Hardy: A Poet of Awkward Innocence - Literature review Example

Hardy: A Poet of Awkward Innocence? In describing the poetry of Thomas Hardy, F.R. Lewis used the term ‘innocent awkwardness’ as a general description. From this characterization, one can assume Lewis views Hardy’s poetry as something unsophisticated, inexperienced and lacking in a certain grace. Perhaps he is discussing the somewhat sing-song meter that can be found in several of Hardy’s poems, such as “The Pheasant’s Confession”: “Good Father! … It was eve in middle June, / And war was waged anew / By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn / Men’s bone all Europe through.” (Hardy, 1-4). Perhaps he is referring to the somewhat detached nature that can be felt between the narrator and the subject in most of the poems: “A perfect gentleman then neared; / The wagtail, in a winking, / With terror rose and disappeared; / The baby fell a-thinking.” (Hardy, “Wagtail and Baby,” 13-16). Yet Lewis could also be referring to the sometimes awkward turn of phrase such as that seen in “Aberdeen”: “I looked and thought, ‘All is too gray and cold / To wake my place-enthusiams of old!’” (Hardy, 1-2). While several of Hardy’s phrases may have a certain roughness around the edges, a strange hitch in the rhythm now and again or a cool detachment from his subject, giving birth to descriptions such as Lewis’ ‘innocent awkwardness’, the poetry written by Thomas Hardy nevertheless reveals a quite sophisticated thought process and often demonstrates an inordinately succinct imagery to associate with the difficult or complicated concepts regarding the true questions of the ages within his poems, belying the phrase could be meant for him. For many readers of poetry, the sing-song nature of iambic meter such as that used through much of Hardy’s poetry is a signal of a lazy or less creative mind. It smacks of childhood lessons, schoolyard chants and unsophisticated attention to detail. “I scanned her picture, dreaming, / Till each dear line and hue / Was imaged, to my seeming, / As if it lived anew” (Hardy, “Song from Heine”, 1-4). These lines illustrate the unstressed/stressed nature of the syllables of iambic meter. However, to dismiss this as an old-fashioned or unsophisticated means of writing poetry would be a mistake. Iambic pentameter, using five unstressed/stressed syllables in a line, is one of the most common forms of English poetry, rising from a classical Greek tradition of doing the same (“Iambic Pentameter”, 2006). Its use can be seen in blank verse, the heroic couplet and the sonnet as well as many other types of poetry. Examples of other poets who have used this metrical organization include William Shakespeare, John Milton and John Donne. There is a difference, though, in the lines of “Song from Heine” and those of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate …” (1-2). While these others are using a five-beat meter in each of their lines, Hardy, in this poem at least, is using only three beats. This accentuates the rhyming meter and further throws the recitation into sing-song. Although this could be the foundation for Lewis’ disparaging remarks, it hardly seems enough to stake an entire judgment upon. For further explanation regarding Lewis’ opinion of Hardy, there are several poems in which the meter and the rhyme don’t seem to match up or where the lines seem to run along of their own accord. In “Lament”, the lines rarely include more than four or five words at a time – “How she would have loved / a party to-day! - / Bright-hatted and gloved, / With table and tray / And chairs on the lawn / Her smiles would have shone” (Hardy, 1-5). This simple-seeming break-up of the lines into innocent, hopping, nearly unconnected thoughts, serves to bring out the more sophisticated nature of the narrator’s sorrow at her loss. The choppy nature of the poem skips along to the happy memories while working its best to ignore the unpleasantness that those who cannot take such joy in small celebrations are there to enjoy it while she, who lived for such things, was within “her yew-arched bed” (Hardy, “Lament”, 44). Therefore, the simple-seeming nature of the poem actually serves instead to provide it with a creativity and depth of meaning and character that might not have been arrived at in any other way. Similarly, enjambment, or the breaking of a syntactic unit by the end of a line or between two verses, is used in “The Darkling Thrush” to emphasize the desolateness of the landscape and impressions of the narrator: “I leant upon a coppice gate / When Frost was spectre-gray, / And Winter’s dregs made desolate / The weakening eye of day” (Hardy 1-4). While enjambment is most often used to pull the reader’s eye forward and to create a sense of acceleration (“Enjambment”, 2006), such as what was seen in its use in the previously discussed “Lament”, in this poem, Hardy uses the technique to slow the reader down and forces one to focus on the gloomy imagery he is presenting as Cardiff explains. “The word ‘dregs’ with its strong stress and combination of a hard consonant with a sibilant in ‘gs’ forces a caesura, and then desolate trails off from its strong stress. ‘DE solate’ when spoken as normal