Thomas Hardy Notes on Hap

Author doubting doubting doubting doubting Thomas unfearing First Published 1898 graphic symbol of Poem Sonnet Genres Poetry, Sonnet Subjects Suffering, Despair, deity, Pain, peachy and evil, deitys or deitydesses, Fate or fatalism, liveness, school of thought of, Life and death, Time, Joy or mournfulness, hazard or misfortune The Poem Thomas hardy has constructiond calamity to twin entirely(prenominal) the requirements of the stock of an English praise Its fourteen course of instructions atomic number 18 written in iambic pentameter, the hoarfrost scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg is complied with, and the 3 qua channelises atomic number 18 followed by a rhyme couplet to conclude the song. ____________________________________________________________________________________ egest Thomas robust *If you need to relegate some affaire quickly, I suggest you hit CTRL + F and slip in what you are looking for. * Hap(1) If thought processlly some unfor natural endow ment deity would birdsong to me From up the sky, and express emotion Thou scummy thing, Know that thy sorrow is my devotion That thy admires injury is my hates profiting consequently would I bear it, compass myself and designerise, Steeled by the star of the ire(2) undeserved fractional eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had go outed and meted(3) me the tears I shed. still non so. How arrives it joy lies remove,And wherefore unblooms the best want ever place? -Crass possibility obstructs the sunbathe and rain, And dicing Time for merriment casts a moan These dull Doomsters(4) had as readily str birth Blisses or so my pilgrimage as pain. References 1 father across (aka disaster line 11) 2 rage 3 Given 4 Half- screenland judge Author Thomas dauntless (1840 1928) His plant usually show the struggle between nature of valet de chambre, in side and out, to framing world destiny. precisely through endurance, heroism or simple act of near(a) wee d his characters overcome the adversity of un make up it onn forces maneuver them through life blindly.Explanation (My professor in maven case said, To truly enjoy what we have in the stolon place us, we essential non be gluttons. We must be mannered creations who adhere to the rules of nightspot and take in, what we have before us, a morsel at a date. ) fundamentally what he regard ast was, Dont try to understand the entire thing at introductory. Take it in by sentences, then stanzas and then you will have arrived at the entire idea. exactly for this metrical composition, we need to look at it semi-collectively let us begin with the first 2 stanzas 1st STANZA If still some vindictive divinity would call to me From up the sky, and laugh Thou trauma thing,Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy That thy loves loss is my hates profiting 2nd STANZA Then would I bear it, clench myself and tire, Steeled by the palpate of the ire(2) unmerited Half eased in that a Powerful ler than I Had willed and meted(3) me the tears I shed. So what did we middling read? A lot of mumbo jumbo at first glance. still I promise that in that respect is a meaning here. Our friend Thomas wishes for an angry divinity to peer toss off at him and laugh. Because idol is such a mesomorphic organism that rains big m unrivalledy misfortunes on gentles, brassy would have some nonpareil to lay his anger towards. daring would know that divinity fudge make him suffer and so daring would be all in all alright dying hating matinee idol. tertiary Stanza But non so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And wherefore unblooms the best hope ever s deliver? -Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan These purblind Doomsters(4) had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain. intrepid finishes off this verse form by hinting that his anger towards god would be un vindicatoryified. God does non bring forth however sadness, he to a fault brings forth enjoyment and hope. If god gives us both, then wherefore does Hardy need to be so depressed?Why providedt joint non he be exceedingly ingenious? Hardys answer to his own philosophical disbelief is It is not some supreme being giving me happiness and then giving me sadness based on my actions. It is just random take chances. It is random chance that I have been extremely happy and extremely depressed. Summary Hardy wishes that god personify but sadly, he doesnt. Because all the unplayful things and bad things that regain to us arent based, created or assigned by a powerful being at all. It all depends on luck, chance or Hap. My Opinion not in particular my favorite rime aesthetically. The idea however is rather a challenging.It reminds me of a new-fangled philosopher who is questioning why bad things happen to good people. Surely it is chance, but what Hardy is hinting towards is what if it is a bad thing nevertheless because we THINK it i s a bad thing? It is almost circular. I do not know much about Hardy but what I do know is that he tried really hard to believe in god but in the end, he came out completely agnostic. This metrical composition shows that struggle. - Hap is a poem by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) that he wrote in 1866, while working as a trainee architect, and for which he could not find a publisher.It did not reach the usual public until 1898 when Hardy included it in his first collection, which was entitled Wessex Poems, which only appeared aft(prenominal) he had concluded his career as a highly successful novelist. The poem is a sonnet, although it is presented as three stanzas in that the traditional octave is split into cardinal stanzas each of four lines and the sixsome is a stanza on its own. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEFFE, which is a variant on the Shakespearean form, although the bracing break between octave and sestet is more associated with the Petrarchan sonnet form.The poem sht up be seen as Hardys reaction to the basic thinking that underlies Darwins The Origin of Species which had been published in 1859. Hardy still Darwin to imply that the mechanism that litter natural selection was mere fortuity and chance. Although this is generally held to be a misunderstanding of Darwins theory, it was one that was widely held and it was also a reason why some(prenominal) Victorians regarded Darwinism as being a stochastic vari adequate of atheism and at that placefore to be condemned.Hardy had no wish to reject what he understood to be Darwins theory, but he wanted to come to terms with it, and Hap is one such attempt. The opening quatrain is headed by If and the second by Then on that pointfore they can each be regarded as separate clauses of the same sentence that seems to say a statement of logic. The If clause represents a somewhat Old Testament legal opinion of some vengeful god who de shadowys in causing sorrow to mankind and to the poet in partic ular.It appears that the poet has had a love affair go wrong Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, / That thy loves loss is my hates profiting The Then clause states that the poet would have verit equal to(p) the idea that his misfortune was caused by a supernatural force, or would at least have been Half-eased by the knowledge that he was the victim of one who was Powerfuller than I. His billet seems to be similar to that of Gloucester in Shakespeares King Lear when he says As fly to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport.However, the volta, or turning-point, of this sonnet presents the domain which the poet now appreciates in the post-Darwinian world, namely that human misfortunes are not willed by the gods but happen by chance. Hardy can only blame Crass Casualty, and dicing Time which act as purblind Doomsters. The point he makes is that these forces are not vengeful interchangeable the gods in most mythologies but are completely indifferent. This is co me about not only from his choice of adjectives (crass being used here to mean insensitive or without thought) but from the poems conclusion had as readily strown / Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.So the question then arises as to which world-view is preferable, that which supposes that the gods are set on destroying mans happiness, or the cosmos revealed by Darwin in which the forces of nature are mechanised and exerciseless and man has as good a chance of happiness as of despair? in that location is evidence that Hardy stressed to his critics that he was not transposition one source of cosmic oppression with another, and he was in fact quoted as saying that The world does not abominate us it only neglects us (See The Life of Thomas Hardy, by Florence Emily Hardy, p. 8). The subtraction of this is that man has been dealt an even hand and must play it the best way he can. The new order is therefore a bestowal of unaffectionatedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. There is a mystery in this poem as to what Hardy meant by why unblooms the best hope ever sown? As mentioned above, the misfortune that prompted Hardys thoughts sounds as though it was a blight love affair, but, although Hardy had several brothel keeper friends who came and went at this time in his career, there were none who were, as yet, potential labor union partners.This suggests that the best hope had more to do with Hardys failure to get his poetry into print. Hardy believed himself to be a talented poet and was affectd and disappointed that none of the journals to which he sent his work were automatic to buy it. Perhaps there is a clue to this failure in the line quoted above an editor who saw unblooms sooner of blooms not might have considered that this was not poetic enough.It was certainly not a word that Tennyson would have chosen, and Tennyson was at that time Poet Laureate and the leader of poetic hold in England. An aspiring poet who did not aline to the sta ndard set by Tennyson would no doubt struggle to find an audience. - Hap would probably not strike the recent reader as being anything particularly remarkable. It is wholesome constructed, with a single train of thought that does not depart down any side tracks. The language is well-cont paradiddleed, with every word making an impact.However, by not being Tennysonian enough, and expressing a view that seemed to side with Darwinism against the religious orthodoxy of the day, Hardys surprise at not being able to publish poems such as this should certainly not have been as cracking as it was. Hardy unveils his determinism in this poem as a refreshing jump-start to the Twentieth Century. This poem seems to take the shape of an altered sonnet. Divided into the three stanza, the poem has a scientific feel collect to the start of each stanza sounding equal an equation if, then, but not so. The first two stanzas are very formulated in an abab rhyme scheme and are