What Book to Read?

I don’t usually write about verse – being of a more prosaic turn of mind – but I couldn’t resist all the convergences around this one. The ‘Convergence of the Twain’ is a poem written by Hardy on hearing of the loss of the Titanic in 1912. Now the Titanic has been in the news again recently. There is of course the 1997 film, and the 2012 re-issue of it in 3D to coincide with the centenary of the sinking. Then we had the re-enactment of the voyage – minus the iceberg; this seemed to me in pretty poor taste, given the regulatory and operation failures that contributed to the deaths of so many of the poor emigrants locked away below decks. Here in Australia we have also had the promise from coal mining magnate Clive Palmer to build a replica of the Titanic, which he can apparently afford to do, even though – or perhaps because – his various companies pay little or no tax. And finally there is a joke doing the rounds – which like many other jokes is not funny – which says ‘our children ask us what the Titanic was. Their children will ask them what an iceberg was’. You can read the poem below.

The form of the poem is interesting, each stanza having two short lines and one long one, all rhyming. This is a variant of a ballad form, and has the driving rhythm of a ballad, which is crucial to the idea of two forces – the ship and the iceberg – inexorably moving closer. For these are the two forces of the title, the ‘twain’, an archaic word for two, or a pair, which are brought together with such disastrous consequences.

The first stanza introduces Hardy’s theme of the foolishness of human vanity. What was planned in pride is now isolated on the seabed. ‘A solitude’ of the sea, I take to suggest a specific location, rather than the general solitude of the sea. He then goes on to describe the wreck. In the second stanza, he evokes the remains of the engine room. ‘Late the pyres of her salamandrine fires’ is difficult. ‘Pyres’ suggests funeral pyres – and the whole ship is a coffin, though I don’t think that fire was an issue in its sinking. ‘Salamandrine fires’ suggest the salamander – the mythical creature that can live in fire. I think Hardy is describing the engine room as something that was once the site of the fire and energy that drove the ship (yes Clive, her engines were coal fired), and seemed enduring, like the salamander. But now the only activity is that of the tide, threading through the steel as if plucking at the strings of a lyre. And he is right about there being internal ocean tides – I checked.

Hardy then contrasts the opulence of the fittings of the ship, and the jewels of the rich passengers, with the indifference of the grotesque creatures and the darkness at the bottom of the ocean. The words ‘bleared and black and blind’ are wonderfully alliterative – and onomatopoeic – and the repetition of ‘and’ is like a hammer driving in his meaning.

In the sixth stanza, Hardy turns from the lovely image of the ship designed to slice its way through the ocean – the ‘cleaving wing’ being the bow wave – to the other great object which is being fashioned: ‘the sinister mate’. The ‘Imminent Will’ is fate, rather than God, since Hardy suffered from what has been called ‘failed faith’. But there is nevertheless intention in the workings of fate ‘that stirs and urges everything’. Thus fate is preparing the iceberg, quite separate – ‘dissociate’- from the preparation of the ‘gaily great’ ship. Giving a capital ’S’ to ‘Shape of Ice’ gives a mythic quality to the iceberg. I like ‘the smart ship’; it suggests the pride of human contrivance, as well as the fashionable, opulent interior. They seem alien – not ‘twain’ at all, but this is only a human view, fate knowing better. The words ‘intimate welding’ carry the metaphorical cargo of both the sense of the personal intimacy of a wedding or physical union, and the mechanical reality of the metal, or welded hull, crushing up against the iceberg so that the two are stuck together and can’t be separated. Hardy packs a lot of meaning into these two words. ‘Twin halves’ echoes the ‘twain’ of the title, suggesting the ship and the iceberg are two physical halves of the same whole. Hardy restates their destiny to be joined in some ‘August’ event, here meaning stately or majestic (rather than month, since the Titanic sank in April). He is describing the journey of these two huge objects towards each other as if they were necessary parts of some dignified dance.

In the last stanza, Hardy breaks the slowly escalating rhythm of the ship and the iceberg coming together with the sudden exclamation of ‘Now!’ signifying the dreadful clash. The Spinner of the Years is again destiny, with perhaps an echo of the spinning Norns of Norse mythology. Obeying their fate –which ‘each one hears’ as if they are alive – their collision is described again with the image of marriage – ‘consummation’.  And the collision did jar two hemispheres, resulting in outrage in both Britain and the United States, and shattering popular faith in technology. Looking back, the collision seems like an augury of things to come, as nature strikes back at human arrogance. I’d watch out if I was Clive Palmer.

If you have enjoyed this discussion, you can find more like it on a new blog called The Poetry Room, www.thepoetryroom.com which is devoted to discussion of poetry of all kinds.

        I

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: ‘What does this vaingloriousness down here?’. . .

VI

Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

X

Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,

XI

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

If you like this poem, have a look at a modern version written by Simon Armitage in response to 9/11.