THOMAS HARPY

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12199, 25 July 1925, Page 12

THOMAS HARPY

FORMS ffWDRN AWAY THIRTY YEARS

By

J. C. SQUIRE

It js now bPPHnpnJy surmised that the greaifii of liyjng English novelists may r» even mere- valued by posterity re a port than as a novelistBut the miracle of the novelist’s transformation into « poet ft generally exaggerated. There has oertatoly been 1 mftMe lenpuipi about Mr Hardy;* nareef a* a' wet, -Rawy.- half -of his nperns have- begn'wi'itten ptoce be was > ; topre written wjtoto toab later pertod are, 0? .a whole, ;EW)re beautiJnli' .dexterous and moving, than the ■toftief even now, at eigbty-foiir, -fie,'ft writing lyrics equal to the best toot he or any of hi* contemporaries - kave done : and those who are aware of :: pis perennial freshness, sensibility or .eoriosfty woul d uat he surprised were be ■ to anreass hinjseif at the age of ninety. Nobody ip toe records of English literature has dens such a body or jibe work at so late an age- But though Herds’* nos try is nof toe work of en elderly retired novelist, it represent* toe late blossom of one who wse always a poop, and always to some extent a twaotiring poet. And toe earliest of Ms esteni works ar© poems. . THE FIRST RHASE 5 George Meredith. to whose novel* m ta tPpso of Mr Hardy, the post, is rsflpeswble for thb finest things, is reputed J» haye said tost he would bays preferred to he a poet 41 lift life, but that economically to# poet’s, as a whole-time urotosMon, was net practfcaple, Whether -Mr Hardy, during his (one and illustrious career ss » novelist, was fretting at tb© Jimitetioss of prose ft matter for eoniestore. But by Ms pw» sopfessftn his first years as a writer were went is the practice of , veto#, and it was hr a deliberate ast shat fie .“switched over’’ to prose ficMob, For some years from 1852 onwayds Mr Hardy was in London working to the. architectural schools and to an arctoteet’s office, ■during those years he must' have written epough poetry to fill » respect. 4>!® volume; and ho demonstrably wrote enough good poetry to have atteanted nttestjon had he chosen to publish, But with singular restraint and nteifstv he allowed .thirty years—the wnete'Hto of -a Shelley from erode to grave—-to elapse before he published !MS first volume of verse; “Wessex Reams ” in lfiW- And when he did pub-, wto. be revived one by one there eariy eomnositmns wbieb for so long bad reposed in his dreh, 1 ' Scattered ; over ’ his . "Collected Foams,” for ha bos revised them after varying intervals, are some thirty , -pawns which date from the ’sixties, <j toftstinf them ftemstSfifi and IBS7, when to was living in 'Westbourne Park yillaa, No critic Would compare them for emotional force or rhythmic originsHty ivito bis l»ter work, but their date mfikre them very, interesting. For Mr Hardy as n poet must be credited to the Victorian see: tho Hardy of the wxties w#s toe same man as toe Hardy of to-days ,the early poems contain the germ# of sjl the characteristic* of his thought and stele. In form b# nsd not yet found himself. He worked largely to sonnets: toe long Joow metres, toe experimental ftapzas of the typical Hardy were to noose later. The complete Ttomae Hard v i», 6™t seen to such poem* ae “Her Jfittv” of 1870: to the' earliest poem, Amatol,” there i» even a touch of the early Tennyson. Smooth, however, Mr Hardy was. In these early poems one finds slrpady conspicnous his tendency to use collognialisms and technical and cumberaome term*, and hi* ability (bccanse of his atoceritv) to use the unlikeliest words without unduly arresting the attention or'even interfering with’ his strong natural music. His thought was already what it was always to be. lie sighs that “Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill." NOTE OF GLOOM ' , He writes a sonnet with the title “At a Bridal” and the sub-title “Nature’s Indifference”: and in this supposing himself wedded to an ideal woman and ideal children resulting from the union, he concludes that Nature doe* not care— Iftb® race all such sovereign type*

That “unknows” is very charaeteris-

tie; in anyone else we should resent it a$ clumsy, He describes a lover waking and doubting bft beloved : Q vision appalling When the one belieyed-in tbillg Is seen falling, falling, With all to which hope can ding, tiff; it is not .true; For it cannot’ be That toe prize I drew Isa blank to me! His one hope about the “future ft“Tb»t thy worm may to my. worm, Jove”; in bft dialogue totween an Heiress and an Architect fwto/is building a bowse for her) lie emphasises the fact that a staircase should always be wide enough to permit people “to hale a coffined corpse downstairs.” His was never toe morbidity of the decadent, nor the cultivated gloom of the sombre poseur. Indeed, he. always believed ip making toe most of life... ■ A doit ft be who memorises 1 . Lessens that leave no time for prises. But his’•abiding outlook is -clearly indies ted in such of bis titles .as “Tim#’# Laughing-Stocks, to “JLille’s

Little Ironies/’ and “Satire* of Circumstance.” He sees no governors of our universe except Fate ,and p»atb: Fate which wantonly play* with its puppets, Peatb which rattles them once and tor all hack into the boxThose very, ’.'Satires’’ in whiehjiater he summarised, perhape wit)i;ten,., /.much pessimism and certainly ’ with an .ah most comic compactness, the tragedies of daily life are anticipated in a poem of 18Sfi, in which a girl sadly and pitifully lire shout her feeling* to a .man because ah« knows: he ft dying, and they are standing -

In n annies* church, Whose mildewed walls, uneven paring' W tones : wasted, carvings passed antiffp* *“■ r9Mftirob'■ ■ ■■ ; r And nothing broke toe clock's dull montene*. .■. Tfce species wa* new to poetry except for ope or two poem*.of Browning’s.'

“TORE HARDY.” , There ft especially one-by Browning about two women and a man sheltering from a storm- In terror of the lightning one woman tells the man that an* would have married him had he seised her, and the other that she did marry him without loving him. When ■ till storm pastes each pretends that she has been raving. This is pure Hardy, even m its phraseology. Hardy’s poems, as a : whole, though, might be regarded ae a kind of pessimistic complement <f Browning’s, written by a man with a similar interest in the varied show of life, similar neostiyenes* and humour, and similar passion for technical and linguistic experiment. Each of them, perhaps, may to regarded—ln Browning’s own image—to a “broken arc.” Happily the nature of their philosophy is not the roost important thing about either of them as a poet : and toe best of the poems in Mr Ha-dy’s “Selected I’ocms (Macmillan) nr* as certain of survival, ns the best of Browning’s.