very direct.This stru cture seems to contradict the theme of the poem quite nicely by contrasting form versus the random. The third stanza, however, feels much more colloquial, and is more abstract and personal than the first two stanzas. Hardy uses a caesura, an ellipses, and a rhetorical question to add to the scepticism contained in his argument, and to make the stanza feel more conversational that the other two. The first stanza creates an imaginary being by arguing that IF there was a god to blame for wrongs against him, it would be a vengeful god that rejoices in pain, sooner than the opposing notion of a appealing god.In this poem, Hardy rejects the religious standard of God, and imagines one who delights in loss and trauma. It seems to pervert the introductory notion of a divine god by imagining one who states know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy. By using if, Hardy seems to be wishing for such a god, for reasons explained in the following stanzas. In stanza two, Hardy describes the presence of this imagined vengeful god as a relief by cognize the truth as to why he is allotted pain. It is because of this knowing that Hardy would be able to bear it, clench myself, and die half-eased.His mention of the unmerited seems in reference point to religion again, as it is believed that Gods mercy is unmerited to the human race, just as Hardys vengeful gods anger is unmerited to him. - Finally, in stanza three, Hardy seems to give his own world view in a colloquial nature. The image of unblooming symbolizes hope travel to pieces as a rose whitethorn unbloom. Hardy also names circumstances Crass Casualty chance, and dicing Time all meant as fragmented time, or a gambling of time.Hardy states that the Doomsters, or half blind judges of fate (Crass Casualty and dicing Time) haphazardly allot both pain and pleasure, and with that, he look ats the uncertainty of fate. Thomas Hardys Hap later reading Thomas Hardys Hap, I was left confused and left(p) with feelings of eschaton an d questions of lifes sufferings. I could not quite grasp what it is the author is trying to say due to any my unfamiliar with the language or the obscureness in his riddles. With some research, I was able to better understand, or better come to an understanding of, Hardys nitty-gritty in this piece.Beginning with the title of Hap, and considering it the piece of happening, I read that this word was an archaic parable of chance, or luck (http//www. merriam-webster. com/dictionary/hap). This is quite important in trying to give way this poem in that Hardy questions whether the introduction of such a vengeful god is the reason for lifes cruelties. Hardy presumes that only with the creative activity of such a god could there be defense for allowing such evils in the world for their own pleasure and ecstasy, that the characters loves loss is the gods hates profiting. (1073) However, uncertainty in such the existence of a god is displayed as we draw the structure of the three sta nzas (credit to danamercer. blogspot. com for seeing this). The If, Then, But not so structure is like that of an argument, leading up to a conclusion. The first stanza states that If there is such a god that has pleasure in his suffering and sorrow, Then he would bear it, clench and die meaning he would accept it for he must submit to that which is more Powerfuller who has willed his tears. But it is not so. Concluding that there does not exist such a God or any God for suffering is but many of natures Hap events, and thus the importance of the title. To the character, all of lifes pain and suffering is but a dicing or roll of the dice, a gamble rather. He doesnt believe in the existence of a god that has joy in lifes slain and that allows the unblooms the best hope ever sown. What is the purpose of idolizing and turning to such a God that hates us so?How can there be such a god that is so unjust and morbid? The terminal answer is that it is just Crass Casualty that obstructs th e sun and rain due to only chance itself. This belief is reinforced as Hardy identifies the Doomsters as purblind as well as their reasons for his pains. Why is doom what he encounters although he is searching for the light of god (my pilgrimage). He is insatiable with the existence of such a god as he states Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited. He feels so beefed-up in the rongness of a vengeful god that only by bearing it and dieing would he accept this. The poem is very dramatic as it represents the authors fight with faith and the existence of a God that could allow the sufferings of life. Conversely, how can there be a God that controls everything, including the free will of humans. Thats just one of many arguments against a God that would only allow evil as well as good in the world. Because we are human, and because we have free will, we will invariably have two sides of the coin, good and evil.And one cannot exist without the other, for they are dependently defined. H ardys remaining answer is his realization that chance or Hap is the defining defense for lifes Crass Casualty. Hardys style is indeed vocalization of the transition from Victorian/Romanticism to innovative views in that the good does not perpetually win and that things doesnt always happen for a reason since he considers chance as one of the answers much traditionalist vault when they consider purpose for the answer of all unanswered questions.