ABSTRACT
Robert Gittings observed how Hardy's 'lifelong self-discipline in reading and note-taking' became more and more orientated towards 'poetry and to theories of how to write poems', and towards philosophy, so that 'extracts from Schopenhauer, Haeckel, and von Hartmann are prominent'. From the 1880s onwards these preoccupations are reflected intensively in the notebooks. Gittings even concludes that Hardy's 'intellectual life seemed to burn brighter as his body grew feebler'.1 This chapter sets out to consolidate the book's central emphases, but by revisiting them in a different context - through a concentration on what emerges from studying Hardy's reading of writers such as Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Bergson, and William James. Above all, the aim is to note the points of contact between his work and the work of these philosophical writers who increasingly fascinated him. However, the question is not in what ways did the work of each influence him, but in what ways did it attract him? What were the continuities between his work and theirs, and what light can these correlations throw on our conception of his work?
