Downdolphinry

DOWNDOLPHINRY RONALD BATES I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air. To begin with a commonplace, a poem is a matter of words-all the words and probably all their meanings. Consider Hopkins' "The Windhover ," in which the single word "dauphin" can be the first link of a chain leading to the centre of the poem. W. A. M. Peters, in his book on Hopkins, refers to an article by Harris Downey in which the etymological link between "dauphin" and "dolphin" is pointed out.1 Peters, however, considers it unlikely that Hopkins had this idea in mind, as it would confuse the imagery. He goes on to state that Jones's Pronouncing Dictionary gives no such pronunciation of dolphin' But to bring Jones's book into this context is clearly a red herring, as can be seen by referring to Downey's actual statement: Dauphin is a variant of dolphin, though not vice-versa. The pelagic fish' are noted for the brilliant and dappled colours assumed when they are out of water and dying.' In his prose, Hopkins says "After the sunset the horizon was, by 4.10, lined a long way by a glowing tawny light, not very pure in colour and distinctly textured in hummocks, bodies like a shoal of dolphins." One might quote other references that he made to these creatures of that pied beauty of which he was so fond.' Downey merely points out the etymological relationship between the two words; he is not concerned with pronunciation. The key point here is the quotation about dolphins by Hopkins himself, and the various other uses the poet made of this whole complex of idea and observation. Surely the dolphin is no more confUSing to the imagery than, say, the picture of skating, brought into the poem in line 6. The skating image is almost purely visual and motional; so is the dolphin image, with, however, the added symbolic suggestiveness of the dolphin as a saviour of men which is found in such Greek legends as that of Arion, and remains in the popular imagination. But let us do as Downey suggests : examine some of Hopkins' references to the dolphin. Volume XXXVI, Number 3, April, 1967 230 RONALD BATES The quotation which Downey uses comes from a letter by Hopkins printed in the periodical Nature (I5 November 1883) concerning certain curious appearances in the sky connected with what Hopkins, in another letter to Nature (3 January 1884) on the same subject, called "the pageant or phenomena we call sunset.'" (The idea of "pageant" in relation to sunset and the chivalric element in "The Windhover" will occupy us shortly.) Hopkins' sentence does not end where Downey stops, but continues "... or in what are called gadroons, or as the Japanese conventionally represent waves.'" Although dolphins are obviously associated with water, we should note that Hopkins is concerned with an atmospheric effect which is likened specifically to dolphin shapes, to a stylized wave-efFect, or to curved, sculpted forms Cgadroons). More than a decade before this, and some six years before the composition of "The Windhover," we find Hopkins noting in his Journal: "Bright afternoon; clear distances; Pendle dappled with tufted shadow; west wind; interesting clouding, flat and lying in the warp of the heaven but the pieces with rounded outline and dolphin-backs shewing in places and all was at odds and at Z's, one piece with another. Later beautifully delicate crisping. Later rippling ....". The linking of cloud effects and waves is perhaps not too unusual, but Hopkins frequently made such connections, and, what is more, in some rather unusual combinations. In "The Windhover" the image of the "wimpling wing" is surely striking. But the idea of sky or water forms seen as folded cloth is One that Hopkins liked. The entry for 16 July 1868 reads: At Grindelwald are two glaciers, the upper and the lower, which are in fact two descending limbs of one.... In slanted brooks the bias keeps falling from bank to bank across and so knits the stream and glaciers also arc cross-hatched with...