We thought of it not as a dramatic epic,
but as a dramatized novel--a mistake. We thought that Hardy was
taking the long way around, when in truth he had found a short cut
to his issues. That "The Dynasts," considering the vastness of its
Napoleonic subject, was far more concise, more direct, clearer
than his novels, did not become manifest, although the sharper-
eyed may have seen it.
In "The Dynasts" I find all of Hardy. The Immanent Will is God, as
Hardy conceives Him, neither rational nor entirely conscious,
frustrating His own seeming ends, without irony and without
compassion, and yet perhaps evolving like His world, clearing like
men's visions, moving towards consistency. The Sinister Angel and
the Ironic Angel are moods well known to Hardy, but not loved by
him. The Spirit of the Years that sees how poor human nature
collides with accident, or the inevitable, and is bruised, is
Hardy's reasoned philosophy. The Spirit of Pities (not always, as
he says, logical or consistent) is Hardy's own desire, his will,
his faint but deep-felt hope. I quote, from the very end of the
great spectacle, some lines in which the Spirits, who have watched
the confused tragedy of the Napoleonic age, sum up their thoughts:
AFTER SCENE
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Thus doth the Great Foresightless mechanize
Its blank entrancement now as evermore
Its ceaseless artistries in circumstance.
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