MY a Bas 2». ‘Quoted by Maxwell, Swinbume,p. 2 Robert Buchanan, “The Hleshly School of Pocty: Mr D.G. Rosset’, CConzemporary Review, 18 (x87), pp. 234-80, reprinted in David G. Riede (ed), Critical Essays on Dante Gabriel Reset (New York: G.K. Hall, 1992), p. 29. Swinburne, Leters, vol . 185. Hyder (ed), Swinburue: The Crist Hentage, p29. Jerome J. McGann, Suinburne: An Experiment st Critciom (Chicago: University of ‘Chicago Press, 972), p. 33. Maxwell, Swinure, p13. Chapter 36 Christina Rossetti and Hopkins ‘Writing one of his charactestically bubbling levers ro William Mowbray Balin uly 186, Gerard Manley Hopkins tod rational hope than before of doing something in poetry and painting. About {he fist have sai ll there isto say ina leer about the latter Fhave no more oom to speak, but when nextT see you Thave reat hings ro ell have been introduced to Miss and Miss Cristina Resseti. [met them and Holman Hunt and George Macdonald and Peter Cunfnjingham and Jenay Lind at the Gurneys." Cleacly Christina was something of a celebrity and the under sraduate Hopkins was atthe eight ofhis ambitions ofbelonging othe artistic svant-gardeas he knew oficin London. He had, he told Bail, ‘nearly finished an answer to Miss Rosseti’s Convent Threshold, to be called A voice from the ‘worl, or something like cet, with which Iam at presencin the fatal condition of satisfaction” Rossert’s ‘Convent Threshold is not an account of demure spiritual yearnings but depicts che turmoil of 2 woman eaught between forbidden love and & petifying fear of damnation, a fear of the sore engen: dered at Chest Church, Albany Street where Christina worshipped; cities have pointed co Pope's ‘loisa ro Abela’ as a literary precedent.’ Hopkins’ answer’ seveals both the strengths end weaknesses of his immature verse. ‘The initial paragraph contains vibrant natural description, inchuding the extended mesaphor of cuckoos calling, with the precise observation that the call varies berwten five notes and seven and that i ean be heard earlier ia some years than in others, but Hopkins had not the range of human exper: ence to convey with conviction the pain of losing a lover.” More convincing is the passage fllowing the loves’ atemps wo save cach other athe Last Judgment ronelly, Hopkis's narrator finds thas, unl his lover, whose womanly love he had wrongly dismissed as ‘not strong’ line 48) because female, he cannot give up his chance of salvation for her Conveniently, inthe poem such price isnot exacted instead the young man conchudes that he had been ‘ignorantly bol line x26) even to deeam that he that, Thave now amorehad been asked to make such a sacrifice and in thinking through the episode he records My hopes and my nnworthiness, “Ar once perceived, with excess Of borden exme and bow’d my fead, Yea, erush'é my heart, and made me dumb © hideous vice to haggle yet For more with Him who gives thee all, Freely forgives the monstrous debt! iving the infinitely grest ‘Thecewith to banker for the small! (CA voice from the word, lines 0-3, 162-5) itis worth asking in what way Hopkins’s poem constnutes an answer t0 Christina Rose's, Hopkins's protagonist rejects earthly love, for which the speaker of “The Convent Threshold’ stil yearns, as ‘ways soven with salt (line 168) and he secks instead! for the means by wich to ‘tum my passion pastured thought / To gentle manna and simple bread’ (lines 187-8). The Aficulty of conveying religious humlity without appearing to pose fsevident, and the satsfiction he mentioned to Bailie may in parcbe tat of'correcting’ ‘whathe sew as a spistully erroneous attitude, He remained interested in the ‘poem for some yeas, composing eleiac in Latin raterna nobis’) in 8670) based on the opening and closing sections. In x672 he compared Christina's ‘work with thar of her brother: ‘From the ite Thave seen and gathered of {Dante Gabrie] Rossetu's Poems, 1876 I daresay he has more range, foree, and jterest, and then theres che difference between aman anda woman, bu for pathos and pure beauty of at I donot think he is her equal: infact the simple ‘beauty of her work cannot be matched.” Betty Flowers rightly praises ‘the pevfect pitch and clarity of her line, the subde effects of rhyme and shythm {that owe much to the nakednes of feeling and simplicity of form tbe found {nthe hymns she knew so well.* la her recent biography of Christina Rosset, Jan Marsh gathers evidence to suggest that although Christina undoubtedly row on her experience in hes writing, she also consciously belonged to the tualtion of women’s poetry that concentrated on the themes of ‘nature, domestic affection, deatbeds and devotional religion’? Christina's mature verse with its apparent snplicity'has a disiled essence that is haunting, sometimes excorating. Whether or not she experienced is full bitterness, she gives voice to loneines, lost hope and frustrated love a effectively a5 “Tennyson spoke of rrosbled faith and grief. A narroseing but intensifying of ore CChrissna Rosset and Hopkins he sange of one and subject was further increased by exticisms made by her ‘brother, Dante Gabriel Rostetd, to whom she showed most of shat she published daring his fie, He counselled her to cut her more outspoken and ‘feminis’ verse on such subjects as legitimate children and women abandoned by faithless lovers, some of which, such as ‘Cousin Kate’, she purged Grom her later cllecions* Christina was bor in London in 1830 and remained contentedly urban. Her father wes Ilan, exiled from the Kingdom of Neples, He taught Ttalian athe University of London until Christina was in ber teens, when severe eye problems forced him so