6.

Not out of his bliss
Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt―
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt―
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).

The Wreck of the Deutschland
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

 

 

The first stanzas in the Wreck of Deutschland are personal and autobiographical but even though it might seem as if Hopkins hasn’t even mentioned the shipwreck, there is a murmuring sound of it present in the background. In this stanza the tone, with the help of parenthesis, gets even more confidential…

- Isn’t it appealing that he chooses this personal perspective as an path into writing about such a horrible thing as a sea-disaster?

We do all have our personal relations to disaster. We hear about them on the radio, see them on TV and read about them, as Hopkins did, in the papers. Sitting in the safety of our homes…

Most often we don’t think twice about it, but sometimes the horror of it strikes us. A few years ago there was the shipwreck of Estonia outside of Sweden. Hundreds of people died. My co-workers from one of my previous workplaces had a conference on board, they all died. I’m thinking of the terror attacks 2001 and later. The terrible Tsunami in December 2004 or disasters on a smaller scale, having someone dying in your lap, witnessing a car collision, diseases, everyday life that seizes: No one is spared. It happens to all of us, again and again. The just and the unjust are stroke alike.

Why does God let these things happen? How can there be a God who allows such suffering?

In the Wreck of Deutschland Hopkins refuses to explain disaster as either the absence of God or the presence of some negative power which resists God. It’s not through accidents or catastrophes God reveals himself the most. We are not closer to him when good things happen to us, nor more distant when things go bad. This dilemma is hard to grasp, even for the faithful, Hopkins say, but he will help us interpret the suffering.

God reveals himself the fullest in an ongoing sacrifice, an everlasting moment, an action that flows in time.

 

 

 

During lent I will publish the stanzas from the Wreck of the Deutschland, one by one. Sometimes with a small commentary or with some aspect about the poem. Hopefully someone will be able to use this as a form of prayer during Lent.