Thought and Silence
In Hardy’s poetry, silence comes first and foremost as an obvious mark of absence, of the emptiness left by the loved ones, once departed. As Poems of 1912-13, the series of poems to his late wife Emma, shows, the poet’s painful sense of isolation from the dead is thus signalled by his inability to...
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| Udgivet i: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprog: | Anglais |
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FATHOM
2013
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| Online adgang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | In Hardy’s poetry, silence comes first and foremost as an obvious mark of absence, of the emptiness left by the loved ones, once departed. As Poems of 1912-13, the series of poems to his late wife Emma, shows, the poet’s painful sense of isolation from the dead is thus signalled by his inability to communicate with them. Poetry thus breaks the silence of the dead by letting the mute ghosts speak, and beyond that, by giving the speechless and the inanimate — “pensive mutes” — a voice, from insects and animals to trivial objects, incongruous personae of various poems. In reality, the poet and writer also presents himself as a pensive mute, deprived of voice but not of thought, “struck speechless” by the survival of dogmas but still retaining his personal reflexion. The equation between thought and silence or tension between judgment and voice thus appears in several poems which bear the trace of a strong personal commitment on Hardy’s part, both as poet and as man — poems of agnosticism such as “God’s Funeral”, ‟The Impercipient” and “A Sign-Seeker”. The silence imposed on Hardy’s agnostic views points again at the poet’s isolation, cast off as he is by his loss of faith. Central to the ambiguity of thought and silence in Hardy’s verse is the use of irony and pretence, as one of Hardy’s last poems makes it clear: “He Resolves to Say No More”. |
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