[John Whitworth]

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable gives us Hodge as a generic name for a farm labourer. Other dictionaries give country bumpkin. There i an attribution in 1885 referring to the Hodge vote, meaning the vote of the agricultural labourer.

Cardinal Vaughan - who was he? Probably subtle and untrustworthy. The English felt like that about Catholics, doubtless unfairly. Ah, I have him 'of a remarkably fine presence and aristocratic leanings'

Anyway, doesn't Hodge SOUND agricultural? Hodge plods through the sludge. I take it Johnson's cat was emphatically not slinky and siamese but foursquare and English, like Johnson in fact. I have a cat like that - Frank.

[Jerome Betts]

Maryann, some interesting points. Re 'kopje', maybe not in USA, but here there is a place, a hill, somewhere in Staffordshire, called Mow Cop, with the 'cop' element coming from copp meaning 'hill top'. An area of Liverpool (I think) football club's ground, or the supporters identified with that particular part, is called 'The Kop', apparently after the Boer War battle of Spion Kop, though the place-name 'cop' might also fit or reinforce the usage. How many Liverpool supporters consciously recall the Boer War when they refer to 'The Kop' I don't know, but it's a reminder of the fact that a few S. African topographical words - karoo, veldt, kopje, as in the poem - became very familiar to the newspaper and general reading public of the day through the writings of war reporters like Edgar Wallace and the young Churchill.

I would have thought 'to west' would have been as unusual as now, but taken as country speech by Hardy readers.

I would have thought that 'Drummer; was capped as a quasi-rank, or even actual rank (military anoraks may enlighten us) or form of military address, like 'Private Corbett! Report to Sergeant Whitworth for simile-drill!'

'Yet portion of that unknown plain' seems unforced to my ears. Connects in my mind with a phrase like 'part and parcel' where an article would be the forced element.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable gives us Hodge as a generic name for a farm labourer.

Thanks, John; a source new to me, but one I'll have to learn more about. I'll concede that the word meant this to Hardy.

Other dictionaries give country bumpkin. There i an attribution in 1885 referring to the Hodge vote, meaning the vote of the agricultural labourer.

My dictionaries mark this "chiefly British," and I only found it unabridged editions. I can imagine anthology editors arguing among themselves over whether students would need a note about this point. I would have needed one. But at least this tells me more about Snodgrass's aim.

Anyway, doesn't Hodge SOUND agricultural? Hodge plods through the sludge. I take it Johnson's cat was emphatically not slinky and siamese but foursquare and English, like Johnson in fact. I have a cat like that - Frank.

I see; the -udge words are famous for being dumpy and negative: drudge, grudge, pudgy.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable gives us Hodge as a generic name for a farm labourer.

Wow! Thank you for mentioning this, John. The complete book, with searchable text, is available for free on Google Books! What a find! I could get lost in there for days...

Thanks,

Bill

[Lance Levens]

The connotations around the English name Hodge appear to be central. That single word and its connotations appear to stand against the foreign words and their connotations: kopje, Karoo and veldt. A connotation war? Or at least we can say that Snodgrass's deletion of all of the above--Hodge, kopje, Karoo, veldt-- dilutes some tension.

Translators: how to get the thick-set, dull-witted country boy Hodge's
info across merely by the choice of a name.

Re punctuation. In the first line the comma after "Hodge" calls my attention to what was done to Hodge's body. It was thrown in. Thunk! In the Snodgrass version, we push on through "to rest uncoffined." The upshot is that in the Snodgrass version I don't get to hear that "thunk," not unless I go back and parse the event. Then the dash after "uncoffined" registers N's anger and shock. This is how a brutal war works. No time to bury the dead. It's "thunk" and move on.

[Gail White]

I think Hodge is definitely supposed to be a country boy, and probably a teenager as well - most drummers were. (See Kipling's wonderful story, "The Drums of the Fore and Aft". )

*****************

This may be a good place to mention that the mail just brought Jayne Osborn's book "Only Joking" with its wonderful cover picture:
Poet in a scenic landscape dictating --"When all at once I saw a bunch, A bunch of golden daffodils... No, it still doesn't sound right! "

[Gregory Dowling]

Wonderful thread.

I see Hodge as a precursor of Edward Thomas's Lob. And, for those who know the poem, of Andrew Waterman's Buster.

And Vaughn, I suspect, is something of a cad (or possibly a bounder).

[Marcia Karp]

Not his coinage, but Hardy revived Wessex and made it his own.

Marcia

[Maryann Corbett]

I'm at home with the book now, and can report that Snodgrass gives us this poem and rewrite in a section of the book called "The Singular Voice." He gives that title, then all the poems, and only then the fuller explanation of what he's about. I think this is the core of it:

"Choice of subject, ideas, or details, levels of diction, rhythm, movement, and sound textures, of imagery and allusion--these qualities may tell us that we are hearing Gerard Manley Hopkins or E.E. Cummings or John Berryman. Just as many tribal groups feel a menace--often for good reason--from an unfamiliar dialect, many of us, fearing change or loss of power, feel threatened by a new voice in poetry. Yet individuality and novelty are particularly sought by modern artists and, just as in the sciences, have provided much richness and invention. Having got past the initial strangeness, there may be a marked pleasure in finding a once-alien voice to be familiar and reassuring."

[Ann Drysdale]

I am still pushing this excellent headfood round my plate and nibbling at the tasty bits.

I am still struck by how my response (in this case) to the second poem changes when I remove the original from my thinking.

There's something I am reaching for and can't express (I've attempted it in a poem but that, rightly, can't be posted here); something to do with the poetic continuum, of how subject matter runs like a river and poets dip in as it runs past them and never (yet always) in the same place. The experience links, the language distances.

An example of what I mean is the being caught unaware by the singing of a bird. They roll on through our literary history - Keats's nightingale, Shelley's skylark, Hardy's thrush, Dun Karm's canary, Sassoon's nameless "everyone" who suddenly burst out singing - again and again they tap a poet on the shoulder.

I'll stop because I am not addressing the specific issue, but I am troubled by the thinking and will continue in my own time. Aspects of classical and foreign language translation are bothering me now and I am puzzling over a link with another forum. I can hear the voices of the adults in the next room "Just ignore her - she'll play like this for hours"...