In this essay I plan to examine the way Hopkins deals with religious experience in his poems. Religion plays a central part to all of Hopkins' poetry, he himself being a devout Jesuit. Experience of religion is frequently a topic of his poems, and he, personally, deals with it by reflecting - and by writing poetry, evidently. I will first consider Hopkins' epic Wreck of the Deutschland, then his Sonnets of Desolation, and finally, The Windhover.
Religious experience is something deeply personal, and this is reflected in his poetry. For example, many of his Sonnets of Desolation deal with his personal depression, frustration, and desolation. But likewise, many of his poems deal with more general characteristics of divinity, such as God's grandeur and the sacrifice of Christ.
Yet despite the optimism and gracious poems depicting the majesty of God, inspiring hope, awe, and humility, the Sonnets of Desolation are often bleak and comfortless, offering nothing but a void.
Hopkins' epic The Wreck of the Deutschland is a celebration of divine providence. It details the grounding of the Deutschland, a boat carrying (among others) nuns exiled from Germany. It begins in a similar manner to that of a prayer, praising God and his creative power - and also his destructive power, "Lord of living and dead". The paradox of God as both a creator and destroyer is one very important to Hopkins, and is relevant not just to this poem but to his work as a whole.
As it continues, it moves to a more personal note, where he says he is a grain of sand in an hourglass, "I am sóft síft / In an hourglass", and then "water in a well". These two contrasting metaphors - one of motion and one of stasis - seem to imply monasticism, where every day is the same, but things are constantly changing due to spiritual dedication.
Another paradox emerges, "Thou art lighting and love… a winter and warm". Here Hopkins is suggesting that "Man's malice" - freely and deliberately chosen evil - is a necessary component to life, and that suffering is a means to salvation. The first part ends with the word "king", reflecting its prayer-like qualities.
The second, longer part, details the wreck itself. The personification of death enters, and serves as a memento mori, recalling the bible verse "remember man that thou art dust, and that unto dust thou will return". Hopkins next describes the ship and its crash, and the terrible situation they were all in; "Hope was twelve hours gone".
The heroine, the "lioness", is now introduced, and Hopkins begins to develop the idea of martyrdom, which he expands on later. She calls out to Christ - but is she crying out to evade death, like Christ's disciples "in the wéather of Gennésaréth", or is she praising him and embracing death? Death, to Christians, is another paradox - it is a gateway to both punishment and paradise.
Later Hopkins pities the non-religious who perish on the boat. He thinks they are comfortless, but then he retracts that statement; "Comfortless unconfessed of them - / No not uncomforted," as he thinks that God comforts all in some way or another. But his doubt on this matter is interesting, and can be more clearly seen in his Sonnets of Desolation. However he is sure that God has control over all this destruction, calling him the "master of the tides". Another paradox is brought forth, God "heeds but hides".
Hopkins finishes the poem with a two-stanza flourish, addressing Christ with a variety of names, attributes, and titles, with the last word "Lórd" sealing the poem. It is a celebration of the providence of God, that while tragic, effectively martyred the nuns (they had been exiled from Germany due to their beliefs). Likewise, the name of the poem is perhaps a small attack on Germany for rejecting Catholicism.
No Worst, one of Hopkins' sonnets, begins abruptly, using spondaic feet before converting to more the usual iambus. This makes the poem declamatory, highly charged, and indicative of the depth of his emotional state. This poem is not a celebration like The Wreck of the Deutschland. "Comforter, where, where is your comforting?" Hopkins reaches out for the Holy Spirit, his repetition of "where" revealing his desperate searches. "Mary, mother of us all, where is your relief?" Once again he cries out for help. He likens the mind to a mountain, which highlights the danger of falling - connoting panic or mental collapse. The disjointed syntactic structure indicates his distressed state of mind. He is imprisoned within his own mind.
"All / Life death does end and each day dies with sleep." The end is absent of Hopkins' usual Christian hope, and finishes on a tone of futility.
I wake and feel, another of Hopkins' sonnets, offers references to the "Dark Night of the Soul", when an individual feels cut off from God and his grace. In this poem Hopkins examines how he feels his messages to his lord are not being received - is God not listening? While some see such situations as a test, a call to faith, Hopkins gets discouraged, and looks inwardly, "I am gall, I am heartburn". He ends ambiguously, "but worse". It is not clear who he thinks is worse - himself or the damned.
Despite this, his poem That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection offers a miserable view that reads like a flow of consciousness, often contradicting and even arguing with itself. It begins with a light, whimsical tone, and introduces the theme of transience, and imagery of clouds. The imagery moves down from the clouds, to treetops, and eventually to the mud; "Cloud-puffball," "an elm arches," "in pool and rutpeel parches". Transience is continued with the mud, or "ooze", becoming "squeezed dough", then "crust", then "dust".
Here Hopkins looks at nature as an expression of God, as in each thing can be found an aspect of God. This panentheistic idea is called "instress" or "inscope". As Hopkins begins to think of oblivion and death, he quickly changes the subject and comforts himself with thoughts of the resurrection, the creation, and then the idea that there is no mark men can make that is not beaten down by the march of time; "Flesh fade, and mortal trash / Fall to the residuary worm". Once again, Hopkins pushes these thoughts aside and thinks of the resurrection. "I am all at once what Christ is" - Christ is God become as man, and so man, to an extent, can become God. He - Hopkins - has many attributes, "Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond", and only the final one matters, as it is Christ within him. While Hopkins may get disheartened, he never gives up, he always endures and persists - this perhaps is proof of his great faith.
Running through all of these poems is paradox. Hopkins is fond of paradoxes, which may explain their prevalence in his work. Of motion and of stasis, of punishment and of paradise, of presence and of absence, all of these are dealt with by Hopkins but never completely resolved - he is trying to show to us that the mysteries of the universe, and therefore the mysteries of God, cannot be fully understood.
He sees human beings as the greatest paradox of them all. They are mortal yet immortal, have a body yet a soul, and are intrinsically evil yet are made in the image of God. He does not profess to understand this or be able to explain it - he just believes that God is a part of everything. Consequently, he sees the intrinsic quality of everything - inscape.
This is reflected in The Windhover, a poem with dancing rhythm and alliteration that thrusts the reader forward through it at a speedy pace, delivering drama and an almost intoxicating image of inscape. Hopkins describes watching a bird of prey as it swoops through the air, gracefully. He has an epiphany - the bird itself is beautiful, but behind it is the driving force of its grace - God is within it, God is part of it. In an everyday, natural thing, Hopkins had found a rare, supernatural presence. And with it he also realises his own limitations and longings. To an extent he is envious of the bird, he wishes he could soar in the dizzying heights of divine glory. This poem is subtitled "to Christ our Lord" - illustrating Hopkins' dedication to his faith.
To summarise, Hopkins deals with his religious experience by reflecting. He always finds paradoxes, and revels in them. They do not confuse him, he accepts them and realises them as a part of life. His poem The Wreck of the Deutschland is a glorious celebration of divine providence, acknowledging God's position as both creator and destroyer, and the nature of death as leading to either punishment or paradise. His Sonnets of Desolation offer little in the way of celebration, focusing instead on more personal issues such as his feelings of isolation or futility. The Windhover shows us how Hopkins deals with the Jesuit idea of inscape, and his dedication to Christ.
Despite many disappointments, Hopkins never loses faith, never doubts God's love or even existence, and that is what makes his accounts of religious experience so excellent.
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