“What Does this Vaingloriousness Down Here?”: Thomas Hardy, James Cameron, and the Titanic
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Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain" endows the sinking of the Titanic with a moral and spiritual meaning, as a punishment for human overreaching. This is linked in the poem's imagery with the imagined spectacle of the ornate wreck on the seabed. James Cameron's feature film Titanic, which dramatises the sinking, and his documentary Ghosts of the Abyss which details his exploration of the wreck constitute hubristic technological achievements to rival the tragic history and narrativisation of the ship herself. Where Hardy commemorates the Titanic disaster poetically, Cameron's films recreate it technologically, reappraising the wreck through complex forms of reenactment. The poem and films together represent speculations on the sinking as a significance-laden event, which acquires heterotopic qualities. However, Cameron's films, which reproduce the image of the wreck with an immense technological expenditure, can be read as manifestations of the Pride of Life Hardy's work sought to chasten.