H05079 A POEM TO HARDY -10/3/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________
From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 3, 2005 8:03:38 AM PDT
Hi folks--
We -- at TTHA HQ -- have been talking this week about modern poets and Bob Mezey's name came up. I thought you might like this --I have only just found it. I read it today for the first time.
Cheers,
Rosemarie
Hardy
Thrown away at birth, he was recovered,
Plucked from the swaddling-shroud, and chafed and slapped,
The crone implacable. At last he shivered,
Drew the first breath, and howled, and lay there, trapped
In a world from which there is but one escape
And that forestalled now almost ninety years.
In such a scene as he himself might shape,
The maker of a thousand songs appears.
From this it follows, all the ironies
Life plays on one whose fate it is to follow
The way of things, the suffering one sees,
The many cups of bitterness he must swallow
Before he is permitted to be gone
Where he was headed in that early dawn.
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From: waverly01@adelphia.net
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 3, 2005 9:19:15 AM PDT
The poem seems to totally ignore Hardy's actual life; Hardy had no "cups of bitterness." He was from a close loving family, never went without a meal or a roof over his head, became almost immediately successful at both of his professions, was mainly loved by his countrymen, respected in his field, wealthy in his later days, replaced his first wife with a newer model, lived to 88 when the average lifespan was 46, never had any illness or infirmity and lived where and how he pleased. If this is "trapped in a world," sign me on!
Peter Richards
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From: segr@segr-music.net
Subject: RE: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 3, 2005 9:27:27 AM PDT
Greetings and thanks to all at HQ!
Quite nice to see some rhyme used in a poem, although it may not always turn out to be an asset. I was wondering if the second stanza here was intended to remind one of of that bit of real Hardy in "The Going" (first stanza) where he "could not follow (Emma) with wing of swallow"? I find that too slick a rhyme and a little hard to digest in a Hardy poem. It leaves too much
to the literal imagination. (I have not found any alternatives recorded, e.g., in Hynes or Gibson.)
Roy Buckle.
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From: jacky@wilkibob.me.uk
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 3, 2005 11:20:06 AM PDT
Re. the poem - Why does the word 'contrived' come to mind? I feel as if the
poet, once he has conceived the concept, has almost said: "I've GOT to make
this work."
Jacky
--
I am no bird; no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an
independent will.
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From: nhardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 3, 2005 4:25:43 PM PDT
Peter,
I see where you're coming from, but it's hard to deny that, while Hardy lived a long and healthy life and enjoyed numerous successes, his writings dwell on themes of loneliness, isolation, bitterness, rejection, being cast adrift in a world no one asked to enter in the first place, and the inevitability if not welcomeness of death. It also shouldn't be overlooked that Hardy was often unlucky in love, often very unhappy in his marriages, had his faith shattered, loved children but had none of his own, and felt himself to be a favorite target of critics. I think the poem Rosemarie posted CELEBRATES Hardy for not giving in to Jude-like despair and instead fighting on with his best weapons--his words.
At any rate, this wouldn't be the first time a writer or artist ignored the facts of a person's life and instead focused on the IDEA of the person. Anyone who's read P. B. Shelley's "Adonais" can't possibly envision short, skinny, tubercular John Keats as the subject of that poem. . .nor should they.
Ave,
Paul Niemeyer
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 3, 2005 4:45:27 PM PDT
An alternative view to
Hardy's actual life; Hardy had no "cups of bitterness." He was from a close loving family,
___________
And he had an alcoholic grandfather -- (who beat his mother); and went cap in hand to London looking for a job at aged 21 with no possessions save a return ticket to Dorchester; and didn't land a job for some months, and became too ill to continue living in London; and returned to Dorset within 5 years ; and had his first novel rejected ; and had his second novel (self-financed) remaindered; and was still Anon with his 4th novel; and had rejection slips from publishers for the next 20 years; and had an unhappy marriage; and had no children, as desired; and suffered illness and near death at age 40 (beloved mother also seriously ill); and contemplated suicide several times over; and endured bouts of chronic depression; and suffered at age 60 from weeping eye disorders and failing vision until he died.
______
Rosemarie
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From: jwwhipple1@comcast.net
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 3, 2005 4:53:38 PM PDT
Dear Rosemarie,
Brava! You beat me to it, dear friend. We are in a Progress Report period at my school, but I echo your thoughtful response entirely. How could your points be misconstrued?
