Design in Nostalgia
HEN one is in a mood to curse the radio for its intrusivéness, for its brashness, for its peddling of mediocrity, there often comes something which makes one aware of its real value. Such, for me, was Walter de la Mare’s brief recollection of a meeting with Thomas Hardy. It was quite simply a privilege to hear this wonderful old man, speaking with slow, gentle deliberateness and jewelled precision of a cherished encounter with one of Britain’s greatest writers, and reaching back to the world
before two world wars when time was something more than a commodity. Old men’s memories are always misted by nostalgia, and Mr. de la Mare, himself a master of literary nostalgia, perhaps gave us a double dose, softening Hardy’s outlines and turning him into one of his own characters. Yet whether the subject was Hardy as he was, or Hardy as an old poet re-sees him, it was good to make contact with such gentle courteous integrity. This brief walk round an old walled garden of memory, brought from an instrument which so often vibrates with a resonant vulgarity, a tare echo of the thoughts which lie
too deep for tears.
J.C.
R.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19560406.2.49.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 870, 6 April 1956, Page 26
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201Design in Nostalgia New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 870, 6 April 1956, Page 26
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