This is Thomas Hardy's Study (1840- 1928), copied from his study in Max Gate. They say everything is as original as possible. Four-walled books, a desk and some round-backed chairs. His coat rested on the round-backed chair and leaned against the cane. Hardy's portrait hangs on the wall, silently overlooking his study and constant visitors.
In such a room, he wrote many novels, poems and a poetic drama on this table, with some stationery and a small calendar on the table. March 7th is on the calendar. It is said that this is the day when Hardy first met his wife. After her death, Hardy raised the calendar to today, so that this day can be kept forever. The curator picked up three ivory dip pens, saying that they were used to write The Wood Man, Tess of the D 'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.
There are his manuscripts, works and many reading notes on the bookshelf, and all kinds of materials are recorded. Thick books are well bound. It is said that this museum has the richest collection of Hardy's manuscripts. The curator opened a book, The Mayor of Casterbridge, which was printed neatly and hardly changed. It suddenly occurred to me that now that there is a typewriter, there will be no need for museums to collect manuscripts in the future, and people will have no fun reading manuscripts. There is a letter in this manuscript, which Hardy wrote to the person in charge of the museum at that time. Thank you for asking for my manuscript. It's just not necessarily worth saving. Why not collect William Barnes' manuscripts? That's worth it! This last exclamation point impressed me deeply. Almost a hundred years have passed, which proves that Hardy's own works are worthwhile! It's worth reading, studying and opening a museum-maybe it's not enough, it's worth crossing the ocean to see his Wessex, Eden Wilderness and Casterbridge.
William Barnes is a native of Douste and a local poet in this area. There is a statue of him in the street. Hardy spoke highly of him. 1908, he edited and published a collection of poems for him. Hardy himself can be said to be a local writer to some extent. But he is very different from Barnes. Barnes "retreated from the times and the world and wrapped himself in an unrealistic bubble", while Hardy's consciousness was "always open to the times and the world". Hardy himself said in the preface to Wessex's novels in 19 12: "Although the environment of most people in the novels is limited to the north of the Thames and the south of the English Channel, the eastern boundary is from Heling Island to Windsor Forest, and the west is the Coney Coast, I want to write them as typical, and they belong to any place in essence, where' thought is the slave of life, and life is time. In the minds of these characters, the obvious locality should be truly cosmopolitan. " Hardy called his fourteen novels and four short stories with strong local color Wessex novels, but these novels reflect the society and life, far from just the life in that area. Novels always have an environment and the environment is always limited, but really good works always go beyond that environment and touch the whole world.
Hardy's four tragic novels The Return of the Native, Tess of the D 'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure are such novels. When I was reading The Return of the Native in the early 1940s, I was deeply attracted by Eden Wasteland. Later, I learned that the use of the natural environment is a major feature of Hardy's novels, and The Return of the Native is the representative work of this feature. Hardy's wasteland is alive. It has expressions, shouts and manipulates the activities of the characters. It is the background, the role, and the role that runs through every role. Bird's-eye view of English literature is often selected from a description at the beginning of The Return of the Native:
Hanging in the sky is not only such a gray tent, but also the most lush irrigation on the ground, so the boundaries between heaven and earth on the horizon are clear. ..... The surface of the wasteland, just because of the color, added half an hour to the dusk. It can delay the dawn and dim the noon under the same circumstances; The storm has almost disappeared, and it shows the gloomy face of the storm in advance; In the middle of the night, there is no moon, it is deeper and darker, which makes people tremble and fear.
