Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Hopkins Still Hovers



I've just come across in my inbox a long, lovely article about Gerard Manley Hopkins, his life, his faith, and his poetry. I haven't even had to time to do more than skim it, but I'm putting the link here in case you want to read it and so that I can come back and read it with no chance of losing the link.

"....Hopkins’s genius is to make a poetic virtue out of the contradiction between dogma and experience. The designs of providence, running athwart appearances (and our wishes), require the orthodox to look again at the world, to see it in new and original ways. When dogma and experience are read into and against each other, they license—they do not foreclose—an idiosyncratic and creative vision."

(I did not take the photo. It came from here, where there are several others, and they are wonderful.)

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