Thomas+Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840 in the village of Upper Bochampton, England. At the age of eight, Hardy began to attend Julia Martin’s school however most of his education was self-taught by himself through books he would read. At sixteen, Hardy’s father apprentices his son to a local architect and would be sent to London for a five year understudy to work with an architect. However during his stay in London Hardy become immersed within the culture of the city and began to take an interest in Literature. He choose to return to Dorchester as a church restorer in which he took as new found talent for write as well. From 1867, Hardy wrote poetry and novels, athough the first part of his career was devoted to a novel. At first he would publish his works anonymously, but when people became interested in his works, he began to use his own name. Hardy's novels were published in serial forms in magazines that were popular in both England and America. His first popular novel was Under the Greenwood Tree, published in 1872. In additions he would then publish Other popular novels followed in quick succession: The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). His works would mainly focus on highly criticizing the Victorian society and delts with a more declining rural society. While his poetry centralized with themes of disappointment in love and life, and mankind's long struggle against indifference to human suffering. However, despite the praise of Hardy’s fiction received, many critics also found his works to be too shocking, especially Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. The outcry against Jude was so great that Hardy decided to stop writing novels and return to his first great love, poetry. Before his death, Hardy had written over 800 poems, many of them published while he was in his eighties. After a long and highly successful life, Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928, at the age of 87. His ashes were buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. To this very day Thomas Hardy is considered one of the greatest authors of Victorian realist writing for his greatest novels such as Tess of Ubdervilles.


 * Poems:**

"Between Us Now"
Between us now and here -

Two thrown together

Who are not wont to wear

Life's flushest feather -

Who see the scenes slide past,

The daytimes dimming fast,

Let there be truth at last,

Even if despair.

So thoroughly and long

Have you now known me,

So real in faith and strong

Have I now shown me,

That nothing needs disguise

Further in any wise,

Or asks or justifies

A guarded tongue.

Face unto face, then, say,

Eyes mine own meeting,

Is your heart far away,

Or with mine beating?

When false things are brought low,

And swift things have grown slow,

Feigning like froth shall go,

Faith be for aye.

A Dream Or No
Why go to Saint-Juliot? What's Juliot to me?

I've been but made fancy

By some necromancy

That much of my life claims the spot as its key.

Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West,

And a maiden abiding

Thereat as in hiding;

Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed.

And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago,

There lonely I found her,

The sea-birds around her,

And other than nigh things uncaring to know.

So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed)

That quickly she drew me

To take her unto me,

And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed.

But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see;

Can she ever have been here,

And shed her life's sheen here,

The woman I thought a long housemate with me?

Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist?

Or a Vallency Valley

With stream and leafed alley,

Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist?

"I Said to Love"
I said to Love,

"It is not now as in old days

When men adored thee and thy ways

All else above;

Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One

Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,"

I said to Love.

I said to him,

"We now know more of thee than then;

We were but weak in judgment when,

With hearts abrim,

We clamoured thee that thou would'st please

Inflict on us thine agonies,"

I said to him.

I said to Love,

"Thou art not young, thou art not fair,

No faery darts, no cherub air,

Nor swan, nor dove

Are thine; but features pitiless,

And iron daggers of distress,"

I said to Love.

"Depart then, Love! . ..

- Man's race shall end, dost threaten thou?

The age to come the man of now

Know nothing of? -

We fear not such a threat from thee;

We are too old in apathy!

Mankind shall cease.--So let it be,"

I said to Love.


 * Sources:**

Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy, The Time Torn Man(Penguin, 2007), pp.46–47. Harvey, Geoffrey. //Thomas Hardy: The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy.// New York: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2003.