Described by the acclaimed twentieth-century poet and literary critic W.H. Auden as being "modern without being too modern," Thomas Hardy is one of the most influential and important writers in English literary history. Today, nearly a century since his death, he is still widely read in schools and by fans throughout the world. His literary oeuvre is punctuated by recurrent themes and, perhaps above all, by a constant return to the English countryside; after all, he set all his novels in south and southwest England, in a region he termed 'Wessex.'
His poetry is particularly striking. Scholars believe that between 1898 and 1928, Hardy published some 900 poems. The number of poems he wrote is believed to be much higher. Debate has also raged amongst literary critics over the extent to which we can place Hardy in his poetry, as either a character alluded to or the narrator itself. Either way, we can learn much from his poetry not only about how he reacted to significant events in his own life, including the death of his first wife, but also about how he reacted to significant world events, including the Second Boer War and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
Hardy is a complex figure, his life marked both by intense personal experiences and by the turbulent era in which he lived. Fin-de-siecle Victorian society was a melting pot of beliefs and peoples. While taboo issues such as homosexuality and the perceived threat of miscegenation were beginning to be explored in the literature of Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula, respectively), scientific beliefs, notably Darwinism, had begun to challenge the authority of the Church. Life on the ground was also changing rapidly, as pointed to in Hardy's 1924 poem "Nobody Comes," where he writes of "A car...with lamps full-glare" passing him by. Industrialization and the emergence of new technologies such as the car began to alter what had been a very rural way of life before; people started to relocate to the cities in search of paid employment, thus leaving the previously active countryside quiet. Poems like "The Darkling Thrush" attempt to reckon with these rapid changes in lifestyle, and to mourn a past which seems utterly gone in the rush of new technologies. This sense of the horror at a broken present is part of why Hardy is often categorized as a modernist, despite his Victorian roots.
So, in reading Hardy's poetry, we must consider its historical context and the important contemporary events that the Victorian reader would most certainly have been aware of. Aside from these larger developments which impacted the lives of a considerable number of people in the 1890s, we must also consider Hardy's own background, and the events he experienced in his life that we can trace in his literary output. The two major romantic relationships of his life crop up frequently in his work; his first marriage of 38 years to wife Emma Gifford (1874-1912) which ended when she died, and his second marriage of 14 years to Florence Dugdale, which ended upon his death in 1928. After Emma's death in 1912, Hardy was consumed by grief and dedicated the remaining years of his life to writing poetry about his lost wife and their complex and troubled relationship, from touching poems including "The Going," and "Your Last Drive" to poems like "The Voice," which is more pessimistic and haunting. Indeed, Hardy named a group of nearly thirty poems "Poems of 1912-13," a work which testifies to the importance of the immediate period after Emma's death for his literary career. Unsurprisingly, Florence, who moved in with the poet the year after Emma's death, felt somewhat isolated and ignored in her marriage, though there was a great deal of love and affection between the married couple, who remained together until Hardy's death in 1928.
It would be wrong, however, to describe his poetry as being concerned only with personal issues. in 'Drummer Hodge', he tackles head-on what he sees as a waste of young lives and resources, namely war. "The Darkling Thrush" concerns both an individual speaker and a broader historical dynamic in which all living people are involved. In "The Convergence of the Twain," a poem about the sinking of the Titanic, Hardy criticizes what he perceives as mankind's attempts to outdo the power of the natural world with technological innovation; as Hardy puts it, "the smart ship" is no match for "the Shape of Ice," leading to her sinking and the deaths of hundreds onboard.
Hardy's musings on the natural world don't focus solely on its power, but also its harsh and uncaring character. In "The Darkling Thrush," the bleak and desolate setting parallels the speaker's mournful perception of the end of the nineteenth century. Likewise, in "The Voice," the natural world appears uncanny and haunting, in line with the overall mood of the poem.
In spite of the verse form, rhythm or rhyme scheme used, Hardy returns to some key themes in his poetic output: love, how it can be extinguished and how the loss of a loved one impacts an individual; the incessant passing of time and our inability to prevent it; and the importance of place and setting in our lives. Whether he be read as a pensive and regretful widower, an anti-war campaigner, or a provincial Luddite, Thomas Hardy, as a poet, continues to make us think and that, above all else, is arguably why he is still so popular almost a century since he last put pen to paper.