speech lengthens its duration in a falling cadence in comparison to ‘COPpice GATE’ even though it maintains regularity metrically. Although the line is enjambed, the tongue requires a little adjusting, and another slowing down occurs with ‘The’, and ‘weakening’ inserts an extra unstressed syllable, (iamb, anapest , iamb), to the full stop of ‘day’.” (Cardiff, n.d.). So, although the traditional use of enjambment is nullified in this instance, it is up to the reader to decide whether this is the accidental stumblings of an inexperienced poet or the artful maneuverings of a highly creative thinker who is able to find a new use for an old technique while still utilizing its most salient features in pulling the reader deeper into the poem. Simple is also a word that can be used to describe the subjects and perspectives that Hardy chooses to focus on within his poems. Titles such as “The Ivy-Wife”, “To Flowers from Italy in Winter” and “The Workbox” don’t do much to inspire confidence in the weightiness of their message or relationship to items of worth. However, each of these poems carries a much greater depth than the name might imply while still contemplating little more than the concept of the title itself. In “The Ivy Wife”, Hardy discusses the nature of the ivy vine as it reaches for a host to grow upon. Although he never strays from the topic of the ivy as it reaches for first one, then another possible host with varying degrees of success, he weaves an analogy to the human wife who chokes her husband in her ambition and forgets from where she gains her support. In “To Flowers from Italy in Winter”, he presents a bleak image of hopelessness for mankind’s lasting effect. “The Workbox” seems a whimsical poem relating the discussion between a man and his wife, but is actually a fully developed short story complete with foreshadowing, characterization, drama and horror: “Yet still her lips were limp and wan, / Her face still held aside, / As if she had known not only John, / But known of what he died.” (Hardy, 37-40). With some awkwardness in style acknowledged yet greatly overshadowed by the artistry involved in making these creative ventures, it could be considered that Hardy’s use of peculiar phrases might be a plausible explanation for critical distaste for his works. At times, these odd choices of phrase lead to an awkward rhyme scheme: “They rate the world as a gruesome place, / Where fair looks fade to a skull’s grimace” (Hardy, “John and Jane”, 13-14). This poem presents the rosy view of the world that is held by a boy, then the couple, then the young parents and finally the parents of a “worthless son.” While happy, the poem bubbles along on a skipping rhythm and perfect rhyme. Although there is some change to the meter as John is joined by Jane and finally by “a pearl of the human race, / A hero, maybe, hereafter styled” (Hardy, 11-12). It is only when the poem takes its sudden plunge toward despair that it also takes a sudden plunge in its happy, skipping, perfect dance to the darkly hopeful thoughts of “a pilgrimage they would fain get done - / Do Jane and John with their worthless son” (Hardy, 15-16). This sort of awkward rhyming can also be seen in “When Dead”: “No sign of querulousness / To wear you out / Shall I show there; Strivings and stress / Be quite without.” (Hardy, 5-8). For most readers, the rhyme between “querulousness” and “stress” is somewhat forced, while the use of the term “querulousness” seems overly cumbersome for the part. However, this is exactly the point. In using such a difficult word to get around, Hardy is underlining the concept that he has been difficult to get along with in this life. He makes the reader have to work to understand the line. This passage also demonstrates another instance of enjambment, throwing the meter off just slightly, making the reader just a bit uncomfortable about looking forward to a time spent on earth without him, yet still demonstrating an understanding about why someone would wish this. By including the forgiving acknowledgment that “I shall be more myself, Dear, then, / Than I am now.” The rhyme scheme in this first stanza follows his characteristic meter and tone, only to be interrupted by the second stanza with its stuttering enjambment and difficult stance. This otherworldly rhythm is then carried out throughout the rest of the poem, including further strange turns of phrase as “life-brief blight” and “Place in the vast.” By analyzing the ways in which these types of ‘forced’ rhyme schemes are utilized, then, it can be seen that Hardy’s choice of words in these instances are not as much forced by an awkward poet without a thesaurus as they are brilliantly placed alarm clocks intended to wake up the sleeping mind from the half-stupor into which its been lulled. There are still, however, several strange phrases used throughout Hardy’s poetry that have little to do with the rhyme scheme yet still seem to upset the balance of the poem. In “The Supplanter”, Hardy tells us “He bends his travel-tarnished feet / To where she wastes in clay: / From day-dawn until eve he fares / Along the wintry way” (1-4). These hyphenated phrases serve to both smooth the transition of the words within the