H05081 "THE DYNASTS" -10/12/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ________________________________________________________________________

H05081 "THE DYNASTS" -10/12/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________

From: sflynn@gettysburg.edu

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/DYNASTS

Date: October 12, 2005 5:38:02 AM PDT

Bravo Keith - both for your defense of the extraordinarily valuable checklist (and those who compile it) and the woefully under-read Dynasts. As to the latter, I have always been amazed by how few scholars - even Hardy scholars - have read The Dynasts cover to cover. It is an amazing work, unlike anything else in Hardy's oeuvre -- or anyone else's for that matter. If the 200th-anniversary hoopla over Trafalgar prompts a few folks to explore that phantasmagoric epic-verse-drama, Hardy's spectre would, I'm sure, be pleased.

Best wishes,

Suzanne Flynn

Gettysburg College

==========

From: waverly01@adelphia.net

Subject: RE: Hardy and TrafalgarTHE DYNASTS

Date: October 12, 2005 6:25:49 AM PDT

It is an amazing work!! Like Ulysses, I would rather praise it than read it (to steal a phrase).

Peter Richards

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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: Re: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 12, 2005 6:24:54 AM PDT

When he ended "The Dynasts" on a Choric speculation that Consciousness might come to inform

the Will "till It fashion all things fair!", he was presumably suggesting the possible final evolutionary triumph of this most positive aspect of human consciousness.

Keith

______________

"Definitionally Hardyan" also describes his comment to Henry Newbolt, at the time of publication of the The Dynasts, Part First, that "The Original Cause did not (apparently) foresee the pitch of intelligence to which humanity would arrive in the course of the ages, & therefore did not prepare a world adequate to it."

Newbolt, incidentally, included Hardy's "The Night of Trafalgar" (from The Dynasts, Part First) in his 1905 publication entitled, The Year of Trafalgar. The Cornhill, and Outlook, on the other hand, were not so lucky. The editors invited Hardy to contribute a poem to mark the centenary of Trafalgar, fought on 21 Oct 1805., but he replied that he felt he had exhausted his Trafalgar matter in The Dynasts. He was, he said "pumped dry."

Perhaps we can moisturise him for 2005?

Rosemarie

==========

From: aghewitt@yahoo.com

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 12, 2005 7:19:25 AM PDT

Could I say a word in praise of "Thomas Hardy, Monism, and the Carnival

Tradition: The One and the Many in The Dynasts", by the teacher who inspired

my love of Hardy, Glen Wickens? It is one of the few book-length studies of

The Dynasts in the last fifty or sixty years. I know this work had a mixed

reception -- Bakhtin has perhaps gone out of fashion, but the idea of the

many-voiced text seems fully appropriate for The Dynasts, and its

implications are explored in depth in Prof Wickens' book.

Andrew Hewitt

==========

From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu

Subject: The Dynasts

Date: October 12, 2005 8:11:01 AM PDT

To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu

Reply-To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu

TTHA's poet in residence, Isobel Robin, also has some pertinents comments

on The Dynasts in her essay, "The Imminent Will in Hardy's 'Convergence of

the Twain'', which appeared in the inaugural (1998) volume of The Hardy

Review. This paper had also been presented at the 1996 Dorchester

Conference in Rosemarie Morgan's first Symposium at that venue.

Betty Cortus

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: RE: Wickens/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 12, 2005 11:07:52 AM PDT

Thank you, Andrew. TTHA has two excellent reviews of the Wickens on the Members' Page. One review is by C. M. Jackson-Houlston and the other by Robert C. Schweik.

TTHA welcomes members' further responses, either to the Wickens itself or to the reviews, in the form of rejoinders.

With every good wish

Rosemarie

==========

From: schweikr@localnet.com

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 12, 2005 12:14:21 PM PDT

I'd like to second Andrew Hewitt's comments on Wicken's "Thomas

Hardy, Monism, and the Carnival Tradition." I was one of the reviewers

who gave it a mixed review--particularly for the intrusion of so many

references to Bakhtin. Still it has many excellent insights and new

observations that make it a welcome and very valuable study.

