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toujours_nigelJust read Hopkins' Carrion Comfort, after a gap of about six years. We were taught him in undergrad, and very briefly at that. His homosexuality was mentioned in passing, and while I thought at the time that it could be used to examine his various conflicts, Hopkins himself constituted a very small and often confusing part of our syllabus and I didn't pay him much attention. Six years later, I can see that his romantic leanings needn't play much part in his overall emotional turmoil: there are several other things he did that must have been cause enough, not least of which were conversion to Catholicism and depression.
But then I look at Carrion Comfort, and I think, gods but how well it must have spoken to countless queer people, especially religious ones who felt conflicted about their sexuality. Carrion Comfort, the text of which I'm reproducing below, was published in 1918. I cannot stop thinking, just now, of a younger Dave reading it, despite the vast differences in religion. Or even of passing the first edition to Andrew, to lie beside Phaedrus. I'm not sure whether it would have helped, but here was a young man, passionately in love, who fought his nature into submission and emerged closer to God.
(Carrion Comfort)
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.
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.
A compelling text, that. And in fact the whole business where he falls for Dolben, a boy some years his junior and his mentor/confessor forbad any contact except through letters and that Dolben dies tragically young and emerges this muse Hopkins loves with a deeply Tennysonian yearning... it hasn't any direct parallels to TC, maybe, but it makes me think very much of Laurie, Andrew and Dave.
