Gerard Manley Hopkins as photographed – public domain image

(11) GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1884-1889)

“The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”

Hopkins would earn special mention for “the sonnets of desolation” alone – a title I think would make a good name for a music band, perhaps as Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Sonnets of Desolation.

You don’t really expect poetry, let alone sonnets of desolation, from a man who was primarily a Jesuit priest – and an English one at that – but there you have it. Mind you, he published very little of his poetry during his life – it was only through a posthumous volume of his poems published in 1918 by his friend and fellow poet Robert Bridges that he “became recognised as one of the leading Victorian poets”.

“That night, that year

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

Not surprisingly for a priest, a focus of his poetry is his celebration of the natural world through the lens of his religious belief –  “his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature”.

Not so much however his sonnets of desolation, which evoke religious doubt or as he described them to Bridges, “the thin gleanings of a long weary while” – hence why I prefer them (as I do the poems of T.S. Eliot that reflect his early doubt rather than his later faith).

According to John Bayley – “All his life Hopkins was haunted by the sense of personal bankruptcy and impotence, the straining of ‘time’s eunuch’ with no more to ‘spend’ …”

We’ve all been there.

As for which sonnet of desolation I’d choose over the others for this special mention, I’d nominate “Carrion Comfort” – the source of my quote of wrestling with (my God!) my God.

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)