JOSEPH BRODSKY
463
for the time far and dissociate"? Or, for that matter, "a sinister mate"? As con–
junctions go, it is so far ahead of 1912! It's straight out of Auden. Lines like that
are invasions of the future into the present, they are whiffs of the Immanent Will
themselves. The choice of "mate" is absolutely marvelous, since apart from al–
luding to "shipmate," it again underscores the ship's femininity , sharpened even
further by the next trimeter: "For her - so gaily great - "
What we are getting here , with increasing clarity, is not so much collision as
a metaphor for romantic union as the other way around: the union as a
metaphor for the collision . The femininity of the ship and the masculinity of
the iceberg are clearly established. Except that it is not exactly the iceberg. The
real mark of our poet's genius is in his offering a circumlocution: "A Shape of
Ice." Its menacing power is directly proportionate to the reader's ability to
fashion that shape according to his own imagination's negative potential. In
other words, this circumlocution - actually, its letter
a
alone - insinuates the
reader into the poem as an active participant.
Practically the same job is performed by "for the time far and dissociate."
Now, "far" as an epithet attached to time is commonplace; any poet could do
it. But it takes Hardy to use in verse the utterly unpoetic "dissociate." This is the
benefit of the general stylistic nonchalance of his we commented on earlier.
There are no good, bad, or neutral words for this poet: they are either functional
or not. This could be put down, of course, to his experience with prose, were it
not for his frequently stated abhorrence of the smooth, ''jewelled line."
And "dissociate" is about as unglittering as it is functional. It bespeaks not
only the Immanent Will's farsightedness but time's own disjointed nature: not in
the Shakespearean but in the purely metaphysical - which is to say, highly per–
ceptible, tactile, mundane - sense. The latter is what makes any member of the
audience identify with the disaster's participants, placing him or her within time's
atomizing domain. What ultimately saves "dissociate," of course, is its being
rhymed, with the attendant aspect of resolution moreover, in the third, hexamet–
ric line.
Actually, in the last two stanzas, the rhymes get better and better: engaging
and unpredictable. To appreciate "dissociate" fully, perhaps, one should try
reading the stanza's rhymes vertically, column-wise. One would end up with
"mate - great - dissociate." This is enough to give one a shudder, and this is far
from being gratuitous, since the succession clearly emerged in the poet's mind
before the stanza was finished. In fact , this succession was precisely what allowed
him to finish the stanza, and to do it the way he did.
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
