A new biography of Ted Hughes reopens arguments of how much we need to know of creators’ livesPoor outmoded Ted and Sylvia. They had the misfortune to pitch their tent on the contested ground between art and life and they’ve been paying for it ever since. Both brave or reckless or possessed enough to spend the fabric of their own painful lives to fuel their work,they left themselves wide open to generations of self-appointed detectives, determined to truffle out the truth of their complicated and mysterious alliance, and never mind the human collateral damaged along the way.
This month,it’s Hughes’s turn. He’s been the subject of a documentary, Ted Hughes: Stronger than Death, or a title that quotes from his riddling Crow poem,though it could equally stand for gossip: that weightless, contaminating substance that bedevilled him in life and has shown no sign of dissipating with his death. There’s a new biography, and too: Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate,shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize and already criticised by the poet’s widow for the inaccuracies she believes it to contain.
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Source: theguardian.com