qjquinton的部落格

Yesterday I was reading an autobiographic literary composition by G.M. Hopkins and recovered it to be uncannily corresponding to that of the Hindu ideology of Mortification and Renunciation as a money to accomplish to divinity.

Hopkins' poem, The Habit of Perfection was unruffled in 1866, the identical year he was not long after acceptable into the Catholic Church. He brainwave it fit to contradict himself the earthly pleasures calculated from the senses in bid to achieve state in God's analysis.

Hopkins chooses spiritual Silence and invokes it to lucky charm his ears next to its auditory communication. He afterwards asks the lips to rest dumb, since they change state clear solely by taciturn entry to God. He besides asks the opinion to loiter shut, because this alone enables them to see the uncreated godly muted. Normal eyesight, on the contrary, deposit bound; overcome and unfocused by the moving swarm of property. Likewise, he asks the palate, wherein is keep all the gourmet's pleasures, not to want for inebriant for wetting the palate, because in devout fasts even cans and crusts are reciprocally treacly and firm as the intoxicant itself.

Further, the rhymester tells the nostrils that spell their regular activity is spent on the boosting and reparation of pride, they would relish by far the scent curled up from incense- load-bearing censers in the private sanctum sanctorum of the place of worship. He also tells the guardianship that want to quality the consistence of flowers and the feet that hope to perceive the elastic conceding grass, that the feet will larger select to amble the gold-paved way of heaven, and the custody will better whip the ordained Host from the temple and present the sacrament at the Mass.

Lastly, to downright the method of ne plus ultra the lyricist proposes to Poverty to be his bride, and at the marriage-feast he will equip his relative with refulgent achromatic clothes, symbolical of purity, similar to lilies of the field which shall be neither labored nor spun.

The Habit of Perfection refers not merely to the light-colored robe ("habit") that symbolizes perfection, but likewise to the dedicated controlled movement of flawlessness by renouncing and transcending the esthetic pleasures. The poet's confidence is that one and only by a single-minded withdrawal from the outermost international can one go in into the hidden spiritual vivacity. The verse suggests the success of the ascetical complete the intense lateral of his disposition.

The verse is autobiographical, but is divine in its import.