There’s an intimidation factor to poetry that I think we all feel – or at least have felt – at one time or another. In one sense this is a good thing in that it can help facilitate and acknowledge the reverence that good poetry can (and should) have. But it’s also a bad thing because it can end up cutting oneself off, perhaps indefinitely, from the deep joys that poetry can bring.
I count myself fortunate that I was able to overcome the wavering hesitation about engaging with poetry. I did this, in part, like probably a great many others: simple memorization. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing with poetry or how to dig in. But I knew that it possessed something worthy of my time and effort, even if I couldn’t say exactly why that was the case. So I made a commitment to memorize half a dozen or so poems, a process I had hoped would make me more at ease not only with the specific poems themselves, but poetry in general.
Gerard Manley Hopkins took up about half of these – not for any specific reason other than that upon first reading many of his poems I felt drawn to his poetic voice. I didn’t know at the time that one of these poems would serve as a kind of refuge that I could go to (or it me, as it turns out) in depressing, whirlwind-like times. I also wanted to memorize because it served as a way to internalize a poem – that invaluable process – and gradually acquire a deeper, more nuanced understanding. The poem of Hopkins was “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Victorian poet and deeply committed Catholic. In 1877 he was ordained as a Jesuit priest. He was also, somewhat paradoxically, someone with an eccentric poetic style and unafraid to exude passion. Not everyone liked it nor knew what to make of it. Hopkins employed what he termed “sprung rhythm,” which can be difficult to read. These things about Hopkins’s life and artistic style, however, were largely unknown to me at the time; I simply wanted to become more immersed and intimate with poetry. And Hopkins helped me do this.
I’d been engaged in memorizing the poems for a few weeks. I’d recite them to myself while on a walk or waiting at a busy intersection or shopping for groceries. There was (and still is) a great satisfaction about being able to entertain a poem at will. But what’s even better is when a poem just suddenly comes in response to an immediate sight or feeling. This kind of undirected, sporadic experience of a poem has happened a handful of times since I’ve made poetry part of my life. But one occasion stands out more than any other and embodies the very reason I decided to engage with poetry in the first place.
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I was in bed. It was morning. The night before I’d felt mildly sad though nothing serious and nothing like in the past. Yet when I awoke in the morning there was an immediate, unmistakable feeling of despair. But near simultaneously as I felt this the opening line of Hopkins’s poem slowly began to speak itself inside my head – each word silently pronounced with a sharp assertiveness. More significantly, it was purely automatic. I don’t remember even opening my eyes. I assume that whenever my consciousness had merged enough from sleep the poem and my feelings somehow joined up, resulting in the first line: “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”
Those ten monosyllabic words which begin Hopkins’s sonnet expressed so accurately how I felt that morning. I was a person gripped by a cold, unexpected sadness; someone beholden to the dark and without the gentle warmth of a new day. The precision of this first line is in part what gives it such ability to capture deep feelings. Despair, in my experiences, can only come with so much exertion. The original sheer intensity soon withers and one’s mind and body must become economical. “I wake and feel the feel of dark, not day” seems a great line to me because of its succinctness (among other things).
Following this dark reflection comes an even dark one, in lines 2 and 3: “What hours, O what black hours we have spent/ This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!” These two lines tell so honestly of the scary travelings and turns one experiences during a time of inner-chaos. Every thought, every feeling, seems to lead somewhere further – and usually to an even darker place.
In lines 4-6 we learn the speaker is accustomed to this black existence, that in fact it is characteristic of his whole life and being. “And more must, in yet longer light’s delay./ With witness I speak this. But where I say/ Hours I mean years, mean life”. As cruel as the suffering and torment is within a single night, the experience is endless. And to compound the matter, the speaker, in lines 6-8, expresses the abject feeling of not being able to get through to God. “And my lament/Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent/To dearest him that lives alas! away.” His wailings and countless cries are unheeded.
In lines 9-10, we get, in my opinion, some of the most interesting of the poem. The speaker locates the bitterness in himself, an experience which God has decreed. “I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree/ Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;” No doubt it’s hard to feel good when “the fell of dark” is inside onself, a very part of oneself. To me these lines evocate original sin and something which cannot be avoided. It is an inherent state. Even back in line 1 there might be a possible suggestion of original sin if we take “I wake” to mean, in part, to be born – to enter the world – is to be sinfully flawed because of the sin of Adam and Eve. Lines 11 and 12 then build and expand on this: “Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse./Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours.” This is a haunting description of the inner-portrait of the speaker.
In the last lines, 13 and 14, (which make up the volta of the sonnet and provide the twist or turning point) we read: “The lost are like this, and their scourge to be/as I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.” There are others out there like Hopkins, suffering from the same affliction, from the same torment. From the speaker’s standpoint it is the universal affliction.
It’s not clear whether or not the speaker’s malaise will let up. But it’s also, I think, beside the point. The force of the final two lines comes from the metaphysical separation between believers in Christ and those not. The difference between those other “sweating selves” is partly a difference here on earth; but it is much more than that. And it is knowing this which makes all the difference for the speaker.
This, then, was the poem that went through my mind on that gloomy morning. As distinctly as I remember this, and as vividly as I can reflect on the experience, surprisingly I do not remember what happened afterward. I do not remember whether the morning improved nor do I remember anything about the rest of the day. What I do know is that as I experienced that bout of sadness and despair in bed, Hopkins’ poem brought a level of comfort and analysis to the situation that otherwise probably would have been absent. It also brought a kind of richness to it all. It sounds odd, admittedly, to characterize pangs of despair as possessing richness; but it was that very richness which elevated the experience from a dull sadness to a sensitive appreciation of being human.
Spectatio 