-----Original Message-----
From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
Nobody dared mention faith, Peter. I think writing is all about faith,
though in what is obviously a moot point.
Well, I'm chiming in late on this one, but, yes, I also think
writing is all about faith. I am reminded of my father who on
moving us all each of the more than twenty times we moved,
often with no money, no job on the other end, who would
always say to "have faith," without a particular faith in
anyone or anything. It was a kind of turning in openness
toward possibility, casting one's whole being into what
looked impossible in many reasonable and practical ways.
Actually, I've found this whole discussion interesting, and
particularly liked your reading, Alison, of Celan's "rose over
the thorn", for if poetry is like prayer, it is in this turning
in openness toward possibility, and also in the sense, of
not expecting any reply, of turning with attentiveness toward
what, absent or present, is without expectation of reply.
>>Which makes me think of a quote I read
coincidentally this week of Simone Weill's to the effect that "sexual energy
constitutes the physiological foundation" of mystical experience, since "we
haven't anything else with which to love". Though I realise you weren't
talking of mystical experience. Or are these merely dragging the divine
back to the libidinous?
>>
Ah, Simone Weil, I've loved her work for years, even her strange
rigors of thought. She also says in Waiting for God that we are wrong
to criticize the mystics for using the language of love "because it is theirs
by right," for she often saw more human loves as dimn reflections of
the divine. So I suppose there is a difference in where one begins, for
she also wrote: "The longing to love the beauty of the world in a human
being is essentially the longing for the Incarnation. It is mistaken if
it thinks it is anything else. The Incarnation alone can satisfy it." So
a different perspective perhaps, perhaps poetry is prayer, and the poet
and the prayer merely look at the same intermingling of the divine and
the libidinous from different ends of the spectrum? I don't know, in reading
translations of St. John of the Cross, I have often been struck by how
bad the translations are as poetry when they are translated with the intent
of faith. As for translating them as erotic poetry, I don't think that's been
really done into English, though native Spanish speakers read them that
way in the original.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
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