Poetry of Stress
A Hopkins Reader. Selected and with an Introduction by John Pick. (Geoffrey Cumberlege. Oxford University Press. 21s.) Selected Poems of Gettrd Manley Hopkins. Edited with an Intro- duction and Notes by James Reeves. (Heinemann. 6s.) Now that we have acclaimed the restoration of the Brownings, and the biographers, with a flourish of trumpets, have returned to barracks, there are signs that another Victorian claims wider appre- ciation. It is true that Hopkins hardly needs such militant supporters: four volumes of, his letters and papers appeared in the 'thirties and were soon out of print, and he has continued to occupy the anthologist, critic and editor. Mr. Leavis maintained, years ago, that Hopkins was the greatest poet of his age, while Mr. Gardner, in his two-volume study, has declared that "after an intensive reading of Hopkins, most other English poetry seems outwardly facile and in varying degrees inadequate." Today, however, when we are presented with a Hopkins Reader and the first popular selection of his poems, it seems time to assess him more generally.
He is not a Victorian. That, at least, is our immediate response. He was born in 1844 and died in 1889, but he shows in his life no self-conscious Victorian piety, and he shows in his work no trace of the histrionics or maudlin sensibility which were sometimes evident in Tennyson. He would not tolerate literary padding, he deplored mere technical virtuosity, innovation devoid of feeling. He was a lover of language and passionately sincere.
He believed in using the language of everyday, but he enriched it with words some of which he coined himself, some of which he took from Anglo-Saxon, "a vastly superior thing to what we have now.
It makes one weep to think what English might have been." Hopkins' devotion to language we find in his diaries, meticulously kept: "Note that the beaded oar, dripping, powders or sows the smooth with dry silver drops. . . . Notes for poetry. Feathery rows of young corn. Ruddy, furred and branchy tops of the elms backed by rolling cloud." Then, significantly: "Addis says that my arguments are coloured and lose their value by personal feeling. This ought to be repressed." The method is Flaubertian; the struggle recalls Flaubert's dictum: "Art should rise above personal affections and nervous susceptibilities. It is time to give it the precision of a physical science"; and as Flaubert strove to discipline his romanticism, so Hopkins fought to impose precision upon his poetry and to maintain a'Jesuit austerity in his life.
It is idle (and the more so as there remain unpublished papers) to discuss the wisdom of Hopkins' ordination; but, as we judge from the available facts, we can only share Mr. Reeves' opinion that renuncia- tion and privation crippled his genius. In his dedicated life he felt himself forbidden to write poetry ; and when, in time, there came encouragement, his inspiration failed.
... birds build—but not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not build one work that wakes.
Mine, 0 thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
It was, paradoxically, in this very barrenness, this last grieving before God, in the final admission of failure that he touched the depth of his feeling and the height of poetry.
On Hopkins' death many of his letters were destroyed. It is a task of literary justice to publish what is left. Meanwhile, Hopkins' latest editors have done general good service. They present him with discretion and insight; and they remind us, even by showing us Hopkins in little, that he remains the profoundest poet of his age: that his technical triumphs are triumphs of the spirit.
JOANNA RICHARDSON.
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