Hardy

Hardys Poetry is Relentlessly Pessimistic and Haunted by Ghosts of the Past
Pessimism is defined as having a negative, cynical view on ones life and surroundings and is demonstrated frequently in Thomas Hardys poetry. He shows a fixation with the past in his work and expresses regrets about several failed romances in his life, most notably with his first wife, Emma and these become a recurring theme in his poetry. He romanticises the past, both on a personal level and when considering wider society. I partly agree with the statement because he seems to view life as a ceaseless struggle. For example in A Wish For Unconsciousness he describes life as being a cross [burden] to bear and muses If I could but abide, as a tablet on a wall, which proves he has a pessimistic view of life because he occasionally expresses a wish for it to end. This is made more melancholy by the fact Hardy did not believe in God so struggled to believe in heaven. In Hap, he discusses with himself the cause of the suffering in the world and concludes that crass casualty obstructs the sun and rain, that it is fate, not God, that controls our lives. He demonstrates a slightly depressing view of the dead in his poem Friends Beyond when he claims they have no wish to hear the tidings, how the peoples fortunes shift. In his short composition Christmas 1924, he expresses a cynical view of the uselessness of religion after two thousand years of mass, weve got as far as poison-gas. Hardys poetry often comments on human nature and society. He idealises his idea of the traditional rural lifestyle in the region of England he calls Wessex, which was his home, and rejects urbanisation and modernisation. In The Darkling Thrush, the bird sings for some blessed hope, whereof he knew at the coming of the new century but Hardy was unaware. In the poem, the thrush represents society and the voice represents Hardy as being separate from them. In Convergence of the Twain, he describes the ambitions of the builders of the Titanic as foolish and Vaingloriousness and the regular rhyme scheme conveys a sense that it was inevitable that nature would triumph over man.
In both his storytelling poetry and his novels, Hardy presents his readers with a series of tragic events which his characters are powerless to stop. In fact, it seems that their attempts to rectify a bad situation make it worse. For example in A Sunday Morning Tragedy a mothers discovery of her daughters illegitimate pregnancy causes her to seek out a herb to abort it. The herb poisons her daughter and she dies the following day at the very moment when her lover has announced plans to marry her. The refrain of alas for me creates a sense of dread and malevolent fates hand in the tragedy. Hardy shows that he is haunted by ghosts of the past in his elegies to his wife, Emma. He frequently returns to places that they loved and is able to summon an almost tangible image of the past, such as in The Voice where he imagines he hears her voice. The dactyl Call to me, call to me conveys a sense of a ghostly echo. In At Castle Boterel he distinctly sees myself and a girlish form climbing the hill. However, this does not always have negativity attached to it because he creates beautiful imagery when describing Emma in her native Cornwall joy in its throbs, with the heart of a child. While Hardy did not believe in God and found it hard to believe in heaven, he found meaning in memory and heredity, the eternal thing in man/that heeds no call to die, despite leaving no children. In Afterwards, Hardy imagines what people will think of him after he is gone He was a man who used to notice such things and has hopes of leaving behind a positive legacy. In During Wind and Rain the last line, Down their carved names the rain drop ploughs may at first glance seem to indicate that all good things end in death but the use of the word plough may suggest renewal of the familys memory. He attaches significance to places and the memories connected with them. For example, in The Roman Road he associates an ancient road with both historical events and a mothers form... guiding my infant steps. In Drummer Hodge, a poem about the Boar War, Hardy expresses a Rupert Brooke-esque view of the death of the Wessex soldier he describes Yet portion of that unknown plain, will Hodge for ever be, commenting that the soldier will live on in the soil of Africa. He shows cynical humour in poems like Channel Firing where he uses the amusing image of a group of skeletons having an alarming awakening to criticise war in a satirical way.
One of the recurring themes in Hardys poetry is Nature and its beauty. In Childhood Among the Ferns he richly describes the vibrant ferns that he loved to play in as a child tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly and says that theysheltered me. This is in contrast to the destructive power of nature described in Convergence of the Twain. Possibly the best example of Hardys work to disprove the statement made by the critic is Snow in the Suburbs. Throughout the poem, Hardy uses present tense and a regular, jovial rhyme scheme to create an upbeat poem Every branch big with it, bent every twig with it. He creates light humour when describing a sparrow startled by a snow-lump thrice his own slight size falling on his head. Hardys poetry demonstrates both pessimism and optimism and he brings back the past as a source of comfort and happiness and is not always haunted by it.

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Hardys Poetry is Relentlessly Pessimistic and Haunted by Ghosts of the Past

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