Gerard Manley Hopkins, selected poems Contents
Commentary on To What Serves Mortal Beauty
The danger of beauty
The octave sets out the problem, typical of the traditional petrarchan octave:
- Mortal, meaning human, beauty is ‘dangerous' (a word Hopkins uses also in The Windhover, where it is applied to Christ's beauty)
- In medieval times, the word meant ‘ownership, power and control' so beauty is powerful and controlling
- To religious people, it could be dangerous in the modern sense, too, since it could lead beholders astray, either through vanity or infatuation.
Can beauty be good?
The artist's desire is to try to ‘seal' beauty, capture it in a painting or poem.
More on capturing beauty: How to capture beauty is what the Romantic poet, John Keats, discusses in his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
- To a celibate man, like Hopkins, the sight of beauty, as in a pretty woman dancing, could well be distracting (and not just to celibates!)
- If such a beautiful person is gazed on ‘out of countenance', the desired person merely becomes an object
- However, if beauty is just glanced at then some real good could come, some desire which has a moral sense to it
Beauty can save
In the last three lines, Hopkins goes on to give the example of Gregory, one of the leadersof the church in Rome, who saw two English boys being sold as slaves. He was so struck by their beauty, he enquired where they had come from. Eventually, this led to the mission of St. Augustine of Canterbury, to England, and the evangelisation of much of southern England (hence the story of the pun on ‘Angles' (English) and ‘angels').
Conclusion
In the sestet, Hopkins tries to bring a solution:
- Outer beauty can truly reveal an inner beauty
- Even better is to see that all humans are beautiful, and we can get glimpses of their inner beauty
- So don't reject outer beauty, but don't make too much of it, either
- The best thing of all is to wish for that other beauty, the grace of God.
Investigating To What Serves Mortal Beauty
- Do you agree that beauty can be ‘controlling' or destructive if ‘gazed out of countenance'?
- Are you suspicious of human beauty, or do you enjoy it?
- What good can you see coming from human beauty?
- Are you suspicious of human beauty, or do you enjoy it?
- Have you ever been able to see beauty in someone, even though at first glance, they seem rather plain, or even ugly?
- How have you been able to see it?
- Gather together the words that are linked to beauty in the sonnet.
The 8-line stanza of a Petrarchan sonnet, always occupying the first eight lines. It sometimes has a division halfway, creating two quatrains. It poses a problem or describes some single object or incident.
In the style of Petrarch, an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, who created both a form of the sonnet and presented a courtly ideal of womanhood.
Title (eventually used as name) given to Jesus, refering to an anointed person set apart for a special task such as a king.
1. Term for a worshipping community of Christians.
2. The building in which Christians traditionally meet for worship.
3. The worldwide community of Christian believers.
Rome ' the capital of Italy and the Roman Empire, traditionally founded by Romulus in 753 BC
1. A group of people sent out to share religious faith.
2. The task of sharing faith.
The 6-line stanza of a Petrarchan sonnet, occupying the last six lines, sometimes divided into tercets or couplets. It often resolves the problem posed in the octave or comments significantly on it.
Undeserved favour. The Bible uses this term to describe God's gifts to human beings.
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