St. Afphonsus Rodriguez, alias Gerard Manley Hopkins

1. A Problematic Poem

In honor of
St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth bears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

  Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

This might not be among the best poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, (1844-1889), which is a bit like claiming that the stars in a deep-field view of a 1% sweep of space are less numerous than those from a 2% sweep; true, yet the near-infinity of suns in the former is more than enough to astound.

In Hopkins's art, the medium is indeed the message, but the message of the medium is of vital importance as well. In this article, we will focus on the latter.  The poem assumes knowledge of the life of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, who, being a Jesuit saint, was and presumably still is, an icon of the Jesuit community, but little known among non-Catholics; we will therefore begin with a brief biography of his life.

Alfonso Rodriguez (1532-1617) was the son of a wool merchant.  When his father died when Alfonso was 14, the latter took over the business, but was unsuccessful. The future saint married, at the age of 16, a peasant woman and had three children.  When he became  a widower with two surviving children, he began to be increasingly devout, which in his case included severe austerities.  When his third child died, he sought to enter a religious order.  He was not accepted by the Jesuits to be trained as a priest, since he had little education.  He tried to remedy that deficit by attending a college in Barcelona, but was unsuccessful at that as well.  Eventually, he was accepted by the Jesuits as a lay brother.  He was soon transferred to the Jesuit college in Majorca, where he served as the doorkeeper, or hall porter, for 46 years.  He was apparently frequently beset by fits of melancholy; he also believed from time to time that he was being persecuted by devils.  Nevertheless, he was quite effective and beloved as he performed his humble station.  It's hard to diagnosis him after four hundred years, but it seems likely that he suffered from a malady which  today is called manic depressive disorder. He seems to have had cognitive limitations as well.  His canonization, took place in 1887.  Hopkins wrote the poem in 1888 to commemorate the saint on the first anniversary of his canonization.

Shortly after completing the poem, Hopkins wrote the following to Robert Bridges : "I ask your opinion of a sonnet written to order on the occasion of the first feast since his canonization proper of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, a laybrother of our Order, who for 40 years acted as hall-porter to the College of Palma in Majorca; he was, it is believed, much favored by God with heavenly light and much persecuted by evil spirits."

2. A Brief Analysis of The Poem

In honor of
St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth bears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

  Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

In this section, I will give a brief analysis of the poem, which is reprinted above for easy reference.

The poem informs us about something that nearly everyone ignores when young, that which a good percentage of old people realize as they age: fame isn't everything.  Studies have determined that what makes us happy is the quality of our personal relationships, although there is certainly more to happiness than that. 

Hopkins asserts that worldly honor is not everythng; what the world sees in public and what God sees in private are far from identical.  The poet tells us that honor is certainly due to those who have done brave deeds of which the public is aware, and gives us military examples of such heroes.  But what about those who have fought against battalions of their inner demons, and won--what about these unsung heroes?  Hopkins tells us that honor is especially due to Christ and to martyrs, but, regarding a war within, "Earth'--that is the world, more likely than not, doesn't even notice, even though the battle that results in the victory over self might have been even fiercer than a famous general's battle over an enemy.  In addition, the unknown victor of inner struggles has to fight without protection, as susceptible to the arrows of outrageous fortune as St. Sebastion was to the arrows of Roman soldiers.

In the sonnet's sextet, Hopkins asserts that God does things both large and small, and that, in His eyes, the humble victor of existential battles, a victory which enables him to lead a so-called ordinary life, deserves as much honor and praise as do military conquerors, whom the world rewards with statues and oratory.

I have discovered that Hopkins often writes, however cryptically, about himself in nearly all of his poems.  I contend that Hopkins became a priest to overcome his desire for sensual enjoyment, a tendency of which he was often ashamed, probably due to its more-than-occasional homoerotic content.  He fought long and hard in a battle that caused him a good deal of suffering.  Another reason why Hopkins might see himself as an unsung combatant is due to the little acknowledgment he received in his lifetime, despite the immense effort he put into his art.  (One editor referred to him as a "young aspirant" although he was at the time middle-aged, not far from death, and had been writing poetry--great poetry, in fact--for quite some time.)

Like all poets, Hopkins wanted to see his work published and acknowledged, but this was not to be, due to the striking originality of his art.  (I shall illustrate the poet's ambition with one example; there are others. After Hopkins wrote his first great work, The Wreck of the Deutschland, he submitted it to a well-known Jesuit journal, The Month.  The editor wanted to publish it at first, but eventually rejected it.  One hundred years later, the journal, still in publication, apologized for having made the blunder of failing to recognize a great poem by a great poet).

Hopkins was not to enjoy a life of inner rest, at the fulcrum, as it were,  of a seesaw between alternating ambition on one side and alternating humility on the other. It's as if his left brain had placed a copy of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises in his right hand, while his right brain had placed a pen in his left hand, ready to autograph an imagined edition of his famous poems.  Having such an unresolved conflict inside oneself does not auger well for a happy future; Hopkins's despair at the end of his life was unfortunate, but not unexpected.

