On
September 25, 1888 ,
Hopkins
wrote to Bridges:
Lately I
sent you a sonnet, on the Heraclitean Fire, in which a great deal of early
philosophical thought was distilled: but the liquor of the distillation did
not taste very Greek, did it? The effect of studying masterpieces is to make
me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some
degree, on me to a marked degree.
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire
and of the Comfort of the Resurrection is the
last of Hopkins
’s great works about nature. Yet it is different from
other nature poems, different from anything
Hopkins
ever wrote; different also from the theme of Heraclitean αρχή. “No wonder of
it:” it has been “distilled” in
Hopkins
’s own filter of aestheticism and asceticism. It is in this respect that the
present section will strive to present this “sonnet with two (sic!) codas.”
The poem begins with what can be
called a symbol of Chaos. The “tossed pillows” of clouds are presented in a
way which clearly implies an almost electronic randomness: “roysterers, gay
gangs, throng;” all those terms irresistibly suggest an unending and aimless
movement. Nowhere in Hopkins
can a similar image be found which would in such
an intensive way present the flamboyance, the freedom of Nature. The
exuberance of wind-torn clouds is in fact not unlike that of fire. This is
not the only allusion to Heraclitus: “Air-built thoroughfare” leading “Down”
is the other. Indeed, according to Hercaclitus, “Fire becomes sea, air,
earth, and fire again. The metamorphoses of fire take place on two paths,
(“thoroughfares”): down and up: flowing from its upper
domains, fire changes into air, which in turn becomes water, and water falls
on earth and is absorbed into it: but earth in turn emits vapour, vapour
turns into water, which becomes clouds and as such finally returns to the
upper domain as fire; there are two directions, but one is the path up and
down.”
The image of vertical motion is
presented here among effects of light: “glitter,” “dazzling,” “shivelights”
and “shadowtackle.” This is no clear sunshine in an open landscape as in
Hopkins
’s earlier nature poems: this is not mere light, but
light “heightened” by its shining through clouds and trees, to imitate
Hopkins
’s language of his Platonic Dialogue.
In this way, light is enhanced by
the fact that it reflects off every object. This is clearly a symbol - for
this poem is probably Hopkins
’s most symbolic - of God’s grace shining on every
individual being. In this sense, this sonnet can be called Scotist: in its
detail it is Ruskinian. Cloud is rarely associated with light, yet their
combination is an instance of rare beauty. Once again. the nature of beauty
consists in contrast - this is the Heraclitean theory of contraries in
Nature, that they are its essence.
Hopkins
deliberately takes Heraclitus’ ideas and transforms them by his own, of
Scotist origin. He performs this process having beauty as his final point of
reference, and his response is sensuous, as evidenced by the powerful use of
“delightfully.” This word, in fact, belongs to the first quatrain; W.H.
Gardner’s interpretation of the second,
suggesting the wind to be the force obliterating the marks of man on earth,
would certainly point to the irrelevance of this adverb in the description
of the destructive power of the “boisterous” wind.
This conjunction of Heraclitus and
Scotus might seem risky; yet this is what Hopkins himself admitted to be the
aim of this poem: to distil, to “Hopkinsify,” to remake the Heraclitean
theme in his own way. This theme, fire, reappears in l. 9: “Million-fueled,
nature’s bonfire burns on.”
Hopkins ’s typical kenning
brings about, once again, the infinite diversity of things which is
consummated in Nature. In the fire of Nature,
Hopkins
recognizes, “instresses” man, “her clearest-selved spark.” This, in turn, is
an association with Scotus’ hierarchy of differentiation of being, where man
is the highest – most individual – of God’s creations. This interpretation
of Scotus is new in Hopkins
; yet the following lines:
But quench her bonniest, dearest to
her, her clearest-selved spark
Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable. all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indignation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time beats level
are reminiscent of an earlier poem, Lantern out of
Doors:
Men go by me whose either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or
distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Both poems, though written eleven
years apart, discuss man’s fate. Man’s “beauty bright” is “dearest” to
nature, for he is God’s “achieve of, the mastery of the thing.” Yet parallel
to this, is the motive of man’s transience: “Death or distance buys,”
destroys man “quite;” “vastness blurs and time beats level;” man, “that
shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star,” who could “rain … Rich beams” (note
the similarity of metaphors) is mortal, and this truism is something Hopkins
can never accept in full.
