Any literary critic or scholar wishing to ascertain the relationship between the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe and the English novelist/poet Thomas Hardy cannot realistically begin without considering the questions posed by Cyril Clemens in In the fall of 1925, during an interview with Hardy at his home in Max Gate: “Do you like Poe, Mr. Hardy? “Yes,” he replied, “I have always liked the American. I particularly like “The House of Usher”, this cryptogram “The Golden Bug” and “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (26). Clemens , the nephew of American novelist/humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain), continued his questioning with “Did Poe influence your work,” to which Hardy responded “Yes, without hesitation, I say Poe did?” influenced my work” (27 With these assertions by Hardy firmly established, we can proceed to explore Poe’s influence in the poetry of Thomas Hardy, for both poets shared a common desire for “rhythmic creation of the beauty”, as defined by Poe in his “Poetic Principle” of 1848. DH Fussell, in his article “Do You Like Poe, Mr. Hardy” shares this view by admitting that Poe and Hardy share “(a) underlying similarity of vision and certain concerns that the two writers have in common” (214). Get an Original EssayIn order to simplify our investigation of the relationship between Poe's poetry and Hardy, several key elements must first be discussed. . In his 1938 work, The Pleasures of Literature, John Cowper Powys verifies the Poe/Hardy connection with a personal reminiscence of a visit to Max Gate in the early 1890s: "But it was in my own youth...that none other than Thomas Hardy pointed out to me, with a more passionate appreciation than I have ever heard him demonstrate for any other author, the power and beauty of Poe's Ulalume, that strange poem which represents the essence the most intimate of his genius” (528). With this revelation in mind, consider Fussell's statement regarding Poe's poetic complexity: “Hardy saw in Poe a technician of some importance; in several cases he noted Poe's excellence in this respect” (213). According to Florence Hardy, the poet's wife, Hardy had nothing but praise for Edgar Poe, as shown in a letter to him in which he states that "Poe... was the first to realize... all the possibilities of the English language in terms of rhyme. and alliteration” (343). As a poet, Hardy clearly exemplifies all those traits usually attributed to Poe: power and beauty, technical mastery, and an uncanny sense of rhyme and alliteration, as the poems that follow will demonstrate. In a second letter, Thomas Hardy wonders whether or not Poe would have achieved even greater poetic mastery and power had he remained in England in 1815 among John Allan's extended family: "It is curious to know whether his achievements in verse would have been the same if the five years childhood spent in England had been extended to adult life. This “merciless disaster” which prevented these achievements from going further must be an endless regret for lovers of poetry” (Florence Hardy 343). Since Hardy was obviously a "lover of poetry," this statement shows his concern about Poe's fate in the American literary cultural arena in the early 1830s and 1840s, when Poe was forced into a life of literary servitude that sustained him barely financially and was cast aside by his editors and publishers who lacked the sagacity to see his potential as a great American poet and prose writer. For Hardy, Poe's "merciless disaster" (a segment of "TheRaven") was the underlying cause of his failure to achieve poetic fame in America during his lifetime, leading to "endless regret" for those in England who would have gladly accepted him. as a fellow Englishman with the status of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley or Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In January 1909, the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Edgar Poe's alma mater in 1826, invited Thomas Hardy to attend the 100th anniversary of Poe's birth (January 19, 1809), but Hardy declined the offer and wrote : “The university...does well to commemorate the birthday of This poet. Now that time has reduced the little details of his life to their true proportions outside the measure of his poetry, and has softened the horror of the upper classes at his lack of respectability, this fantastic and romantic genius shows itself in everything. its rarity” (Florence Hardy 356). Hardy's high endorsement of Poe, however, is missing from the biography, for it is interesting to note that the American poet James Russell Lowell with whom Hardy dined and corresponded on several occasions had met Poe in New York. York City in 1845, prompting him to write a glowing profile of him in his Pioneer magazine. But due to Poe's scathing attacks on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a plagiarist, Lowell's enthusiasm quickly cooled and later described Poe as "three-fifths genius...two-fifths pure fudge", a reference to Dicken's Barnaby Rudge. affiliation between Edgar Poe and Thomas Hardy, Robert Gittings makes this significant observation: "In Hardy's works there are only two suggestions of Poe's presence in the writer's mind. The first is found in the poem "The Dawn After the Dance" which is in a meter so close to that of Poe's "The Raven" that it is more than a coincidence. The second is found in Jude the Obscure, where “The Raven” is cited” (145). Poe's 'The Raven', first published in the Evening Mirror. of New York in 1845, has been the subject of various interpretations over the years, but one aspect of this poem is undeniable, for beneath its Gothic undercurrent lies the distinct sense of horror generated by the most recognizable from American poetry, the recurring "Nevermore". Simply put, "The Raven" depicts the loss of a loved one in the form of Lenore, the "rare and radiant maiden" whom the narrator, like an eloquent hero, imagines wandering aimlessly "on the Plutonian shore of the Night" as the bird sits placidly "on the bust of Pallas" above his bedroom door, a black and white contrast that reinforces a repetitive theme in the poetry of Thomas Hardy. Hardy's "Dawn of the Dance", which imitates the meter of "The Raven", also contains similarities in rhyme and use of alliteration, as shown in these lines: I would be frank with pleasure, but l The dawn looms so fearfully, that it makes more sadness intolerable Now, then, I won't bear to try to declare a day to break up, But it will hold you tight as always, just the confession of old love. (Gibson 230 - lines 5-8). Now listen to "The Raven": Ah, I remember distinctly that it was in the dark month of December, and every dying ember wrought its ghost on the ground. , I wished the next day - in vain I had sought to borrow from my books a reprieve from sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore (Mabbott 365--lines 9-12 In 1896 John Cowper Powys returned another). visited Max Gate and spoke to Hardy about Poe's influence in his poetry: "He drew my attention to Edgar Allan Poe's 'Ulalume' as a powerful text and extraordinary poem. At the time, I had never read this sinister masterpiece, but following Hardy's allusion, I quickly learned from it, 1938.