From the Personal to the Universal: The Poetry of Thomas Hardy In discussing the nature of his poetry and

his own poetic intentions, Hardy once quoted Leslie Stephen stating that, the ultimate aim of the poet should be to touch our hearts by showing his own. Referring to the personal intensity of his work, Hardys comment perhaps offers a key to understanding his poems. It is as if he invites us to view them as deeply emotional expressions of lived experience. So what then, is the Alevel student to make of Hardys poems? While many teachers instruct against making a direct connection between the poet and the poems speaker, dissociating Hardy from the poetic voice is much more difficult. Critics have similar problems: Cecil Day-Lewis argues that Personalities should be kept out of the criticism of poetry. But it is extraordinarily difficult, and possibly undesirable, to dissociate Hardys poetry from his characterAlmost all of his finest poems are deeply, nakedly personal. Therein lies the difficulty of forming a critical assessment of Hardys poetry for students. If we must rely on a personal response to Hardys poetry to what extent can we explore the universal significance of his writing? Is it possible to accommodate both approaches in our study of Hardy? The answer is quite simply yes. Like all successful writers of the literary cannon, it is the writers ability to transcend the personal and reach for the universal that have ensured their work has outlived their lifespan and extended beyond temporal boundaries. With Hardy, it precisely because of the personal nature of his poetry that he is successful in achieving universal significance. Defining the universal For Alevel students it is relatively easy to understand the personal as the private aspects of a persons life, the individual, the intimate, particular or even concrete. Understanding of is meant by universal is problematic as the term has much more abstract connotations and questions such as To what extent does death in Hardys poetry have universal significance? can often pose a difficulty for students. In basic terms the universal refers to what is worldwide, applicable to all situations regardless of historical, cultural, sociological, or political contexts. This essay question therefore encourages the student to look beyond what is immediate, that is beyond the specific details of Hardys life or the personal aspect of the experience, to

engage with the wider implications of the poem and assess the degree to which Hardys message is relevant to all human experience. Reflections on death: Poems of 1912-13 Biographical material is important in understanding the intensely personalised quality of Hardys writing, and the reader often resorts to historical information to illuminate the text. This is particularly so with Hardys most recognised and celebrated poems, Poems of 1912-13 a group of heartfelt poems which offer Hardys reflections on the sudden death of his estranged wife, Emma, and his guilt and regret for the decline of the relationship. Collectively these poems form a sequence, initially expressing the agony of bereavement which gradually moves towards acceptance as he comes to terms with her death. The first poem of the sequence, The Going is an immediate reaction to Emmas death and allows direct access to the privacy of Hardys thoughts. The title indicates the poets refusal to accept her death; unlike other Victorian elegies such as Tennysons In Memoriam, there is a sense that the poet has been left behind and that his wife has journeyed without him a sense of loss that is carried into the first lines of the poem.
Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrows dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone,

The poem begins with an interrogative; the aggressive and accusatory questions are directed to his wife and notably the speaker avoids reference to her death, only recognising it in terms of her move away from him. Here Hardy refuses to present an idyllic marriage, instead showing the reality of the deteriorated relationship an indifferent union where both parties refuse to communicate with the other. The absent female never returns the dialogue, thus the poem remains a monologue which highlights the speakers sense of loneliness and abandonment. The raw and emotive tone which Hardy uses shows the extent of the blame and misery. While this poem is notably personal, Hardy addresses the archetypal theme of death, thus using the specifics of lived experience to reflect on fundamental human concerns such as love and loss. Like many poems of the sequence, Hardy explores

the bitterness, guilt and regret one feels at the decline or loss of a relationship. Hardys technique is to express these basic human emotions directly, confronting the reader with the intensity of the experience. Notably Hardy uses a first person perspective and direct address. Like many of his poems, this use of the first and second personal singular contributes to the universal quality of his poetry: the I and you of the poem we would assume to be Hardy and Emma, yet this use of pronouns and avoidance of the proper noun expresses personal emotion but simultaneously, the anonymity of the speaking voice makes it universal. This is a common feature of Poems of 1912-13: with opening lines such as Woman much missed how you call to me, call to me in The Voice or You did not walk with me in The Walk, through his use of pronoun, Hardy moves the personal into the realm of universal human experience. Universal simplicity Language is an important tool in achieving a universal appeal, particularly for Hardy whose simplicity and economy of language brings a timeless, universal quality to his writing. The minimalism of the language in poems such as The Self Unseeing achieves great effect:
She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet we were looking away!

