1. „I have no philosophy, merely…a confused heap of impressions
„I have no philosophy, merely…a confused heap of impressions.” --Hardy • „Tragedy is simply a true perception of reality evident in all conditions of life.” --Hardy * * From Dr. Dósa’s lecture notes

2. Montaigne?

3. “Telling the truth, for Montaigne, is at last the telling “Of Experience…” Experience is passage; that will become the philosophy of all literature after Montaigne, from Shakespeare and Moliére to Proust and Becket.” Bloom, 144, 145, The Western Canon: the Books and School of the Ages

4. „My original starting point was Plato’s discussion in book 10 of the Republic –mimesis ranking third after truth—in conjunction with Dante’s assertion that in the Commedia he presented true reality.” –Erich Auerbach, 554, Mimesis: the Representation of Reality in Western Literature

5. What is tragedy?

6. „Tragedy is, then, an enactment of a deed that is important and complete, and of [a certain] magnitude, by means of language enriched [with ornaments], each used separately in the different parts [of the play]: it is enacted, not [merely] recited, and through pity and fear it effects relief (catharsis) to such [and similar] emotions.” Aristotle— Poetics, VI 1449b 2–3[19]

7. a medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great man
b : a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror –Merriam Webster

8. Catharsis (from Greek κάθαρσις katharsis meaning "purification" or "cleansing") is the purification and purgation of emotions—especially pity and fear—through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration.

11. ’Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess. ’ ’Yes. ’ ’All like ours
’Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?’ ’Yes.’ ’All like ours?’ ’I don’t know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted.’
’Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?’ ’A blighted one.’
’Tis very unlucky that we didn’t pitch on a sound one, when there were so many more of ’em!’ ’Yes.’ 25

12. „Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting’s import she might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired one in all respects…In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ’See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ’Here!’ to a body’s cry of ’Where?’ till the hide-n-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us around and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.” 35-36

13. „Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order.” 63

14. ’Sometimes I feel I don’t want to know anything more about it than I know already.’ ’Why not?’ ’Because what’s the use of learning that I am one of a long row only—finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that’s all. The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands’ and thousands’, and that your coming life and doings’ll be like thousands’ and thousands’.’ ’What, really, then, you don’t want to learn anything?’ ’I shouldn’t mind learning why—why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike…but that’s what books will not tell me.’ 107

15. „It is as it should be,’ she murmured
„It is as it should be,’ she murmured. ’Angel, I am almost glad—yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me.’ She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved. ’I am ready,’ she said quietly. 328

16. In 1891, the same year that Tess was published, Oscar Wilde publishes Dorian Gray (fin de siécle)

17. „…it is undoubtedly possible to detect by the 1880’s a widespread faltering of Victorian self-confidence, a new edginess and uncertainty about the future. Among writers, such a climate might have supposed to favour a mood of determined realism, and so, in some cases, it did. But the commonest reaction was withdrawal, a retreat into nostalgia, exoticism, fine writing, belles-lettres.” –John Gross, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters

18. from Preface to Dorian Gray: „The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim…The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass…It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”