retire, leaving him reluctantly dependent on the other members of the family. The house was a meeting place for Ttalian politcal exiles and all the children had to come to terms with ther father’s excensi interpretations of Dante. Christina's mother, Frances, was English and Christina was devored to he; looking afte her and two of her aunts tll cheie deaths, by which time she was herself terminally ill with cancer. Prances encouraged the intellectual achievement of her four children, who grew up assisting each other's artistic effors; Christina modelled for Dante Gabsiel’s paintings andthe siblings exchanged hous rinds over many years; Christina feequenly knocking them off in less than ten minutes? Although Christina's grandfather privately printed a collection ofher verse ‘when she was only sinteen, and she had two poeras printed by the prestigious ‘Athenaeum wien she was just seventeen,” her frst volume to aurace public artention was Goblin Market (1862): She had by then published individual poems in Macmnilan's and various other journals and contributed psendony smously to The Germ, “Goblin Market seems,in.a aunmber of respect, olinketo the work ofthe Pre-Raphacites, parscularly that of Dante Gabriel Rosser. By the 18sos he was producing his morally ambiguous ‘Venetian’ pictures with their voluptuous women framed by lush flora." ‘Goblin Maske shares this sexually charged lushness, but Cristina brings to it an agile imagination that produces nightmarish characters with the hands of men and the faces of cats ‘and vermin, Confronted by images of body aac, exotic fruit with ital ‘overpowering cffecs and cautions about pre-marital sex, itis litle wonder chat so many modem interpretations are genderpoliical: vaslavons on the theme of young.swomen entering a male economic sphere with only their bodies for bare.” But, s with many of Christina's most wellknown poems, moving ftom a sense of general meaning of temptation and exploitation to recs, llegorcal decoding soon leads o inconsistency and a sexual explicc ress that seems biographically unconvincing, Part of the fascination with ‘Goblin Marker is the richness of the paradigms and sources to which on“suggests allusion. Laura reacts to the goblins and their frutlike a modern-day Eve, and her eating ff recalls Proserpine. However, her decline becomes an examination of the psychology of sin; the mechanism of the liting of the curse brings “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ to mind, and Laura's respite is purchased by Lizze's ‘martyrdom. The story is told with romping free verse, ‘opening with spit pairs of etrameter lines but considerable vaviety in pacing, ‘The second line's opening spondee might suggest Hopleins's sprung chythe: “Maids heard the goblins ey’. The diction similarly ranges from the isocolonic, childlike cautions, ‘We must notlook at goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits! (lines 42-3) to absorbing the polysyllabic ‘obstreperously’ and the colloquial ‘mad to tg her standard down’ (line 421) when describing Lizzie's withstanding the goblins’ assault. The sensuous delights of the fruit sare mouthed by the reader through the articulation required by ‘Plump tunpecked cherries, / Melons and raspberries, / Bloomdown-cheeked peaches’ (lines 7-9), Resolving the poet incoa set of familial values (asserting ‘hac ‘there is no fiend like a sister (line 562) while the two mothers caution their childzen to value their family ties) was both highly acceptable 10 contemporary audiences and in keeping with Christina's lifelong practice. ‘The volume included religious poems that such critics as Nilda Jiménez, Jerome McGann and Betty Flowers point out evince complexity in verses that ‘may appear to secular readers to be only unexceptionsbly pious. Flowers cites 1 Will Lift up Mine Eyes unto the Hill’, in which verses from Psalms, Revelation, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Isaiah and 1 John are interwoven, each bringing contexts that colour the quotations, combining them into a ‘richly shaded emorional joumey’. McGann gestures towards what he sees as Christina's attempts to convey emotion that is beyond human experience and expression, He says of ‘A better resurrection’ and poems like it chat “unt wwe understand how fiercely the poem is trying ro annihilae all ordinary and ‘personal attachments’ we will not understand its ‘disturbing briliance’* [have no wit, no wards, nd tears ‘My heare within me ike a stone Is numbed 109 ruch for hopes or fers Look vight, look left 1 dell alone; 1 Li mine eyes, but dimmed wich grief No everlasting hills Ise; My lf isin. the falling leat (© Jesus, quicken me, (lines -8) ‘The diction has an unadorned simplicity that conveys absolute sincerity, the large number of monosyllables worthy of stress weighing down the chythm in ‘Christina Rosset and Hopkins sombre contrast to the final line's iambic ples, whose syntax breaks the ‘metrical foot (us, quick’) with sudden tochaie effect: O Jesus, qicken ‘me’. These ‘everlasting hill’ are indescribable through worldly existence and their Biblical connotation is used to indicate yearning for immortal life ‘beyond death and human comprehension. Christina was to go on to write ‘Annas Domini: A Prayer for Each Day of the Yee, Founded on a Text of Holy Scripture (874) and, ultimately, five volumes of religious verse and commen- tary for publication by the Sociery for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Many of Christina's poems in Goblin Market and Other Poems concer love: tales of broken relationships, generally through duplickous behaviour (Cousin Kate’, “After