Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation: Thresholds of Wonder 9781138636231, 9781315206103

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of figures
Notes on contributors
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction: why wonder?
Part I Philosophical perspectives
In the Valley of the Lot
1 The wonder of not wondering: from Plato to Lucretius
2 Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection: Giordano Bruno
3 Wonder, epiphany, haecceity in Gerard Manley Hopkins
4 Wonder in ethics and aesthetics: Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore
5 A mysticism of a dead leaf: a brief apology for an ordinary phenomenon
Part II Theological perspectives
The Litany
6 The extraordinary of the ordinary: G.K. Chesterton, imagination and the wonder of a natural theology
7 Between rapture and rupture: an exploration of wonder
8 Between the poet and the legislator: wonder and ambivalence in Midrash and Hebrew poetry
9 Scandalous wonder: contemplating the cross with Isaac Watts
10 This world of wonders: theology, poetics and everyday life
Part III Literary perspectives
Creed
11 Wonder and the power of the word
12 Wonder and the radical vision of Francis of Assisi
13 Rilke’s poetics of wonder: looking at the picture books of beauty in the Duino Elegies
14 Poetry, radicalism and wonder: Peter Levi, priesthood and David Jones
15 ‘The flowers remember/ the sugar bowl remembers’: quotidian wonder and the painter/ poet Joanna Margaret Paul
Part IV Afterword
A Space for God
16 ‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’: notes on Bergoglio’s aesthetics
Index

Citation preview

Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation

This volume is a collection of essays that explains how literature, philosophy and theology have explored the role of wonder in our lives, particularly through poetry. Wonder has been an object of fascination for these disciplines from the Greek antiquity onwards, yet the connections between their views on the subject are often ignored in subject specific studies. The book is divided into three parts: Part I opens the conversation on wonder in philosophy, Part II is given to theology and Part III to literary perspectives. An international set of contributors, including poets as well as scholars, have produced a study that looks beyond traditional chronological, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, both within the individual essays themselves and in respect to one another. The volume’s wide historical framework is punctuated by four poems by contemporary poets on the theme of wonder. An unconventional foray into one of the best-­ known themes of the European tradition, this book will be of great interest to scholars of literature, theology and philosophy. Francesca Bugliani Knox is Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL and Research Fellow at Roehampton University, both in the UK. Her publications include translations into Italian as well as several books and articles on various aspects of English and Italian literature from the Renaissance to the present, including The Eye of the Eagle: John Donne and the Legacy of Ignatius Loyola (2011). She is the editor, with David Lonsdale, of Poetry and the Religious Imagination (2015) and, with John Took, of Poetry and Prayer (2016). She is also the editor of Ronald Knox: A Man for All Seasons (2017). Jennifer Reek has a PhD from the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow, UK. Her work has appeared in journals such as  Literature and Theology  and  Contemporary Women’s Writing. She is the author of A Poetics of Church: Reading and Writing Sacred Spaces of Poetic Dwelling (2017).  Currently, she teaches seminars in Great Books in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA.

Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation Thresholds of Wonder The Power of the Word IV

Edited by Francesca Bugliani Knox and Jennifer Reek

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Francesca Bugliani Knox and Jennifer Reek; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Francesca Bugliani Knox and Jennifer Reek to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-­1-­138-­63623-­1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-­1-­315-­20610-­3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

In memoriam Michael Paul Gallagher SJ (1939–­2015)

‘Zum Erstaunen bin ich da’ (‘To wonder I am here’)

Contents

List of figuresx Notes on contributorsxi Preface and acknowledgements xvi

Introduction: why wonder?