But I do think that there's something to be added about the "mixed-

voice" text of The Dynasts. It's not just that the voices are mixed

but that at times they can be awfully unpoetic. Some of the scenes,

read, for example, like Hansard set to verse.

Bob Schweik

Robert Schweik

University Distinguished Teaching Professor

Department of English

State University of New York

Fredonia, NY 14063

USA

Telephone: (716) 673-1905

FAX: (716) 673-3446

schweik@fredonia.edu

schweikr@localnet.com

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 12, 2005 1:56:32 PM PDT

Bob --

If by this you are referring to the House of Commons debates, Hardy purposefully made them ungainly. He told William Archer that he chose blank verse for these debates - what he called "narrative, annalistic, or ironical matter" -- to emphasise the fact that they couldn't possibly be poetical; that to render them in this contrasting fashion would bring a kind of harmony to the whole.

Rosemarie

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: Dynasts

Date: October 13, 2005 7:12:22 AM PDT

Hardy evidently had a foretaste of the "ad infinitum"email experience.

I have been reviewing his correspondence with Florence Henniker and came across this (which also, by hap, coincides with our Dynasts conversation):

I have had a good deal of correspondence in one way & another about The Dynasts, which seems to have puzzled most readers as much almost as if it had been written in Hebrew. I daresay you saw the discussion I had with the Times dramatic critic about it: no good was done, I imagine, by my answering him, but I was in the mood to do so just for once, & when you begin a newspaper correspondence there is no telling when you will end.

____________

Rosemarie

==========

From: kgwilson@uottawa.ca

Subject: Reading "The Dynasts"

Date: October 13, 2005 7:05:29 AM PDT

I think that Bob Schweik's comment about the "Hansard set to verse" scenes is well taken. One of the unfortunate consequences of the obvious weaknesses of certain aspects of "The Dynasts" (weaknesses that are probably an inevitable consequence of a number of challenges that Hardy set himself by addressing in an anachronistic and hybrid poetic form an expansive subject-matter requiring the conveying of a great deal of historical information) is that they put readers off persevering with the work. And perhaps one of those disincentives is provided also by the whole somewhat cumbersome Overworld and the immediate invocation of the Immanent Will in the Shade of the Earth's opening line: not exactly an enticement to continuance in the tradition of "On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor"!

But if one does persevere, a point rapidly arrives at which these quirkinesses soon naturalize themselves in the reader's mind and become less alienating. One of the huge pleasures of paying serious attention to "The Dynasts" is the fact that it is the work in which the paradoxes of Hardy's "philosophy" are most fully embodied and worked out, and the clearest sense conveyed of his reflections on the relationship between accident and design, determinism and free-will. My impression is that for students who get around to wrestling with "The Dynasts," the conceptual contradictions they encounter in Hardy's other work become resolved, and they understand how apparently contradictory views can be reconciled. They then stop talking about Hardy believing in "Fate" as some kind of external quantity under whose predations human beings suffer (a view that they have often absorbed from the superficial teaching of Hardy as a "pessimist," and probably from the reading of certain characters' responses as Hardy's own), and come to understand the notion of a design that from certain vantage points -- most notably that enjoyed by the Spirits (themselves no more than the embodiment of various kinds of human response to the world) who are looking down on the human action of "The Dynasts" from a distance in time and space -- can be seen as "immanent" in the physical world. This explains for them the possible relation in Hardy's mind between contingency and design, accident and purposiveness. That in turn helps them with the shorter "philosophical" poems; it certainly helps them with an anthology favourite like "The Convergence of the Twain," with its translation of a horrific literal accident into something suggestive of meaning, of however bleak a kind.

