Paying Attention To The Sky

Images of metaphysical transcendence in either the form of earth, air, fire, water, and/or archetypes abound throughout Gerard Manley Hopkins’s writings, including his poems, letters, journals, essays, sermons and correspondence with friends and colleagues.

Most noticeable, these images rhetorically grow in textural and spiritual depth–visually, audibly, intellectually- and in human and spiritual complexity as Hopkins himself grows intellectually and spiritually, especially in his moral and theological beliefs and in his increasing commitment to God and to his philosophy of incarnation and the universal transcendence of the Trinity-God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For Hopkins, proof of the Creator’s incarnation and the transcendence of the Trinity lie in the inscapes instressed (witnessed/realized) in Nature, which encompasses all the creatures, plants, humans, and landscapes, as well as in the external elements of this vast universe-its stars, meteors, comets, planets, and galaxies.

Significant to understanding Hopkins’ poetry and prose, especially his images of transcendence, is Hopkins’s usage and meaning for “inscape” and “instress,” terms he invented but never formally defined. As a result, argues W. A. Peters, S. J., numerous critics and scholars have either avoided consideration and/or inclusion of these terms in their analysis and evaluations of Hopkins’s work or have misinterpreted his intended meanings. Peters provides numerous examples of these instances both in his text and in his endnotes.

Since Hopkins in his journals, essays, and correspondence with friends and colleagues states that “’inscape’ is what I above all aim at in poetry” (letter to Bridges dated 15 February 1879); inscape is “the very soul of art.” Peters labels these critics and scholars’ treatments of Hopkins’s poetry, in particular, as “too cursory and superficial and even incorrect.” Peters believes that nearly all of them have mistaken “’inscape’ for little more than one of many words that Hopkins invented because the English language did not contain any one word representing this objective fact or thing, or because he was dissatisfied with the existing word for reasons of euphony. They have failed to see that this word represented something that was not observed by other men, [and] therefore caused a very personal experience, and so was to stand for something not experienced by others, for which consequently there existed no word, because the need for it was never felt”

Peters thus defines inscape as “the unified complex of those sensible qualities of the object of perception that strike us as inseparably belonging to and most typical of it, so that through the knowledge of this unified complex of sense-data we may gain an insight into the individual essence of the object”  Citing specific examples from Hopkins’ poems, journals, and correspondence, Peters further concludes that for Hopkins “the inscape of an object was . . . more ‘word of God’“ and therefore reminded him more of the Creator than a superficial impression could have done.”  He also notes that Hopkins himself writes that “’this world is word, expression, news of God.”

What is inscape ?
Inscape is a concept derived by Gerard Manly Hopkins from the ideas of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. The term itself means the unique, distinctive, and inherent quality of a thing. Hopkins believed that everything in the world was characterized by inscape and in turn inscape was what designed an individual’s dynamic, never static, identity.

Hopkins use of the concept is filtered through his conviction that God the Creator is endlessly inventive and makes no two things alike. This is related to a logocentric theology and the imago Dei. A logocentric theology of creation is based on correlation of the Genesis account and John 1. Since all creation is by the Word (divine fiat) human identity in God’s image is grounded in God’s speech and no two creation words are ever spoken alike. This idea is mirrored by JRR Tolkien who compares the Creator to a perfect prism and creation to the refraction of perfect light. Tolkien writes,

‘Dear Sir,’ I said — ‘Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed Dis-grace he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Because humans are the most highly selved in the world, we can recognize the inscape in other beings of the world through a process called instress, says Hopkins; and to recognize a being’s inscape through instress requires a divine intervention. Inscape and instress play a major part in organizing the structure of Hopkins’s poetry.

The idea is strongly embraced by the famous Trappist monk and literary genius Thomas Merton who admired both Scotus and Hopkins. In New Seeds of Contemplation Merton equates the unique “thingness” of a thing, its inscape, to sanctity. The result is that holiness itself is grounded in God’s idea of being. To the extent that any “thing” (include humans) honors God’s unique idea of them they are holy. Holiness thus connects to “vocation” (from the Latin vocare for “voice”) in two ways. First, God creates through the word; and second, when being responds rightly to God’s speech by expressing his unique word the result is Holiness.

