HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01021 2/22/01 "RESTLESS AND PLEIADES QUESTION" =========================================================== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: The restless Pleiades Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 18:25:03 -0000 In chapter 2 of FFMC, Hardy refers to the 'restless Pleiades'. I have been wondering why he thought of the Pleiades as restless. I often see this small group of stars above our garden and they look very static to me, though I know they have an association with Hallowe'en and catastrophic floods. I thought it might be an allusion to the Seven Sisters in Classical mythology then I found the following in Merlin's prophesy from the History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth: "The chariot of the Moon shall disorder the zodiac, and the Pleiades break forth into weeping." I don't know whether one could think of weeping as being 'restless', but the chariot of the moon sounds like a reference to Selene who is usually identified with Diana/Artemis and represented as a woman with the moon (often in crescent form) on her head and driving a two-horse chariot. All this does seem to have a link to some of the other things connected with Bathsheba. She first appears in the novel, for example, in an "ornamental spring waggon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses." It seems to me curious that both weeping and charioting occur so closely together in the following sentences from FFMC that we have recently discussed: "Her tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the coffin: tears of a complicated origin, of a nature indescribable, almost indefinable except as other than those of simple sorrow. Assuredly their wonted fires must have lived in Fanny's ashes when events were so shaped as to chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet effectual manner." ========== From: "schweik" Subject: The restless Pleiades Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 19:23:52 GMT On the "restless" Pleiades-- Hardy was certainly familiar with the reference in Job, 38:31--"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades"-- and that unbindable quality may equate with "restless." Their twinkling (Electra is partiularly dim and elusive) has also been taken as a a sign of their fear of Orion who, in one of the myths associated with them, still pursues them through the sky. Bob Schweik ========== Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:53:25 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: The restless Pleiades Patrick, on page 356 of the new Penguin edition of FFMC Rosemarie Morgan notes that the Pleiades are "restless" because they are twinkling stars and only visible under certain conditions. Betty Cortus ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Restless Pleiades Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 11:03:18 -0000 Another explanation of TH's "restless Pleiades" is that in Classical mythology they were the seven daughters of Atlas (Electra, Maia, Taygete, Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, and Sterope) and, though always pursued by Orion, they always managed to escape from him. Patrick Roper ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Restless Pleiades Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:59:59 -0000 Having sent the below, I realised this was something Bob Schweik had already pointed out. Many apologies - must be the weather! Patrick ========== Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 07:57:10 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: RE: Restless Pleiades This really has nothing to do with Hardy, or the restlessness of the Pleiades, but from ancient times the Australian Aborigines have viewed this cluster of stars as seven sisters, being deceased ancestors who became points of light in the sky. Doesn't this sounds like something out of Jung's Collective Unconscious? ========== Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:04:50 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: RE: Restless Pleiades Mea Culpa for breaking the rule I'm always stressing by not signing this message sent earlier. It's still early in the morming here in California. Betty ========== From: KVANART@aol.com Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 11:40:57 EST Subject: Re: RE: Restless Pleiades In current New Age parlance,the Plieades are closely linked with extraterestrials.Perhaps there were some crop circles on Bethsheba's farm? Or Hardy owned a circular rake? This is meant in jest of course ,but the Aboriginal and Jungian connection is very interesting,better call Eric von Donigan...(I'm actually serious here) As far as Hardy being aware of this is of course less likely,though it may be chalked up to metaphyiscal/subconcious influence ,after all we find his work his work fascinating on a very profound level do we not? It would be interesting to delve into Hardy's metaphysical (albeit from a victorian /edwardian viewpoint) a time which was after all Very metaphysical,a true precourser to late 20th century New Age thought. ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Restless Pleiades Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 16:41:22 -0000 It seems that many cultures worldwide have regarded the Pleiades as a rather special constellation and I suspect TH was aware of this, though his allusion to the 'restless Pleiades' was perhaps only a nod in the direction of the Classics. In the northern hemisphere the constellation reaches its highest point in the sky, or culmination, in late October or early November and this led to an association with the dead because of the proximity to All Soul's/Samhain/Hallowe'en and, more generally, the death of the year at the start of winter. This makes it particularly interesting that the Australian Aborigines should have linked the stars to deceased ancestors as I would have thought the Australian culmination would have occurred in spring, though maybe I am wrong here. The Pleiades have also often been associated with floods and other catastrophes, not only in Europe, but as far away as Mexico and it is conceivable that there was some ancient catastrophic episode that coincided with the culmination of the constellation and was therefore thought to have been caused by it. Patrick Roper ========== From: "Ahmad" Subject: Re: The restless Pleiades Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 18:59:22 +0200 : In his Norton Critical Edition of the novel, Professor Schweik also explains that the pleiades "appear to twinkle - hence Hardy's word * restless * (p. 15n.). The twinkling seems to be caused by the reflection nebula, a cloud of dust and gas, which surrounds these stars, scattering their light and absorbing some of it (Mitton, Jacqueline. * The Penguin Dictionary of Astronomy *. London: Penguin Books, 1993). Hardy's meticulous knowledge of "the full-starred heavens that winter sees" ("Afterwards," l.14) is memorably demonstrated in this chapter of * Far from the Madding Crowd *. Setting it at "nearly midnight on the eve of St Thomas's, the shortest day of the year" (opening sentence), the narrator names no less than 13 stars, clusters, and constellations. All of them are plainly visible to the naked eye in the clear night sky in the northern hemisphere in winter. Suleiman M. Ahmad (smahmad@mail.sy) ========== From: KVANART@aol.com Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 14:23:03 EST Subject: Re: RE: Restless Pleiades Good stuff Patrick. Keith Van Allen ========== From: KVANART@aol.com Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 14:25:27 EST Subject: Re: The restless Pleiades Thanks Betty. Keith Van Allen ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Pleiadians Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 13:09:37 -0000 The full New Age story of the Pleiadians (sic) is at: http://www.tje.net/para/alien_races/pleiadian.htm Thank heavens (if that is the right word) for the more credible imagination of Thomas Hardy! One thing I did come across on a web site about the Pleiades in Japan (where they are called Subaru - the cars are named after them) would, I think, have been appreciated by TH and reflects the passage we have been talking about in FFMC: "In going out to look at the sky at night, we have always been awed by the fact that in a sense, we are not only looking at the same basic things Galileo and Kepler gazed at, but also the same basic scenes all of our near and distant ancestors viewed, regardless of culture. There is a shiver we get from this that is not from the November cold; it is a somewhat paradoxical feeling of both nearness to humanity and vastness of the universe." Patrick Roper ==========