Thomas Hardy as a Novelist with a Poetic Vision - Essay Example

28 July Thomas Hardy: a Novelist with a Poetic Vision Thomas Hardy, born near Dorchester in 1840, was first an architect, then gave it up for literature in 1867. He first essayed his skill in verse, then in novels, short stories and poems. He was greatly influenced by his family background that formed the base for his success as a writer and a poet. In some respects there is in him a Rousseau, as extreme in his revolt, but different in his self- mastery. Not only does he deny the hope of a happiness founded upon the progress of critical reason; it is the whole of modern civilization that he condemns, and his sore heart seeks, as a wounded animal would, the shelter of the most primitive and untouched earth. The biographer of Thomas Hardy, James Gibson, has classified Hardy’s life into three phases, each of approximately thirty years. According to Gibson, “the first phase began with his birth in 1840 and lasted until the writing of his first published novel, Desperate Remedies, in 1871” (1). The years from 1856 to 1862, were immensely important to Hardy’s mental and cultural growth as a writer and a poet. The second phase, 1870 to 1897, not only saw publishing of Hardy’s fourteen novels, but also the onset of a distinct poet. His ultimate aim of becoming a poet was realized in the third phase (1898- 1928), with his publishing of first book of poems Wessex Poems. Thomas Hardy, in his literary career, convinced the world through his writings that he was not only a great novelist but a distinct poet as well. Brought up to the profession of architect, Hardy received a mixed culture that refined his artistic sense. Through his apprenticeship with architecture, he was awakened to the world of imagination that was to an extent influenced by his historical sense. This provided him with important experiences that later appeared in his fiction and poetry. However, the deeper foundations of his thoughts are those of Victorian mind, important of them being his curiosity to connect cosmic to the human past, which featured as a key temporal structure in his novels. Hardy’s philosophy grew out of his experience and reflection. As a meditative and solitary man, he kept in harmony with his countryside house, where he spent his boyhood; and it was there, in retirement, that his life developed, uneventful except for the stages of his work. Everywhere in his novels human beings are portrayed as submissive to a superior force of nature and indifferent chance. Throughout his life as an artist, Hardy was quite moved by the vision of necessity, which he grasped and illustrated with an unwearied persistence. Though the importance of the novels is not neglected, we are reminded that Hardy conceived himself principally as a poet. He inherited the creative spirit from his forefathers that played a vital role in shaping Hardy as a poet. Poetry was for him a purer art that foreshadowed his life experiences; built with temporal structures, it acquired a distinct elemental simplicity. According to Halliday, Hardy’s friendship with Barnes provided him a platform to begin his career as a poet. He might have been an inspiration for young Hardy to start his career in poetry that acquired rural theme. Evelyn Hardy regards Hardy as the most significant poet between Tennyson and Yeats. Miss Hardy by this statement projects Hardy as a major poet, as an artist who was distinctly not a philosopher (2). Many critics regard his mass of poetry as a sideline, a release of creative energy. According to Stange, Hardy’s poems, “have been intelligently praised, but they are still not really possessed by modern readers as are, for example, the poems of Hopkins or of Yeats… Mr. Auden has said, ‘Hardy was my poetical father’; whereas Mr. Eliot finds in the poet an indifference ‘even to the prescripts of goodwriting’, and an ‘extreme emotionalism’ which is a symptom of decadence” (Stange, 358). Nevertheless, Hardy’s poetry is neither old nor new fashioned. Though diction is modern the issues and characters are of a specific time, they are heightened to timelessness. Hardy did not have, as Yeats did, to create a system that would provide poetic symbols, or as Eliot, to construct a literary past. That is to say, though he was primarily a dramatic poet, he was not much concerned with establishing a ‘persona’ or exploring the artist’s role. “In the realm of his poetry is not Darwinism that opposes Christian belief; it is rather horror that opposes love, and the objects of the poet’s troubled emotions are eternal: nature and man, death and life, love itself” (3). On the surface Hardy’s poems might seem to be without imagery, but as we penetrate into it acquires metaphorical significance. For instance, his poem The Oxen, might appear to be a comment on the legend of an oxen at Christmas, but as we delve into it we find a metaphorical