The Convergence of the Twain: Lines on the loss of the "Titanic"

The poem’s dramatic title describes two separated things coming together. There is speculation that Hardy may have chosen the lofty title “The Convergence of the Twain” to point to the disaster’s epic levels of hubris: the failure of technology, the arrogance of the rich, and the folly of testing the limits of fate. Hardy wrote the poem for a disaster relief fundraiser on May 14, 1912, an event that took place a month after the Titanic sank. The poem’s epigraph—“(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)—makes it clear that the “convergence” is a negative joining rather than a positive one.

The poem is an elegy—a form of poetry written to commemorate the dead. However, the expected elegiac tone found in most occasional poems is absent here. Instead of concentrating on the great loss of life, the poem surveys the wreck of the liner on the ocean floor. It does not represent the events on the boat before, during, and after the wreck from the perspective of its human passengers. Rather, the first five stanzas pass judgment on the hubris that went into boasting about the ship’s specialness by concentrating on its ruin.

The once opulent ship is now a carcass “stilly couche[d]” (Line 3) in the “solitude of the sea” (Line 1)—a position it is in because of “human vanity” (Line 2). The poem chastises the “Pride of Life” (Line 3) of those who lauded the ocean liner as unsinkable. All the effort that went into making the ship the most extravagant of its kind was a waste: The Titanic’s grand machinery, as well as the beauty of the ballrooms, mirrors, chandeliers, and wood, has fallen to dysfunction and decay.

The engine room’s “steel chambers” (Line 4) that once propelled the ship with “salamandrine fires” (Line 5) have ceased to burn. Instead “cold currents” (Line 6) thread through them and create an eerie music of “rhythmic tidal lyres” (Line 6). This description, especially words like “salamandrine” (Line 5) and “lyres” (Line 6), elevates the wreckage to the level of epic: The engines’ ability to house flames used to resemble the fire-proof nature of the mythical salamander.

The wreck has extinguished the ship’s lights, which dims all of the surfaces that before accentuated this luxury. The ship’s “mirrors” (Line 7), once meant to catch the magnificence of the wealthy, now reflect nothing, and formerly sparkling “[j]ewels” (Line 10) are now “lightless” (Line 12) in the ocean’s depths. The Titanic is now a dark coffin, where creatures “grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent” (Line 9) crawl over all its “gilded” (Line 14) elegance that is now “bleared and black and blind” (Line 12). This motif of grandeur reduced to rubble recalls Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 sonnet, “Ozymandias,” which also explores the wreck of a formerly grand statue of a vain king—all that’s left of his once impressive empire (See: Further Reading and Resources).

Another set of primordial creatures, “dim moon-eyed fishes” (Line 13) pass through the rest of the ship. The speaker imagines them wondering how this “vaingloriousness” (Line 15) came to rest in their terrain. Indirectly implied is a contrast between these denizens of the deep and the human beings that once peopled the ship. The juxtaposition shows that the Titanic is out of place, a manmade thing in a natural environment. The fact that even fish can perceive its “vaingloriousness” (Line 15) implies the ship is such a prime symbol of the overarching vanity of human beings that this has become its main identifying feature. Grandeur and wealth are tenuous if not fleeting; they do nothing to keep one safe from accidents and death.

In conversation with both the fish and the reader, the next six stanzas turn the factual collision of the Titanic and the iceberg into a mythic tale that begins with a storyteller’s colloquial, “Well:” (Line 16). In this version of events, the oblivious ship and the lurking ice shelf it hit were an ill-fated match designed by an “Immanent Will” (Line 18), and “Spinner of the Years” (Line 31). This nod to epic poem tradition simultaneously elevates the crash to the status legend and brings an enormous event to manageable size by personifying the players.

While the Titanic was being “fashion[ed]” (Line 16) down to every bell and whistle by its human creators, the “Immanent Will” (Line 18) was working to correct their overreach. The verb to fashion here is purposeful, suggesting both the making of the ship, but also its expensive and stylish adornments. The Titanic is the belle of the ball yet, Fate feels she is “so gaily great” (Line 20) that she needs to be tempered. Thus, the “Shape of Ice” (Line 21) is “prepared [as] a sinister mate” (Line 19) for her. As the Titanic grows in “stature, grace, and hue” (Line 23), so does the threatening iceberg, swimming at a “silent shadowy distance” (Line 24) until it is time for it to strike.

Contemporary ecopoets might look at the poem as a commentary on how humans invade natural spaces, with the iceberg as a figure of retribution. However, in the Victorian era, the disaster was more often interpreted as an example of how human progress might be an exercise of vanity and extravagance. Moreover, the loss of life on the Titanic was soon seen as a microcosm of the dangers of wealth disparity. By the time of the poem’s composition, the failure of too few lifeboats for the number of passengers was already known. Hardy was aware that the first-class passengers were given rescue seats before the lower ticket classes. The poem thus suggests that while the iceberg strike was unexpected, the demise of the Titanic should not be seen as “alien” (Line 25). The implication is that by putting her beauty over her safety, the Titanic’s human engineers doomed the voyage forward.

The Titanic and the Iceberg’s “paths coincident” (Line 29) lead to a violent, “intimate welding” (Line 27), or convergence. They are designed, the speaker suggests, by Fate to be “two halves of one august event” (Line 30). This serious “consummation […] jars two hemispheres” (Line 33)—the entire globe feels its effect. The language makes the collision into a twisted version of marriage: The word “welding” sounds very much like “wedding,” especially when paired with “intimate”; likewise, one of the meanings of the word “consummation” is marital sex.

The “Immanent Will” (Line 18) returns in the final stanzas as “The Spinner of Years” (Line 31), a reference to the Greek mythology figure of Clotho, one of the three Fates who spin out each mortal’s life, deciding who lives and dies. The idea of human progress flowering forward without restraint has been broken in a profound and public way so that everyone might receive Clotho’s message: “the Immanent Will” (Line 18) reminds human beings that the power to “stir and urg[e] everything” (Line 18) is not in their hands. The shipwreck also offers a warning that if humans do not abide by the laws of Fate, then they will all end up ruined on the floor of the ocean, food for fish.