The reason is obvious. Such is the
beauty of man’s inscape that Hopkins the aesthete is at a loss when
confronted with its mortality. This is where his other quality, asceticism,
asserts itself with a new strength. Indeed, the lines quoted above remind in
their “darkness” of Hopkins
’s sonnets of desolation. They correspond roughly to the
classical fourteen-line sonnet and the remaining part of the poem can be
treated as an addition: an addition due to an act of ascetic will.
There is yet another quality of
Heraclitean Fire that distinguishes it from the “terrible sonnets:” it
is the intensity of the description of beauty in this poem; and
Hopkins
’s will, weathered in the “dark” year of 1885, is
able to quench in him the sorrow of man’s mortality:
Enough!
the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away griefs gasping, joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam.
Hopkins
’s “Enough!” is probably the strongest utterance ever
made in any of his poems. Like the famous capitalised “AND” of The
Windhover, it breaks one stream of thought, the expression of one
attitude which the poet finds unjust or improper, and introduces a
reaffirmation of faith. In fact, “Enough!” should also be capitalised, to
mark, as in Hopkins
’s most famous poem, the dramatic quality of the word.
Nature’s immense, fiery energy summoned in the first line of the poem is
focused into this one word of Ignatian willpower. “Enough!” is also an
instance of Hopkins
at his most disciplined-ascetic.
This poem combines three principal
and consecutive themes: first, the perception of the beauty of nature
through contrast; second, the change in nature, and one of the
manifestations of this change, the mortality of man, “her clearest-selved
spark;” and finally, comfort, not through Despair as in the “terrible
sonnets” – the comfort of the Resurrection, which rallies the dejected man.
The metaphor of the sinking ship is perhaps less original than
Hopkins
’s usual, almost-Metaphysical “wit” but, on the
other hand, its appearance here is important, since it is clearly a
continuation of Hopkins
’s poetic practice. Indeed, his ever-present metaphor of
man’s fall and mortality is based on this image of a sinking ship. It is
The Wreck of the Deutschland and The Loss of the Eurydice,
Hopkins
’s two longest poems, that in all their richness establish this vein in
Hopkins
. A ship in a stormy ocean is his recurring
metaphor of man at a loss between God’s absolute, to which he aspires, and
Nature’s mortality, to which he is condemned.
A ship is beautiful yet mortal, very
much like Nature or man.
Je crois que
le charme infini et mystérieux qui gît dans la contemplation d’un navire en
mouvement… dégage… l’hypothèse d’un être vaste, immense, compliqué, mais
eurythmique, d’un animal plein de génie, souffrant et soupirant tous les
soupirs et toutes les ambitions humaines.
Baudelaire (who died eight years
before The Wreck of the Deutschland) wrote his comparison of a ship
to man, that “animal full of genius,” in a way surprisingly similar to
Hopkins
’s imagery. Although the unquestionably tempting
comparison of the two poets will not be attempted here, John Wain’s short
note might be of some interest:
Like
Baudelaire, Hopkins
was interested in painting; indeed, as in the case of so
many French poets (and so few English!) at about that time, he gives the
impression of being able to nourish his poetry directly from his studies in
the other arts, because he does not rigorously separate them. The Hopkins
who pushed forward beyond Victorian taste in the direction of modern poetics
also pushed backward beyond it in his love for the music of Purcell. The
Hopkins
who was so isolated, who had made writing so difficult,
who had to endure being patronized and misunderstood by Patmore and Bridges,
had in fact found a place for himself at the most sensitive point in the
development of a new awareness.