For someone like me, who finds no evidence of a God intervening in human affairs from without, the belief that God acknowledges inner victories that go unnoticed in the world is a metaphor for the spiritual enhancement inner victories provide. But what good are these triumphs if no one is aware of them and if one is not strong enough not to doubt their significance, despite the lack of affirmation from others?

In Rodriguez's case, the porter accepted his humble station and performed it well.  He was a beloved doorkeeper indeed; he made everyone feel important, and did the errands which his position required--such as informing his superiors about the arrival of guests--with joy.  People were amazed by his good nature, and soon were even requesting advice from this humble, uneducated man.  This despite his frequent fits of depression and, perhaps, of paranoia.  A victor over demons, if there ever was one.

In Hopkins's case, the results of his struggles were far less consoling.  In his last poem, he writes "I wat the one rapture of an inspiration"  and disparages his "lagging lines."  A judgment which, to put it mildly, posterity doesn't share.  He approached the end of his life on a bitter note of self-loathing, Although Hopkins believed to the very end in a God that intervenes in human affairs, yet this God never provided him with a sense of inner victory, a sense he so richly deserved.

One difference between  Rodriguez and Hopkins is striking: Rodriquez was surrounded by people his entire life as a doorkeeper, people whom he helped and who admired him.  Hopkins, although rather gregarious in his younger years, became increasingly isolated in Ireland, where he was a professor of classics in the last four years of his life.  He was, however, a born poet, not a born teacher. He was overworked and frustrated. A sad anecdote of this time is the fact that Hopkins retired at ten p.m. nightly, just as the rest of the faculty gathered to relax and enjoy each other's company.  His last years were sad indeed.

In Donizetti's opera, Anna Bolena,  the besieged Anna Boleyn is asked what is important in life.  "Amore et fama!" ("Love and fame"), she sings. with the highest notes on "fama!"   Poor Anna was only half right.   

Music is Music: In der Fremde, a Lied by Schumann

Many years ago, in 1966, I fell in love with a German girl, if the emotions felt by someone so confused as I was at the time can be indicated by the sublimest word in the language.  It was during the year I spent studying abroad in Freiburg, Germany, 1965-1966.  During a semester break, she invited me to stay a few days at the family home in Bad Pyrmont, Germany, a town near Hameln, of Pied Piper fame, not far from the city of Hannover.

One evening. we listened to some recordings from the family phonograph--vinyl recordings, of course.  I was transfixed by a recording of lieder by Schumann, as performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore at the piano.  One lied especially, In der Fremde--which I liberally translate as "Far From Home," moved me to the point of tears.  It has remained with me all these fifty odd years; I have played it in my head countless times; it has never failed to reverberate along that remarkable pathway, possessed by everyone, that leads from mind to heart.

The poem Schumann set to music is by Josef von Eichendorff, which follows:

In der Fremde

Aus der Heimat hinter den Blitzen rot
da kommen die Wolken her;
Aber Vater und Mutter sind lange tot,
Es kennt mich dort keiner mehr.

Wie bald, ach wie bald, kommt die stille Zeit
Da ruhe ich auch; und über mir
Rauscht die schöne Waldeinsamkeit,
Und keiner kennt mich mehr hier.


Far From Home

From my home behind red, blazing skies
Clouds are heading this way;
But father and mother have long since died,
No one knows me there today.

How soon, ah! how soon comes that quiet time
When I'll rest as well--and above me shall stir
woods' solitude, woods' solitude, sublime,
And no one will still know me here.

Later, after we had returned to Freiburg, I told my girlfriend how much I not only loved the music, but the poem as well.  She told me that Eichendorff was no longer respected in academic circles.  She thereupon said something like, "'Hinter den Blitzen rot'--Was soll das bedeuten?  Quatsch!"  ("'Behind red lightning'--What is that supposed to mean?  Nonsense!")  But "Blitzen" can mean flashes as well as lightning; here it signifies the intense, changing brief lights of the sunset.  Thus, instead of "behind red lightning" I translated the phrase as "behind red, blazing skies" which I think is much closer to Eichendorff's intent.

Eichendoff's poems are deceptively simple.  They are able to suggest much with few words, the true mark of a poet.  He is also a master of the last line--a rare gift.  I still admire this poet, and sometimes defend him before my girlfriend in occasional dreams, despite the fact that she has been united with the solitude of the woods for the past fifteen years.

Schumann, who had a remarkable sense for poetry, composed a truly exceptional lied to the text of this poem.  Listen to the magical way he repeats, "When I'll rest as well" and the haunting repetition of that untranslatable noun "Waldeinsamkeit," which I approximate with "woods' solitude".

In this edition of "Music is Music" we will discuss three recordings of this geat lied.

1. Bryn Terfel

Bryn Terfel, the renowned Welsh bass baritone, made this recording at an early age.  His truly beautful voice is readily apparent.  It seems to me, however, that he is singing the notes more than he is interpreting the text.  His pronunciation is very good; a significant part of his career has involved performances of German repertoire, especially opera.

