Thomas Hardy Notes on Hap

germ doubting doubting Thomas audacious First Published 1898 Type of Poem Sonnet Genres Poe crusade, Sonnet Subjects Suffering, Despair, theology, Pain, skilful and evil, divinity fudges or graven imagedesses, Fate or fatalism, Life, philosophy of, Life and death, epoch, Joy or mourning, Luck or misfortune The Poem Thomas intrepid has organize f every(prenominal) out to meet all the requirements of the fake of an English sonnet Its cardinal personal credit lines are written in iambic pentameter, the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg is complied with, and the terce quatrains are followed by a rhymed couplet to conclude the meter. ____________________________________________________________________________________ authorize Thomas insolent *If you need to find mostthing quickly, I suggest you stimulate CTRL + F and type in what you are looking for. * Hap(1) If save some revengeful matinee idol would leaveress to me From up the sky, and laugh Thou hapless thin g, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy That thy honors dismission is my hates profiting Then would I induce it, clench myself and die, Steeled by the consciousness of the ire(2) undeserved Half eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted(3) me the crying I shed. just now non so. How arrives it gratification lies slain,And why unblooms the outstrip commit ever s have got? -Crass Casualty obstructs the lie and rain, And dicing duration for gladness casts a moan These pur maneuver Doomsters(4) had as quickly strown Blisses well-nigh my pilgrimage as offend. References 1 Chance (aka Casualty line 11) 2 Anger 3 Given 4 Half-blind judges Author Thomas stout (1840 1928) His fakes usually show the struggle mingled with disposition of man, inside and out, to shape human destiny. solo through endurance, valiance or simple act of good can his characters overcome the chastening of un cognisen forces guiding them through disembodied spirit blindly.Explanat ion (My professor once said, To really enjoy what we have forwards us, we essentialiness not be gluttons. We must be mannered universes who adhere to the rules of society and take in, what we have before us, a morsel at a time. ) Essentially what he meant was, Dont try to understand the entire thing at freshman-class honours degree. Take it in by sentences, indeed stanzas and then you will have arrived at the entire idea. But for this poetry, we need to look at it semi-collectively Let us begin with the first 2 stanzas 1st STANZA If besides some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh Thou suffering thing,Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy That thy crawl ins loss is my hates profiting 2nd STANZA Then would I suffer it, clench myself and die, Steeled by the sense of the ire(2) unmerited Half eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted(3) me the tears I shed. So what did we just read? A lot of mumbo giant at first glance. But I promise that t here is a meaning here. Our friend Thomas wishes for an angry god to peer master at him and laugh. Because god is such(prenominal)(prenominal) a powerful being that rains cut out misfortunes on humans, braw would have some ace to target his raise towards.Hardy would know that God made him suffer and so Hardy would be altogether alright dying hating god. 3rd Stanza But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? -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. Hardy finishes off this poem by hinting that his anger towards god would be unjustified. God does not bring forth hardly sadness, he too brings forth happiness and hope. If god gives us both, then why does Hardy need to be so depressed? wherefore can not he be passing happy? Hardys issue to his own philosophical question is It is not some supreme being giving m e happiness and then giving me sadness based on my actions. It is just random chance. It is random chance that I have been extremely happy and extremely depressed. Summary Hardy wishes that god exist alone sadly, he doesnt. Because all the good things and bighearted things that transcend to us arent based, created or assigned by a powerful being at all. It all depends on luck, chance or Hap. My Opinion Not especially my positron emission tomography poem aesthetically. The idea however is quite challenging.It reminds me of a young philosopher who is skeptical why bad things happen to good people. Surely it is chance, except what Hardy is hinting towards is what if it is a bad thing only because we THINK it is a bad thing? It is almost circular. I do not know over 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 entirely agnostic. This poem shows that struggle. - Hap is a poem by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) that he wro te in 1866, mend working as a trainee architect, and for which he could not find a publisher.It did not r from each one the general public until 1898 when Hardy included it in his first collection, which was entitled Wessex Poems, which only appeared after he had concluded his passage as a highly successful novelist. The poem is a sonnet, although it is presented as three stanzas in that the traditional musical octave is split into two stanzas each of four lines and the sestet is a stanza on its own. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEFFE, which is a variant on the Shakespearean form, although the clean break between octave and sestet is more associated with the Petrarchan sonnet form.The poem can be seen as Hardys reaction to the basic thinking that underlies Darwins The ancestry of Species which had been published in 1859. Hardy mum Darwin to imply that the mechanism that herd natural selection was mere accident and chance. Although this is generally held to be a misinterpretat ion of Darwins theory, it was one that was widely held and it was also a pen why many Victorians regarded Darwinism as being a version of godlessness and because to be condemned.Hardy had no wish to reject what he understood to be Darwins theory, but he wanted to come to call with it, and Hap is one such attempt. The opening quatrain is headed by If and the second by Then hence they can each be regarded as breach clauses of the same sentence that seems to propound a statement of logic. The If clause represents a somewhat Old Testament view of some vengeful god who delights in causing sorrow to mankind and to the poet in particular.