Death’, “The Hour and the Ghost, ‘An Apple Gathering, ‘Maude Clare’, "Noble Sister), indiect mourning of lost lave, such as ‘Shue Out’ and ‘May’, in which the indirection includes the sles, and “a Pause for Though in which what is longed for is both unnamed and easy to guess. By way of contrast, ‘No, thank you, Jon’ isa rather brutal rejection of courtship" and ‘A Triad’ an unsentimental analysis of married love. ‘Song: .. with its three shifts in perspective similarly treats the happiness of couples within a religious context that limits is value; such awareness of| tension between love forthe human and divine seems to have been funda- ‘mental to Christina's manure sensibility snd may also party explain the suimber of poems that place the speaker either beyond death, looking back to 8 lover, or dying, asin ‘Wife to Husband’. Such perspective invites nigh- mare, ‘My Dream’, with its voracious erocodile who prudently begs for forgiveness when a ghostly ship arrives to avenge the crocodile relatives it has devoured, is a child's allegorical poem of sin and retsibution, but “The Convent Threshela! and ‘From House to Home’ suggest eerie symbolism on ‘primeval levels of consciousness’.” in the latter the vision of a woman suspended by chains of light from above is weird and power. The figure, with eyes ‘ke some fireenshrining gem’ (ine 1), ‘stately’ yet ‘tender stood on inner ground that budéed flowers’ (ines 22,126). But‘every flower ‘waslifted ona thom, / And every thora shot upright from is sands / To gall hee feet; hoarse laughter pealed in seom / With cruel capping hands’ (ines 125-32). Her taste for such resonant visions was developed by gothic novels ofthe sore written by Charles Matusin~ she liked Melmoth the Wanderer best that mediate imagery from Revelation. “The Prince's Progres’, the ttle poem ro her second volume (1866) is, lke “Goblin Marked, similarly clficaltto interpret more than very loosely. The story is of a fairyale prince who is deflected so often and for so long in his journey to claim his affianced princess that when he eventually asives, itis to onbe grected by her funeral cortége. Readers have seen the influence of Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress and experimented with suggesting that, inverting, the roles, the prince represents the human sov], cautioned that it may lose its place in heaven (the bride) fit dallies with the lures of the world to0 Tong,” ‘But questions arse as to whether the princess can convincingly be seen to fit sch a scheme. Lines 5zi-4o describing her enduring her lonely wait were ‘yritten before the first part ofthe poem and retain differences in tone and use of symbolism. Joan Rees suggests that the poem gives us ‘a picture of two ‘kinds of spiritual testing, side by side: one test consists ofa call to efforeand the testis failed; one is a eal to suppress normal human yearning and to live and dic in hard-won patience’»° Antony Harrison farther points out that Rosser reworks echoes from such poets as Keats (1a Belle Dame Sans Merci’ for the Prince's delay with the millamaid, frors Tennyson ("Tristram froma the Ids) and Browning's ‘Chilkle Roland’ for the nightmarish landscape the Prince traverses.” These, he claims persuasively, suggest 4 highly selfconscious poet appropriating the work of her precursoss in revisionist ways that create a tension in the reader between an the one hhand sympathetic involvement with the characters and events of her poem sod on the other an inrellecual detachment compelled by an awareness of Specic literary precedents and traditions that have helped to generate the poem” (Christina's Italian was fluent and she wrote poems in Italian, including ones perhaps writen about her deep ftiendship with Charles Cayley, a shy scholar ‘and former pupil of her father’s, hought to be the principal love of her life Like her siblings, Dante Gabriel and Maria, she made translations of Dante, and later wrote a review article on contemporary translations of his works.” Her knowledge of Italian literature may also have affected the tone of some of ‘her English poems, such as “Ihe Convent Threshold’, which describe violent passions belonging more to the poems she and Dante Gabric! translated than to English precedents. Cayley is also thought to be the lover who inspired (Christina's "Mona Innominata’ a sequence of sonnets by a ‘lady troubadour’ published in her collection A Pageant and Other Poems (881). Each sonnet has ‘two epigraphs, one by Dante and one by Petrarch. Christina's headnote to the sequence explains that Beatrice and Laura lack tendemness because we do not see their feelings. She saggests that Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have constructed a series with a speaker comparable to Beatrice and Laura but ‘more attractively tender had she been unhappy, rather than in her content: ‘ment producing her Sonnets from the Portuguese. The impression created by (Christina Rosse and Hopkin “Mona Innominata’ is described by Antony Harrison as a Pre-Raphaelite “aesthesic withdrawal’, an ‘ethereal final effec’ created by ‘the dialectic of desive and renunciation’. But this would imply a certain detachment from experience thar does not seem to me to have been attained: the power ofthe poems lies in the strength ofthe felings they convey, whatever their origins. Rossest insisted chat none of the poems be printed singly, a cohtextualising thatemphasises the poetic persona. Jan Marsh suggests thatinto this sequence, Intended for publication, Christina articulated ‘love in all ts aspects ~ roman. tic, wistfl, steedfast,seldenying, painful, heroic, serene’, informed