Daily Poetry Readings

Part 283 of a daily series of readings of his favourite poetry by Dr Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary. Today's poem is Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
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~ Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins ~
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist - slack they may be - these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

[@genevaelaine2076]

This was such a great reading! I felt so much emotion in your presentation

[@ronansharkey]

This is such an extraordinary poem, a concentrated, masterly expression and examination of nearly unbearable grief. I don't think I've ever heard someone else read it aloud, but this reading seems to me near perfect, though there must be other ways of emphasising its parts. The pause between the oath ("my God!") and the identification of his adversary in the struggle ("my God") is exactly right. But is he really struggling with God? Or rather, does he not implicitly recognise that the struggle is with himself ("that coil", "cheer whom though?"). It seems odd to refer to God as "the hero", whereas Hopkins very possibly had heroic aspirations when he kissed the hand that became a rod. Interestingly, a recent biography of the founder of the order Hopkins belonged to describes a very similar torment in the life of his subject, one that led Ignatius to contemplate suicide

[@akm97]

Thank you, Ronan, for your kind and thoughtful reply. I agree there is an oddity about using the word 'hero', which always brings me up short. But then there is the phrase immediately after, 'whose heaven- handling flung me'. Who is the subject of that clause? It seems to me that intrinsic to the poem is Hopkins's uncertainty as to what in his self-experience comes from him and what from God. One way of thinking of that is that both parties in the struggle he describes are facets of Hopkins's imperfect apprehension of the divine; and at one and the same time they are aspects of God's working in him. I sense that if we could wholly clarify this enigma we might be working against the very grain of the poem.