Sárospataki Füzetek 18. (2014)

2014 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Christ plays in ten thousand places"

Frank Sawyer

World's strand, sway of the sea;

Lord of living and dead;

Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,

And after it almost unmade, what with dread,

Thy doing; and dost thou touch me afresh?

Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

In this first stanza the poet refers to Gods creating and re-creating or revising of us. He feels that God is touching him “afresh” - God’s finger of contact being likely an allusion to Michelangelo’s famous fresco, The Creation of Adam. This opening stanza establishes the Lordship of God over life and death. It is a personal experience: “mastering me.. .fastened me flesh”. This is an echo of the biblical Psalms.

2

I did say yes5

O at lightning and lashed rod;

Thou heardst me truer than tongue conf ess Thy terror, O Christ, O Cod;

Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:

The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod Hard down with a horror of height:

And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.

Hopkins confirms his faith by the strong yes’. The “lightening and lashed rod” refers to the storm that sank the ship but also to the poet’s inward storm of emotions, as he contemplates the death of those on the ship, especially the five nuns, with whom Hopkins as a Jesuit priest strongly identified. “Midriff astrain”, referring to the ship, also indicates the poet’s own nausea. The harshness is emphasized by means of the alliteration: ‘heart, hurl, hard, horror, and height’.

7

It dates from day6 Of his going in Galilee;

Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;

Manger, maiden's knee;

The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;

Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,

Though felt before, though in high flood yet 5 This stanza appears to referto Hopkins'spiritual conversion and vows, as well as alluding to the spiritual, psychological and physical suffering of which the poem - and life - is made of.

6 Hopkins contemplates the theme of Christ's grace, grounded in his incarnation, suffering and obedience, which, whether he preferred it or not, led to the cross, but also to grace for us.

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Sárospataki Füzetek 17. évfolyam I 2014 I 1