The Transitus of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Today is the anniversary of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s death in 1889. The poet died of typhoid fever (or perhaps Crohn’s disease) while in Ireland.

129 years ago, the “blue-bleak ember” of Fr. Gerard’s life fell and broke and revealed an “immortal diamond,” and we’re still writing and thinking about him–and most importantly still reading his poetry.

On this day he met the God who “Pást áll / Grásp” is “thróned behínd / Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides” as he writes in The Wreck of the Deutschland. The poet who prayed “let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us,” did not get to finish his own Easter since June 8, 1889 was the eve of Pentecost. The poet of the terrible sonnets who could tell remind us in a loving and consoling way that the “mind has mountains,” gave his last breath to the joyful message, “I am happy.”

There’s a tradition that religious are met by their founders at death. I hope Hopkins didn’t just meet Ignatius but also his poetic predecessors. I hope he met Petrarch, whose poetry he followed as a neo-courtly poet, and Chaucer, whose bangs he imitated in the picture below (true story).

Let’s take a moment to think about The Golden Echo’s heavenly literary patron.

Versions of the following post were originally posted here on June 11th, 2015 and here on June 8th 2016.

I came to Ron Hansen’s Exiles knowing every character would die. It is a book about a shipwreck, a book about a famous poem memorializing the deaths of five nuns in that shipwreck. I knew Hopkins would die. But in that moment when the first nun was lost to the sea, it hit me: I’m going to watch him die. I’m going to feel the pain of his winter world drawing to a close, more deeply than when reading any of the biographies. I’m going to hear afresh his final words: “I am happy, so happy.”

This past Monday, I was reminded again of Hopkins’ last moments. June eighth is the anniversary of his death, and the reminder made me think on his legacy and impact. Once an obscure Jesuit classicist teaching in Ireland, he is now included in high school literature books, like the one I found him in. What touched me most is that just a day before this anniversary, churches that celebrate Corpus Christi sang his poetic translation of Adoro Te Devote.

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what thy bosom ran—
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Here Hopkins is as tender as the fabled pelican he mentions. The more formal Latin name, Jesu, is made intimate with its open vowel sound and softened J. The internal and yet wondrously capacious world, that winter world of his final poem, is met by an even more capacious, cleansing drop. It’s a translation, and yet it is quintessentially Hopkins, and people who may have never read one of his poems sang it this past Sunday on the eve of his death. I like to think that knowing this would have swayed his “spirits to peace.”

In all of this, Hopkins has instilled in me reverence for the mystery of failure. His works weren’t published in his lifetime. His friend, the poet laureate Robert Bridges, didn’t think readers were ready for them. He was passed over for continued studies in theology, remaining a spiritual coadjutor. He felt estranged from his family and his nation during his time teaching in Ireland. And in his poetry, this comes out as a sense of artistic sterility. He was “time’s eunuch” who wrote “lagging lines” and had lost the “fine delight that fathers thought.” All his hope was for his roots to be given rain, to know “one rapture of an inspiration.”

Externally, on June 8, 1889, a frail Jesuit priest died far too young with a life spent grading papers.

BUT

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!

The pieces of his life buckle in this last moment and flame out. We get some of the best verse of the era, not only producing scholarship, but also inspiring Modernist poets. Much of my purpose comes from this man’s life. I started researching Victorians because of Hopkins. We never know what we’re really doing, who we’re serving. We never know when our roots are given rain.

And what did he do? He lived his life. He wrote, he graded, he died with nothing. And that was a billion times lovelier than if his life had been different. There’s really…

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.

Near the end, his life was a blue-bleak ember, but it is in that moment when his joy gashes gold-vermilion. And over a century later, he’s made the tender tale of the pelican true for me.

Yeah, I know, we all need one now…

Sometimes reading Hopkins feels like a Kirk Hug