Brief Background

The poet that I chose to research was Thomas Hardy. Hardy was born in 1840 in England and raised in a relatively low-class Victorian setting. He was apprenticed to an architect when he was young and made architecture his course of study while Attending The King's College in London. While there he won several awards for architecture and pursued and early young architectural career. In 1874 he instead decided to leave London, which he harbored a disdain for, and pursue a literary career. He wrote several novels including: Far From the Madding Crowd, The Native, and The Woodlanders. Despite success with his novels and a gained celebrity status, Hardy then chose to pursue his "first love", poetry. His first poetic volume Wessex Poems contained poems from the previous 30 years was published in 1898. Afterwards, he publishes poems sporadically. In 1912, his first wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford passed away which was an extremely traumatic event for Hardy. One of his biographers, Claire Tomalin, notes that after Emma's death , Hardy became a "truly great" English poet and his poems achieved a new depth and sense of sorrow. Hardy eventually remarried and died in 1928 at the age of 88. He has achieved great post mortem fame and is now recognized as one of the most masterful English poets. He is a noted Naturalist and Romanticist, elements which are extremely prominent in his poetry and life.

Friday, January 6, 2012

The Convergence of the Twain

   
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she
  
   Steel chambers, late the pyres
     Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.


     Over the mirrors meant
     To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls--grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.


     Jewels in joy designed
     To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.


     Dim moon-eyed fishes near
     Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?". . .


     Well: while was fashioning
     This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything


     Prepared a sinister mate
     For her--so gaily great--
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.


     And as the smart ship grew
     In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.


     Alien they seemed to be:
     No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.


     Or sign that they were bent
     By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,


     Till the Spinner of the Years
     Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
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1 comment:

  1. Connor DrooffJanuary 6, 2012 at 1:19 PM

    This poem was published as a direct response to the Titanic incident, which occured during Hardy's later years. He offers a more naturalistic viewpoint towards the giant ship, using words like "consummation" and "sinister mate" to emphasize a reactionary viewpoint towards the giant, industrious ship. He uses aphorism at then end of stanza 6 with the line "The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything" as an observation of fate and its inescapability. I particularly would like to point out stanza 3 and its use of the sound of words to illustrate a point. He uses rhyming, euphamous words in the beginning to symbolize nature nad cacophany towards the end to emphasize the "grotesque" nature of the ship.

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