Cheers!
Julian
--
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
- Oscar Wilde
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From: shjoan1002@qwest.net
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 4, 2005 8:56:54 AM PDT
Moreover, it should not be necessary to possess debilitating credentials in order to understand and, so astutely as Hardy, express the sufferings and conflicts of one's society. Might it rather be that an empathetic, encompassing intelligence endured, quite understandably not without depression, fate's dealings? The man wrote a kind of truth for his time that did not sit well with society's denial of its path to the future. I think he carried a heavy burden of insight that he tried to deliver through the novels and poems. An isolating loneliness was central to this condition, and it is this that dignifies A Poem to Hardy.
Joan Sheski
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From: waverly01@adelphia.net
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 4, 2005 9:43:42 AM PDT
I agree, but the poem, in all its overstatement, indicates that Hardy had a difficult life. And, despite other postings, relative to authors such as Dickens, the Brontes, Wilde and even Bulwer Lytton, Hardy did not have or need a miserable life to write about the world's woes.
Peter
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From: jacky@wilkibob.me.uk
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 4, 2005 10:42:32 AM PDT
I am sorry, but I feel there is a joy integral to Hardy's work which is completely lacking here. The poem is burgeoned with images of suffering and bitterness, and, for me, that is not Hardy. Where is the joy that one experiences in the country life that Hardy knew? Where is the music and laughter which is so apparent in so many of his novels and poems? Hardy may have endured dejection and suffering in certain aspects of his life, but this is by no means the whole picture. Where is the irrepressible humour which he portrays in the villagers, and which he must have experienced himself in village life. If, perhaps, village life was such a burden to him why did he constantly return to it? There is a suffering here which is gothic in its grotesqueness, I believe, all is darkness, and hope only seems to live in 'the early dawn' of the after life of which he appeared to be so unsure.
I am sorry, but for me, this poem is very one-sided in its views, and I yearn for a poem which contains more of the music and laughter of Hardy's soul.
All the best
Jacky
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 4, 2005 11:29:01 AM PDT
I think, if you read the seven volumes of Letters, Peter, you get a different picture. Nary a week goes by when there isn't some kind of deep struggle going on --albeit significantly understated. And on the physical side alone, although he was not given, temperamentally, to making his health an issue (and never a public issue) -- thus tending to elide the seriousness of his condition -- you don't have to make too close a reading to perceive that the constant "colds" and "unwellnesses" he suffered continually bespeak a fragile constitution. He frequently endured physical pain while putting on a brave public face. His emotional constitution was not strong either. His intense sensitivity places him a different camp entirely from Dickens. One suspects this particular child, who wept easily and was moved to tears by music, and who was only just robust enough to start attending the Dorchester day school at ten years old, would never have survived working in a blacking factory.
Cheers,
Rosemarie
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From: goldie.morgentaler@uleth.ca
Subject: Hardy's constitution vs. Dickens
Date: October 4, 2005 12:29:18 PM PDT
I cannot resist jumping in here. Dickens died of a stroke at the age of 58 and was frail for a good few years before that; Hardy may have had all kinds of ailments all his life, but when it comes to robustness I think he wins the cake hands down. Eighty-eight is a most respectable old age to attain, even today. I don't think Rosemary's comparison is a good one, especially since Dickens's work in the blacking factory consisted of filling bottles with blacking, not as difficult or life-threatening an occupation as many other forms of child labour at the time. I'm sure Hardy could have survived this as well as Dickens did. On the whole, however, comparing the constitutions of these two writers does not make much sense to me. There are too many variables that need to be taken into account.
--
Goldie Morgentaler
Dept. of English
University of Lethbridge
4401 University Drive
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4
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From: kgwilson@uottawa.ca
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 4, 2005 4:49:10 PM PDT
To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu
Cc: hardy-l@csusm.edu
Reply-To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu
I don't want to extend a thread that may have run its course, but surely
one of the relevant factors here in speculating abut the nature of
hardship is the nature of sensibility/sensitivity. Presumably one of the
things we all admire about Hardy is his unusual responsiveness to the
poignancies of human circumstance. He was a man who not only "used to
notice such things" but used to feel such things. Given his emphasis on
the primacy of human consciousness -- as Angel Clare observes of Tess, her
individual consciousness is "her every and only chance," and as the
narrative voice observes elsewhere in that novel "the world is only a
psychological phenomenon and what they [the natural processes around her]
seemed they were" -- Hardy becomes an eloquent spokesperson for ills, like
joys, being a function of the sensibility of the person experiencing them.
