647 / 676
BOOKS
649
Christ" or the naturalistically spatial reading of the word "pitch" in Poem
65 (at the expense of the much richer "throw-ness" merely indicated in a
footnote) contradict Hopkins' own conviction at this stage of
his
spiritual growth. By now, the poet no longer locates man's project in
relation to Being, but in his will, consciousness or, as he calls it,
arbitrium.
But this kind of will no longer exists as the will-towards-space of Joseph
Frank's Proustian artist. It has finally separated itself, perhaps with
infinite pain, from that illusion. It now exists in the difficult, unresolved
realm of time, where everything i.s always stilI ahead of us, at once
threateningly imminent and elusively beyond our grasp. Mr. Miller
rightly puts the exclamation of the dying nun in "The Wreck of the
Deutschland" "0 Christ, Christ, come quickly" at the center of Hopkins's
doctrine of grace, but he fails to stress that this is essentially a temporal
outcry. Throughout his crucial last pages on Hopkins, I find Hillis
Miller's distinctions between "nature" and "God," "correspondence"
and
"arbitrium,"
"freedom" and "grace" insufficiently thought through;
it is quite possible that these distinctions remained blurred in Hopkins
himself, but it would have been Mr. Miller's task to unravel them instead
of maintaining the ambivalence. His reading of Arnold would have been
an excellent model.
Of course, had he done so, his method would have been affected,
and he could not have written the same introduction. For if poetic
Ii
ji··
AS I LAY DYING
By WILLIAM FAULKNER
$1.65,
now at your bookstore
IlANPOM HOUSE
from AVON
.,
3 Distinguished Fall Titles
.-_
CALL IT SLEEP
Henry Roth
For
30
years
an
underground
classic, now available
in
paper–
back for the fIrst
time.
THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
Herman Kahn
By
the controversial author
of ON
THERMONUCLEAR WAR,
a
non–
technical exposition
of
his argu–
ment.
ON CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Richard Kostelanetz, ed.
A 638 -
page collection
of essays
by
leading
critics on
the major
writers
of
the post-war era.
AVON, 959 Eighth Avenue, N_V.C.
I