The Boar

The Boar is an image that has continued to haunt me. My first encounter with the boar took place in "Adonis and Venus" Then on two versions of Ted Hughes Book The Goddess of Complete Being there is the image of the boar. Out of curiosity I read some of Ted Hughes work, specifically his poetry. Many of his more notable poems are focused on animals and the inherent emotions and imagery that each evokes. I especially enjoyed his poem, "Pike", among others.



Pike
  
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.


Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.


In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds


The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.


Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one


With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-


One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.


A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-


Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast


But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,


Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.


Ted Hughes

His poetry uses the image of these animals as a muses for his work. Thus the image of the Boar became more important to my understanding of Ted Hughes and his analysis of Shakespeare.  I do not yet have Ted Hughes book, however it is on its way via UPS (those big brown trucks kind of look like boars). In the mean while I am looking into the boar outside of Hughes and Shakespeare, that way I may be able to pick up what Hughes and Shakespeare are putting down.

What I started to find intrigued me. I may be drawing these conclusions out of thin air, but I still find them interesting. The wild boar is a crepuscular animal; meaning they are active at night. When I read that it screamed school of night. Not only that but the wild boar is found on practically every continent (beside Greenland and Antarctica). Once introduced from one area to another they adapt and grow, like an idea. However it was not always like that. In the middle ages the boar was nearly hunted to extinction, pursued without mercy into the deepest recesses of world. The boar was no push over, when confronted the boar fights to the death. The boar reminds me of Sir Walter Raleigh in his last words to his executioner, "Strike man, Strike!"

Besides the biological, the boar has a symbolic meaning in many different mythologies. In  Greek mythology both the Erymanthian Boar, and the Calydonian Boar were an instrument of the gods giving it a divine nature. Also these boars were both hunted by Greek heroes to prove their worth. The most interesting myth of the boar that I found, comes from Norse mythology. There was a boar by the name of Gullinbursti (meaning golden mane). This boar belonged to a nordic god by the name of Freyr. According to the myth Freyr threw a pigs skin into a furnace to create Gullinbursti which gave him bristles in his mane that glowed in the dark to light the way. Gullinbursti lights the way, he was a symbol of light in the dark, and enlightenment. Finally one last mythological boar Hildisvíni, on which a Nordic goddess Freya rode. The boar Hildisvini was actually her protege Ottar whom she had concealed as a boar to protect his identity.

At this time I don't quite know what to make of the boar and it's importance to Hughes but I am starting to draw some ideas. One the boar as a symbolic figure of enlightenment, and as a disguise. The disguise I want to say has something to do with the school of night, goddesses, gods, and maybe even Shakespeare himself.