Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy     1840 – 1928

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism. Like Charles Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society .

Initially he gained fame as the author of novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). However, beginning in the 1950s Hardy has been recognised as a major poet.

Most of his fictional works – initially published as serials in magazines – were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex (south and southwest of England). They explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

Life

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in the village in Dorset, England, where his father Thomas  worked as a stonemason and local builder. His mother Jemima was well-read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at age eight. For several years he attended Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester. Here he learned Latin and demonstrated academic potential. At the age of sixteen, when he became apprenticed to James Hicks, a local architect. In 1862 he enrolled as a student at King's College London. He won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Association.

But Hardy never felt at home in London, because he was acutely conscious of class divisions and his social inferiority. However, during this time he became interested in social reform. Five years later, concerned about his health, he returned to Dorset, settling at Weymouth, and decided to dedicate himself to writing.

Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Lavinia Gifford, whom he married in 1874. Although they later became estranged, her death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him and his Poems 1912–13 reflect places linked with their courtship. In 1910, Hardy had been awarded the Order of Merit.

Hardy became ill with pleurisy and died on 11 January 1928. His heart was buried (захоронено) at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.

Hardy's birthplace in Bockhampton and his house Max Gate, both in Dorchester, are owned by the National Trust.

Novels

After he abandoned his first novel, Hardy wrote two new ones that he hoped would have more commercial appeal, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), both of which were published anonymously. In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes, a novel drawing on Hardy's courtship of his first wife, was published under his own name.

In his next novel Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Hardy first introduced the idea of calling the region in the west of England, where his novels are set, Wessex. Wessex had been the name of an early Saxon kingdom, in approximately the same part of England. Far from the Madding Crowd was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next twenty-five years Hardy produced ten more novels.

He wrote Tess of the d'Urbervilles in 1891. This novel attracted criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman" and was initially refused publication. Its subtitle, A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented, was intended to raise the eyebrows of the Victorian middle classes.

Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, met with an even stronger negative response from the Victorian public because of its controversial treatment of sex, religion and marriage. Furthermore its apparent attack on the institution of marriage caused further strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiographical. Despite this, Hardy had become a celebrity by the 1900s.

Poetry

In 1898 Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years.

Thomas Hardy wrote in a great variety of poetic forms including lyrics, ballads, satire, dramatic monologues, and dialogue, as well as a three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts. He "persistently experimented with different, often invented, stanza forms and metres, and made use of "rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction".

Many of Hardy's poems deal with themes of disappointment in love and life, and "the perversity of fate", but the best of them present these themes with "a carefully controlled elegiac feeling".

Although his poems were initially not as well received as his novels had been, Hardy is now recognised as one of the greatest twentieth-century poets.

Works

Prose

Novels of Character and Environment

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)

The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character (1886)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891)

Jude the Obscure (1895)

Romances and Fantasies

A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (1873)

Drama

The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon (verse drama)

Poetry collections

Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)

Satires of Circumstance (1914)

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires…

…. At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom…

Дрозд в сумерках

Я прислонился у входа в рощу

Когда Мороз был призрачно-серым,

И остатки Зимы делали тоскливым

Слабеющее око дня.

Сплетенные стебли побегов расчерчивали небо,

Как струны разбитых лир,

И люди, которые здесь часто бывали,

устремились к домашним очагам…

… Внезапно голос взлетел среди

Черных сучьев над головой

В самозабвенной вечерней молитве

Безграничной радости;

Старый дрозд, худой, тщедушный, изможденный,

С взъерошенными перьями,

Решил таким образом выплеснуть душу

В сгущающийся мрак…