{Literary Circles [continued (10)]}[29th November 1988]

[Redbook6:48)][19881129:1512e]{Literary Circles [continued (10)]}[29th November 1988]

.1512

[continued]

Thomas Hardy:

[The text on the ms diagrams reproduced above is too complicated to be summarised in a table at present.]

1878-1895 is the period of Hardy’s greatest achievement as a novelist. The Immanent Will + Inevitability of Human Tragedy.

‘There is no line of development in Hardy’s poetry

from immaturity to maturity,

followed by a falling-off; at any period, his best and inferior work are found mixed, and his style undergoes no significant change.[’]

The Immanent Will ‘is an indifferent and unconscious force “that neither good nor evil knows”, and [which] is the motive power of the Universe. The results of its impulses are almost invariably disastrous. In the Dynasts there is an implication that it may be growing into self-consciousness; perhaps the most striking expression of this concept is in “The convergence of the Twain”, a poem written on the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.’*

Although the Half-cycles pattern is also instructive, the overall impression is of Outer Circle dominance (but with strong Inner Circle contra-rotation). The Outer influence is particularly apparent in the growth of his ideas on human [sic] tragedy and the Immanent Will.

*[Probably per Encylopaedia Britannica V, 701-2, Hardy, Thomas]

[continues]

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