John Wain
(1925 - 1994)
John Wain was bom in Staffordshire and educated at Newcastle
High School and the Oxford University. From 1946 to 1949 he
was a Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford, and then a lecturer in
English literature at Reading University, Berkshire.
John Wain’s first novel “Hurry on Down” was published in
1953 and the literary critics immediately placed his name at the
top o f the list “Angry Young Men” group. The novel portrays a
young man who has just left University. He tries to find his proper
place in life but fails. His feeling o f being a displaced person
runs through the whole novel.
Wain’s criticism of contemporary life becomes increasingly
serious with the further progress ofhis literary career. In his novels
he describes the difficulty of survival in the modern world if one
wants to preserve his real self in intrusive and demanding sur
roundings. Wain’s other novels include “ Living in the Present”
(1955), “The Contenders” (1958), “A Travel ling Woman” (1959),
“Strike the Father Dead” (1962), “The Young Visitors” (1965),
“The Smaller Sky” (1967), “A Winter in the Hills” (1970), “The
Pardoner’s Tale” (1978), “Lizzie’s Floating Shop” (1981), “Young
Shoulders” (1982).
John Wain is also a distinguished poet and literary critic.
He published several volumes o f verse including “Mixed Feel
ings” (1951), “A Word Carved on a Sill” (1956), “Weep Before
God” (1961), “Wildtrack” (1965) and “Poems 1949-1979” .
Ted Hughes
(1930-1998)
•- '.-J
.pi
d
)
-v
йй
.rda
..'-С. ...
Ted Hughes is known chiefly for his portrayal ofthe violence
and fierce beauty of the natural world. He was bom in Yorkshire.
He took a degree at Cambridge, where he was primarily interested
in folklore and anthropology. In 1956 he married an American
poet, the late Sylvia Plath. His first book o f poetry “The Hawk in
the Rain” appeared in 1957.
Much o f Ted Hughes poetry deals with the natural world. He
frequently writes of the savagery and cunning of animals and of
similarqualities in human beings. It is characteristic of Hughes’s
verse to use plants, objects or animals as symbols of some larger
general concept. His creatures are powerful and watchful. Like
Aesop, Hughes portrays animals in terms that carry messages
about human nature. But his messages are seldom moralistic or
reassuring. His works show a variety o f influences: folklore,
mythology, anthropology, as well as the poetry o f Thomas Hardy,
D.H Lawrence, and Robert Graves.
Hughes’s second book o f poetry, “Lupercal”, won England’s
prestigious Hawthomden Prize in 1961. “Wodwo”., a compilation
o f both poetiy and prose, including short stories and a radio play,
was published in 1967.
Here, below, is one of the poems included into Ted Hughes’s
“Wodwo”, which shows the poet’s keen observation o f nature
and natural processes:
F irn
Here is the firn’s frond, unfurling a gesture
Like a conductor whose music will now be pause
And the one note o f silence
To which the whole earth dances gravely.
The mouse’s ear unfurls its trust,
The spider takes up her bequest,
And the retina
Rains the creation with a bridle of water.
And, among them, the fem
Dances gravely, like the plume
.Of a warrior returning, under the law hills,
Into his own kingdom.
In 1970 a cycle of poems “Crow” came into being and became
a best-seller. In it Hughes attempts to create a fragmentary
mythology. In addition to verse, Hughes has written a number of
plays and several books for children.
Some critics have attacked Hughes for the grimness o f his
poetic subject matter and the violence o f his language, but his
admirers contend, that his language is vibrant and passionate,
and that his recognition of violence in ms.n and nature is a valid
perception.
In 1984 Hughes was appointed a poet laureate.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |