'I do not think she heard. Loosing thence she said,
As she stepped forth ready to go,
"I am rested now.--Something strange came into my head;
I wish I had not leant so!'...
'And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see
In the running of Time's far glass
Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be
Some day.--Alas, alas!'
Superstition and symbolism, some may say; but they mistakenly invert the
order of the creative process. The poet's act of apprehension is wholly
different from the lover's fear; and of this apprehension the
chance-shaped crucifix is the symbol and not the cause. The
concentration of life's vicissitude upon that white-clothed form was
first recognised by a sovereign act of aesthetic understanding or
intuition; the seeming crucifix supplied a scaffolding for its
expression; it afforded a clue to the method of transposition into words
which might convey the truth thus apprehended; it suggested an
equivalence. The distinction may appear to be hair-drawn, but we believe
that it is vital to the theory of poetry as a whole, and to an
understanding of Mr Hardy's poetry in particular.
Pages:
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193