The first two expositionary lines of the text are followed by the main theme of the poem, death.  He sings the second two lines in almost the same way he sang the first two.  "Wie bald" ("How soon") seems to me best sung with a degree of joyful anticipation, especially on the "bald," death coming as a relief to the poet's loneliness and suffering.  Listen to how he repeats "die schöne Waldeinsamkeit," with little increase in intensity.  This phrase should "hit home;" --that is, the singer should make us hear what the poet feels--subject to interpretation, of course, In my view, the phrase cries out to be sung as an emotive, internal response to the declarative sentence that precedes it.  The fermata on the final "kennt" ("knows") at the end of the song is sung flawlessly, yet as if it were a note in a sonata--there is no sense of the transition from earthly loneliness to that of cosmic unity.  Being unknown and lonely has obviously been a major aspect of the protagonist's life; its resolution here should be revealed to the listener, not solely through an emphasized high note, but with a nuanced interpretation of the meaning of the text as well.  The lied is beautifully sung, however; Terfel is a first-rate musician.

2, Hermann Prey (1929-1998)

Marvelous!

Prey understood and poignantly interpreted this great poem.  He sang this late in his career and knew a good deal--although he was a great comic actor on stage as well--about tragedy and impending death. It shows. Perhaps it is unfair to compare this version sung by a mature artist to that of Bryn Terfel, who was in his early twenties at the time. The difference, however, astounds.

The lied is a very intimate art form, combining (ideally) great poetry with great music.  Lieder are therefore best sung before a small audience, in a salon or at home among friends.  Prey chose a living-room-like setting to perform Schumann's Op. 39, of which In der Fremde is the first piece of the series.  Unlike Terfel, he is not wearing a tuxedo.  Prey seems to be singing in a private room before one honored guest, you, the listener, or, more specifically, before your very soul

This is a low-key, emotional performance, portraying with soft tones the melancholy nature of the subject.  The accompaniment stikes me as being a tad too slow, but this is a matter of taste.  Notice, after the expositionary first two lines of the poem, his subtle rendering of "Father" and "Mother," which crescendos to a gentle emphasis on "lange," indicating that there has been a lot of water that has flowed under the bridge, and that the world-weary swimmer is ready to be swept out to sea.  Notice how he sings "Und über mir rauscht die schöne Waldeinsamket" more loudly and how he so poignantly and subtly trails off into reverie on the last two syllables of "Waldeinsamkeit," namely "Einsamkeit" which the listener can easily infer has been a major defining problem in the protagonist's  life.  The repetition of "die schöne Waldeinsamkeit" conveys perfectly the protagonist's reflection on his impending death, a resolution of his loneliness and isolation, yet bitter nevertheless.  The final high-note on "kennt" is extraordinary.

Marvelous!

3. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012)

This is the recording I listened to with my girlfriend in Bad Pyrmont so many years ago.  The most exquisite factor of this recording is the singer's extraordinary timbre, his beauty of tone; this is an example of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the late great baritone, at the very height of his artistry.  (I remember hearing Fischer-Dieskau sing the role of Falstaff in a production at the Vienna State Opera conducted by Leonard Bernstein, in 1966.  I had a Stehplatz, a standing room place; from my perspective at the very back of the orchestra, one couldn't see the conductor.  "What was that jetting up into view like a silver fountain?" I soon asked myself. Bernstein being Bernstein, I was amused to watch his head periodically bop into view as he jumped up and down.) The role of Falstaff was far too large for Fischer-Dieskau's voice; in the lied, however, he was a great master.

Beauty of tone, certainly, but a very effective interpretation as well.  While Prey's was more subdued, Fischer-Dieskau's interpretation gives us more dramatic variation--it's like a mini-opera.  Notice how sorrow takes over when the protagonist sings about his parents, long since dead.  After this, the singer changes tone: he anticipates "that quite time" with joy.  Schumann ingeniously repeats phrases, such as "da ruhe ich auch," giving the singer an opportunity for heightened expression, an opportunity which this singer utilized masterfully.  On the second "auch" Schumann raises the third note of the minor scale, thus changing, albeit briefly, minor to major.  Fischer-Dieskau's muted singing of this note provides a contrast, as if the protagonist has both positive and negative reactions to the approaching quiet time.  Beautiful! Notice as well the gentle crescendo to "Waldeinsamkeit"--and notice the subdued wail on the "ein" when he repeats that word.  While this repeat is a melancholy reflection in Prey's interpretation, in Fisher-Dieskaus's one feels the buried sorrow of the protagonist's resignation.  Fischer-Dieskau's high-note on "kennt" conveys deep sorrow of a man who has long since discovered that his life raft is composed of straw.

Gerald Moore, the pianist here, was one of the greatest accompanists of all time.  When one listens to his playing here, one agrees with this assessment.

A double marvelous for this performance--What a beautiful way to say good-bye!


