Hap
If but 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 love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
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 had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
At the beginning of the poem, T.Hardy rejects God and he says ıf there was a God, he would be a revengeful God.Hardy opposes the notion of a benevolent God and thinks that God rejoices in pain.
ReplyDeleteWhile Hardy says:'Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited', he thinks God's anger is unmerited to him.And at the end of the poem, he accepts uncertainity of fate.
In the last stanza, Hardy is telling that he is sure that a god could not exist and life is not written in stone and man goes on his life with his own choices. All other occurences/events are chance.He is saying that he controls his destiny.
ReplyDeletethe most important thing here that draws my attention is that he doesnt even need to capitalize the name 'god' in the first stanza. and i have searched for it. and come across with an explanation that this may indicate his lack of believe in God. because he doesnt believe in God, he doesnt feel the necessity to capitalize the first letter of the 'god'.
ReplyDeleteit reflects his unchristian stance.
hardy says that he doesnt believe, cannot believe while the others believe in god and see the positive things of life. According to my readings he had an unhappy personality and his way of thinking god is to some aspect is rational, because while he was suffering from his loneliness, the others were enjoying being closer. and when we think about the some reality of the life, we can easily say that bad people generally have the pleasures of life. So his questioning of where is the fairness of god when good things happen to bad people is really discussible.
ReplyDeleteÖznur Öztürk
ReplyDeleteWe can find so many examples in the poem which tells us that hardy does not believe in God.In addition to my friends' comments there is one more thing I want to mention.
In the last line of the poem
(Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.)there is a word pilgrimage.This term is something related to religion.Pilgrimage is a methaphore here.It stands for a kind of meaningless journey.For him people go for pilgrimage in vain.
Fatma Kaya
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with Merve Önder . In the first stanza he refers to a "god" without the capital letter indicating his unchristian views. It is almost mocking in the way that he choses not to capitalise the name to express lack of believe. Through this poem we can see the rejection of victorian belief in a benevolent god. He begins by asking questions, with a sense of uncertainity, and ends with his own answers. And also "Powerfuller" is capitalised with in comparison to the lower case of "god" shows how Hardy has a stonger believe in a Powerful force than a higher being.
We can see easily that he rejects the belief of God. He criticize both God and the peaople who believe in.He underestimates the God's power and see the people who believe in as "half-eased".
ReplyDeletesedef konuk
ReplyDeleteThe poem's major theme seems to be this sense of the world being ruled by a hostile and blind fate, not by a generous and kind God. This is clearly stated within the poem itself as Hardy writes in the lines:
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky and laugh: "Thou suffering thing..."
BUKET TANYERİ
ReplyDeleteHardy is saying that only random chance is responsible for his suffering. In the last two lines of his poem he writes about the fact that random chance has indifferently given him as many blessings as sufferings in his life.
I search something about the faith of Hardy in God and religios and I find this text in wikipedia.I want to share it with you
ReplyDelete***Hardy’s idea of fate in life gave way to his philosophical struggle with God. Although Hardy’s faith remained intact, the irony and struggles of life led him to question the traditional Christian view of God:
“ The Christian god — the external personality — has been replaced by the intelligence of the First Cause…the replacement of the old concept of God as all-powerful by a new concept of universal consciousness. The 'tribal god, man-shaped, fiery-faced and tyrannous' is replaced by the 'unconscious will of the Universe' which progressively grows aware of itself and 'ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic'.[8] ***
ın here, we can see Thomas' unchristianity.
İlknur Kaya
ReplyDeleteIn this poem, Hardy rejects the religious standard of God, and imagines one who delights in loss and suffering.The first part 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 opposing notion of a benevolent god.In the last part,Hardy is saying that only random chance is responsible for his suffering. In the last two lines of his poem he writes about the fact that random chance has indifferently given him as many blessings as sufferings in his life.
When we read the whole poem, we can comment on his attitude to believing god. He starts poem with questions and answer these questions by his own thoughts and feelings. And it is easy to recognize that he is always in confusion on topics related to god. This supports his atheist attitude.
ReplyDeleteThomas Hardy is expressing his opinions about divine providence that controls the universe through chance.
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza he shows that he don't believe in God so he has written the name of God not with capitalized letter.It is almost mocking in the way that he choses not to capitalise the name to express lack of believe. In the second stanza he criticize God. Because he gives a lot of suffer to his people in the hardy's eyes.
He expresses the idea that people accept this suffering because they are "half-eased" by the prescence of a higher being. "Powerfuller" is capitalised with in comparison to the lower case of "god" shows how Hardy has a stonger believe in a Powerful force than a higher being. This force being divine providence
Jiyan TAHER says :
ReplyDeleteIn this poem the main idea is about the sorrows of life and how they occur by random chance. The speaker wants to say that human sorrows of life and man provides himself with his own choices. All other occurrences are chance and people are the dealers of chance. Therefore the speaker realized that it is he that guides his fate and what chances have the power to occur.
In this poem the poet accuses god for his sorrows.In the first stanza he says that god is happy with people's suffering and when people loose their love god's hatred for human kind is fed.But in the second stanza he says that there is no god either good or bad; then he asks himself:"so why I am suffering if there is not such a god?"He cannot understand the reason of this situation so he imagines such a revengeful god...In a way he finds a reason for his sufferings.
ReplyDeleteHe denies God and ıf there would be a one God would be vengeful and takes pleasure because of Poet's sorrows. We see that he believes Somethinf poerfuller than him It can be our chance. He says that Life should be controlled by someting like fate and chance. hE tells taht if there is God the world would not be so he wolud not have sorrows people would not suffer from hunger I reda drom wikipedia that he is strict to christiam elements in his youthoood. He says that I go to pligrimage but this is painful because of there is no God TO Take care about my pilgrimage.
ReplyDeleteHardy simply questions and criticizes the idea of a god, showing a typical example of the modernist poets.
ReplyDelete"If but 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 love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
By these opening lines, he depicts a god which takes pleasure from his suffering and actually mentions if there WERE a god, it would certainly be this way.
Hardy puts forth that if a god came foreward and told him that he finds an amusement from Hardy’s sorrows, and it overjoys him. Hardy would then erupt in a outburst of rage, and feel more vunerable and weak than he had ever felt under the reign of such a god, that the gods amusement only brings to him the wish of death and that the god makes his tears melt him away. Then, in the last paragraph, Hardy becomes aware to himself that a god such as that could not exist and that life is not written in stone and man provides himself with his own choices. All other occurences are chance, and people are the dealers of chance, therefore Hardy realized that it is he that guides his fate and what chances have the power to occur.
ReplyDeleteı think this poem shows the author's self-proud. he thinks he can questions the God or he thinks the God has to inform him for all He does.
ReplyDeleteGULNOZA
ReplyDeleteHow arrives it joy lies slain,/ and why unblooms the best hope ever sown? Why should he not be happy if there is no malevolent force preventing it? Why should all his hopes be ruined? Hardy answers his own questions by writing that Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,/ and dicing time for gladness casts a moan. In other words, Hardy is saying that only random chance is responsible for his suffering. In the last two lines of his poem he writes about the fact that random chance has indifferently given him as many blessings as sufferings in his life.