Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

96Gerard Manley Hopkinspower. Just as one needn’t be a Romantic to appreciate the sublimityof poems such as Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” or Shelley’s “Ode to theWest Wind,” one needn’t agree with Hopkins’s theology to appreciatethe power of his verse. Ultimately, indeed, it is the power of the writerthat makes any potentially sublime work truly sublime; if the writerlacks the talent and genius to make his work compelling, his choiceof a “sublime” theme will not matter. Only a highly gifted writer cancreate the effect of sublimity; otherwise he risks seeming ridiculous.As Longinus himself observes, “evil are the swellings, both in the bodyand in diction, which are inflated and unreal, and threaten us with thereverse of our aim; for nothing, they say, is drier than a man who hasthe dropsy” (i.e., is puffed up with excess fluids [49]). Excess is alwaysthe risk a writer runs in any attempt to achieve sublimity; in striving toseem lofty, an untalented writer may only produce derisive laughter.Another famous poem by Hopkins—“The Windhover”—arguablyruns a brief risk of bathos when the speaker, describing the stunningflight of a kestrel falcon, exclaims that he “Stirred for a bird” (l.8)—phrasing that can perhaps be seen as inapt, inept, and too obvious.Otherwise, though, the poem seems yet another example of Hopkins’sgift not only for imagining sublime effects but (more importantly)for getting them down on paper. Certainly the topic itself—a soaringfalcon—is lofty almost by definition, and the poem begins at oncewith an assertion of the speaker’s own power in the phrase “I caught”(i.e., literally saw and perhaps also imaginatively grasped). The fact thatthe poem is set during the “morning” immediately associates it withlight and with new beginnings, while the description of the falcon as“morning’s minion, king- / dom of daylight’s dauphin” links the birdwith royalty, with further light, and with royalty once again, while theflood of alliteration, the unusual break between the first and secondlines, and the torrent of nouns all help convey (and evoke in the reader)the speaker’s sense of excitement and exultation. The very syntax of thepoem is breathless: The first sentence consumes the first six-and-a-halflines, as if the speaker can barely pause to catch his breath or collecthis thoughts, and the poem brims with powerful, heavily accentedand active verbs, which are often further emphasized by rhyme (e.g.,“riding,” “striding,” “gliding”; ll. 2–3, 6). Hopkins creates vivid, striking,and extended metaphors (e.g., ll. 2–5) and equally memorable similes(e.g., l. 6), and the tone of the poem is literally ecstatic (l. 5)—an effectemphasized by its frequent exclamation marks (e.g., ll. 5, 8, 10, 11) and