I'm not sure if I agree that utopianism is based on the idea that "that history tells a story with a happy ending." I think, rather, that utopianism is based on the idea - surely false - that we can devise a sociopolitical system that will solve any and all problems. As for history, it is simply the sequence of events. I happen to believe, along with Julian of Norwich, that "all will be well and all manner of thing will be well," but that's because I also believe that "the Holy Ghost over the bent /world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."
Hopkins can make the world seem brighter and reveal "the dearest freshness deep down things," but I think he'd see history more as a "dappled thing": sometimes the grandeur of God, sometimes a place of "mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap / May who ne'er hung there."
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Hopkins moment in the middle of the day. I keep his collected poems by my son's crib to read on those long nights while waiting for him to drift off. Nothing better to fill the empty, quiet night.
--Bob (ArtBlogByBob.blogspot.com)