' . . my main contention in this paper is that Green's reading of Hopkins is, in fact, a reading of himself and of his own preoccupations as a person and as a writer. What Green reads or rather highlights and singles out for comment can be seen to be a mirror of his own deepest concerns.'
French novelist, Julien Green and Hopkins
Read the rest of this lecture: Hopkins and a Nun called Gertrude
. . . imagination and its characteristic vision already encompasses the concept of revelation, and does so at any depth or height of reality we may care or dare to visit. To put the matter in the terms of Hopkins' own metaphysic and epistemology of instress/inscape: some power of being (perhaps what Dylan Thomas called 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower'?) Read the rest of this Lecture
The unique achievement of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) has long been recognized. One of the most outstanding English poets of the late nineteenth century, he made poetry read like a prayer, offering a profound insight into the world of the spirit, into the mystery of the Word "instressed" and "stressed" by word(s). For years now the critics have been concerned with exploring numerous aspects of the poet's doGerard Manleyatic Christianity (Leavis, 85), yet although they often emphasize the Christocentric character of his work, only a few seem to realize how crucial, and in fact indispensable, for his poetry and the religious quest it offers to the privileged reader (cf. Delli-Carpini, viii) is Hopkins's preoccupation with the Marian theme, represented in every major phase of his poetic life.
Western writers have made very extensive use of the poetry of Horace. In speaking of this process, we tend to glibly employ nouns such as 'tradition', 'influence', 'legacy', and 'heritage', but the metaphors involved in these nouns require interrogation. The Oxford English Dictionary definitions of these nouns - respectively 'The action of handing over to another'; 'The action or fact of flowing'; 'anything handed down by an ancestor'; 'that which has been or may be inherited' - clearly show that, from the perspective of modern people, a passive process is being described. But when a modern person make use of Greek or Roman material, the process is, from their point of view, active.
Thomas Aquinas affirms, "God is virtually everything," an idea that is capital in Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry. It is our contention that no one has ever better expressed in literature the Thomistic conception of creation than Gerard Manley Hopkins, well expressed in "Pied Beauty" Hopkins rejects the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in favor of Duns Scotus, the Franciscan logician and theologian. It is the contention of this paper that on further analysis there is a deep "parenté" between Aquinas and Hopkins that is empirically verifiable. Read 'Pied Beauty' . . .
First, instead of a definition, I would like to offer a paradiGerard Manley experience of contemplation, that of Isaiah of Jerusalem, sometimes called First Isaiah: "In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; his train filled the sanctuary" (Is. 6:1). Not only does Isaiah see the Lord, but he is literally dumb-founded, that is, mute before the vision, managing only to hear the Seraphim stammer out the phrase, "Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are filled with His glory."
It is with some foreboding and not a little feeling of 'mauvaise foi' that I take the floor at this year's Hopkins' Summer School. Because, you see, Hopkins isn't someone whom I enjoyed reading as a young student. I realise now why that may have been the case. He is a complex and difficult poet who, in order to be understood, requires readers who have endured hardship and despair in their own lives. In this he resembles Jean Sulivan (1913-1980), a writer whom I know somewhat better. I had the privilege of translating into English Sulivan's memoir of the death of his mother, Devance tout adieu or Anticipate Every Goodbye (Veritas, 2000), by its English title. . .
It is ironic that in the midst of the present cacophony of vying moral, spiritual, and social authorities, poetry is in most intellectual quarters regarded as a species of discourse which can no longer - perhaps never could express universal truths since its meaning, we say, varies from reader to reader, culture to culture, age to age, and so forth.
Elaine Murphy traces Hopkins's Spiritual life from his conversion to Catholicism in Oxford, his joining the Society of Jesus, his life as a Jesuit until his death in Ireland.His appeal to ‘sensual gross desires’, to ‘foul and cumber not the shaken plumage of My Spirit’s wings’ is a foretaste of his later thinking that poetry as a sensual activity was dangerous for his spiritual soul.
Hopkins' Spiritual LifeContemplation in Hopkins Poetry
Hopkins and God
Hopkins and Teilhard de Chardin
Saint Aquinas, Thomism and Gerard Manley Hopkins
Saint Gertrude in Hopkins Poetry
Influence of Horace onHopkins
French Novelist Jean Sulivan and Hopkins
Catholic Novelist Julien Green and Hopkins
Mariology in Hopkins Poetry
Self as Other in Hopkins Poetry
Irish Exile and Hopkins Terrible Sonnets