hardy Flashcards
(36 cards)
At Castle Boterel meaning and points
‘I look behind’- contrast between lonely present & happy past. the transitory can be of such significance that it in some way matches permanence of primeval rocks (some moments cannot be extinguished by time) but conviction fades at the end as he realises he is old and also subject to time; quality of brief human experience set against mechanical operations of time
1) change between lonely ‘I’ to ‘we’ (I emphasise ‘time’, ‘life’, primeval?)
2) ‘dr’ and ‘s’: present is shit
3) 1st to 2nd: 43 year jump, but keeps it present tense. then shifts to past to make it more real (emphasised by caesura slowing pace like climb)
4) ‘It filled but a minute’ short to emphasise brevity but ?, superlative, thousands after shows significance
5) present tense when describing the rocks- still found there, not transitory
6) Never again stress emphatic ending
ish) ‘life’ runs on then stopped by dead (plosive) and feeling fled falls completely
at castle boterel context
orpheus: tried to recoverer dead wife from underworld, but looked behind and so lost her forever
The Oxen
yearning for childhood beliefs which the adult speaker can no longer hold. nostalgia for credulous childhood, though such beliefs are unfashionable now. urge to faith that persists in the face of all better judgement.
Ballad
1) Certainty at beginning STRUCTURE: ‘Christmas eve’ opens with a stressed, secure syllable, and the line is end stopped, present tense. hushed moment of exitement. no caesura 1 and 2. ‘ease’/’knees’. easy run on lines then disintegrate with stops and starts of doubt. rhythm changes from trochee and dactyl.
) certainty language: speech of ‘elder’ in monosyllables. ‘elder’ means church elder but also wise old man. ‘embers in heathside ease’, ‘meek mild’ ALLUSION TO 18TH C HYMN, ‘straw’ comfort. ‘flock’ and ‘we’: longing to be group.
) fading away of certainty: ‘would’, ‘should’, ‘hoping’. ‘f’ ‘f’ ‘f’ sliding away of certainty. ‘ember’ hope is dying/way of life. whereas before they could ‘picture’ them, now he has to go and ‘see’ as doubts.
) ‘in these years! Yet,’ memorys attempt to bridge gap. pause and highlight context of war years. pause shows longing. exclamation conveys knowledge its fantasy but Yet shows longing and he is led by ‘feel’ing. get out of ‘gloom’. conditional as defence.
) hope/desire to believe: carries poet from end of 3rd verse to beginning of 4th, invitation is definite (‘come’, ‘see’ present tense commands, and are iambic breaking the meter- only other exception is ‘hoping’)
before he was in a group ‘we’, ‘us’ now alone ‘I feel’, ‘I should’ tentative; dialect to try and reinforce community
used to know rhymes with hoping it might be so
The Oxen context
1915 WWI
hardy lost faith but remained ‘churchy’ (affiliation with Anglican church)
‘Nor did it occur’ is a criticism of passive acceptance of Victorian christian teaching which WWI and Darwinism prompts to challenge DESPITE lilting rhythm etc = respect for simplicity of faith
TILL 25 seriously considered career in Church
War swept away many illusions in those who remained faithful
distant relative of Hardy killed at Gallipoli that year
whereas Dewy in Tess uses pious feelings to play on bull and escape, here the children’s pious feelings are played on. playing on faith of bull is parallel to playing on credulity of children; sees parallel between children ‘in a flock’ and the ‘meek mild creatures’
initially wrote ‘believe’, then changed it to ‘weave’ TRADITIONAL COTTAGE INDU: country tales & homespun ways, introducing many different elements together
laments dissapearing ways of farming life; mechnisation taking over animals; no one will picture machines kneeling
The Oxen Critic
Claire Tomalin: ‘He could no longer believe, but he cherished the memory of belief’
Drummer Hodge
anonymity. becoming a forgotten unit but being part of collective identity within nature; humility. cannon fodder; cruelty/brutality of war. insignificance in relation to universe. indifference. unimportant figure in major war, but becomes vital part of something that will last far longer than any human conflict. existentialist paradox. vitality & creativity of nature.
will never be a hero among men, but is elevated to a divine level through southern landscape that harbors him as something precious. rep. of many.
1) ‘they’ ambiguous beginning (attitude; alliterative ‘th’‘th’); + ‘uncoffined’ (Hardy’s own word- rushed vocabulary), ‘throw’, ‘just as found’– NO ONE IS THERE IN LAST MOMENTS (FND is repeated- rush). pathos. anonymity important. drummer hodge is thrown in, not his body: we are reminded its happening to a PERSON. Hardy uses numerals & very structured: Hardy is paying own tribute with deference.
