his later years, Hopkins' letters increasingly discussed musical composition, hinting at a desire to create a "highly wrought work." His correspondence with Bridges about a song titled "What Shall I do for the Land that Bred Me?" reveals an intricate exploration of technique similar to that in his poetry. Hopkins' commitment to craftsmanship remained unwavering, even as he shared these technical insights with a kindred spirit.

A Legacy of British Sensibility

The letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins provide a time capsule of a distinctly British artistic sensibility. They reflect a world imbued with notions of manliness, patriotism, indifference to sensuality, and mental fortitude. Feminists may find his views challenging, as he often disparaged the thoroughness of women's studies in comparison to men's. Yet, his Jesuit seclusion allowed him to transcend the more base obligations of manhood, focusing intensely on intellectual and spiritual endeavors.

The Silent Poet

Curiously, the letters largely omit the poetry Hopkins was crafting amidst his extensive correspondence. While he dissected metrical possibilities and occasionally referenced a line from a sonnet in progress, he rarely delved into what inspired his works. Instead, he emphasized technique and the mechanics of poetry, leaving the passion and emotional impetus to be discovered within the poems themselves. In this, Hopkins' letters reveal a man absorbed by the process of creation, his fervor manifesting in the works that continue to inspire and perplex readers today.

Sources for Further Study

• Contemporary Review. CCLVI, June, 1990, p.335.
• The Observer. April 29, 1990, p.58.
• The Times Literary Supplement. December 7, 1990, p. 1323.

In a review of Robert Bernard Martin’s Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life (1991), Paul Mariania practicing Catholic and a poet himselfcalled for a biography that would uncover Hopkins’s true inspiration for writing “some of the most powerful poetry of the last two centuries”: his love of God. Such a biography would “take into account Hopkins’s mature life . . . the entire twenty years Hopkins spent as a Jesuit” and reveal a man “shaped by his intense indwelling,” that is, his inner quest to remain faithful to Christ.

In Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life, Mariani has now written that biography. His text begins with Hopkins’s youthful conversion to Catholicism, assesses the consequences of his decision to leave the Anglican fold, and goes on to cover his years as a Jesuit priest. Within this framework, Mariani describes the origins of Hopkins’s groundbreaking poetry, with its unique rhythms and unparalleled intensity. His work offers Hopkins scholars and readers, who have long relied on Mariani’s Commentary on the Complete Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1970), a full version of the poet-priest’s adult life.

The Hopkins biography is constructed in four sections. The first, “We Are So Grafted on His Wood: 1844-1868,” quotes the last line of “Barnfloor and Winepress,” a poem celebrating the great Eucharistic sacrifice made by Christ. As Mariani interprets the line, it describes the strength of Hopkins’s early commitment to Christianity: “He has seen something, he confesses, has seen into the magnificent mystery of God’s love for him and for millions of others like and unlike himself.” In the same manner, Mariani’s chapter titles stress Hopkins’s religious convictions.

The first two chapters, “In the Breaking of the Bread: Horsham & Home, 1866, and the Early Years” and “The Dense and Driven Passion: Oxford & Hampstead, 1866,” substantiate the vital importance of Hopkins’s conversion. After several years of intense soul-searching, the youth became a Catholic while still a student at Oxford University. His philosophical studies and the influences of professors, tutors, and colleagues led him to believe that the Anglicans had failed to follow the true teachings of Christ. Anglican theorists considered the Eucharistic ceremony to be symbolic rather than a manifestation of God’s actual presence, a position that Hopkins strongly rejected. Without an acknowledgement of God-incarnate in the bread and wine, any observance of Christianity inevitably lacked logical depth and spiritual enlightenment.

After his conversion, Hopkins graduated from Oxford with highest honors, receiving two “firsts” in his field, Classical Greats; however, as a Roman Catholic, he was given no preferential recognition or even acceptance by his countrymen. Animosity between Anglicans and Catholics, originating during the fifteenth century reign of King Henry VIII, continued to relegate English Catholics to the fringes of mainstream society. In these circumstances, Hopkins’s family believed that their oldest son had made a grave mistake and found further cause for grief in his decision to become a Jesuit. Hopkins’s Catholicism disqualified him from partaking of Anglican sacraments with his family, and in a heartbreaking letter his mother asked if he were truly lost to her. After the influential John Henry Newman received Hopkins into the Catholic faith in 1866, the young convert expressed feelings of peace and joy, emotions that encouraged him to study theology and enter the priesthood.

