Dualism and Spirituality in Hopkins's Poetry
This article is based on a Lecture given at the 34th Hopkins Literary Festival September 2021Father Brendan Staunton S.J.
The Pro-Cathedral,
Dublin 1.
This talk is a reflection on a fragment of a Hopkins's sonnet, one you're all familiar with; the only poem Desmond Egan devotes a whole chapter to in his admirable book, Hopeful Hopkins.
Auden
, in his glowing tribute to WB Yeats, claims, poetry makes nothing happen.
I begin by giving the lie to that half-truth from a personal viewpoint. As a young Jesuit in formation, we were told that it's not what you do, but who you are that counts. So the stress on interiority, an inner life was primary, and action was secondary. This scholastic definition was corrected, on reading this sonnet by Hopkins: what I do is me! A dualism dissolved.
As kingfishers ... doesn't trip off the tongue as readily as Shakespeare's, Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end .; a sonnet also about time. The fragment from Hopkins's sonnet, that talked of being indoors, adds being to time.
Being is a big word, and I will try to unpack what Hopkins may have meant by it, and its purpose in the poem.
Heidegger's landmark Being And Time has had a huge influence. Linking Being to Time implies the former is about becoming. We are historical beings, above all else. (Some say "hysterical"!)
I imagined Hopkins visiting his indoors as an interior designer, and here are some of Hopkins's observations, ideas and experience of a unified selfhood, that speaks and spells.
Compare and contrast this with the effect daffodils had on Wordsworth; lying on his couch, in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon the inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude. Is Being then more than an inward eye. Why? We'll come to that.
The second room reminds me of T.S. Eliot's Prufrock "Let us go then you and I... " But is there is more to Being than an interior monologue, a debate about whether an elderly man should speak feelingly and declare his love, or play safe?
Sure, interiority is involved, but what it does is the key.
Some quotations from Heidegger's work on Being And Time, cast light of Hopkins loaded word, being indoors. Our philosopher says the House of Being, is language. Being evokes more than an individuals' emotion recollected in tranquillity . Or a poet's voicing twin aspects of an intellectual and affective debate. A debate may be a discussion but not an interpersonal dialogue.
So Being for Hopkins is more inter, than intra personal. And touches the theme of the trans-personal, the trans-individual reality of the subject; the grace that keeps all his goings graces.
A second philosopher, Kierkegaard, is on the same wavelength as Hopkins. We show who we are by what we do. The Danish visionary says the foundation of this is the relationship between Recollection and Repetition.
The former is the foundation of Plato's remembering. Therefore looks back. Meaning is retrospective. The latter looks forward, and reaches expression, that harmonises thought and speech. Echoing the Gospel's out of the heart the mouth speaks.
Hopkins condenses so much into these few lines, and it is the metaphoric pull that packs the punch. Not a knock-out blow, but an enlivening expression of who we are, as human beings, what we are made of, with our human condition.
You could say that this sonnet answers Lear's agonising cry: who can tell me, who I am? How Lear could have done with Hopkins's clarity of calling: for that I came. Instead of confusing a question with a demand; that wasn't met, with tragic consequences.
Having solved or overcome the seeming conflict between being a priest and a poet. (An optional paragraph on linking Climate change and our conceptual climate?)
This sonnet doesn't as much inform us about identity, but evokes the difference between introspection and reflection. A core concept for St Ignatius and his Spiritual Exercises, which were an intimate part of Hopkins's being indoors. Both involve interiority and being indoors, but one expresses, finds a language where the outer and inner are in harmony, without denying the divisions inherent and inchoate in every human being, subjected to language. (Hebrews quote?)
Egan notices the lack of abstractions in the sonnet, and how in the 14 lines, are 15 images and 20 verbs. Therefore Movement, so being indoors for Hopkins implies becoming, a real and ideal being.
(If all conforms to a purpose, like the Lantern Outdoors , and The Candle Within , how account for sin, evil and the lack of inner freedom in so many?)
I began with the poet Yeats and will come to end with his brother the painter, Jack B, and his current Exhibition, Painting and Memory in our National Gallery. Some of you may already have been, and what struck me was the way so many of the 85 paintings portray a journey, someone on the move. And in many, a person looks back and others look forward. Recollection and Repetition!
As someone said last night, education is about what remains when you've forgotten everything you've learned. A good teacher gets out of the way!
So enjoy and treasure your unique and common inner landscape. It is the foundation of poetry and self-possession, the requisite for communication.
Brendan concluded by quoting the opening sentence of Being and Time, by Heidegger. You have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression;. We, however, who used think we understood it, have now become perplexed. May that Perplexity evolve in our minds too, thanks to Heidegger and Hopkins.
I give the last word to Shakespeare's Richard I: we will not be pleased 'til we be eased with being nothing. Food for thought!
P.S. Hopkins as a poet was a visionary, and I imagine he anticipated or was a forerunner of Heidegger, even though there's a gap between 1877 and 1927.