1

FRANCESCA BUGLIANI KNOX

PART I

Philosophical perspectives15

In the Valley of the Lot

15

HILARY DAVIES

  1 The wonder of not wondering: from Plato to Lucretius

17

GUIDO MILANESE

  2 Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection: Giordano Bruno

29

DILWYN KNOX

  3 Wonder, epiphany, haecceity in Gerard Manley Hopkins

50

RICHARD KEARNEY

  4 Wonder in ethics and aesthetics: Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore

62

PRIYAMBADA SARKAR

  5 A mysticism of a dead leaf: a brief apology for an ordinary phenomenon PHILIPPE NOUZILLE

75

viii  Contents PART II

Theological perspectives85

The Litany

85

DANA GIOIA

  6 The extraordinary of the ordinary: G.K. Chesterton, imagination and the wonder of a natural theology

87

BRETT H. SPEAKMAN

  7 Between rapture and rupture: an exploration of wonder

100

BERNARD SAWICKI

  8 Between the poet and the legislator: wonder and ambivalence in Midrash and Hebrew poetry

114

ARIEL ZINDER

  9 Scandalous wonder: contemplating the cross with Isaac Watts

129

JEAN WARD

10 This world of wonders: theology, poetics and everyday life

143

HEATHER WALTON

PART III

Literary perspectives155 Creed

155

JAY PARINI

11 Wonder and the power of the word

157

PIERO BOITANI

12 Wonder and the radical vision of Francis of Assisi

178

JON M. SWEENEY

13 Rilke’s poetics of wonder: looking at the picture books of beauty in the Duino Elegies

186

EMILIA DI ROCCO

14 Poetry, radicalism and wonder: Peter Levi, priesthood and David Jones ROBERT FRASER

199

Contents ix 15 ‘The flowers remember/ the sugar bowl remembers’: quotidian wonder and the painter/ poet Joanna Margaret Paul

210

JOANNA OSBORNE

PART IV

Afterword225

A Space for God

225

ELENA BUIA RUTT

16 ‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’: notes on Bergoglio’s aesthetics

227

ANTONIO SPADARO AND FRANCESCA BUGLIANI KNOX

Index241

Figures

2.1 A detail of the map of Frankfurt am Main engraved in 1626 by Matthäeus Merian the Elder showing the Carmelite Monastery. 30 4.1 Diagram illustrating the distinction between ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’ in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.64 15.1 Joanna Margaret Paul. Unwrapping the body, artist’s book [HEAD caput CUP] c. 1978, Bothwell, Dunedin. A Women’s Picture Book, ed. by Marian Evans, Bridie Lonie and Tilly Lloyd. Wellington: Government Printing Office, 1988, 86. 213 15.2 Joanna Margaret Paul. On Roundness. 1984, ink, watercolour, pencil and collage, Private Collection, Dunedin. 215 15.3 Joanna Margaret Paul. ‘Blessings on Morandi’. Imogen. Days Bay, Eastbourne, NZ: Hawk Press, 1978. 218 15.4 Joanna Margaret Paul. Frugal Pleasures [Still life with statuette and Latin text], 1999, gouache and watercolour on paper: 313 x 352 mm. David and Keren Skegg Deposit, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of 219 Otago, L2011/­43. 15.5 Joanna Margaret Paul. Frugal Pleasures [Still life with apples and plums on a tray, with Latin text], 1999, gouache and watercolour on paper: 319 x 403 mm. David and Keren Skegg Deposit, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, L2011/­46. 220

Contributors

Piero Boitani is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Medieval Academy of America, and the Accademia dei Lincei, Professor of Comparative Literature at the ‘Sapienza’ University in Rome and at the Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano. His books include The Bible and Its Rewritings (1999), Winged Words: Flights in Poetry and History (2007), The Gospel According to Shakespeare (2013), Il grande racconto delle stelle (2012), Riconoscere è un dio (2014), Il grande racconto di Ulisse (2016) and Dieci lezioni sui classici (2017). He received the Balzan Prize for Comparative Literature in 2016. Francesca Bugliani Knox is Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL and Research Associate at Roehampton University, both in the UK. Her publications include translations into Italian as well as several books and articles on various aspects of English and Italian literature from the Renaissance to the present, including The Eye of the Eagle: John Donne and the Legacy of Ignatius Loyola (2011). She is the editor, with David Lonsdale, of Poetry and the Religious Imagination (2015) and, with John Took, of Poetry and Prayer (2016). She is also the editor of Ronald Knox: A Man for All Seasons (2017), published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. Elena Buia Rutt is a poet, translator and literary critic who holds degrees in philosophy and literature and an MA in journalism. She contributes to cultural programs on Italian television and national newspapers, including La Civiltà Cattolica and L’Osservatore Romano. A  prize-­ winning essayist, Elena has written on Pier Vittorio Tondelli and Flannery O’Connor. Elena’s first book of poems (Ti stringo la mano mentre dormi) was published in 2012, her second (Il mio cuore è un asino) in 2015. Elena has translated poems by Rowan Williams (La dodicesima notte) and Mary Oliver (2012), as well as Flannery O’Connor’s Prayer Journal. Since 2016, Elena has been teaching at John Cabot University in Rome. Hilary Davies has published four collections of poetry with Enitharmon Press, the latest of which, Exile and the Kingdom, was published in November  2016. She is also a translator and critic. Hilary has been

