"Beautiful dripping fragments": A Whitmanesque Reading of Hopkins' "Epithalamion"

Abstract

A celibate whose Ruskinian interest natural beauty focussed upon innocent child or youth, Hopkins has not often been written of sexual language or been critically analyzed for sexual themes attitudes. Perhaps should be glad. (Johnson, Sexuality Inscape) (1) IN CONSIDERATIONS PR[OR TO--BUT LEFT UNCHANGED IN--HIS LITERARY biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Norman White dismisses poet's elusive Epithalamion as second-hand impressions pasted together, as landscape descriptions [which] have no force of plot behind them. (2) I wish to argue pages to follow that such assessment overlooks Epithalamion as display of Hopkins' mastery of painterly, priestly, prurient--overlooks masterpiece which John Ferns has argued not only reveals Hopkins freest happiest poetical vein, but also shows his genius. Even as recently as 1990, scholars such as James Earl have suggested indelicately that proper lesson learned from Hopkins' Epithalamion is that we would do well to destroy poems write while administering exams, merely labeling poem a beautifully embarrassing sexual fantasy. (4) Traditionally, most scholars have dismissed Hopkins' poem as spurious improvisation, ignoring existence of earlier drafts, drafts indicative of thoughtful process of revision. Scholars seem to request fair copy to legitimize Epithalamion, even though its writer admitted only year after its composition, that fatal year which saw both his death purging of his uncollected manuscripts: We greatly differ feeling about copying one's verses out: I find it repulsive, let them lie months years rough copy untransferred to my book (Last letter to Bridges, April 29, 1889). (5) Hopkins himself contributed to this dismissal of poem as fragment, certainly for good reasons. As if to thwart societal disapproval, Hopkins attached nuptial title two extraneous fragments, obvious fragments which Norman H. MacKenzie describes as perhaps weakest lines GMH ever wrote (Facsimile II, p. 383, note). Always keen on exploiting poetic opportunity, Hopkins seems to have converted occasion of his brother Everard's wedding into an audible fig leaf intended to cover sentiments expressed earlier [in poem], (6) sentiments both suggestive erotic. If look behind fig leaf--the nuptial title appended fragments--we discover poet inflamed with pederastic desire, poet who guides us into woodland abounding with bathing boys; then directs our gaze towards advancing stranger who, inspired by sight of these naked striplings, undresses bathes alone, caressed by vacillating stream. Not typical, Catholic wedding-scene, to be certain--or, words of Simon Humphries, looks not like nuptial. (7) Regarding spiritual psychological nakedness of Hopkins' Terrible Sonnets, most would agree with Robert Bernard Martin that in this great series of poems Hopkins seems stripped before us, so that no conventions of nationality, period or religion come between poet reader to obscure sense of profound emotion they share. (8) But, White's classification of later Epithalamion as pitiable fragment Earl's suggestion that it should have seen flames together reveal deliberate avoidance, critical sphere, of homoerotic pederastic qualities which infuse it, avoidance of sexual psychological nakedness that it presents represents, avoidance of what Michael Lynch has labeled the gayness of [Hopkins'] whole aesthetic. (9) Take away 'title,' suggests Humphries, and those forty-two lines might begin to look like kind of poem that is uncongenial to some critics (p. 344). This scholarly preference for congenial is partly decorous cautious attempt not to marginalize Hopkins' deeply felt religious convictions, his devotion to celibacy, his authentic sense of vocation. …