In consenting to God’s call to priesthood, Hopkins gave up personal control of his future in hopes of experiencing a vigorous and joyful spiritual life. He believed that his acceptance of the Jesuit vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience would create an opportunity to strengthen his indifference to worldly concerns, a principal goal of the order. Church leaders would now determine where he would live and what he would do, freeing him to focus on his inner struggle to emulate the life of Christ. With this priority in mind, he burned his finished poems and set aside all plans to write more, although his journals reflect an ongoing philosophical quest to formulate satisfactory views on the nature of reality and the role of language in human perception. These core interests grew as the years passed and emerged when he returned to writing poetry.

Part II of Mariani’s biography, “Walls, Altar and Hour and Night: 1868-1877,” follows Hopkins as he studies theology and performs the duties of a priest in training. As a novice, and periodically thereafter, he participated in the spiritual exercises prescribed by Society of Jesus founder Ignatius Loyola, who envisioned a corps of religious militants performing apostolic, missionary work. Loyola compared spiritual exercisesones including frequent silent retreats filled with meditation and prayerto physical exercises, activities designed to incorporate the entire being.

Hopkins contemplated such topics as God’s creation, sin, the life of Christ, correct attitudes toward worldly possessions, humility, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and Godly love. He viewed redemption and salvation as the only worthy goals in life. As Mariani explains, Hopkins’s devotion required “kenosis,” an act of self-emptying, and the omission of personal concerns in order to emulate Christ on the cross. On the other hand, Hopkins refused to compromise his cherished belief that words held inspirational meaning that could be understood through reason and contemplation.

After two years as a novice and his first set of vows in the priesthood, Hopkins was sent to the college of Stonyhurst as a scholastic to continue his academic training. There, in 1872, he discovered the work of John Duns Scotus, a medieval Franciscan who asserted that God’s constant renewal of the world could be seen in each human, tree, flower, and so on. This philosophy supported Hopkins’s Platonic views on the individuation of things, often poignantly expressed as delight in God’s presence in the beauty of art and nature. The poet referred to this presence as “instress,” existence as opposed to nonexistence, a quality of “Being” that could inspire if only humans would look beyond the mundane aspects of life. The poem “God’s Grandeur,” written in 1877, depicts the “dearest freshness deep down things” and describes the “Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” The forms assumed by instress provided “inscape,” a contour somewhat similar to a landscape that Hopkins used to shape his poems.

After nearly a decade had passed, Hopkins took up writing poetry again in the winter of 1875 when the rector of St. Beuno’s seminary suggested that he compose a tribute to five nuns who had recently died in a shipwreck. Prior to their deaths, they had been ejected from Germany under the provisions of the anti-Catholic Falck laws. Unfortunately, the editor of the foremost Jesuit publication rejected “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” and Hopkins’s poetic talent remained practically irrelevant to his career as a priest. An 1877 failure to win approval for a fourth and final year of theology study meant that he would never attain “Professed” standing and would instead be relegated to the lower rank of “Spiritual Coadjutator,” one unqualified for advancement.

In spite of Hopkins’s intellectual brilliance and great popularity with other students, his propensity for argument and his “somewhat obstinate love of Scotist doctrine” had been evaluated as out of step with current Jesuit theology. Hopkins’s predisposition to go his own way in spite of well-meaning advice caused Jesuit superiors to doubt his usefulness to the order. His poor health and lack of aptitude for administration may also have persuaded them to end his seminary training. Even so, Hopkins composed several outstanding sonnets, including “The Windhover” and “Pied Beauty,” during this period.

In parts III and IV, “In Harness: 1877-1884” and “Dublin: 1884-1889,” Mariani chronicles Hopkins’s inner struggle and describes his frequent bouts of physical exhaustion as he cycles through the church calendar with its numerous Biblical ceremonies, maintains his devotional exercises, and works at ministering, preaching, and teaching. Although Hopkins’s sense of duty compelled diligence, he could not seem to fit in and was often moved with little warning. Eventually he received a seemingly prestigious teaching appointment as Fellow of University College in Dublin. However, the school proved to be small and dilapidated. In addition, the Irish campaign for home rule increased the intolerance, religious and otherwise, directed at Hopkins as an Englishman and former Anglican. The great poverty and suffering of Dubliners added to Hopkins’s emotional burden and increased his longing to serve elsewhere.

