영혼의 탈각

Husking New Self from the Old One: G. M. Hopkins’ Dublin Poetry

Hopkins’ Dublin sonnets of the last four years convey, as Dixon says, a “terrible pathos”(LII 80), which is barren, mountainous, frightful, bruised and blind. Many critics have generally regarded Hopkins’ Dublin poems as a failure because they don’t enact the conversation with God, which he previously cherishes the basis of his poetic structure. This is due to the fact that they put a higher value on “Nature Sonnets,” paying less attention to the earlier and the later ones. Throughout his life, Hopkins struggles to establish the relationship between God and self. It is natural that he should come back on the problem of self in his later poems. This study examines Hopkins’ later poetry through the husk-kernel paradigm, which is Augustinian method of biblical exegesis. By using this paradigm, Hopkins solidifies his Christian beliefs and accommodates himself to God. As St. John of the Cross’ darkness leads to true illumination, the darkness described in the later sonnets serves as a husk through which its kernel germinates. “Terrible Sonnets” can be read as the sacrament of penance through which new soul is created. In this sense darkness and suffering described in “Terrible sonnets” indicate not Hopkins’ isolation from God but serve as an incubator to his journey towards a vision of light. His “inscape” stands for a holy moment of grace and insight, meeting point God and self in later poems. “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire . . . ”, written less than a year before Hopkins’ death, describes Hopkins’ victory as a poet and priest. Like the “passion-plunged giant risen” of “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” Hopkins experiences personally himself “what Christ is.” In this poem, Hopkins finally earns a vision where the inscape of selfhood, modelled on Christ, is crystallized into an “immortal diamond.”