2) ‘strange’ + dialect. ‘never knew’ why fighting. lack of knowledge
3) sense of personal identity: ‘young’, ‘fresh’. Wastage, but whereas man wastes nature doesn’t– turns him into a tree; welcomed, important, integrated, a worthiness not there in life.
4) ‘His stars eternally’ mixes his and stars– this strange unexpected mix is now forever. capitalised ‘His’ + ends on ‘eternally’. the last stanza’s lines run on: a long, spacious feel.
5) first 2 boy, second 2 nature, last 2 heaven: mans insignificance in relation to universe. focus widens, getting bigger and bigger beyond mortal significance.
Drummer Hodge context
‘The Dead Drummer’; very little identity, just unit in war, but then restored a sense of identity as representative of Dorsetshire people he came from. derogitory term but sense of endearment BUT unknown to those in charge.
Local dorset boy died so moved to write
wrote: ‘in the country one knows everybody… for miles around’ in a letter to friend explaining that he wrote the poem.
debunk the mythology that surrounded war-glory (drummer)– heroic deeds in far-flung countries by Kipling (THE DRUMS IN THE FORE AND AFT) sold in great number. other poets write about sight and smell of the battle, Hardy writes of the aftermath.
Tess: ‘of no more consequence to the surroundings than that fly’
letter to friend: ‘deplore the fact that civilised nations have not learnt some more excellent… ways of settling disputes than the old barbarous one’ ‘the romance of contemporary wars has withered’
75,000 lives
‘the poem is anti-war’
‘utter failure of theology’
The Darkling Thrush
Hardy wonders whether bird knows of some reason for hope that he is ignorant of. comes at the nadir. lack of resolution. struggle for faith.
rhythm regular, slow, joyless, dull
3 run on lines take us at gull tilt to thrush’s ‘joy illimited’ & then again to ‘Hope’
interlocking rhyme scheme: tensions
chronological vs ‘At once’: inevitable passing of time vs immediacy
two perspectives in conflict: ‘Hope’ capitalised, but final downbeat line ‘unaware’ (stressed)- left w his doubt.
‘leant’ and ‘outleant’: disablement
‘weakening eye’ (if nullity is mirrored in consciousness of poet himself) a metaphor for darkening vision.
SETTING metaphor for dying century:
- ‘gray’ only colour rhymed with ‘day’; what might be cheery is ‘desolate’, ‘weakening’
- heavy sounds of ‘g’ and ‘d’ & alliterative ‘c’ and ‘s’ and ‘k’
- ‘tangled’: imagines them as capable of music, so that they’re instantly useless. ‘broken-lyre’: absence of faith & links to thrush song.
- Frost and Winter capitalised: most important
- ‘bine-stems’ remind us of summer; winter appears harsher through contrast’
- death metaphors: everything seen in terms of death- ‘every’
- ‘birth’ & ‘earth’ rhyme negated by ‘dry’, ‘I’
- absence of characters: in tension with world or defeated by it: ‘all… haunted’
BIRD:
- ‘blast-beruffled’ (1000) vs ‘full-hearted’. plosives. ‘aged’ ‘frail’ yet ‘flings’
DARKLING KEATSIAN WORD BOTH SOUNDS LIKE BIRDSONG AND PREPARES US FOR SMALLNESS BECAUSE OF LING
- chosen: defiant act of affirmation. loving-kindness that forges contact between itself and poet; sense of solidarity with all living things
- ‘illimited’ flowing double I joy spills out
- ‘At once a voice arose among… overhead’: H uses lyrical, rhythmic and repetitive words to introduce to song, like song. perfect iambics, each prefaced by ‘a’ (echoes)
- pulse that was ‘shrunken hard and dry’ ‘trembled through’
- loads of happy words
- heavenly: ‘Hope’ one of 3 Christian virtues, capitalised suggests Christ, ‘Evensong’ etc, ‘terrestrial’ connotes celestial
The Darkling Thrush context
first 2 last 2; architect.
not the nightingale of Miltonic & romantic tradition whose arrival brings rapture, but ordinary indigneous song-thrush.
‘Hope’ one of 3 christian virtues; Xmas just the week before….
Hardy like wordsworth is ready to learn from nature
BY THE CENTURYS DEATHBED
MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH THAT ARE DREAMPT OF
POETIC WORDS TO GIVE SENSE OF TRADITION: DARKLING ALLUDES TO PARADISE LOST, ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, SHELLEY WRITES ‘DIRGE OF THE DYING YEAR’
greater affinity for romantic poets than contemporaries but at philosphical odds with romantic idealism. consolations replaced with sadness & longing. nature more harsh & cruel. struggling to be romantic poet but impossible
before ‘Immanent will’ so more optimistic
Hardy rejected ‘divine plan’ around 1865; observer of empty chaotic universe. nostalgia for benign absolute.
dichotamy between pessimism & nostalgic desire for optimism
fascinated with endless vitality & creativity of nature
landscape major source of communication of theme
often uses birdsong as reminder of passing of time
1900: empire declining, more industrialised landscape
TDT critics
Rumens: ‘territorially possessive’
represent Hardy himself? abundant poetic inspiration at end of life.