Hopkins soon faltered under the heavy workload he had been assigned, and he suffered a further decline in physical and mental health. His despair led him to write sonnets of deep desolation, although readers familiar with Ignatian spirituality cite an overall pattern of trial and redemption in the poems. Mariani, who attended a thirty-day Jesuit retreat before writing the biography in order to heighten his awareness of Hopkins’s situation, depicts the poet-priest’s psychological state in his last years with compassion and insight.

Almost all of Hopkins’s poetry remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1889 because editors invariably viewed them as odd and unappealing. His preference for “sprung rhythm” (scanning by accents rather than syllables) and other curious techniques troubled them. Hopkins believed that rhythm was generally misunderstood in his day, and he worked tirelessly to reconstitute the language in his poems, drawing on Welsh, Shakespearean, and even Anglo-Saxon influences. He recommended reading the poems aloud to show the speech patterns and nursery rhythms that he believed replicated the instress of God’s ongoing re-creation of the world. Even his life-long friend Robert Bridges (who would later become poet laureate) repeatedly expressed frustration with Hopkins’s strange style. Nevertheless, Bridges collected Hopkins’s poems and saw to their publication in 1918, almost thirty years after their author’s death. Since then several of Hopkins’s poems have been cited as being among the best in the English language, and his collected works have greatly influenced later poets such as John Berryman and Hart Crane.

Throughout his biography, Mariani details his critical analysis of Hopkins’s poetry and affirms his respect for Hopkins’s accomplishments as a priest using a day-to-day, month-to-month construct. He deftly weaves together quotations from Hopkins’s journals, sermons, poetry, and correspondence, supplementing and extending passages with paraphrases that frequently echo Hopkins’s own style. Early drafts of poems and journal entries present Hopkins’s sources of inspiration, and Mariani connects those life experiences to later poems by placing quotations from finished works nearby. These interpolations tend to break up the chronology of the narrative, and while some readers may find these movements back and forth in time distracting, the result is a work of dynamic intensity. Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life concludes with comprehensive documentation and a selected bibliography.

Gerard Manley Hopkins is often contrasted with poets like John Keats and other Romantics of the earlier nineteenth century, particularly in terms of their treatment of nature. While Keats and his contemporaries celebrated the sensory beauty of the natural world, Hopkins approached nature with a unique lens, intertwining it deeply with his spiritual beliefs. His works do not merely revel in natural beauty but explore a divine presence within the natural world, marking a distinct departure from the Romantic tradition.

Hopkins' sonnet “God’s Grandeur” exemplifies his intricate relationship with language and meaning. The line “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things” is crafted with the omission of a preposition, likely "in." By experimenting with the placement of this word, several interpretations arise. Each variation enriches the text, indicating the dynamic nuances Hopkins injects into his work, allowing readers to derive multiple layers of meaning from a single line.

In his religious affirmations, Hopkins skillfully melds joy with caution. This duality underscores the importance of both celebration and reverence in his faith. His poetry exudes a sense of joy in divine creation while simultaneously acknowledging the gravity of spiritual truths, providing a balanced perspective that resonates with readers both religious and secular.

Moreover, Hopkins has a knack for transforming the mundane into the extraordinary. He elevates everyday objects and experiences, infusing them with profound significance. This ability to find beauty and depth in commonplace elements endears his work to a broad audience, transcending the boundaries that might otherwise limit the appeal of religious verse.

Hopkins’s enduring legacy is also attributed to Robert Bridges, his contemporary and friend, who played a pivotal role beyond his own poetic contributions. Bridges, recognizing Hopkins’s genius, ensured that his works were published posthumously, granting them the audience and acclaim they deserved.

Many might find religious poetry challenging, yet Hopkins’s work is exceptional due to its universal appeal. His ability to express profound spiritual themes in a manner accessible to those outside of his own religious convictions makes his poetry particularly noteworthy. His language often transcends specific religious doctrines, allowing readers to connect with the underlying humanity and spirituality in his verse.

For those willing to delve deeply into Hopkins’s poetry, the effort is often richly rewarding. His poems, layered with complexity and meaning, offer readers a transformative experience, revealing insights and emotions that justify the meticulous study of his work.