Honours arrive in death which are often denied in life. But the passing of Ted Hughes at the relatively young age of 68 and clearly at the height of his career now makes it fitting to compare his visionary turbulence with that of Blake and Yeats. And, while conceding his Lawrentian excess, he must be acknowledged as a volatile heir of Thomas Hardy and of John Clare, while the rhythms of Hopkins are unmistakable.
More than any other English poet this century he subverted - and revitalised - the pastoral tradition in a way that was daring, often risky, at times risible but invariably vivid and exciting.
For a poet whose literary career has been consistently defined by the public perception of him as the bullying husband of poet Sylvia Plath, whom he met at Cambridge and married in 1956, there is some justice in the fact that the best of his work, his superb Tales From Ovid (1997), came so late in his career; while the verse-novel Birthday Letters, addressed to Plath, published earlier this year, reveals a tenderness so markedly absent from his often rhetorical oeuvre.
Hughes is a major figure as well as a maverick, not merely because of the energy and power of his quasi-Shakespearean work, with its cast of elemental, almost heraldic devices - wolves, hawks, ravening crows, foxes, trees, stones, warriors - but because he alone battled openly to keep 20th century English verse out of the drawing room and away from its natural element, satire and the ever-popular whimsy. Hughes is a solitary, almost pagan, figure obsessively revising the natural world, exploring and celebrating its raw beauty and cruelty, the deadly swoop of the bird of prey.
He frequently balanced this primativism with a subversive reworking of Biblical episodes. Birth, regeneration and life rituals are also prevailing themes.
Born in Mytholomroyd, West Yorkshire, he remained a countryman long after he discovered cities. Settling in Devon in 1970, it was home for the rest of his life. Myth, legend and magic were his native languages.
On its publication in 1957, Hawk in the Rain, a collection which incidentally had been greatly helped by its having won an American poetry competition for which Plath entered was seen as the verse equivalent of the "Angry Young Men" led by John Osborne, who were radicalising British theatre. Within three years, he had confirmed his reputation with Lupercal, a collection based in the natural world.
By then he and Plath were living, if not settled, in England. Both probably knew their marriage was over before his relationship with Assia Wevill even began. Hughes and Plath separated in December 1962. Two months later, she committed suicide. Wodwo, his third book, even now, 30 years after its publication, remains original.
Crow (1970) heralded the emergence of the mocking, predatory immortal crow as witness "screaming for blood" amidst "the horror of creation". That scavenger bird became a central symbol for Hughes. Hughes was above all a teacher and co-founder of the Arvon Writers Foundation. He possessed a profound understanding and appreciation of the child's imagination. He wrote many children's books such as the animal poem sequence What is Truth (1984).
In the latter half of this century - specifically since the death of Auden - only Philip Larkin challenges Hughes as England's finest poet. But Larkin's artistic territory was very different from Hughes's. It was he who famously refused to succeed John Betjeman as England's Poet Laureate in 1984, leaving the way open to Hughes. Many were disappointed when he accepted the position. It seemed the ultimate endorsement of a cynical belief in the poet as artist for hire.
Meanwhile, the Plath industry was consolidating her legacy as a feminist icon and frequent feuds were fought out over the estate with various Plath biographers by Hughes's sister Olwyn. Small wonder Hughes became reclusive.
Throughout his career he remained the dark, dangerous "Heathcliff" figure, the brooding Yorkshire man who married two wives who committed suicide. Although graced with a dramatic presence, Hughes was witty if shy. About 10 years ago he was present at a publication party held for William Golding. Still strikingly handsome, he seemed preoccupied. As compelling a reader of his own work as is his close friend Seamus Heaney, Hughes, in common with another fellow poet, Joseph Brodsky, died abruptly before his work was done.
In a statement to The Irish Times, the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney said yesterday:
"Ted Hughes was the heir and the continuer of the deepest traditions of English poetry. His work is in a direct line that leads back through Shakespeare and the Bible to Caedmon, the earliest Anglo- Saxon poet, and it will be seen as one of the important achievements in poetry in our century. His vision was both radiant and stoical; he was a poet in the high terms de- fined by William wordsworth, namely, one who delighted to see the workings of his own spirit reflected in the workings of the universe. He saw a blade of grass like a straw in the cosmic wind. His poems about the vitality and endurance of creatures were equally about the human capacity for survival and endurance."