Today, when I see the wilderness of Dorset, I seldom feel that it is vast and eternal. English friends drove us to the wasteland, and the plants under the ground were obviously not as gloomy as described in the book, nor did they form such a sharp contrast with the sky. I don't want to travel which hill Tessa is standing on. From a distance, it is green, open and plain. In the preface to The Return of the Native written by 1895, Hardy said that he wrote The Waste Land from 1840 to 1850. When he wrote the preface, the wasteland had been reclaimed or planted, which was not quite like it. We went in 1984, of course, the change was even greater. The impression of wilderness atmosphere is as strong as wine, and it is more and more mixed with water. Maybe it's because the original description was so successful that it always feels different. But I have no regrets. We are also allowed to go to a highland closed to foreigners and have a look at the wilderness. The sky and the ground only feel gray, as if lined with gloom, which shows that this is not an easy place. After all, I saw Hardy's heartbroken Eden wasteland.
We also visited Hardy's birthplace. Through a tall forest, I came to a hut. This kind of English cottage is very beautiful and always reminds people of fairy tales. There is an English lady whose doctoral thesis is Beijing Siheyuan. Someone should study this kind of English hut. It's uncomfortable inside, and the roof is low and quite wet. Like Milton's former residence, this house is occupied by tenants and managed at the same time. Starting from his birthplace, he went to the church and cemetery in the small village-Stingsford Cemetery. Hardy's parents and wife are buried here.
Buried here is Hardy's own heart.
The cemetery is small and not as crowded as some cemeteries. Under a big tree, three sarcophagus-like tombs stand side by side, and the middle one says "Hardy's heart is buried here". This is also the grave of his first wife.
It is said that Hardy had a will before his death and will be buried in his hometown after his death, but people think that he should enjoy the honor of being buried in Westminster Abbey. So, after careful consideration, I decided to leave his heart in the wilderness. But there was an unusual and terrible experience in his heart. If Hardy knew this himself, he might have to write a sad, perhaps ironic masterpiece for his heart.
No one can say whether this is true or not, but English friends say it is true-I hope not. After Hardy's body was carried away, his heart was left to a farmer to guard. He put it on the windowsill for burial the next day. When I saw it the next day, my heart was gone, and there was a cat sitting next to me.
They had to bury the cat. So in Hardy's coffin, there is his heart, his wife and a cat! I used to like cats very much, but after listening to this story, I didn't want to see cats for a long time. But even through the cat's skin, Hardy's heart stayed in the wilderness, with the soil of the wilderness. It exudes the fragrance of the wilderness and nourishes everything in the wilderness.
The discussion about Hardy's works has been overwhelming. Especially pessimism and fatalism. The characters in his works are teased by the children of fate, and no matter how they struggle, they can't escape the tragic ending. Just like the flies in Mansfield's later work The Fly. If a drop or two of ink falls, no matter how it flaps its wings, it will never fly out of the deep pool of ink. Hardy's fate is accidental and seems irresistible and doomed, but the main frustration of the characters obviously comes from society. The author has a comment in Tess of the D 'Urbervilles, saying, "In the future, when human civilization has evolved to the supremacy, human intuition will naturally be more acute than it is now, and the relationship between social institutions will naturally be closer than it is now." He also hopes to have a less painful society. Tess, a beautiful and pure girl, was forced by life and environment to do what she didn't want to do but had to do step by step, missed her love again and again, and was finally cornered. Such a tragedy not only accuses an unreasonable society, but also shows the complex character in Hardy's works. Because you are noble and innocent, you are in a quagmire. Hardy named this kind of novels "character and environment novels". In the conflict between personality and environment (not only the conflict between good and evil, but also the conflict between good and good), the characters step by step towards death. This is the tragic content revealed by Hegel's The Old Man.
We passed Max Gatt's old house. Because it is closed, we only see a big house outside the courtyard wall, which Hardy began to take care of and build from 1883. He came from an architect's family and studied architecture himself. He moved in on 1885 until his death. It is said that someone lives there. I don't know who dares to occupy Hardy's former residence!
The last stop of this visit is the famous hanging sun altar, which is a large group of rocks in the endless wilderness. It is said to be a temple dedicated to the sun around 2800. Pieces of stones weighing about 50 tons, some upright, some inclined, some flat on other stones, just like there used to be a magnificent giant here, and now only the skeleton is left. The cold wind blows from all directions in the open wilderness, echoing in the ear, as if no matter how history advances, this skeleton is still calling for the past.