line, providing a roadmap of the meter, but also place a succinct meaning on each and every idea as it comes along. We immediately see that the man is barefoot and that he does a lot of walking on those feet. They are tarnished, worn to a tough leathery surface. Day-dawn presents another immediate word-picture. It isn’t sufficient to say dawn, as it could be the dawn of a new day or the dawn of a new idea. It also isn’t sufficient to say day, because day wouldn’t provide the same kind of eerie half-light stillness that the combination of day and dawn together provide. The next stanza offers the same sort of hyphenated word-painting: “’Are these the gravestone shapes that meet / My forward-straining view? / Or forms that cross a window-blind / In circle, knot, and queue” (Hardy, 7-10). Against the backdrop of the day-dawn gray and the travel-tarnished feet, this forward-straining seems completely in line with the action. Dawn is symbolic of a new beginning, travel-tarnished indicates a lifetime of crossing the new horizon while forward-straining serves to give voice to a tension that’s been building from the start. Although several of these phrases that are used throughout Hardy’s works have the aura of being trite or awkward, it can be seen that they do not lose their power regardless. In spite of their often strained nature, these words help to build the allegory Hardy is trying to convey, bringing just enough attention to them to make an alert mind begin to think about the deeper meanings involved while still providing a sense of down-to-earth wisdom within the poem. Rather than insisting his knowledge is the only knowledge and is the true knowledge, Hardy instead presents his arguments as comfortable rhymes that flow on the tongue, snagging on an idea now and again, but allowing enough room to question the concept, roll it around a little and come to a unique conclusion. “Hardy was deeply hurt and perplexed by life, and such honest doubts and comfortless broodings represented the age. Hardys poems were simple and direct, written without Classical trappings or Romantic attitudinizing” (Holcombe, 2006). Rather than reducing the importance of his poetry or negating his ability to bring these ideas out to his readers, Hardy’s use of the well-turned, oddly-turned, or mis-rhymed phrase served to heighten the impact of his work as well as bring him closer to those who might listen. There is ample evidence that Hardy wrote from a distanced perspective throughout much of his writing. Even in his autobiography, he wrote from the third person perspective and the book was published under his wife, Florence’s, name rather than his (Simons 2005). J. Hillis Miller (1970) argues that this is a stance that is established early in his novels, proving difficult to withdraw. “In the lyric poetry too a stance of detachment is habitual” (Miller 1970). Even though many of the poems are written from a first person perspective, they yet maintain a certain degree of separation from the world upon which they’re commenting. “The motif recurs once more when the speaker in a late poem, a poem characteristically craggy in diction, remembers as a child crouching safely in a thicket of ferns and asking himself: ‘Why should I have to grow to man’s estate, / And this afar-noised World perambulate?’ [Hardy, “Childhood Among the Ferns”, 14-15]. The world is noise and glare, the threat of an engulfing violence which will shake and twist a man’s life. Only if he can remain self-contained, sealed off from everything, can he escape this violence.” (Miller 1970). In this poem, the child tells of how the rain “gained strength, and damped each lopping frond, / Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond” (Hardy, 4-5). Earlier in this poem, he demonstrates how the boy is completely untouched by the world around him. Although the rain runs down the stalks of the ferns, it runs right by him. And although some of it manages to work its way through his ferny roof, he says “I sat on, / Making pretence I was not rained upon” (Hardy, 8-9). Other poems are told in first person, but avoid the personal entanglement by focusing most of the attention upon a third party, such as the technique used in “The Woman in the Rye.” In this poem, the only hint we have of the first person appears in the first stanza: “’Why do you stand in the dripping rye, / Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee, / When there are firesides near?’ said I” (Hardy, 1-3). Although he speaks for three lines, two of those lines are devoted to describing the condition of the woman being queried while the remaining line describes their location. The rest of the poem is devoted to the woman’s tearful lament regarding the hateful way in which she treated her husband. And although the woman has someone to talk with at the moment, she is also expressed in terms of being completely isolated from the rest of the world as she remains wrapped within her grief. “The rooks sheer off to where he lies / Wrapt in a peace withheld from me!” (Hardy, 11-12). Just as the isolation Hardy experiences in much of his work is self-imposed as he and his characters observe the world, this isolation experienced by the woman is placed in large part