Sárospataki Füzetek 18. (2014)
2014 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Christ plays in ten thousand places"
Frank Sawyer As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!17 No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion18 Shine, and blue-bleak embers,19 ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. The Windhover is a kestrel, or falcon, “which hunts by hovering on the wind with quivering wings and occasional rapid bursts of larger wing-movement. It can glide sideways from one level to another and dives to snatch its prey.”20 Thus Hopkins catches the awesome movements and wonder of this bird and its colours in action. This falcon is king of the dappled dawn, swooping, hovering and diving with ecstasy. The poet compares this to riding a horse, and then to ice-skating. There is a mastery of movement and controlled focus of energy. The ‘sprung rhythm’ form of the lines emphasizes varied movements of the falcon. The hidden thought - introduced by the emphatic ‘AND’ - is a final image of Christ as “my chevelier” or Medieval Knight on horseback and the higher glory that belongs to Him - because of his self-sacrifice, as hinted at by gall and gash’. This is a personal experience for Hopkins, as his “heart in hiding” is drawn out to admire the power and beauty of the bird, but then a ‘billion times’ so the salvation by Christ. And the ‘danger’ involved in such use of power and our (perhaps inadequate) response. The theology in and behind these poems is well stated in another sonnet, As kingfishers catch fire, whose last six lines read as follows: I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God’s eye he is 17 While ambiguous, this chevelier (cavalier, knight) refers to Christ as infinitely more than all the wonder we find in nature. The arguments for this interpretation are based on the dedication of the poem, and on the tendency of Hopkins' sonnets on nature to end by speaking of Christ or of God. The personal mention of'my' chevalier also alludes to the change in thought. 18 Sillion is a strip of land ploughed by a tenant farmer; Hopkins refers to the shine of a plough which becomes brightly polished from use. 19 The idea is that of embers grown cold and dark on the outer crust, but hot and shiny in the middle. 20 Catherine Phillips, op.cit., p.352. 88 Sárospataki Füzetek 17. évfolyam I 2014 I 1