And quite apart from these conceptual rewards, with their major implications for the understanding of Hardy's other work, "The Dynasts" also contains some of Hardy's most startling perspectival triumphs, such as the moving reflection provided by the Chorus of the Years on the effect of the Battle of Waterloo on the natural as well as the human world that has been caught up in its destruction.

Best,

Keith

Keith Wilson

Department of English

University of Ottawa

==========

From: sflynn@gettysburg.edu

Subject: RE: Reading "The Dynasts"

Date: October 13, 2005 7:30:21 AM PDT

Keith's reflections on the response of "students who get around to wrestling with 'The Dynasts'" raises an interesting question: how many students are ever even introduced to 'The Dynasts'? I have the pleasure (?) of teaching undergraduates exclusively, but they're bright undergraduates, and I find that they balk at reading any poetic work longer than a few pages. (As an aside, I'm teaching In Memoriam this week.) Even when I teach an advanced seminar on Hardy, I find it well-nigh impossible to assign The Dynasts to them. Yet, how can one claim to have given students a complete view of Hardy without exposing students to his most ambitious work? I've compromised by giving them excerpts from each of the 3 parts, but I always feel as though I'm "cheating" by doing so. With apologies to those on the list who do not teach, I'd be curious to know how others in the profession handle this quandary.

Regards,

Suzanne

Suzanne Flynn

Department of English

Gettysburg College

Gettysburg, PA

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: Re: Reading "The Dynasts"

Date: October 13, 2005 8:18:33 AM PDT

Hardy was the first to ackowledge "weaknesses" (he felt the work was exeedingly rushed) and one wonders what might have become of the Dynasts had he had the time and inclination to make revisions. However, I think it is debatable that "anachronistic" forms apply in this instance (unless you mean purposefully anachronistic). Equally, the complications set by including "a great deal of historical matter" may be less of a factor in contibuting to these "weaknesses" than Hardy's own hybridised forms. Could you elaborate, Keith, on "anachronistic.?

Hardy had what he calls (in the context of the Dynasts) the "theory of contiguity" which he explains as "unemotional writing which has no claim of itself to verse-form [which] may properly be attracted into verse-form by its nearness to emotional verse in the same piece." He applies this to plays in particular (including Shakespeare) and certain lyrics that are not lyrical "every moment throughout, but the neutral lines are warmed by the remainder." This form of symbiosis is an intriguing idea but might it be far too subtle for common consumption?

Thanks

Rosemarie

==========

From: kgwilson@uottawa.ca

Subject: Re: Reading "The Dynasts"

Date: October 13, 2005 9:13:31 AM PDT

Suzanne's posting caused a tremor of guilt to pass over me. I am actually teaching a graduate seminar on Hardy at the moment, and this time, even at that level, I didn't assign "The Dynasts" formally as one of the course texts -- although I hasten to add that I am recurrently referring to it, providing extracts from it, and encouraging them to read it. Sometimes I do include it as a course text in the graduate Hardy course, sometimes not. I also teach this course as a fourth-year seminar sometimes, and don't include The Dynasts then, although do discuss it with students. Whether graduate or fourth-year versions of the course, students are expected to read -- for a one-term course -- Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Tess and Jude, plus all of Jim Gibson's edition of the Complete Poems. So they certainly aren't getting an easy ride in terms of the course texts for which they are directly responsible. This boils down to a novel a week in the first seven weeks of class, so it's not for the faint of heart. Students are also expected to submit weekly discussion points on that week's text, and because it is a seminar (maximum of 12 students at the graduate level, 15 at the undergraduate), it is relatively easy to tell whether the reading is genuinely being completed.

But, of course, they all emerge better people for having had to read that quantity of Hardy!

Best,

Keith

==========

From: schweikr@localnet.com

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 13, 2005 9:50:07 AM PDT

I realize that discussion of *The Dynasts* has turned to questions of teaching and filiming it, but I'd like to recur here to that brief exchange between me and Rosemarie Morgan on my remark that parts of *The Dynasts* read like "Hansard in verse." My message and Rosemarie's response are appended at the bottom of this posting.

