No Worst There Is None

Author : Jack R. Harding
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (133 download)

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Download or read book "No Worst, There is None," by Gerard Manley Hopkins written by Jack R. Harding and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In spite of all the efforts of critics and artist-critics from the time of Aristotle to today to define what poetry is, what it ought to be, and how it does whatever it does to its readers we still do not know what we are talking about when we talk about poetry. We have come a long way down the road which leads to knowing what we are talking about, but that is the extent of the boast we can make. The end of the road, if indeed there is an end, still cannot be seen. In this light I.A. Richards' notion that we cannot trust any theory of poetry which is not so intricate that it cannot be applied makes perfect sense. Poetry is an intricate web composed of necessary and inextricable fibers. These fibers may themselves be made from numerous undefinable filaments. In this study I attempt to progress a little farther down that road which leads toward knowledge about poetry. In this study two inextricable fibers, meter and meaning, and their relationship, are examined. The history of criticism of the literature of Hopkins is a clamorous cry of confusion. Talented critics hold opposite points-of-view as they wrestle with the often strained and tense poetry Hopkins has given us. Because of his unique and powerful poetry Hopkins has risen from obscurity to become firmly established in the English poetic tradition. Tradition itself has been dramatically altered by the poetry of Hopkins. He is a rare poet whose creative experiential poems have cause a plethora of controversial criticism. Such criticism is testimony to the full and complex nature of his poetry. Such poetry is, surely, well worth studying - in and for itself, and for what it says to us about the nature of all poetry, and the nature of man. "No worst, there is none," one of the "terrible posthumous sonnets" written between 1885 and 1889 is an example of Hopkins at his best. In this sonnet technique and powerful emotion are mixed precisely into an admixture which creates as profound an experience as any literature can create. Criticism of "No worst," like criticism of Hopkins' work in general, is lively with disagreement. In these fourteen lines all the skill and cunning of sophisticated critics are tested. In these fourteen lines readers are tempest tossed through a complete dramatic event which leaves them breathless, bewildered, and different somehow. "No worst, there is none," because of how all its poetic fibers are so intimately integrated, is an archetype of the Petrarchan sonnet. Before it is anything else, poetry is a feeling experience. It is something as basic as blood; it runs rhythmically under our skin; it beats in our breasts like our hearts; we feel its sense in its sound before we know what it means. Its commonness of experience speaks to us when no common symbols exist to do so. Among the strategies of pedantic critics must be, as an a priori element, the act of interpretation. If we do not interpret before we criticize we cannot be certain that what we have to say about a poem has any relationship to what the author meant the poem to mean. We come to know what the author means by listening to the sounds he makes: both the qualitative and the quantitative aspects of that sound. Hopkins is a skillfull technician who purposefully uses rhythmic sound to make his poetry say what he wants it to say. He marries meter to meaning perfectly to create his message. Scanning "No worst" enlightens us to the basic structure which underlies the dramatic effect of the whole poem. In this structure meter and meaning are found to be, if not the same thing, inextricably united. Scansions based on different points-of -view and from varied backgrounds of experience and maturity uncover the same basic structure. This structure provides the constant which simplifies the complex event, which helps settle disputes about meaning in the poem. "No worst, there is none" is the consummate marriage of meter and meaning. It is a poem of praise and celebration. In its lines we find the vindication of the meaningfullness of human life. In it we find an aspect of our complicated selves. After all, we too are composed of necessary and inextricable fibers"--Document.