The Haunter
POV of Emma; words in mouth; reassure himself she forgives/loves him. celebrates fidelity and benevolence; she is desperate to bring him comfort. hopelessness of wishes.
PROSOPOPOEIA & dramatic monologue
HER:
- INABILITY: ‘hover’ repeated, modal: ‘could’, ‘would’ (open up possibility but then cut down), ‘phantom’/deathly images (abstract ‘shade’, ‘wished’, ‘peace’: ephemerality of speaker), ‘doing’ repeated so determined, ‘Always lacking the power’, ‘cannot answer’. semantic field of movement undercut by ‘still’. pattern of verbs.
- DESPERATE AND LOVING: ‘faithful’, ‘companion’, ‘O tell him!’ (‘quickly’, ‘tell’, ‘make’). sf of devotion. questioning
- interrogative words suggest confusion and anxiety
HARDY:
- DEVASTATED: ‘the words he lifts me’, ‘sigh’, ‘befells’, romanticises past (‘old aisles’), ‘MAY be worth pursuing’
- guilt: ‘He’ and ‘I’ are separate pronouns, Hyperbaton ‘seldom’ and ‘never’ foregrounds his presentation as neglectful
SETTINGS:
- ‘I haunt here nightly’: here is specific (entrapment) + conflicting connotations of ‘night’
- ‘whither his fancy sets him wandering’: indistinct settings: universality of grief - trapped in it, can only wander in his imagination and goes where it takes him
- idealised sense of past: ‘dreamers’ (central to poem); romanticised but hopes cannot become reality
- ends on future setting: tentative sense that future peace is possible
The Haunter context
Nov 1984: emma letter - Hardy ‘understands only the women he invents- the others not at all’
burnt her manuscripts including ‘What I Think Of My Husband’
The Haunter critic
‘love triumphs over time, asserting Emmas absolute presence in the landscape of memory’
silent out of shame?
The Going
ELEGY/. dismay at sudden death. struggles to come to terms. remembers happier past.
coldness of their relationship: ‘term’, ‘calmly’, ‘indifferent’. she is in control in the poem, and Hardy is bitter and resentful (‘dankness’, ‘blankness’ rhyme and repetition)
1) ABSOLUTE THE DIFFERENCE MADE BY DEATH ‘great going’/’altered all’ (assonance and finality of stressed all) made to seem momentous. ‘I could not follow… ever anon’ (+ rhyme). ‘Never to… or… or’ structure insists
2) title: sense of leaving & abandonment. ‘go’ repeated. life as a journey: subject to time and change.
Avoids death: ‘close your term’ ‘up and be gone’ ‘vanishing’ ‘swift fleeing’
Time mentioned heavily in first 3 verses– time changes all: life to death, love to indifference.
Suddenness of departure
- opening line runs to the next in first verse showing speed (+ follow swallow when he wants to follow her)
- ‘quickly’, ‘such swift fleeing
- IRREGULAR SYLLABLE COUNT
3) first 4 ‘you’, then 5 ‘we’, then last is Hardy alone
regret: ‘did we not’ repeated]
full of verbs they didnt do: ‘speak’, ‘think’, ‘strive to seek’, ‘might have said’
4) romanticised: she is landscape - ‘red-veined rocks’ vitality and beauty, different tone. ‘You were’
5) pessimistic ending: heavy caesura brings pace to standstill; half finished sentences, faltering rhythm– unable to find the words.
6) ‘Why’ beginning stanzas
7) ‘for a breath it is you I see’: present tense convey immediacy, then short 5th + 6th lines + short stressed ‘me!’ at the end make it irreversible.
The going critics
hourglasss? convergence of the Twain
controlled form of poem like metrical ‘box’ as only way he can express such intense emotions without losing control and breaking down
irritation/squabbling/anger/accusation
F B Pinion: ‘regret and romantic memories mingled’
Alan Pound: as this poem begins the series, it follows conventional pattern that parallels the normal processes of grieving: shock, despair, resignation. SHOCK. Common in Elegaic tradition to refuse to believe she has died
ideal image of Emma
The going context
27/11/1912: Hardy hadnt realised how ill she was and was shocked at her death
they’d been estranged for a while but continued to live together at Max Gate
first in the poems her death promoted
Afterwards
his death. imagines how he will be remembered.
