CHAPTER IV:
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS AND THE RECK OF THE MOMENT

They fought with God’s cold—

And they could not and fell to the deck

(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled

With the sea-romp over the wreck.

Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble,
The women’s wailing, the crying of child without check—

Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,

A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” 1876

The currently effective messianic elements of the work
of art manifest themselves as its content; the retarding
elements, as its form. Content makes its way toward
us. Form holds back, permits us to approach.

Walter Benjamin, 1919 ^cslv