Discussion of the poem

1. Does the poem echo with the stories by Hemingway that we have analysed? If it does in what respect?

2. Speak of the role of the title and opening lines of each stanza. How is the reader kept in suspense and emotional tension? Note the suspension marks, speakofthe implication they create.

3. In what way does the author brand war and sufferings it brings to people?

4. Is there any implication of the condemnation of those who profit by war enjoying life? How is it made obvious?

5. Can we judge of the attitude of healthy people to those mutilated in the war? With whom does the author's sympathy lie and how is it made clear?

6. Study the structure of the poem (structural and compositional coupling, contrast, defeated expectancy, suspense).

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS*

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is now generally regarded as a modern poet, in spite of the period in which he wrote. This is partly because his work was not widely known during his life- time: he was a priest and felt that his calling prohibited from publishing his poetry. It was not until 30 years after his death, in 1918, that, his friend Robert Bridges published the first edition of his poems. The influence of his work, with its radical difference in sensibility and technique from the main poetry tradition of Victorian poetry, has been considerable. The building up of complex patterns of meaning though multiple suggestiveness given to words in their poetic contexts, is what so existed 20th-century poets. His metrical experiments, his breathless pace in which grammar was sacrificed for the sake of the rhythm have been widely imitated.

To Hopkins belongs a justification of the complexity of modern poetry. He was dismayed when R. Bridges found him unintelligible -but it was his aim, said Hopkins, to express, not to communicate: «I do not write for the public... No doubt my poetry errs on the side of singularity... indeed, I was not overdesirous that the meaning of all should be quite clear…» «If it is possible to express a subtle and recondite (1) thought on a subtle and recondite subject in a subtle and recondite way and with great felicity and perfection, in the end something must be sacrificed with so trying a task, in the process, and this may be the being at once, nay, perhaps even the being without an explanation at all, intelligible...»

G.M. Hopkins is thus in a sense a 20-century poet born out of his time who had to wait until the 20-century century for posthumous appreciation.

*Biography and questions are borrowed from Arnold I.V., Tarasova V.K. Modern Poetry. Leningrad, 1987, pp. 14-17.

(1) recondite - obscure to the ordinary understanding, connected with secrete knowledge.

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