Thomas Hardy
Sir: I read Barbara Hardy's review of Donald Davie's Thomas Hardy and British Poetry (March 10) with disappointment at what seemed to me her misrepresentation of both the scope and tone of what is, by any account, an important book on modern poetry. Though I was quite Prepared to agree that it had faults, I was very surprised to be told that it was "a book about authority in academe " written in an " arrogant and assertive tone," two statements that sent me back to the book in some bewilderment. A re-examination seems to confirm that it is, as its title claims, about Hardy's influence on British poetry, and not about university politics, which figure only briefly in the weakest chapter, that dealing with Amis and Tolkien and their view of " authority " in general. The reader of the review could not guess that Professor Davie also deals with Larkin, Auden, Betjeman, Lawrence, Roy Fisher, Jeremy Prynne and Charles Tomlinson, relating each of them to Hardy, and in doing so both offers new perspectives on the work of the more established poets, and, perhaps more importantly, introduces Prynne and Fisher to the wider audience they deserve.
In the light of this range of interest, Professor Hardy's regret that Davie chose not to write " in detail about the campus troubles in England and America" seems oddly irrelevant: it is a curious demand to make of a book on British poetry, even if that book does take into account, as it should, the social and political situation in Britain. One feels that Professor Hardy may be projecting her own current concerns onto the book (" a good many teachers still in their classrooms are agonising over the attempt to extend freedom and life without too much destruction ") in much the same way as she accuses Davie of misreading Hardy for his own private muse-making ends.
Perhaps there is a touch of personal interest too in the oversensitive reaction to Professor Davie's strictures on the " blindness or condescension of the metropolis " towards such poets as Fisher and Tomlinson. Though Davie's customary urbanity may bP less evident here than elsewhere, one wonders if it may not be Professor Hardy's own identification with the metropolis that makes her find not only these brief passages, but the whole book, "arrogant and assertive" — a judgement so unfounded that it might almost be seen as exemplifying the very vices that it purports to find in Davie. Whatever the reason, it is sad to see Professor Hardy being unfair to a book which deserves serious attention.
Torn Cain School of English Language and Literature, Newcastle University
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