The Poetry of Hopkins by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins is recognized as a significant figure in British poetry, known for his innovative style and deep religious themes. His work, which includes less than two hundred poems, reflects a mastery of rhythm and imagery, often exploring concepts like "inscape" and "instress," which highlight the essence of nature and the divine. His most famous pieces, such as "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "Pied Beauty," showcase his ability to fuse emotion with unique poetic structures, transforming traditional forms into something fresh and vibrant. Hopkins' lyrical talent is also evident in his sonnets, where he experiments with rhythm and diction, revealing his joy in nature and deep theological contemplation. Themes of conflict between personal desires and spiritual commitments permeate his poetry, offering insights into his complex character as both a priest and a poet. While Hopkins' work may initially appear elusive, a careful reading of his poems alongside his letters and essays can illuminate the profound human and mystical dimensions interwoven in his art. His legacy continues to inspire critical scholarship and appreciation, marking him as a classic in the poetry canon.
The Poetry of Hopkins by Gerard Manley Hopkins
First published:Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Now First Published, with Notes by Robert Bridges, 1918; Complete Poems, 1947
Type of work: Poetry
Critical Evaluation:
Twenty-nine years elapsed from the time the poet Robert Bridges first published his edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ POEMS to publication of the definitive collection edited by the great Hopkins scholar, W. H. Gardner. Within that time Hopkins had been firmly established as an important if not a major British poet, not of his age but of the present. Undoubtedly, many of the conflicts over his life and work will have been resolved by the hundredth anniversary of the year Bridges first presented a small number of Hopkins’ poems in important anthologies (1893).
Certain it is that the interest when this brilliant genius was in vogue, during the decade after 1918, has changed to something more deeply critical and scholarly. The letters, notebooks, and essays as well as the complete poems—no one now believes the best of the poet’s work was destroyed—are now available to all, and hardly a year passes without the appearance of a volume of criticism or biography of the extremely paradoxical G. M. Hopkins.
Of utmost importance in understanding the very powerful poetry of this often misunderstood poet is his eclecticism, his wide knowledge and deep insights. While it is true that the preponderance of criticism has dwelt on Hopkins’ innovations in rhythm-rhyme and imagery (“instress” and “inscape” summarize the two main facets), his whole poetic output indicates that he followed in the great European poetic tradition from Homer to Matthew Arnold. Hopkins’ greatest poems are unique in powerful rhythmic effect, equal to or surpassing that of any other poet of like output; historically speaking, his poems prove that the genius of our language lies in stress-rhythms (often “sprung”) of our oldest traditional poetry, at least as important as syllabic meters in effect. His poetic diction, his use of common idiom as well as ingenious coinages, is without exact parallel. His ear for language was so acute, though highly individual, that he helped restore poetry as an oral-aural art, a fact the late Dylan Thomas so brilliantly demonstrated.
The lack of bulk, the slender volume of three hundred pages encompassing less than two hundred poems or fragments, makes arbitrary the distinction of whether Hopkins was a major poet. Certainly he is a classic in a very special sense. His central vision was deeply Christian, Jesuit, even mystical, often ecstatic though intellectually controlled. One of his greatest poems, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” was inspired as much by the “happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns” as their tragic death in 1875 by drowning. By his own account, the thirty-one-year-old theologian, deeply affected by the newspaper account of these nuns, exiled by the Falk Laws, who drowned in the Thames on a ship carrying them from Germany to America, responded to his rector’s suggestion that a commemorative poem should be written of this. Hopkins was eager to try a new rhythm which had been haunting his ear, as he puts it. In spite of Robert Bridges’ disapproval, he kept the rhythmic “oddnesses” because the technique was irrevocably bound to the sentiment he wanted to express, the sprung rhythm or “expressional rhythm . . . a vital fusion of the internal rhythm of thought-and-emotion and the external rhythm of sounds,” as Gardner describes this phenomenon. As a threnody the poem is unique. An invocation to God to master rebellious feelings, a narrative of the tragic event, an elegy of one nun’s heroism, a meditation on God’s beneficence, a plea for intercession—all these and other arguments within the poem demanded a flexibility and felicity of form. The result is one of the great poems in English or any language. Stanza thirty-two, a poem of praise to a merciful God, will illustrate these subtleties:
I admire thee, master of the
While no one definition of “inscape” or “instress” will suffice, this stanza contains both: the former is seeing of the internal and fundamental, significant form or nature of, say, the ocean in motion; and the latter would include the access to God’s grace and a celebration of this, though the rhythmic expression is also implied.
Perhaps the searching eye and the recording ear are best illustrated in Hopkins’ most famous lyric, “Pied Beauty.” Here the poet as painter and musician is displayed, showing his deep concern for bringing to bear in a poem all the senses:
Glory be to God for dappled things—
Here are rhythmic contrasts, dramatic juxtapositions, unique word manipulations, a compelling meter as dappled and iridescent as the things described.
Another facet of Hopkins’ talent, one of his most pronounced achievements, was his variation on the sonnet form, a revolt against the stilted structures and concepts of Victorian poesy. This is not to say he wrote loosely or without thought; quite the contrary is true, for his critical writings reveal the depth of his study and experimentation. Ascetic by habit and temperament, he elevated the form to a new lyricism by breaking with or modifying many old systems and establishing his own.
“The Starlight Night,” a well-known sonnet not too revolutionary, illustrates the nervous counterpointed rhythms, the startling pauses, the jarring sound clashes, the harmonic word fusion among many other interesting poetic, semantic, and linguistic devices:
Look at the stars! look, look up at the
This sonnet also illustrates Hopkins’ childlike joy in fairy lore, his deep love of nature, and a metaphysical rapture over God’s munificence, a simple joy born of a deep religion. In the DEUTSCHLAND poem Hopkins is critical of man’s questioning of God’s ways, but his later poems show this questioning in his own lack of balance—a conflicting of personal desires, private impulses, and his theology. This unrest is perhaps best expressed in the priest-poet’s sonnet “Peace” (1879):
When will you ever, Peace, wild wood-
Here he seems to have found some measure of this peace through virtuous acts, selfless serving of an often thankless mankind.
As most critics point out, Hopkins combined in his interesting person a depth of humanity with a height of mystical insight, with a whole spectrum of emotions and attitudes infused. Most of the contradictions in his nature, the ambiguities within his poetry, can be resolved by a thorough reading not only of his poems, but of his letters, diaries, and essays.