Two notes on *The Dynasts*: one to provide an example of the problem of Hardy's treatment of such things as the House of Commons debate and a second to comment on Rosemarie Morgan's reference to Hardy's remarks on his practice to William Archer, with a reference. also, to Bill Morgan's remarks on the prose parts of *The Dynasts*.

First, on Hardy's use of blank verse for the House of Commons debate--what I have called "Hansard set in verse"--it might be useful first to provide a brief example of what I was referring to. In Part First, Act First, Scene III, titled

"London. The Old House of Commons," Hardy renders in blank verse a debate on the tangled history of the Militia Act of 1802 which provided for raising the nation's military forces by fining any parish that did not produceits quota of men. Between 1802 and 1805, the act was amended more than once to correct deficiencies in it, but by 1805 it was still not getting satisfactory results. It is a debate in 1805 on that act which is the subject of the House of Commons scene referred to above. Here is a short sample of what in *The Dynasts* goes on for many pages with many different speakers, of which this is the opening of a speech by the third--to be followed by many others, some 20 in all:

WINDHAM

The question that compels the House to-night

Is not differences in wit to wit,

But if for England it be well or no

To null the new-fledged Act, as one inept

For setting up with speed and hot effect

The red machinery of desperate war.---

Whatever it may do, or not, it stands,

A statesman's raw experiment. If ill,

Shall yet more assays and more be tried

In stress of jeopardy that stirs demand

For sureness of proceeding? Must this House

Exchange safe action based on practised lines

For yet more ventures into risks unknown

To gratify a quaint projector's whim,

While enemies hang grinning round our gates

To profit by mistake?

[Samuel Hynes, *The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas

Hardy*, Volume IV, p. 39.]

That is what I refer to as "Hansard set to verse."

Now Hardy does also, as Bill Morgan has noted, render parts of *The Dynasts*

in prose. In fact, its very beginning, Part First, Act First, Scene 1, "England,

A Ridge in Wessex" provides an example of that prose, from which this is just a brief snippet:

FIRST PASSENGER

There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway, even at this time of year.

SECOND PASSENGER

Yes. It is because the King and Court are coming down here later on. They

wake up this part rarely! . . . See, now how the Channel and coast open like

a chart. That patch of mist below us is the town we are bound for.

[Samuel Hynes, *The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas

Hardy*, Volume IV, p. 23-4.]

With the examples above in mind, I'd like address Rosemarie Morgan's citation of a letter to William Archer

provided in the copy of her message attached below. There, Rosemarie says that Hardy's comments to Archer indicate that he "purposefully made [the House of Commons speeches] ungainly." Not so. Here is what Hardy said:

On one matter I disagree with you: that blank verse must only be used for what is essential poetry. I hold that it may be applied to narrative, annalistic, or ironical matter that comes between more poetical matter, to preserve harmony with the general form. So the H. of Commons debate, which could not possibly be poetical, was a right subject to bring under its rhythm, in the circumstances.

[Purdy and Millgate, *Collected Letters*, Volume 3, p. 105.

Clearly Hardy's point is *not* that he made the House of Commons debate "purposefully . . .ungainly" as Rosemarie Morgan claims, but nearly the opposite--that in an effort to make them less ungainly he put them in

rhythmic verse form so as to "preserve harmony with the general [verse] form." Such was Hardy's argument in justification of putting the House of Commons debate in blank verse.

There are two weaknesses in Hardy's argument.

