Powers and priciple-ities

 Powers and principle-ities 
(Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, pt. 2)

Nedum verum, hiemem unamquamque carpe. ^§

Correspondence with the dead continues.*

Dear Trudy,

Trudy’s Tess

Addendum. Still thinking of Angel. His principles. What they’re good for? (Like war: “Absolutely nothing!”) → Do they make sense of his feelings for Tess? Maybe they could, but only if they left Tess herself completely out of it: They can make no sense of her. Actually, they don’t even try to. The sad thing about Angel – at least at this point – is that he is only ever truly interested in Angel. He lives entirely within himself.

     Granted, it’s not good to live completely outside oneself as Alec does when he is Mr. Clare’s evangelist or as Tess tends to, giving all her thought (and all her thinking) over to Angel. Or over to her idealization of him. She doesn’t yet realize what a jackass he is. (And will she ever?)

     So . . . You keep giving me assignments. Here’s one for you: Is there a principle by which we can judge our principles so they don’t run away with our humanity?

Unnerved, Ted

 

 

 Dear Ted,

A principle to govern our principles? Sounds like metaphysical mayonnaise in a baloney sandwich. And, yes, I know that’s not the way you spell the meat, but it is the way you spell the bull-jabber. But don’t mind me: if there is anything I am not, it is a philosopher. But it sounds like, too, that you have met Angel, and he is you. I don’t know why you think so. He will never be able to live with Tess for more than a day or two. Poor ’Liza-Lu! Am I being too harsh? I suspect I am. If so, sorry.
     You have read the book to its bitter end, I take it. If you have not, don’t read on here until you have because I am going to tell you what happens, and I am going to tell you why it happens. And I am going to tell you who makes it happen. – The men in the story: Alec and Angel, and Thomas Hardy in particular. Which is not to say that there aren’t others, especially “Sir” John and Mr. Clare and Farmer Groby of Flintcomb-Ash, EVERY ONE of which is mean, not in the sense of cheap but in the sense of narrow, in the sense of lacking in imagination. And, yes, I include Hardy, who because he can’t think beyond Wessex, so he can’t get Angel and Tess farther north than Stonehenge, where she must be captured and hauled back to face man’s justice.  

     Besides, if they went on, Angel would have to continue living with her and loving her and suffering her love, which would end up scattering his principles like so much chaff in the wind. For the book to come to an end and he escape with his mangled sense of purity: Tess must die! And don’t say, “But ’Liza-Lu is left to carry on,” because she won’t carry on: she’ll become under his tutelage what he wanted Tess to be: pure, doggammit! as the driven snow. You can bet she hasn’t fooled around with any “cousin” smart-Alec! 
     Scribble on, you say, or screed on: I am blaspheming, misspelling, throwing around underlines and exclamation like pick-up sticks. But you see my point, don’t you? I’m not doing these things without a purpose. Hardy’s brain may be on the side of Paganism, but he hasn’t weaned his heart from the prudishest Paulinism: it (heart) remains mean and narrow and dry. The Apostle is passionate, but he doesn’t love flesh and blood, only the Spirit. It’s why, I think, he never writes about Jesus. It’s not that he doesn’t know him but that he doesn’t want to know him but only the crucified Christ, drained of all blood and lymph, wrapped in bandages and laid in a tomb to rise again from the bone-dry dead to float into the Ether.
     But what do I know? I’m only a girl. But one that loved flesh and blood, yours, you poor benighted fool.

Yes, Trudy

 11.29.20

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§ “Seize not only the spring, but everywhich winter.” – Gaudius
* This correspondence with Trudy Monae began with The Return of the Native, starting here. How I got, and how I still have, her copy of Tess I do not know.