Gerard Manley Hopkins
125 years ago, on June 8th 1889, Gerard Manley Hopkins died in Dublin at the age of 44, the most prominent English Catholic poet and the father of modern English poetry; raised in a wealthy Anglican clerk family, during his university studies (classical) a participant of the Oxford Movement, under the influence of Bl. JH Newman he converted (1866) to Catholicism and joined the Jesuit Order; ordained to the priesthood in 1877, then worked as a preacher in England and Scotland; between 1882 and 1884 he taught Greek and Latin at Blackburn, then classical philology in Dublin; he found the metaphysical source of his poetic world in philosophy (and ascetic religiosity) of the Subtle Doctor – Bl. John Duns Scotus, and especially in its haecceitas category (the uniqueness of a unit of people and things, their "inner form " rendering that an object is just what it is, and not something else); his most famous series are the so- called dark sonnets; he died of typhoid fever, reportedly uttering the words "I'm so happy".
prof. Jacek Bartyzel
translated by Arek Jakubczyk
Kategoria: Reactionary Diary
