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Yes, Matthew, the puns are interesting indeed. Exiles could have just as well been called "Once U-pun a Rhyme . . ."

 

But allow me to delay addressing the puns for a bit, and take stock of where we are. At the risk of simplifying both Amy's and Bishop Flores's points, which is not my intention, it sounds like we've moved on to motives and intentions -- of the characters, the author(s), and the narrator of Exiles. Let me try to throw my two cents in, and in the process address or at least underscore what's already been said.

 

While by no means simple itself, the motive of the sisters -- with slight variety in the degree of comprehension (e.g., Sister Aurea vs. Sister Barbara) -- seems straightforward enough. Amy deftly points out that there was no sense of second-guessing on the part of the nuns -- which isn't to say that their deaths were thereby any less horrible. If anything, the struggle to maintain a hold on their faith was all the more difficult -- at least for the reader, atheist or believing, to comprehend. But the absence of hesitation on the sisters' part reveals how well they possess the habit of obedience to God's will obtained through their religious formation.

 

That leaves us with Father Hopkins:

 

But the scruples to which he was prey caused Hopkins to consider the worldly pursuit of poetry writing in conflict with his vocation to the priesthood. Just before entering the Society of Jesus in 1868, Hopkins resolved to pen no more verse unless his religious superiors requested it, and in a theatrical act of renunciation he incinerated some copies of his Oxford poems in a secret ceremony that he inconspicuously noted in his journal simply as "the slaughter of the innocents." And that act of renunciation was confirmed for him when, as a novice Jesuit, he was urged to relinquish "disordered attachments" that would impede his freedom and availability for a variety of ministries as well as tempt him to the sin of pride . . . .

 

And yet . . . there was always an interior and hard-to-quell 'and yet.'

 

I find this passage the most telling when it comes to Hopkins's motives and ambitions -- here we do have some second guessing. His own death, of course, is another matter, and clearly he embraces his eternal destiny at the end of the book. Although, as Bishop Flores notes, even there, some second-guessing on the part of the narrator (are we to assume Hopkins's as well?) at least implies that Hopkins's own life was not as self-possessed as that of the sisters.

 

Much can be made, of course, of the ambiguity with which Hopkins was "requested" to write "The Wreck":

 

Hopkins held open the newspaper so [Rector] Jones could see the multiple articles on the Deutschland shipwreck. Hopkins told him, "The nuns have been laid out for viewing in the Convent of Jesus and Mary near Stratford. I would guess they'll be interred in St. Patrick's cemetery, just a mile from where I was born."

 

When the rector's interest seems to wane, Hopkins reads the account to him.

 

Jones sighed, "Requiescant in pace," but then glanced over at his underling. Hopkins was so greatly affected by the account that he was close to tears.

 

Jones kindly considered him and said, "Perhaps someone should write a poem on the subject." And then the Rector gently patted Hopkins's forearm and got up to heartily greet some theologians who'd just entered.

 

The ambiguity is so thick you can cut it with a parenthesis -- that is, my first read of this passage had me chuckling at the craftiness of Hopkins. The novice Jesuit is learning to be, as the old Protestant term goes, Jesuitical: "I'm not actually asking the rector to be released from my vow of literary poverty, but if I just place enough reminders in front of him, perhaps he'll get the idea in his head to request a poem from me, and I'll be free and clear . . ."

 

Reading the section through a second time, though, left me with more unease than anything. For, as the rector only counters with more ambiguity, Hansen leaves it to the reader to decide who's got the letter and who the spirit on his side -- Hopkins or Jones? Indeed, to redouble the ambiguity, the most striking element of the passage is its conclusion:

 

Hopkins touched a handkerchief to each eye and left The Times for others on a gleaming library table as he walked out. Although he'd at first intended to visit the main chapel for his nightly prayers in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, his thoughts were racing, and in the rapture of inspiration he hurried up the stairs to his room in "The Mansions." And though his "hand was out at first," as he later admitted, Hopkins managed by midnight to pen eight lines . . . .

 

Blessed Sacrament vs. poetry. I guess we see who won out -- at least for the moment. And so begins the composition that would allow him to take his place as one of Clio's literary darlings.

 

 

I think this is about as close as Hansen comes to something ignoble about, as Bishop Flores says, Hopkins's "noble" character. It is bound up in layers of ambiguity, and for that reason cloaked well enough to leave all to the reader's discretion -- and for all that, a true marvel of Hansen's pen (which itself seems to be dancing around the line between letter and spirit, although perhaps in a different way!).

 

This passage tells us more, for sure, than the historical facts of the case -- but it also leaves more questions than answers. Especially if you couple this exquisitely drawn passage with the lingering "And yet" in the previous passage and the rueful "What if" at the end of the book. Can a case be made that Hopkins does not find obedience to God's will as easily as the sisters? Can a case be made that Hopkins is not in fact preferring Parnassus to Mount Zion?

 

If this is the case, then we are dealing, after all, with a moment of fictional interest, and if that's the case, then Hansen has given us something more than the facts. Indeed, the above passages only further confound things when, toward the story's conclusion, the reader arrives at his deathbed confession:

 

Reverend Tom Finlay heard his confession, and included in it was Hopkins's confession not just of sins such as petulance, laziness, and rash judgment but of shutting off the grace of inspiration by not paying enough attention to his poetic gifts (emphasis added).

 

The confessor stared with confusion. "I didn't know you wrote poetry."

 

"I don't," Hopkins said, "but I did once." And then he looked away.

