Aspects of Narrative: Hardy Monday, 03 December 2018 jonathan peel SGS 2010

Aspects of Narrative: A focus on how writers write rather than simply on what they write. Focus is maintained on: Narrative voice Time and place Narrative form – linear/circular, poetry/prose Use of distinctive lexis to create effect. SLAP – setting (time and place), language, Action, People… jonathan peel SGS 2010

The Poet Born into relative poverty Ambitious mother Trained as an architect in London –hated it. Returned to Dorset and set out to make his life in the county. Depressive Prolific writer Commentator on human affairs Superb technician. jonathan peel SGS 2010

Key ideas from life into literature Poverty of a rural working class Development of industrial revolution damaging fabric of society Love – Hardy is forever falling in love. Ambition and rejection Loneliness and depression A disastrous marriage A voyeur’s eye for detail in events around him A personal philosophy jonathan peel SGS 2010

Emma Lavinia Hardy (nee Gifford) Married Hardy in 1874. Died in 1912. Unexpected Unloved? Poetry suggests not. Veteris Vestigia Flammae Hated Hardy’s later novels – tried to prevent Jude being published – claimed co- authorship of early works! Source of great work. A muse? jonathan peel SGS 2010

Neutral Tones We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles of years ago; And some words played between us to and fro On which lost the more by our love. The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have strength to die; And a grin of bitterness swept thereby Like an ominous bird a-wing…. Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged with grayish leaves. A: nothing apart from a silent pair by a pond. Stillness focuses on the small things… eyes… smiles… S: look for key words. When, where – time of day, location. Focus on the lack of colour and the idea of the pond? P: Hardy and? Too early for Emma. Poem is a flashback until final stanza. L: effect of “and” when creating a sense of informal narrative. Metaphor in third stanza. jonathan peel SGS 2010

As narrative? Consider the typicality of Hardy’s narrative. A great novelist, he creates miniatures to great effect. Traits include: A shift of time for the final stanza, close description of the mundane, references to Classical originals (not really intertextuality), archaisms to suggest that the speaker is in touch with a distant past, punctuation to create a genuine sense of informal narrative, pathetic fallacy. jonathan peel SGS 2010

Darkling Thrush S: coppice gate, bine-stems simile, weather conditions, metaphors of “century’s corpse, spectre-grey”, poet and landscape merge. L: power of “ fling”, contrast with triplet description of previous lines, archaisms – why is carollings effective? Capitalised Hope – another typical Hardy touch – almost a deity. A: fervourless and drained. Effect of verbs describing the bird and its song. Hope emerges in poets mind, despite the desperate conditions. I leant upon a coppice gate In a full-hearted evensong       When Frost was spectre-grey,       Of joy illimited; And Winter's dregs made desolate An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,       The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky       In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul       Like strings of broken lyres,       Upon the growing gloom. And all mankind that haunted nigh So little cause for carolings       Had sought their household fires.       Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things The land's sharp features seemed to be       Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through       The Century's corpse outleant,       His happy good-night air His crypt the cloudy canopy, Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew       The wind his death-lament.       And I was unaware. The ancient pulse of germ and birth       Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth       Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among       The bleak twigs overhead jonathan peel SGS 2010

The Going Why did you give no hint that night You were she who abode That quickly after the morrow's dawn, By those red-veined rocks far West, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You were the swan-necked one who rode You would close your term here, up and be gone Along the beetling Beeny Crest, Where I could not follow And, reining nigh me, With wing of swallow Would muse and eye me, To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! While Life unrolled us its very best.   Never to bid good-bye, Why, then, latterly did we not speak, Or lip me the softest call, Did we not think of those days long dead, Or utter a wish for a word, while I And ere your vanishing strive to seek Saw morning harden upon the wall, That time's renewal?  We might have said, Unmoved, unknowing "In this bright spring weather That your great going We'll visit together Had place that moment, and altered all. Those places that once we visited." Why do you make me leave the house Well, well!  All's past amend, And think for a breath it is you I see Unchangeable.  It must go. At the end of the alley of bending boughs I seem but a dead man held on end Where so often at dusk you used to be; To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know Till in darkening dankness That such swift fleeing The yawning blankness No soul foreseeing— Of the perspective sickens me! Not even I—would undo me so! jonathan peel SGS 2010

At Castle Boterel As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,  And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,  I look behind at the fading byway,  And see on its slope, now glistening wet,  Distinctly yet Myself and a girlish form benighted In dry March weather. We climb the road Beside a chaise. We had just alighted To ease the sturdy pony's load When he sighed and slowed. What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of Matters not much, nor to what it led, - Something that life will not be balked of Without rude reason till hope is dead,  And feeling fled. It filled but a minute. But was there ever A time of such quality, since or before,  In that hill's story? To one mind never,  Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,  By thousands more. Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border,  And much have they faced there, first and last,  Of the transitory in Earth's long order;  But what they record in colour and cast Is - that we two passed. And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour,  In mindless rote, has ruled from sight The substance now, one phantom figure Remains on the slope, as when that night Saw us alight. I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,  I look back at it amid the rain For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,  And I shall traverse old love's domain Never again. jonathan peel SGS 2010