Wrestling with Gerard Manley Hopkins

Abstract

When Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins was published in 1918, readers were advised to brace themselves. Robert Bridges introduced the volume with the starchy disapproval of the schoolmaster, reporting on ‘Definite' and ‘bad' ‘faults of style'; notably, a tendency towards ‘oddity and obscurity'. We may wish to cavil with Bridges’s cavilling, or contest his foundational assumptions. What we cannot do is ignore his objections as if they do not matter. The evaluative task he undertook was unavoidable, and it is the same task incumbent on readers ever since. We must question why Hopkins writes as he does, and, by extension, what is gained or lost in the process. No adequate account of the ‘content' of his poems can be achieved without attending to how they are shaped and animated. Not to ask after Hopkins's style, in all its audacious ‘oddity and obscurity', is not to read him at all. This essay takes up the challenge of coming to terms with Hopkins's style by plotting one stylistic habit in particular, his habit of ‘wrestling’, that–it is argued–fundamentally defines and enables his poetics, and our understanding and experience of his poetry too.