"The Windhover," Gerard Hopkins

[lnhammer]

Before going on to other formal variations, a glance another metrical experiment that brings up the question of topic. This one has of course nothing to do with romantic love -- which would be odd indeed for a devout Jesuit priest to write about.

It is sometimes tempting to claim that if the sound of a Hopkins poem does not move you, you have no soul. I don't, mind you, but it is tempting. Read this one aloud, especially if you haven't before. A windhover, by the way, is a type of small falcon usually called a kite, for its hovering in the wind over the downs, and sillion is a dialect word for a furrow. Note again a classic volta, one drawn even more sharply than either Petrarch's or Sidney's.


The WindhoverTo Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
    dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, –- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

    No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.


More or less five feet per line, depending on how much you agree with Hopkins' own analysis of the meter, but definitely not iambic -- and yet I'd argue it still is quite recognizably a sonnet. Compare to his "Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves," a more extreme metrical experiment that doesn't feel sonnet to me, despite the orthodox rhyme and volta -- plus others such as such as "God's Grandeur" (fairly orthdox), "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day" (the darkest of his dark sonnets, and an object lesson in how many spondees you can substitute and still count as iambic).

Are there any subjects you consider particularly inappropriate for a sonnet -- whether because it's unsuitable to the form, or the form won't suit it, or whatever?

---L.

Comments

[primeideal]

Confession time: I should really enjoy Hopkins' stuff. The religious tradition. The emphasis on topics besides romantic love. The mix of creativity and formalism.

But--I can't do it, at all. I think I just don't have a soul. ;)

I would say that a sonnet can be made to fit any theme, yeah.

[spiralsheep]

I too should hypothetically appreciate Hopkins for his style and his "nature" poetry... and yet... not so much as a single spark. Critic Alan Pryce-Jones claimed, in 1931, that reading Hopkins (faithfully) required "a characteristic giving-up of any sense of humour", which might explain my problem, hee!

[zirconium]

The funny thing is, I think Hopkins did have a sense of humor. At least, I like to think there was a glint in his eye when he complained about Algernon Swinburne's notoriously saccharine stanzas about babies (specifically, that Swinburne's "rot about babies" (qfm) would make anyone side with King Herod).

[spiralsheep]

Well, yes, almost all human beings have some sort of sense of humour BUT some people choose to suppress or abandon that in their public work (or persona). Even poets who write exclusively autobiographically, and I would contend they're few and far between (amongst mature poets with a significant body of work - beginners often start exclusively with autobiography), don't necessarily include their whole selves in their work. Poetry, as the saying goes, is found through what one chooses to leave out.

But I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has found humour in Hopkins' poems. We don't all share the same sense of humour. :-)

P.S. I thought it was Andrew Lang who originated the famous quote about Swinburne and Herod:

"What, then, is lacking to make Mr. Swinburne a poet of a rank even higher than that which he occupies? Who can tell? There is no science that can master this chemistry of the brain. He is too copious. “Bothwell” is long enough for six plays, and “Tristram of Lyonesse” is prolix beyond even mediaeval narrative. He is too pertinacious; children are the joy of the world and Victor Hugo is a great poet; but Mr. Swinburne almost makes us excuse Herod and Napoleon III. by his endless odes to Hugo, and rondels to small boys and girls. Ne quid nimis, that is the golden rule which he constantly spurns, being too luxuriant, too emphatic, and as fond of repeating himself as Professor Freeman. Such are the defects of so noble a genius; thus perverse Nature has decided that it shall be, Nature which makes no ruby without a flaw."

- Of Modern English Poetry

[zirconium]

Heh. Now I'm wondering how swiftly Swinburne:Herod quips were making the rounds. (I forget where I first read it, but the phrase "rot about babies" is definitely GMH, and makes me grin w/how much exasperation it manages to convey within three words.)

....and there's also the unintentional humor aspect -- GMH was probably not trying to be funny when complaining about Swinburne, Hugo, Milton, et al., but the forcefulness of his snark entertains me.

(To Robert Bridges, 3 April 1877 -- on some sonnets RB had sent to him)

Yours are not at all like Wordsworth's, and a good thing too, for beautiful as those are they have an odious goodiness and neckcloth about them which half throttles their beauty.

(And again to Bridges, about Mr. Swinburne, 29 April 1889)

Swinburne has a new volume out, which is reviewed in its own style: 'The rush and the rampage, the pause and the pull-up of these lustrous and lumpophorous lines'. It is all now a 'self-drawing web'; a perpetual functioning of genius without truth, feeling, or any adequate matter to be at function on. There is some heavydom, in long waterlogged lines (he has no real understanding of rhythm, and though he sometimes hits brilliantly at other times he misses badly) about the Armada, that pitfall of the patriotic muse; and rot about babies, a blethery bathos into which Hugo and he from opposite coasts have long driven Channel-tunnels. I am afraid I am going too far with the poor fellow. Enough now, but his babies make a Herodian of me.

ETA: quotes from The Letters of GMH to RB

[spiralsheep]

The early reviews certainly mentioned the bloodthirstily graphic language of Swinburne's poems about "the massacre of the innocents" but afaik (might be wrong) Lang's 1889 book was the first published pro-Herod humour (provided one reads Lang as lolzing in the context of his letter).

Thank you for the quotes. I can see why you might find his vitriol droll. I suspect I'm more likely to be laughing at Hopkins than with him.... ;-)

[zirconium]

I don't think there's any subject I'd reject as inappropriate for any form (and, indeed, would be tempted to consider it a challenge if someone decreed somesuch off limits) -- it's more a matter of whether the writer in question has the chops to make the form serve the subject. I remember reading a collection of sonnets some years ago that I found really, really boring, and that experience nudging me toward recognizing that technical proficiency in itself is not enough: it can be either or both structure and sauce (i.e., make a topic more interesting, because of the tension added by the form, or provide a spring for the poem to reach a height it might not otherwise), but those things by itself are still not enough.

(She says, glancing wistfully at a basketful of first lines...)

[lnhammer]

I think there's more than just the poet's chops, though -- the subject has to be the right size for a sonnet: too complex, and it won't fit in that basket. Too brief is also a problem, but it's not all that difficult to spin out material with imagery and metaphors and so on without it actually coming across as padding. (In this, it's not as strict a container as, say, a sestina, which is dueced hard to pad out, as well as being harder to stuff beyond capacity.)

Yes, and yes, about technical proficiency not being enough. "Not doing anything wrong is not enough -- what matters is what you do do right."

---L.

[zirconium]

the subject has to be the right size for a sonnet: too complex, and it won't fit in that basket

Too true. When I read your question, I was thinking more in terms of social or moral acceptability rather than scope.

[bookblather]

Not really? I've seen sonnets written effectively on everything from love to popularity to the tribulations of writing a damn sonnet. And, okay, I might be the only one but I love Gerald Manly Hopkins, but-- and it's a big but-- only if he's read out loud. I think this one doesn't sound like a sonnet unless you read it out loud.

[spiralsheep]

I find poems that depend on rhythm for their structure or sense are usually better aloud, and Hopkins definitely emphasised rhythm. Are there any recorded readers or readings you'd recommend? Any online links to youtube or websites with audio files?