Form, Tradition, and Consolation in Hardy's “Poems of 1912–13”

Abstract

Hardy's “Poems of 1912-13” constitute a formal elegy over his first wife, Emma. The twenty-one lyrics are thematically unified, and the sequence is given overall form and structure by the persona's organized perception of time. Within the sequence the narrator focuses upon time periods in the following order: recent past, present; then distant past, recent past, present. This five-part temporal model serves as the form of the elegy, a form that it is likely Hardy worked consciously to achieve. It is also likely that he wrote this sequence in full consciousness of the great elegies preceding his, for he adapted many of the conventions of the elegiac tradition to his own artistic needs. The traditional consolation of perpetuity outside time and space, however, he denied, and for it he substituted the consolation of full emotional and intellectual comprehension of the couple's experience together. This limited consolation, based upon the persona's organized perception of time, is the logic of grief for Hardy's godless universe.