in some places by her love ‘but not defined or limited by that and cercainly not meant to describe or disclose its details.” Like many women of the middle clas, Christina's involvement with her church led her to cary out charitable work. However, Christine was some- ‘what unusual in that her work was preaching to prostitutes and abandoned ‘mothers and children at St Mary Magdalen Home for Fallen Women and later at Highgate Penitentiary. ‘That she reacted sympathetically to the plight of single mothers and abandoned lovers is suggested by such poems as ‘Light Love’, ‘Cousin Kate’ and 'An Apple Gathering’ In the early 18608 Christina wasa ‘corresponding member’ of the Portfolio, a group of women writers and artists including Jean Ingelow, Adelaide Proctor and Barbara Bodichon, who regularly seta theme on which all the members ‘were to produce work either literary oF artistic. Christina protested, a8 she often did, that she could nor produce poems to arder, and she riled her considerable sore of old or unpublished poems of the 850s o find something that might fit rather than writing something new. ‘Reflections’ (originally titled ‘Day Dreams’), ‘A Study’ (originally ‘A Soul’, "My Old Friends’ (orig- inally “A Burthen’), ‘Rivals’ (originally ‘A Shadow of Dorothea’), ‘A Coast” (criginally ‘Nightmare’) were all such contributions. Certain themes may have propelled her into writin from unusual perspectives: ‘A Bird's Eye View’, for example, which Marsh suggests might have been a subject set by the Portfolio, tells the story of a bride forgotten except by the birds."* Unlike Hopkins, Christina had « gift for story-telling and she made use of the ballad form in poems such as Jessie Cameron’ and ‘Songs in a Cornfield, ‘both tales of marriage. Although she was close ro her brothers and had several long fitendships with men, in her verse, men ere not usualy seen except as lost lovers, their inconstancy highlighted by comparison with Christ's endur ing care. She also wrote pocms in which a reader senses that rather then choosing a spiritual life of chastity, the higher love has been invoked in order ‘to repress perversely a human longing fora loving companion. ‘Repining’ is of osthis sort, where the human desires seem wrongflly crushed. In others a desire for death seems stronger than that for eternal life asin fe and Death’, {for example, ‘Although romansic and religious subjects dominate Christina Rossert's work, she also wrote # volume of verse for children and included in her other volumes a few poems on contemporary issues, such as ‘In the Round “Tower ac Jhansi @ June 1857, based on a mistaken newspaper account ofthe final moments of Captain Skene and his wife,” and ‘A Royal Princess’, which she donated to fund-raising anthology for Lancashire textile workers affected by the trade embargo against Souther ‘slave’ cotton. While er most constant social participation in contemporary political movements was the campaign to-make vivisecton illegal, her verse reveals her disdain for the bargeoning materialism of the period and her scrupulous perception of hypocrisy that also gives an incisive wit ro some of her lewers, Her contem- porary stature asa poet is suggested by the fac that when Tennyson died in 1892, Christina was mentioned as a porental candidate to succeed him as Poet Laureate, The sse of Modernism had the inverse effect on Christina's post: Jhumous reputation fiom that of Hopkins, and it has only been in recent ‘decades that estimation of her achievement has begun to regain the level that made her the celebsity whom Hopkins met in 1864, Gerard Manley Hopkins was bom on 28 July 1844, the eldest of eight children. His father, Manley, was a marine insurance adjuster who had been “unable to go to university because of he disarray in which his ow father had lefthis financial affairs. However, Manley not only became the director of his ‘own insurance firms he also wrote poetry, articles on a variety of topics from Hawaii to fosss, published two well-regarded handbooks for shipmasters in rmatine disaster, composed songs end drew in pen and ink and painted in ‘watercolours. He was though, devout, sensitive to the beauty and fragility of nature and conventionally upstanding. Many of his attitudes can be seen expressed more strikingly in his son's work. Gerard grew up on the outskirts cof London with the attitude to the country of those whose livelihood is not famished by it, loving ts beauty, imbuing all with a Romantic sense of being. Ofhis extant works itis his drawings that ae the ealiest examples we have of his vision, In 1862-3, when he would seem to have been following Ruskin's advice as set out in his Elements of Drawing, he made delicate studies of hedgerow plants, rees blowing in the wind and flowing water. These are subjects that are found vividly described throughout his poetry. It was his aesthetic sensibility, not his poetry, that was mentioned in the newspaper notices of his death in 1889.” 