‘Looking into Glass’: Moments of Unvision in the Poetry of Thomas Hardy
The article studies the ambivalent, if not antithetical, qualities of glass – both a substance and a transparent medium – in Thomas Hardy’s poems. In these, the looking glass does not send back the exact image of the human subject looking at it, but series of fleeting, evanescent images through whic...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
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FATHOM
2019
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| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | The article studies the ambivalent, if not antithetical, qualities of glass – both a substance and a transparent medium – in Thomas Hardy’s poems. In these, the looking glass does not send back the exact image of the human subject looking at it, but series of fleeting, evanescent images through which the past is conjured up and the future intuited. Reflected images travel in space and time, with a strange capacity of penetration and subversion: subject and object, seer and seen, the real and the virtual, the visible and the invisible are tossed together, until all that is left is the fundamental ontological question: “who am I?” In Hardy’s mirrors, the beholder undergoes a deeply troubling anti-narcissistic experience, which only inspires him with the feeling of self-estrangement (instead of self-love) and of alienation, in a world inhabited by mysterious transcendent presences. |
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