A Lover of Unreason. The Life of Assia Wevill. Ted Hughes' Doomed Love by Koren Yehuda & Negev Eilat

Author:Koren, Yehuda & Negev, Eilat [Koren, Yehuda & Negev, Eilat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, poetry, History
ISBN: 9781861059741
Amazon: 1861059744
Goodreads: 1425910
Publisher: Robson Books
Published: 2006-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Just as she was sealing the envelope, she heard the key turning in the front door. She quickly pushed the letter under the sofa but David caught the quickness of her move. There was a short, sad scene and she was furious that with her clumsiness, she caused anguish to her husband.

Later that evening, she re-opened the envelope and added a few more lines: ‘Now I begin to think, superstitiously, that when I’m possessed with you, you magically have dispossessed me, and vice versa. When I feel free of you – then surely, you want me most – if only there was a way of testing it. It’s Thursday, 8.30 p.m., and you are in total possession.’ What began in defiance, ended in total surrender.

Hughes’s letters were usually addressed with terms of endearment such as ‘My sweet Assia, sweetest, sweetnessest, sweetnessest’. He constantly invented pet names for her like ‘my fox’, ‘little pod’, ‘ovenfox’, ‘my lovely owl of halva’, ‘Chocolate Halva’, ‘honey pot’ and the biblical fragrances of myrrh and cassia. While he was very flamboyant in his inscriptions, trying to woo her with his words, Assia was very sombre and straightforward. She addressed him as Ted, Teddy, or ‘most darling Ted’, and simply signed Assia or even AW.

Hughes encouraged Assia to keep herself occupied and resume painting, and send her work to him when she could not write a letter. At Ted’s request, Assia taught him the Hebrew alphabet, and he used to transcribe English phrases in hesitantly drawn Hebrew letters and occasionally flawed grammar, for example ‘to love in you and copulate for ever’. To disguise his Valentine’s Day gift, Hughes suggested that she tell David that it was from her uncle Grisha Gutmann in Australia. When Ted fell ill, Assia sent him a ‘get well’ telegram but he was alarmed and warned her to be discreet next time, since the postmaster in North Tawton and his wife were opening his letters and reading her telegrams.

Lucas Myers remembers that there were times that Ted received communications at what must have been a post office box in the nearby town of Okehampton. Hughes was disturbed that Assia was saving his letters: he argued that he would have written much more openly and affectionately, but had reason to believe that she was showing his letters as well as her diary to her friends, who were meddling in their affairs. He urged her to burn them all. However, Assia kept Ted’s letters. Most of her letters to him, though, have not survived.

He was at his desk twelve to fifteen hours a day, and reported his progress regularly to Assia. On 31 January 1964, he almost finished typing his play in verse Gaudete. The protagonist was Nicholas Lumb, an Anglican clergyman who was abducted to the underworld, the evil spirits replacing him with an exact duplicate, who brought chaos to the parish: fornicating with the married women, making them cheat on their husbands and eventually causing the death of those who loved him.

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