Hopkins ’s allegiance to Loyola is perhaps the strongest point in favour of this interpretation of The Windhover. Critics generally agree that the sonnet is written under the primary influence of the Spiritual Exercises. For Ignatius, the existence of “the Evil One” is obvious. The Exercises include two entire chapters devoted to the “differentiation of spirits:” “It is usual for the evil angel taking the guise of the angel of light to begin together with a pious soul, and end in his own way; that is, he usually brings about thoughts good and holy, and then strives to reach his aim, drawing the soul in to his hidden traps and evil purposes.”[13]

It can be easily seen that the construction of The Windhover (studied below in more detail) in more follows the Ignatian pattern: the dazz1ing beauty of the first 1ines (ll. 1 - 8) “brute” in l. 9, and is contrasted with the beauty “a billion times… lovelier” of Christ. If the influence of medieval and Ignatian thinking on Hopkins, and especially on The Windhover, is elsewhere agreed upon, and never challenged, then all consequences of this must be recognized and studied – including also the awareness of the active existence of the Devil - strange as it may seem and might have seemed to both Victorian and 20^th-century readers.

The final doubt concerning the existence of the Devil in Hopkins ’s work remains still to be discussed. It is true that the Devil is never directly referred to by Hopkins . Yet there is a marked awareness, if not of its personification, then of the Fall in general, in many of his poems. Man is trapped, Hopkins writes in The Wreck of the Deutschland, between “the frown on his (God’s) face” and “the hurtle of hell behind.” “It is the blight the man was born for.” The deterioration of the world is depicted in the otherwise hymnic God’s Grandeur: “All is seared with trade, bleared. smeared with toil.” In Spring, Hopkins enjoys the world before, in the inevitable sequence, “it cloy, before it cloud ( ... ) and sour with sinning.” The line “Fair have fallen” - which can easily be associated with the fall of the angels - opens another poem, and the poet can hear the roar of “A wilder beast from the West” in Andromeda.

But if there is the Devil in Hopkins’s work at all, he can be found in the “terrible” sonnets of 1885 especially in the one that, according to Bridges, Hopkins himself described as “written in blood” (Carrion Comfort) . “Carrion comfort, Despair,” which invokes an association with another and even more obviously sinister ominous bird, a vulture, is in its barrenness and cruelty full of a certain devilish nature. “It is the evil spirit that influences us in desolation,” maintains St. Ignatius. “If one … begins to fear, there is no other beast more keen than the Enemy … to persevere in the pursuit of his evil purpose.”[14] It is, however, the fact of temptation that is the main connection between the Devil and Despair. Similarly to a number of ardent believers (St. Francis being the best-known example), Hopkins must have experienced a particular period of temptation - in his case, by the “carrion comfort” in the first eight months of 1885. A truly hellish scene is described in No worst, there is none of the same year:

My cries heave, herds-long: huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing –
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.  

Hopkins ’s adversary here is no longer God, as in the earlier Carrion Comfort. The enemy is not named, but the influence of the Devil here is an arguable interpretation – the more so as the “symptoms” agree with Loyola’s definitions: “Desolation … is darkness of soul, disturbance in it, movement to things low and earthy, the disquiet of different agitations and temptations, moving to want of confidence, without hope, without love, when one finds oneself all lazy, tepid, sad, and as if separated from his Creator and Lord.”[15]

There seems to be an almost comic discrepancy between St. Ignatius’ abstract, mystical subject, and his methods in Spiritual Exercises,,” full of matter-of-factness and simple, arbitrary rules. In the light of the above, a link can be seen between the sonnets of desolation of 1885 and the “central” sonnet of 1877. The indirect realisation of the Devil’s existence in the world (The Windhover) and in man’s mind (Carrion Comfort), provides a new depth to both Hopkins’s oeuvre as a whole and to his individual poems, of which The Windhover is, as has been repeatedly emphasized in this study as well as elsewhere, the pivotal point in G.M. Hopkins’s work.