One is that elsewhere in *The Dynasts*--e.g., in the prose in which he renders the rustics speeches--Hardy finds no need to "preserve harmony with the general [verse] form" but simply uses prose. Why, then, did he argue for the need to use something other than prose for the House of Commons debate on the grounds that

it had to be "harmonious" with the general verse form of the poem, when, in fact, he felt no such need in other places were he in fact used prose? Moreover, Hardy's argument that the House of Commons debate

"could not possibly be poetical" is also countered by what he actually did, for Hardy introduced that House of Commons debate with a discussion between the Spirits in which details of the debate are expressed poetically. In short, Hardy's justification for using that blank verse in the House of Commons speeches in *The Dynasts* does not square with his actual practice in the poem. Perhaps, of course, he felt that the relatively short prose passages for the rustics could easily be absorbed in such a long poem, but the extended speeches in Commons would too greatly clash with its general "poetic" character. I think that is likely.

But, if so, secondly, and unfortunately, the result has the effect *not* of making it "harmonious" but of calling attention to its oddity. That clash between the unpoetic quality of the matter (which Hardy fully admitted) and the "poetic" form in which it was rendered is the clash which Archer felt and recorded in his review and which, I think, may be felt by many readers today. And that's what I meant by parts of *The Dynasts* being "Hansard in verse." Hardy, I think, would agree with that characterization but mistook what effect it would likely have.

Bob Schweik

==========

From: kgwilson@uottawa.ca

Subject: Re: Reading "The Dynasts"

Date: October 13, 2005 10:26:44 AM PDT

"Anachronistic" may be too strong a word. But it certainly seems to me that

both verse drama and epic (and notwithstanding the strong modern tradition for

the former in the first half of the twentieth-century) have proved very

difficult to pull off in any enduring way in a cultural world whose assumptions

have become increasingly secular, and hence tend to privilege the mimetic

traditions of realism for the rendering of human action. Stephen Phillips'

star sank so fast he barely gets an entry even in literary encyclopaedias any

longer. Christopher Fry is a figure who increasingly seems something of a

period oddity, now famous as much for having provided Margaret Thatcher with

one of her best-known phrasal improvisations ("The Lady's Not for Turning") as

for the work from which it derived. T. S. Eliot's verse drama? -- does it

still receive much attention? That's all I really meant: that I suspect that

verse-drama is felt to be a somewhat alien form that the Victorians had kept in

the closet and that had only a spotty capacity to pull readers and audiences

after a handful of twentieth-century writers decided to try letting it out

again. Of course one can also say that Phillips disappeared because he finally

didn't write very good plays, but of course that's what some would say --

incorrectly! -- about "The Dynasts."

Best,

Keith

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 13, 2005 11:18:04 AM PDT

Aha --! a question of misinterpretation. By the following

On one matter I disagree with you: that blank verse must only be used for what is essential poetry.

I understand Hardy to mean that he does not agree with Archer over this matter. Thus he uses a rather ungainly blank verse (as I stated and as you have agreed) for the House of Commons debate (what you call Hansard-- although, strictly speaking Hansard provides reports of proceedings in Parliament, not verbatim speeches) . The Commons speech which you cite actually becomes "blanker" as it goes on employing crude off-rhymes and frequently none at all - for very good reasons. Because the content is not worthy. Note Hardy's use of the semi-colon in the above phrase. He is saying (in my reading of it) "I disagree with you that that blank verse must be used only for what is essential poetry." He does not wish to render poetical the Commons debate. He purposefully makes it ugly and ignoble (as versification goes).

One of your other points, Bob, follows on from this. Hardy's use of prose, you'll notice, is reserved for commoners and rustics. In this he follows the classics, Shakespeare in particular. "Poeticals" are reserved for the principals and for nobility. The House of Commons speeches do not qualify for fine verse -- only blank verse-- and the rustics do not qualify for fine verse --only prose . This is classic form.

Cheers,

Rosemarie

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: Re: Reading "The Dynasts"

Date: October 13, 2005 11:24:50 AM PDT

edu

In this I think you must be spot on. Keith! I heard today that Pinter has received the Nobel Prize for literature.