DEATH IS OKAY: INEVITABLE AND PART OF CYCLE
1) death = still, inactive verbs (‘if it be’, ‘if i pass’, ‘been stilled’) vs nature = ‘flaps’, ‘comes crossing’)
2) an ELEGY, but impression of happiness of spring: ‘May’ is the month of his death but the coming of summer
3) ‘When’ in every stanza
4) euphemism: ‘stilled at last’, ‘pass’
5) cycle of seasons of poem reflects cycle of mans life AND cycle of day too: ever renewing cycle contrasts brief ‘stay’ of man’s life on earth.
6) death is quiet: ‘eyelid’s soundless blink’
7) ballad: slow, gentle rhythms = quiet acceptance & certainty he will live on in memories
8) quietly accepts time: future tense conditional ‘if’, ‘may’, ‘will’– not threatening, inevitable
9) ‘quittance’: discharged from debt
0) first line monosyllables joyous
0000) GLOOM rhymed with BOOM
MAN IS SMALL IN NATURE
1) ‘full-starred heavens that winter sees’: man is small; frequent theme in novels
2) ‘he could do little for them’ life fragile and man powerless
WILL BE REMEMBERED BUT ONLY A FRAGMENT
1) poetry & beauty of nature vs prosaic, everyday response of everyone else, factual announcement; stark contrast w Hardy’s awareness of natural world & joy at it. hardly begins to convey what he experienced.
2) each stanza is epitaph: remembered as countryman. imagined direct speech. lives on in other’s memory.
3) shift from 1st to 3rd person. minute detail reduced to outsider’s comment.
NATURE IS GREAT
1) poem has varying tenses, but natural detail is always in present tense. nature lives now.
2) Each word has link to next:
- ‘may month’ alliterated
- ‘flap’ ‘glad’
- ‘glad’ ‘green’
- ‘green’ ‘leave’
- ‘filmed’ ‘silk’
3) third stanza is night, but benign: ‘mothy and warm’, there are people there, and the hedgehog is innocent.
Afterwards context
77: own elegy; read at memorial service for him
great supporter of RSPCA: wants to be someone steeped in knowledge of countryside
‘mysteries’ book of common prayer refers to Corinthians passage BUT here natural world, rejects spiritual significance of mysteries and instead man of county awed by mysteries of natural world
Afterwards critics
Hardy wants to be remembered here as a ‘lover of nature’ (ALLINGHAM)
focus on nature rather than spiritual
Lizbie Brown context
‘lost’: a lost woman? 19th C lost woman fallen woman
women had a profound influence on him; a number of infatuations as a boy
red-haired gamekeepers daughter elizabeth: ‘scorned him as too young’
he was 16: first object of his affections was older girl he lost
UBI SUNT: medeival European poems (‘where are they?’): posing a series of questions about fate of strong, beautiful, virtuous to meditate on the transitory nature of youth, life, beauty & inevitability of death– any poetry that treats these themes.
BALLAD. ELEGY. Form intensifies his idea that love can end in suffering. LYRIC so close to heart.
LIZBIE critic
first person so narrative, story of impact of unrequited love on speaker. never hear her voice. speaking to himself although he longs to hear from her.
‘It seems that Hardy truly loves women for their beauty and their mystery, but at the same time detests the power they have over him’
the voice meaning
love then v love now; hope and despair
inevitability of decay, loss, the passing of time, regret, memory, death and love
Batter my heart
apostrophe. begs for God’s grace so that he can be delivered salvation (protestant), ‘mend’ him from overwhelming sinfulness: needs God to act as a ‘magnet’ and give him spiritual breakthrough. like love poetry: desire for intensity and complete experience.
1) TROCHAIC first word
2) Petrarchan, Elizabethan but also triplet at end. changing mood throughout
3) URGENCY present tense, direct address, enjambment. MONOSYLLABIC
4) list with plosives and active verbs, STRIDENT COMMANDS imperatives: both kind, onomatopoeia & plosive
5) feminine: weak, untrue, devoid of reason, betrothed, VACILLATING, MODAL AUXILLERY wishes he was stronger etc. ‘Labour, O is hyper metric
6) paradox
7) BATTERing ram: conceit of city under siege
Batter my heart massolit context
priest: ‘duty’ to take us on a ‘spiritual journey’ to ‘new religious knowledge’
GRACE central to Protestant belief: not up to individual to save themselves, only God’s grace: appealing to God for it here, aware of how weighed down he is by sin.
‘Agonised guilt and fear’
‘very little confidence… that God will come through’
APOSTATE: die, fine, fundamental crisis
‘sheer power and violence needed’ to help salvation. magnet.
‘palpable’ ‘urgency of the now’
‘demanding a response’
