Hardy's Birds, Strayed from Lovecraft's Polar Regions

[Extollager]

From Tess ofthe d'Urbervilles, Chapter 43:

----...strange birds from behind the North Pole began to arrive silently on the upland of Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures with tragical eyes — eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude such as no human being had ever conceived, in curdling temperatures that no man could endure; which had beheld the crash of icebergs and the slide of snow-hills by the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded by the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous distortions; and retained the expression of feature that such scenes had engendered. These nameless birds came quite near to Tess and Marian, but of all they had seen which humanity would never see, they brought no account.----

Both the substance and the style reminded me of HPL.

 

[dask]

Is the whole book like this?

 

[Extollager]

No--if you're looking for the specifically Lovecraftian flavor in Tess, that's about all there is, so far, at least in this my second reading (about 80 pages to go).

 

[dask]

Not necessarily Lovecraftian but this bumping against dark fantasy type thing.

 

[Extollager]

No, I wouldn't say so, not in Tess. Have you read his short story "The Withered Arm," though?

 

[dask]

No but I have it in The Distracted Preacher And Other Tales. I'm close to finishing The Mad King, when I do I'll give it a try. It looks to be only 30 pages or so. (Then unless something else pops up it's finally off to Father Brown.)