Write a note on Hopkins as a poet.

Discuss Hopkins as a writer of Sonnets.

Ans.

Background

Hopkins was one of the most gifted man of his age. He lived and died in obscurity. He tried again and again in poetic art. More clearly than any man of his time, he understood the real nature of the crisis in English Poetry and the means by which he cloud overcome. He felt his means as the integration of spiritual and sensuous experiences. He gives freshness to the technique which would give fresh importance to the meter and language in English poetry. However, as he lived a life of isolation and as his poems were not published during his life time, his revolutionary technical innovations remained unknown till his friend, Robert Bridges brought out the first edition of his poems after his death.

Spirituality

Hopkins gives a rich sensuous imagination in his poetry which reminds us of Keats. The young Hopkins behold not only the sensuous richness of the world but also its spiritual emptiness. In his poem Nondum written at Oxford, contains a vision up of a universe from which spirit has been banished. His poem The Habit of Perfection expresses his conviction that only by a withdrawal from the outer world and a reconstruction of the inner life we can unite with God. He helped to find in the inner life an ‘uncreated light, which would give shape and meaning to the material universe. He had a deep faith in Jesuit training. But his submission to that training and discipline he both gained and lost as a poet. He gained a vast advantage of the disciplined inner life enabling him to escape the anarchic individualism of poets like Walt. Whitman. he cut off himself from the main stream of contemporary English life and thought.

His Basic Themes

Hopkins is a religious author who turns to his own personality to test the religious experience. He turns to inward thinking and feeling and perhaps for that reason alone is regarded as a master of modernity, he turned to outward and read God’s signatures in all creations. His own fundamental feeling in the relations of God and man is adorable. God is present in all objects and he bears a separate immense soul, pervading in the universe. His poetry depicts oneness with God. In his sonnets Hopkins narrates individual infidelities and fallen state of mankind. To him suffering is a part of man’s life, a suffering that has been made sweet and acceptable by Currito passion and death. To tolerate this suffering he suggests to have patience which never goes in vain. He appreciates mankind in the light of divine glory. All objects of Nature remind him about the greatness of God.

As a Sonneteer

Hopkins nourished a sense of frustration in his sonnets. His earlier six sonnets are called ‘terrible’ sonnets which depicts terrible and desolate state of mind. He wrote for the highest service of God. The grammar used in these sonnets is so ordinary that readers find it perplexed and critics find controversy in it. His rigorous ascetic practice makes them uncommon. He treats loneliness frustration and despair as his subject matter. They are free from emotional indulgence. They are unpremeditated outbursts of feeling. Style adopted to these sonnets is full of figures and far-fetched images. His curtail sonnets and its technique is an original contribution to the English literature. He wrote sonnets on standard pattern too.

Poetic Diction

Hopkins felt a need of new poetry which was the need of the time. His diction was not archaic like that of nineteenth century poetry descending from Milton, Dryden, Tennyson and Words worth. To him poetic Language of an age should be the current language heightened to any degree but not an obsolete one. This is the basis of his poetic art that it should be contemporary Hopkins invented sprung rhythm. It was based on the stress not on the syllables. This metre, he thought, should have the rhythm of prose with a real pattern of endless variety. His alliterations, new word formations and word order combine to make readers to feel the violence and terror and strange beauty of storm.