...'
That is the primary element manifested in one of its simplest, most
recognisable, and some may feel most beautiful forms. But a melody so
simple, though it is perhaps the swiftest of which the English language
is capable without the obscurity which comes of the drowning of sense in
sound, did not satisfy Hopkins. He aimed at complex internal harmonies,
at a counterpoint of rhythm; for this more complex element he coined an
expressive word of his own:--
'But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music and
design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of
calling _inscape_ is what I above all aim at in poetry.'
Here, then, in so many words, is Hopkins's 'avant toute chose' at a
higher level of elaboration. 'Inscape' is still, in spite of the
apparent differentiation, musical; but a quality of formalism seems to
have entered with the specific designation. With formalism comes
rigidity; and in this case the rigidity is bound to overwhelm the sense.
For the relative constant in the composition of poetry is the law of
language which admits only a certain amount of adaptation.
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