xii  Contributors Chairman of the Poetry Society, a Hawthornden Fellow, an Eric Gregory award winner and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at King’s College, London, 2012–­16; she is currently a Royal Literary Fellow at the British Library and is a Fellow of the English Association. For many years she was Head of Languages at St. Paul’s Girls’ School in London. Emilia Di Rocco is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the Department of European, American and Interdisciplinary Studies, at the ‘Sapienza’ University in Rome. Her most recent publications include Baciare la terra: Un topos letterario (2012) and Raccontare il ritorno: Temi e trame della letteratura (2017). Her current research interests include literature and theology, literature in relation to the Bible and the rewritings of ancient myth in medieval and modern literature. She writes for the Osservatore Romano, Nuova informazione bibliografica and Indice dei libri del mese. Robert Fraser was a chorister at Winchester Cathedral and subsequently educated at the University of Sussex and the University of London. He has lectured at universities in Cambridge, London and Leeds and at the Open University, where he is now Professor Emeritus of English. He has published a number of biographies and other books on Marcel Proust, Sir James Frazer and print history in the non-­European world. Pascal’s Tears, or How Not to Murder One’s Wife, his meditation on mortality, faith and choice, was published in 2018. Dana Gioia is the Poet Laureate of California. He is the author of five collections of poetry, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New  & Selected (2016), which won the Poets’ Prize. His three critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Gioia has written four opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies. He served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009. He holds the Judge Widney Chair of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College. He is the author of over twenty books on European philosophy and literature. His most recent publications include Anatheism (2012), Reimagining the Sacred (2015), Carnal Hermeneutics (2015) and Twinsome Minds: An Act of Double Remembrance (2018). As a public intellectual in Ireland, he was involved in drafting a number of proposals for a Northern Irish peace agreement (1983, 1993, 1995). He is currently international director of the Guestbook Project – Hosting the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality. Dilwyn Knox is Professor Emeritus of Renaissance Studies at University College London and former Director of the School of European Languages,

Contributors xiii Culture and Society there. His research focuses on Renaissance philosophy and cosmology, in particular the ideas of Marsilio Ficino, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno. Guido Milanese is Professor of Classics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan and Brescia, and lecturer of Latin at the Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano. He publishes extensively in the fields of Roman philosophy, particularly Lucretius, Cicero and the Epicurean tradition, and is interested in the relation among Latin and music in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. He has a PhD Honoris Causa in Comparative Literature from the Institut Catholique in Paris. Editor of the journal Studi gregoriani, he is a practising musician, founder and leader of the musical ensemble ‘Ars Antiqua’, Genoa, which specializes in Gregorian chant and medieval music. Philippe Nouzille is Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Atheneum of St Anselm (Rome). He writes on Cistercian monastic tradition and on contemporary philosophy, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics. He has published Au-­delà de soi: Révélation et phénoménologie (2014) and has edited several books, among them Fenomenologia e umanesimo (2015), L’animale (2017) and, together with Salvatore Rindone, Ermeneutica, cristianesimo, politica: Intorno a Gianni Vattimo (2018). Joanna Osborne is a PhD Candidate at the University of Otago, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. She is interested in interdisciplinary exchange between religion, theology and the arts. Her research has focused on the spiritual sensibilities of the twentieth-­century Aotearoa/ New Zealand artists Joanna Margaret Paul, Ralph Hotere and Allie Eagle. Jay Parini, poet, novelist and biographer, is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent books are New and Collected Poems: 1975–­2015 (2016) and The Way of Jesus: Living a Spiritual and Ethical Life (2018). His eighth novel, about the life of St Paul, is The Damascus Road (2019). Priyambada Sarkar is Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Calcutta. Her research interests are analytic philosophy, epistemology, applied ethics and Indian ethics. She is the author of Wittgenstein and Solipsism (2009), Uttarparber Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations (2007), Tatparya o Vachya: Freger Bhasa-­Darsaner Bhumika (‘Sense and Reference: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language of Gottlob Frege’) (2007), and Language, Limits and Beyond: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore (forthcoming, OUP India). She is President of the Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Society, India, and a life member of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR). Bernard Łukasz Sawicki is a Benedictine monk of Tyniec Abbey, Cracow. He graduated with a degree in theory of music and piano from the

