Fergana state university

Grief and Despair
. . .a pain too huge to utter. Pain – dark pain.
Instead of the light – pain. (Hughes A 66)

Heaney’s and Hughes’ poems explore themes of grief and despair, and the protagonists’ feelings of negation and powerlessness. Especially when expressed in contemporary language these themes are relevant for modern readers through empathy and personal experience which few people will evade. Grief is a deep or violent sorrow, while its companion experience of despair is a powerful and debilitating emotion engendered by loss – a want of hope. Apportioning blame and expressing anger are components of grief and despair, as are apathy and numbness. The modern English word “despair” is onomatopoeic. The last syllable is exhaled, with the diphthong lengthening the sound.

The physiological action, the loss or expulsion of the breath indicates an end, which mirrors the word’s meaning. The selected poems explicate these emotions as experienced by both individuals and communities, through a range of contemporary poetic expressions – sensuous, musical and colloquial, as well as controlled and simplified. Particularly in his re-worked Orpheus poems, Heaney transforms words into music, a connection he repeatedly argues (GT 92, CP 466). In “Orpheus and Eurydice” the poetical language reverberates with a sense of loss and an utter want of hope for the loved one’s return. Similarly in “Death of Orpheus”, the birds, animals and woods mourn. Hughes’ language is equally

lyrical when “The Rape of Proserpina” constructs Ceres’ despair as she ransacks the earth searching for her abducted daughter Proserpina. In The Cure at Troy, Philoctetes is marginalised (as discussed in Chapter 3 above). He expresses despair at his exclusion and isolation and Heaney’s language roughens to reflect a parallel with an Irish context through vernacular idiom. The watchman in “Mycenae Lookout” experiences grief and despair for the loss of his country’s honour and for his adulterous queen. He projects the helplessness of the ordinary citizen when faced with atrocities in times of conflict.

Similarly, the house of Atreus and the society of Argos in Hughes’ The Oresteia experience a crushing grief when the men return from war as ashes. This poem also expresses an individual’s grief and anger in terms which mimic the cause of the grief: “the rips in our skin are fresh” (90). Hughes creates powerful images of the Greek women’s despair as they wait for news from the battle. Death is an inherent part of grief and despair but in Alcestis it emerges as an overt entity who comes for Alcestis. While in Tales from Ovid Hughes images Ceres’ despair lyrically, in Alcestis he employs stark and simple language which reflects the depth of Admetos’ grief. The possibility of the loved one’s return replicates the Eurydice narrative, but Alcestis constructs a contrary ending of hope.