Previous editions of this series, all available on my blog:

1.  Music is Music: Farther Along
2.  Music is Music: Feeling Good
3.  Music of Transformation: An Analysis of a Spiritual
4.  Schubert in Five Songs Part l
5.  Schubert in Five Songs, Part ll
6.  Music is Music: Gospel
7.  Music is Music: der Schmied
8.  Music is Music: Throw it Away
9.  Prometheus
10. Music is Music: Beautiful Hurts

The Dangerous Goon, His Enabling Poltroons, and Those Lily-White Loons

1. The Dangerous Goon

O-my-God-can-you-believe-it?  Lies!  Incompetence! More lies!  Pundits still seem to be shocked by the fact that the Distemperor has no clothes.  When will he pivot into a president? As late as August 30, 2017, Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein said, after Trump pardoned that monster sheriff, "I believe he can be a good president...The question is whether he can learn and change."

Really, Sen. Feinstein, really?  Haven't you figured him out yet?

You're not alone. How can pundits be shocked night after night while commenting on his egregious behavior?  He'll straighten out.  Soon he'll be somebody about whom Uncle Sam will be proud.  Really?

I don't consider myself a political scientist, far from it, but I knew this guy's number from the very beginning, and am amazed that intelligent people still seem to be finding out how unqualified he is at so late a date, tweet by tweet.  Trump was for five years before his election the mouthpiece of the shameless birther movement, which claimed that President Obama was born in Kenya, all evidence to the contrary, and thus not fit to run for president. The malevolent racism of this calumny is all-too-apparent.  And the lies!  How could this modern Humpty Dumpty, asserting that "truth is whatever lie I choose it to be" ever follow in the footsteps of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and, yes, Obama?  America could never elect someone so incompetent and narcissistic as that!  That was, alas! what I thought right up to November 8, 2016.

Yes, Trump is mentally ill;  yes, Trump is a malignant narcissist.  Part of this disease is the belief, due to a pitiful neediness, that one is Zeus among zombies.  All human beings save him are zombies in his mind, since another aspect of his disease is a sordid lack of empathy.  Criticism, however justified, is like a zombie coming at him with a knife; he must disarm the dead man and destroy him for the second time in order for him, in his imagination, to Zeus on.

Pundits have pointed out that all presidents have a bit of Narcissus in them. But not to Trump's degree!  100 degrees F. is a low-grade fever; once the fever soars to 107 or so, the brain cells begin to be destroyed.  Malignant narcissists have malignant fevers.

Combine this with stupidity and we're in trouble--and we certainly are.  A stunning indictment of Trump's abilities came form Dr. William Kelley, who taught Trump at the Wharton School of Business in the late 1960s: "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student that I ever had."  Trump apparently came to the school convinced that he knew everything already.  "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."  Really?

The damage he has already done to our country is palpable.  Anyone who is politically aware and not thinking solely from his brain stem can make a list of unprecedented lies and debasements of our country  With the muddle of Trumpsurdities, China must be pleased.

2. His Enabling Poltroons

American patriots, however, should not be pleased.  The United States is very much in need of better governance. The world is a very complicated and sometimes dangerous place; our nation has many problems, such as inequality and the lack of affordable health care for all, that need to be addressed. We are therefore in great need of good domestic and international leadership. Instead, we have an incompetent man-child as president, who claims to be making America great again, but is making things worse at home and more dangerous abroad.

There are many mentally ill persons in the world, but this is arguably the first time one has been elected president.  His pathology is increasingly obvious to all discerning individuals.  What is keeping him in office; who is responsible for letting him continue to drag us down?

The Senate has 100 seats, 52 of which are currently held by Republicans; The House has 435 representatives, 240 of which are, at present, Republicans as well.  To my knowledge, only two have come forth with criticism.  One, Senator Flake from Arizona, up for reelection in 2018, criticizes Trump and the party for its lack of decorum; he is in basic agreement with Trump's agenda, however.  His nice-guy approach puts him in danger of being challenged from the right by someone--there are apparently many--who are more extreme in their conservatism.  Sen. Bob Corker, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been far more critical.  He contends that the White House has become an Adult Daycare Center.  The adults around Trump have to keep this adult child from running amuck.  His irresponsibility is leading us nearer to World War lll--Unprecedented criticism!

Sen. Corker, however, is not running for reelection.  He also contends that many, perhaps most, Republicans know that Trump is dangerously inept; nevertheless, they keep silent.  They are his enabling poltroons. 

Districts have been gerrymandered by the G.O.P., nearly assuring Republican victories.  But more reasonable Republicans are  threatened to a greater degree by challenges from the right than they would be if the cynical redistricting had not taken place.  The Republican Party may not be likely to lose, but less fanatic candidates sure can.

It is understandable that politicians want to be reelected; this is a primary goal of politicians of both parties.  They get a lot of money and enjoy a lot of perks.  It is easy to say to them, "What good is it to gain the world and lose your soul?"  A lot of people say things like this, but they, along with those whom they criticize, don't always put this great maxim into practice.

I hardly expect Republicans to be saints, but it is reasonable to expect them to begin to disassociate from a person who is completely unfit to be president, proofs of which Trump provides on an almost daily basis.

