contexts for eliot or hardy

kms

Modernism

Modernism is the cultural and literary movement that emerged in the growingly industrialised and secular world of the 19th and 20th centuries. It focused on the effects of urbanisation and technological advancements on society as well as individuals, often exploring fragmented portraits and voices as amalgamations of the Western world. It sought to break away from traditional spiritual and artistic norms, such as Romanticism, to reflect the complexities of human existence. Modernists opposed popular culture and saw the growth of art as a commodity which they saw as evidence of increasingly mechanised ways of life. Modernist work tended to focus on non-traditional style and structure over content.

‘Modernism […] is the one art that responds to the _________ of our _____.’ - James McFarlane

scenario / chaos

Hardy life

Thomas Hardy’s upbringing in Dorset before moving to the industrialised London as an architect apprentice influenced his litereary themes like conflict between nature and society, as well as constraints that the modern world places on individuals. His experiences in the smog-filled London opposed to the countryside in Dorset shaped his poetry as he explored tragedy of modern life.

The Boer War - Eswatini and South Africa

The Boer was started with the idea of the prospect of gold being discovered in the Transvaal region, leading to conflicts between the British Empire and the two Boer republics. Hardy intesnely rejected this and saw it as a futile conflict driven by imperialism, reflecting his anti-war sentiments and the suffering inflicted on both soldiers and civilians.

Evolutionary meliorism

Hardy’s idea of “evolutionary meliorism,” the hope that human action could make life better, and despite using often traditional structures and forms, his innovation in terms of the portraits and voices in his poetry certainly offered a sense of pervasive fatalism juxtaposed against ‘serene inhabitant of the natural world’ as claimed by Claire Tomalin.

Emma Quote

‘He understands only the women he invents - the others, not at all.’

Buddhist

Eliot, before becoming Anglican, believed strongly in the Buddhist idea of Karma, whichb

‘Everyone gets the __________. Some get the ______.’ - TS Eliot

experience / lesson

‘Anxiety is the hand maiden of _________.’ - TS Eliot

creativity

‘Genuine poetry can __________ before it is __________.’ - TS Eliot

communicated / understood

‘Talent ________, genius ______.’ - TS Eliot

imitates / steals - point is geniuses can steal because they make something great out of it

‘I am blind to the ______ of […] Thomas Hardy.’ - Eliot

mertis

The premiere of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps - 1913

Listeners accustomed the idea of tonal music with a main pulse or meter that would carry throughout were thrown off by music that had no tonal centre (or too many tonal centres), and a seemingly lack of form. - fragmentation of Eliot’s work

Wordsworth’s Preludes - Eliot’s Preludes

The narrator in Wordsworth’s poem makes an ecstatic speech about the ‘vales’ and ‘harbours’ and the ‘blessing in this gentle breeze’, Eliot has chosen to focus on dank pictures of idsillusioned city life.

1922 is described as the _____ _______

annus mirablis / the Wasteland was written this year

‘In ____, human nature ______.’ Virginia Woolf

1910 / changed

Eliot’s poetry is ‘___-like’ - Sylvia Plath

god

‘Hardy’s works grapple with the _______ between human ______ and moral ____________, often leading to ______ outcomes.’

tension / desire / inevitability / tragic

‘In Hardy’s writing, ________ is rarely clear-cut’ - J.O. Bailey

morality

‘Hardy’s ______ and ____________ [is] unsophisticated’ - Leavis

oddity / idiosyncrasy

‘His subjects are men and the ____ of men, time and _______ of time, love and the ______ of love’ - Philip Larking

lives / passing / fading

‘Hardy is a poet of ___ […] that dwells on human ________’ - Davie

loss / morality

Hardy is a ‘poet of _____ _________’ - Davie

rural nostalgia

‘Hardy’s poetry is a […] perpetual _____ on the death of ___________’ - Richardson

elegy / possibility

‘Hardy avoids the _________, focusing instead on a _____ world’ - Riquelme

spritiual / human

‘The business of a poet is to show the _________ underlying the grandest things, and the ________ underlying the sorriest things.’ - Hardy

sorriness / grandeur

‘If his poetry has a _______, it is perhaps that life can be most deeply _____ if we observe.’ - Hebron

message / lived

The Wasteland is widely regarded as…

…‘the poem of the century’

Eliot’s career

After working as a teacher, perhaps motivating some allegorical elements to his poetry, suggesting his innate desire to enlighten, Eliot pursued a shockingly succesful career in banking at Lloyds bank, despite his aversion to the world of modernity.

Eliot’s spirituality

Eliot converted to Orthodox Christianity in the late thirties

Russian revolution

Ocurring in 1917, the Russian revolution, and strengthening of both Facist and Communist parties throughout Europe showed ordinary people to be more inclined to question their rulers, with many historians arguing this to be the true Fin de siècle. Perhaps this was symptomatic of a society saturated with a sense of ennui and desire to revolutionise the monotony of the newly mechanised world.

Challengers of religion

Karl Marx ‘religion is the opiate of the masses’ (Communist Manifesto 1848)

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (1905) that challenged accepted scientific certainties

Freud and Jung

Modern society to Eliot

For Eliot, modern society lacked a spiritual centre and pivotal sense of collectivism, with humanity no longer existing as a community but isolated beings that lacked individuality, and with sexual relationships being meaningless and sterile. The Wasteland, for this reason perhaps, explores the spritiuality of other past religions and cultures to explore the possibility of salvation and intellectual vitality to be regained.

The Fisher King

Tracing back to Welsh literature, the tale of the Fisher King depicts a cursed land, laid to waste. The Fisher King is impotent and his people lack fertility and vitality. There is a grail which contains the waters of life, which bring back abundance and vividity to the land, only lifting the curse by the arrival of a stranger who must pose or answer certain questions. The young man (Hero or Fool) leaves his home in the Wasteland and goes on a questo to eventually ask the question ‘Whom does this grail serve?’ which saves the land.

The Epigraph of The Wasteland

Translation of the end: ‘What do you want Sybil?’ She answered, ‘I want to die.’

Comes from The Satyricon by Petronius, and author of the late Roman Empire, who wrote about the vulgarity and decadence of the period. Sybil wishes to live forever but still ages so is kept in a cage in pain.

Hardy and Darwin

He read On the Origin of Species the year it was published in 1859. Hardy appeared to take on both the acceptance of a life of struggle, but also an fascination with the evolutionary branchong tree metaphor that is the foundation of Darwin’s proposed system. He was also intruiged by the Darwinian sense of time passing for human life to develop, leaving individual human life to be inexplicably short, evoking a sense of futility and ennui in those which resonated with these views.