This is a great thread--thanks for blowing the dust off it, Tim. I'm ashamed of myself that I don't know Hardy's poetry that well--I know his novels much more. This thread is giving me a jolt, and I'm looking forward to getting into his poetry more. He really is such a subtle writer.
I looked up the original Pound quote, out of curiosity. Actually, it's interesting to see that Pound changed his tune about Hardy.
In 1918 he wrote:
"We may, I think, set aside Thomas Hardy as of an age not our own, perhaps Walter Scott's . . . remote from us and from things familiarly under our hand." --from his essay on Henry James in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, p. 331.
In the 1930s he wrote:
"A conscientious critic might be hard put to it to find just praise for Hardy's poems. When a writer's matter is stated with such entirety and with such clarity there is no place left for the explaining critic. When the matter is of so stark a nature and so clamped to reality, the eulogist looks an ass. . . . poem after poem of Hardy's leaves one with nowt more to say. . . . When we, if we live long enough, come to estimate the 'poetry of the period', against Hardy's 600 pages we will put what?" --Guide to Kulchur, p. 285.
And, Mark, you'll like this one, also from the 1930s:
"Thomas Hardy's Noble Dames and Little Ironies will find readers despite all the French theories in the world." --ABC of Reading, p. 193.
|