In Tess's case, had her sensibility been different she could presumably
have wandered off to the nearest city and become as cheerful in her lot as
the eponymous heroine of Hardy's "The Ruined Maid."
So what Hardy did or didn't suffer presumably had little to do with
whether his misfortunes were greater or lesser than Dickens's or anyone
else's. It had to do with the quality and nature of his response, which
fortunately was sufficiently subtle (whatever the cost to him) to generate
many of the most moving poems in the English language. After all, would
we say in relation to "Poems of 1912-13" that in the great scheme of
things he had little to grieve about and in any case treated Emma
abominably? Presumably not (I hope): we'd probably say something like
isn't it deeply poignant that a relationship to whose failures Hardy had
himself contributed so much should have generated such sensitive,
wrenching, honest, and finally wise poems.
Best,
Keith
Keith Wilson
Professor of English/President, ACCUTE
University of Ottawa
70 Laurier Avenue East
Ottawa
Ontario, K1N 6N5
CANADA
Tel: (613) 562-5800 Ext. 1160
Fax: (613) 562-5990
e-mail: kgwilson@uottawa.ca
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 4, 2005 6:47:21 PM PDT
Thank you Keith--(and Lorks a'Mussy if we haven't started --on this thread anyway -reading life into art or vice versa!)
Lord Emma - preserve us!
It is an odd thing that folks seem to have to search (and even need) some kind of pathology to explain art.
The original poster seems to feel that because Hardy's life was not a case for pathological study (although this is entirely dependent upon the biographer and it may well be that Rosemary Sumner's Psychological Novelist has more to offer here than many biographers might have encountered) that his sensitivity to suffering and inordinate psychological pain is not, or should not be, an existentialist factor in his art just because his mother might have cooked dinner and his wife might have crocheted doilies.
This strikes me as quite extraordinary. I would be devastated if my friends negated the death of my beloved sister & that this should not eat up my days and nights just because I pay taxes to the city. Or that the loss of my dearest love did not fill my living dreams, to the point of hallucination, just because I might live to 80 and -- oh Joy -- require a pension.
And as Joan Sheski points out, why the need to detail Hardy's private anguish anyway?
If we could return to Mezey's poem (which I originally posted to illustrate one poet's insight into another -- simply) might we gain a little wisdom - as opposed to ire and prejudice -- if we actually read it.?
To start with, aren't the performatives fascinating ? " recovered " "chafed and slapped " " "Drew the first breath " "howled " and then, finally "a thousand songs " appear -
Isn't this intensely beautiful? like the beginning of the universe?
With every good wish,
Rosemarie
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From: jacky@wilkibob.me.uk
Subject: Re: A Poem to Hardy
Date: October 4, 2005 7:12:20 PM PDT
One of the points this discussion has brought home to me is the intensity of
feeling each of us has for Hardy, and the multi-faceted emotions which have
been exposed. This in itself suggests that there is something most valuable
in the poem in that it has given rise to so much discussion. One thing is
certain, that no matter what each person's response is to the poem, the
response to Hardy's sensitivity as poet and novelist is not in doubt.
Jacky
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Mezey
Date: October 5, 2005 5:03:40 AM PDT
See How much TH influence you can find in this little Mezey gem.
Cheers
Rosemarie
____________
Variation on a Theme
My hands have made this monument--
Bronze will tarnish before it will.
Smaller than all the glass towers,
Winds cannot shake it, even the strongest,
And the rains powerless, rain and time,
The endless dripping of the years
That wears down everything to nothing.
This body will go down to dust,
But death not touch these slender lines.
As long as boys make war and girls
Bow to the biddings of the goddess,
As long as my native city stands
And one forgotten neighborhood
And the sluggish Delaware flows on,
I shall not altogether perish,
Who helped to keep the meters live.
The honor, if any, will not be mine;
Not mine but yours, creator spirit,
Yours the shaping hands, the laurel.
after Horace
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