 

Did he not pursue his talents enough? Or in the wrong way? Or was it just that he was confusing what he wrote with not being recognized by critics (thank you, Mr. Bridges!) for what he wrote? In this case Clio is silent once again, and Calliope (epic muse) seems to be speaking out of both sides of her mouth.

 

 

But on another level, there's something about Exiles that makes one sit up and take notice. Again, I think a good deal of this has been drawn out of the book in our discussion, but I'd like to reiterate: Hansen seems to be playing a game with history, as if he's daring history to betray something with his fictional nudges.

 

Let me put it this way, and in the process try to answer Matthew's query regarding punning: Hansen portrays his poet in the act of composing. How does one do that successfully in such a way that is both believable and meaningful to the story as a whole? I want to quote Auden one more time, this time in an essay he's written on Isben, "Genius & Apostle":

 

Actors . . . can toy with cucumber sandwiches, but they cannot eat a hearty meal because a hearty meal cannot be imagined taking less than three quarters of an hour to consume. Dramatists have been known to expect an actor to write a letter on stage, but it always looks ridiculous; on stage a letter can be read aloud but cannot be written in silence.

 

While Auden's essay is speaking specifically to stagecraft, it strikes me that, in part, what he has to say can be equally applied to fiction. A novelist who spends his time narrating every action of a hearty meal (unless of course that action is pertinent to the plot) will usually lose his readers somewhere in the middle of the second course. Furthermore, what Auden says about Isben's "artist-genius" can apply equally to the artist-as-hero in fiction:

 

It was inevitable that, sooner or later, a dramatist would ask himself if the artist genius could be substituted for the traditional man of action as a dramatic hero. A sensible dramatist, however, would immediately realize that a direct treatment would be bound to fail.

 

This "direct treatment" is exactly what Hansen manages to avoid -- but for all that, Exiles still comes off sounding less like fiction, more like history. Why? Auden lists three technical pratfalls that the playwright should avoid (and I would insist these also hold, more or less, for the novelist). Some of these Hansen avoids, some he doesn't.

 

First, Auden points out, the artist is not a doer like Achilles or Othello; he's a maker, and as such, adapting what Auden says about the challenges to the playwright, what the artist makes cannot easily be rendered part of the narrative framework. Second, Auden points out, the audience needs to be convinced through the actions of the character that he is a genuine artistic genius. Again, I think Hansen does a fairly good job of at least showing where Hopkins's genius is authentic.

 

It is interesting to note that, as an illustration, Auden chooses a playwright who has a poet as his artistic genius:

 

If he is a poet, for example, the poetry of his that the audience hears must be of the first order. But even if the dramatist is himself a great poet, the only kind of poetry he can write is his own; he cannot make up a special kind of poetry for his hero, unlike his own yet equally great.

 

Again, Hansen avoids this hazard by writing about a character who is also fictitious, and comes with his lines already written. Hansen's job is merely to fill in the spaces between the lines, as it were; show us how these lines pertain essentially to the subject at hand, namely, the German religious exiles bound for America. Bishop Flores noted that there seems to be a correspondence between the sprung rhythm in Hopkins's lines and Hansen's handsomely galloping prose. I agree it's probably there -- and maybe I'm also suffering at the soft verges of literary expectations here -- but Hansen needs to show more of the necessity involved in writing these lines. Why these and no others? What makes it difficult to fathom, admittedly, is the notoriously dense character of Hopkins's gifts.

 

 

But we've already seen in the passage quoted that Hansen has a preternatural fascination with nature -- the ice-skating party comes to mind, as do the landscapes Hansen shows us Hopkins looking at. The operative word, I think, is shows. Hansen shows us the landscapes in his novel -- perhaps the most prevalent "showings" in the novel -- to show Hopkins's talent in its inchoate form. The puns are yet another way of getting at these first bursts of inspiration. It's almost as if Hansen is showing us: Look, the man can't help himself -- if he tries to dam up the poems one way, they'll come spilling out in another.

 

Hopkins's second attempt at composition is equally telling. Compared to his first passionate swipe at the poem, Hansen portrays Hopkins's more tranquil recollection of emotion after kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament (reversing his earlier, more rash attempt at composition):

 

Without giving up on the stanzas he'd completed, Hopkins went up to his room in The Mansions one night and began his poem again, writing ten introductory stanzas of autobiography and homage to the Trinity: God who is "lightening and love" and "Father and fondler of heart thou has wrung." With a pun on "mastering" as owing and controlling skills or talents but also captaining a ship, Hopkins initiated "Part the First" of "The Wreck of the Deutschland" with these stanzas . . . .

 

Nature, the puns, the first burst of inspiration, and now, weighing anchor, Hopkins himself is poised to set sail on the seas of composition. But without those earlier signals to the reader through Hopkins's own perception, we would never have the sense that the stuff was floating around and only needed the tranquility of grace to draw them together like bootlaces.

 

It seems Hopkins received the green light from his superiors -- well, from his ultimate Superior -- after all.

 

I've gone on far too long, so will end with a question: Does Hansen meet with equal success in Exiles itself? In other words, does he, like Hopkins, in fact pull the strings together successfully? Given contrasts between the sisters and the priest-poet and the tension of nature and grace, of literary fame and eternal salvation, of obedience and inclination, does Hansen present us with a work of Catholic fiction? Beneath all the explicit Catholicity of the work, is there an implicit Catholicity in the approach to and execution of the themes?