Thanks to L. Helm for the analysis of the hawk poems by Hughes. Here are
some interspersed comments on the one 'roosting':
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed 1
inaction no falsifying dream
between my hooked head and hooked feet
or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat
the convenience of the high trees 5
the air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
are of advantage to me
and the earth's face upward for my inspection
my feet are locked upon the rough bark 9
it took the whole of creation
to produce my foot, my each feather
now I hold Creation in my foot
or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - 13
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
there is no sophistry in my body:
my manners are tearing off heads -
the allotment of death. 17
for the one path of my flight is direct
through the bones of the living.
no arguments assert my right:
the sun is behind me. 21
nothing has changed since I began.
my eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
In a message dated 2/9/2016 12:40:27 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
LINE 1:
"I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed."
Helm: "I have several photos of hawks sitting near or at the top of trees,
but I can't quite picture one sitting at the top of a wood. As to their
eyes being closed, they never seem to miss our approach. The idea of
surprising a hawk in a tree is inconceivable to me."
Yes, your commentary reminds me of Alice, when she meets this card player,
"Impossible thing? I believe five every morning, before breakfast!" (I'm
paraphrasing). A philosopher would conceptualise on 'what is' and 'what
fails' to be "unconceivable" to this or that individual.
LINES 2-3: Inaction, no falsifying dream / Between my hooked head and
hooked feet"
Helm: "He isn't moving and if he is dreaming it isn't a false dream. It
is a dream "between" his head and feet" presumably meaning the reality of
him, hooked, the hook being weapon-like; although I'm not sure "between" works
at this point. And if he is sleeping and dreams it is all about killing
and eating which is what he is all about -- an unconflicted predator."
McEvoy may expand on the 'falsify', since after all, it is a word abused by
Popper! I would not think a false dream is a falsifying dream. I think
Popper calls them FALSIFIERS.
I'm not sure the 'between' works but at least we cannot say it's a mixed
metaphor. It's not between the feet and the _mind_. It's between the strong
feet and the rather small head hawks have (But Geary tells me that the
'implicature' of "head" is brain, and sometimes, "mind"".
LINE 4: "Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat."
Helm: "Why does Hughes anthropomorphize this hawk as himself? What is
killing and eating a metaphor if not for the conquests he was engaging in prior
to the time of this poem?]
Perhaps I should get a volume, "The hawks of Yorkshire"!
LINES 5-6:
"In the second stanza this hawk is viewing the woods as being for his
convenience, the high trees, air's buoyancy and the suns's ray "are of
advantage
to me" / And the earth's face upward for my inspection" [quite an
arrogant hawk]."
Well, I would think 'arrogance' does apply to hawks.
For the record, it's a Latinism: "arrogans": "assuming, overbearing,
insolent," present participle of arrogare "to claim for oneself, assume."
I suppose that if he is going to anthropomorphise, he does it 'the whole
hog', as it were!
LINES 9-12:
Helm:
"[C]ontinues in stanza three ... One must come to a decision about whether
Hughes is identifying with this hawk, as he seems to be, writing as he is
in the first person" or disapproving of this hawk's arrogance which, it
seems to me, involves reading into the poem something that isn't there."
This reminds me, nicely, of the INTENTIONALIST FALLACY, so-called. As per
Owen Barfield, Speaker's meaning. If it's not MEANT by Hughes, is it not
_meant_ at all? It may be 'naturally' meant by this or that. E.g. I can read:
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose
mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden
and while MILTON may have meant-nn (non-naturally) this or that, I may take
THE LINES to mean something Milton did not mean them to mean. One example
favoured by Austin was not by Milton but by Donne:
At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, overthrow.
Grice once asked Austin: "Does this MEAN anything?" "Did Donne mean
anything?" "Should we UNDERSTAND what Donne never MEANT?"
Austin's reply was terse:
'Come on, Grice [public-school types never use first-names], it is
perfectly clear what Donne means. he means that angels should blow their
trumpets
from what Donne thinks persons less cautious than him would regard as being
the four corners of the earth."
LINES 13-24:
Helm: "He needs no arguments to assert his right because his "might" does
that for him and in the last stanza the sun asserts his right as well being
behind him."
CONCLUSION:
Helm: ""Hawk Roosting" ... was written in 1959. ... Was he feeling
arrogant back then or was he critical of people or beings who felt arrogant.
I
have been assuming the former, influenced as I was by the materials I read
back in the 60s, largely by and about his dead wife Sylvia Plath, but
perhaps I am wrong."
Perhaps the hawk knows!
In February 2005, ornithologist Louis Lefebvre announced a method of
measuring avian "IQ".
Hawks were named among the most intelligent birds based on his scale.
Grice mentions 'or' as applied to animals. A hawk may lurk because the hawk
has not decided to attack x or to remain inactive, or to attack y. Grice
is into the behaviour that manifests behaviour in animals, and this type of
'lurking' seems to manifest the fact that the hawk has 'internalised' the
logical operation of disjunction. Unfortunately, this is notwhat Lefebvre
seems to be interested in! But surely we can expand on the ethology of hawks!
I believe the point about an (+)- or a (-)-orientation, as we may call them
(positive or negative) towards the hawk's behaviour is an important one.
The fact that Hughes the first person in the first place seems to
"implicate" that he does not care what the intended reader may believe.
There's also
the possibility of a neutral orientation!?
I'm sure there's some bibliography -- if not a PhD dissertation deposited
at the British Library -- in Manchester? -- about HUGHES's ORNITHOLOGICAL
ETHOLOGY! Fascinating topic!
Cheers,
Speranza
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