78 Christina Rossers and Hopkins “The ewo clearest ruming-points in Hopkins's work occur in x866, when he converted to the Roman Catholic Chureh, and in 1875-6, when he wrote "The ‘Wreck of the Deutschland’. His early poetry was influenced by Herbert, who \was becoming popular in the nineteenth century, by Tennyson and by Keats. His gift for precise observation and unusual phrasing is sometimes evident but the descriptions lack purpose. He experimented with using therm as meta jphors in plays modelled on Elizabethan dramas of crossed lovers but his lack ‘of human experience and lifelong inability co complete extensive projects "The Wreck of the Deutschland’, his fst major poem, was to remain his longest completed one ~ make the works primaily interesting because they are the youthful experiments of the later accomplished artist, and express _many ofthe subjects to which he was later to return: the nature of perception, natural beauty, a personal sense of lack of accomplishment, religious observ- ance, shipwreck. His early work also includes conventional poems of frus ated love, “Troubadour’ sonnets of admiration co Oxford, eighteenth- century pastorals and the religious poems that have recsived most atsention: “Heaven-Haven’ and ‘Easter Communion’ ‘When Hopkins was an undergraduate at Oxford he expesienced the uni versity at a time of intelectal urmoll. On the one hand chere were the agnostic Fellows, such as Jowett and W.H. Green, who were aware of new- historical analyses thar cast straightforward belief inthe Bible in doubt and the rapid development and organisation of science at the university under such figures as Henry Acland, evident in the building of the Oxford Museum, designed to bring together the nascent science departments. On the other ‘hand, a second phase of the Oxford Movement was pushing various students beyond the High-Church preaching and practice of W. H. Liddon and Beware Pusey into following JH. Newman in his conversion to Catholicism. The ‘education ofthe day equipped Hopkins with a knowledge of Greek: and Latin literature, rather precise religious doctrine, a general ability to engage in ‘ethical philosophical debace and an interest in etymology. To these he added extensive reading of journals, following up throughout his life contem- porary lireraure, religious debate and ideas about architecmure. He read Welt ‘Whitman, George Eliot, ‘Thomas Hardy's novels, Mrs Gaskell, and classed ‘contemporary poers such as his former schoolmaster Richard Watson Dixon and Dante Gabriel Rossett into ‘schools: that he traced loosely from the Renaissance and Romantic traditions In July 1866 he decided to enter the Roman Catholic communion end was received by Newman on 21 October. When Hopkins converted t0 the Catholic Church, he removed himself from the Anglican artistic circles ofhis childhood, placing himself instead within the social subset of middle-class converts, landed Catholic families and the swelling numbers of impoverished Catholic immigrants. Graduating from Oxford with a First, he was to spend the rest of his life in extended training for the priesthood and in teaching at secondary and tertiary level combined with parish work. After a spell of teaching at Newman's Oratory school in Birmingham from September 1867 10 April 1868, he resolved to enter a religious order, burning copies of his ‘poems asa symbolic taming away from his earlier artistic ambitions; he had sent Robert Bridges the latest versions of any be already had. His initial taining from 1968 to 1870 was in London, at Manresa House, Roehampton, a stately home modified to accommodate noviees, lay brothers and priests, rom there he went to St Mary's Hall for three years of philosophy. St Mary's Hall was built in the grounds of Stonyhurst, a long-established Catholic schoo) in Lancashire that was at the time the headquarters of the Jesuit forder in Britain, Tt also provided ewition for undergraduates, generally Catholics, taking extension degrees from the University of London. Hopkins was to spend three periods here before being moved to Ireland. rotn St Maty's Fall one looked across to bare rounded hills on the far side of the Ribble valley; the bleak simplicity of the landscape drew a:tention to the ‘variety of the skyseapes. Although he wrote no poetry at St Mary's Hall, Hoplins was refining his descriptive skills in his diary entries, and in 1872 the discovery of the thought of Duns Scotus gave religious authority to his Romantic sense ofthe individual identity ofa things. These were important preparatory stages for his mature poems. From Lancashire, he moved back to Roehampton to teach thetoric for @ ‘year, His lecture notes on verse show the long gestation of his style. They Include his statement that ‘poetry is speech framed for contemplation of the rind by the way of heating or speech framed to be heard for its own sake and interest even over and above its interest of meaning, Some matter and mean- ing is essential to it but only as an element necessary co support and employ the shape which is contemplated for its own sake.”* The writing of “The ‘Wreck ofthe Deutschland! was over twelve months away, composed among, the Welsh hills, where for three years he studied theology at St Beuno's College near St Asaphs, "The Wreck’, a Pindaric ode “To the happy memory offive Franciscan nuns, exiles by the Fale Laws, drowned between midnight and morning of December 7’ (1873), broke with his previous verse in a number of ways. The unit is here noe the line but the stanza, whose flowing stream of sound engages andl projects the excitement within the descriptions. He used for it what he called sprung rhythm, which required one siress a foot but on ‘Christina Rosser nd Hopkins allowed a variable number of unstressed syllables, from none to three, Examples of such verse he cited in Shakespeare, nursery rhymes and music, but he claimed to be the fist poet to make the rhythm che ruling metre. The stanzas of "The Wreck’ are set out to show the different lengchs of the lines within the stanzaic unit 2,3, 4, 35,5; 4 6 with an extra stress in the first ines of the stanzas of Par the Second. The poem's firs partis discursive, informed by a distllation of the theological and philosophical taining Hopkins had been seceiving, but