In
preparation for a series of four lectures entitled, “A Dozen Perfect
Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins,” I came across the following excerpt from a
letter of Hopkins to Robert Bridges from1882: “But first I may as well say what I should not otherwise have
said, that I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like mine
than any other man living. As he is a
very great scoundrel, this is not a pleasant confession. And this always makes me more desirous to
read him and the more determined that I will not.”
I was taken
aback; who would have thought Hopkins and Whitman were soulmates? Hopkins’s turning a compliment of another
into a weapon to disparage himself is consistent with his personality, since
self-acceptance was not part of his inner makeup. Aside from the fact that both wrote great
poetry, when Whitman comes to mind one thinks of a joyful acceptance of things
as they are, a love that even had a place for evil, and for which a belief in
God, at least in the traditional sense, was not necessary. These traits seem to be the polar opposites of
the qualities of Hopkins’s personality, such as shyness, self-denial and
orthodox belief.
What did
Hopkins have in mind when he wrote those lines to Bridges?
We will explore several possibilities in the first part of this essay,
including a trait common to both which Hopkins may have had in mind; in the
second part, we will briefly discuss why Hopkins chose a radically different
path from that of Whitman, in order to escape what he could not accept.
Originality
Hopkins and
Whitman have a great affinity here; both were innovators. Each author developed a style radically
different from that of the poetry written at the time. The two poets, in their own ways, invigorated
poetry by combining the rhythms of spoken English with the artifice of
composition. Hopkins, as one might
expect, did this in a more formal way.
He invented a system called sprung rhythm in which each line in a poem
had the same amount of stresses but had a varying amount of syllables
associated with each stress, giving his poetry a freedom that traditional poetry, with its limited number of choices of metrical feet, lacked. The
gregarious Whitman was more directly inspired by the speech he encountered in
daily conversation, and subsequently interspersed his great poem, Song of Myself, with
sections of great lyricism, along with descriptive sections, bordering on prose. (His style here reminds me of classical
operas, in which lyrical and/or dramatic arias are introduced by recitatives.) Both Hopkins and Whitman possessed great
ears, that is, both had an acute sensitivity to the sound of poetry.
Hopkins was
undoubtedly aware that both he and the American master were innovators, but this
commonality cannot be what he meant when he wrote that “he knew in his mind” that he and Whitman were so similar.
Originality was certainly not the factor that caused Hopkins to consider
Whitman “a very great scoundrel.”
Personality
Not many
similarities here. Whitman's libido was more like
a male lion's rather than a monk's; Hopkins penchant for self-denial made them polar
opposites in this regard. (As we will see, there were libidinous similarities between them as well; the difference is that Hopkins spent his life trying to deny the sensual side of his nature.) One sang of
the body, including its desires; the other sang of grace, and admitted to
students at the end of his life that he was still a virgin—no, not much
similarity here.
Views
Regarding Class
Whitman was a “people’s person;” he associated with persons of all
classes. He was just as comfortable with
famous people as he was with carpenters and trolley conductors. Most people in the United States today live
in communities segregated not only by race, but by class as well. Whitman would have had none of this.
Hopkins was
much more bookish and reserved. In his
one political poem, Tom Garland, his political naivete is striking. He asserted that workers were happy because
they worked so hard and thus had little time to be pensive. Hopkins's political views were conservative; he asserted that as long as
the poor had food to eat, class distinctions should be preserved. One could imagine him, if he were a contemporary American, being a registered Republican.
If alive now, Whitman would undoubtedly be appalled about such things as
the lack of universal health care, the failure to raise the minimum wage, and
the rigid interpretation of the Second
Amendment.
Relationship
to Nature
In an essay
written in 1865, On the Origin of Beauty: A Platonic Dialogue,’ Hopkins reveals a
knowledge of flora that reminds one of a botanist’s. He was a close observer of nature, of which his poems provide ample evidence. Images of both fauna and flora, as well as examples of inanimate nature, such as bodies of water, occur in his poems; a strong condemnation of civilization’s desecration of nature occurs as well. His eye for nature was keen, as this phrase from
Pied Beauty, one of his most celebrated short poems, attests: “For rose-moles
all in stipple upon trout that swim...”
