God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
“God’s Grandeur” is a sonnet written by the English Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manly Hopkins. Hopkins wrote “God’s Grandeur” in 1877, but as with many of his poems, it wasn’t published until almost thirty years after his 1889 death. The word "grandeur" means grandness or magnificence. In "God's Grandeur" Hopkins conveys his reverence for the magnificence of God and nature, and his despair about the way that humanity has seemed to lose sight of the close connection between God and nature during the Second Industrial Revolution. Though the poem is a traditional 14-line sonnet, it's also an example of Hopkins’s characteristic use of unconventional poetic meters—though the meter of “God’s Grandeur” is actually more conventional than that of many of his other poems.
Summary
The speaker describes a natural world through which God's presence runs like an electrical current, becoming momentarily visible in flame-like flashes that resemble the sparkling of metal foil when moved in the light. Alternately, the speaker describes God's presence as being like a rich oil (such as olive oil), whose true power or greatness is only revealed when crushed to its essence. Given this powerful undercurrent of evidence of God's presence in the world, the speaker asks, why do human beings not heed God’s divine authority? The speaker starts to answer his own question by describing the state of human life: the way that humanity over the generations has endlessly walked over the ground, and the way that industry and economic pursuits have damaged and corrupted the landscape such that it looks and smells only of men (and not of God). Not only has the land been stripped bare of the natural things that once lived upon it, but even the shoes that people now wear have cut off the physical connection between their feet and the earth they walk on.
And yet, the speaker asserts, nature never loses its power, and deep down life always continues to exist. Though the sun will always fade into the darkness of night in the west, morning will always follow by springing up over the edge of the horizon in the east. The source of this constant cycle of regeneration is the grace of a God who guards the broken world much like a mother bird uses its body to watch over and keep warm its eggs and hatchlings.
Themes
God, Nature, and Man
The poem's very first line establishes the profound connection between God and nature that the speaker explores throughout "God's Grandeur." God is not connected to nature merely because God created nature. Rather, the speaker describes God as actively suffused within nature, as an ever-present "charge" running through it. Further, by describing God's grandeur as being something that will "flame out," or as being something as tangible as the oil that oozes from a crushed olive, the speaker makes an additional claim: that human beings can perceive, contemplate, or even interact with God through nature. The speaker reveres nature not only because it is a divine creation, but also because it is a direct conduit between humanity and God.
The belief in such a deep link among God, nature, and humanity explains the speaker's despair about how humanity is ruining the natural world. In destroying nature ("sear[ing]", "smear[ing]", and "blear[ing]" it), humanity is destroying God's creation and severing its own connection to God. Even worse, humanity is not only destroying nature, but replacing the pristine sights, sounds, and smells of the natural world—and God's "charge" within it— with the "smudge" and "smell" of human beings.
At the same time, nature's connection to God gives the speaker hope: because it is the creation of an omnipotent God who continues to watch over the world, nature can never be obscured or ruined by human beings. The natural cycles of life and death (implied by the references to sunset followed by sunrise), and the fact that God is still fulfilling his "charge" to protect nature (the way a mother bird "broods" over an egg), give the speaker confidence that nature will endure humanity's plundering and be reborn. Yet the speaker seems unsure about humanity's own place within nature's endless cycles: it's unclear if the speaker's vision of a reborn world includes humanity or not.
Industry and Destruction
Hopkins wrote "God's Grandeur" in 1877, in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution, which was a period of rapid technological advancement, including the expansion of factories, railroads, and electrical power. While the Second Industrial Revolution had many positive aspects, such as improving standards of living and loosening the social restrictions that blocked the lower classes from rising, it also had a brutal impact on nature: clear-cutting and mining for resources decimated the landscape; pollution from factories and trains darkened the air and water; and growing urbanization replaced countryside with cities and suburbs.
