The Mariology of Gerard Manley Hopkins's The Wreck of the Deutschland
Aleksandra Kedzierska Marie Curie University, Lublin, Poland
The unique achievement of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) has long been recognized. One of the most outstanding English poets of the late nineteenth century, he made poetry read like a prayer, offering a profound insight into the world of the spirit, into the mystery of the Word "instressed" and "stressed" by word(s). For years now, critics have been concerned with exploring numerous aspects of the poet's dogmatic Christianity (Leavis, 85), yet although they often emphasize the Christocentric character of his work, only a few seem to realize how crucial, and in fact indispensable, for his poetry and the religious quest it offers to the privileged reader (cf. Delli-Carpini, viii) is Hopkins's preoccupation with the Marian theme, represented in every major phase of his poetic life.
Hence, this study, a fragment of a greater whole (concerned with the portrayal of the Virgin in Hopkins's works), will concentrate on "The Wreck of the Deutschland" (henceforth "The Wreck"), the first great poem of his maturity (Sprinker, 96) in which, defying the sentimental descriptiveness, song-like rhythms and easy rhymes of his preconversion poems, Hopkins turns to inscaping the central spiritual mysteries of his faith. Not only does he effectively demonstrate "a miraculous birth" of Christ in the Bethlehem of the human soul, but, at the same time he manages to render Mary's unique role in the Incarnation which, Hopkins seems to believe, takes place again and again, whenever the "heart right" lovingly utters the name of the Saviour.
In "Nondum", one of Hopkins's late Protestant poems, he so complained about the cross of his spiritual aridity and God's indifference he was made to bear:
. . . And Thou art silent, whilst Thy world
Contends about with many creeds
And hosts confront with flags unfurled
And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds
And truth is heard, with tears impearled,
A moaning voice among the reeds.
Contends about with many creeds
And hosts confront with flags unfurled
And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds
And truth is heard, with tears impearled,
A moaning voice among the reeds.
My hand upon my lips I lay;
The breast's desponding sob I quell;
I move along life's tomb-decked way
And listened to the passing bell
Summoning men from speechless day
To death's more silent, darker spell.
The breast's desponding sob I quell;
I move along life's tomb-decked way
And listened to the passing bell
Summoning men from speechless day
To death's more silent, darker spell.
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