Responding to Hardy: Tess

Inspired by Elaine V. Emeth and reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

After two "silent reconstructive years" of achieving a tenuous inner repose in the reclusive aftermath of being taken advantage of while trying to claim kinship and thus reverse the demise of her family; shortly before her child Sorrow's death which was preceded by her emergency home baptism of the hotly loved though inwardly spurned child, but a few months after the all-too-expected outcome of her stay with her "bogus kinsfolk"; well after settling in her mind that her home village would not be where she would be able to veil and outgrow her fate and at the age of 20 make a new start; again, through the arrangement of her mother, Tess Durbeyfield sets off for a neighboring county to the southeast of her Blackmoor Vale, Wessex roots. Tess "felt the pulse of hopeful life still warm within her; she might be happy in some nook which had no memories. To escape the past and all that appertained thereto was to annihilate it, and to do that she would have to get away." Yet is her taking off in fact her own choice or a reaction to tenets abroad at the time? Hardy drops a clue and considers her movements through semi-omniscient eyes. As she leaves her home once again and its nearby scene of her entanglement with the 'brut' lover, Hardy's narration gives the story a naturalistic overtone and her more settled mind is still rift with a troubled outlook and conflicted sentiments, in fact her whole train of rationalizing and perplexed thought is played off by the figure she forms upon the changing landscape--insignificant, only noticed by an alighting heron, only fleetingly called to mind by her family after her departure from her home village. This is Hardy juxtaposing the innermost feeling of his heroine against the fabric of village and rural life and letting it play out on the Wessex scene and therefore making his readers long for more of his writing.

In Hardy's words: Tess stood still upon the hemmed expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a billiard-table of indefinite length, and of no more consequence to the surroundings than that fly. The sole effect of her presence upon the placid valley so far has been to excite the mind of a solitary heron, which, after descending to the ground not far from her path, stood with neck erect, looking at her.

Flash association: Successfully ministering as an elder in the United Methodist Church while combatting the effects of multiple sclerosis, Elaine V. Emeth hits on similar sentiments of a spiritual journey in her poem "Dancing in the Dark."

"... having to crawl cautiously to an unfamiliar place,
testing the ground each step of the way.
What perils lie in my path?
Where am I?
What inner light can guide me
when I am lost
and cannot see at all?"

[Weavings, XVII: I January/February 2002, p. 23]

The difference here is spun by Hardy so that we know Tess is in a twin state of thoughtfulness and unreflected action which makes her countenance light up to the warm spring air of May in the less confining space of the new county's verdant expanse. However, there are clues dropped by Hardy that she is still not on her very own journey but had the prospects of work for the summer by dint of her mother's letter arranging the position. Another clue is how her emotional growth has gone from a very reclusive phase to one which is transmuted to optimism by the spring air - a sunny view and lack of thoughtfulness Hardy says is John Durbeyfield's character in her, to celebrate at the slightest of gains. I think her frame of mind is only a reprieve from the conflict she will face later. For now she is making a change, but the conflict remains below the surface and she hasn't formulated her response to this deeper theme and is not acting but, instead, reacting, making wrong turnings as she wends her way through new undiscovered country to the dairy and the forthcoming events which will take her precarious reprieve from her home and local village and her temporary delight in life she longs for but has as yet to earn and give it the next vexing spin.

Christa Wolf speaking to massive crowd in East Berlin on November 4, 1989

On November 4, 1989, over 500,000 people gathered on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin to peacefully protest the East German regime. It was a culminating point in a series of events over several months, if not years, which led to German reunification.

Christa Wolf was one of several prominent public figures invited to speak. She gave a memorable ten-minute speech which I reproduce here in English to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the transformation and reunification of former West Germany and the GDR, never to be forgotten. In addition to all the German people I know played an important role in this, I thought Hungarian prime minister Miklós Németh was remarkably brave in helping "trigger" the transformation.

Original German: Christa Wolf footage of speech

We look on at the turncoats with amazement...

Dear fellow citizens,

Every revolutionary movement also liberates language. What had previously been so hard to say openly, now rolls right off our tongues. We are amazed at what we had been thinking so long and we now shout out to each other: Democracy now or never! And we mean government by the people. We remember the bogged down or brutally repressed approaches in our history and do not want to fail to seize the opportunity in this crisis, it stirs all our productive powers. But we do not want to rashly waste this chance either, or simply reverse the images of what the enemy is.

I have difficulties with the word Wende.(1) It brings to mind a sailboat; the captain shouts out: “Get ready to change tack,” because the wind has shifted, the wind is blowing in his face [applause], and the crew ducks as the boom sweeps across the boat. But is this picture still an accurate one? Does it still fit a situation that is being driven forward each day? I would describe it as revolutionary renewal. 

Revolutions start at the bottom. The “bottom” and the “top” exchange places in the value system and turn socialist society upside down. Major social developments are set in motion.

