Enjoyed this lecture as much as I have every other week, John. Thanks very much! I hope you'll indulge a quick thought on Hopkins's poetics: a curious paradox laden in the concept of inscape is that freewill always results in imitation. And because Hopkins finds Christ in every organic form, freewill results in the submission and disintegration of matter in divine imitation of Christ's submission. The imitation of disintegration is more overt in poems like "The Windhover" and "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire," but I think its subtly present in the "fire" and "flame" of "As Kingfishers Catch Fire." More importantly, I think this is relevant to your discussion of queer theory's deconstruction of Hopkins's verse that troubles its spiritual element. What they might see as the separation of the signifier and signified as obfuscating the religious intent of his poetry is actually imitating Christ through the post-structuralist recognition of language's submission to its inherent polysemy in the face of direct meaning. Even when he says something like “I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am" (from "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire"), Hopkins can still only linguistically express his relation to Christ in metaphorical terms through the tropological substitution of himself for Christ and so he is unable to find a direct reconciliation of humanity and Christ within language, yet he finds the reconciliation in poetic language's submission to metaphorical representation. Thus, language is in the process of enacting itself as representational failure when it is most beautiful like the kingfisher catching fire, or the dragonfly drawing flame. Language, like the falcon in my favourite Hopkins's poem "The Windhover," buckles (a word strangely written in all caps in the poem) against the dispersing pressure of the metaphorical base of poetic language that is also the necessary dialectical movement of Christ’s affirmation. In locating the essential ability of nature to be failure, a deconstruction of Hopkins's verse only affirms his spiritual intention rather than negating it. Just like with Freud, the poet's were there before.
Not sure how thoroughly this has been discussed with regards to his poetics before and my language is probably too anachronistic, but its an idea I've been toying with for awhile. Hopefully I'm on track with some of the concepts you were discussing in the lecture, but if not critique away! Sincerely, one of your inquisitive Zoomers
I appreciate how you are able to give different schools of criticism their due while cautioning against reductionism, especially how we should not overlook the religious significance of a work because we've become so attuned to possible subversive readings. Nevertheless, as a descendant of the Huguenots, I feel compelled to note the irony (echoing a recent substack note from Naomi K) that Anglo flirtation with Catholicism as an alternative to the anomie of the commercial society only became possible when liberalism (for all its faults) made religion a lifestyle choice rather than a matter of life and death (at least in this life).
Wow - Hopkins is great. I had barely even heard of him before this (I didn't study literature in college or anything like that and have just read what catches my eye my whole life, hence my enthusiastic participation in this project). I do agree with Yeats though. I think there is something in the very greatest English poetry that catches that sense of sound as the thing itself but doesn't become half-unintelligible. The example I kept thinking of is the "full fathom five thy father lies" bit from The Tempest, which is simple enough to teach to a fifth grader but seems to somehow still embody the abyssal deep.
Interesting listen! There was a period there on Tumblr and the review blog where it felt like you had a secret thesis that every great anglo-American writer was Catholic, so it's interesting to hear your thoughts on such artists. The point about having an aesthetic capaciousness for non-normative sexuality is important but I think hard to wrap your head around if one was raised in the framework of a more-or-less affirming environment (or even one where people weren't, but were too polite to speak of the matter to condemn it!) where one is either for or against the thing. Rosetti might be the first person in the curriculum I've fully never heard of-I'll have to. check her out, Hopkins I like but haven't read enough of.
Enjoyed this lecture as much as I have every other week, John. Thanks very much! I hope you'll indulge a quick thought on Hopkins's poetics: a curious paradox laden in the concept of inscape is that freewill always results in imitation. And because Hopkins finds Christ in every organic form, freewill results in the submission and disintegration of matter in divine imitation of Christ's submission. The imitation of disintegration is more overt in poems like "The Windhover" and "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire," but I think its subtly present in the "fire" and "flame" of "As Kingfishers Catch Fire." More importantly, I think this is relevant to your discussion of queer theory's deconstruction of Hopkins's verse that troubles its spiritual element. What they might see as the separation of the signifier and signified as obfuscating the religious intent of his poetry is actually imitating Christ through the post-structuralist recognition of language's submission to its inherent polysemy in the face of direct meaning. Even when he says something like “I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am" (from "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire"), Hopkins can still only linguistically express his relation to Christ in metaphorical terms through the tropological substitution of himself for Christ and so he is unable to find a direct reconciliation of humanity and Christ within language, yet he finds the reconciliation in poetic language's submission to metaphorical representation. Thus, language is in the process of enacting itself as representational failure when it is most beautiful like the kingfisher catching fire, or the dragonfly drawing flame. Language, like the falcon in my favourite Hopkins's poem "The Windhover," buckles (a word strangely written in all caps in the poem) against the dispersing pressure of the metaphorical base of poetic language that is also the necessary dialectical movement of Christ’s affirmation. In locating the essential ability of nature to be failure, a deconstruction of Hopkins's verse only affirms his spiritual intention rather than negating it. Just like with Freud, the poet's were there before.
Not sure how thoroughly this has been discussed with regards to his poetics before and my language is probably too anachronistic, but its an idea I've been toying with for awhile. Hopefully I'm on track with some of the concepts you were discussing in the lecture, but if not critique away! Sincerely, one of your inquisitive Zoomers
I appreciate how you are able to give different schools of criticism their due while cautioning against reductionism, especially how we should not overlook the religious significance of a work because we've become so attuned to possible subversive readings. Nevertheless, as a descendant of the Huguenots, I feel compelled to note the irony (echoing a recent substack note from Naomi K) that Anglo flirtation with Catholicism as an alternative to the anomie of the commercial society only became possible when liberalism (for all its faults) made religion a lifestyle choice rather than a matter of life and death (at least in this life).
Wow - Hopkins is great. I had barely even heard of him before this (I didn't study literature in college or anything like that and have just read what catches my eye my whole life, hence my enthusiastic participation in this project). I do agree with Yeats though. I think there is something in the very greatest English poetry that catches that sense of sound as the thing itself but doesn't become half-unintelligible. The example I kept thinking of is the "full fathom five thy father lies" bit from The Tempest, which is simple enough to teach to a fifth grader but seems to somehow still embody the abyssal deep.
Interesting listen! There was a period there on Tumblr and the review blog where it felt like you had a secret thesis that every great anglo-American writer was Catholic, so it's interesting to hear your thoughts on such artists. The point about having an aesthetic capaciousness for non-normative sexuality is important but I think hard to wrap your head around if one was raised in the framework of a more-or-less affirming environment (or even one where people weren't, but were too polite to speak of the matter to condemn it!) where one is either for or against the thing. Rosetti might be the first person in the curriculum I've fully never heard of-I'll have to. check her out, Hopkins I like but haven't read enough of.