, offers a redress to tyranny. Contents Acknowledgements 6 Methods of Citation 8 Table of Abbreviations 9 Preface 12 I. Tyranny and Redress 1. Tyranny and Redress: A Balance of Powers 19 2. The Poet as Tyrant 32 3. 'Redressing our Historical Perspectives'? 40 II. Robert Lowell 1. Introduction 50 2. 'Tyrannical Delusions' 55 3. 'This Wicked Earth Redress': Lowell's Early Work 65 4. 'Furious Separate Existences': Life Studies 82 5. 'The Solipsism of all Imperialisms': Lowell's 100 Translations and Plays 6. 'Staring the Despot to Stone': For the Union Dead 112 and Near the Ocean 7. 'Some Injured Tyrant's Home': The Notebook Volumes, 125 History and For Lizzie and Harriet 8. 'A Foolsdream of Armor': Lowell's Late Poetry 142 III. Geoffrey Hill 1. Introduction 152 2. Critical Redress: Hill's Prose 157 3. Supreme Patronage: For the Unfallen: Poems 172 1952-1958 4. 'Cleansing' and 'Killing': King Log 185 5. 'Signatures and Retributions': Mercian Hymns 194 6. 'A Patience Proper for Redress': Tenebrae 207 5 7. 'The Tyranny of Taste': 'An Apology for the 219 Revival of Christian Architecture in England' 8. 'Redeeming Wrath': Hill's Version of Ibsen's Brand 232 9. 'In Brutus' Name': The Mystery of the Charity of 23 9 Charles Péguy 10. 'The Strutting Lords': Hill's Recent Poetry 248 IV. Seamus Heaney 1. Introduction 262 2. Artful Redress: Heaney's Prose 269 3. 'The Sway of Language' 279 4. 'The Despotism of the Eye': Death of a Naturalist 286 and Door into the Dark 5. Language and Imposition: Wintering Out, Stations 296 and North 6. Revision and Retribution: Heaney's 'Second 310 Thoughts' in North 7. 'Helmsman, Netsman, Retiarius': Field Work 319 8. 'Fortified and Bewildered': Station Island 328 9. Threatening Language: The Haw Lantern 33 8 10. Swaying for Balance: Seeing Things 3 49 11. 'The Far Side of Revenge': Translations and 360 Adaptations Conclusion: Osip Mandelstam and the Redress of Tyranny 37 0 Bibliography 3 86 6 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to a number of people for their help and encouragement at various stages in the production of this thesis. In particular, I thank my supervisor, Dr Peter Swaab, for four years of essential guidance and valued friendship. Material derived from this thesis has been published in Agenda, Essavs in Criticism and P.N. Review. I am grateful to the respective editors of these journals, William Cookson, Stephen Wall and Michael Schmidt, for spurring me on. I would like to thank Dr Wall for his meticulous reading of my article on Robert Lowell's manuscripts, and David Trotter at U.C.L. for reading some work-in-progress and making helpful recommendations when my writing was at an earlier evolutionary stage. Seamus Heaney's warmth and generosity on our meetings at Cambridge, Stirling and Harvard Universities will not be forgotten in a hurry. I am much indebted to him for agreeing to an interview on my trip to the United States, and for providing me with unpublished lecture material. While at Harvard, I also received friendly assistance from the staff at the Houghton Library; references in my thesis to the collection of Robert Lowell's manuscripts lodged there are made with the kind permission of the curator, Leslie Morris. On a similar note, I gratefully acknowledge the services of the National Poetry Library in London for granting me access to much recondite material, and for the long-term loan of Lowell's out-of-print volumes. Thanks are due to Dr Peter McDonald and Professor Helen Vendler for sending me critical essays in advance of 7 publication. I must thank Dr McDonald also for first stimulating my interest in the work of Lowell, Hill and Heaney when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and in particular for encouraging me towards a thesis proposal with these three authors in mind. In addition, I am pleased to acknowledge financial support from the British Academy for the first three years of study (including my trip to the States) and from the English Department at U.C.L. which provided me with a tutorial fellowship during my fourth. For everything else, which must remain unarticulated, I wish to thank my family and friends, and most of all my partner, Helen. Methods of Citation Quotations from primary sources are identified by an abbreviated title, as listed overleaf, and a page reference. These are inserted parenthetically in the main body of the text or, in the case of a quick succession of references, in a footnote. Where several passages from a single poem or the single page of a work are quoted consecutively, only the first citation bears a reference. In the case of recurrent reference to a text for which no abbreviation is provided, for instance to a critical work from which I quote several times, the first footnote given provides full publication details and subsequent references consist simply of the author's surname followed by the relevant page number or numbers. On occasions when I refer Ciys to more than work by the same author, a surname and a short title is used for second and subsequent references to this text. The works listed on the following page are arranged chronologically according to the date of first publication. Full publication details for each title, including an indication of which particular edition or reprinting of the volume I have used, are provided in the bibliography at the end of the thesis. Distinctions between American and British publication dates may also be found there. Table of Abbreviations Robert Lowell 19 PNT: Poems 193 8-49 (1950) LS : Life Studie's"(1959) IM: Imitations (USA: 1961; UK: 1962) FUD For the Union Dead (USA: 1964; UK: 1965) NTO Near the Ocean (1967) NBN Notebook 1967-68 (1969) PB : Prometheus Bound: Derived from Aeschylus (USA: 19 69; UK: 1970) NB: Notebook (1970) HIS: History (1973) DOL The Dolphin (1973) DBD Day By Day (USA: 1977; UK: 1978) LCP Collected Prose (1987) Geoffrey Hill BRA : Brand: A Version for the English Stage (1978) LL: The Lords of Limit: Essays on Literature and Ideas (1984) HCP: Collected Poems (1985) EC : The Enemy's Country: Words, Contexture, and Other Circumstances of Language (1991) NCP: New and Collected Poems 1952-1992 (1994) Seamus Heaney DON : Death of a Naturalist (1966) DID : Door into the Dark (1969) WO : Wintering Out (1972) STA: Stations (1975) NOR: North (1975) FW: Field Work (1979) PRE: Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (1980) SA: Sweeney Astray (Eire: 1983; UK: 1984) SI : Station Island (1984) HL: The Haw Lantern (1987) GOT : The Government of the Tongue: The 1986 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures and Other Critical Writings (1988) POW: The Place of Writing (1989) CAT : The Cure at Troy (1990) ST: Seeing Things (1991) MV: The Midnight Verdict (1993) ROP: The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures (1995) Other Abbreviations OED: Oxford English Dictionary (1933) SUD : Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) 10 TYRANNY AND REDRESS The Poetry of Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney 11 "Speak, strike, redress ! ‘ (Julius Caesar.
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