Music and Meaning in a Hopkins "Terrible Sonnet"

In this paper, I will examine the phonetic/phonological patterning of a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins,
No Worst, There Is None, one of the sequence of ‘Terrible Sonnets’ written during a period of deep despair toward
the end of his life. My paper illustrates the use of a
computer program, the Pattern-Finder, to develop the
conventional, close-reading techniques in literary criticism, as exemplified in Burke (1973) or Vendler (1988), beyond
what can be discovered by even the most aware naked eye and ear. I will argue that by using this new computational
approach, we can discover a level of meaningful
sound-structure present in the poem but previously
inaccessible. (A full description of the computationally-based
technique which I will be using is found Smolinsky & Sokoloff’s abstract proposal for the poster presentation plus software display Introducing the Pattern-Finder (#140), immediately preceding this abstract.)
Hopkins was an accomplished linguist (in the sense of ‘language-learner:’ see Davies 1998), and one of the most consciously linguistically aware of all poets
writing in English. He truly knew his medium, and used
it to the fullest. In No Worst, we see this in his syntax, as in the Shakespearian epithet “no-man-fathomed” or the elided “that” relative in “under a comfort [that] serves in a whirlwind.” Both compressions embody the excruciating pressure which the poet is expressing; the second one also gives a sense of uncontrollable velocity.
We see Hopkins’ awareness of his medium just as much in his phonetics. One example is the striking /iy/
assonance in six of the end-rhymes, also echoed
inside the lines, in “heave,” “leave,” “shrieked,” “steep or deep” and “each,” /iy/ being the vowel with the highest pitch (Peterson and Barney 1952): in this context, I would argue, the most evocative of a scream. Another is the
/p/ alliteration in the first two lines, all in pre-stressed
(‘opening’ (de Saussure 1959), maximally plosive,
aspirated (Ladefoged 1982) and forceful) position: “pitched past pitch” “pangs” “(fore)pangs” the complete absence of /p/ in lines 3-9, and the gradual accumulation of /p/’s in final (‘closing’ de Saussure op.cit, non-aspirated (Ladefoged op cit), minimally forceful position in lines 10-14. The movement of the poem is from increasing
paroxysms of pain, up to a climax and then down to an uneasy annihilation in “sleep,” the last word of the
sonnet. The placing of the two groups of /p/ alliterations,
the strong opening /p/’s at the beginning and the weak closing /p/’s at the end, embody this progression.
So far, I have given instances of Hopkins’ control of his medium, the English language, which anyone willing to read slowly and carefully can find for him- or herself. But I would argue that his capacity to build meaningful linguistic structures in his poem goes well beyond what even the most conscientious reader can pick out. If we look below the level of normal speech-sound repetitions
(rhyme, alliteration, assonance) we will see that
patternings of phonetic/phonological features of the speech sounds in the sonnet also support, even embody, its meaning. Aided by the Pattern-Finder, I will give two simple examples.
The first is the distribution of pre-tonic voiceless
consonants, that is to say, those consonants in the positions
spotlighted by stress (see illustration 1: file Hopkins
C cons-stress voiceless). We can think of voiceless
consonants (speech sounds which are in the minority among
English consonants, and in an even smaller minority if we consider the total number of English speech sounds) as a small—and especially salient because small—number of interruptions to the stream of vocal vibration ocurring as the poet or reader recites the sonnet. These interruptions
will take the form either of small explosions (plosives)
or small frications (fricatives) or something of both
(affricates). We see how noticeable they are in the explosive
first line’s “pitched past pitch of grief,” or the dragging, elongated quality of the tenth line’s “frightful, sheer
no-man-fathomed! Hold them cheap”
There are other things to be said about the function of pretonic voiceless consonants in the sonnet (see, again, illustration 1: file Hopkins C cons-stress voiceless), but here we will focus only on distributional gaps—where they are absent. We note that while there may be as many as five in a line (see frequency counts (leftmost, in red) for lines 2, 5 and 10), there is only one line with a single pre-tonic voiceless consonant, and only one with none at all. Line 4, with no pre-tonic voiceless consonants, is one in which the poet appeals to the Virgin Mary for “relief.” The forcefulness of his expression of distress is softened by the maternal presence which he is addressing; he begs and wails as a small child would. The last line, 14 evokes the dropping away of painful sensation into oblivion; the paroxysms are temporarily quieted. The final thing the poet focuses on is the state of “sleep,” and this is the only word in the line picked out by an initial voiceless consonant.
