"Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson"
About this Quote
A Victorian poet confessing he’s “begun to doubt Tennyson” is like a priest admitting he’s started to doubt the creed. The line lands with comic chill because Hopkins frames a private shift in taste as a calamity: not “I’m rethinking my influences,” but “a horrible thing has happened to me.” The melodrama is the point. In a culture where Tennyson functioned as the sanctioned voice of English feeling, doubting him wasn’t mere aesthetic nitpicking; it hinted at social and even spiritual dislocation.
Hopkins’ intent is less to take a swipe at the laureate than to register an inner mutation. His own poetic project - sprung rhythm, jagged stresses, ecstatic compression - runs against Tennyson’s polished musicality and public-facing grandeur. The subtext is an artist realizing that the official language of beauty no longer fits his perceptions. “Doubt” echoes religious vocabulary, and Hopkins, a Jesuit with a conscience tuned to scrutiny, chooses it carefully. He dramatizes taste as conscience-work: if Tennyson once offered a stable, approved order of sound and sense, then losing faith in that order feels like losing a map.
Context sharpens the bite. Hopkins wrote in an era when poetry carried national prestige and moral authority; the Poet Laureate was not just famous but legitimizing. To doubt Tennyson is to step out of the warm radius of consensus and into a more solitary, experimental modernity. The joke masks anxiety, but it’s also a declaration of independence: the moment reverence cracks, a new music becomes possible.
Hopkins’ intent is less to take a swipe at the laureate than to register an inner mutation. His own poetic project - sprung rhythm, jagged stresses, ecstatic compression - runs against Tennyson’s polished musicality and public-facing grandeur. The subtext is an artist realizing that the official language of beauty no longer fits his perceptions. “Doubt” echoes religious vocabulary, and Hopkins, a Jesuit with a conscience tuned to scrutiny, chooses it carefully. He dramatizes taste as conscience-work: if Tennyson once offered a stable, approved order of sound and sense, then losing faith in that order feels like losing a map.
Context sharpens the bite. Hopkins wrote in an era when poetry carried national prestige and moral authority; the Poet Laureate was not just famous but legitimizing. To doubt Tennyson is to step out of the warm radius of consensus and into a more solitary, experimental modernity. The joke masks anxiety, but it’s also a declaration of independence: the moment reverence cracks, a new music becomes possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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