Adopting such an interpretation of the octet, of the description of the bird, it is interesting to discover hos it influences the possible readings of the sestet. “Thee” referred to l.10 is “Christ our Lord.” Most critics agree that “AND” is capitalised because it serves as a dividing point between two images: that of the falcon and that of Christ. Indeed, a classical construction of the sonnet would more probably limit the former to the octet, and devote the whole sestet to the latter. Here, the dynamic description of the kestrel !”overflowed” the form, and a visible separating mark was needed.

But most of all, the capitalisation indicates the contrastive rather than conjunctive value of the crucial “ AND. ”[16] In fact, “AND” is the centre of gravity of the poem: above, the “brute beauty,” “barbarous beauty” (as in Hurrahing in Harvest) of the proud Son of the Morning; below, the hidden glory of “blue-bleak embers” of the crucified Christ.

 The motive of crucifixion, combined with Christ being called the “chevalier” (l. 11) and the general abundance of feudal/medieval/chivalric imagery in the poem (“minion,” “king,” “dauphin,” “rein,” “mastery,” “valour,” “pride,” “plume,” “chevalier” make the appearance of “dangerous” in l. 11 much more plausible), bring about the reminder of a much older masterpiece of English literature. “Then the young Hero stripped himself - that was God Almighty - strong and stouthearted.”[17] , The Dream of the Rood presented Christ as a young: warrior – surprisingly, in the very moment of hanging on the cross. Hopkins , either conscious of “The Dream.” or independently, adopts the same wording to imply the contrast and thus the struggle between two knights: Christ and the Devil. Conforming to Hopkins ’s typical optimism, Christ is stronger, “more dangerous,” “a billion times.” However, another interpretation of dangerous” seems plausible, the one proposed by Daiches: dangerous, he maintains, is to be carried away by the chivalresque qualities in Christ - He should be the example of humility, meekness and endurance, not of “valour and act.”[18]

The importance of the above poem and its interpretation to the subject of the present study has already been hinted at. The Windhover is composed of two parts: the aesthetic octet, where the beauty of the bird is described, and the ascetic sestet, where Hopkins raises Christ’s humility above the “brute beauty” of nature. Both parts are contrasted by means of the capitalised “ AND. ” This contrast is greatest when the interpretation of the hawk as a manifestation of Devil, or of some of its qualities, is adopted. As can be seen, the ascetic dominates above the aesthetic in Hopkins in this poem. He quenches in himself the sensuous delight for beauty, and rationally turns towards traditional Christian values. What remains to be seen is to what extent this preference is conditioned by Hopkins ’s personality, and to what extent it is the result of his religion and vocation. More important still is to study Hopkins ’s attitude to beauty in detail. An analysis of a poem of 1885 may shed some light on this question.

[1] Abbott ed., 85. [2] I.A. Richards, The Dial, vol. 131, September 1926. [3] Pick, 70 . [4] M. McLuhan, “The Analogical Mirrors,” Gerard Manley Hopkins, A Critical Symposium, 27. [5] S. Barańczak, Preface to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wybór poezji, Kraków: Znak, 1981, 8. [6] F.R. Leavis, “Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Hopkins , A Collection of Critical Essays (G.H. Hartman ed.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966, 29. [7] However, Yvor Winters concludes his essay on The Windhover: "It is not the greatest sonnet ever written, nor even the best in Hopkins , it is a poem of real, but minor and imperfect virtues; and that is all." Y. Winters, “Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Hopkins , A Collection of Critical Essays, 56. [8] W.S. Johnson, Gerald Manley Hopkins, The Poet as Victorian, New York : Cornell University Press, 1968, 8. [9] D. Daiches, Note to “The Windhover,” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, New York : Norton, 1979, vol. 2, 790. [10] The Bible (Matt. 14:12 ). [11] J. Milton, “ Paradise Lost,” The Norton Anthology, vol. 1, 1421. [12] H. Newman, The Idea of a University, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1964. [13] I. Loyola, Ćwiczenia duchowne, Kraków: Anczyc, 1894, 175. [14] Loyola, 171-172. [15] Loyola, 167. [16] This meaning is also clearly visible in two otherwise very different Polish translations of the poem: two translators of The Windhover, Stanisław Barańczak and Jerzy Pietrkiewicz, in uncharacteristic agreement, both use “a” instead of “i.” [17] The Norton Anthology, vol. 1, 22. [18] Ibid., vol. 2, 1790.