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Thomas Hardy :
‘Love begotten by despair’
With Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) we are finally into the 20th century.
Although he was already 60 when it dawned, he only began to publish
poetry around the turn of the century, going on to do so at regular
intervals until the year of his death. It is as a novelist that Hardy
belongs to the 19th century, and we have to thank the unfavourable
reception of his last novel for his decision to return to his first
love, poetry. So the poet turned novelist went on to become a novelist
turned poet, and this reinvention, as we would call it today, of himself
was to have a marked influence on the content and style of his poetry.
In Hardy’s greatest novels, “Tess of the d’Ubervilles” and “Jude the
Obscure”, the struggles of the eponymous protagonists for
self-fulfilment end in tragedy. This is shown to be due to the
indifference of whatever higher powers there might be, allowing them to
fall victim to cruel twists of circumstance, hostile social forces and
their own “tragic flaws”.
This unrelievedly pessimistic view of life is reflected in Hardy’s
poetry, even though he argues that “what is alleged to be ‘pessimism’
is, in truth, only such ‘questionings’ in the exploration of reality”,
and again, in another poetic preface, that “a true philosophy of life
seems to lie in humbly regarding diverse readings of its phenomena as
they are forced upon us by chance or change.”
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Thomas
Hardy |
Such questionings of what he calls “life’s little ironies” and
readings of its phenomena constitute much of the subject matter of his
poetry. As the first two lines of a poem of his puts it, “Any little old
song will do for me”, and “A Meeting with Despair” is a good example.
These are the first two verses:
“As evening shaped I found me on a moor Which sight could scace
sustain: The black lean land, of featureless contour, Was like a tract
in pain.
“This scene, like my own life,” I said, “is one Where many glooms
abide; Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun-Lightless on every side.”
This extract is revealing of the influence of the novelist on the
poet. The style is descriptively narrative, landscape plays a major role
in determining context and atmosphere, and the mood is joyless. The
versification is conventional, but the effective containment of the
prosaic phraseology imparts liveliness to the rhythm and the touches of
alliteration and assonance are effective. Yet we can see that the poem
might have benefited from more than the maximum of three or four drafts
that Hardy said he allowed himself to make of his poems so as to
maintain their freshness.
Despite the negative nature of his “philosophy of life”, Hardy has
definite positive centres that feature in, and heighten the appeal of,
his better verse. They are his love for the “Wessex” countryside of his
own naming, his affection for its simple inhabitants and his sympathy
for its animal and bird life.
These motivations enhance his powers of observation and description
and enable him to create some positive value for himself and his
readers. “The Darkling Thrush” begins desolately enough, detailing a
deathly bleak winter scene. All at once the poet hears a joyful
“full-hearted evensong” from “an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume, (that) Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon
the growing gloom.”
This is one of the special moments of poetry, reminiscent of Keats
hearing the nightingale and Hopkins sighting the windhover. What makes
it especially poignant is the frailty of the bird that produces “such
ecstatic sound” amid “so little cause for carollings”. The concluding
lines are heartrending on account not only of the bird but of the poet
whom the bird somewhat symbolises: “That I could think there trembled
through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And
I was unaware.”
“Afterwards” is another moving poem. It is anchored midway in the
lines: “One may say, ‘He strove that such innocent creatures should come
to no harm, But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.’ ” The
poet’s (and every caring person’s) love for the natural world and its
creatures is seen to have an enduring value in spite of his transience
and his limited ability to act on their behalf...
Yet, the undoubtedly magnetic quality of such poems is primarily by
way of reflecting on experience from a given viewpoint or philosophy. We
sense that something is wanting that makes for the greatest poetry, and
this is the full emotional impact arising from a poet’s personal
involvement in his experience.
Something was needed to provide this and it came, like a bolt of
lightning, with the death of Hardy’s first wife (he remarried a couple
of years later) from whom he had long been estranged.
Hardy was powerfully affected by this. He revisited the scenes of
their courtship and early married life in Cornwall as if to recover what
had now for ever been lost. The result was some of the greatest love
poems ever written, a mere dozen or so, on which Hardy’s reputation as a
great poet chiefly rests.
“Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now
you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to
me, But as at first, when our day was fair.
“Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I
drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you
then, Even to the original air-blue gown!
“Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness Travelling across the
wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard
no more again far or near?
“Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing
thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling.”
This one example, “The Voice” in its entirety, suffices to show the
transformation wrought in the poetic sensibility by intensely felt
experience and in poetic expression through its recreation. Bereavement
has touched off not the usual pain of separation, but the painful
realisation of what the failure of a relationship has cost over the
years. This is communicated through the skilful juxtaposition of a
vision of the past with a landscape of the present and verse that has
the clarity of good prose and the evocativeness of good poetry. Among
other poems in this key group are “The Self-Unseeing” and “After a
Journey”.
Thus the aged poet is finally swept off his feet by the rediscovery
of love. The tragedy of this love is that it has, in the words of
Marvell, “been begotten by despair upon impossibility.” It is impossible
of fulfilment even in the memory, unlike U Karunatilake’s Kundasale love
poems where the poet is able to come to terms with the desolation of
bereavement through the recollection of a joyful relationship.
In Hardy’s case, the experience of desolation is complete, the
pessimism finally has a genuinely personal reason for its being
unrelievable, and he can rightly be viewed, therefore, as a tragic poet. |
