Moments of Vision
Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses is a collection of poems by English poet Thomas Hardy published in 1917. His largest poetic collection (including as it did the wartime sequence 'Poems of War and Patriotism'),[1] Moments of Vision is (for Hardy's poetry) unusually unified in emotional tone, and is considered to include some of the finest work of his late poetic career.[2]
Themes
[edit]The key-note (and title) of the collection was given by the opening poem, with its examination of the mystery of consciousness in a material world,[3] setting the stage for the introspective meditation on human feeling that pervades much of the volume.[4] Having successfully achieved an integration of past and present in the Poems 1912-13,[5] Hardy was able to capitalise on his ability to work through long-buried emotions in the present, balancing the vitality of his past visions against the march of time.[6]
Some thirty poems related to his first wife, Emma,[7] while other notable poems included were "The Last Signal", on William Barnes,[8] and "Logs on the Hearth" about his recently deceased sister.[9]
Influence
[edit]- Virginia Woolf took Hardy's phrase as a key to the occasions of heightened intensity that gave meaning to life: "the year is marked by moments of great intensity. Hardy's 'moments of vision'".[10]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ M. Seymour-Smith, Thomas Hardy (London 1994) p. 797
- ^ I. Ousby, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (CUP 1995) p. 641
- ^ M. Seymour-Smith, Thomas Hardy (London 1994) p. 849-50
- ^ I. Ousby, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (CUP 1995) p. 641
- ^ J. C. Brown, A Journey into Thomas Hardy's Poetry (London 1989) p. 162
- ^ J. Lucas, Modern English Poetry: From Hardy to Hughes (London 1986) p. 47
- ^ M. Seymour-Smith, Thomas Hardy (London 1994) p. 848
- ^ I. Ousby, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (CUP 1995) p. 641
- ^ J. Lucas, Modern English Poetry: From Hardy to Hughes (London 1986) p. 48 and p. 33
- ^ H. Lee, Virginia Woolf (London 1996) p. 319
External links
[edit]- Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses at Project Gutenberg
- Moments of Vision:Texts
- Moments of Vision: Audio selection
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