Perhaps one of the best illustrations of Hopkins’s appreciation of what he calls the inscape of an object [or being]-of “God’s utterance of Himself outside Himself is this world” appears in his journal notation following his perception of a bluebell he found to be extraordinarily beautiful:

I know the beauty of our lord by it  as we drove home the stars came out thick: I lent back to look at them and my heart opening more than usual praised our lord to and in whom all that beauty comes home, this busy working of nature wholly independent of the earth and seeming to go on in a strain of time not reckoned by our reckoning of days and years but simpler and as if correcting the preoccupation with and appealing to and dated to the day of judgment was like a new witness to god and filled me with delightful fear.

Here, Hopkins’s image of transcendence following his experience with the bluebell seemingly exemplifies how that intrinsic force that “keeps a thing in existence and its strain after continued existence,” that is, the instress of the inscape of the bluebell has allowed him to lose consciousness of time, of himself, of even where he is and what he is doing as he becomes unified with the oneness of the Universe, with God.

This theme flows through many of Hopkins’s poems such as Deutschland. Hopkins clearly pronounces that God is present in everything in this world: it would be impossible for him but for his infinity not to be identified with them or, from the other side, impossible but for his infinity so to be present to them. 

Obviously, Hopkins’s perception of the individualization of God in and of this world, naturally prompted his usage of personification of the object in his poetry. Based on his definition of inscape, however, Peters believes that Hopkins is actually “impersonating” the object’s inscape as he witnesses its inner essence to be. Consequently, Hopkins is not personifying the object in that he does not deliberately use intellectual construction and design; he is simply using impersonating the object to project its inscape as in the following example from Deutschland:

hope had grown grey hairs,
hope had mourning on,
trenched with tears, carved with cares,
hope was twelve hours gone.

In this example, Hopkins’s description appears to personify “hope,” but it also illustrates what Peters believes to be Hopkins’s definition of inscape. Rather than personifying the abstract noun hope, Hopkins is actually impersonating the inscape of hope as he has perceived it.

Hope, A Significant Image Of Transcendence
Consequently, Hope becomes a much more significant image of transcendence of suffering that humans must experience on the road to salvation, a necessary condition in experiencing their oneness to the Universe, to God the Creator. In impersonating the inscape of the humans trapped on the ill-fated Deutschland and the experiences and events that occur as the ship sinks, the tragedy itself becomes an image of transcendence of God’s presence in the Universe and of his promise of eternal life in a world free from stress and strife. That Hopkins at this point in time had been deeply influenced by Plato’s philosophy of the ideal real world adds credibility to this interpretation.

Hopkins And His Use Of Impersonation In Gerard Manley Hopkins
In A Critical Essay Towards the Understanding of His Poetry, Peters provides a detailed explication of Hopkins use of impersonation and its application to personification, including specific examples from his poems and journals. That Hopkins does impersonate and thus personify the inscapes he senses and observes in all of Natures’s subjects-trees, birds, water, men, animals, and so on-that through these entities he gleams or comes to know the presence of God at the core of each object-that each object is charged with God actually empowers Hopkins as well as his readers to experience or to transcend to a spiritual level of knowing the unknowable through the images of these objects he creates-to transcend the physical world of reality to the reality of the spiritual world to the true essence of God-to experience the Trinity on Earth. 

Coming to know the inscape of entities in the Universe is dependent upon instress, “that stress or energy of being by which all things are upheld and strive after continued existence,” the power that “ever actualizes the inscape.”  Hopkins himself contends that instress refers to the intrinsic force that “keeps a thing in existence and its strains after continued existence” as exemplified in his after experience with the bluebells: Hopkins states, “as in man all that energy or instress with which the soul animates and otherwise acts in the body is by death thrown back upon the soul.” 

Inscape And Instress Simplified
To simplify, inscape is that inner and outer essence of an entity that can be seen, touched, heard, and/or described whereas instress is the mystical experience, the feelings within us that the inscape or energy of an object stirs within us that all but defies description; it is the instress of the inscape we experience that connects us with the Spirit of our Creator. Peters notes,

In Hopkins there remains a clearly marked separation between the activity of the poet and the independent activity of the object; they do not become one in a poetic experience in which the subjective element and the objective element have been fused by the imagination. the emotional activity ascribed to an object by hopkins is real to him and fancied, as real as its inscape. 

