How do you intro­duce a poet you love?  “Dear new French friends, this is my old friend Ger­ard?”  No—too arti­fi­cial.  Per­haps, “Meet my friend Ger­ard: he wrote exhil­a­rat­ing poems.”  Or, “My friend Ger­ard wrote the most ter­ri­fy­ing poem I know.”  Pos­si­bly bet­ter?  In any case, let me intro­duce Hop­kins in all his exhil­a­ra­tion and ter­ror.  First, exhilaration :

 

      Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
         O look at all the fire-folk sit­ting in the air!
         The bright bóroughs, the cir­cle-citadels there
      Down in dim woods the dia­mond delves! the elves’ eyes !

 

Or,

 

      Sum­mer énds now; now, bár­barous in béau­ty, the stóoks ríse
      Around; up above, what wind-walks! What love­ly behaviour
      Of sílk-sack clóuds! has wilder, wilful-wávier
      Méal-drift mould­ed ever and melt­ed acróss skíes ?
      I wálk, I líft up, Í lift úp heart, éyes,
      Down all that glo­ry in the heav­ens to glean our Savior.…

 

Or con­sid­er his ter­ror, when Hop­kins fears he’s los­ing his mind:

 

      …My cries heave, herds-long; hud­dle in a main, a chief-
      Woe, wórld-sor­row; on an áge-old ánvil wínce and síng—
      Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
      Ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.
      O the mind, mind has moun­tains, cliffs of fall
      Fright­ful, sheer, no-man-fath­omed. Hold them cleap
      May who ne’er hung there.…

 

Now you know him a bit, through his exhil­a­ra­tion and his ter­ror.  Now, may I intro­duce my poet-friend as he was and as he is: first, as he was in his life, then as he is, in his poems and his fame.

      First, his life.  Son of Man­ley and Kate Hop­kins, Ger­ard was born in 1844 in a Lon­don sub­urb, the old­est of nine in a com­fort­able Vic­to­ri­an fam­i­ly, and he grew up in London’s cozy, leafy Hamp­stead.  At Oxford, he was bril­liant in Clas­sics, became a Roman Catholic in 1866, and won a “first”—the high­est degree—in 1867.  For a year he taught school in Birm­ing­ham, then entered the Jesuit order in 1868.  He learned Jesuit spir­i­tu­al­i­ty as a novice in Lon­don, stud­ied phi­los­o­phy in Lan­cashire, and the­ol­o­gy in Wales.  Ordained a priest in 1877 at the age of 33, he worked for sev­en years in Jesuit schools and parish­es in Eng­land and Scot­land, then went to Dublin in 1884 as Pro­fes­sor of Greek in the new Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege.  Five years lat­er he con­tract­ed typhoid fever just as an epi­dem­ic was end­ing, and died in 1889 at the age of 44, sev­en weeks before his 45th birth­day.  He was buried in the Jesuit plot at Dublin’s Glas­nevin Ceme­tery, and died almost unknown: his book Poems of Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins was not pub­lished until 1918, 29 years after his death.

      Such are the facts.  But who was Ger­ard Hop­kins as a per­son?  A short fel­low of 5’2 or 3”, he was enthu­si­as­tic, had a high-pitched voice, loved to sketch and write poems, was close to his fam­i­ly, and had warm, life­long friends from Oxford, fel­low Jesuits, and Irish fam­i­lies.  For recre­ation he vis­it­ed art exhi­bi­tions and old church­es, and enjoyed hol­i­days with his fam­i­ly, friends, and fel­low Jesuits in Switzer­land, Hol­land, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man, Whit­by on the North Sea, Wales, Scot­land, and the West of Ire­land.  Dur­ing these hol­i­days, he loved to hike and swim.  His pas­sions were nature (espe­cial­ly trees), ecol­o­gy, beau­ty, poet­ry, art, his fam­i­ly and friends, his coun­try, his reli­gion, and his God.  His curse was a life­long “melan­choly” (his word) which in 1885 in Dublin became deep depres­sion and a sense of lost con­tact with God. In life and poet­ry he was seri­ous and playful–even whim­si­cal.  Spir­i­tu­al­ly, despite an ear­ly scrupu­los­i­ty which he nev­er ful­ly lost, he fol­lowed the Jesuit way of find­ing God in all things, and rejoiced in “God in the world”: “The world is charged wíth the grán­deur of God.”  He was very, very bright, with an exten­sive knowl­edge of words and languages—he knew so many words!  His intel­lec­tu­al hero was the medieval philoso­pher Duns Sco­tus, whose phi­los­o­phy of self­hood he held dear.  Hop­kins him­self had a strong sense of self, appre­ci­at­ed his own indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, and was immense­ly self-confident.