Don't mistake me, folks - I'm a huge Pinter fan. I teach Pinter on every drama course.

But Phatic Language (not Verse Drama) clearly has it all -- hands down!

Cheers,

Rosemarie

==========

From: schweikr@localnet.com

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 13, 2005 12:33:32 PM PDT

In response to the first part of Rosemarie Morgan's message below, I can do no more than quote again Hardy's statement and my comment on it. Here is Hardy's statement:

"On one matter I disagree with you: that blank verse must only be used for what is essential poetry. I hold that it may be applied to narrative, annalistic, or ironical matter that comes between more poetical matter, to preserve harmony with the general form. So the H. of Commons debate, which could not possibly be

poetical, was a right subject to bring under its rhythm, in the circumstances."

[Purdy and Millgate, *Collected Letters*, Volume 3, p. 105.]

About that statement I wrote as follows:

"Clearly Hardy's point is *not* that he made the House of Commons debate "purposefully . . .ungainly" as Rosemarie Morgan claims, but nearly the opposite--that in an effort to make them less ungainly he put them in

rhythmic verse form so as to "preserve harmony with the general [verse] form." Such was Hardy's argument in justification of putting the House of Commons debate in blank verse."

I can, then, only repeat the point I made: Hardy says he put "narrative, annalistic, or ironical matter that comes between more poetical matter" "which could not possibly be poetical" into blank verse to "preserve harmony with the general [poetical] form." How that translates into Rosemarie's assertion that Hardy said that that he made the House of Commons debate "purposefully . . .ungainly" I do not comprehend.

Rosemarie is right, of course, in pointing out that Hardy follows Shakespeare in rendering rustics' speech in prose. But that, it seems to me, would be a relevant response to my point only if Shakespeare had produced enormous quantities of unpoetic parliamentary prose in blank verse and then

claimed he did it so that it would "preserve harmony with the general form." Shakespeare didn't.

Hardy did.

Bob Schweik

============

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: RE: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 13, 2005 1:17:58 PM PDT

Bob --

Blank verse is written in iambic pentameter. It is bound to be rhythmic. (as TH says it would be -- "its rhythm" -- below --refers to blank verse) .

"So the H. of Commons debate, which could not possibly be poetical, was a right subject to bring under its rhythm, in the circumstances."

That I say the blank verse ungainly in this instance (with its clumsy off-rhymes and final blanking out of rhyme altogether) & that TH says it "could not possibly be poetical" amounts to much the same thing. . I don't see any point of contention here.

Of course TH isn't writing Shakepeare. That was never an issue. That he frequently follows classic /Shakespearean form is the point. Interestingly, TH comments, in this context, on "those blank verse passages in Shakespeare's histories which are mere transcripts from chronicles". (Letter to Arthur Symons, March 2:3.06. Letters,Vol 3. 198)

But enough is enough.

Cheers,

Rosemarie

==========

From: schweikr@localnet.com

Subject: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 13, 2005 4:39:41 PM PDT

Sorry to prolong this, but I'm finding it hard to understand what I take to be a simple distinction I've made repeatedly.

Rosemarie Morgan wrote,

Blank verse is written in iambic pentameter. It is bound to be rhythmic. (as TH says it would be -- "its rhythm" -- below --refers to blank verse) .

"So the H. of Commons debate, which could not possibly be

poetical, was a right subject to bring under its rhythm, in the circumstances."

Let me once again quote Hardy:

poetical, was a right subject to bring under its rhythm, in the circumstances."

Hardy clearly is *not* saying that blank verse "cannot possibly be poetical." He is saying that the House of Commons debate "could not possibly be poetical." Nor is it at all clear that he regards his blank verse renditions of the Commons debates as having what Rosemarie assumes to be "clumsy off-rhymes and a final blanking out of rhyme altogether."

