Stage 3: Determination

The third Hopkins’ poem I’ve chosen to guide us on our journey from despair to delight is called Carrion Comfort.

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; 

Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man 

In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; 

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. 

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me 

Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan 

With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, 

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? 

   Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. 

Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, 

Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. 

Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród 

Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year 

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Now there’s a fair bit of difficult stuff in this poem, which we’ll not worry about too much.  For example how Hopkins likes to use adjectives like ‘rude’ as verbs; or phrases like ‘I kissed the rod’ which means taking holy orders, becoming a priest.

Let’s focus on the first four lines, which are all about his thoughts of suicide. Hopkins is not just accepting his despair. Now has started to wrestle with it. He is not going to die. He is not going to let anyone or anything feast on his rotting remains. He is not giving up – even though he knows how hard it is to keep going - as we can see from his double negative ‘not choose not to be’.  He can. He can stay alive. He can hope.

Unlike Hamlet wondering whether ‘to be or not to be’, or Keats who was ‘half I love with easeful death’, Hopkins is determined to survive. Like the conatus – desire - of my favourite philosopher Spinoza, these lines are all about his dogged, bloody-minded resolve to keep going, come what may.  And we can draw immense strength from that. 

There’s a lot more wrestling in the rest of the poem, but it’s no longer with himself. Now it’s a conflict between Hopkins and his God.  We can take this more generally. Since we have decided we are going to stick around, we can decide there is no point in just meekly accepting our fate. We can decide to stand up and be counted. We can decide to do battle with the conditions that have been grinding us down.  

But what’s the point?

Maybe it’s to strip away the ‘chaff’, the rubbish that surrounds us, so that our ‘grain’, our inner being, lies ‘sheer and clear’. Maybe it’s to find out that we are strong, strong enough to grapple with the toughest of them all, and not be defeated.  

And we have a clue in the last line that the worst is over, as ‘of now done darkness’ shifts these experiences from present to past tense.

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.