#### Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Poet-Priest of Sacred Nature Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was a Victorian poet and Jesuit priest whose work stands as a singular achievement in English literature. While his contemporaries often wrote of [[Nature]] in idealized or sentimental terms, Hopkins presented the natural world with a startling intensity, precision, and spiritual fervor. His poetry is a profound exploration of how the divine manifests in the physical universe, with the intertwined elements of “the wild and the wet” serving as the central pillars of his unique poetic vision. To understand his perspective, one must appreciate the confluence of his life and faith. A deeply devout convert to Catholicism, Hopkins burned his early poetry upon entering the Jesuit order, feeling it was incompatible with his religious vocation. He did not write for nearly a decade until a superior encouraged him to compose a poem about a shipwreck of five Franciscan nuns. The result, "The Wreck of the Deutschland," announced his mature style: a radical, innovative use of language, rhythm (which he called "sprung rhythm"), and a theology that found God not in abstraction, but in the gritty, particular, and explosive details of creation. His perspective is best summarized by two key, original concepts: 1. "The Wild" as Inscape: The Divine Essence of a Thing. For Hopkins, "the wild" was far more than uncultivated land. It was the unique, God-given inner energy that defines every created thing—its essential identity, which he called "inscape." This is the dynamic, untamed force that makes a kestrel a kestrel and an ash tree an ash tree. It is the bursting, unruly, and beautiful order of nature, the very fingerprint of God within His creation. To [[Perception|perceive]] a thing's "inscape" was to understand and glorify its Creator. 2. "The Wet" as Instress: The Divine Force That Animates Creation. Water, rain, dew, and wetness are consistently used by Hopkins to symbolize renewal, immediacy, and the palpable presence of God's grace. "The wet" represents the world in its most vital, "just-created" state. It is the medium through which the Holy Spirit constantly refreshes and recharges the world. The perception and reception of an object's "inscape" is achieved through "instress," the divine force that binds the observer to the observed and communicates its essential energy. These ideas are best understood through the lens of his most famous poems: In Praise of "The Wet" and Perpetual Freshness The opening of his masterpiece, "God's Grandeur," is a definitive statement on this concept: The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil... And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things... Key Idea: Here, "the wet" is that "dearest freshness deep down things." Hopkins acknowledges the spiritual barrenness of industrial society ("seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil"), yet he insists that beneath this surface, nature remains eternally charged with divine energy. This renewal is made possible because the "Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings," a direct allusion to the Spirit of God hovering over the waters in Genesis. The world is perpetually moistened and revitalized by this divine presence. Celebrating the "Wild" Energy of Creation The sonnet "The Windhover" is a direct address to the "inscape" or wild energy of a kestrel hawk in flight. The bird's magnificent, controlled power becomes a metaphor for Christ. I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon... Hopkins marvels at its mastery of the wind, its wild, ecstatic flight, which he terms "Brute beauty and valour and act." The poem's crucial moment comes when this wildness "Buckle!"—meaning both to collapse under pressure and to clasp together. In this instant, the wild energy of the bird and the glory of its Creator fuse into one revelation, demonstrating that the wildest, most natural beauty is where the divine and earthly most powerfully meet. The Joyful, Unruly "Wild" and "Wet" Together In "Inversnaid," a poem about a rough Scottish stream, Hopkins explicitly celebrates the raw, untamed beauty of a place that is both wild and wet. This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down... What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. This is his most direct ecological and spiritual plea. He explicitly links "wet" and "wildness" as essential, life-giving qualities. They are not inconveniences to be tamed or drained but are the very source of the world's beauty, vitality, and sacred character. Summary: The Hopkinsian Vision To synthesize, Gerard Manley Hopkins articulated a vision where: · The Wild ("Inscape") is the unique, divine essence and dynamic energy inherent in every creature, from the smallest flower to the grandest [[landscape]]. · The Wet ("Instress") is the perpetual freshness and regenerative power of nature, maintained by the constant, brooding presence of the Holy Spirit, which continually renews the world like a life-giving rain. · Together, they are indispensable. They are the fundamental manifestation of God's grandeur in the physical world. A world without them—a world "seared with trade," stripped of its uniqueness and vitality—would be a spiritually dead world, devoid of its divine charge. · He pleaded for their preservation, seeing the industrial and utilitarian spirit of his age as a direct threat to this sacred, wild freshness. His work is thus not only poetic but also prophetic, anticipating modern [[Ecology|environmental]] thought. ![[IMG_Gerard Manley Hopkins.jpeg]] In short, Hopkins did not merely describe nature; he sacramentalized it. He saw the wild and the wet not as mere scenery but as the primary evidence of God's beautiful and ongoing creative act, charging every moment and every element of the world with breathtaking theological significance. `Concepts:` `Knowledge Base:`