Hopkins
’s debt to painting and music is one of the factors
making him a modern poet.
In this poem. contrary to his “ship”
poems. the comfort of Resurrection rescues “the foundering deck.” Salvation
is “eternal:” through “world’s wild fire” man is purified of “mortal trash”
and man’s transubstantiation takes place. In the ultimate glory, on the Day
of Judgement (“In a flash, at a trumpet crush”), Christ fulfils his promise
to man (“since he was what I am.”) As
Hopkins
explained to Bridges,
Christ is
in some sense God, in some sense he is not God - and your interest is in the
uncertainty: to the Catholic it is: Christ is in every sense God and in
every sense man, and the interest is in the locked and inseparable
combination; or rather it is in the person in whom the combination takes
place.
The mainly Heraclitean “combination”
of God and man is in Hopkins
somehow parallel to his ascetic aestheticism. The
Heraclitean theme recurs in the “wildfire” and in the final metaphor as
well:
and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood,
immortal diamond.
Is immortal diamond.
Hopkins
’s mastery here consists in this enumeration (a device he
often used with great skill, as shown in the previous chapter), which,
beginning with derisive nicknames for man, ends suddenly in his praise.
“Jack” is a term particularly abusive in
Hopkins
because of its implied generality: some other expressions carry associations
with clay - the material of man, and/or with fire. “Potsherd” is a deeply
ironic word for man - a broken vessel made of clay and baked in an oven. A
“patch” can be one of clay on the ground: dirty and irregular. “Matchwood”
suggests man’s frailty when confronted with time’s, or world’s, “wildfire.”
Without warning, however, out of this ash and confusion emerges an object
indestructible by Nature, the “immortal diamond,” the perfect being, and
ushers in the very obvious association with The Windhover. This
association is chiefly enhanced by the final line, from which the “immortal
diamond” “gashes gold vermilion.” However, while in The Windhover the
transubstantiation was that of Christ (from the shame of the Cross to the
glory of the Resurrection), in Heraclitean Fire it is man’s
purification of “flesh.”
In aiming at, and achieving, this
effect of surprise, Hopkins
demonstrates the ability to startle the reader.
Indeed, this device - which by no means could be called a fault in
expression - catches one unprepared for such a discrepant contrast in
meaning within one sequence of phrases. Sadly. the Polish translation of
Heraclitean Fire includes a pause before the first use of “immortal
diamond:” “G³upi Ja¶, po¶miewisko, ¶mieæ niski, I strzêp, nic – jest
diamentem,”
and, in a classical case of Berman’s clarification, spoils a
major effect of the poem by making the reader’s effort easier.
For the Polish reader, again, this
poem has an additional connotation. Its final lines irresistibly remind one
of a well-known use of the metaphor of the “diamond” by a Polish poet
(1821-1883):
Czy popió³ tylko zostanie i
zamêt
Co idzie w przepa¶æ z burz±?; czy zostanie
Na dnie popio³u gwia¼dzisty dyjament,
Wiekuistego zwyciêstwa zaranie!
The comparison between Hopkins and
Norwid (one “which forces itself on the Polish reader”)
will not be dwelt on here. Yet there are some common characteristics in the
two poets: contemporaries, innovators - and both unknown to the general
reading public of the 19th century, in contrast to their
tremendous impact on the poetry of their respective countries in the later
decades.
Heraclitean Fire
is no doubt one of Hopkins
’s most difficult poems – or rather one which most
critics found somehow uncomfortable to deal with. This is probably due to
the very essence of the poem, the “distilment” process
Hopkins
imposed on Heraclitus’ philosophy; or perhaps it is the exuberance of
language, unusual even for
Hopkins , that played the
role of “a dragon folded in the gate to forbid all entrance.”