Never has there been so much talk, speaking with each other, in our country than has been seen these past few weeks, never before with this passion, with so much rage and sadness and with so much hope. We want to take advantage of every day, we do not sleep, or only a little, we become friends with new people and we argue in anguish with others. That is now called “dialogue” – we demanded it and now we can hardly stand hearing the word and still haven’t really learned what is meant by it. We stare, with a sense of mistrust, at certain hands suddenly extended toward us, into faces which had previously been so stony: “Mistrust is good, control even better” [applause] – we twist old sayings which once scorned and injured us and respond in kind. We are afraid of being exploited. And we fear rejecting an offer which is honestly meant. Our whole country is now in this Catch-22 dilemma. We know that we have to practice the art of not allowing these conflicting feelings to turn into confrontation: These weeks, these opportunities will be given to us only once – by our own selves. We look on at the turncoats (Wendehälse) with amazement. "Wendehals" is a German expression for a political chameleon who, as the dictionary says "quickly and easily adapts to a given situation, moves cleverly in such a situation, and knows how to gain from the situation." It is these people most of all who will block the credibility of the new political climate. We are not that far along yet that we can humorously shrug off the  turncoats/Wendehälse – something we are already able to do in other cases. I can read “Fellow travelers – step down!” ["Trittbrettfahrer - zurücktreten!"] on banners. And demonstrators chanting at the police: “Change your clothes and join us!” – a generous offer.

In economic terms, we also think: “If you have rule of law, who needs the StaSi (state security)!” (StaSi was the GDR’s feared intelligence and secret police organization.)

And we are even willing to dispense with down-to-earth things:
 

“Fellow countrymen, turn your boob-tubes off! Join the Trabi motorcade!”

Indeed, the language sheds the bureaucratic and newspaper tone it was rolled up in and recalls words that have feeling. One of these words is “dream.” Therefore we dream with alert minds: Just imagine, there would be socialism and nobody went away!

But we see the images of those who are fleeing even now and ask ourselves: “What can you do about it?” and we hear the echo in response: “Do something!”(2) The tasks (“Do something!”) begin now as the things we demand, rights, become obligations: investigation committees, constitutional tribunals, administrative reforms. A lot to be done, and all of it on top of our regular work.

Plus the newspaper too, and eating! We won’t have any more time to go attend adulatory military parades, prearranged popular demonstrations. This is a demo, approved, non-violent. If it stays that way till the end, we will again know more about what we are capable of and then we will insist on it. A proposal for May 1:

The leadership parades by in front of the people.

[crowd laughs in approval]

Unbelievable transformations. The “state citizenry of the GDR” takes to the streets in order to recognize itself as the people. And to me this is the most important sentence of these last few weeks – the thousand-fold cry:

We – are – the - people!

A simple statement of fact. This we should not forget.
 

---

(1) The term Wende, which means a new political beginning and reorientation, was introduced as a new phrase in German as die Wende and symbolizes the unrest, upheaval and revolutionary movement and "about-face" of 1989 in the German Democratic Republic. As elsewhere in this text, Christa Wolf refers to the repressive GDR regime and its official use of words or nomenclature. For example, “dialogue” is ironic (she says she cannot stand hearing it anymore) and refers to speeches given by Egon Krenz, the General Secretary of the SED and the GDR's last Chairman of the State Council of the SED party, in which Krenz used the term Dialog in a manipulative and inhuman way. Everybody at the demonstration was aware that with his use of Dialog, Krenz had falsely claimed the mass demonstrations were still controlled by the Central Committee or even desired by it, and thus amounted to so-called “dialog.” By using the phrase die Wende, Krenz also tried to usurp the people’s revolution for himself, the Central Committee and the politburo: “As of today, we will initiate a Wende, we will, in particular, regain the political and ideological upper hand (speech by Egon Krenz, October 18, 1989). In the meantime, the political sea-change (Wende), which we initiated has taken hold of all areas of our society (speech by Egon Krenz, November 3, 1989).” It is perhaps fitting that "Die Wetterfahne" ("The Weathercock") was set to music by Schubert, for it also means somebody who is fickle and flip-flops depending on the political winds, or in this case, romantic inclination. Further discussion of Wendehals is found on Deutsche Welle.

 
(2) Rhetorically the German question keeps the same words of “Was tun” because the phrase can mean both a) What can be done (about it)? A resigned tone indicating, no, you can’t help those who still don’t believe. The second time it means b) Get up and do something (bring about the collapse of the regime) so that those who still don’t believe and are fleeing/going away will see there is no point in driving through Czechoslovakia to the Hungarian border to Austria, as so many in fact, hundreds of thousands, did.        

Flying to South Dakota, April 2000

Flying to Dad’s Funeral


The unpleasant premonition
 that we’ve walked this earth with less gusto
 and a hollow ring to our sloughing steps.
Myself knelt down to survey
 the treeless moldings
 of snow-blasted, snow-softened
 Greenland – or was it Prince Rupert Island?
My first Leif Erikson view
 out above the clouds
which offer their blanket
 to stark masses of untamed land.

A certain pang struck me
 as rills of sub-zero groundswells
 arched in fish-fin precision
 over and against unsmuch’t whiteness
                                           of inviting purity.

My gaze sought out a sign of spring -
 a lifeline to thaw the taut expanse
 to relax frozen kinks
 of steel-gray shoulders.

I cast out for a lone ambling deer,
 a sliver of melt streaking the face
 of cold December
 with April’s fledgling warmth.