THOMAS HARDY
I Tis no mere transcript of life at a certain time and place that Hardy has given us. It is a vision of the world and of man’s lot as they revealed themselves to a powerful imagination, a profound and poetic genius, a gentle and humane soul,” Virginia Woolf wrote with admiration after visiting Thomas Hardy’s home in Dorchester.
Although Hardy is often characterised as a writer of pervasive fatalism, Woolf saw past this. For despite his pessimistic outlook, Hardy was certainly a writer of deep compassion and moral sympathy, particularly interested in championing those on the fringes of society. “If a way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.” These words from In Tenebris II (Latin for “in darkness”) encapsulate his beliefs, for whilst exploring life’s dark underbelly, he clearly wanted to fashion a better way forward for mankind.
Born in Dorset in 1840, Hardy’s country childhood fostered a love of the natural world. As a young man he was apprenticed to a church architect, work he pursued until the success of his serialised novels, specifically that of Far From The Madding Crowd (1874) allowed him to write full-time. Hardy always considered himself primarily a poet, even though the majority of his poetry didn’t appear until 1898 when he ceased writing the novels that had made him famous. It is unknown if this occurred after savage criticism was unleashed upon Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure pertaining to their rejection of conventional Christianity, but the wave of condemnation engulfing him must have been painful.
He had long penned verse but he wrote prolifically from the 1890s, publishing eight volumes. The sudden death of his estranged wife Emma in 1912 inspired Hardy to write elegiac poems including After a Journey, The Voice and others published in Poems of 1912–13. This mournfully retraces happier days with Emma and is often considered some of his finest work.
Drummer Hodge, from Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), reflects the Second Boer War in colloquial language. It illustrates war’s futility, offering an elegy for a young British soldier brusquely buried abroad. Hardy’s war poetry shaped the next generation, including Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke, the latter’s “some corner of a foreign field” surely echoing Hardy’s “portion of that unknown plain.” Philip Larkin cited Hardy as his greatest influence, saying, “what I like primarily is his temperament and the way he sees life . . . his subjects are men, the passing of time, love and the fading of love”.
Hardy’s poems encompass many forms, but he’s particularly renowned for his lyric poetry. Claire Tomalin, his perceptive biographer, speaks of “the contradictions always present in Hardy, between the vulnerable, doom-struck man and the serene inhabitant of the natural world.” A beautifully lyrical poem like The Darkling Thrush brings this dichotomy into stark relief as the poet muses how this bird can sing with such instinctive buoyancy on a cold and desolate winter’s evening.
Hardy spoke of his verse as a “series of seemings”, eschewing any fixed viewpoint, but his poetry’s resonant compassion and native perception have ensured its longevity. When he died in his eighties, Hardy’s heart was buried – at his behest – near Emma in Stinsford, but his executors insisted his ashes be interred at Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. Today, his reputation remains as both pre-eminent novelist and major poet. It is a rich and fully merited legacy.