Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.
(G. Macdonald. The Diary. January, 5)
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.
(G. Macdonald. The Diary. January, 5)
"Rilke knew the meaning of the hidden heart. I first came across the German poet while i worked at Bookworm in Lampeter, 2003. I had a lot of time to fumble through the titles. “Book of Hours: Love Poems to God”, jumped out to me immediately, although it was a good three months later before i opened her. I guess i was little skittish, like a new lover i was somewhat scared of the intensity i felt over a title.
i loved the idea of ‘love poems to god’ - they make god somewhat intimate, secret and close - a picture of the divine or the world i much preferred to the Judaic Patrician
You, God, who live next door-
If at times, through the long night, i trouble you
with my urgent knocking-
this is why; i hear you breathe so seldom..
..As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin, Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily
If at times, through the long night, i trouble you
with my urgent knocking-
this is why; i hear you breathe so seldom..
..As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin, Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily
Rilke the Sufi?
When i first read Rilke i was struck by his emotionally honest descriptions of a spiritual heart. He yearns for God like an ardent lover, and seeks in some of his poems to be overcome by his God like a mystic
..May what i do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children
then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepending tides moving out, returning,
i will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children
then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepending tides moving out, returning,
i will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
For me the poet captures the dark twilight world of the heart beautifully: his earlier work is often in the form of metaphors and symbols - which are more like snapshots of memory. The ideas they seek to express are difficult, immense, sometimes contradictory - a lot like the stumbling of our own hearts when trying to feel their way forward. The rhyme and sense of a Rilke poem is consistent with an inner landcape of pictures, which just throw things together, never answering, just questioning what the truth could be in amongst these difficult visions.
Reaching, these hands would pull you out of the sky
as if you had shattered there,
dashed yourself to pieces in some wild impatience.
What is this I feel falling now,
falling on this parched earth,
softly,
like a spring rain?
as if you had shattered there,
dashed yourself to pieces in some wild impatience.
What is this I feel falling now,
falling on this parched earth,
softly,
like a spring rain?
Rainer Maria Rilke
18 comments:
Is MacDonald a Sufi? I don't know about that. . . His writing may seem to have a shade of some ideas of Sufism, but I doubt that he subscribed to it. I think it moves further away from MacDonald's faith once Sufism starts to play with Gnostic ideas. But then I have neither a good knowledge nor experience of Sufism, so I could be wrong.
As for Rilke, he wrote 'Book of Hours' after he had followed Lou Salome and her husband to Russia; he was inspired by the experience there and wrote it in the persona of a Christian monk in a Russian cloister as soon as he came back. I think that he had in mind both God and Lou when he wrote it much the same way 'The Song of Songs' of the Bible was written.
I'm all for mysticism as long as it keeps away from Gnosticism and it is focused on Christianity. (I'm open-minded to other faiths; it's just that my path is set and different.) Yes, MacDonald had an unconventional Christian faith, but nonetheless his faith was deeply rooted in the Triune God of Orthodox Christianity. If he appears to be a mystic, that is when he was having a deep communion with God. And he expressed that experience and longing for being united with Him in the way he did through his sermons and novels, such as Phantastes and the Golden Key, and so forth. But then again, this is just what I think.
Well, the tone of my comment may seem to be confronting you, but I'm not. It's just that there is something. . . Well, let me leave it at that. All in all, I want you to know that it comes from a caring heart. - Gene
Thank you for the comment Gene. Its so pleasant to be read by your eyes: they have seen something which now you open me here. My great thanks to them!
I think, and I think you would agree with me, that the way the poets choose is the crankiest, maybe, but they at the end would be able to come to the same Gate, which the great theologicians, the Fathers of Church achieved in the ear of Early Christians. Deep union with God. This feeling marked each mystic life of those who could declare: "I have met God". These people usualy are very humble, because they saw how Great the God is indeed! I think Rilke knew this truth as well.
But I feel you might love theology more than poetry? :)
And what could I say about patristic? I love works by St Isaac the Syrian whose experience I know through the works and translations of the Bishop Hilarion.
The Bishop Hilarion is a serious theologian. The Bishop is my close friend and I thought you might have been interesting to read some of his works on Early Father’s mysticism, which is not Gnostic, :) but namely as you perceive a feeling coming from the deep communion with God.