Hardy knew full well that blank verse doesn't rhyme at all. He's simply saying that those House of Commons speeches, which he regards as "not possibly poetical," he would nevertheless render,in between other truly "poetical matter," in "rhythm" so as to "preserve harmony with the

general [poetic] form of *The Dynasts." That's all he argues. He says nothing at all about "clumsy off-rhymes and final blanking out of rhyme altogether." Those are Rosemarie's words. And, I think, he would be amused to find someone looking at his blank verse (and he of course knew it to be unrhymed) to assume that first he tried "clumsy off-rhymes" and, then, "final blanking out of

rhyme altogether." Hardy, unaware of what blank verse consisted, trying "clumsy off-rhymes"?

He *may* have done such a thing, but that's not the issue. The issue is what he wrote to Archer. Of course there is nothing in the Archer letter to support any such claim that he was doing anything of the sort. I have been addressing myself to Hardy's letter to Archer. Rosemarie Morgan's claims go far beyond anything Hardy argued there and depend, rather, irrelevantly, on what she regards to be Hardy's deliberately awkward handling of his blank verse. Maybe he did--though I doubt it.

But I make this final rejoinder because a claim that *Hardy* somewhere *asserted* that his blank verse in the House of Commons speeches was "ungainly" is a fabrication of Rosemarie Morgan's. She may think Hardy made such a statements, but Hardy never made any such assertion. nor implied any

such thing. That the matter expressed in the House of Commons speeches "could not possibly be poetical" he indeed said. That he could, by putting them in blank verse, help them "preserve harmony with the general [poetic] form" of *The Dynasts* he certainly said

I concede, of course, that a critic may judge Hardy's poetic performance in the Dynasts, with respect to his treatment of the House of Commons speeches, as what Rosemarie Morgan claims them to be. That's

a judgment call.

But the evidences from Hardy's comments to Archer in his letter should not be obscured by unfounded claims that Hardy said or thought that his rendering of the House of Commons speeches were "ungainly." That is, I think,

a fabrication clearly not supported by the available evidence.

Bob Schweik

Robert Schweik

University Distinguished Teaching Professor

Department of English

State University of New York

Fredonia, NY 14063

USA

Telephone: (716) 673-1905

FAX: (716) 673-3446

schweik@fredonia.edu

schweikr@localnet.com

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: Re: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 13, 2005 8:21:03 PM PDT

I think we are both saying the same thing, Bob

Your point was:

"It's not just that the voices are mixed but that at times they can be awfully unpoetic. Some of the scenes, read, for example, like Hansard set to verse."

And mine was, in agreement -- that the debates are "ungainly" --(ie., "awfully unpoetic").

Hardy contended --as we have both seen --that blank verse didn't have to be reserved for "essential poetry" but could also be used for "narrative" etc: My words were :

"If by this [Hansard] you are referring to the House of Commons debates, Hardy purposefully made them ungainly. He told William Archer that he chose blank verse for these debates - what he called "narrative, annalistic, or ironical matter" -- to emphasise the fact that they couldn't possibly be poetical; that to render them in this contrasting fashion would bring a kind of harmony to the whole."

I should have explained-- "contrasting fashion." But I assumed you would know that I meant contrasting the surrounding poetic lines (essential poetry?) of the Pities. Sorry about that. Possibly I should have quoted the entire passage but I'm not sure that would have made the point any clearer since we are not disputing Hardy's meaning here. Instead you seem to be disputing my impression that the Commons passages in blank verse are ungainly. I happen to think they are ungainly just as you happen to think they are "awfully unpoetic." . You are mistaken in thinking that I had attributed "ungainly" to TH. Not so. "Ungainly" was my impression just as your impression was "awfully unpoetic."

The whole issue (of "ungainliness" and final harmony) may be made clearer if we go to the text (I have the First Edition) .

