70 chapter 2
that “the English accent is emphatic accent, is stress: it commonly includes clear
pitch, but essentially it is stress. Pitch totally disappears in whispering, but our
accent is perfectly given when we whisper.”^69 His letter continues, revealing
Hopkins’s larger philosophical investments in the idea of stress:
But perhaps one ought further to explain what stress is. Stress appears
so elementary an idea as does not need and scarcely allows of definition;
still, this may be said of it, that it is the making of a thing more, or mak-
ing it markedly, what it already is; it is the bringing out of its nature.
Accordingly, stress on a syllable (which is English accent proper) is the
making much of that syllable, more than of the others; stress on a word
or sentence (which is emphasis) is the making much of that word or sen-
tence, more than the others.^70Hopkins joins accent and stress conclusively here, and he seems also to join
metrical stress with his theory of instress: “the accented syllable then is one of
which the nature is well brought out, whatever may become of the others.”
Syllables and words, then, are marked outwardly and bring out the nature of
the syllable or word—a nature that actually exists within the syllable or word,
not as an abstraction of it. Hopkins’s objection to Patmore shows us how
greatly Hopkins invests in the materiality of English accent, the marking of
stress, so that we might “catch first” or “lose last” the nature of a sound, made
material in the ear. As Hopkins narrows his definition of accent and stress
here, he tries to enlist Patmore’s support for a concept of the English language
that mimics Hopkins’s metaphysical definitions of nature and inscape. The
“thingness” of language, manifest in marked stress, has the same potential for
transformative power, for instress, as nature itself, beckoning to be seen in a
certain way. Just as we might see inscape in the natural world or in the graphi-
cally marked metrical stress, Hopkins seems to be grasping at a definition of
concrete accent that might go beyond the visual realm. If he cannot teach eyes
to see in instress the visual patterning in nature but can hope to teach or train
his readers to recognize the flashes of meaning in a metrical mark or a visual
sign, perhaps a heard “accent” can become a universal way of communicating
meaning from poem to reader. Just as he saw that the wavering apprehension
of the stigma’s visual marks were a necessary part of faith in his consideration
of instress, here, too in his consideration of accent we see Hopkins hoping, as
he does in his many explanations of how to “perform” his poetry, that all ears
might hear alike.
For Hopkins, then, the “markedness” of stress is not only to be read literally,
as a graphic mark; the inscape might also be “marked” for the ear, but unlike
the perceivable patterns in nature, the markedness of sound is particular to
each individual ear. Hopkins was aware that not all eyes would read his marks
correctly—indeed, his marks were not always intended to give a right or uni-
form reading, but rather to alert the reader to the fine similarities and differ-