At Homepage there are some words of Fr. Hilarion Alfeyev.
http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/
But I could understand what St. Isaac had written, the poetry of 'The Song of Songs' and Psalms after I entered/passed through the Gates of Love into my religious mystic life, poetry, and saw the cross, which I was granted to carry and care. :)
Dear P.,
I visited Bishop Hilarion’s website and read about St. Issac of Nineveh. I am glad that my beliefs have a lot in common with the teaching of St. Issac. His belief in universalism in particular corresponds to my understanding of salvation which I attribute to the renowned physicist-turned theologian John Polkinghorne, for whom I have an enormous respect for, not just because of his great scholarship in the field of theoretical physics, but also because of his deep compassion and humility. Maybe I can tell you all about it some other time.
If you are inspired by St. Issac, you are certainly not a Gnostic. Gnosticism regards spirit and matter as opposites. According to Gnostic teaching, human beings are spirits trapped or imprisoned in matter; the material world is an illusion or the work of an inferior or even demonic divine being; and the purpose of life is to learn how to free oneself from material things (including the body) and attain eternal life in the spiritual realm. This is accomplished by learning specialized or secret knowledge about the nature of reality. When I think of these aspects of Gnosticsm, I can’t help but have doubts about Sufism, which I believe can be dangerous. Maybe you should ask your Bishop friend about it, and let me know if you do, and find out anything to enlighten me; one of the things I learn time after time in life is the deepening fact that I may be wrong, and I’ve had to revise my thoughts numerous times.
Since I have a set of unconventional set of beliefs, I find it very hard for me to fit in. I was a Catholic, and then a Methodist. But now I can’t find peace with any organized religious institutions. And I’m considered sort of different by others. I think that George MacDonald must have felt the same way. And together with the faith of George MacDonald I have scientific conviction to add to.
Yes, I am a serious reader of theology. I devote a lot of time to it because I think it is the most important, noble human quest, and because it has to do with the matter of life, death, hope, and eternity. One’s religious experiences may be expressed in an organized pattern of rational exposition as well as in poetry. Poetic language is a bucket to draw from the bottomless well of the mystery of insights and emotions. I place poetry at the right hand of the helm of theology. Without poetry, religious feelings can’t be properly expressed. Without theology, poetry is deprived of its life. When we think of theology as thinking about God in an orderly manner, it will not appear so dry. After all, we are made in the image of God, and reason is one of the faculties we have been given. And with this we can try and fathom how the universe works the way it does, and hopefully get a glimpse of the mind of the veiled existence of the Creator.
Having said that, I must put it this way: I value theology while I love poetry.
Well, I didn’t intend to write this long in an haphazard way, but I’ve tried to make it short. ^^* - Gene
Proserpine, can I ask where you live?
Yes, why not? I live in a pine forest near Moscow, in Russia. :)
Okay, thank you. You see, gathering from your talk about mysticism --- Sufism in particular --- I thought that you might be living in Southern California. And the mention of your Bishop friend of the Russian Orthodox Church led me to think that you might be a Russian immigrant living in Southern California. Funny idea, isn’t it? Anyway, I just wanted to see if my guess was right. Well, I was wrong, but I was partially right. ^^*
I grew up with books by Leo Tolstoy and in my twenties dreamed of life in Russia. This sentimental idea of youth was nurtured in part by the snowy landscape of the movie Dr. Zhivago which I saw in college - I must say that I didn't read the original novel though. I didn't read it mainly because Navokov hated Pasternak's writing.
There was something that pulled me in the landscape of your country that I saw in the movie and pictures when I was younger. Later on, I read Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Nabokov, and Dostoevsky. I envy you your literary heritage. - Gene
I didn't read it mainly because Navokov hated Pasternak's writing.
:) A rather serious argument. Nabokov never seemed to be a kind person. :)
And my adorable Ivan Bunin - he is the Maestro - you did not read him? so Ivan Andreevich didn't understand Nabokov considering him to be a great snob. :) Zaitzev remembered how they at last (Nabokov insisted) met in Paris. They met in the cafe, were sitting for an hour in front of each other at the little table and then without dropping a sigle word stood up and left each other. Well two geniuses. :)
Though the book of Nabokob's lectures on the world literature is interesting.
I myself are not crasy from Pasternak at all, though in my college years I loved his poems, and I didn't boring his book of prose "Airly Ways".
I envy you your literary heritage Thank you. I think, from them all I would reread only Anton Chekhov. Besides there are things I didn't read. For instance "The Island Sakhalin". :)
It’s so funny that Nabokov himself was called a snob when he so often criticized philistines. ^_^. You are right in saying that he didn’t seem like a kind-hearted person. But how beautiful prose he wrote!
