Yet these
real issues, it appeared as we talked, were not theories. Ideas,
he said, if emphasized, destroy art. Writers, he thought, in the
future would give up pure fiction (serious writers, I suppose he
meant). Poetry would be their shorthand; they would by intenser
language cut short to their end.
What was _his_ end? Not mechanical, scientific theories, that
was clear. Not mere realistic description of life. He told me he
had little faith in mere observation, except for comic or quaint
characterization. He had seldom if ever studied a serious
character from a model. One woman he invented entirely (was it
Tess?) and she was thought to be his best. What, then, was this
essence which the novelist, growing old, would convey now in
concentrated form by poetry which to him, so he said, was story-
telling in verse.
It is easier to understand what he meant if one thinks how
definitely Hardy belongs to his age, the latter nineteenth
century, in spite of his reachings forward. On the one hand, his
very gentleness is characteristic of a period that was above all
others humane, On the other, his somber moods sprang from a
generation that was the first to understand the implications of
the struggle for life in the animal world all about them.
Pages:
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318