Trump could not remain president without their support, yet they remain silent.  When will they begin to follow their conscience?  When will they cease being Trump's enabling poltroon?



3.  The Lily-White Loons

Let us illustrate the exotic state of our politics with an image of a pyramid, The Pyramid of the Pathological Pharaoh.  The duncecap-shaped stone at the apex is Trump; the boulders supporting him for several layers down are the Republican politicians.  The vast bulk of the pyramid consists of rigid boulders which represents Trump's base, the 62,979,879 U.S citizens that voted for PP, the Pathological Pharaoh.

Without this base, the entire pyramid would collapse.

I am shocked by the fact that so many people could have voted for someone whom our Secretary of State called--with justification--a moron.  This is not a conservative or liberal issue; a mentally ill narcissist does not belong in the White House.  

A good section of our society is politically uninformed and angry, a toxic combination.  If one votes with one'a brain stem without access to one's frontal lobes, Trouble in River City can inundate the entire nation; and so it has.  One look at a Trump rally brings one to the inescapable conclusion that racism has a lot to do with the mess we're in, but racism alone is not the sufficient cause. I don't get it.

I do get this, however: the well being of our nation and the world is in danger.  We therefore need to focus on Trump's base, treat its boulders as decent human beings who have gone astray, and do our best to bring them to reason.  Even more important, we must do all we can to get all Americans to the polls for both local and national elections.  

It's up to us.  Each citizen has a hammer; each citizen has a vote.  Our country needs vigorous political activism from its informed citizens, especially now--Get involved before it's too late! The Pathological Pyramid, like all confederate statues, must come down.

Ten Unforgettable Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins Part ll, Poems 6-10

                       
                    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) in 1885

This is the second edition of a two-part article showcasing ten of the best poems written by the nineteenth century English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.  Both articles can be googled; they are on my blog, thomasdorsett@blogspot.com.  Written primarily for my students, I invite anyone interested in poetry to read these poems, whether for the first time or whether one is familiar with the poet and the poems.  Each one is followed by a brief commentary.

6. Peace

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,

Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?

When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite

To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but

That piecemeal peace is poor peace.  What pure peace allows

Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu

Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,

That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does home

He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,

                   He comes to brood and sit.

Commentary

This poem was written in 1879, just after Hopkins found out he was to be transferred to work as a parish priest in Liverpool.  It is along with “Pied Beauty,” an example of a curtal sonnet, discussed previously. Hopkins dreaded his new position; the frequent moves, over which he had no control, were beginning to wear him down.  I suppose he felt that functioning as a priest in a working-class environment of a big industrial city was not a good match; if this is true, his intimation was indeed correct.

Notice the hushed, soft tones of this poem—the w’s and r’s, the relative paucity of hard consonants.  No bold, celebratory lines such as “The world is charged with the grandeur of God” here.  The soft tones of the music evince sadness and resignation; the subject of the poem is the absence of peace, not its presence.

Also notice the Latin-like manipulations of normal English word order: “under be my boughs” for “be under my boughs;” and “To own my heart” for “To my own heart”.  Hopkins is not trying to be odd here; for him music and rhythm are primary.

The image of “reaving Peace” is striking.  Peace is lacerating because she lives alas! away.

For me, what makes this poem truly unforgettable is the last line.  After the easy rhyme of “do” with “coo,” the ear expects a resolution, a happy ending.  The understatement of the last line is like a stab in the heart.  (I read this line a little faster and softer, giving the understatement an even greater impact.)  Even when she makes a rare appearance, Peace doesn’t come as relief; Peace comes as rumination; Peace comes as depression. 

Hopkins’s poems evince a largely negative emotional progression, albeit with some notable exceptions.  In two short years after “Pied Beauty,” we see his vision begin to darken.  The technical wizardry, however, will remain undiminished.

7. Spring and Fall

    

       to a Young Child

 

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! As the heart grows older

It will come to such sighs colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name,

Sorrow’s sprigs are the same,

No mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.  

Commentary

Hopkins wrote this poem in 1880; at this time, he was functioning as a priest at St. Francis Xavier’s, Liverpool.  He was not happy there.  He had some difficulty relating to the working-class parishioners of this large, industrial, troubled city.

He was also much overworked. The poet informed Bridges that the young girl of the title is fictional. I mentioned previously that Hopkins’s poems prior to the confessional Terrible Sonnets were nevertheless more biographical than their objective, rather anonymous treatment indicates.  Hopkins is quite possibly the young girl of the poem, having become more and more aware of death and sorrow as his life became more difficult. 

“It is the blight man was born for.” One can’t help noticing that there is no “Grave where is thy victory; death where is thy sting?” here; the absence of religious consolation is striking.  It’s not that Hopkins lost faith; he was, however, increasingly aware of his faith’s inability to resolve his increasing sorrow.

The poem contains four stresses per line; it is written in sprung rhythm throughout. Once again, we are confronted with strong rhythms and neologisms, e.g. “wanwood” and “leafmeal”.  “Leafmeal” indicates the dissolution of fallen leaves, an understatement of the horror of death. 