the ideas are grasped in such a way that they become visceral experience: “Thou hase bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, ‘And after it more made, what with dead, ‘Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afesht ‘Over again I fel thy finger and find thée (ranza lines 5-8) ‘We lash with the best or worst ‘Word last How a lush-kept plushcapped sloe ‘Wil, mouthed to lesh-burst, CGusht~fush the man, the being with it sour or sweet Brim, ina fas, fall (stanza 8, lines 2-6) "The poem sets out the relation Hopkins knows and feels between the world andl a God who brings his people to hima, those susceptible to influence with overwhelming sweemess, the recaletzant through terror. He is the creator and mover of all under the heavens, hidéen yet on occasion perceptible through nature, his Being to be stressed, instessed: perceived by a ready heart and acknowledged (stanza 8). The poems develops more complex ideas of the history of Christ's continuing influence within'the world since his crucifixion in the continuing strain of redemptive grace (stanza 7). The second and more accessible par (stanzas 12-34) introduces elements of Christian elegy sand Miltonic epic, explaining the possible salvation of souls from the Deutschland, which was wrecked on a sandbank near the mouth of the ‘Thames. It was carrying, among others, five mune expelled from their German convent to new lives of hospital service in America. The question ofhov Chris's influence is exerted within the modern warld isin this instance shown to come from publie witness, something which has a strong tradition in America and of which English Roman Catholicism might be a bit wary. The ‘all nan becomes a modern-day Mary, bringing knowledge of Christ into the ‘world through her wimess ~as Mary gave him physical presence — reminding the passengers of their Christian belief in their crucial last moments. When read well aloud, as Hopkins wished all his verse to be, the second partis highlydramatic, the flexibility of the rhythm and the compressed description bring ing the scene alive “They fought with Gods cold — ‘And they could nof, an fll 10 the dk. (Crushed them) of wter (and drowned them) or rolled ‘With the searornp over the wreck Night roared, withthe heartbreak hearing a hearbroke rabble, “The woman's walling, the ceying of eid without check ~ (sanza 27) ‘Both parts end with invocations that together ask God to work on the hearts ‘and minds of the Bnglish people to bring them back gently to the Catholic ‘communion. ‘The poem was much longer and far more complex than the few published by the public Jesuit journal, the Month, and it was perhaps predict ably rejected. Hopkins was aor to write many more such openly public poems, and turned to the sonnet form, which he developed and used almost ‘exclusively forthe rest of his life. Sonnets were, he told Canon Dixon, one of the most perfect of poetic forms it may also have suited his shore bur intense spurts of inspiration, his infrequent spare dime and psychological need to cxercise his brilliant idiosyncrasy within boundaries set by authority: for example, as late as 1887 he pestered Robert Bridges for information about Milton's use of codas for his poem ‘Tom's Garland!, preferring to follow precedent rather than simply failing his poem's needs. Starting with “The Wreck of the Deutschland’, Hopkins embarked on ‘numerous experiments in rhythm and rhyme, influenced by Greek compound words and patterns of Welsh cyaghangedd (patteras of alliteration and ass0- nance he deduced in Welsh poems he learmed to read). The year 1877 was panticularly fruitful, producing such favourites as ‘Spring’, ‘God's Grandeur’ ied Beauty’, "The Starlight Night, "The Windhover’, Hurrahing in Harvest and "The Lantetn out of doors’, In these an octave of freshly observed natural description is often followed by a sestet that uncovers its religious dimension. Nor all cutis find the latter ameneble but the Christocentric vision gives significence to the natural elements, binding them into a large, metaphysical ‘scheme thactakes them beyond the fragmentary experiments ofhis apprentice ‘yerse. The pattern has some similacty to the Ignatian Spivitual Exercises that Die the exercitant to imagine a scene of importance in Chris's life, ora concept such as Hell, by imagining its effect on each of the senses, then thinking, through its religious significance. The sonnet that has attracted mostattention, "The Windhover, isa bravura exercise in which every line of the octave ends {in ‘ing, the ‘a’ and ‘b' rhymes differentiated by the double chyming ‘b's ‘Christina Rosset and Hopkins (Ciding’). Yer the lines are so enjambed that the reader or listener is generally ‘unaware ofits tight rhyme scheme. Within the smaller compass of the sonnet Hopkins sets out to establish the ‘inscape’, visible essence, of the Kestrel, identifiable not by his colouring alone but by his unique ability to hold his position through flying into the wind, matching the winds speed wich the variable beating ofhis wings. Such a phrase as ‘his riding / Of che rolling level ‘undemeath him steady air (lines 2-3) provokes the reader into vocalsing the bird's suspension within the air Lines 9-to may be interpreted as the coming together within che observer's mind of the characterises of shape and behaviour that identify the bird: “Brute beauty and valour and act ob, ais, pride, plume, here / Buckle’. The early versions of the poem (ard many others) were lifted into more stiking individuality later when Hopkins revised the transcriptions Bridges had made for him in 1883-1, For example, so