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Date: | Mon, 12 Jul 1999 12:08:39 -0400 |
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Deryk Barker correctly attributed:
>It (Egdon Heath) is inspired by Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native
>(or one particular passage).
Imogen Holst is quoted on the liner notes to Sir Adrian Boult's 1962
recording with the London Philharmonic:
"The mood of Egdon Heath had grown out of a sentence in the opening
chapter of The Return of the Native, where the heath is described as
a 'a place perfectly accordant with man's nature -- neither ghastly,
hateful, nor ugly; neither common-place, unmeaning, nor tame; but
like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and
mysterious in its swarthy monotony.'
"This is the sentence that Holst quotes on his title page. There
is another quotation which seems particularly appropriate (to the
1960s). 'Haggard Egdon,' wrote Hardy, 'appeals to a subtler and
scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which
responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair. The time
seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened
sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that
is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among
mankind'."
John Dalmas
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