What a beautiful last line!  It sums up the whole poem. The stress on “Margaret” is very effective.  Falling leaves are not the problem; world sorrow is not the issue: it is the sudden, personal realization of the demise of one’s self that is so effectively portrayed here.  For Hopkins, hope, albeit an increasing inaccessible hope, remained in Pandora’s box; death however has escaped and will not, even by faith, be banished back to an unopened casket.

8. Felix Randall

Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? My duty all ended,

Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome

Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some

Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended

Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some

Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom

Tended to him.  Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.

My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,

Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,

When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,

Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

Commentary

Written in the same year, 1880, Felix Randall is a companion piece of Spring and Fall; both deal with death.  In the latter, a young child realizes she, too, will die some day; in the former, death comes to an adult.  There is a symmetry here; the spring poem begins with a child in good health; the Randall poem begins with the death of an adult.  In the first poem, death is a concept, soon to be banished from the little girl's mind as she is absorbed by distractions that surround her.  In the other poem, death is a reality.  Margaret will presumably have a long life ahead of her; in the second poem, a priest recalls the life of a man who is already dead.  Between these two brash realities, namely, the realization of one’s mortality during youth, and that mortality coming to pass at the end of one's life, is a period of (usually) many years, when, caught up in the workaday world while possessing the vigor of youth, one is able to (almost) forget one’s own eventual demise.  This latency phase is beautifully portrayed in the last three lines of this poem, all the more poignant since it is a recollection of a deceased man in the bloom of youth, at a time when that bloom has withered and already has become part of the leafmeal of the forest.

9.

 I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! What sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak thus. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him who lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me,

Bones build in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours.  I see

The lost are like this, their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Commentary

Hopkins greatest poems were written over a period of about ten years.  What a range of subjects!  Love of nature, love of God—and unfortunately for him, rejection of the self, which is readily apparent in his Terrible Sonnets, this one, like most of the others,  being a virtuosic example of vitriol against the self.  This and the other dark poems were written sometime after 1885.  From 1884 until his death in 1889, Hopkins’s official position was the most important one he had ever held: that of Fellow in Classics and Professor of Greek and Latin Literature, at University College of Dublin. But it sounds better than it was: the Jesuit College was formed to prove that a Catholic college could compete with the Protestant ones. The emphasis was not so much on the love of learning as it was on passing examinations. The Irish found an Irishman to run the science department; Hopkins was chosen because a qualified Irish Classics scholar could not be found.  It was an era of nationalism; the Irish were not fond, to put it mildly, of the English.  They even looked down on recent converts to Catholicism.  Hopkins was overworked and increasingly isolated.  A poignant illustration of his isolation is his retiring every evening at 10 P.M., just when the faculty gathered to enjoy each other’s company.

Although the Terrible Sonnets indicate that Hopkins was suffering  from serious depression, the artist in him was still in supreme control. Something negative expressed with what Keats called Negative Capability, is a double negative, something very positive indeed.  We must feel grateful that Hopkins composed these Terrible Sonnets, terrible in their honesty and unforgettable in their austere beauty.

My favorite line of this poem is “Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours,” one of the finest examples of Hopkins’s intensification of meaning through sound.  “Selfyeast of spirit” has a neutral tonal quality; it is followed by two hammering alliterative stresses of “dull” and “dough.”  Then comes the amazing “sours,” which comes across as an implosion of self-disgust. (Read it slowly; read it as if you were chewing on something very bitter.)  I have found in all literature no expression of self-hate that is more powerful than these six words.  For me they are the negative image of the glorious “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” discussed earlier.

10.

Mine own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this toremented mind

With this tormenting mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find

Thirst’s all-in-all in a world of wet.

Soul, self; come poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what, whose smile

‘s not wrung, see you, unforeseentimes rather—as skies

Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

Commentary

Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and give Hopkins some much-needed lessons in Buddhism, a system which is perfectly capable of finding-by-not-finding Thirst’s all in all in a world of wet.  I wish I could have brought the current pope along with me, so that he could repeat what he said regarding those who have “the wrong sexual orientation,” namely, “Who am I to judge?"

This is the eye of a Terrible Hurricane: you know that comfort will not only not find “root-room;” it will soon be uprooted, and perhaps never return.

The movement of this poem evinces Hopkins at the height of his powers.  (It’s important to state here that in the midst of writing desperate sonnets, he wrote on other subjects as well and continued to function, albeit unhappily, at the University College Dublin). Notice the emphasis on “Charitable”—as if it were something foreign to him, yet something of extreme importance.  Notice how the effect would be lost if that word came at the end of the previous line.

This poem contains several examples of Hopkins’s assault—a glorious assault, but an assault nevertheless--on conventional grammar.  There is no noun after the adjective “comfortless,” which is used here as a noun, or more likely, as an adjective modifying an assumed noun such as “world.”  Notice the “’s” beginning the next line after “smile”—it works here, but this device should be used rarely, if at all--E.E. Cummings being a notable exception.