connection that the poet tries to deliver by commenting upon the childhood and the gloom- a state of secure belief and joy, the other of disillusioned maturity. It is for this substance of life embedded his poetry, that Hardy regarded it as an individual part of his literary life rather than fiction which for him was not more than a regular trade of earning an income. Though Hardy regarded himself mainly as a poet, he still flourished rather profusely as a novelist than a poet. His novels can be divided into groups, from one to another of which, on the whole he passed. The first are of a lighter or more traditional build, showing either a predominance of the plot (Desperate Remedies, The Hand of Ethelberta, etc.), or the traces of a fanciful invention in the action and the characters (A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Trumpet Major, etc.). His novels are primarily of provincial and rustic life, with a strong sense of place and time. The sense of place comes partly from his work as an architect. A strong sense of time, and particularly of time passing, seems to have been with him from his earliest childhood. For instance, his novel, Desperate Remedies, is divided up not into chapters but periods of time and in all his work he takes care to make his readers aware of where the action is taking place, and when. His plots are not simple. They grow out of elementary passions: ambition, greed, love, jealousy, the thirst for knowledge; and the springs which move them are psychological. More and more as he progressed in his career, Hardy tends to shift the construction of his novels to the inner world, showing us the conflict of contradictory wills and feelings. He situates his heroes in the grasp of inimical luck that they cannot escape, yet are strong- willed souls. The women of Hardy’s fiction are closer to the instinctive stage of good and evil. He projects them as a tool of the life- force, victims of a cruel fate rendered hostile due to their sensibility of hearts. It is for his faultless art that characters of Hardy’s fiction excel his status as a novelist. In his field of fiction, he is architect rather than a poet. According to Jonathan Wike, the world as a text in Hardy’s fiction, “is a matter mainly of legible faces” (4). These faces are the landscapes that have his thoughts engraved in them, for instance, the idyllic scenes in Far from the Madding Crowd. In his works the natural background signifies the unchanging realities of human life, that throws light on the true relationship between the universe and the man. Hardy’s major contribution to the literary world is his writing imagery that allows him to make an important link between old and new. “His original configuration of the world as text through writing imagery is part of a search for meaning in the world” (5). The delineation of landscape is the key to understand his imagery that embodies the elementary aspects of nature pronouncing the peaceful state of a human mind. His pessimism is not only a way of thinking, but the very essence of his poetic work. Jude the Obscure, is the most powerful of the books in which Hardy has eloquently used his pessimism through his landscape imagery to highlight the fatigue of modern vitality that brought bitter spectacle of human pains. Overall, his works show that he was not concerned with creating a system of thought or exploring a philosophical notion, but the inner struggle of his own spirit of denial and acceptance. His works form the most vigorous and personal canon of modern English literature. They give us the reaction of his thought to events, discreet hints as to his sentimental life, a summary account of his readings, forming a precious document towards his moral biography. Notes 1) Gibson, James. “Introduction”. Thomas Hardy: A literary life. (New York: Palgrave, 1996) 1. 2) One might perceive that thought he was shaken by the intellectual agitations of his age, he was blessed with the negative capability- having not the reason of the philosopher but the intelligence of poetic passion. 3) Stange, G. Robert. “Hardy the Poet”. Poetry Vol. 85, No. 6 (March, 1955): 358. 4) Wike, Jonathan. “The World as text in Hardy’s Fiction”. Nineteenth- Century Literature Vol. 47, No. 4 (March, 1993): 455. 5) Wike, Jonathan. “The World as text in Hardy’s Fiction”. Nineteenth- Century Literature Vol. 47, No. 4 (March, 1993): 458. WORKS CITED 1. Halliday, F.E. Thomas Hardy: His Life and Work. London: House of Stratus, 2001. 2. Gibson, James. Thomas Hardy: A literary life. New York: Palgrave, 1996. 3. Stange, G. Robert. “Hardy the Poet”. Poetry Vol. 85, No. 6 (March, 1955): 356- 361. 4. Wike, Jonathan. “The World as text in Hardy’s Fiction”. Nineteenth- Century Literature Vol. 47, No. 4 (March, 1993): 455- 471. 5. Hardy, Evelyn. Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography. London: Hogarth Press, 2008. Read More