Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Poet at Penuel

National Library Bibliothèque nationale u*l of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliogaphic Services sewices bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Canada Canada Your f~kVotre reterence Our fi& Notre rêf4rence The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier OU sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otheMrise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract Gerard Manley Hopkins' "terrible sonnetst1are famous for their ambiguity and for the profound spiritual suffering they express. Secular critics uçually interpret the poerns as failures of one sort or another, psychological or intellectual or poetic. Christian critics usually interpret the poems, not in terms of failure, but of mystery: what Hopkins calls the Hincomprehensible certaintyH of God. Hopkins' reference, in the poem "Carrion Cornfort," to the story of Jacob's wrestling with Cod at Penuel (Gen. 32:23-32) invites a specifically biblical interpretation of the mystery of the "terrible sonnets.ll The circularity of Jacob's life - £rom conflict, through resolution, to a deeper conflict - illuminates the circular development of Hopkins' poetry; and the climactic episode of Jacob's life - bis confusing, paradoxical wrestling with God at Penuel - allows us interpret the "terrible sonnetsIl as a spiritual, intellectual and literary wrestling with God. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Professors Roger Ploude, Diana Austin and Robert Larmer for their thoughtful readings of the manuscript. 1 am particularly indebted to my supervisor, Professor Dan Doerksen, and to my best friend and partner, Heidi MacDonald, for their patience and faithfulness during the long writing of this thesis. To them, and to the glory of God, this thesis is dedicated. iii Table of Contents Chapter One The Problem of the "Terrible SonnetsIl Chapter Two The Criticism Chapter Three Christian Criticism Chapter Four Penuel Chapter Five A Poet's Progxess Chapter Six The Poet at Penuel Works Cited 1 Chapter One The Problem of the "Terrible Sonnets" Questions to which clear, simple and universally satisfying answers can be given are not the only questions worth asking. - Helen Gardner ' It is perhaps inevitable, when reading the final works of a poet, that we listen for a summary note, a final judgement upon, or resolution of, the conflicts that inspire a poet's work. Last poems, whether intended as such or not, carry at least this inadvertent authority: whatever a poet's intentions or ambitions, the poetry ended here, ended as this. And bearing the authority we normally grant to final things, final poems have a unique retrospective power. Learning £rom thern the poetryts destination, we can, £rom final poems, chart a poetts progress. Like the last lines of an individual poem, last poems may signify a destination reached, or an integrity rnaintained. Last poems can grant to a poetls life work the kind of integrity we expect to find in individual works. Even in modern poetry, in which the open or broken quality of the verse rnay disallow tidy resolutions, we may hope to hear in a poetts last works a final, consummate brokenness. The desire for conclusion, for 1 Helen Gardner, Relision and Literature (London: Faber and Faber, 1971) 13. "the sense of an ending" in Frank Kermoders phrase, runs very dee~.~ In the case of Christian poets, the reader's desire for conclusion may become a settled expectation; for, through their £aith, Christians are firmly grounded in Christ, the Alpha and Omega, the first and last. Just as Christ's completed life, death and resurrection comprehends the whole of a Christian's life, sot it may be assumed, christian doctrine should determine the purpose and shape O£ Christian poetry. In Relision and Literature Helen Gardner suggests that the peculiar beauty of religious poetry lies precisely in the fact that the poet who writes as a religious man does write in fetters. He writes as a man committed and his commitment, even if it is not stated, is implied-.. he asks the reader to accept, at least during the reading of the poem, truths which are not presented as persona1 discoveries, [and] values that are not his individual values. (Gardner 134) Such commitment suggests that, in Christian poetry, resolution is always close at hand. The poetry is written, as the life is lived, "in obedience to what are felt to be imperatives £rom without the sel£ that are binding" (Gardner * Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Endinq (New York: Oxford UP, 1967) 4. 3 Christian poetry exists not to glorify itsel£, nor the poet, but to glorify God and His greater creation. Thus the Christian poet, it might be said, labours in the service of an already completed work. We would not expect the last poems of a Christian poet to contxadict the witness of his earlier poetry - not so long as he rernained true to the doctrines of the Christian faith. Gerard Maniey Hopkins clearly challenges this assumption: his last poems, particularly his six or seven "terrible sonnets," express a su£f ering and con£usion unprecedented in Hopkins ' poetry and in English literature generally - a profound spiritual conf lict which is not even an intelligible con£lict . Hopkins' last poems suggest, not that the poet has ceased to believe in, or submit to his Gad' but rather that God has been disloyal to him, and is trying to destroy him. The llterrible sonnets" are not "terriblet1in the popular sense of the word - because of a failure in their design or technique - but because they so convincingly recreate the experience of terror. More disturbing yet, the source of that terror is revealed as Ilthou terrible," God himself, from whom one would normally seek refuge from terror. The agony expressed in the ltterxible sonnetst1 would be remarkable in any poet, at any age, but is particularly surprising given the confidence with which Hopkins ' most famous poems proclaim Godt s mercy. The nature poems for which Hopkins is most £amous are among the most joyous, confident poems produced in our language. Even a quick list of titles - Weaven-Haven," "Gad's Grandeur,' and perhaps most explicitly, "The Virgin Mary compared to the Air we Breathe" - suggests Hopkinst confidence in the goodness of God and of His creation. Such poetry celebrates the communion which exists between the divine and human and natural orders. If, as a Christian poet, Hopkins was writing, as Gardner says, "in fetters," they were fetters in which he found freedom. He embraced the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, even as they embraced him. How did this poet whose earlier work seems so full of confidence in Godlsgrace, corne, at the end of his life, to write poems of such desolation? How are such poems to be understood? This, briefly put, is the problem of the "terrible sonnets. In May 1885 Hopkins sent a long, chatty letter to his friend Robert Bridges in which we find the first oblique reference to the "terrible sonnets." Hopkins writes: "1 have after long silence written two sonnets, which 1 am touching: if ever anything was written in blood one of these was.l13 The phrase "which 1 am touching" may suggest that Hopkins was "touching up," or revising the poems, and such revision is borne out by the surviving manuscripts. The words also suggest, however, that as he writes the letter, Hopkins is 3 The Letters of Gerard Manlev Hopkins to Robert Bridses, ed. Claude Colleer Abbott (London: Oxford UP) 221. 5 touching the manuscript with his fingers; and to readers familiar with the poems, this is a strangely compelling image. These sonnets speak of a suffering so extreme, yet so obscure, that it renders the poet a mystery to himself. One can imagine Hopkins trying with difficulty, and perhaps with great reluctance, to touch again the disorienting, frightening crisis of the poems, to hold within the mind that considers the poetry, that other mind, also his, which suffers so powerfully in them. The appropriateness of the phrase "written in bloodw becomes obvious enough, even on a cursory reading. These are poems not of creation, but of dissolution; not of praise, but of sacrifice: Not, 1/11 not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist - slack they may be - these last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry ' 1 can no more. ' 1 can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be . But ah, but Oh thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lion limb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? 6 Why? That my chaf£ might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in al1 that toil, that coil, since (seems) 1 kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh , cheer . Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod 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.

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