The last three lines are enigmatic.  “Betweenpie” is used as a verb here.  I suggest that the meaning here is, "Between mountains skies pie (that is, make pied) with a play of light and dark the valley between them).  But “lights" is a singular form of the verb, while “skies” is plural.  What “lights” is the smile of joy which breaks out unexpectedly like sun rays piercing an overcast sky. This takes some figuring out; I sense that many modern readers have little patience for such grammatical idiosyncrasies.  The musicality of these lines, however, is well-nigh perfect.

This completes this selection of ten of my favorite Hopkins poems.  Yes, there are others—but not many others; Hopkins left relatively fewer completed great poems than is the case with other major poets.  

I suggest that the reader peruse the poems periodically at a periodicity I leave up to her or him.  One has to give them “root-room.” The effort is indeed worth it, for they are among the best poems in the language.

Ten Unfogettable Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Note: I recently taught a course on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins at the Osher Institute of Towson University, Maryland, which has inspired me to write about his poetry.  What follows is a series of poems by Hopkins, along with a brief discussion of each poem.  The poems are what I consider to be the most important ones to remember  for students who are interested in poetry--the selection is somewhat arbitrary, of course, but only somewhat: each of the poems discussed is a masterwork written by one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. I have tried to keep my comments brief, so that those interested can copy this article and refer to these wonderful poems, without getting lost in commentary.  Although primarily written for my students, all are invited to read, and if so desired, to make a copy of the Ten Unforgettable Poems.

A very brief introduction: Gerard Manley Hopkins, (1844-1889), was one of the most musical and innovative poets of all time.  He stated that he wanted readers to pay special attention to the sound of his poems, the mark of a true poet.  His themes--the beauty and importance of transcendence and of nature, etc. are still very pertinent for us today.

1.  God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

   It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

   And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never pent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last light off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Commentary  

This poem dates from 1877, eleven years after Hopkins's conversion from the Anglican Church to Catholicism; he had become a fully ordained Jesuit priest in this year.

This is certainly a great religious poem, written at a time when such poetry was losing its prominence in Western literature.  Every word is a perfect fit; Hopkins give his full attention not only to the whole but to every detail.  Two lines have always been especially significant for me: the first and the ninth line.  In the first, we have a consummate example of word-painting.  The "o" vowel in "world" is enunciated lower in the throat from the "a" of "charged"--you thus can hear the electricity when the word "charged" is pronounced.  Hopkins indicated that the next major stress is on the word, "God."  "with the grandeur of" to be read more quickly, and with less emphasis--the poem moves here to what is most important: "God."  That the sound and movement of the words indicate the meaning is a rare poetic achievement; there are many other such examples in Hopkins's poetry.

Line nine, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things," should be committed to memory, because it is so well-put, so essential, and so true.  We have caused environmental damage to a degree unimagined in Hopkins's time; nevertheless, industrialization had already caused widespread damage in the nineteenth century, especially to cities.  When one is confronted, however, with ugliness all one needs to do is really look at a plant, even a weed, to realize the truth of this line.

Hopkins was a conservative Catholic, but this poem is also catholic in the universal sense of that word.  If one finds the reference to the Holy Ghost too dogmatic, all one needs to do is to realize what the significance of this line is: it is a variation of line nine.

Notice how primary rhythm and sound are for Hopkins.  For instance, he does not write, "Now, why then, do men not reck his rod," but the much more rhythmically beautiful, "Why do men then now not reck his rod."

The "what," the content of this poem is good, but the "how" of the poem, its technique, is what makes this and all the major poems by Hopkins unforgettable.  Even greater was to fuse both aspects into an unforgettable whole.

2. Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;

       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

       With swift, slow; sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;

                                     Praise him.

Commentary

This is one of the most popular poems that Hopkins wrote.  It is written in "paeonic sprung rhythm."  Paeonic rhythm, which was used in classical Greek poetry and prose, consists of four stresses to the line, with the first stress emphasized.  "Sprung rhythm," which originated with Hopkins, signifies dividing the line into stresses, with an arbitrary (usually four or less) number of feet in between.  The result of sprung rhythm is a closer approximation of the cadences of spoken language; Hopkins's ear sensed that if the meter is too exact, the result can be boring.

This is what Hopkins called a "curtal sonnet," that is, a poem that has been curtailed, a poem that has the effect of a sonnet, but contains fewer lines.

This poem is a hymn to diversity in nature, and applied to our times, to cultural diversity as well.  Hopkins was different, and he knew it. (A significant aspect of Hopkins's poetry is that, without being confessional--in the earlier poems at least--the autobiographical elements of his poetry are prominent.  Like Hitchcock, he not only directed his art, but usually made an appearance in each work as well.  Hopkins was known to be "eccentric and slightly effeminate."  He was also a great genius; he also sensed the oddness of this.  

