Summary
The tenth stanza continues fluidly from the end of the ninth; indeed, the ninth, tenth, and eleventh stanzas are all one long sentence. In the tenth, the speaker specifies that the “mortal eye” who could not see their fated crash, was also unable to see the signs that the Iceberg and the Titanic were destined for one another. Nevertheless, in the eleventh stanza, fate, or “the Spinner of the Years,” declared it time for the two to collide, and immediately the two great objects obeyed, crashing into one another and bringing destruction in their wake.
Analysis
In the tenth stanza, Hardy emphasizes that, although “no mortal eye” could have predicted the fate of the Titanic, there were nevertheless indications of its fate (26). The first two lines make a comparison between the crash and astrology. “Paths coincident” suggests the paths of celestial objects through the sky, and, in that context, “sign” similarly implies an astrological omen, such as a comet or planet, which might be read as symbolic of some important event (28-29). This metaphor amplifies the poem’s sense of inevitability by suggesting that the paths of the Titanic and the iceberg were determined by some sort of natural law, in the same way that gravity decides the paths of stars. Furthermore, by comparing the crash of the Titanic to a celestial movement, the speaker casts the collision as in some way beyond the laws of the earth. Although, in a literal sense, the collision was confined to Earth’s ocean, Hardy’s allusion emphasizes that the event was really determined by the hand of fate, which operates beyond human knowledge.
The last line of the stanza is likely an allusion to Plato’s Symposium, an important Ancient Greek text made up of fictional speeches given by a number of influential thinkers. In one, Aristophanes, a comic playwright, relates a creation story in which the gods originally created three types of people: men, women, and persons with the physical attributes of both men and women. Soon, the gods decided this last group was too powerful, so they split them down the middle, and they were left to spend the rest of time searching for their missing half. The line “being anon twin halves” alludes to this story (30). Through this allusion, the speaker suggests that the Titanic and the iceberg were originally part of the same whole, and, furthermore, builds on the myth by implying that with the crash, that broken whole was reunited.
The final stanza builds on this allusion by continuing to figuratively speak of the ship and the Iceberg as a pair of lovers re-uniting. The word “consummation” in the last line connotes marriage, and hence figures the collision as the wedding night of two lovers (33). This strange comparison topples the clichés surrounding the Titanic by imagining it, not as a tragedy, but as a bizarre moment of intimacy. At the same time, it also suggests that there is something sinister or deadly about romance and sexuality. The poem thus challenging another cliché, the beauty of love.
The eleventh stanza also returns to the personification device which began the poem. In contrast to “the Pride of Life” which built the Titanic and believed it was unsinkable, the “Spinner of the Years” actually has the power to determine what happens to the ship, and he dictates that it sink (3, 31). This figure, the same force as the “Immanent Will,” is not the Christian God (18). Given the Classical allusion in the previous stanza, it is most likely that the “Spinner of the Years” is an allusion to the Greco-Roman image of fate as three women spinning yarn (31). Ultimately, Hardy's own atheism, and belief in an indifferent universe, comes through in this poem. The Titanic becomes an expression not of God's design, but rather of the power of the universe itself to cause bizarre and monumental events beyond human's ability to predict the future.
