I’m leaving here some other Gerard Manley Hopkins trivia I have found on my travels, in case anyone arrives at this thread searching ‘Dorian rhythm’ or similar.
- Apparently Hopkins was working on a commentary on Greek lyric before he died, which he thought would be his greatest work, greater even than his poetry. The first part was to deal with ‘Dorian metrics’ and the second with how he thought Greek lyric had been composed.
Todd Bender, Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Classical Background and Critical Reception of His Work, 1966, pp.71 ff.
This book is available for free on Project Muse.
Hopkins believed that his most important literary work was to be a commentary on Greek lyric art, in comparison with which he thought his English verse unimportant. If indeed this work was ever completed, it is now lost; but the general drift of it can be reconstructed from his extant papers. It was to be in two volumes: one treating Dorian metrics, the other dealing with the technique of composition of the Greek choral and lyric odes. Subsequent scholarship tends to show
that his volume on metrics was based on a misconception about Greek verse; but his volume on structural principles has since been at least partially verified and, in fact, shown to be a brilliant insight into the method of composition of certain Greek lyrics. It is unfortunate therefore that what little attention has been given to his analysis of Greek lyric art has been concentrated on the metrical side of his study. An examina tion of Hopkins’ theory of the structural principle of lyric and choral odes shows: ( 1) that he accurately foresees Gilbert Norwood’s hypothesis about Pindar’s method of composition, (2) that Norwood’s hypothesis, in turn, explains the structure of " The Wreck of the Deutschland," and (3) that Hopkins’ theory about the organization of Greek lyrics is consistent with Ford’s theory of the unearned increment or Read’s theory of the collage effect in modern art.
…
It seems that Hopkins believed that the Greek verse, which he called logaoedic, was composed of dactylic and trochaic feet mixed indiscriminately, but that the feet were equivalent because they were isochronous. Modern classical scholarship, although not absolutely conclusive, tends to show that his theory, insofar as it describes Greek practice, is not accurate.3 But even if Hopkins’ theory of Dorian meter is inaccurate as a description of the Greek, his misconception may have influenced his English meter (or vice versa) and therefore his study would have been of great interest to the student of his poetry if the manuscript had not been lost.
- He composed some Greek and Latin verse, most of which has been lost.
Bassanio’s song in The Merchant of Venice, III, ii:
Tell me where is Fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.
It is engender’d in the eyes
With gazing fed; and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring Fancy’s knell;
I’ll begin it,-Ding, dong, bell.
Hopkins’ Latin version reads:
Rogo vos Amor unde sit, Camenae:
Quis illum genuit? quis educavit?
Qua vel parte oritindus ille nostra
Sit frontis mage pectorisne alumnus
Consultae memorabitis, sorores.
Amorem teneri creant ocelli;
Pascunt qui peperere; mox eumdem
Aversi patiuntur interire.
Nam curas abiisse ita in feretrum!
Amorem tamen efferamus omnes,
Quern salvere jubemus et valere
Sic, O vos pueri atque vos puella:
Eheu, heu, Amor, ilicet, valeto.
Eheu, heu, Amor, ilicet, valeto.
And this, in turn, is rendered in Greek:
οτροφή. χορευτής ά]
τίς ἔρωτος, τίς ποτ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἁ πατρὶς ᾖν; ρευτὴς
τίς δέ νιν τίκτει, τίς ἔθρεψεν, ἀνδρῶν ἢ θεῶν;
πότερ᾽ αὐτὸν καρδίας ἢ κεφαλᾶς ἐτήτυμον εἴπω
τὸν καὶ πάλαι ὡς ἐπιστρωφῶντα μᾶλλον
τόπον ; οὐ γάρ, οὐκ ἔχω πᾶ τάδε θεὶς δὴ τύχοιμ᾽ ἄν.
ἀντιοτροφή. χορευτής β’]
τὸν ἔρωτ᾽ ἆρ’ οὐχ ἑλικοβλεφάροις
ἆρ᾽ ῳς ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσι τραφέντ᾽ ἀκούεις ταῖδα μέν,
συνέφαβον δ᾽ ἱμέρου καὶ χάριτος τέως νεοθαλοῦς
τηλαυγέσιν ἐν πρόσωπον τοῖς θεάτροις
τέλος ἐκπεσόντα φροῦδον, θανάτῳ φροῦδον ἔρρειν;
ἐπῳδός. κορυφαῖος] φροῦδος ἔρως, φροῦδος ἡμῖν.
ἡμιχόριον α] ἀλλ᾽ αἴλινον αἴλινον εἴπωμεν, ἄνδρες.
ἡμιχόριον β] αἴλινον γὰρ αἴλινον εἴπωμεν.
χορός] αἰαῖ, φροῦδος ἔρως τὸ λοιπόν, φροῦδος ἡμῖν ἔρως.
3. John Stevens has collected Hopkins’s extant music, including notation where available p.466-497 of The Journals And Papers Of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Graham, 1959). The only other surviving Greek setting is Gregorian chant to Pindar’s Olympian 2. I tried transcribing this from ‘moveable Do’ into A major with one beat per punctum as is usual with chant but this struck me as obviously wrong, so I tried again, approximating the clustering in the original, especially in the descending passage (climacus). The result seems more how I would imagine, but I might be way off.