Such was the Hop­kins of the past.  But he also lives today, alive in his poems and in his fame.  As a poet, his pas­sion for strength and fresh­ness made him remake Eng­lish poet­ry.  To for­mal Vic­to­ri­an tastes, he brought pow­er­ful words, sounds, and rhythms, return­ing to Anglo-Sax­on roots, invent­ing new word-com­pounds, and at once loos­en­ing and strength­en­ing poet­ic rhythm with his “sprung rhythm.”  He fresh­ened poet­ic forms, too: usu­al­ly writ­ing Mil­ton­ic son­nets of 14 lines, he exper­i­ment­ed suc­cess­ful­ly with such unusu­al forms as a “cur­tal” son­net of 10 2/5 lines (“Pied Beau­ty”) and a “cau­dal” son­net of 24 lines (“That Nature is a Her­a­clitean Fire”).  As an exper­i­menter, he was a mod­ern poet before “mod­ern” poet­ry exist­ed.  That’s who Hop­kins is today: a com­pelling, path-break­ing poet bring­ing vivid word-life to nature, ecol­o­gy, God, and men­tal anguish, and writ­ing one of the three or four finest odes in Eng­lish, “The Wreck of the Deutsch­land.”  Hop­kins is now con­sid­ered a major Eng­lish writer.

He also lives today in his fame.  He influ­enced such poets as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke, Eliz­a­beth Bish­op, John Berry­man, Robert Low­ell, Ted Hugh­es, Sylvia Plath, Denise Lev­er­tov, and the Nobel Lau­re­ate Sea­mus Heaney.  In the 1920s and 30s, he was a dar­ling of the British and Amer­i­can “New Crit­ics” who prized and probed his poems’ rich “tex­ture.”  In the 50 years between then and the cen­ten­ni­al of his death in 1989, Hop­kins accrued many books–biographies, crit­i­cal stud­ies, con­cor­dances, and a bibliography–plus count­less arti­cles, a jour­nal devot­ed to his work (The Hop­kins Quar­ter­ly, found­ed in 1974 and now in its 39th vol­ume), and quite won­der­ful­ly, a pol­ished, grey memo­r­i­al stone in West­min­ster Abbey’s Poets’ Cor­ner, ded­i­cat­ed in 1975.  Final­ly, in the Unit­ed Nations’  Palais des Nations in Gene­va, an enor­mous mar­ble bas-relief above the entrance to The Coun­cil Cham­ber has carved into it the open­ing words of Hop­kins’ ode “The Wreck of the Deutschland.”

In 1989 the cen­ten­ni­al of Hop­kins’ death brought him new, inter­na­tion­al fame.  The day itself, June 8, was com­mem­o­rat­ed in Lon­don, Oxford, Loch Lomond (Scot­land), Dublin, and Wash­ing­ton.  Major exhi­bi­tions were mount­ed by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin, and The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, with small­er exhi­bi­tions in Spokane (Wash­ing­ton State), North Wales, and his birth­place of Strat­ford (Essex).  Con­fer­ences and schools cel­e­brat­ed him in Italy, Eng­land, Wales, Ire­land, and the Unit­ed States.  Fes­tive lec­tures fes­tooned France, Eng­land, Wales, Cana­da, the U.S., Paraguay, the Philip­pines, and Japan.

Today, twen­ty years lat­er, Hop­kins’ work still inspires music, new books still pro­lif­er­ate, and schol­ars of many reli­gions (or none) teach, trans­late, and write about Hop­kins in Israel, Rus­sia, Poland, Italy, France, Hol­land, Eng­land, Scot­land, Wales, Ire­land, Cana­da, the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co, New Zealand, Korea, and Japan.  Per­haps the most unex­pect­ed are two Israeli women, Rachel Salmon and Eynel War­di, both schol­ars and pro­fes­sors, who have spo­ken and writ­ten about why Hop­kins appeals to Jew­ish women.  Every year, the Hop­kins Soci­ety of Ire­land has a fes­ti­val of poet­ry in Co. Kil­dare, and Reg­is Uni­ver­si­ty, in Den­ver, Col­orado, holds a inter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ence.  Final­ly, in 2014 Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press will com­plete the pub­li­ca­tion of a new schol­ar­ly edi­tion of every­thing Hop­kins wrote, in eight volumes.

As I end, I note two recent fes­tiv­i­ties.  In 2008 in Dublin, a play about Hop­kins was pre­sent­ed as a walk-around dra­ma in the very house where he lived and died, and sold out every tick­et!  And in 2009, singers, poets, and dancers in San­ta Fe, New Mex­i­co, mem­o­r­al­ized Ger­ard Hop­kins in their own cre­ative for­ma.  Amaz­ing Hop­kins!  Amaz­ing people!

This is the Hop­kins I intro­duce to you: born in 1844, died in 1889, still liv­ing in 2014–a Hop­kins who was and still is.  Today, he shines in glo­ry and is fresh­ly cel­e­brat­ed in France.

 

                                                         Saint Joseph’s Uni­ver­si­ty Philadel­phia, Pennsylvania

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