Thomas Hardy

If we were to evaluate Hardy's current standing as a poet solely in the light of the quality and quantity of literary criticism recently brought into full-length book publication we might well believe him to have lost the far-reaching interest he commanded over the last century. Paucity of books and poverty of content noticeably complement each other. Take for example the single most substantial book-length study produced in the year 2000: Amitav Banerjee's An Historical Evaluation of Thomas Hardy's Poetry (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 418 pages. This book sports, in chronological order, twenty-five short pieces, all extracts from works written in the twentieth century. With one or two exceptions (which will be noticed later) the critical talent lies almost exclusively in the first half of the twentieth century.

The book opens with Edmund Gosse's "Mr Hardy's Lyrical Poems" (pp. 19-42, reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, 1918). Keen to delineate Hardy's passionate love of mankind Gosse remains Hardy's most powerful advocate in his revolt against Keats's prescription of "load[ing] the rifts with ore." John Middleton Murry follows with "The Poetry of Mr Hardy" (pp. 43-49, reprinted from The Athenaeum, 1919). Renowned for his unfailing devotion to Hardy, whose poems, Murry says, become a part of his own being--their "indelible impress has given shape to dumb and striving elements, in our soul"--never, for an instant, swerves from his admiration for Hardy: "no poet since poetry began has apprehended or told us more. Sunt lacrimae rerum" (p. 49). I. A. Richards' "Thomas Hardy: Contemporary Poet" follows (pp. 50-52, reprinted from Criterion, 1924-25) but his essay is too clumsily truncated by the editor, Banerjee, to be of much value. The same can be said of T. S Eliot's "Thomas Hardy" (pp. 53-54, reprinted from After Strange Gods, 1933), whose single paragraph fails to equitably represent either Eliot or Hardy. Likewise Ezra Pound's scant fragments (pp. 55-56) from Guide to Kulchur (1938), and Philip Larkin's meager apologia on Hardy's behalf (pp. 131-133, reprinted from The Listener, 1968), which does justice to absolutely no one. This is a most unexpected encounter--of all people, Larkin, whose debt to Hardy is immeasurable and certainly no literary secret!

At this point, W. H. Auden's less cursory "A Literary Transference"--delightfully redolent of that quirky, introspective style of his--fills a much needed gap. There is nothing diminished or diminishing about Auden's piece: he not only affirms that "it was Hardy who first taught me something of the relations of Eros and Logos," but also marches on vigorously with his enthusiasms eagerly to the fore (pp. 57-66, reprinted from the Southern Review, 1940). David Perkins tends, on the other hand, to amble rather aimlessly through "Hardy and the Poetry of Isolation" (pp. 67-87, reprinted from the Journal of English Literary History, 1959), where, by contrast, John Crowe Ransom's "Thomas Hardy's Poems, and the Religious Difficulties of a Naturalist" (pp. 88-100, reprinted from the Kenyon Review, 1960) grapples valiantly with the theological configurations of Hardy's verse. This is no easy task but the narrative tone remains probing, sincere, and compassionate, as befits Hardy's own theological concerns. Irving Howe's firm grasp of essentials--the rhythmic foot, the chiaroscuro effects, the rhetorical compression in Hardy's short lyrics--follows in "The Short Poems of Thomas Hardy" (pp. 101-133, reprinted from the Southern Review, 1966).

Sadly, this first half of An Historical Evaluation--influential as these poet-critics most certainly are--barely touches the surface of what James Gibson in his Thomas Hardy: Interviews and Recollections (St. Martin's Press, 1999) elsewhere calls a "veritable embarrassment of riches" where Hardy's distinguished (but oft-neglected) twentieth-century contemporary critics are concerned. Every single item in the Banerjee selection is already in print and in some cases copiously anthologized. Is this duplication the best...