Introduction:
Thomas Hardy kept alive the spirit of questioning about sense and outward things and gave a jolt to the feelings of self-complacency and cheap optimism of the Victorian. His poetry is the final expression of the disillusionment which had been at work ever since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hardy liked to be known as a poet rather than a novelist “To be a poet, to give his life to poetry that had always been his desire, and if he had been quite free to choose it is likely that he would have written no novels at all." The fact is that the soul of Hardy was animated by poetic feelings and even in his prose works the poetic feeling gushes out with an emotional force. He was a Victorian poet, but he disagreed with the current conventions of his age. He was a natural poet. Hence, much of his poetry is in prose. He had the poet's largeness and intensity of vision - a threefold faculty displayed throughout in his novels. But his poems are generally marked with harshness and angularity.
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| Discuss Thomas Hardy As A Poet |
His Poetic Output:
The fame of Hardy as a poet rests on Wessex Poems (written between 1865 and 1901), Poems of the Past and Present (1901), The Dynasts (Part I 1903, II 1906, III 1908), Time's Laughing Stock (1901), Satires of Circumstance (1914), Moment of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917), Later Lyrics and Earlier (1922 ), Human Shows (1935), Winter Words (1928), Collected Poems (1932).
Various Themes and Forms:
The range of subjects in his poems is fairly wide. Love as a theme predominates in his poetry. The other principal subjects of treatment in his poems are nature , the relationship between nature and man , the importance of the past , the significance of the present , the value of past memories and reminiscences , the impossibility of continuing to hold past to the traditional religious beliefs , the ironies of life , the tragic aspects of human life ; the cruelty of fate , social injustice , and the barbarism of war . In fact is that Hardy made any and everything a subject of poetry. His range is undoubtedly remarkable. In addition to the large variety of themes in Hardy's poetry, we also find a variety in the forms which his poetry takes. He practised a variety of poetic genres - lyrics, ballads, narrative poems, dramatic monologues, elegies and elegiac poems, deeply personal and autobiographical poems. He employed a wide range of metrical and stanzoic forms. Throughout he had been successful in maintaining a remarkable uniformity to tone and a wholly individual use of language. He had also been successful in forging an idiom of his own.
Melancholic Element, A Characteristic Feature:
Melancholy is the prevailing atmosphere of most of his poems. He was pessimistic in his novels, though not cynical and he is pessimistic in his poems, though not cynical here also. The grief, which finds expression in his poems, is intense. A sense of the transitoriness of human happiness is one of the most persistent themes in his poetry. It is the death of human happiness that he writes most about. It is generally not his personal sorrows that Hardy speaks about in his poems. He was temperamentally incapable of seeing only justification for optimism. His poems reveal the miseries and sufferings of human life. At the top of his elegiac poems, stand the following three: In Tenebris I, In Tenebris II and In Tenebris III. These three poems are truly enveloped in darkness. The poet's outlook here is most gloomy. There is a poem entitled Afterwards in which hardy again speaks of death which would overtake him. Tess' Lament is an almost heart rending poem. Drummer Hodge and In Time of the Breaking of Nations are both war poems and therefore inevitable bad. Drummer Hodge is an elegy in the proper sense of that word. To An Unborn Pauper Child is another poem of sadness. There is a feeling of melancholy in the poem addressed to Lizbie Browne; and there is deep sadness in A Broken Appointment. Then there are the Poems of 1912-13 in which Hardy addresses his dead wife Emma.
His Belief in Destiny and Chance: He presents the cruel working of destiny in human life spoiling the chances of man's happiness. Destiny strains joy and brain with a nerveless and purposeless hand:
“These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.”
In one form or another this power of destiny is presented in Hardy's poetry. His voice is raised against God, Whom he calls blackguard. He protests against the Immanent Will, wearing the cruel web of life. There is a famous poem entitled Hap in which Hardy says that human suffering is not due to the malicious designs of a 'vengeful god' but due to sheer chance.
In the poem entitled Nature's Questioning, Hardy expresses the view that the objects of Nature and all living beings have been created by a power which may be described as 'Vast Imbecility'. In the poem, The Convergence of the Twain, Hardy speaks of the Immanent Will which is always at work, stirring and urging everything.
A Poet of Love:
Love is one of the major themes in Hardy's poetry. Love predominates in his poetry as a theme. He is one of the most outstanding poets of love, and has written a very large number of love poems. Some of his love - poems are deeply personal, while other are impersonal or dramatic. Neutral Tones is an early poem which seems to relate to Hardy's love affair with Tryphena. This poem is a most effective expression of the bitterness which lovers experience at the failure of their love - affair. There is a poem with the title Lost Love in which the speaker is woman who is feeling frustrated in her love. Tess’ Lament is one of the most poignant poems about frustrated love. It is a heart rending poem. One of Hardy's most famous poems is A Broken Appointment. It has been conjectured that this poem relates to Hardy's unreciprocated love for Mrs. Henniker who was herself an author of some distinction. To Lizbie Browne is another love - poem which had a personal basis. A Church Romance relates to the start of a love affair between the man and the woman who subsequently became Hardy's parents. But the twenty - one poems which Hardy wrote about his love for Emma of the days of their courtship and also of the early years of their married life , have been regarded as the finest among his love - poems .
