THE STRENGTH OF DESPAIR

Southland Times, Issue 23646, 22 October 1938, Page 14

THE STRENGTH OF DESPAIR

A New Study Of Thomas Hardy

(SPECIALLY WRITTEN .FOR THE SOUTHLAND TIMES)

By

R. G. C. McNAB.

In “The Dynasts,” the Years lament the discords of life permitted by Will, the “All-mover and the All-prover, and the Pities ask: Shall it never Curb or cure Aught whatever Those endure Whom It quickens, let them darkle to extinction swift and sure The general chorus responds But—a stirring thrills the air Like to sounds of joyance there That the rages Of the ages Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from .the darts that were, Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashions all things fair. Till that remote day there is no joyance in Hardy’s air, there are many darts than sting, things are not fashioned fair, and the nature of “It” is not known. “The Dynasts” crystallizes Hardy’s gloomy convictions, as. the world had found them ten to 15 years before in “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” (1891) and “Jude the, Obscure” (1896). There is some hope for man dimly expressed in “The Dynasts,” none in “Jude the Obscure,” a book the condemnation of which was sensationally wrong and a book which deserved to be condemned for other reasons. The derision and abuse showered upon Hardy now seem ridiculous. Compared with D. H. Lawrence, Hardy seems a dabbler in sexual pathology and, indeed, Hardy’s detractors sufficiently mocked and belittled themselves, from the Bishop who, disgusted with Hardy’s “insolence and indecency,” threw one of his novels into the fire, to the anonymous Australian who sent to Hardy an envelope full of ashes alleged to be the ashes of “Jude the Obscure.” “Tess” and “Jude” are powerful, even furious, novels, full of indignation and pity. “Tess” is one of the most famous English novels, often reprinted, often translated, often turned into a film or a play. “Tess” is not easy, pleasant reading, but it is so compared with “Jude,” but not for their difficulty or power, however stern, would anyone belittle these two novels. It may be regretted, by the way, that their notoriety obscured the earlier novels, which are not so blackly sombre and not so horrifying. The complaint is not that the innocent pay for the sins of the guilty, though Tess does that, and the children in “Jude.” It is not that the books are too markedly mere theses, in which Hardy’s puppets (he used the word of his own characters) writhe and twist in deep black or snowy white. It is not that the characters are overwhelmed by the threats and powers of the natural world, awe-inspiring aS Hardy makes that. It is that tragedy is not produced by conflict, by the clash or development or collapse of human character, but by hostile chance, a ruthless, ignorant, careless Fate, and this not once but as a rule, in these two novels and in “The Dynasts.” VICTORIAN DOUBT Hardy reached this hopeless, renunciatory view of life in early middle age; and he reached it only after a struggle to avoid it. He is said, to have lost all religious faith at 35. (“Under the Greenwood Tree,” “Far from the Madding Crowd,” and “A Pair -»f Blue Eyes” were written before that time.) We forget too soon, perhaps, the misery of doubt that held many great Victorians, their efforts to follow another path than that perceived by their sincerity of mind. And these men, and many others, cared with a passion of conviction that rarely appears in modern controversy. Indeed modern controversy, even in the political region, lacks the appearance of will-power, the necessary bitterness of strength that were employed by Mill, Huxley, Darwin, Newman, Manning, Ruskin, even by Swinburne and Whistler. But Hardy felt with the intensity of any. of his

contemporaries and his mind was equally well prepared. His “twilight view of life,” his nostalgic sombreness grew from his reading, from the natural life he knew, from his experience of religion, and from the ever-increasing activity of his mind as he applied it to the miseries and perplexities about him. He read much mpre poetry than prose; he read the Bible deeply and fully; he admired much Barnes and Crabbe; of Greek writers he studied Sophocles and Aeschylus most. (Hence the famous sentence at the end of “Tess.” “ ‘Justice’ was done and the President of the Immortals in the Aeschylean phrase, had finished his sport with Tess.”) Two Scriptural phrases, according to Hardy’s latest ♦commentator, present the poet’s feeling: “I have no pleasure in the years,” and “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Hardy was much impressed by the thoughts ana sincerity of Huxley, and was helped to his own sad, if comprehensible, position by this sentence -of Huxley : There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought andaction, and the resolute facing of the world as it is. when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have hidden its ugly features, is stripped off. A character in “Jude” quotes again: She or he, who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. BACK TO EARTH Trying thus to stand alone and be firm, Hardy’s characters achieved strength and resolution and, now and again, happiness; but very soon Destiny dislodged them and sorrow and misery brought their lives low. Hardy himself, as “The Dynasts” shows, attained a vague hopefulness that some day mankind would be, not the sport of a great whim, but the co-operating agency of a conscious will. His unhappiness had its good effect on the novelist and the poet. The work of the novelist is timeless, because he was, like a wretched, wounded animal, driven to go back to the earth, to the plainest, simplest living growing. things,, or the least elaborate works of man. Thus the hills and moors and fields and copses where his men and women walk seem the places they were centuries ago as well as the realities of today. He took no notice of modern life, inventions, pastimes, fashions; but old things, music, instruments, tools, words, customs, were his pleasure. The jingle of harness on a clear night, .the flicker of a lantern, the shuffle of a heavy boot, a worn gate-post, a tattered sheet of music, an old scythe-blade were made as memorable by this novelist as the elementary jealousy or greed of a Jude, a Henchard, or a Clym Yeobright. Hardy’s intense delight in such things appears sometimes in curious places. In “The Dynasts” the Chorus bf the Years announces the destruction to come in the battle of -Waterloo: Yea, the coneys are sacred by the thud of hoofs, And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels, And swallows abandon the hamlet roofs. The mole’s tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels, The lark’s eggs scattered, their owners fled; And the hedgehog’s household the sapper unseals. The snail draws in at the terrible tread But in vain; he is crushed by the felloerim; The worm asks what can be overhead, And wriggles deep from a scene so grim, And guesses him safe; for he does not know | 1 What a foul red flood will be soaking him! Beaten about by the heel and toe Are butterflies, sick of the day’s long rheum, To die of a worse than the weather foe. HARDY. A study of His Writings and their Background. By William R. Rutland, B.Litt, D.Phil. Basil Blackwell. 365 p.p. (21/- net).