Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born into a prosperous Anglican family in 1844. The Hopkins household had a great interest in poetry, drawing, music and architecture. In 1854, Hopkins was sent to Highgate School as a boarder. He was fiercely independent and an outstanding student, winning prizes for poetry and a scholarship to study Classics at Balliol, Oxford. At Oxford, Hopkins converted to Catholicism and in 1868 he joined the Jesuit Order. He decided to destroy the poems that he had written because he wished to devote his life totally to the service of god. Hopkins’s appointment as Fellow of the Royal University of Ireland and Professor of Greek and Latin Literature at the Catholic University of Ireland was not the accolade one might think. It was the beginning of the most miserable period in the poet’s short life. He began to suffer from depression. Although there is evidence of a spiritual recovery, his physical deterioration was hastened by the unsanitary conditions he lived in, and he died of Typhoid in 1889.
Gerard Manley Hopkins: General notes
Gerard Manley Hopkins’s work is divided into two main styles: Bright sonnets and dark sonnets.
Hopkins’ bright sonnets typically described nature. They are a celebration of the beauty of nature in the hopes of achieving a greater understanding of it. Many of the subjects are given spiritual connotations and are seen as a manifestation of the glory of God. It was important for Hopkins to capture as accurately as possible the natural phenomena that he was trying to describe. What he was describing was the work of God, so he wanted to get it right.
“Inscape” is defined as the fundamental unique essence that every living thing has. It is one of an organism’s specific defining characteristics that give it uniqueness. This is seen as a God-given uniqueness.
Instress is very closely linked to the concept of inscape (It is important to note that these words, themselves, are neologisms created by Hopkins). Not only did he think that every living thing had its own unique essence, but he also felt that every living thing had its own specific energy. This, again, was God-given. Naturally, he wanted to try and capture this energy and movement as faithfully as possible. To do this, Hopkins used a variety of tools.
Sprung rhythm
For Hopkins to capture the inscape and instress, he felt that he needed to abandon the traditional rhyming structures which had been employed by poets for centuries. He felt that these structures were artificial, contrived and stale, and that they didn’t come close to capturing the reality of what something is like. Instead, he used his new idea of sprung rhythm. The metre of this method was designed to capture the instress of the phenomenon he was explaining.
Neologisms and compound words
Hopkins experimented with language to try and capture as accurately as possible the inscape and instress. He felt that this was necessary as the language existing was inadequate.
Dialect
To try and capture a scene as clearly and vividly as possible, he tried to use the dialect of the place he was in to render his descriptions as faithfully as possible. This is part of the experimentalism that is the trademark of his work.
Ellipsis
Ellipsis was part of his attempt to introduce sprung rhythm. It was an attempt to try and capture the instress of something. He felt that the energy of the object sometimes required the leaving out of words.
All of these features are evident to some extent in his bright sonnets.
A useful poem to look at is “Felix Randal”, as it is a transition poem. It is neither a dark sonnet nor a bright sonnet. It relates to his duties as a priest. One should cover his bright sonnets, then Felix Randal, then his dark sonnets.
The aspect of style you would most focus on in the dark sonnets is the intensity of emotion. This is seen to some degree in Hopkins’s bright sonnets, but is very evident in his dark sonnets. Similarly, inscape and instress can be seen to some degree in the dark sonnets but are found predominantly in the bright sonnets. In the dark sonnets, Hopkins pays less attention to the stylistic features evident in the bright sonnets.
Hopkins’ bright sonnets typically described nature. They are a celebration of the beauty of nature in the hopes of achieving a greater understanding of it. Many of the subjects are given spiritual connotations and are seen as a manifestation of the glory of God. It was important for Hopkins to capture as accurately as possible the natural phenomena that he was trying to describe. What he was describing was the work of God, so he wanted to get it right.
“Inscape” is defined as the fundamental unique essence that every living thing has. It is one of an organism’s specific defining characteristics that give it uniqueness. This is seen as a God-given uniqueness.
Instress is very closely linked to the concept of inscape (It is important to note that these words, themselves, are neologisms created by Hopkins). Not only did he think that every living thing had its own unique essence, but he also felt that every living thing had its own specific energy. This, again, was God-given. Naturally, he wanted to try and capture this energy and movement as faithfully as possible. To do this, Hopkins used a variety of tools.
Sprung rhythm
For Hopkins to capture the inscape and instress, he felt that he needed to abandon the traditional rhyming structures which had been employed by poets for centuries. He felt that these structures were artificial, contrived and stale, and that they didn’t come close to capturing the reality of what something is like. Instead, he used his new idea of sprung rhythm. The metre of this method was designed to capture the instress of the phenomenon he was explaining.
Neologisms and compound words
Hopkins experimented with language to try and capture as accurately as possible the inscape and instress. He felt that this was necessary as the language existing was inadequate.
Dialect
To try and capture a scene as clearly and vividly as possible, he tried to use the dialect of the place he was in to render his descriptions as faithfully as possible. This is part of the experimentalism that is the trademark of his work.
Ellipsis
Ellipsis was part of his attempt to introduce sprung rhythm. It was an attempt to try and capture the instress of something. He felt that the energy of the object sometimes required the leaving out of words.
All of these features are evident to some extent in his bright sonnets.
A useful poem to look at is “Felix Randal”, as it is a transition poem. It is neither a dark sonnet nor a bright sonnet. It relates to his duties as a priest. One should cover his bright sonnets, then Felix Randal, then his dark sonnets.
The aspect of style you would most focus on in the dark sonnets is the intensity of emotion. This is seen to some degree in Hopkins’s bright sonnets, but is very evident in his dark sonnets. Similarly, inscape and instress can be seen to some degree in the dark sonnets but are found predominantly in the bright sonnets. In the dark sonnets, Hopkins pays less attention to the stylistic features evident in the bright sonnets.
"Spring"Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --
When weeds in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning. Download the notes:
"The Windhover"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 steady 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 and 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: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. Download the notes:
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"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 through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. Download the notes:
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