LIGHT ON HOPKINS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 479, 27 August 1948, Page 19

LIGHT ON HOPKINS

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS: A CRITICAL ESSAY TOWARDS THE UNDERSTANDING OF HIS POETRY. By W. A. M. Peters, S.J. Oxford University Press (through Geoffrey Cumberlege). } OPKINS is not widely appreciated because he is a poet’s poet, and if Dr. Peters’s criticism of him is not widely appreciated it will probably be because Dr. Peters is a scholar’s scholar. Like Hopkins he has to be studied, not merely read. In his introduction, Dr. Peters courteously but decisively disposes of other critics of Hopkins: "What is said by these critics is not necessarily ‘untrue, but, the point is that their statements are useless, unless an attempt is made to prove that they are true and are really relevant to Hopkins’s practice." Then, obedient to his own exacting maxim, he presents an interpretation of Hopkins which is logical, precise, comprehensive and above all strictly relevant to, and seemingly borne out by, |- Hopkins himself. The interpretation fits the words, the theory fits the facts. There are few generalisations, no digressions, no» unsupported opinions; every statement which cannot be adequately justified is honestly labelled "not _ (continued on next page)

| BOOK REVIEWS (Cont’d)

(continued from previous page) proven," and Hopkins always has the last word. This is scholarship and criticism of an uncommonly high order. The first chapter (there are only five) is an attempt to explain "inscape" and "instress"-words which Hopkins coined and nevet properly defined. They are, according to Dr. Peters, expressive of Hopkins’s interpretation of the philosophy of Duns Scotus, and they describe the individual, distinct, active essence -the "personality" almost-of even inanimate objects. Once this is understood the rest is re'’atively easy and logical. The obscurity disappears, and the oddness becomes not only reasonable but inevitable. The difficulties of ‘grammar and syntax: arise ,not "from freakishness or an unbridled desire to be invincibly queer and startlingly original" but from Hopkins’s peculiar (the word is Dr. Peters’s) personal conception of reality, which could only be expressed in this peculiar, highly personal way. Considering that this God-obsessed ‘poet was trying to express, not the attributes, but the essence, the "inscape" of God Himself, it is not surprising or unnatural that he is difficult even if you do sympathise with his point of view, and unintelligible if you don’t. But Dr. Peters’ does not leave a general definition to cover particular cases. He says: "It is\ these’ idiosyncrasies of style that tell in Hopkins’s poetry and not one of them can we afford to neglect." We do not neglect one. The thoroughness with which he treats each one and his insistence on accurate factual reference is best illustrated by his. own statement. "I have taken the trouble of counting the adverbs ending in -ly in the poems; the sum-total is twelve." Dr. Peters’s aim was to make Hopkins "more intelligible, more accessible."

) I think he has succeeded. _

S. P.

McL.