HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01020 2/14/01 "BATHSHEBA QUESTION AND DIANA" ========================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 17:22:10 -0600 From: "John P. Farrell" Subject: readings of FFMC passage Greetings-- I wonder if any list members would like to offer a reading of the following sentence from chap XLIII of FFMC (p. 228 in the Norton ed; p.308 in Oxford WC ed). The sentence occurs in the much discussed passage describing Bathsheba looking into Fanny's coffin. The narrator describes Bathsheba's and then continues: etc., etc. It is this particular clause in the sentence that is of interest to me. I would appreciate any suggested explications of it. (I should say that I have read a good bit of commentary on the scene.If I've missed remarks on the sentence in question, my apologies in advance.) Thanks very much. Prof. John P. Farrell Dept. of English University of Texas, Austin (512)471-8755 farrell@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu ========== Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 22:22:18 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: readings of FFMC passage What a fascinating question, John! You've certainly set me a-thinking! Among other things I've been pondering Hardy's envisioning of Bathsheba at this terrible time of her emotional crisis, as Diana, the hunter-goddess (the allusion to Diana occurs shortly before the "coffin" moment in the internal time of the novel). But Diana is also the goddess of fertility and much loved by women. This (thought) is rather an oblique way of tracking your question, John: because there is, in the paragraph you cite, of "wonted fires," the following phrase that "events were so shaped as to chariot her hither ..." (First Edition, Ch, XLII), and I'm wondering if the Diana image is still in Hardy's mind as he now portrays Bathsheba in mute horror looking down into the coffin. Diana (sometimes Selene) was not only exceptionally fertile but is also represented with wings on her shoulders freely riding a chariot and also with a bow and arrow hunting a stag!-- very Bathshebian! Does Hardy, then, intend a ghastly irony which resides in this inspirited "Diana" who now gazes in shock, not "freely riding" her chariot but instead wholly arrested by the sight of her rival, the other loved woman, cold and dead in her erstwhile fertility -- with the cruel evidence: her stillborn infant at her side? Just a maelstrom of thoughts . . Best, RM ========== From: RPKOAK@aol.com Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 22:38:56 EST Subject: Re: readings of FFMC passage following listmember Patricks 'what does Hardy mean by ....' and 'why does he write it this way?' I guessing a certain open intimacy between people was valued in Hardy's time especially among elites and Hardy was keen about seeing his rural people become transformed from silent to more open and express- ive about themselves and those close to them therefore he shows Bathsheba an intimate viewing the 'ruins' there in the coffin of time and events they shared. all that is in contrast to the usual somber silent unexpressive funeral ritual Hardy wants to see become more meaningful that is personal. I like RM's response best but the 'complicated tears' as Bathsheba looks into the coffin seems a mark of sincerity Hardy wants in contrast to the usual more formal gestures at the rural funeral ritual. r ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: readings of FFMC passage Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 17:35:16 -0000 Am I stating the obvious by mentioning the link to Gray's Elegy? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries, Even in our ashes live their wonted fires. Patrick Roper ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: readings of FFMC passage Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 18:09:57 -0000 One wonders if Hardy had picked up on the foot washing link between Diana and Bathsheba. I understand that in the myth of Diana, Actaeon is turned into a stag and devoured by dogs just after Diana has had her feet washed. The biblical Bathsheba was seen by King David when she was bathing and this was often painted by Rennaissance artists and later as having her feet or hands washed. The following web site has an interesting, brief comparison of paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Titian on the Diana/Bathsheba theme: http://www.ccsf.caltech.edu/~roy/vermeer/lww.html And this one shows Rembrandt's picture of Bathsheba having her feet washed: http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/r/rembran/painting/biblic1/bathsheb.htm l Titian's Diana and Actaeon, if anyone wants to see the full set, is at: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/titian/diana_actaeon.jpg.html Perhaps TH had seen some of all of these pictures on one of his visits to an art gallery in London or elsewhere. Patrick Roper ========== Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 13:34:49 -0600 From: "John P. Farrell" Subject: RE: readings of FFMC passage Patrick--thank you so much. I had only been re-reading the poem and still didn't pick up on