JOSEPH BRODSKY
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higher percentage of existential truth than his contemporaries', but be–
cause of these lines' unmistakable self-awareness. It is as though his poems
say to you: Yes, we remember that we are artifacts, so we are not trying
to seduce you with our truth; actually, we don't mind sounding a bit
quaint. If nevertheless, boys and girls, you find this poet hard going, if his
diction appears to you antiquated, keep in mind that the problem may
be with you rather than with the author. There is no such thing as anti–
quated diction, there are only reduced vocabularies. That's why, for ex–
ample, there is no Shakespeare nowadays on Broadway; apparently the
modern audience has more trouble with the bard's diction than the folks
at the Globe had. That's progress for you, then; and there is nothing sil–
lier than retrospection from the point of view of progress. And now, off
to "The Darkling Thrush."
IV
"The Darkling Thrush" is, of course, a turn-of-the-century poem. But
suppose we didn't look at the date beneath it; suppose we opened a
book and read it cold. People normally don't look at the dates beneath
poems; on top of that, Hardy, as I said, wasn't all that systematic about
dating his work. Imagine, then, reading it cold and catching the date
only in the end. What would you say it's all about?
You'd say it's a nature poem, a description of a landscape. On a
cold gray winter day a man strolls through a landscape, you would say;
he stops and takes in the view. It's a picture of desolation enlivened by
the sudden chirping of a bird, and that lifts his spirits. That's what you
would say, and you would be right; moreover, that's what the author
wants you to think; why, he practically insists on the ordinariness of the
scene.
Why? Because he wants you eventually to learn that a new century,
a new era - anything new - starts on a gray day, when your spirits are
low and there is nothing eye-arresting in sight. That in the beginning
there is a gray day, and not exactly a Word. (In about six years you'll be
able to check whether or not he was right.) For a turn-of-the-century
poem, "The Darkling Thrush" is remarkably unemphatic and devoid of
millenarian hoopla. It is so much so that it almost argues against its own
chronology; it makes you wonder whether the date wasn't put below
the poem afterward, with the benefit of hindsight. And knowing him,
one can easily imagine this, for the benefit of hindsight was Hardy's
strong suit.
Be that as it may, let's go on with this nature poem, let's fall into
his trap.
It
all starts with "coppice" in the first line. The precision in the
naming of this particular type of growth calls the reader's - especially a
