Thomas Hardy Writes 'An August Midnight' on Insects Invading His Study
Poet involved
What happened
Thomas Hardy's poem 'An August Midnight,' published in Poems of the Past and Present (1901), describes insects including a fly, a longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore (bumblebee) invading his study on a summer night and covering his manuscript. Hardy treats the insects as fellow creatures with their own consciousness and purposes, arriving on his page with a deliberateness that makes them seem almost like visiting writers. The poem reflects Hardy's deep engagement with the Darwinian vision of a world in which humans are one species among many.
Literary impact
Hardy's 'An August Midnight' exemplifies the post-Darwinian literary treatment of insects as fellow creatures rather than pests or symbols — a shift in consciousness that would shape twentieth-century nature poetry profoundly. Hardy's willingness to see the fly on his manuscript as a visitor with its own ontological standing anticipates the ecological poetry of the later twentieth century. The poem's democratic vision of shared existence between insects and poets connects Hardy both to Burns's louse poem and to the ecological poets of the century that followed.
Source: Wikipedia
