The purpose of this paper is to examine Hardy’s poetry as an alternative to overcome the conflicts in the era of God’s loss and to realize the harmony and reconciliation based on the Buddhist imagination.
The Buddhist imagination stresses that all beings are interdependent in complete harmony with one another. In this vein, Hardy tries to feel other’s pain as his own one, not as an individual apart from other beings but as one originally identified with them. Then, his close-up view of life and close intimacy with the natural world is not a dichotomy, but a unifying force. In particular, a holistic feeling of oneness with all beings, based on interrelatedness and interdependence of everything in the ecosystem, makes up an important element of his poetics.
Above all, Hardy’s universal sympathy and compassion for nature’s beings is shown well through the visible and impressive images: grass, flowers, trees, birds, animals, worms, etc. Hence, the focal point of his Buddhist imagination is the respect, compassion, sympathy, and solidarity consciousness for all organic beings based on harmony and union in the interdependent natural world. Therefore, Hardy’s poetics built on Buddhist imagination has great significance as a practical alternative discourse which aspires to get over conflicts and confrontation of in the era of God’s loss and which hopes to realize the harmony and reconciliation through the interdependence in the great web of life called the ecosystem.