When I first read this I thought that the two words, “that swim” were just there for the
rhyme, and thus a defect. (Even Hopkins nods.) Later I read
that, upon death, trout lose their rose moles rapidly. “Swim” rhymes with “trim,” but the two words
didn’t constitute a facile rhyme. The image of a living trout reveals how exact Hopkins’s observation of nature was. Whitman, in contrast, was a city dweller, and
his imagery reflects life in an urban environment. One would not find a lament regarding the
felling of trees in his poetry, in contrast to Hopkins’s famous poem, “Binsey
Poplars”—in Whitman’s world, the trees had already been removed to make room for
the city. Whitman's acuity of vision was directed at humanity, not nature.
Spirituality
Both poets
evinced a very deep spiritual life.
Hopkins, however, chose a dogmatic version of Catholicism--we shall see
why soon—while Whitman’s spirituality wasn’t dogmatic at all. Can you image Hopkins ever writing such lines
as:
Creeds
and schools in abeyance,
Retiring
back a while sufficient at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor
for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature
without check with original energy.
--from Song of Myself
Lines like
these might well have brought Hopkins to the conclusion that the American poet
was a “very great scoundrel” indeed.
Sensuality
They had
much in common here, except for a very essential fact: Whitman celebrated his
senses, while Hopkins did his best to deny his sexuality; he saw “mortal
beauty” as a threat to salvation, as he made clear in a later sonnet entitled, "To What Serves Mortal Beauty?"
In Whitman’s
world, sex is everywhere. Can one ever imagine Hopkins comparing the mystery of rain to the mystery of
ejaculation? “Something I cannot see
puts upward libidinous prongs,/ Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven"--from Song
of Myself.
Being a
very sensual man himself, sexual imagery occurs frequently in Hopkins’s works as well, but these references are much less explicit, even subconscious in
origin. (one of many instances: the
monster who is attacking Andromeda in the eponymously named poem is described as
being “lewd”; the mythical monster thus becomes a sexual predator.
Why did
Hopkins do his best to deny his sexuality?
This we will briefly explore in the last section of this essay.
2. The Possible
Source of Hopkins’s Asceticism
In the
first edition of Hopkins’s poem from 1918, Robert Bridges included two early
poems. One from 1866, is entitled, “The
Habit of Perfection,” the subject of which is denial of the senses in order to
lead a life suffused with divine grace. In the poem, Hopkins
enumerates each sense in turn, followed by the spiritual benefits of denying
each one. Of taste he writes,
Palate,
the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire
not to be rinsed with wine
From
these and from the poem in general, one is impressed by the author's sensuality; we can infer that his giving up the joys of the senses for God was not going to be easy.
Two
years earlier, he wrote the following poem, also included in the first edition
of his poetry:
Heaven-Haven
A nun
takes the veil
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail
To
fields where falls no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storm comes,
Where
the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
As I
have pointed out on several occasions, there is a marked autobiographical element in nearly every one
of Hopkins’s poems. In addition, a good
case can be made of the author’s use of females as alter egos. This poem is a
good example of both. Hopkins is the nun
of this poem, imagining an idealized
future of peace, once his earthly desires are left behind. Getting “out of the swing of the sea,”
however, is not an easy task, and is, in my opinion, in most cases, futile and self-destructive as well. Nuns who take the veil bring their inner
conflicts—and we all have inner conflicts—with them; they are not post conflict post
vows. A more insightful quote comes from Horace: Caelum non animam mutant, qui trans
mare currunt, “Those who travel across the sea change the sky above them
but not their personality”. An obsession
with self-denial usually does not end well, as it didn’t in Hopkins’s
life. What is the source of Hopkins’s
desire to end all desire; what is the source of his “self-loathing,” a word
which Hopkins used in reference to himself at the end of his life?
Another
early poem, this one from 1865, providess an important clue:
She
schools the flighty pupils of her eyes,
With
levell’d lashes stilling their disquiet;
And puts
in leash her pair’d lips lest surprise
Bare the
condition of a realm at riot.
If he
suspect that she has ought to sigh at
His
injury she’ll avenge with raging shame.
She kept
her love-thoughts on most lenten diet,
And
learnt her not to startle at his name.
In this
very autobiographical poem, Hopkins once again assumes a female alter ego. The
subject of the poem is the ”love that dare not speak its name” and the necessity of concealing it, which, if
discovered, would result in “raging shame.”
That Hopkins is talking about his own difficulties with his sexual
orientation is clear. If we take this
poem literally, it makes little sense.