Yet once the reader is past
“Cloud-puffball” and “shivelights,” the poem opens its meaning in a logical
sequence of images as presented above. Luckily. John Pick, the most thorough
of Hopkins
’s commentators – even if he passes rather briefly over
this poem – stresses its importance in the entirety of
Hopkins
’s oeuvre. “Here is the echo of
Hopkins
’s deathbed words thrice repeated: ‘I am so happy, I am so happy. I am so
happy.”
There is a finality, it is true, in
this work, one of Hopkins
’s last before his death. It closes the long list
of his nature poems: after that, there will only be the sonnet of doubt
Thou art indeed just ... and To R.B. (and three other, minor
poems). Among those, Heraclitean Fire is the swan song of the beauty
and the power of language, of the beauty of nature. More importantly, it is
Hopkins
’s last Credo of intense faith, rare in his poetry after
the “terrible period.” It is in this last fact that lies the importance of
this poem: it is the last instance of the aesthetic and the ascetic in
Hopkins
; in this respect it is
Hopkins
’s ultimate poem.
An interesting observation can be
made at this point: the two main themes in
Hopkins
do not exist independently in his thought. Indeed, it seems that he cannot
be an ascetic without being an aesthete, and vice versa. The beauty of
Nature rouses his aesthetic sensitivity, which his will, or reason,
immediately couples with a disciplined perception of God.
Yet this rule is reciprocal: nothing
helps him to perceive God better than his aestheticism, his “meeting”
“mortal beauty.” The term “ascetic aestheticism” can now be used quite
legitimately with reference to
Hopkins
. Using once again the style of
Hopkins
’s Platonic Dialogue, this term can be defined as not mere
aestheticism, but aestheticism heightened by the belief in the Divine Grace
with which it is charged. Romano Guardini puts this in the following way:
Should
this … surprise, it is useful to remember that Hopkins not only, as his
writings and sketches prove, was struck constantly and anew by the power of
natural forms, but that he also spent a considerable part of his time in
religious meditation. This created a wellspring of vital representation
directed toward the reality of his faith, and which permeated all his
thoughts and daily activities.
Another critic explains even more
lucidly the essence of
Hopkins ’s ascetic
aestheticism:
There is a
deliberate intervention of the will-guided intelligence to give beauty back
to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver. And a terror lest natural beauty
fade unharvested is the dominant note of all his poems. With such startling
clearness did he realise that only through man’s mind is Nature made
transistorily beautiful…, yet only in Christ by man’s free will can both be
made beautiful for ever.
It must be stated that the
above becomes true only in this late and last nature poem. It is arguable
whether this does not suggest an evolution in the aesthetic/ascetic
dichotomy in
Hopkins
as illustrated by
Heraclitean Fire. Indeed, while his poems before 1885 could be accused
by some critics of being torn between two discrepancies, the “dark” period
had for result a crystallisation of Hopkins’s ascetic aestheticism, and a
“mercy from God:”
his coming to terms with this tension in his philosophy. It may be
speculated, then, that
Hopkins
’s silence on this subject
during the time between the composition of this poem and his death might
have been a consequence of having achieved what he had once prayed for:
“peace, wild wooddove.” It must not be forgotten that each poem by
Hopkins
accounted for some kind of
stress and tension, and thus that perhaps his silence was a sign not of
desolation (in fact, the “terrible” period was very rich in poems), but
quite on the contrary, of a desired peace of mind. In his last letter to
Bridges (April 29, 1889),
Hopkins
wrote: “I am ill today but
no matter for that as my spirits are good.”
This is a sense of inner peace also visible in
Hopkins
’s already-quoted final
words.
C.
Baudelaire, Fusées, xv: “I believe that the infinite and
mysterious charm of the contemplation of a ship in movement brings forth
the hypothesis of a huge, immense, complicated yet eurythmic being, of
an animal full of genius, suffering and grieving for all the grievances
and ambitions of man..”
