Inscape and instress: Difference between revisions
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Hopkins's poems typically celebrate how an the immutable Deity continually creates and recreates a physical world of variety and change (Bump 1990, p. 81, citation coming). This world of ostensible mutability paradoxically points to the unchanging God who “fathers [it] forth.”<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Foundation|first=Poetry|date=2020-12-20|title=Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44399/pied-beauty|access-date=2020-12-20|website=Poetry Foundation|language=en}}</ref> The religious aspects are not simply nailed onto his Oxford tutor's ideas of indivitiduation: they are nailed through the hands of Christ onto the cross. This tutor, [[Walter Pater]], was highly influential, but agnostic in his beliefs. Similar to Pater’s ''Conclusion'' to ''The Renaissance [citation coming]'', Hopkins’s vision of the physical world in his poem “''Pied Beauty''”<ref name=":0" /> is one of “perpetual motion.” For Hopkins, the responsibility of establishing and maintaining order within the physical world does not lie with the individual observer as Pater maintained, but rather with the eternal Creator himself.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Urban|first=David V.|date=2018/2|title=Ignatian Inscape and Instress in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty,” “God’s Grandeur,” “The Starlight Night,” and “The Windhover”: Hopkins’s Movement toward Ignatius by Way of Walter Pater|url=https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/2/49|journal=Religions|language=en|volume=9|issue=2|pages=49|doi=10.3390/rel9020049}}</ref> |
Hopkins's poems typically celebrate how an the immutable Deity continually creates and recreates a physical world of variety and change (Bump 1990, p. 81, citation coming). This world of ostensible mutability paradoxically points to the unchanging God who “fathers [it] forth.”<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Foundation|first=Poetry|date=2020-12-20|title=Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44399/pied-beauty|access-date=2020-12-20|website=Poetry Foundation|language=en}}</ref> The religious aspects are not simply nailed onto his Oxford tutor's ideas of indivitiduation: they are nailed through the hands of Christ onto the cross. This tutor, [[Walter Pater]], was highly influential, but agnostic in his beliefs. Similar to Pater’s ''Conclusion'' to ''The Renaissance [citation coming]'', Hopkins’s vision of the physical world in his poem “''Pied Beauty''”<ref name=":0" /> is one of “perpetual motion.” For Hopkins, the responsibility of establishing and maintaining order within the physical world does not lie with the individual observer as Pater maintained, but rather with the eternal Creator himself.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Urban|first=David V.|date=2018/2|title=Ignatian Inscape and Instress in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty,” “God’s Grandeur,” “The Starlight Night,” and “The Windhover”: Hopkins’s Movement toward Ignatius by Way of Walter Pater|url=https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/2/49|journal=Religions|language=en|volume=9|issue=2|pages=49|doi=10.3390/rel9020049}}</ref> |
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==The central paradox== |
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One the one hand is the infinite variety of creation and on the other is the question of how this is achieved by an unchanging creator. |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
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Revision as of 17:31, 20 December 2020
Inscape and instress are complementary concepts about individuality and uniqueness derived by Gerard Manley Hopkins from the ideas of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus.[1]
[Hopkins] felt that everything in the universe was characterized by what he called inscape, the distinctive design that constitutes individual identity. This identity is not static but dynamic. Each being in the universe 'selves,' that is, enacts its identity. And the human being, the most highly selved, the most individually distinctive being in the universe, recognizes the inscape of other beings in an act that Hopkins calls instress, the apprehension of an object in an intense thrust of energy toward it that enables one to realize specific distinctiveness. Ultimately, the instress of inscape leads one to Christ, for the individual identity of any object is the stamp of divine creation on it.[2]
This is related to a logocentric theology and the Imago Dei. A logocentric theology of creation is based on correlation of the Genesis account and John 1. Since all creation is by the Word (divine fiat) human identity in God's image is grounded in God's speech and no two creation words are ever spoken alike.[a] This idea is reflected by J. R. R. Tolkien who compares the Creator to a perfect prism and creation to the refraction of perfect light. Tolkien writes,
- 'Dear Sir,' I said – 'Although now long estranged,
- Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed
- Dis-grace he may be, yet is not de-throned,
- and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
- Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
- through whom is splintered from a single White
- to many hues, and endlessly combined
- in living shapes that move from mind to mind.[3]
The idea is strongly embraced by the Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton who admired both Scotus and Hopkins. In New Seeds of Contemplation Merton equates the unique "thingness" of a thing, its inscape, to sanctity. Merton writes,
"No two created beings are exactly alike. And their individuality is no imperfection. On the contrary, the perfection of each created thing is not merely its conformity to an abstract type but in its own individual identity with itself."[4]
The result is that holiness itself is grounded in God's creation, his call, and not in a Platonic ideal. To the extent that any "thing" (including humans) honors God's unique idea of them they are holy. Holiness thus connects to "vocation" (from the Latin vocare for "voice") in two ways. First, God creates through the word; and second, when being responds rightly to God's speech by expressing his unique word the result is Holiness.
An example
As kingfishers catch fire Poem by G.M. Hopkins
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
In this poem inscape is exemplified by the kingfisher doing its unique kingfishery thing, each stone and each bell is heard making its own unique sound: unique because each stone and each well is different. The judge does his judgey thing, and inscape is seen to come into being through performance of each individual's perfect birthright. Eyes are lovely becase each is unique and leads us to God by ten thousand different routes.[5]
The central paradox
Hopkins's poems typically celebrate how an the immutable Deity continually creates and recreates a physical world of variety and change (Bump 1990, p. 81, citation coming). This world of ostensible mutability paradoxically points to the unchanging God who “fathers [it] forth.”[6] The religious aspects are not simply nailed onto his Oxford tutor's ideas of indivitiduation: they are nailed through the hands of Christ onto the cross. This tutor, Walter Pater, was highly influential, but agnostic in his beliefs. Similar to Pater’s Conclusion to The Renaissance [citation coming], Hopkins’s vision of the physical world in his poem “Pied Beauty”[6] is one of “perpetual motion.” For Hopkins, the responsibility of establishing and maintaining order within the physical world does not lie with the individual observer as Pater maintained, but rather with the eternal Creator himself.[7]
See also
Notes
- ^ While it is true that "logos" also means "word" in the conventional sense of "speech", in John it refers not to the "divine fiat" ("Let there be Light" etc.), but to Christ as the second person of the Trinity. As the first quotation from the Norton Anthology states: "Ultimately, the inscape of instress leads one to Christ".[2]
References
- ^ Chevigny, Bell Gale. Instress and Devotion in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins Victorian Studies Vol. 9, No. 2 (Dec., 1965), pp. 141–153.
- ^ a b Stephen Greenblatt et al., Ed. "Gerard Manley Hopkins." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. p. 2159
- ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories, in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, CS Lewis Ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978)
- ^ Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation New Directions Publishing, 1972. 29.
- ^ "Hopkins's Poetry: "As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame" | SparkNotes". www.sparknotes.com. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
- ^ a b Foundation, Poetry (20 December 2020). "Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
- ^ Urban, David V. (2018/2). "Ignatian Inscape and Instress in Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty," "God's Grandeur," "The Starlight Night," and "The Windhover": Hopkins's Movement toward Ignatius by Way of Walter Pater". Religions. 9 (2): 49. doi:10.3390/rel9020049.
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External links
- Everett, Glenn (1988). "Hopkins on 'Inscape' and 'Instress'", VictorianWeb.org.