Hopkins’s use of instress as incorporating both the “cause and effect” may be seen in the following quote from his notes on the bluebells:

Bluebells in hodder wood, all hanging their heads one way. I caught as well as I could . . . the lovely / what people call / ‘gracious’ bidding one to another or all one way to another or all one way, the level or stage or shire of colour they make hanging in the air a foot above the grass, and a notable glare the eye may abstract sever from the blue colour / of light beating up from so many glassy heads, which like water is good to float their deeper instress in upon the mind.

In another journal entry, Hopkins writes:

I saw the inscape though freshly, as if my eye were still gowning, though . . . for the constant repetition, the continuity, of the bad thought is that actualizing of it, that instressing of I…

And in another,

This access is either of grace, which is ’supernature,’ to nature or of more grace to grace already given, and it takes the form of instressing the affective will, of affecting the will towards the good which he proposes…it is to be remarked that choice in the sense of taking of one and leaving of another real alternative is not what freedom of pitch really and strictly lies in. it is choice as when in English we say ‘because I choose,’ which means no more than . . .I instress my will to so-and-so.

In Hopkins’s attempt to make known his feelings of instress in objects, he utilizes not only verbs, similes and metaphors but also alliteration and assonance as in the following:

flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,
wave with the meadow, forget that there must
the sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.
(Deutschland)

A Workable Definition For Hopkins’s Intended Usage Of “Inscape” And “Instress”
In Peters’s excellent discussion and analysis of Hopkins’s poems and his implied meanings of inscape and instress in his writings, he presents a workable definition for Hopkins’s intended usage of “inscape” and “instress” in his poems and that his respect for Hopkins’s perception of the world in which he lived should remind readers that in examining Hopkins’s work, especially his images of transcendence, that Hopkins is a serious, intellectual man who took life, his poetry, and his spiritually seriously and that his work deserves careful attention and respect, that Peters’s definitions of inscape and instress are indeed relevant in the examination of Hopkins’ writings and his beliefs in Spiritual transcendence.

Hopkins, Man And Poet
The complexity of Hopkins’s works, especially his experimentation and love of language, his incorporation and experimentation with the writing techniques of other writers and philosophers including the early classical ones, and failure to fully understand Hopkins’s intended meanings for instress and inscape may partially explain the multiple and varied interpretations and evaluations of Hopkins the man, Hopkins the poet, Hopkins’ poetry, and Hopkins’s place in literature among other poets.

The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe– Gerard Manley Hopkins 

                Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through,
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.                

 I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.                

 If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man’s beating heart,
Laying, like air’s fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvellous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn—
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God’s and Mary’s Son.

Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire-shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not
Stain light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass-blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow shows.
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft,
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.

                So God was god of old:
A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man’s mind.
Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.

                Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky;
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God’s love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child. 

Carl Jung and the Collective Unconscious
Certainly, in comparing Hopkins’s earlier work with his later, the most noticeable change is his decreased usage of similes for more sophisticated metaphors, a topic that several of his critics have discussed. Another change is in the types of metaphors he selects that seem to include universal archetypes as first proposed by Carl Jung (1875-1961), founder of analytical psychology, who believed there existed a “collective unconscious, a genetic myth- producing level of the mind common to all men and women, and serving as the well-spring of psychological life.”  In his examination of mythological motifs and primordial images, he came up with seven major archetypes:

the wise old man,
the trickster,
the persona,
the shadow,
the divine child,
the anima and animus, and
the great mother

Hopkins and the collective unconscious Since Jung noted the usage of these archetypes in international myths and legends, he believed that they did indeed stem from what he came to call the “collective unconscious” and began using them in analyzing his patients. As writers became more and more familiar with the concept of archetypes, they began using these in their writings to further enhance their characterizations. While Hopkins would have had no access to Jung’s theories, he still seems to have tapped into the “collective unconscious” in many of his poems.

