Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Folded Dragon Hidden Cavern

Robert Bridges presumably knew that Gerard Manley Hopkins was gay, but I wonder if that's what he had in mind here:

therefore the poem [the Wreck of the Deutschland] stands logically as well as chronologically in the front of his book, like a great dragon folded in the gate to forbid all entrance, and confident in his strength from past success. This editor advises the reader to circumvent him and attack him later in the rear; for he was himself shamefully worsted in a brave frontal assault, the more easily perhaps because both subject and treatment were distasteful to him.


(via Mark Ford's new piece in the NYRB). The sexual implications of backloading one's oeuvre are obvious in hindsight.

2 comments:

Jeremy said...

Am I the only one that read that as "the Wreck of the Deuceland"

Zed said...

Quite probably. I did, however, ineffectually try to come up w/ a "wrecked 'im" joke.