In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

i

Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

ii

Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

iii

Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

iv

Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”…

v

Well: while was fashioning This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

vi

Prepared a sinister mate For her — so gaily great — A shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

vii

And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silence grew the Iceberg too.

viii

Alien they seemed to be: No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history,

ix

Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event,

x

Till the Spinner of the Years Said “Now!” And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Chevalier and Gheerbrant claim that a ship symbolizes “a picture of life in which the individual must choose a goal and steer a course.” In Hardy’s The Convergence of the Twain, individual course collides with the design of spinning fate which fuses two halves of an submerged unconsciousness. Like “twin halves of one august event,” the poem itself is split into its surface story and its submerged psychology. At one layer is the telling of the Titanic, how it lays in rest “In a solitude of sea” and how it happened to sink; yet, at a deeper layer is the discussion of an unconscious mind engaged in a clash between humanity and its nature. When, in the last stanza, the “Spinner of the Years” steps between ship and iceberg and “jars two hemispheres” it resolves the duel by combining the two halves of man’s dual nature.

Hardy’s Titanic represents the mind submerged in the unconsciousness of the sea. The ship’s “Steel chambers” suggest, like the mind, an impenetrable room, locked with secrets, isolated and alone. The depth at which the ship rests suggests that the mind lies within its unconsciousness: the depth of the sea translates into a depth of the mind. Support of the sea’s symbolising the unconscious comes again from Chevalier and Gheerbrant. They note, “But monsters rise from its depths, and so the sea is an image of the unconscious which has currents of its own which may be either lethal or regenerative.” Their interpretation coincides with Hardy’s imagery: he describes a “sea-worm … grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent” and in the ‘jarring’ of “two hemispheres” suggests a mind reborn from the sea.

The “dumb” indifference of the sea-worm opposes the reasoning intellect of the “smart ship.” Hardy notes the duality of man in this separation of reason and emotion — of the human and the brute animal. The sea-worm recalls Tennyson’s The Kraken which describes the emergence of the subconscious mind into consciousness through the rising of the Kraken whose “uninvaded sleep” within the sea depths symbolizes an unawakened subconscious. However, Hardy’s mind is not emerging, but a mind colliding with its base twin through the “Immanent Will” of fate. Unlike Tennyson, who places the emergence of consciousness in an act of self, Hardy allows fate to guide ship/mind and iceberg/nature on a collision course.

In the third stanza, Hardy foreshadows the union of man and nature’s brute. The “mirrors meant/To glass the opulent” now take on a new reflection; they reflect the sea-worm and the brute of nature. In the mirror the ship is seen as that second side of itself which fate will join when “consummation comes” in the poem’s final line. The sexual union that will take place is first seen in the ship’s mirrors which show, perhaps, a hidden nature awaiting rebirth. Its rebirth comes in “The intimate welding of their later history.” Welding suggests both a physical and mental fusion which picks up the diction of shipbuilding. Nature, emotion, and the brute within the iceberg is welded onto the ship’s “Steel chambers” by an arc-light of fate.

The sea-worm and iceberg are connected images — the both represent the brute and the brutish side of man. The “grotesque, slimed” sea-worm which crawls within the ocean seems hidden in darkness, feeding, and growing. In stanza eight, Hardy portrays the growth of the iceberg and the ship. However, in terms of what aspects of each’s nature is growing, the two are remarkably differing: “Alien they seemed to be.” Like that sea-worm, the “Iceberg too” grows as it nears the ship. In its growth, the iceberg takes on the immense scope of nature. Its size and impending doom connects with ‘the storm’ — nature’s vengeance. Yet, the Titanic’s growth “In stature, grace, and hue” corresponds to man’s intellect as though it were a growing of reason. Here, Hardy demonstrates a reciprocal growth of ship and iceberg, each growing as the other grows, to show that not only are they connected, but two halves of one entity.

Earlier, Hardy hints at the ship’s relationship to the animalistic brutish nature of the iceberg or sea-worm. In stanza two, the Titanic’s “steel chambers” are extinguished “Of her salamandrine fires.” ‘Salamandrine’ has several meanings. First, it is enduring fire. But, the term also pertains to a salamander and is “the bulbous crowfoot, a favorite food of swine.” In that relationship, the ship is now consumed by an animal. This perhaps strengthens the notion that the sea-worm is feeding and growing, just as is the Iceberg. The consuming fires which sink the ship and began as the iceberg collided with its hull portray that “Shape of Ice” in animalistic brute terms feeding on its prey.

Consumed by nature and the brute animal, the reasoning half of man undergoes “consummation” — within the unconscious, man and brute are joined. They have been “twin halves” separate, until fate pits them on a collision course of convergence. Not only are the histories of the ship and iceberg fused, but what they symbolize in man are joined in an act of fire and consumption. When fate “jars two hemispheres,” she both disrupts and encapsulates the two aspects of man’s duality as though they have been combined into a single chamber of man’s multiple mind.

References

1. Chevalier, Jean and Alain Gheerbrant. A Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by John Buchanan-Brown. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1994.

2. “ARTFL Project: Webster Dictionary, 1913.” ARTFL Project. Accessed January 12, 1997. http://humanities.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=salamandrine.