A Poet of Nature:
Hardy was a great lover of Nature. Nature occupies a dominant place in his poems. His poems abound in nature - pictures. His nature - imagery is always vivid and realistic. He gives us minute pictures of the scenery of land, the sea, and the sky, though his pictures are always brief and not elaborate or lengthy like those of the romantic poets. The poem entitled Neutral Tones begins with a brief picture of nature. The lovers stood by a pond on a day in winter when the sum was white as if chidden by God. A few leaves lay on the starving sod. These leaves had fallen from an ash - tree, and were gray in colour:
“We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the Sun was white, as through chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.”
In a war - poem entitled Drummer Hodge, we again have brief nature pictures as a background for the poet's grief over the death of an English soldier on foreign soil. In The Darkling Thrush, we are first given a most graphic description of a wintry then an account of a thrush's joyous singing which was totally unexpected in the midst of that desolation. Some excellent nature - pictures occur in The Convergence of the Twain. The poem entitled In Tenebris I offers similar brief pictures of natural phenomena. The poem Afterwards is also remarkable as showing Hardy's keen and wide ranging interest in nature and its activities.
Monotony and Dullness:
There is a note of monotony and dullness in Hardy's poetry. His colours are invariably grays. He tells of tragic irony, of frustrated love, of passion followed by disillusion, misery by deceit, of a teasing who provokes tragedy, of lost faith. All these lead to a feeling of monotony and unhappiness in the heart of the reader. Never at any time is Hardy's poetry intoxicating or magical. Occasionally it approaches profundity, or rises towards a guarded exaltation, but its characteristic is a satisfying flatness. It is satisfying because it presents the interesting spectacle of a mind continually probing and exploring; while its flatness is produced by the presence of the spirit of negation.
His Lyrical Genius:
Hardy is one of the greatest lyric writers in English. Most often the subject of his lyrics is love. But he has written a large number of lyrics on other subjects as well. He has written lyrics on the subject of Nature and the relationship of Nature with man. He has written lyrics on the subject of war on the subject of bereavement or death. He has also written what may be called philosophical lyrics. He has written lyrical ballads. Most often the feelings in his lyrics are one of grief or sorrow or regret. Indeed he is a master of what may be labeled as the elegiac lyric. There is very little joy or delight in his lyrics. The predominant feeling is one of melancholy or despondency or regret. Some of his most successful lyrics are: To My Father's Violin, Copying Architecture in an Old Minster, An East - End Curate, The Monument Maker, and A Hurried Meeting.
His Dramatic Monologues and Narrative Poems:
As a writer of dramatic monologues, Hardy reminds us of Browning. However, while Browning speaks of both the joys and sorrows of human life, ignoring completely the bright side. Besides, Hardy does not show that psychological insight or depth or subtlety which Browning displays in his dramatic monologues. Some of the noteworthy dramatic poems written by his are: A Popular Personage at Home, Christmas in the Elgin Room, A Practical Woman, Bags of Meat. Next Hardy is capable of telling interesting stories and anecdotes in his poems. Like Wordsworth, he tells simple stories of rural life. Some of his noteworthy poems of this kind are The Bunglers, My Cicely, and A Tramp - woman's Tragedy.
Element of Universality in His Poetry:
Hardy's poetry has the quality of universality. Although he did write occasional poems such as The Convergence of the Twain and Drummer Hodge, yet the bulk of his poetry has an everlasting appeal. The philosophical poems have an everlasting appeal becomes the riddle of human suffering can never be solved and because any speculations with regard to it will continue to evoke an emotional response from the readers. The nature poems of Hardy would continue to have an appeal because nature can never grow stale. The love poetry , which forms the bulk of Hardy's poetic output , will of course continue to appeal to readers in all times to come because love is one of the most fundamental emotions of mankind .
Diction and Versification:
Hardy's poetry abounds in felicities of words and phrase. His compound words and his coinages are also often very original and very striking. In The Darkling Thrush we have such compound words as ‘spectre – gray’, ‘winters dregs’ and ‘blast - be ruffled’. Hardy showed a mastery of all the technical devices which contribute to the music of poetry. He employs a large variety of rhythms in his poetry. The Darkling Thrush illustrates the appeal of Hardy's rhythm and its tunefulness. The same appeal is to be found in the poem Afterwards. Hardy also makes frequent use of rhyme. The triple rhymes of The Voice are especially effective. Hardy also makes use of repetition to produce musical effects. This is best seen in Tess’ Lament. Another notable feature of Hardy's poetical work is alliteration. There are numerous alliterative phrases scattered throughout Hardy's poetical work. Another notable feature of his craftsmanship is the use of a variety of stanza - forms. Another technical merit of his poems is their compact structure.
