Reality in Excess
In Hardy’s poetry, letters, notes and telegrams are most commonly linked to the experience of disappointed love. Those letters often reveal themselves under the ambivalent light of either sun or moon, and therefore convey the most painful truth in a highly ironical manner. As the means for both unio...
Tallennettuna:
| Julkaisussa: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Päätekijä: | |
| Aineistotyyppi: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Kieli: | Anglais |
| Julkaistu: |
FATHOM
2018
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| Aiheet: | |
| Linkit: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Yhteenveto: | In Hardy’s poetry, letters, notes and telegrams are most commonly linked to the experience of disappointed love. Those letters often reveal themselves under the ambivalent light of either sun or moon, and therefore convey the most painful truth in a highly ironical manner. As the means for both union and division, letters are weapons because they control their senders and recipients by weaving a web-like continuity between people, places and events. Hardy’s conviction that poetry is the most efficient conveyor of truth is also made clear in the way the letter motif participates in poetic continuity: the conjunction of lit letter and poem enables a genuine dramatization of the truth, as the vertical unfolding of the poem reproduces that of the letter. Through this unique and complex form of visual tautology – this actual irony of correspondence –, Hardy’s poetry materializes what Jean Baudrillard calls “the irony of too much reality”, indeed asserting once more the author’s belief that “the letter killeth”. Ultimately, the poet’s own voice has to suffer this ironical redoubling of the text, which consequently also concerns the relation between writer, text, and reader. |
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