Comments on: Top ten things you may not have known about G.M. Hopkins

By: Don Share

Don Share — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:12:21 +0000

All threads die a natural death, and I’ll let this one be… right after I add something from one of H.’s letters to Robert Bridges, on their contemporary, Walt Whitman – whom Hopkins reluctantly acknowledged as an influence:
“I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. And this also makes me the more desirous to read him and the more determined that I will not.”
Around the same time he wrote that, H. was seen entering the rooms of his Jesuit digs at Stonyhurst – as the Rector recorded it – “publicly through the window, lately, in order to save time by not having to go round by the corridor.” And H. was also seen in the swimming bath… with all his clothes on!
With that, I depart from sharing some details in the life of holy Hopkins!
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:07:54 +0000

Daisy: yep! He was always struggling with Welsh, and good as he was with languages it was one that mostly eluded him, as far as I can tell…
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By: Daisy

Daisy — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:42:47 +0000

“Tried”–Meaning he failed?
Daisy
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:20:49 +0000

Well, duh, Don, everyone knows that. [smiley emoticon]
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:54:31 +0000

OK, did you know that he also tried to translate Cinderella into Welsh???
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:03:47 +0000

OK, I saved the best for last.
Did you know that when Hopkins was in a Jesuit seminary he – in Paul Mariani’s description – “hypnotized a duck by holding its beak down on a black table and drawing parallel chalk lines from its beak outwards”?
But best of all is Hopkins’ own explanation of how it worked: it was, G.M.H. wrote, “the fascinating instress of the straight white stroke” that does the trick…
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By: Jilly

Jilly — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:14:31 +0000

I love Hopkins.
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By: Frank Giampietro

Frank Giampietro — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:44:19 +0000

One of my favorite quotations by Hopkins comes from one of his journal entries.
He writes: “Gerard Manley Tunks . . . poor Tunks.”
I also love the self-portrait posted here. Hopkins is drawing himself from a bridge, using the water below him for a mirror.
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By: Richard Haney

Richard Haney — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:06:09 +0000

Enjoyed the Hopkins trivia. I’m in Oxford for a study stint where I first became interested in Hopkins. I used to walk daily past St Aloyisus, a Roman Catholic church on St Giles Rd. They used to have a sign that made reference to John Henry Newman and Gerard Manley Hopkins–Hopkins served briefly there as a curate. But the sign is gone and I wonder why?
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By: Michael Gushue

Michael Gushue — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:44:30 +0000

He also thought the poet closest to him in mind was . . . Walt Whitman!
From a letter he wrote to Robert Bridges:
, , , first I may as well say what I should not otherwise have said, that I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. And this also makes me the more desirous to read him and the more determined that I will not…
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By: Joe Safdie

Joe Safdie — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:35:12 +0000

Another interesting fact was that both he and Oscar Wilde studied with Walter Pater, whom they both revered and saw as the model for their respective work. Maybe someone should do a blog about Pater pretty soon . . . Henry, glad to see that you’re a year older than me . . .
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:29:17 +0000

Funny you should mention lepers. This is from Hopkins’ unfinished verse drama, “St. Winefred’s Well:”
O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,
While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from fountains,
While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing,
While blind men’s eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts of daylight,
Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that ’s lost upon them,
While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-dance,
Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,
Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,
Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief; in burden,
As long as men are mortal and God merciful,
So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,
This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist and musical
With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night delivering
Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in róck wrítten,
But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,
That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,
Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, everywhere,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, móre pílgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
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By: Doodle

Doodle — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:25:05 +0000

Who’s Michaelangelowas?
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By: Lkat Graham

Lkat Graham — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:00:06 +0000

Was he a leper?
Fun fact: Michelangelowas once commissioned to make a snowman.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:58:54 +0000

In my 56 odd years of experience, anyway, when somebody – poets, non-poets, anybody – bursts into memorized recitation – the verse is most-often that of GM Hopkins.
(Disclaimer : I grew up in a town in Minnesota called Hopkins. I went to a school there called Blake. So did poet Allen Grossman. And we shall build Jerusalem in England’s green & pleasant land.)
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