Unconscious Desires in “The Collector Cleans His Picture”

Abstract

This paper examines both Hardy’s writing process and his vision of how man’s desires might engender mistaken impressions. I will mainly focus on the poem “The Collector Cleans His Picture”, whose central issue is the “gaze”; the gaze being a reflection of man’s desires.Here, the narrator, a rural parson (and antiquarian) collects works of art. However, the main focus in the poem is the painting itself – the very point of attention which mesmerizes the collector.Gradually, the “cleaning” and “rubbing” of the picture will reveal illusive desire(s) in the parson. Indeed, there are inner contradictions within the poem between the biblical quotation, after the poem’s title, referring to Ezechiel’s “desiderabile oculorum” and, in the painting evoked in the poem, the goddess Venus, who turns out to be only an old hag. The painting is blasphemous with regard to the biblical quote, for the picture belongs to a different sort of context than the Judaeo-Christian world. The man’s gaze on his picture reflects his unconscious, his desires, which seem to be mere illusions, a “lure”.