This is a peculiar review, to say the least. Actually, it isn't much of a review at all. It is mostly Donoghue going on about his experiences getting to know and understand Hopkins. Was Hopkins gay? Well, who knows and who really cares? Was Hopkins’s sense of self so acute as to be a danger to his soul? Well, that's what God's for, I guess, to figure that sort of thing out for us. As for Empson's leap from the ambiguity of a word to a statement about the poet's interior life, why bother? One thing seems certain: Hopkins took his faith seriously. A biographer who takes that as a central tenet seems to me to be on the right track. I find Donoghue's problematical approach to literature rather off-putting.
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