Here the speaker narrates a keenly felt personal experience, fusing both past and present as he nostalgically recaptures a moment from childhood. Hardy is economic in his use of words, giving sparse details but communicating the particulars precisely She sat here, He who played stood there. Once again the indeterminate use of pronoun is rich in suggestion, inferring to the speakers loved ones. There is a lack of poetic language, the rhetorical flourishes that one would normally expect with poetry. In Hardys work the absence of figurative language such as metaphor and simile is an important feature, yet imagery is skilfully embedded into the poem emblazoned and glowed for example picks up the

reference to the fire in the second stanza, giving the scene a literal and metaphorical radiance. The language creates a sense of immediacy and intimacy while the simplicity of the words, mostly monosyllabic, makes Hardys poetry accessible to all. Moving beyond the commonplace Although Hardys poems tend to deal with the commonplace or personal issues, many poems illustrate his skill in dealing with wider thematic issues. Because of his propensity to explore these through the personal, the universal significance of these poems can be overlooked and the reader may miss the deeper meaning behind the poem. The Darkling Thrush for example, written in December 1899, can be read as the poets feelings of despair at the turn of the century. The narrator pessimistically observes the bleak landscape, noting the spectre-grey frost and the sharp features of the environment which accumulate to create a death-like figure. The archetypal symbol of time personified, in this case as a corpse, is used to signify the death of the century. This use of pathetic fallacy reflects the speakers general state of despondency. The reflections are broken with the joyous song of an aged thrush leading the speaker to wonder if the thrushs carolling indicate some greater understanding or Blessed Hope of which he is ignorant. These personal reflections, often read to be Hardys own religious doubt and scepticism, have a wider significance. It also reveals the religious doubt and agnosticism of the Victorian period, offering a Darwinistic view of nature as an indifferent, sometimes threatening, force controlling the doubtful fate of mankind. Such concerns with humanity and the Immanent Will are explored elsewhere in Hardys work in poems such as The Convergence of the Twain. Although referring to a specific time and place, the poems concerns anticipate the anxiety, on occasion hysteria, felt by many with the approach of the new millennium in 1999. Similarly, the concern with mankinds fate and direction with the commencement of a new modern era is also conveyed in the mood and tone of the passage. Many of the poems from this collection and the later collection Times Laughingstocks (1909) are concerned with mans moral progress and the decline of traditional values in the uncertainty of the twentieth century.

Conclusion W.H. Auden, in his assessment of Hardys writing, admires the poets ability To see the individual life related not only to the local social life of its time but to the whole of human history. Indeed, the brilliance of Hardys poetry rests with his capacity to take the individual experience, the commonplace and even mundane and imbue the ordinary with a universal import. Hardys style is subtle yet effective, and through his expression of intensely felt experience and raw emotion in the Poems of 1912-13, his poetry expresses what is applicable to all of human experience. By dealing with archetypal themes of love and death for example, Hardy represents the issues and dilemmas common to all life. Hardys skill in achieving this is a result of his technique as a writer; his employment of simplistic language devoid of poetic flourishes, indeterminate use of pronoun and a first person narrative all combine to form a poetic style that is at once personally felt whilst having a universal impact that all can relate to. Just as Blake was able To see a world in a grain of sand, Hardy likewise is able to explore the universal through the personal. He creates a pattern of meaning and explores issues beyond the scope of individual experience thus offering a profound understanding of human nature in all its gloom and glory.