In Retrospect

Abstract

Man, like a glass ball with a spark a-top,

Out of the magic fire that lurks inside,

Shows one tint at a time to take the eye:

Which, let a finger touch the silent sleep,

Shifted a hair’s-breadth shoots you dark for bright,

Suffuses bright with dark, and baffles so

Your sentence absolute for shine or shade.

‘Others abide our question.’ So, without the appropriate qualification, Matthew Arnold introduces his sonnet on Shakespeare, marvelling at the vision of a poet whose lasting greatness was beyond the perception of his contemporaries. By comparison, our knowledge of Hardy is enormous, and yet the more we know, the more we realize that experiences which were most central to much in his life and writings, including the best of his personal poems, raise questions which are finally unanswerable; too much of the crucial evidence is wanting to warrant biographical assertion, and we are left to conjecture. The issue is complicated by the heterogeneity of Hardy’s reactions to people and circumstances at critical junctures; so inconsistent do they appear at times that they may seem almost contradictory.