Eidetic Images

Abstract

Besides dark outlines and silhouettes there is another way in which Hardy embodies memory in his work. Many poems contain images which the memory appears to project onto the bare, external world, like colour slides on a screen. These images assume a virtually autonomous existence outside the poet or his persona, and are quasi-visionary or ‘eidetic’ images. ‘After a Romantic Day’ describes how these visions are formed:

The railway bore him through

An earthen cutting out from a city:

There was no scope for view,

Though the frail light shed by a slim young

Fell like a friendly tune.

Fell like a liquid ditty,

And the blank lack of any charm

Of landscape did no harm.

The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,

And moon-lit, was enough

For poetry of place: its weathered face

Formed a convenient sheet whereon

The visions of his mind were drawn.