Jesuit Poet-Priest - Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Era Might]

An old documentary I just watched about Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was part of the Romantic rebellion against the ugliness of Victorian England and modern industrial society. It's a meditative documentary. Hopkins burned his poetry when he entered the Jesuits, and the poetry he wrote after was never published in his lifetime. Part of his story is what it means to have a vocation in the world, it's both a way to be part of the world and a way to reject the world. Hopkins felt God's presence intensely and lived his vocation as a Jesuit humbly and quietly, but, he had a living flame inside him known only to God, and to those who read his poetry.

[Guest]

Haven't watched the video just yet but plan to do so tonight and looking forward to it.  Must admit I can find G.M. Hopkins' poetry hard to understand at times, other than reflecting and giving it my own meaning.  That seems ok to me as I heard/read somewhere about painting that whatever it means to the viewer is the meaning.

Thanks for sharing.

[Guest]

How incredibly beautiful in the commentary: "The poems he wrote in Ireland are overwhelmingly poems of isolation and suffering.  Physically tired and loaded with lectures and examining, he failed to make any important human contacts - while at a deeper level he suffered the worst pain a religious mind can suffer: the feeling somehow that he had fallen out of the earshot of God"  That would have to be to me one of the most moving and descriptive depictions of a Dark Night of The Soul in a few simple and very human-like sentences most anyone could grasp.

An incredibly beautiful again reading of a poem of Hopkins follows to the end of the video, depicting a particular Dark Night of the Soul in poetry, out of which shines a beautiful, yet hidden somehow, light and hope.  It rather reminds me of the Book of Revelations "¹ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth". (when I read that sentence in the Book of Revelations, I sort of want to say........thank you so much for lifting our chins out the ground and all the horrors).

Excellent video..........thanks heaps, Era.

Edited June 30, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[AveMariaPurissima]

I've always liked his poem "The May Magnificat."

 

[Era Might]

12 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said:

Haven't watched the video just yet but plan to do so tonight and looking forward to it.  Must admit I can find G.M. Hopkins' poetry hard to understand at times, other than reflecting and giving it my own meaning.  That seems ok to me as I heard/read somewhere about painting that whatever it means to the viewer is the meaning.

Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, I liked the documentary's discussion of Hopkins as a radical...maybe I'd call it a radical personalist rather than an individualist (like Walt Whitman). Apparently he got it from Duns Scotus's idea of "thisness," the particularity of all things. This poem in particular:

like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

 

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

 

I say móre: the just man justices; 

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; 

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — 

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, 

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

 

It's a very Ignatian view of the world, that one's being matters, not just "being here" but being what one is. It reminds me of something Shakespeare's Falstaff says, "'Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation." Which, I've always understood to mean, a man has to be what he is...which is funny coming from Falstaff, who was justifying his own jolly, drinking, pleasure-loving humanity. And it reminds me of Dostoevsky's Karmazovs, those sensualists, compared to worms who love the dirt, who exist in filth and grime, and yet, this is a type of holiness that the religious person can't understand, except those rare souls like the holy fools.

 

It's a real mystery, the idea of being ignored by the world, which Hopkins was (by his own choice). We all sort of think we matter in the world, we want to matter, we want to be seen, to have something last. But, ultimately what lasts is not us. Hopkins lived unknown and unregarded, his poetry lives on, but, it loves on as something apart from him. The man himself can never be known, or maybe he was known to only a few.

 

I really believe that to be an honest prostitute is more pleasing to God than to be a formal saint -- "Crying, what I do is me: for that I came, for Christ plays in ten thousand places." It's an irony that the religion person wants to be like God, and that's really a kind of satanic pride, in the disguise of holiness. We are nothing, just a part of everything else, and everything is what it is. All we can do is like St. John the Baptist...he must increase and I must decrease, until I exist no more, except in him who exists in everything.

[Guest]

We have a young man, boy really, who died in our time of serious illness.  He is on his way to canonization and an absolute inspiration to laity, teenagers and the young especially.  He was only 15 years of age but he shared many inspiring, gifted and profound thoughts.  One line that leapt out at me especially was  “All people are born as originals,” he said, “but many die as photocopies.”  

Hopkins was an original to his death.

BLessed Catherine Jarrige is another person on the way to canonization.  She lived during the times of the French resolution.  She was not afraid to invest fully in who she was - in her own unique identity, in fact she sort of 'glorified' in it as unique as her personality was - and a most unusual identity for a would be saint...........some very amusing stories in her life.  I had a real giggle.  I posted about both the stories of Catherine and Carlos HERE (scroll down to their posts).  

This is what the article had to state about Catherine "let’s ask her intercession for strong and spirited women, that they would follow the Lord just as they are, rejoicing in who God made them to be and not attempting to fit into some other mold. Blessed Catherine Jarrige, pray for us!"

None of the above lived and died as photocopies and they were lay people.  They lived out fully and died uniquely who they really were and are.  They like each of us is absolutely unique, never to be repeated in any way at all. Even the good we do while here cannot be done by anyone else.   I read somewhere and I do like it that holiness and saintliness is really all about becoming who one really is i.e. truly human (where have we heard those words "truly human" and it tells us about what holiness and sanctity is in essence   )

53 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

 

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 

To the Father through the features of men's faces

 

 

Edited June 30, 2017 by BarbaraTherese