In “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe,” the “Great Mother” archetype appears. Hopkins refers to Mary as the “world-mothering air” without whom man would be as spiritually dead as he would be physically dead without life-giving air, for it is she who “Gave God’s infinity/ Dwindled to infancy.”

Here, she obviously represents the archetype of feminine mystery and power, the Queen of heaven. She is “divine, ethereal, and virginal” and exudes all those traits and qualities that Hopkins holds close to his heart; she also represents the mother of childhood who nourishes, supports, and protects. As Hopkins creates this image of transcendence, he proclaims Mary’s “presence” and “power” to be greater than that of a goddess’. He acknowledges that “God’s glory” travels “Through her” and flows from her.

In the following lines, his description of Mary may well equate to his love and feelings for his own mother, perhaps even to his grief of separation from his mother when he chose to become a Catholic in spite of his parents’ objections:

she holds high motherhood
towards all our ghostly good
and plays in grace her part
about man’s beating heart,
laying, like air’s fine flood,
the deathdance in his blood;
yet no part but what will
be christ our saviour still.

Continuing the Great Mother motif, Hopkins states that Mary has given new life not only to Christ but to all of us:

men here may draw like breath
more Christ and baffle death;
who, born so, comes to be
new self and nobler me
in each one and each one
more makes, when all is done,
both God’s and mary’s son.

Hopkins continues his life-giving image of air as he moves into the breath-taking description of the sky, distinctly marked with light images that intensify feelings of warmth, and the coolness of life-giving water as we caress his words:

Again, look overhead
How air is azured;
O how! Nay do but stand
where you can lift your hand
skywards: rich, rich it laps
round the four fingergaps.
yet such a sapphire-shot,
charged, steeped sky will not
stain light. yea, mark you this:
it does no prejudice.
the glass-blue days are those
when every colour glows,
each shape and shadow shows.
blue be it: this blue heaven.

The fiery images that follow these lines

His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault,”

light and lift our spirits higher as we move into Hopkins’s proclamation,

through her we may see him
made sweeter, not made dim,
and her hand leaves his light
gifted to suit our sight.

In addition to the archetype of the Great Mother who births, nourishes, protects, and loves, the archetype fire appears in this poem that places Mary in the spotlight to remind us that through Mary’s gift of Christ, sin is destroyed, we are liberated, cleansed, purified, we are liberated from darkness-from death to a life ever-after; we are one with the Spirit, with Christ, with God.

As someone who came to the Church through a literary imagination, I have a tremendous debt to Hopkins for having taught me the true meaning of Mary to the Church. My habit is to memorize poems that move me and The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe was one such poem. Over the period of a couple months I would start my workday trudging along to the bus stop with a folded piece of paper where I had printed out the poem. Memorizing a poem forces you to repeat it over and over again until you master its rhythms and intricacies. Parts of it become traps, you can’t seem to recall it and you realize those parts are the ones the author is forcing you to look up and pause, reconsider.

I spent a number of years in Japan learning the art of bonsai and Japanese gardens. When I visited Kyoto and many of the famous gardens there I learned of the phenomena of “borrowed scenery.” The designer[s] would place stones on a path for you to follow but would purposely place one of the stones out of order or at a slightly different spacing. It would take you out of your step, force you to stop, and in that moment cause you to be aware of your surroundings – usually to focus on something beyond the garden space. Of course as a long legged American I would have to try to envision where that place was. I recalled the experience when reading Hopkins, how he would force you at certain places in a poem to THINK and try to interpret the significance of what he was saying.

This section here:

Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvelous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn—
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God’s and Mary’s Son.

With the broken reading occurring on Him and There, the mellifluousness of  “Who, born so, comes to be/New self and nobler me” encapsulates so much of the experience of learning this poem –realizing the spiritual path we follow that echoes the physical birthing of Christ and how it is Mary who can guide us. As someone who had a challenging mother-son relationship, I was always suspicious of the Church’s emphasis on Mary but came to realize the absolute integrity of that stance though this poem.

Much of the above is adapted from an essay by Evelyn Wilson titled “Gerard Manley Hopkins – Images of Transcendence.”