HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE  H0029 3/25/00  "NOTES &QUERIES".
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From: Suarky@aol.com
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 18:18:14 EST
Subject: Oscar Wilde


Maybe old news to most of you, but I was quite interested to read that an 
obscure friend of Dorian Gray's would-be brother-in-law is named Tom Hardy.  
That's it.
Okay bye
Travis K

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From: "ROBERT C PETERSEN" <RPETERSEN@prodigy.net>
Subject: Reading Hardy
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 09:51:59 -0600



For those who missed it, let me call your attention to remarks about Hardy
in Seamus Deane's essay on Seamus Heaney--"The Famous Seamus"--in
The New Yorker for March 20, 2000.

Deane and Heaney were classmates, and one topic discussed is the impact
of  having a good teacher who encourages reading.  In that, there is a
comment on the experience of reading Hardy"s The Woodlanders.

In part, the section reads, "Now and then, a chill came off the page. . . .
To move from the Hintock plantation to the deserted highway, Hardy wrote, involved the'exchange by the act of a single stride the simple absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn.'"  Neither Seamus liked it.  'The air between us was cold. . . .
We didn't like it, but we were impressed by the force with which we didn't.
. . . I think it was the first time a literary work made me feel miserable and
isolated, and I saw Heaney resisting the misery and isolation, then accepting them, then overriding them."

This connects, I think, with the current list discussion of Hardy's
philosophical and religious beliefs.  His work still touches readers--the inquiries from students on list, the responses from lifetime readers on list, and this bit about Deane and Heaney all testify to the power that work has.  Just what it means that I reread The Woodlanders every couple of years, and have done so for over thirty years, I cannot say.
It does suggest, I think, that Hardy speaks to readers today because he evokes a psychological and spiritual condition to which we respond.

The Deane piece talks about Heaney's reading and mentions a number of
Romantic and Victorian figures, so some folks may want to read the whole thing.

Bob Petersen
Associate Professor
Department of English
Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, Tennessee  37l32

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