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 true the idea that his misfortune was ca utilize by a supernatural force, or would at least have been Half-eased by the knowledge that he was the victim of one who w as Powerfuller than I. His attitude seems to be similar to that of Gloucester in Shakespeares power Lear when he says As flies 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 reality which the poet now appreciates in the post-Darwinian creation, that is to say 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 standardised the gods in most mythologies but are completely indifferent. This is clear 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 prefer qualified, that which supposes that the gods are mold on destroying mans happiness, or the cosmos revealed by Darwin in which the forces of nature are mechanical and purposeless and man has as good a chance of happiness as of despair? There is evidence that Hardy stressed to his critics that he was not replacing one source of cosmic oppression with an different, and he was in fact quoted as saying that The world does not despise us it only neglects us (See The Life of Thomas Hardy, by Florence Emily Hardy, p. 8). The implication 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 freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. There is a brain-teaser 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 blighted love affair, but, although Hardy had several(prenominal) lady friends who came and went at this time in his career, there were none who were, as yet, potential marriage partne rs.This suggests that the best hope had more to do with Hardys misadventure to get his poetry into print. Hardy believed himself to be a talented poet and was surprised and disappointed that none of the journals to which he sent his work were willing to buy it. Perhaps there is a clue to this failure in the line quoted above an editor who saw unblooms instead of blooms not might have considered that this was not poetical 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 taste in England. An aspiring poet who did not conform to the standard set by Tennyson would no doubt struggle to find an audience. - Hap would in all likelihood not strike the modern reader as being anything particularly remarkable. It is well constructed, with a single train of thought that does not actuate down any side tracks. The language is well-controlled, with every word do an impact.However, by not being Tennysonian enough, and expressing a view that seemed to side with Darwinism against the sacred orthodoxy of the day, Hardys surprise at not being able to publish poems such as this should surely not have been as great as it was. Hardy unveils his determinism in this poem as a refreshing start to the Twentieth Century. This poem seems to take the shape of an modify sonnet. Divided into the three stanza, the poem has a scientific feel collectible to the start of each stanza sounding like an equation if, then, but not so. The first two stanzas are very conjecture in an abab rhyme scheme and are very direct.This social structure seems to diverge 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, rather than the opposing flavour of a benevolent god.In this poem, Hardy rejects the unearthly standard of God, and imagines one who delights in loss and suffering. It seems to pervert the previous 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 knowing the faithfulness 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 to religion again, as it is believed that Gods mercy is unmerited to the human race, just as Hardys vengeful gods anger is unmeri ted to him. - Finally, in stanza three, Hardy seems to give his own world view in a colloquial nature. The image of unblooming symbolizes hope falling to pieces as a rose may unbloom. Hardy also names fate Crass Casualty chance, and dicing Time either 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) randomly allot both pain and pleasure, and with that, he accepts the uncertainty of fate. Thomas Hardys Hap After reading Thomas Hardys Hap, I was left confused and curious with feelings of crack of doom and questions of lifes sufferings. I could not quite grasp what it is the author is nerve-racking to say due to either my unfamiliar with the language or the obscurity in his riddles. With some research, I was able to better understand, or better come to an understanding of, Hardys message in this piece.Beginning with the title of Hap, and considering it the piece of happening, I read that th is word was an archaic metaphor of chance, or luck (http//www. merriam-webster. com/dictionary/hap). This is quite important in trying to dissect this poem in that Hardy questions whether the existence of such a vengeful god is the reason for lifes cruelties. Hardy presumes that only with the existence of such a god could there be plea 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 identify the structure of the three stanzas (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 no t 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 last-place answer is that it is just Crass Casualty that obstructs the 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 uneasy with the existence of such a god as he states Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited. He feels so strong in the rongness of a vengeful god tha t 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 continuously have two sides of the coin, good and evil.And one cannot exist without the other, for they are dependently defined. Hardys remaining answer is his realization that chance or Hap is the defining justification for lifes Crass Casualty. Hardys style is indeed representative of the transition from Victorian/Romanticism to modernistic views in that the good does not always win and that things doesnt always happen for a reason since he considers chance as one of the answers much traditionalist overlook when they consider purpo se for the answer of all unreciprocated questions.