Interested in your association between the Gnostic Song of the Pearl and the
medieval _Pearl_, Martin--will have to reread the latter with the Gnostics
in view. Meanwhile, found another Pearl text at the Gnostic Society Library,
for which Robin provided a link, and it's gorgeous! Here are a few excerpts,
with the URL for the rest
(http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/St.Pachomius/Syrian/pearl.html).
Candice
The Pearl: Seven Hymns on the Faith
By St. Ephraim of Syria
Translated by J.B. Morris
Reedited by John Gwynn
(The Saint Pachomius Orthodox Library)
Hymn I
....
2.
It was greater to me than the ark,
For was astonied thereat:
I saw therein folds without shadow to them
Because it was a daughter of light,
Types vocal without tongues,
Utterances of mystery without lips,
A silent harp that without voice gave out melodies.
The trumpet falters and the thunder mutters;
Be not thou daring then;
Leave things hidden, take things revealed.
Thou hast seen in the clear sky a second shower;
The clefts of thine ears,
As from the clouds,
They are filled with interpretations.
....
3.
It answered me and said,
"The daughter of the sea am I, the illimitable sea!
And from that sea whence I came up it is
That there is a mighty treasury of mysteries in my bosom!
Search thou out the sea, but search not out the Lord of
the sea!
"I have seen divers who came down after me, when astonied,
So that from the midst of the sea they returned to the dry
ground;
For a few moments they sustained it not.
Who would linger and be searching on into the depths of
the Godhead?
"The waves of the Son are full of blessing,
And with mischiefs too.
Have ye not seen, then, the waves of the sea,
Which if a ship should struggle with them would break her
to pieces,
And if she yield herself to them, and rebel not against
them,
Then she is preserved?
In the sea all the Egyptians were choked, though they
scrutinised it not,
And, without prying, the Hebrews too were overcome upon
the dry land,
And how shall ye be kept alive?
And the men of Sodom were licked up by the fire,
And how shall ye prevail?
"At these uproars the fish in the sea were moved,
And Leviathan also.
Have ye read these things and run into these errors?
O great fear that justice also should be so long silent!"
Hymn II
....
2.
....
O daughter of the water,
Who hast left the sea, wherein thou wert born,
And art gone up to the dry land,wherein thou art beloved:
For men have loved and seized and adorned themselves
with thee,
Like as they did that Offspring Whom the Gentiles loved
And crowned themselves withal.
....
Hymn III
1.
Thou dost not hide thyself in thy bareness, O pearl!
With the love of thee is the merchant ravished also,
For he strips off his garments;
Not to cover thee--
(thy clothing is thy light, thy garment is thy
brightness,
O thou that art bared!)
Thou art like Eve who was clothed with nakedness.
Cursed be he that deceived her and stripped her
and left her.
The serpent cannot strip off thy glory.
In the mysteries whose type thou art,
Women are clothed with Light in Eden.
....
> Synchronistically, I had just been reading the middle English poem _Pearl_
> & thinking about the possible connexion with the Pearl story you direct us
> to, Robin , so fascinatingly associated by Ted Hughes with the Gnostic
> Sophia myth in Shakespeare's later plays, especially _Pericles_, where the
> lower split off Sophia, like the Pearl, falls into a dark prison of
> ignorance, a brothel in the Simon Magus story & _Pericles_. I am grateful
> for the link to The White Robed Monks of St Benedict Source Documents 1A & B
> and the Jungian material expounded there. I love reading about the yearning
> for transcendence, though I keep failing to believe in its object. Ecstasy
> can be attained, but transcendence of life/death is hard to imagine.
> I am also (like Candice) reading the _Qur'an_, backwards in the edition of
> the Islamic Call Society, Jamahirya Arab Libyan Popular Socialist, Tripoli,
> translation by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, the 1st by an English Muslim,
> as he proudly claims. It strikes me that it fairly stresses that not only
> Jews & Christians can hope for God's mercy, as they claim, but unfairly
> limits that grace or mercy to those believing in the (Godsent) Scripture,
> disbelievers get short shrift. The stress on doing good is heart-warming ~
> no Calvinist justification through wealth here. But the emphasis on
> retaliation falls short of the Christian ethic, in my opinion, though most
> Christians have fallen lamentably short of that. But at least Allah wishes
> retaliation to be law-governed, not arbitrary. I haven't looked at this
> since my youth (an old Everyman edition only skimmed through) & am glad a
> former pupil had presented me with it, plus a book by an Islamic cleric
> criticising Khomeini. I'm very interested to hear your further responses to
> it, Candice.
> best
> Martin
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