On the back cover, author Ron Hansen erupts, “a true page-turner that superbly explains Hopkins’s conversion to Catholicism, his poetic genius, and his intellectual daring, while correcting earlier misconceptions that Hopkins was a failure as a Jesuit.” Having read this description I was primed for a book that not only explained these things but did them “superbly.” Further, I was expecting a narrative that would keep me up to the wee hours. Not only that, I didn’t think that the work would have to reach too high a standard since I knew next to nothing about Hopkins’s life, and I was greatly interested.

Sadly, the book does none of what Hansen claims. It’s not that the book doesn’t explain these things well; it simply doesn’t explain them. Yes, Mariani’s biography shows us a young Hopkins struggling with his decision to abandon the Church of England for the Church of Rome. It shows Hopkins seeking counsel and fearing the repercussions within his family. But that showing does not explain. I read the chapter three times. We are not made privy to the issues driving Hopkins away from Anglicanism to Rome. We are not told what specific aspects of the church made Hopkins believe that Rome was the “true” church deserving of his lifelong devotion and sacrifice. There are references to the Oxford Movement, and Hopkins’s connection to Henry Newman is well-documented, but for all the talk around the conversion, there is nothing here to help one understand what exactly it was that convinced Hopkins to make such a radical, sacrificial decision.

Likewise, the biography presents numerous quotes and explications of Hopkins’s poetry, showing how the poems echoed the concerns and feelings of the poet. The book charts the friendship between Hopkins and Robert Bridges and their individual development as poets. Yet, the book does not “superbly explain…his poetic genius.” The book narrates the troubles that kept Hopkins’s poems from being published, both the barriers that Hopkins erected against pride and the difficulty editors had in understanding what he was about. The book also sketches out the artistic differences Hopkins had with his friends, especially Bridges. It is here that the biographer is faced with a conundrum. If Mariani were to truly explain superbly the arguments between the two, the narrative force of the biography would most likely come to a shrieking standstill. However, by not digging in too deep, the reader is left with a sneaking suspicion that the tension between the two was caused mainly by Bridges “not getting it.” The same could be said for the lack of elucidation of Hopkins’s intellectual prowess.

However, I’m sure I would have felt none of this negativity had I not read the back cover.

Had I simply ignored the back cover foo-fer-all, I would have been left to enjoy what this biography actually is: an insightful meditation on a committed Christian struggling with the path God has asked him to walk. After years of following all the rules in his Jesuit order—and performing poorly on one examination—Hopkins found himself basically performing interim pulpit-fill duty in various remote locations in England until he was asked to be part of the faculty of a new university being established in Dublin. While the post of professor at a Jesuit university sounds prestigious today, Hopkins’s tasks were anything but glamorous. His main duty seemed to be the creation, administration, and grading of interminable Latin exams taken by prospective students. Hopkins wrote his mother in July, 1888, “It is a great, very great drudgery…a burden which crushes me and does little to help any good end” (394). As someone who has taught a great deal of Freshman Composition, I can easily imagine the scene. One of the world’s most spectacular poets strives for hours to indicate carefully the errors in grammar and style of hundreds of students who haven’t a clue as to what they are doing. After interminable hours of analyzing dreadful writing, the poet’s brains have mushified into gloppy wallpaper paste, unable to render even the least poetic of images, let alone work that deserves to be published. All the while, the poet knows he has been given a gift that is wasting away, yet he trusts that not only God but also His servants know what is best for eternity, and he bows humbly to their will. Hopkins asserts that he is “only too willing to do God’s work and help on the knowledge of the Incarnation,” and he is certain that Christ came for the his own “salvation and that of the world,” but he also feels that the God’s work is carried out by “a great system and machinery which even drags me on with the collar round my neck” (411). In his darker moments, he acknowledges that he is “unwilling enough for the piece of work assigned me, the only work I am given to do, though I could do others if they were given” (411). Yet, even with these doubts and misgivings, he carries on without complaining to his superiors.

Which is not to say that his struggle is not expressed. In one of his final sonnets, Hopkins cries out to God, “Wert thou my enemy…How wouldst thou worse”. Mariani writes

This is the incredible, mystifying paradox at the heart of it all: that one should keep on, in spite of it all. That, when one gives oneself over to Christ, Christ provides the victory as well, and in such a way that we know—if we know anything—that it is God’s working in and through us. Still, like Christ, however much Hopkins understands all this, he is finding it “an intolerable grief to submit to it.” Yes, he “left the example,” and that “is very strengthening,” but, he has to admit, “it is not consoling.” (367)

And it is in these words, in his struggle, that Hopkins speaks to me. Numerous sermons remind us of Christ’s command to take up your cross and follow him. Bless the pastors who try to warn us that the path of discipleship is not an easy one, that the gate is narrow. Yet, in most of these sermons, the focus is on the spectacular struggle, the noticeable persecution, the dolorous passion. How often are congregations encouraged to gut out the grinding perseverance of pouring all of your energy into the drudgery of everyday service to the kingdom? How many times have you heard the brilliant research scientist commanded to give up discovering the next medical miracle in order to minister by tending the church grounds? How often do we raise as an example the gifted musician who plays the same familiar hymns week after week after week to a tiny congregation in a small rural town?

So while Mariani’s book does not do the things touted on the back cover, it does superbly illuminate a devoted Christian struggling to be content with the work set for him to do.

It strikes me anew that each book, each collection of pages bound together with some purpose, proves to be not a container of sometimes wondrous thought but rather a door. “It is a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door” old Bilbo used to say. For these books, on each page, do not so much contain the content of their writers’ minds as open up those minds for our exploration. I sing not only of fictional works or narrative works (although I am shivering in anticipation of entering the mind of Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt even as I slog my way through Gerard Manley Hopkins). Even these philosophic and critical works open onto a mind wrestling with a problem. I look forward to exploring the mental landscape of a contemporary master as he instructs us on the magic of a sentence; I am curious about the slices of vision offered a series of interviews. Might they flay the imagination setting free a new work?

It is an embarrassment of riches I eat breakfast with each morning, sipping Indonesian coffee, stunned into immobility by the panoply of worlds awaiting my engagement.

5a: 2 quatrains iambic tetrameter

Astronomers have sought for years
With telescopes and satellites
For evidence of gravity’s
Devouring black parasite.
My starry friends, arise! Resist
Celestial gazing misapprised,
Your laboratory waits aglow
For evidence now televised.

5b: 2 quatrains alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter

From television, actors fled
To cinematic fame,
Nocturnal creatures seeking out
The screen’s eternal flame.
But now the humble box attracts
Artisianal fireworks
Where I can watch in comfort sans
The pimply soda jerk.

5c: 2 quatrains trochaic tetrameter: 1 straight, 1 with docked weak endings on lines 2 & 4

Bombs and kittens nightly battle
Sports and weather on each channel,
Striving, selling, pacifying,
Distancing ignoble passions.

Postman warned us of the pleasures
Found in TV’s psychic touch.
Now this disenchanting measure
Doesn’t sound like quite enough.

On July 3, after the completion of the 2010 PDGA Amateur World Championships, I sauntered down to Columbus to see Cindy’s new show. Here’s some pictures.