Thomas Hardy - Search and Destroy

easily one of my favorite poems:

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

Wow. Of a piece with that one Rilke poem.

His self-taught rhythms are uniquely his.

oh yeah i love that. what’s the title?

"The Voice."

the dying fall in the last line...

It’s in the extremely handy Penguin Book of English Verse, edited by Paul/P.J. Keegan

transplanted from the monthly reading thread...

> I'd call The Woodlanders major.
> ― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 26 April 2024

the biography is making the same claim, grouping it with Tess and Jude, possibly because it is as dark. whereas i don't really think it's as much "general knowledge" as those two and Madding, say. but maybe the public consciousness thing is based on the films rather than the books. has there been a Woodlanders film? (or Jude for that matter?)

i might need a reread.

imdb:

Jude in 96 with Ecclestone and Winslet (and David Tenant's first film).

Woodlanders in 97 with Rufus Sewell, Emily Woof. TV series in 1970 with Felicity Kendell "believed to be lost".

not sure i remember rather of these

rather / either

I want someone to read The Dynasts.

I've always meant to -- one day. As a poet he is as good as it gets, in my view.

The stuff I read is dead as blank verse -- except the parts dealing with the Phantom Intelligences. Hardy is so weird.

woodlanders is absolutely major, partly for the way his affection for setting, detail and mood eclipses the central drama; in a way which is unfeasible in the emotional tumult of tess. those opening pages simply describing an old carriage passing up the wintery woodland road are a marvel.

The Woodlanders certainly needs more attention. It has one of my favorite scenes in literature: Winterbourne hides in a tree while his lover calls his name.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, November 1, 2008 9

interesting factoid from the biography - TH went to Glastonbury Festival

"In 1924 the [Glastonbury] festival hosted the première of Boughton’s musical setting of Thomas Hardy’s play The Queen of Cornwall. The author was present and was said to be 'pleased'."

(quote from classic fm website)

Who was headlining on the main stage I wonder.

High school English classes killed Hardy for me. One, I have no idea why anyone would think Hardy novels are suitable for 16-year-olds. But also I had to suffer through multiple rereads of Mayor of Casterbridge (once for GCSE, and then I had to do it all over again for A-Level when I changed school). That was punishing! I'm sure I'm missing something but he still feels like Yom-Kippur-service levels-of-boring to me.

idk Tess blew my 17-year-old mind. Try the poems.

Yeah, I was thinking about the poems. I already know the endings the famous ones so I'm tempted to give Woodlanders a go.

Unrelatedly, my high school English teacher knew Hardy's gardener! Weird Kevin Bacon-through-time stuff there.

Bertie Stephens? didn't like the dog apparently. (have just read that bit of the biog)

(that reinforces the surprising thing about the glastonbury attendence - he was alive a lot after people you might consider him alongside like, say, dickens)

and yes, we had Native in school and then Madding for exams, the only exam i failed. but reading them for 'fun' is different.

I remember an English class where we all mad that [spoiler?] Henchard's wife had effectively "died of shame". Life's Little Ironies? Tom's Shitty Plotting more like.

I think I enjoyed Casterbridge more the second time around, especially the soapy second half. It's basically an early Douglas Sirk movie.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rx5HrI7E1uQ/UHdDo7LsqUI/AAAAAAAAAxY/Jlv5LD6sWUw/s1600/Thomas+Hardy+with+bicycle.jpg

Tess blew my 17-year-old mind.

same!