Another feature-distribution worth mentioning, this one a contrast, is that of the stressed front versus the stressed back vowels in the sonnet. Stressed front vowels very much predominate: they are just over twice as frequent as stressed back vowels (see illustration 2: file Hopkins
V stress front vs stress back). In the literature on
phonetic symbolism, an area in which much work has been
done on symbolic attributions to speech sounds, such as brightness and darkness, largeness and smallness, front vowels have been found to be bright, active, small, sharp and fast, and back vowels, dark, passive, large, dull and slow (see Sapir 1929, Newman 1933, Grammont 1946 among many others). So, given that the sonnet is about suffering, our finding might at first seem counterintuitive. But then we consider that the suffering described is acute (“Pitched past pitch of grief”), and that the consciousness
evoked in the poem is just as intensely pleading for
release (“my cries heave”). Moreover, the form of release
grudgingly granted (“Here! Creep/ Wretch”) is only the temporary one of sleep. Thus, we realize that the sharp, bright, wakeful quality of the front vowels is apt for the evocation of a painful emotional state which is bound to recurr. We see that in line 11 and the beginning of 12, where the largest cluster of back vowels in the poem is found, these dominate for only a minute stretch: “Nor long does our small durance…” but are then taken over by the front vowels again “deal with that steep or deep. Here! Creep/Wretch..” Finally, the last line is the only one without any back vowels: there will be no true
escape into something larger than the suffering self. The consciousness is to be granted only a temporary respite in the “whirlwind.”
This is a preliminary sample of the kind of work one is able to do using the Pattern-Finder. As I said earlier, Hopkins was an accomplished linguist; he is known for two terms, ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’ that suggest the
influence of subliminal awareness on poetic meaning. His concepts would lead us to believe that his poetry is a natural candidate for our approach:“ The word ‘inscape’ (coined by analogy with ‘landscape’) varies in its
implications. But its main meaning is distinctive pattern, the relationship between parts that creates the integrity of the whole, which in turn is different at different times. ‘All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.’ So there is pattern even in natural accident…No two things, if properly seen, are identical. Individuality is irreplaceable. The key-note
of inscape is therefore not just pattern, but unique
pattern.” (Myitalics) “Instress is the active energy that binds
parts of the inscape of the whole…It is also a faculty of the human mind when it brings things into creative
relationship. It demands an act of pure attention…for ‘the eye and the ear are for the most part shut and instress
cannot come…’ ” (Davies, 1998, quoting Hopkins)
References
Burke, K. (1973) On Musicality in Verse in The
Philosophy of Literary Form, Berkely, CA: University
of California Press
Davies, W, (ed) (1998) Poetry and Prose of Gerard
Manley Hopkins, London, UK: J. M. Dent
Grammont, M. (1946) Traité de Phonétique, Paris:
Delagrave
Ladefoged, P. (1982) A Course in Phonetics, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich Inc.
Martin, R. B. (1991) Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life, London, UK: HarperCollins
Newman, S. (1933) Further experiments in phonetic symbolism, American Journal of Psychology v 45, pp 53-75
Peterson, G.E. and H. L. Barney, (1952) Control methods used in the study of the identification of vowels, Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America v 24 # 2, pp175-184
Sapir, E. (1929) A study in phonetic symbolism, Journal of experimental psychology, v 12, pp 225-239
Saussure, F. de (1959) Course in General Linguistics, New York, NY: The Philosophical Library
Vendler, H (1988) The Music of What Happens,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.