Act Iiii opens in London at the Old House of Commons, with the Spirits and Angels chanting "antiphonally, in a minor recitative" (this is presumably "essential poetry" or "poetical matter" with its "doth"s and "Ere"s ). Angel I introduces the subject of the Commons and Prime Minister Pitt with:

Once more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him. --

frail though and spent, and an-hungered for restfulness

Once more responds he, dead fervours to energise,

Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind.

Angel II responds with,

Ere the first fruit thereof voices grow audible,

Holding as hapless his dream of good guardianship,

Jestingly, earnestly, shouting it serviceless,

Tardy, inept, and uncouthly designed.

The Spirits -- the "Pities," "Years," "Ironic" and "Sinister" all make various responses and then Sheridan speaks:

"The Bill I would have leave to introduce

Is framed, sir, to repeal last Sessions's Act,

By party-scribes inituled a Provision

For England's Proper Guard;"

(and so on)

This, like Pitt's speech afterwards and Windham's after that (the one your cite) is what I call ungainly blank verse and you call "awfully unpoetic." My gleanings from Hardy's letter to Archer and recalling his indignation when a critic complained that his "Sturminster Bridge" poem was full of ugly sounds to which he protested that his verse and sounds were "onomatopoeic" leads me to understand that this ungainliness or "awfully unpoetic"quality is intentional. And that when TH argues his "theory of contiguity" he is supporting his earlier notion (to Archer) that a kind of harmony would result from the contiguity of "unpoetical " blank verse segments and their surrounding "poetical matter" or "essential poetry" (to wit the lines spoken in recitative by the Spirits). The Spirits do in fact bring closure to this scene, just as they open it-- hence, if the contiguity theory works (and that is a matter of personal opinion) the "unpoetical" will benefit from their presence and a kind of harmony will result. This is why I made the point that the clumsy rhymes of the blank verse (which should of course not be there at all) help to contrast the poetical matter of the Spirits. Hybrid blank verse -- hybrid poetical matter is Hardy's method here so if he does add clumsy rhymes to blank verse -- which he does - and if he does increasingly blank the lines -- which he does- this is surely intentional? These were my points simply.

I do not, by the way, attribute my evaluation (ungainly, crude rhymes etc) to Hardy -- and neither do you attribute your evaluation ("unpoetical") to Hardy. Perhaps this is the source of your misunderstanding -- perhaps this is where the confusion lies?

I hope the above helps to clarify the original points I made. And I apologise for getting you so het about these ideas. They were ideas simply and open to inquiry.

To end on a technical point. My First Edition does not have the line:

"Shall yet more assays and more be tried".

Instead it has,

"Shall more experiments and more be tried"

I wonder if this was one of the revisions Keith spoke of?

With every good wish,

Rosemarie

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From: michael@perceptivecreation.co.uk

Subject: Re: Hardy and Trafalgar/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 15, 2005 3:10:58 AM PDT

"Hardy's use of

prose, you'll notice, is reserved for commoners and rustics. In this he

follows the classics, Shakespeare in particular. "Poeticals" are reserved

for the principals and for nobility. The House of Commons speeches do not

qualify for fine verse -- only blank verse-- and the rustics do not qualify

for fine verse --only prose"

Not always by any means, Rosemarie. In "As You Like It" it's the (idealised)

rustics, Silvius and Phoebe, who have the most glorious verse, with Rosalind

and Orlando mostly wooing in prose. Rosalind admittedly gets infected by

versifying when she's with Silvius and Phoebe. Of course Shakespeare and

Hardy were far from being alone in flying against the status quo and

promoting positive discrimination towards the lower orders. Dangerous

people, writers!

Many thanks, Betty and Keith, for the Dynasts script tip-offs. I'll try the library

system for

them and Keith's book.

Michael Barry

==========

From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu

Subject: Lit. Conventions/THE DYNASTS

Date: October 15, 2005 6:25:25 AM PD

Certainly by no means "always" -- Conventions are conventions, simply.

I look forward to something from you on the Dynasts, Michael.

Cheers,

Rosemarie

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