directly on her own shoulders. It was she who told him she wished him dead in a moment of unthinking haste and he did as he was told. Therefore, it is the woman’s fault her husband died and left her all alone. Through this action, she has also taken it upon herself to distance herself from the firesides that are near as well as the sun, which she professes to hate while even the rooks, the symbols of death, avoid her to go and embrace the husband who is already comforted. Finally, there are many poems that begin with the third person perspective only to return to a first person conclusion. “The Fiddler” is an example of such. By standing back to describe this character, Hardy is able to objectively observe that the fiddler is not the innocent participant in the various sins that are committed in the wanton forgetfulness of an evening of dancing: “The fiddler knows what’s brewing / To the lilt of his lyric wiles: / The fiddler knows what rueing / Will come of this night’s smiles!” (Hardy, 1-4). Again, although he is discussing the fiddler, Hardy is doing it in such a way as to provide a double separation between himself and his subject as the fiddler “sees couples join them for dancing, / And afterwards joining for life, / He sees them pay high for their prancing / By a welter of wedded strife.” (Hardy, 5-8). Even the couples that are being observed are not afforded any kind of connectedness despite the obvious play on words regarding their evening’s ‘prancing.’ Instead, they are described as gaining only a “welter of wedded strife” that leaves them with “many a heart now mangled, / And waiting its time to go, / Whose tendrils were first entangled / By my sweet viol and bow!’” (Hardy, 13-16). At the end, we finally achieve a first person voice, but the credit for any action is given rather to the viol and bow. In this detachment, then, one can begin to see a barrier erected between the poet and the reader, a kind of hazy screen that keeps the two from meeting eye to eye. Many of Hardy’s poems tend to center around a theme of the hopelessness and joylessness of life, perhaps contributing to the discomfort of some of his more critical readers. There are several haunted verses of women who will never know the love felt for her, the ways in which her children have begun to run wild in her absence, the final trip she might take across the sea to Ireland or who were not able to outlive the wondrous plants within her greenhouse despite the cold winter damage to the glass. Hardy doesn’t only kill off a number of women in his poetry, he also bids men and himself goodbye in several variations, and speaks from beyond the grave in some cases. Intermixed within these poems are poems of hope and a searching willfulness to find a life after death to believe in as he witnesses the burst of song from a lonely bird in the dead of winter or remembers the beauty of an individual now gone. Rather than portraying death as a terrifying blank void, Hardy portrays it as the final release from a painful and difficult life. This unique worldview might further contribute to the idea of an innocent nature as he refuses to acknowledge evil associated with the final journey. Although critics have not always been enamored of the works, especially the poetry, of Thomas Hardy, a careful reading of any random selection of his poems will demonstrate how they are not the simple productions of an ‘innocent awkwardness’ as F.R. Lewis once suggested. Instead, they contain elements of innocence in their withdrawn perspective and their original viewpoints even as they use moments of awkwardness to draw attention to those aspects of the poem that can bring in the allegorical meaning he intended. Many of the poems can be read on a surface level and will often provide images of comforting hideaways and abiding love. However, a close analysis of them, taking into account the shifts in rhythm, meter, rhyme and perspective, can provide a much deeper understanding that facilitates philosophical thought processes that challenge the status quo and invite the reader to explore their own actions, beliefs and values. Despite any momentary innocence or awkwardness involved in any of these poems, these moments only serve to heighten the poetic message being delivered, therefore making Hardy one of the more sophisticated and knowledgeable poets of the nineteenth century. Works Cited Cardiff, Gladys. “On Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush.” Western Michigan University. (n.d.). March 22, 2006 “Enjambment.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. (March 7, 2006). March 22, 2006 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enjambment> Hardy, Thomas. The Complete Poems. London: Macmillan, 1976. Holcombe, C. John. “Poetry: Civil War.” Textetc. (2006). March 22, 2006 “Iambic pentameter.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. (March 16, 2006). March 22, 2006 Miller, J. Hillis. “The Refusal of Involvement.” Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire. Cambridge, MASS: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970. Simons, Mark. “Thomas Hardy’s Lifeline.” Thomas Hardy. (2005). March 22, 2006 < http://pages.ripco.net/~mws/timeline.html> Read More