The transcendent, intrinsic beauty of majestic manifestations of nature he referred to as"inscapes."  The ability to appreciate this majesty he referred to as "instress."  These two coinages give a good indication that Hopkins had an extraordinarily rich inner life.  Only one who realizes the inscape in himself is able to appreciate the inscapes that surround him.

3. The Windhover

           To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

  dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon in his

         riding

  Of the rolling level underneath him seady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

   As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and

        gliding

   Rebuffed the big wind.  My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty ad valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

    Buckle; AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

  No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

   Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Commentary

One of the most beautiful poems in the English language!  The musicality of this poem is breathtaking.  Here meaning and music are seamlessly fused; the wonder we can have, should have, and often do have. regarding the awesome inscapes of this world has rarely been better expressed as it has been here. 

One could write a book about this poem!  For reasons of space, however, I will point out only one of its technical aspects, then concentrate on an interpretation. The technical aspect; Hopkins placed one of the four stresses of the second line on "dawn"--what a difference that makes!

The octet of the sonnet expresses the majesty of the falcon.  (Notice that Hopkins uses the upper-case, "Falcon," here, while he always refers to Christ with a lower-case "him,"  as in the last line of "Pied Beauty." I will leave the interpretation of this up to you.)  The bird  flies high above the observer; it represents the transcendent.  In the sestet, the transcendent comes down to Earth and becomes manifest in Christ and in humanity in general..  With hard work and sacrifice, the "gold-vermillion" the very essence of life, in Christ and, potentially at least, in all human beings, becomes manifest.

Hopkins seems to be telling us that angels (the windhovers) are transcendent the easy way, by their very nature; we humans have a harder path--the way of the Cross--but the "gold-vermillion" result is even more impressive.

4. Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

his rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. 

Degged with dew,dappled with dew

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads throuh,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness?  Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Commentary

This poem was written in 1881, while Hopkins was an assitent in Glasgow.  In his free time, he took a trip to Loch Lomond; he wrote this poem after a visit to the falls of Inversanid, a nearby town.  One could hardly guess from this poem that Hopkins, due to overwork, increasing isolation and the stress from frequent moves, was beginning to feel increasingly dispirited.  The only hint of this is the word, "Despair", which undoubtedly welled up from deep inside him; despair will not be so easily drowned in subsequent poems.

At first reading, it does not matter if the meaning remains obscure; the music is primary.  Upon further readings, what the physicality of the word evokes becomes clear: the delightful portrait of a falls.  (It is well known that Hopkins had a special fondness for water.)  This poem I consider to be a companion piece to the next poem.  Both are unique in Hopkins's canon as portraits of nature without any reference to God.  Hopkins would be appalled if one classified these as secular poems, since religion was of the utmost importance to him; they do, however, have a secular feel.

This poem should be read aloud at a somewhat faster tempo than that of other poems by Hopkins, thus giving expression to the bubbly, forward-driving quality of the words and what they evoke: a moving body of water.

In this poem, the joy of nature is apparent; in the second poem, the subject is the uprooting of this joy due to man-made destruction of the natural world. 

5. Binsey Poplars

     felled 1879

    My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

    Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

    All felled, felled, are all felled;

         Of a fresh and following folded rank

                        Not spared, not one

                        That dandled a sandalled

                  Shadow that swam or sank

   On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-

          winding bank.

      O if we but knew what we do

               When we delve or hew—

      Hack and rack the growing green!

               Since country is so tender

      To touch, her being so slender,

      That, like this sleek and seeing ball

       But a prick will make no eye at all,

       Where we, even where we mean

                                   To mend her we end her,

                  When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

         Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

                 Strokes of havoc unselve

                           The sweet especial scene,

               Rural scene, a rural scene,

               Sweet especial rural scene.

Commentary

The sheer virtuosity and musicality of this poem rival that of the masterful “Windhover.”  Hopkins takes his experimentation here, however, to a new level.  This poem stands out first of all due to the asymmetry of the stanzas.  Indentation no longer signifies that the line in question has an end-rhyme with a line similarly indented; what is key in this poem is musical movement independent of stanzaic symmetry, as is the case with his sonnets.  He is experimenting with longer lines, anticipating the experimentation of such poets as Charles Wright, not to mention that of that master of versification, Marianne Moore.

How contemporary this poem is in the age of the Sixth Extinction!  We now live in what’s called the Anthropocene Age, characterized by the significant influence, largely negative, of mankind on the environment—for the first time in natural history.   If people read great poets more, this poem could have become the anthem of the environmental movement.

Binsey is a town on the opposite bank of the Isis (Thames) River, not far from Oxford.  Hopkins was very close to trees, and their destruction bothered him a great deal, as this poem indicates.  The poem has a beautiful sing-song quality, which Hopkins interrupts with a disturbing image: he compares the destruction of the trees to the gouging out of eyes.  It’s a potent image: “After-comers cannot guess the beauty been,” when something is destroyed.  Nature is delicate, Hopkins is telling us, an essential message that is much more pertinent to us today, when greed is threatening the visions our eyes receive from “the eyeball of the Earth,” as it were.

Unforgettables 6 through 10 will soon follow. Comments welcome.