it. I thought I had done well to identify the lines from Lamb in the Cornhill version of the text, but this is the solution to what was for me a very vexing sentence. best regards, Jack Farrell John P. Farrell (Jack Farrell) Department of English University of Texas Austin, Tx. 78712 office: 512-471-8755 fax: 512-471-4909 ========== Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 16:54:40 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: RE: readings of FFMC passage Thank you Patrick! -- (and obviously not "obvious"...) One wonders why Hardy now seeks further to complicate an already complicated exposition! First, Bathsheba, in her feisty independence, on the eve of gaining news of Fanny's death, is aligned with Diana; but then, upon hearing the news and (worse), that there may be "two of 'em" the coffin (as Liddy puts it [in the MS]), she is aligned with the biblical Esther! Overnight, from warrior goddess to the subservient, obedient maiden summoned to serve a wrathful king! And now, with elegiac echoes from Gray's poem, she is, in the same moment, to become "pious" -- or are the "drops" not tears necessarily but some kind of unction for the dead? This was a difficult scene for Hardy, given his editor's censorship of any mention of the illegitimate infant. Did Hardy have qualms about this (before Stephen struck out the offending passages) and was he perhaps hoping to sacralize a profane moment -- "Mosaic law" et al? Just curious-- Rosemarie ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Bathsheba and Diana Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:01:10 -0000 Apropos of our recent discussion of Bathsheba and Diana, I came across the following in Anne Ross's 'Pagan Celtic Britain' (Cardinal edition, 1974) over the weekend: "Portrayals of Diana do occur in various parts of Roman Britain and the evidence suggests that, in some cases at least, some native goddess is invoked in this classical guise. Although there is no goddess in the vernacular tradition who can be considered to be exclusively a divine huntress, several of the goddesses are concerned to a marked degree with venery and wild things. ... Remains of a statue of Diana from the late temple at Maiden Castle, which the presence of the little votive three-horned bull suggests was connected with native cults, like that at Lydney, may commemorate a native goddess having affinities with Diana." I am not sure when the statue of Diana was discovered but, knowing of TH's interest in archaeology, and of his knowledge of Maiden Castle, if he did know about the statue is it not possible that he was imagining Bathsheba as a manifestation in his own time of the Dorset Diana? All this reminds me of the strange episode in chapter 3 of FFMC when horse-borne Bathsheba, taking care that no one can see her, "dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a kingfisher - its noiselessness that of a hawk." A horseriding friend of mind says that this is not uncommonly done and that she has frequently done it herself. She said, however, that it was not really a method for getting under low branches but just a kind of playfulness (frolicing was the word she used) and, I suppose, it might be argued that it is one of many ways of simply feeling at one with the animal. But why does Hardy compare the falling backwards to the glide of a kingfisher? Having seen flying and diving kingfishers quite often, what he describes seems to bear no resemblence to them. The noiselessness of a hawk is a strange simile too. After her remarks about Diana, Anne Ross writes about the connections between some of these early Celtic votive offerings and birds and says that some of the goddesses might have ornithomorphic connections. In comparing Bathsheba to a kingfisher and a hawk while indulging in a strange horse-borne ritual, is he hinting at something that he thought might have been immediately recognised in pagan Celtic Dorset all those centuries ago? Let me quote from Anne Ross again: "Gallo-Roman and Romano-British iconography suggests that certain of the goddesses were thought of as being in pssession of birds, and the vernacular material provides some detail as to the kind of birds the Celtic goddesses may be thought of as possessing. The goddesses who appear most frequently in the company of birds in the Gaulish material remains are the grouped mother goddesses with their fertility prosperity symbols. Epona, 'Divine Horse', is also represented with birds ..." Epona is, most usually, found as a figure of a woman on a horse. This whole thing becomes decidedly spooky in the light of the fact that the woman who told me yesterday about how one can lie on a horse's back has a small business of her own called Epona. Patrick Roper ========== Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:09:51 -0600 From: "John P. Farrell" Subject: thanks : Many thanks particularly to Patrick and Rosemarie for their astute and very helpful responses to my FFMC query. It also hadn't been clear to me that the "nameless piece of Babyhood" passage in the Cornhill version was from Lamb--so I managed to miss allusions to two classic elegies within a few pages!! ========== ==========