In short, the rise of industry came at the expense of the natural world. In lines 5-8, the speaker of "God's Grandeur" laments the destruction of nature and the reckless way that humanity is engaging in this destruction. The repetition of "have trod" in line 5 captures the unceasing and almost mindless way that humanity has worn down the earth over countless generations. Hopkins's expressive—or even graphic—choice of the words "seared," "bleared," and "smeared" conveys Hopkins's disgust at how "all" has been corrupted and destroyed by humanity's relentless "trade" and "toil." The rise of industry has caused nature, once pristine and free of the unnatural stains of mankind, to be marred by "man's smudge" and "man's smell."
Finally, in line 8, the speaker notes how the blind pursuit of economic growth has made humanity unable to even recognize the destruction that the rise of industry has left in its wake. The earth has been laid bare by industrial development, but people can no longer even feel the ground beneath their feet because they are wearing shoes that symbolize the mass production of the industrial world. In "God's Grandeur," the speaker describes a double tragedy: how humanity destroyed nature and its connection to God, and how the destruction is so complete that humanity can't even recognize what it has lost.
신의 장엄함
세상은 신의 장엄함으로 충만해있다.
그것은 흔들리는 금박 조각처럼 빛을 발하며
으깨어낸 개암나무의 기름처럼 모여서 거대함을 이룬다.
어찌하여 사람들은 그의 권위에 무관심한 것인가?
세대가 지나가고 지나가고 지나가;
모든 것이 타협으로 무감각해지고; 눈은 흐려지고 수고함으로 더러워졌으며
인간의 허물을 입고서 인간의 악취를 공유하오.
토양은 이제 황폐해졌으며, 신을 신었기에 발은 느끼지도 못하오.
하지만 이 모든 것들로 인해서도 자연은 결코 쇠잔해지지 않고
가장 소중한 신선함이 깊은 곳 그것에 존재하며
마지막 빛이 어두운 서녘 하늘 아래로 사라진다 해도
오, 아침은 동녘의 벼랑 끝에서 밝아오오---
이것은 성령이, 굽은 세상을
따뜻한 가슴고 오! 찬란한 날개로써 품어 안음 이리요.
* 홉킨스 생애
- 화가가 되고자 했으나 1866년 로마가톨릭으로 개종 -> 예수회에 들어감(신부가 됨) -> 이때 그는 그의 초기시들이 세속적이라며 다 태웠다. -> 농촌에서 성직자로 근무 -> 그가 죽은 지 29년이 지나서야 그의 시가 출판되었다. 그러나 너무 독창적이고 난해해서 거의 팔리지 않았다
* 시인으로서의 경력
- 빅토리아시대의 시인 but 현대시인들과 1920, 1930년대 영미시단에 큰영향을 끼친 것을 감안해 현대시인으로 본다.
- 성직자가 되고 이전 시를 다태웠지만 1875년 수녀들이 탄 배가 침몰하는 사건 이후, [The Wreck of the Deutschland]라는 시를 쓴다. -> 다시 시인이 됨
- 훌륭한 소네트 집필: [God’s Grandeur], [Pied Beauty], [The Starlight Night], [Spring], [The Sea and the skylark], [The Windhover]
- [Terrible Sonnets]: 시인과 성직자 사이에서 갈등하며 정신적 공허와 절망이 드러난다.
- 이후 자연의 아름다움에 신이 깃들어있다고 여긴다.
- 19세기에 시를 썻지만, ‘sprung rhythm(도약률)’의 창안 ->20세기 현대시의 기법을 창안하고 실험한 현대시, 자유시의 효시로 평가된다.
* 홉킨스의 특징
1. Sprung Rhythm이라는 독특한 운율을 창안
2. Sonnet 전문시인 (God's Grandeur, The Windhover 모두 소네트 형식)
3. 전통적인 시형식을 무시하고 독창적이고 새로운 시작법을 만듦 -> 사후에 더 인정받음
4. 도치, 생략문장 같이 복잡한 문장을 사용
5. Romanticism에서 탈피한 20C Modernism에 가깝다.
6. 자연을 다룰때 Inscape(감성적 풍경), Instress(감성적 긴장)이 드러난다.
7. 주요 제재: 자연, 종교, 신, 인간 / 종교시인이다.