Stage 2: Detachment

The second Hopkins poem on our journey from despair to delight is also deeply troubling, but it does offer us a glimmer of light along the way. 

A note before you start reading: in the first line, the word ‘fell’ means ‘deadly, ferocious evil’.

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

          What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent

          This night! what sights you, heart, saw; the ways you went!

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

             With witness I speak this! But where I say

          Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

          Is cries countless, cried like dead letters sent

          To dearest him that lives alas! away.

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

          Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

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

              Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

          The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

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

The main message Hopkins conveys to me in this poem is his dreadful sense of loss; endless separation from the one he loves; sourness and bitterness; visceral, heart-wrenching grief.

And yet. 

He finds an element of detachment.  Despite his obvious distress, Hopkins is able to write perfectly formed classic sonnet lines: ten syllables, with the stress on every second one: ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark not day’.  And then in the final six lines, he decides to vary the rhyming structure from the standard <cde cde> of the previous poem to <ccd ccd> (decree/me/curse; see/be/worse).

There is resonance again with mindfulness meditation - with the point at which we begin to create a space between ourselves and the pain and distress. Instead of being caught outside in the middle of a thunderstorm, we begin to watch the thunderstorm through a window. 

He has some inner company in this time of trouble. Within the first three lines, Hopkins’ switch from the first person ‘I’ to ‘we’ (I plus heart) to ‘you’ (heart). So he is not dealing with all this on his own. His heart is taking some of the burden for him.   

And maybe there is a purpose for him, behind all this suffering.  With ‘I see’ at the end of line 14, Hopkins suggests that this experience is enabling him to understand the torment of lost souls. We do not have to share his views on the afterlife to gain value from this idea. If we have experienced grief and loss ourselves, we are so much better placed to offer empathy and compassion to people we know who going through it all now. 

From Despair to Delight: a journey of six sonnets

I’ve been reading a lot of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry recently.  And I've realised  that his sonnets can offer relief and hope for people going through a period of deep distress. 

I’m going to show you what I mean in this series of posts.

Hopkins was one of the most original poets writing in English during the 19^th century.  Throughout his life he experienced a range of intense emotions, from utter misery to great joy. And he has an astonishing ability to express his emotions in his poetry.

I’ve chosen six of Hopkins’ sonnets which, I suggest, can take us on a healing journey:  from despair, through detachment and determination, to comfort of self and comfort of others, and finally to delight.  The first four are taken from his so-called ‘Terrible Sonnets’, written in Dublin in 1885 during a period of profound sadness.  The fifth was written in Liverpool in 1880, while he was working as a local priest. The final one, his own personal favourite, was composed in north Wales in 1877.

I’ll present each poem in turn, and then make some comments on how they might help us. 

Four things before we start on the journey.

1. The first three of these sonnets are very bleak indeed, so do take care of yourself while reading them.  If they strike a deep chord, then make sure you have someone you can talk them over with.
2. Religion is very important to Hopkins, and permeates all his literary imagery. He became a Jesuit priest, having converted to Catholicism (a very radical move at the time) while a student at Oxford. But it is not at all necessary for us to share his beliefs to get immense value from his poetry.
3. Sonnet structure: Hopkins adopts the standard 14 lines for each sonnet, like Petrarch and Shakespeare before him. Like Petrarch (but unlike Shakespeare) he usually divides them into two parts: the first eight lines set out the main theme, and the last six lines offering a response.  Unlike both Petrarch and Shakespeare, Hopkins often moves away from the standard format of ten syllables a line, with stress on each second syllable; he enjoys experimenting with the length and rhythm of each line.    
4. Reading the poems: I recommend you read through each one a few times, to get the general style and rhythm in your mind.  Then, for maximum effect, read it out loud.  This way you really begin to hear how his words sound and interact with each other.

 OK, with all this in mind, we can begin.  I will introduce the first sonnet for this journey – ‘No worst there is none’ – in my next post, in a couple of days’ time.