The Wreck of the Deutschland is a 35-stanza ode by Gerard Manley Hopkins with Christian themes, composed in 1875 and 1876, though not published until 1918.[1][2] The poem depicts the shipwreck of the SS Deutschland. Among those killed in the shipwreck were five Franciscan nuns forced to leave Germany by the Falk Laws; the poem is dedicated to their memory.

The poem has attracted considerable critical attention,[3] and is often considered Hopkins' masterpiece because of its length, ambition, and use of sprung rhythm and instress.

  • Hopkins's struggles while writing the poem form the basis for the Ron Hansen novel Exiles.[4]
  • The poem plays a major role in Anthony Burgess' third "Enderby" novel, The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End, in which Enderby pitches an idea for a movie adaptation of the poem and produces a script, but the resulting movie bears little resemblance to either his script or to Hopkins's poem.[5]
  • Both Hopkins's efforts to write the poem and the real-life events on the Deutschland are the subject of Simon Edge's novel The Hopkins Conundrum.[6]
  • The first several lines of the ode are part of a relief sculpture above the door inside the Palace of Nations, the home of the United Nations Office at Geneva.[7]

References

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
  1. ↑ Online text and basic information
  2. ↑ Rizq, Michael (12 May 2022). "'Bidding and forbidding': Morality, Prosody, and The Wreck of the Deutschland". The Review of English Studies. doi:10.1093/res/hgac004. ISSN 0034-6551.
  3. ↑ Readings of the Wreck. Ed. Peter Milward and Raymond Schoder. Chicago: University of Loyola Press, 1976.
  4. ↑ "Exiles". Kirkus Reviews. 20 May 2008. Retrieved 11 October 2023.
  5. ↑ O'Hara, J. D. (2 February 1975). "The Clockwork Testament or Enderby's End". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 October 2023.
  6. ↑ "Simon Edge describes 19th century shipwreck that inspired latest novel". 8 May 2017.
  7. ↑ "Inside the Palais des Nations - Richard Flynn".


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