Hardy Smackdown (by David Yezzi)

There's a provocative article in the current issue of the London-based magazine Standpoint titled "Eliot versus Hardy" by Dan Jacobson, an emeritus professor at University College. In it, Jacobson tells of an interesting reversal in his literary tastes: he began with a rapturous fondness for Eliot that over time was supplanted by an appreciation of Hardy's homier virtues. It's a fascinating compare-and-contrast, not least because the two were basically contemporaries. When Eliot wrote (unfavorably) about Hardy in After Strange Gods (1930), Hardy had been dead only two years. Hardy, for his part, copied verses from Eliot into his notebook.

The piece is likely to raise eyebrows and even hackles. I'd be curious to hear what people think. My favorite part of the article, though, was the inclusion by Jacobson of a lesser-known Hardy poem that I found both stark and charming. It's musical and strange--pure Hardy--and it's called "Waiting Both."

A star looks down at me,
And says, ‘Here I and you
Stand, each in his degree: 
What do you mean to do, —
          Mean to do?'

I say: ‘For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come.'-‘Just so,'
The star says. ‘So mean I: —
                So mean I.'

Comments

[DL]

That's a dandy poem by Mr. Hardy, whom it is almost always a pleasure to read -- whereas it's not always possible to be as receptive as TSE demands. A nod of the head will not appease him. It's like the difference between a Schubert song and the second movement of the Unfinished. Eliot's greater ambition cannot be gainsaid. And it would be difficult to defend the claim that Hardy's poetry engages the intellect and exercises the moral intelligence to the extent Eliot's does. In a way, the preference for Hardy over Eliot recapitulates earlier moves by Auden and Larkin, don't you think?

[David Yezzi]

Hi DL,

Yes, I think it does recapitulate Auden and Larkin a bit – though both of them had interesting modernist streaks as well, especially early on. Me, I don't really have a horse in this race. To adapt Olivier’s line from Spartacus for poetry, I like oysters and snails. What you say is absolutely right, though I do see another side as well: Eliot never attempted anything as ambitious (or ambitious in the same way, at least) as The Dynasts. And Eliot’s morality was largely Anglo-Catholic and in that sense more “received” than Hardy’s. Hardy, who was a pessimist and an atheist yet humane in the extreme, was perhaps more “modern” in his morality and no less serious (despite the comic or homey tone of many of the poems). Interesting to ponder!