flexible is the shythm of the poem that Hopkins was able to add syllables thar ‘mimicked the bird's movement more closely, such as adding the second ‘off to the phrase, ‘then off / off, forth on swing, / As a skate's heel sweeps ‘smooth on e bow-bend’ lines 5-6) that imitates (in ‘off, off) that second push ‘ost people require to begin moving across ice and the movement of the bird as it manoeuvres to change direction. He also modified the early version's ‘opening lines from ‘I caught this morning momning’s minion, king / OF ayligh’s dauphin’ to ‘king-dom of daylight’s dauphin’ dines 1-2), which clarified the bird's royal position. ‘Among Hopkins’s technical innovations ofthis period was his use of ‘out- rides, loops stravegically placed below a few syllables that allowed him 10 swell che length of lines while notionally sill adhering to their metre. He ‘explained to Dison that outrides were 2 mechanical means of increasing the absolute size ond weightiness of English sonnets so that they more nearly ‘matched the perfection of ftalian Petratchan sonnets spoken with the caressing ‘of vowel sounds he identified as natural to Italian speech. They were not to ‘count in the calculating of the metre although they were spoken. ‘God's Grandeur’, written like “The Starlight Night’ when he was supposed to be revising for an examination, shows another of his innovations of the period: counterpoint. Taking the term from music, he used it to suggest that after establishing one-rhythm, generally iambic, a poet can introduce a second one bby placing two inverted feet sequentially, especially ifthe feet chosen are thd and fourth in the line 6 thata reader hears the trochaic rhythm without losing the dominant iambic one. The effect on the mezning ofthe opening aserion in’God's Grandeur is subtle: “The world / is chirged / with the / grinder / of Géd’. The inversion placing a stress on ‘with’ and ‘grind’, signalled to thereader by figures of eg placed sideways above the vowels, emphasises not ‘where the grandeur is, nor that itis charged but what sto be found. Te also allows greater stress to be placed on ‘gréndeu’ by preparing the reader forts fall weight. Although councerpoint would seem incompatible with sprung thythm, Hopkins did ater write poems that combined them, As with musical analysis i8 sometimes clear that he wrote relying on his naturally good ear, trying ro exprure in verse identifying movement of things or people he was describing, and then concocted a formal analysis. For example, he described the lurch ofthe Eurydice as it sank in the line: “Then a lrch forward, gate and men (The Los of the Eurydice’, line 4), analysing it vo Robert Bridges as “imitative as usual ~ an angpaest, followed by a twochee, a dacs), and a syllable, so cha the rhythm is anacrustic, of T should eal it, “encounter ing" The imerestin using poetry to capure things sais most extreme in “Harry Ploughman’, which he wold Bridges was the ‘rect picture ofa plough man, without afterthought’ The ocave describes the ploughman as he scands, almost a nude state, but che sestet is more experimental, If one follows the pleshora of marks Hopkins had devised by 1887, the verse teeters ‘between having meaning and alow of sound that conveys the movement of the ploughman ashe follows hs plough through tough sol, counterbalancing ts movement, and lurching forward as i cuts through softer ground. The effec is amongs the most daving of the century. The interes in etymology that Hopkins developed in his early years at (Oxford has its most stiking poate resulein the opening lines afi late poets, “Spelefrom Siby's Leaves (1884-6), whose eight foorlines he described asthe Jongest sonnet ever made’ and probably, given that it had eaken him evo ‘ears, ‘the longest making’ Imagining that he is witnessing the lst evening ‘when nature is disolved before the Day of Judgment, the speaker’ words evolve through cognate words that Hopkins believed were erymologicaly linked in chains of adjectives ershelshing the statement that ‘evening straint to be nigh EBamest, eachless, equal, atuneable, | vauty, voluminous... stupendous Evening strains to be time's vist, wornbofall, home-ofal,heazse-ofall night, (Spel from Sibyt's Leaves lines x3) He is unlikely to have expected that his own end would occur within less than three years, In 1889 he fell ill with what was eventually diagnosed as ‘typhoid, from which, some weeks later on 8 June, he died. Many ofhis papers ‘were sent to Robert Bridges, among them a group of sonnets now known as the dark sonnets, or sonnets of desolation, which were probably the ones ‘Christina Rosier and Hopkins Hopkins had described to Bridges in 1885 as coming unbidden, one of them ‘writen in blood’, generally thought to be “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’2” Here the psychological loneliness ofthe speakers amplified by his physical situation, waking in the middle of the night to find himself in a ‘darkness so dense itis lke being smothered by the thick pele of an animal (the fell of dark’) his disappointment at not finding the release of daylight is ‘aught by the stark, eliptical phrase, ‘nor day’. Cutoff from the world and unable to communicate wich God (‘dearest him that lives alas! away’ (ine 8)), ‘he turns inward, dwelling on his incomprehensible and isrevocabe lack of success (God's most deep decree’ (ine 9) until fels reduced to biter gall and heartburn, tormentedly imprisoned within himself, as Hopkins believed those condemned to hell were. The final lines that seem to sce into hell rnirror desperation by how close they come to saying that dis torment is ‘worse’ than