[Ttha-potm] re Runicity of stone

[carolyn mcgrath]

Dear Ilaria

Thank you for your kind encouragement - this Hardy
conversation that we all engage in is the only
opportunity for me, bar one tolerant friend, to
discuss Thomas Hardy's poetry. It is invaluable for me
to be able to collaboratively reflect and to refine
not only ideas but how to approach the poems and, even
trickier, how to communicate those ideas.

Looking back at your original posting, I want to agree
with your identification of an "immediate shift from a
dimension to another;" but would see it as being
between the second and third stanzas. The first stanza
sets the scene; the second stanza introduces a common
enough experience of time flying when you are having
fun; the third picks up on the undercurrent of
'anxiety' that is present in the first two stanzas by
introducing related 'unknowns' of chance and
consequence on a greater timescale; the fourth
comments on the possible implications, if any, of the
unknowns being perceived by the couple at that time. 

Even though the first two stanzas are highly
evocative, I think there is an ironic aspect to what
you term "an oneiric perception (caused by an oneiric
atmosphere) of his past". Firstly, the poet creates a
narrative distance between himself as poet/man by
creating an omniscient narrator and characters. It is
interesting to substitute the 'they, he, she, them,
their' of the poem with 'we, me, you, us, our' to feel
the difference. If the poet as a man is equated with
the narrator, the meanings become limited and fixed,
although still 'unknown' to a degree. The tone becomes
more tender and personal and the irony is reduced to
personal regret or guilt rather than a more
generalised comment on the nature of being in time and
space. Hardy has created many a poem where the
poet/man addresses his dead/alive wife, but he chooses
not to do so in this poem. It may be at the back of
our minds that we think of the characters as 'Tom and
Emma', but the poem becomes skewed if we allow
ourselves to mentally rewrite what is infront of us. 

There are also those worrying words and phrases in the
first two stanzas which send ripples of anxiety:
'Runic', 'sloped down', 'chattered', the visual colour
detail, 'breeze-blown'; and in the second stanza:
'Rapt', 'alone', 'transport', 'talking so/In such a
place', 'nothing to let them know',
'hours flown'. Even though the first two stanzas evoke
a charming image, there is an undercurrent of
ignorance or lack of awareness that can't does not
bode well; the following two stanzas make explicit the
concerns beneath the surface. 

Maybe the most important aspect of reading the poem is
the image of the Runic Stone and its relationship to
the other 'unknowns'. It is our ability, almost
compulsion, to read meaning into these empty spaces
that keeps drawing us back to puzzle over. Maybe you
and I end up saying the same thing, along with others,
when you say, "constant presence of past in his
present (the runic stone, the relic in disguise like a
sort of "a part of the speech"), allows the poet to be
discouraged by his own memory, and subsequently to be
disillusioned by both his memories and his
"vision"."

I say something like, 'the Runic Stone', like the
'hours flown', the 'die thrown' and 'the dent' in
'their encompassment' are all 'unknown' and when they
can be known or seen (i.e. in the poem) they are
reconstructed as 'a story' or 'history' in that we
impose meaning on them. 'As in the hourglass', which
is but an abstraction made into a material tool by
which we attempt to measure time, so the runic stone
is an abstraction of an event or a person to relate
the measure of their significance. Somehow the poem
simultaneously achieves the reduction of the couple to
something very small and unknowable and their
enlargement to something significant, visible and
symbolic --- are we back to the telescope again!!! 

I'm not too strong on the constative/performative
debate, but is there something of that nature going on
here?

best wishes
Carolyn




Carolyn McGrath


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