[Ttha-potm] The mnute before the meeting

[WILLIAM NEEDHAM]

'Despite the fact that this [poem]... might be the best 
example we have of his early experimentation in sonneteering -- playfulness coupled with naivety is much in evidence (and in its own peculiar way, essential to the "event" -- or mock event).' Rosemary' (Sep 17)

Dear Rosemary,

As you may have gathered I feel that Hardy's motivation is part excitement, part seriousness. 

F. B. Pinion's belief 'that the adjectival "full-up" in the 
final line weakens the poem' ignores any possibility that the author might have ordered it so. To my ear, a previous 'weakening' phrase--though perhaps more anticipatory than insistent--is "rein back Time". It's a question of the rhetoric of the time. At today's remove the phrase can have a dashing, romantic connotation: pre-auto it conveyed no more than slowing the commonest vehicle to a stop. 

Mention sonnet and thoughts fly--one can be pretty sure Hardy's did--to Wordsworth's own Sonnet (ii,noti). What a clarion call ("The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew...") to a young Dorset man frustrated like his hill dwelling predecessor by very modest circumstances. Hardy would recognise the intense emotions, the dramatic acting out and relief that the sonnet offered. Might it be left to him to bring the sonnet up to date? Like Wordsworth before him he could abandon complexities that had become fashionable, and rely on qualities of quotidian speech.

Though the impulse to instigate change is unmistakable, Hardy's climactic phrase "full-up measure" could be from the milking shed or the granary, or just about anywhere where the speech was devoid of any varnish. He's gone too far--this time, that is. Basically it's prosaic. Indeed, its the very sort of local colloquialism that will later bring him fame and fortune in his novels and short stories. 

Best wishes,
Bill 








      
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