Carolyn F. Scott
ABSTRACT
We know from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s own comments that his poetry provided a means to express his Jesuit spirituality. In The Wreck of the Deutschland (1918) he makes the shipwreck a focus for his meditation on the meaning of suffering. At the heart of the poem stands the tall nun, whose cry to Christ provides a focal point for Hopkins’s creative powers. His ability to imaginatively project himself into the scene of her suffering unfolds a key element of the poem. The tall nun is the nexus between heaven and earth, a bridge between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit. In his struggle to understand the nature of her subjectivity, Hopkins comprehends the truth about the immanence of God and his own subjectivity.
KEYWORDS: Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland, intersubjectivity, suffering, meditative technique, anagogy
DOI: 10.30395/WSR.202606_19(2).0001
Carolyn F. Scott, Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan (cfscottmn@gmail.com).
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