지각의 시

The Sensible Poet: Hopkins`s Poetry

This paper is to illuminate the nature of Hopkins`s sensible poetry based on the perception. This consideration has the meaning in correlating his nature poetry with his “terrible poetry”. In general, both kind of poetry have been read and discussed separately. But they are in accord with each other in materializing the organic world founded on the interrelationship between God and man, and also in grasping the universal in the particular. This fact is the very link to connect his nature poetry with his terrible sonnets. Hopkins`s intensive perception reflects his intention to apprehend reality sensually rather than rationally. His perception is based on the concepts of “inscape” and “instress”. He terms the individual distinctiveness “inscape”. But He uses “instress” in two senses: the energy that holds a thing together, and the force which the inscape exerts on the mind. However, it often comes dangerously near to an impression that can only be articulated in terms of subjective emotions. The element that differentiates Hopkins`s concept of instress from impression is the intensity that enables the viewer to go beyond a merely subjective impression he can sense in the object, and vice versa. But terrible sonnets portray a self that cannot escape its own taste. He is seized between his desire to attain spiritual fulfillment and his will not to surrender human identity. It is the grace that absolves this conflict. Grace is any activity on God`s part by which he carries the creature to or towards the end of its being; it usually comes down as an enormous power. This force represents God`s power overwhelming human identity. Figuratively the self is the unthreshed grain, and grace separates the wheat from the chaff. This means that to receive it is to wrestle with God. His attitude to accept suffering as a grace and endure it is identical with his action revealing his inscape through that of object in the nature poetry. Both of these actions also reflects his consistent thought that put the sensible and the spiritual on the same dimension.