If a man discovers that a woman is attracted to him, he is hardly going
to feel injured; when he discovers that it is a male, however, both “injury” in
the one and “raging shame” in the other would have been a likely result of this
discovery at the time. The outer world—especially
its Catholic version—condemned and still often vociferously opposes homosexuality; Hopkins’s inner
world viewed it as sinful as well. (We must not forget that the term "homosexuality" was not in use at Hopkins's time; this hardly means, however, that Hopkins believed that "sodomites," to use the Victorian term, hadn't gone sinfully astray). His
attraction to males was strong. There is much documentation supporting this proclivity. On one
occasion during his Oxford years, for instance, he slipped off to a church to get a good look at a handsome choirboy. One of the reasons he gave up painting was
the realization that painting male nudes would be far too stimulating for him. On another occasion, he wrote in his journal that he was disturbed
by imagining a male friend in the nude.
Shortly
after the "raging shame" poem was written, Robert Bridges introduced a distant relative to
Hopkins, Digby Dolben. He thought that
Hopkins could acquaint the younger Dolben, who was interested in studying at
Balliol College, with life at Oxford.
This brief encounter was of great significance for Hopkins; one critic
described Dolben as “the love of his life.”
This love was, however, apparently not mutual. Hopkins wrote many letters to him, but
received few replies, and when one came, Dolben was indifferent and
unresponsive. The following year after
the brief encounter at Oxford, Hopkins had a crisis of faith, which he resolved,
at least temporarily, with his conversion to Catholicism. Two years later, he
vowed to become a Jesuit, in preparation for which he burned his early poems, in the
belief that writing poetry was not consistent with his new, austere vocation.
If an intention to become a Jesuit, however, is based not on a desire to serve, but on
a desire to escape, peace, if it comes at all, will likely come “to brood and
sit,” as Hopkins wrote in a poem from 1879.
Hopkins did not have a talent for teaching or for parish work. (In one of his sermons, for instance, he spoke
of the Church as an enormous cow with seven teats, each one being a sacrament. Hopkins would never have used such a silly
image in his poetry; that he did so in a sermon is an indication of his futile attempts
to reach working-class Catholics).
Hopkins’s
asceticism turned out to be an indelible prickly pear. He was overworked doing tasks that did not
bring joy, Kindly disposed Jesuit
superiors didn’t know what to do with him, which explains his frequent
transfers, none of which worked out His
last position, that of professor of classics in Ireland, was his most prestigious
employment; regarding his emotional well-being, however, it was
disastrous. His increasing isolation and
sense of alienation at the end of his life resulted in despair, as his Terrible
Sonnets testify Why, he wrote to God in one of his last sonnets,
Does/ Disappointment
all my endeavors end?/Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend/How wouldst thou
worse, I wonder, than thou dost, /Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls
of lust/Do in spare hours more than I that spend/ Sir, life upon thy cause…”
He wasn't out of the swing of the sea as his nunself had hoped; he was drowning instead. Despair
resulted in a severe distortion of his self-image, even of his worth as a poet, as
this line from his last poem, attests:
Sweet
fire the sire of the muse, my soul needs this;
I want
the one rapture of an inspiration.
Posterity hardly agrees with this pathological self-assessment. Too bad for Hopkins that his poetry received
so little recognition during his lifetime!
The tragedy of Hopkins’s final years reveals the importance of
self-acceptance, the importance of friendship, the folly of viewing one’s
sexual orientation as sinful, and the importance of doing what you love and
receiving at least some recognition for one’s efforts. A hard fact for the
faithful is illustrated here: if these factors are absent in one’s life, it is unlikely that one’s
God will remove them. Whitman was lucky
enough to recognize the importance of these factors and the wisdom to practice them.
Both men, as is the case of all poets, had rich inner lives. An inner life, however, without sustenance from the outer world, withers as surely as a plant does when transported from a spring garden to a dark basement. Hopkins might have indeed been correct in his judgement that both poets
were, as it were, soulmates. Whitman’s
choice to celebrate life, in contrast to Hopkins’s attempt to escape it, however,
hardly makes the American poet “a very great scoundrel.”
*
This concludes the last of my five essays on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The titles of the previous four are as follows: 1. Ten Unforgettable poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Part l; 2. Ten Unforgettable Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Part ll; 3. St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, alias Gerard Manley Hopkins; and the penultimate essay, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Present Absence of God. All the essays, including this one, can be located on the internet by googling the title in question along with my name.
I hope this "labor of love" has been of some interest to you. Comments welcome!