As for Ivan Bunin, I only know his name. In fact, I had completely forgotten him until you mentioned him. No, I’ve never read him. Now that you mention him, I’am curious to find out about his writing, and I’ve just ordered a book of collected stories by him. It seems that his novel The Village is hard to come by in English translation. There must be some reason why he is not widely read here. It may be a similar reason as Dostoevsky is not as popular in his native country as elsewhere, especially in the USA. But is it true about Dostoevsky?
I have the whole volume of Chekhov’s short stories: the jewel of my collection of books – how I enjoy reading his short stories, and how much of life he knew! I haven’t read Sakhalin Island either. Thanks/Gene.
Chekhov's report about his visitation of Sakhalin, I think if it was be translated in English it would be very popular in the West, in USA. :)
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfcolony/igcsakhalin.html
O I have found it has translated.
http://www.amazon.com/Sakhalin-Island-Oneworld-Classics-Chekhov/dp/1847490034
Ivan Bunin was/is the knight of the Russian Literature. In all, I can't compare him with someone. He is my first and my last love. :)
Dostoevsky? Well, sometimes it happens. But not in the case with Dostoevsky in Russia. He is much loved here, especiallly in intellectual religious circles and so on.
But you are right I also noted that that sometimes we know author whereas he is not well-known in his onw country. In Gapan it was Akutagawa Ryūnosuke whose name in his native land became famous after his success in the West.
Gene, let me say that, that I am so blessed to meet you. I feel myself with you so comfortable. Maybe it is because we are both intuitive persons? This is our brotherhood... Do you often meet people like you? I do not.
Your design with books on your page greets me and they are so amiable. :) Here is a list of some books I took at random from my bookshelves:
1. Chrétien de Troyes
Perceval, the Story of the Grail.
2. English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones, 1958
3. La Chanson de Roland and , Cantar de mío Cid (in translation)
4. The Complete Essays of Montaigne (in translation)
5. Laurence Stern. Selected Prose and Lettres in 2 vs. (in English)
6. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev. Complete Works in 2 volumes, 1994
7. Late Greek Prose (Flavius Josephus, Plutarch, Lucian, Geliodor «Aithiopica»)
8. Henri-Louis Bergson, V. 1, 1992
9. Joseph von Eichendorff. Werke. (In German)
10. Donald Keene Japanese Literature (XVII-XIX) (in Russian)
But if you asked me when I opened any of them at the last time I would hardly remember. :)
Okay. . . I can’t wait till I receive my order of Bunin’s short story collection next week.
It seems that I’ve been somehow misinformed about Dostoevsky’s popularity in Russia.
Well, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance too. Do I meet people like myself often? No, and I hope not: for if the world is full of people like me, it would be a boring place. I’m not good at making small talks, and I’m not really interested in just making money, and I talk about eternity and all these fairy tales, and life after death, and so forth. And this usually makes people uncomfortable and undecided as to what to make of me, even though they like the idea of having me around. Funny, isn’t it? I may know a lot of people, but few understand me. They may enjoy my company, but they don’t really talk about what I’m most interested in. They often think I’m out of touch with reality. For this reason it was very surprising when you appeared out of nowhere and claimed to understand me. I suspected that someone was just mocking me behind the computer, hidden from the world and me, even until a couple of days ago. But now I know that this is not the case, and I’m convinced of your sincerity. Thank you!
It is too much that you say you feel blessed to meet me. But if you really knew me you would find out that I’m not worthy of being regarded in such a way. If you feel comfortable with me, it is the best I can think of in any type of relationship.
It seems that you have some brainy books. I haven’t read most of them. Some Montaigne or Bergson, maybe. . . I realize time after time that I’m too ignorant and there is too much to learn! The more I read, the nearer I get to the sense of ignorance. YIC/Gene
Thank you, Gene. From my side I feel I should learn many things from you. But this:
For this reason it was very surprising when you appeared out of nowhere and claimed to understand me. I suspected that someone was just mocking me behind the computer, hidden from the world and me, even until a couple of days ago. But now I know that this is not the case, and I’m convinced of your sincerity
"Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?"
"No," said I; "and indeed I hardly believe I do now."
"Ah! that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the
first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition
convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable. I am
not going to argue with you, however, but to grant you a wish."
Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech,
of which, however, I had no cause to repent--
"How can such a very little creature as you grant or
refuse anything?"
"Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty
years?" said she. "Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a
mere matter of relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does
not feel altogether insignificant, though to others you do look
small beside your old Uncle Ralph, who rises above you a great
half-foot at least. But size is of so little consequence with
old me, that I may as well accommodate myself to your foolish
prejudices."
So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she
stood a tall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes.
Her dark hair flowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her
waist, and against it her form stood clear in its robe of white.
"Now," said she, "you will believe me."
:)
I realize time after time that I’m too ignorant and there is too much to learn! The more I read, the nearer I get to the sense of ignorance.
The same with me. New knowledge comes into my room with its reality and rights and tries to fit somehow to the design I have been developing for years... what is better to do: to amend all the furnuture and put this precious vase in the middle of the room? Our knowledge is flexible, indeed. But challenge seems to be always the same. :)
I did love Heinrich Von Kleist one day and now I even do not remember the names of his writings... But I was glad to know you have his book on your table.
I really do not read or write much now. But I feel I am coming back. And thank you for this.
I would like to tell you that my name is Olga, or Olia for friends and family, or you may keep Proserpine if you want. :)
And what does YIC stand for? Yours in Christ? I have seen this abbrevation at the firt time. :)
YIC
Olga
I am delighted to see that you aptly quote George MacDonald. I couldn’t have thought of Anodos brought into play in my case.
Olia is such a pretty name. I used to be confused by Russian names in books. There is first name, patronymic, and family name; and then there you have variants of your first name, sometimes more than one, such as Tanya for Tatiana or Kostya for Konstantin, and so forth. To make matters more complex, you have the masculine or feminine forms of family names. Right? Anyway, I’d rather call you Olia which sounds more musical to me than Olga. The name Proserpine sounds so heavy and somber, if you don’t mind. Proserpina would’ve eased the tension; but still there is something disagreeable about it, and I can’t quite pinpoint what it is. Now that I think about it again, it is the second letter ‘r’. But then if it is Poserpine, it becomes somewhat lightweight, and even comical. Well, I never liked Greek names, and I couldn’t help it. ; ) I hope you’re not offended.
Yes, you guessed it right. YIC stands for Yours In Christ. It is not used widely, but I like it. – Gene
Have a great weekend too! I am so much impressed by your knowledge of the Russian literature and culture.
My spritiual father is an Englishman. :) Fr. Christopher graduated from Oxford and came to Russia, considering it to be the Holy land for him. Now he is married and he has a wife, Elena , she is Russian and they've got tree charming children.
Sometimes they visit us, me and my daughter at the weekend, as we live in a very beautiful place.
Olya
Thank you, but I must say that if there is anything that gives you the impression it is only a scanty knowledge that I have picked up from some books I've read. I can't really say that I'm widely read in Russian literature --- just a few staple books by the few popular writers.
It sounds like a lot of fun having such guests. I wonder, is marriage allowed for priests of the Russian Orthodox Church? I faintly remember I read it somewhere but I'm not quite sure.
I'm sure that a house in the forest must be a beautiful dwelling place, fit for dreaming of MacDonald's fairy world.
YIC/Gene
Yes, marriage is allowed for priests but not for the Bishops, for instance, like in Early Church or in England. I know that in Catholic Church the priest should keep celebacy and so on. Though I think in this sense we all are seeking for our wholiness...
I am afraid I confused you: its not a house we live in, but its a big modern building, where we have a little flat. :)
And as I can see you live in New-York?
It is very interesting. Doesn’t a priest have to climb the ecclesiastical ladder to become a bishop? Or is it that once you are a priest you are a priest forever, and that those who are to be bishops are set out and ordained as such from the start? Or does the priest leave his wife when he is appointed to the post?
It should take a good architect to build a modern building in the forest and not destroy the sense of being in it. But then a standalone house or not, any human creation, however good it may be, is doomed to be confined within the realm of artificiality. So I guess it does not make much difference to my perception of the imaginary scenery. (^^.)
Yes, I live in suburban New York.
YIC/Gene
Doesn’t a priest have to climb the ecclesiastical ladder to become a bishop? Or is it that once you are a priest you are a priest forever, and that those who are to be bishops are set out and ordained as such from the start?
LOL
Yes, if you are a priest, you are a priest forever. :)If you are monk, you are forever blessed to be the Bishop, if your stars are bright.
:)
Really around us there's a beautiful pine forest and soon,in May there will be ily-of-the-valley in it. Its so close, I nearly can touch the pine needles from the window... its like a garden.
We were blessed really with this beauty. I think I could send some photos sometime, or video. :)
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