The Paradox in Hopkins

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.” ~John Shade/Nabakov

The Paradox in Hopkins

Within the mystic concept of the via negativa and the via affirmativa we find the paradox of spiritual schooling reflected in Hopkins’s poetry: that both the “way up” (in affirming creation’s images as a means to find God) and the “way down” (denying oneself the pleasures of created things to the point of giving up selfhood) intertwine in the harmony of the twofold yet single path of abandonment integral to the Christian life.

Hopkins’s poetry—in its crafting and underlying philosophy—embodies key elements of the via affirmitiva. Charles Williams defines this “way up” as beginning with three parts—“an experience, the environment of that experience, and the means of understanding or expressing that experience” (qtd. in Smit). Together these three intermingle into one complex image that ultimately results in the “inGodding of man” (qtd in Smit). Williams’s “inGodding” sounds much like Hopkins’s “instress”—that understanding and emotional or spiritual response demanded by the inherent quality of every created thing, ultimately leading to Christ. According to Hopkins, the “affirmation of images” involved in instress comes about by recognizing each element of creation’s unique “inscape”—a kind of divine essence meant to point one towards God…

Our hearts, too, stir—desire to soar with our Lord; but we can only climb the heights if we also descend the depths: only when the “blue-bleak embers . . . / Fall, gall themselves,” do they “gash gold-vermillion” (14).

Throughout his poetry Hopkins voices the fundamental Christian paradox of abandonment—from the joyful embracing of God’s creativity in creation to the agonized denial of its imagery in darkness and purgation. Christ calls us to follow His example in both means of self-abandonment—fullness and emptiness—the via affirmativa and the via negativa. One without the other leaves the spiritual schooling incomplete, for the experiences of both the joyful poems of inscape and the despairing “terrible sonnets” teach of God’s love and grace. From the cliffs to the valleys, from struggles to tranquility, from despair to delight, Hopkins learned the beautiful, terrible significance of self-abandonment to find true personhood in Christ—that Hero, that chevalier, that champion who “[heaven-handles]” our hearts to bring us home.

Naomi,My Hopkins Paper [link]