that experienced by the los: "The lost are Hike this, and their scourge to be / Asam mine, their sweating selves; but worse’ (lines 1-14) Part of the poignancy ofthe poem arises from its dalogic structure, convey- ing both the intensity of emorion as gall and heartburn and a cleareaded diagnosis ofits causes ~ the mind stomach’) gnawing on iself— culminating in the final ambiguity Cbue worse’) that either confirms the loss of perspee- tive in selfpitying despair, oF provides a volta that earns away in objective recognition that others are in a worse state. The sonnets of desolation have contributed greatly to Hopkins’s posthumous reputation. Bridges, peshaps ‘heir Grst reader, was deeply impressed. The feelings of isolation, despair, an «ennui so intense ic seems to pervade the world, fred well nto the bleakness of the two decades following World War I. Bridges prepared the frst edition ‘of Hopkins's poems for poblication in 1918, brit was not until over a decade later, with the availabilry of a second edition of his poems and the spread of ‘Modemism, that there was a wider audience appreciative of his verbal music. Since dhen many poets have gone through a ‘Hopkins’ phase, their ear caught by his aliterative compounds, abrupt phrases or concision and attracted by the bleak, honest view of mankind and his own human failings or his concern for a beautiful natural world threatened by man. Although he would have ‘wished the proportions reversed, Hopkins has made many more literary than religious converts. The slightly built Jesuit, convinced of what he wanted to ‘express, knowing that he was ahead of hs ime, miserable atthe ant-British feeling around him in Dublin, left small body of work that ‘exploded’ more cffecively into che Modem world than that of any other Victorian literary figure, and his popularity has continued + grow into the rwenry-frst century.Me Nows 40 July-14 August 1863, ther Leters of Geral Manly Hopkins Incding Fis Conesponsence with Coventry amore, ed. Claude Colleer Abbott, second edition, revised and enlarged (London: Oxford Universsy Preis, 1998, 1936), p- 24 Hereafter cited as Further Les 20 [ulyou Auguse 1864, Farther Later, p. 2. ‘The connection was made by William Michael Rossetti in his ediion of (Christina's poems (The Poetical Works of Cristina Georgina Rost, ith Menotr «and Notes (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 482) and has been repeated frequently since. See Christina Rosetti: The Complete Poens, text by R, W. Crump, notes ad introduction by Betty S. Flowers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2002), P. 89. All further quotations from Christina Rossert’s poetry are from this edition ‘The Poeneal Works of Gerard Manley Hops, ed, Norman Hl. MacKeraie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p 4, Hines 6-70. Al father quotations from Hopkinw’s poetry are from this edition, 5 Macch 187, Ptr Letters, p. lowers in Christina Resets The Complete Poe, . 2 Jan Marsh, Oisina Rose: Literary Biggphy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954), pp. 68-9. See bid, pp, 226-8, 38-2, «28 Wid, DB ‘iid, pp. 74-5, 88. The poems were ‘Death's Chill Berween’ and ‘Heart's Chill Rerveen’ ‘See for example The Ble Bower, Bocca Baciata, Pair Rosamund, Regina Conktn, Lady Lith, Venus Vero, See for example the essays by Catherine Maswell, Richard Menke, Lorraine Janzen Kooistrs, in Mary Arseneas, Antony 1H, Hartson and Lorraine Janzen Kooistr (eds), The Culture of Christina Rostati: Female Poetics and Vicorian Contexts (Athens: Ohio University Press, 199. lowers, in Oristina Reset: The Complete Poems, pl. Jerome McGann, “towroduction’ in David A. Kent (ed), The Achicrment of ‘Crs Rosse (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 198), pp. 139, 7, ‘Seck and Find: A Double Seis of Short Studies of the Benedict (899), Called tobe ‘Sains: The Minor Festivals Devotonally Studied (88, Letter and Spire: Notes onthe Commandments (068), Time Fs: A Reading Diary (8), The Face of the Deep: A Devorional Commentary om the Apocalypse (1852). ‘Jn Marsh notes in her biography of Christina Rosset that Christina told Dante Gabriel Rosser thar ‘there was norsk ofeniodnsl exposure, because “aosuch Person exists or existed” ’. Bye in 1850, making notes on a new edition of her ‘works, she penciled in: “The eriginal ohn was obnosious because he never gave scope for “No thank you", p. 2c. Marsh speculates that che original was John Bret 64 Chrstina Rosse and Hophias Antony 4, Hatton, Chrtna Reeth Cont (igo: Harve Pest poten «Marth hit Rat pa > SeeJou ees Chan Ron Det ral Quay 25 980 pp. 39-7 ary Ant, linge and Pospoctnen China Rone Toe Pac's Progr, Wioran Fey, su3-4 Cope, PP 2998 ep. ote 4 aed Diane Damen, Cmisina Rew: Fah, Govt ad Tine ton Rouge: Loan Sete Unive Pes 1p) epecilly caper so, Rees, "Chisina Reset Pot 2 Hanson, Chitin Resi on 8 2 Baap 2 Mah Cain Rose pp so-» 24, Hatin, Chine Rost Cot p95 25, Mash, Ciritna Ret. 26. a 2. hid pe. 2. Bs pve 25, The Nata, Je 185, ein Nowa White, Gh Maney Hopi: A Lira Bg (Ono: Carenon Pre, 99 so. Powny and Vers in The Jornal an Papers of Grr Manly Hopi, #HdGenSey fanin nrd avety r 3. ober, The Cope of Geri any Hopi enchant Walon » Themed C26, Abo, econ tere eon Ono Oxo Ue Pres 5), pp. 7 Heater ced ws Graydon. sa. Ns ltl ein cnet to ae oa omnes wid he mos approved order of dines seo on sone ton teal od was the ents, » November 187, The Lats of Ged ancy Reps fo Rabe Brigey e& G.C. Abbot (London Orford Unive Press P23 ureter ced tLe to rie, sy 29 Oates st, Conese p86. 3.30 May 7, Lees orgs. 5 Sepember yi pa 56. 26 Noveber 186 ip 2 377 May, 2 2 | | | | | | |