Hardy

I have not read yet anything by Vidiadhae Surayprasad Naipaul (V. S. Naipaul), but after his utterances in the Royal Geographical Society last May, I am not sure if I will. I feel curious, that's the truth, but what can you believe from a man who says that his work has never been appreciated in the UK, but holds the title of Sir at the same time? He has been awarded at least 6 important British Literary prizes since 1958, and his recognition spread after his winning the Nobel Prize in 2001... What exactly is he talking about?

Perhaps, his intellectual power has already reached the barren threshold above which nothing will blossom again. That happened to many others before.

The point at which I am in complete disagreement with him is in his saying that Thomas Hardy was and "unbearable writer" who did not know how to compose a paragraph. Oh, men! What a stupid comment! What does he mean with it? I am only now starting to read The Return of the Native, and Hardy's writting is indeed not straightforward, but vivid and poetic. As the great poet he was:

"To sorrow
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me and so kind.
I would deceive her,
And so leave her
But ah! she is so constant and so kind".

Or the beloved woman in Beeny Cliff I have already quoted months ago. In The Return of Native he starts by presenting the Egdon Heath, a place "on which time makes but little impression". Who has not seen the image of a dusk growing above a wild land, being the soil half-an-hour darker than the sky, and with distinct, distant rims of earth and firmament clearly separated?

And listen to this: "It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature -neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly: neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seems to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities".

The negative sequence of three adjectives and that of two-positive ones placed in order and symmetry in the first two lines are nice. The action is simply presented in two realms (locus and personae) in the last two sentences and forecasted in saying "tragical possibilities". The powerful image of loneliness is presented in two directions: outwards (solitude looks out) and inwards (it had a lonely face).

Hardy: I suspect he is a festival for the text analyzer, a truly wizard of eternal and immovable human images. I like it!

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