‘graver things...braver things’ the nation’s ‘tough, enisled, self-centred, kindless craft’ (Part 3,vii.ix. 57) that
Napoleon believes has undone him in the end—comes into alignment with a
conviction that wars can never be won, only endured and not lost. Nothing comes
of war inThe Dynasts; there is nothing to celebrate at battle’s end except battle’s
end. Moreover, in Napoleon’s case there is something lamentable about the way his
faults of character have allowed the old monarchical powers to reassert themselves
so totally. By the time Napoleon the liberator is snuffed out by the dynasts, he has
turned into a dynast himself, and that knowledge can offer comfort to liberal regret.
Even so, there is no positive advance to hold on to afterwards and to use to justify
the carnage or console oneself for the suffering. In 1815, we are back where we
started, exactly and entirely. It is as though Napoleon and Pitt had never been.
Hardy cultivated an ambiguity about whether to pronounceThe Dynastswith
a long or short ‘i’—‘Die-nasts’ or ‘Dinnasts’. There is a similar doubt about
‘Christminster’ inJude the Obscure, which Hardy probably pronounced with a
short ‘i’, as in ‘Christine’, though usually it is spoken with a long ‘i’ (as in Christ
Church). Your decision over this hints at your allegiances, either to Establishment
religiosity (long ‘i’), which is probably hypocritical, or the common people’s
carelessness about religion (short ‘i’), which is both more honest and more kindly.
Something of the same question is raised inThe Dynasts,becausethosewho
view these powers respectfully will tend to lengthen the vowel. The prominence
of this ambiguously sounding word draws attention to the two possibilities, die
and din—the din of dying and the dying away of the din, both of which are
highlighted in the work. Scenes end by fading out, as figures are lost in haze,
enveloped in smoke, or disappear into mist, rain, and snow. At the end of the Battle
of Jena:
The crossing streams of fugitives strike panic into each other, and the tumult increases with
the thickening darkness till night renders the scene invisible, and nothing remains but a
confused diminishing noise, and fitful lights here and there.
The fog of the morning returns, and curtains all. (Part 2,i. iv, closing stage direction)There is an elegiac feeling here (that echoes ‘the withdrawing roar’ of the sea on
Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach and in Tennyson’s ‘Morte d’Arthur’, where ‘the
wailing died away’ on the mere); simultaneously, the perspective seems to be rising
above elegy in search of indifference or calm.
The shifts of perspective inThe Dynastsare probably the most famous thing
about it. In the ‘Spectacle...presented to the mind’s eye’, Europe is seen from on
high, as if from orbit:
as a prone and emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the branching
mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of Spain forming the head....The point
of view then sinks downwards through space, and draws near to the surface of the perturbed
countries, where the people...are seen writhing, crawling, heaving, and vibrating in their
various cities and nationalities. (Part 1, Preface and Fore Scene)