Article: Remembering Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

Remembering Gerard Manley Hopkins 

(1844 – 1889)

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Inversnaid (1881)

It has been 130 years ago; Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ left this world, leaving behind a great legacy in the field of English poetry.  His posthumous fame established him among the leading Victorian poets. He was born in 1844 in Essex, England. He studied Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, between the years 1863-67, where he struck up a significant life-long friendship with Robert Bridges (the eventual Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom). He held a regular correspondence with Bridges throughout his lifetime in which the two friends discussed Hopkins' poetry in great detail.

Influences that marked in the life of Hopkins

According to some sources, Hopkins was deeply impressed with the work of Christina Rossetti and she became one of his greatest contemporary influences whom he met in 1864. During his years at Oxford he studied with the prestigious critic Walter Pater, who first tutored him in 1866 and who remained a friend of Hopkins until he left Oxford in September 1879.

Hopkins was born in a committed Christian family. He began his novitiate in the Society of Jesus at Manresa House in Roehampton, September 1868. Two years later he moved to St. Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Despite his love for writing and poetry, Hopkins vowed to 'write no more...unless it were by the wish of my superiors'. He burnt all of the poetry he had written so far, and would not write any poems again until 1875.

Hopkins was ordained as a priest in 1877. For seven years he worked in London, Oxford, Liverpool, and Glasgow. In 1884 he was appointed professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin. His English culture and his disagreement with the Irish politics of the time, increased his sense of isolation in Ireland. This deepened his feelings of depression, and the poems written during this period, such as 'I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark', reflected this sadness. The poems Hopkins wrote during his time in Dublin came to be known as the 'terrible sonnets' as they capture the feelings of exile and melancholy which plagued the later part of his life.

Poetic Style

In the pages of history, we realize that the struggle between faith and reason has remained very critical subjects. Yet, Hopkins has turned as an inspiration for theologians, philosophers, artists, writers, playwrights and poets. Irrespective of time, place, social-political conditions and cultural differences and boundaries Hopkins has invariably endeavoured to explore the nature of God and to improve his knowledge on the mystery of the universe and the existence of man. Being a Christian Hopkins has creatively written on God, man and man’s relationship with God by using a very innovative language.

It is well known that in 1874, during his theological studies in North Wales, he learned Welsh, and later adapted the rhythms of Welsh poetry to create what he called 'sprung rhythm'. This was a concept Hopkins invented to describe verse in which only the stresses are counted. He marked his verse with foot divisions, accents, and loops, to illustrate where the accent should fall. When examining the original manuscripts of Hopkins' poetry, it is possible to see his use of loops and accents to enhance the sound and stress of each poem.

It is noteworthy to realize that dualism and contradiction constitute the essence of his poetry and they are reflected in every subject-matter and linguistic pattern. God, a central figure of his almost every poem, is depicted, on the one hand, as a creator, life-giver and feeder, but, on the other hand, as a severe final judge who reprimands, punishes and takes human life.

Hopkins died of typhoid fever in 1889 and was buried in the Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. Among his unfinished works was a commentary on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order. After his death, Robert Bridges helped to publish and promote his friend's work, editing a volume of Hopkins' Poems that first appeared in 1918.