Thomas Hardy and Eugenio Montale: In mourning and in celebration

Abstract

In spite of the present considerable amount of research on death and dying and on attitudes toward death, not enough is known about the ways in which old people face the fear of death. The views of innumerable poets, playwrights, novelists, biographers on the subject can complement in an essential way the views of scientists since the literary views are, in heightened form, an expression of the emotions that the average individual may be reluctant or unable to voice. This article examines the ways in which two old poets. Hardy and Montale, came to terms with the death of their wives and suggests that the elegies they wrote in their memory represent two paradigmatic ways in which old individuals' particular relationship to the past may determine the way in which they confront the death of their spouses and their own mortality.