The Cosmic Poet (1903-1908)
universe seem close about us. Both authors dwell among the clouds and, like Socrates, are at home there. Both are actuated by the keenest pity for the wretchedness of human life, and by an overwhelming fear of the unknown and unknowable—the two governing motives of all that is best in tragedy, according to Aristotle. Hardy represents the culmination of an age of scepticism and of the storm and stress of religious doubt, analogous to the age which immediately followed the generation of Æschylus in Greece and was represented by the critical attitude assumed by Euripides in matters of orthodox pagan beliefs. Such an age almost invariably follows a conventionally "romantic" one. Hardy follows Æschylus in sequence of ideas much more naturally than one would expect, considering the lapse of so many centuries.
The very real closeness of Thomas Hardy to the classical ideal in dealing with an epic subject can be observed in the fact that he centers his attention on broad questions of Destiny and Collective Will, viewing individual human suffering sympathetically, but as no more than a by-product. This is an attitude frequently found in classical writers and not always perfectly understood by modern readers. In the Trachinian Women of Sophocles, for instance, one cannot fail to be struck by Heracles' lack of forgiveness for Deianeira and his utter disregard for her feelings, but we may be certain that the members of the Athenian audience did not notice this, with their attention centred in the divine mission of the hero. Likewise in the Æneid, Dido's tragic end, so disturbing to modern notions of the ideal relations between hero and heroine, was probably dwarfed immeasurably in the eyes
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