A Journey into the Night in Pursuit of Light: Abjection and Catharsis in Richard Hugo’s “Museum of Cruel Days”

Abstract

The psychological dimension hidden underneath the surface of Richard Hugo’s poetry is a much neglected aspect that, in the light of Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic hypotheses that explore the ‘mysterious’ mechanisms of the human psyche and their effect on language, begs for a discourse long overdue. Many of the subjects discussed by Kristeva in her essays Powers of Horror (1982), Black Sun (1987), Revolution in Poetic Language (1984) are pertinent and useful in broadening our understanding of Hugo’s poetry and add a utilitarian dimension to poetry in general as a therapeutic device or as a means to catharsis. This essay discusses the poem, “Museum of Cruel Days,” by the poet Richard Hugo through a psychoanalytic framework involving the underlying psychosomatic processes encompassed in the making of the language using being. It examines how the phenomenon of abjection and its abject permeate the poem and influence our reading as either appealing or revolting to our poetic sensibilities. Through Kristeva’s essay, Powers of Horror (1982), that serves as the theoretical framework, this paper engages with the poem’s abject imagery; its themes of violence and cruelty that speak of a poem whose emotional content is founded on fear and cries out for sympathy, for fellowship and understanding; the signs of narcissism and compulsive abjection embedded in the poem while also discussing the potential cathartic development that prevents the poem from becoming a poetic monstrosity and provides it with a utilitarian purpose.