I stood by the altar and it took me a long time to realize that this was where Tess was arrested. She fell asleep at the back door. Angie told people to wait, and they waited. Tess woke up and said quietly, "I'm done." Go! " Of course, these rocks, which have experienced thousands of years of wind and rain, know that there is more than one person like Tess in this wilderness full of primitive and rough breath.
My graduation thesis was about Hardy, which was thirty-five years ago. At that time, I felt that Hardy's works were not completely pessimistic, but hopeful. The example given is the combination of Angie and Tess's sister at the end of Tess, which means that Tess's life can not be achieved by herself, but by her sister. Recently, I heard that many undergraduate and graduate students have written papers about Hardy, so that all the reference books about Hardy have been borrowed. Among them is a young friend of mine. He loves Hardy deeply, and his thesis is entitled Tess. He thinks that the combination of Angie and Lisa Lu is Angie's betrayal of Tess, which shows that human nature is unreliable. Some comments also hold this view. I still stick to my original point of view. Hardy himself clearly stated in the preface of "Late and Early Lyrics": "I hold hope alone. Although philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Hartman, including my respected Einstein, scoffed at hope. " He also said in his diary: "Let everyone create his own philosophy according to his own personal life experience." Hardy himself created a promising philosophy. His criticism of capitalist society in his works is ruthless, but what he left behind is hope for life.
On the issue of pessimism and optimism, Hardy also said that what he wrote was his own impression, without any creed or argument. These impressions are accused of pessimism-it seems to be a curse-which is ridiculous, he said. "Obviously, there is a higher philosophical feature, which is higher than the pessimism, social goodness and even optimism held by critics, and that is truth."
It takes courage and skill to see the truth carefully, and it takes courage and skill to write after seeing it. Hardy was attacked for writing novels, and Jude the Obscure was burned in public. Some people say that he changed his career to write poems in his later years, while others say that he changed his career for family reasons. I thought he always wanted to write poetry. When writing novels, there are often poems hovering in his mind. If he wants to fall into his pen, he also gives the poem some time. He may also think that the form of poetry is more hidden and he can say what he wants to say. As a matter of fact, he has been writing poems intermittently since he was young.
After returning to London, I changed from visiting ancient times to visiting today. However, I often think of Douste town. On Sunday, all the shops were closed and it was very quiet. The picture under the slope not far from the hotel: an English hut with a small bridge next to it, and a light yellow full moon shining on the treetops; I think the bronze statue of Hardy should be moved here. He is sitting in the street now. Although there are not many people in the town, it is noisy enough. Later, I learned that this hut has a name, which is the residence of the executioner. I feel lucky that Hardy was born in modern times and knew that he would bury Westminster Abbey before his death (in fact, there are many people in the corner of poets, not as many as Stepford's cemetery). If he had been in the Middle Ages, he would have dealt with the executioner.
"If you offend others for the sake of truth, it is better to offend others than to bury the truth." These are the words of Saint Jerome quoted by Hardy in the introduction of the first edition of Tess. It seems that even if he has the future of dealing with the executioner, he will not let go of his huge sum.
Hardy's birthplace exhibited translations from all over the world, but there was no Chinese translation from People's Republic of China (PRC). When he came back, he asked someone to bring him a copy of Away from the hubbub. After this paper was finished, I received a letter from Mr. Beals, the curator of Douste Museum. He asked me to tell my colleagues that they have been looking forward to the opportunity to welcome guests from China.
Frankly speaking, I dropped Hardy's crutch twice in the museum. Maybe it was careless, maybe it was too cautious. British friends said Hardy certainly wouldn't care. But I still want to apologize to him and to the readers all over the world who love him.
Finishing: zhl20 1703