xiv  Contributors Fryderyk Chopin University of Music and in theology at the Pontifical University of John Paul II, Cracow. He was awarded a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Atheneum of St Anselm in Rome, where he teaches and coordinates the Monastic Institute. Antonio Spadaro is editor-in-chief of La Civiltà Cattolica. He has published many volumes of literary and theological criticism in dialogue with contemporary culture, including Cybertheology: Thinking Christianity in the Era of the Internet (2014) and Friending God: Social Media, Spirituality and Community (2016). Spadaro has written and edited several books relating to Pope Francis, including My Door Is Always Open: Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change (2013) and Dear Pope Francis (2015). He also edited the Italian version of the Santa Marta Homilies and the texts of the two Synods for the family (2014, 2015), in which he participated as papal appointee. Brett H. Speakman completed his PhD in the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA) at the University of St  Andrews (UK). His thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration on the primacy of imagination and the affections for Christian apologetics, with special reference to the writings of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. A former Graduate Research Assistant at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, he is a reviews editor for The Journal of Inklings Studies and the former senior editor for Transpositions: The Journal of Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Jon M. Sweeney is an independent scholar based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition to being editor-­in-­chief and publisher at Paraclete Press in Massachusetts, he writes on the late medieval period in Italy and is the author of many books on the early Franciscans and other subjects. Among them: The Pope Who Quit: A Medieval Tale of Mystery, Death, and Salvation (2012) and Francis of Assisi in His Own Words: The Essential Writings (2013). He is also the co-­author, with Mark Burrows, of Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart (2017). Heather Walton is Professor of Theology and Creative Practice at the University of Glasgow. She is executive editor of the OUP journal Literature and Theology and has written widely on the relationship between theology and creative writing. Her recent books include Writing Methods in Theological Reflection (2014), Not Eden: Spiritual Life Writing for This World (2015) and, with Zoë Bennett, Elaine Graham and Stephen Pattison, Invitation to Research in Practical Theology (2018). Jean Ward is Associate Professor of the Institute of English and American Studies at Gdańsk University. She is the author of a monograph in Polish on the reception of T.S. Eliot’s poetry by Polish poets (2001). Her other publications include Christian Poetry in the Post-­Christian Day:

Contributors xv Geoffrey Hill, R.S. Thomas, Elizabeth Jennings (2009) and articles in leading Polish, British and American journals on a variety of other poets, among them George Herbert, David Jones, Seamus Heaney, Anne Stevenson, Philip Larkin, Kevin Hart and Czesław Miłosz. She has contributed to collective monographs, including a book in Polish on incarnational aspects of Eliot’s poetry (2015), Striking the Chords of Spirit and Flesh in Polish Poetry (2016), Poetic Revelations (2017) and David Jones: A Christian Modernist? (2018). Ariel Zinder is a lecturer in the Department of Literature at Tel Aviv University. His research interests include Hebrew liturgical poetry, medieval Hebrew literature, literary theory and the interconnections between literature and religion. Currently, he is working on a critical edition of the poetry of the eleventh-century Andalusian author Itzhak Ibn Giyyat, the history of the representation of God’s voice in Hebrew poetry and an interpretive discussion of the relation of poetry to ritual in medieval Jewish culture. He is also a published poet and translator. In 2016 he published, together with co-­translator Lyor Sternberg, the first Hebrew translation of Seamus Heaney’s selected poems.

Preface and acknowledgements

The Power of the Word project took shape in late 2010 under the auspices of Heythrop College and with the support of the Institute of English Studies, two constituent institutions of the University of London. The project’s aim was to stimulate interdisciplinary investigation on ‘the Word’ in scripture, tradition and the arts, bringing together scholars of philosophy, theology, biblical studies, literary authors and critics. Now in its eighth year, the project has produced a series of major conferences, as well as seminars, lectures and other events dedicated to this idea. Contributions to these events have focused on particular themes: for example, the religious imagination, poetry in relation to prayer and what T.S. Eliot called ‘the Word made flesh’, exploring them sometimes from a theoretical viewpoint, at other times through case studies of texts and authors. From the outset, the project has been international, welcoming scholars and students of different intellectual persuasions to discuss their ideas unconstrained – almost – by disciplinary and cultural conventions. The first two conferences were held at the University of London in 2011 and 2012. The conference held at the University of Gdańsk the following year was the first of many, it is hoped, to take place outside the United Kingdom. The papers given at each of these events have given rise to a series of volumes published by Routledge: Poetry and the Religious Imagination, edited by Francesca Bugliani Knox and David Lonsdale (2016); Poetry and Prayer (2017), edited by Francesca Bugliani Knox and John Took; and Poetic Revelations: Word Made Flesh Made Word (2017), edited by Mark S. Burrows, Jean Ward and Małgorzata Grzegorzewska. The fourth international conference, organized in conjunction with the Pontifical Atheneum of St Anselm in Rome in June 2015, was devoted to the theme of ‘wonder’. On this occasion, the conference papers looked at the place of wonder in poetry, philosophy and theology. The essays in this volume, contributed by scholars from many different countries, will, it is hoped, give a sense of the diversity and originality of the conference papers as a whole. I should like to express my gratitude to the Research Committee of Heythrop College, University of London, for their support of the project and for funding the fourth International Power of the Word Conference

Preface and acknowledgements xvii in 2015. Philippe Nouzille, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Atheneum of St Anselm, graciously undertook to arrange for the Atheneum to provide the venue and the conference facilities for the occasion. To Bernard Sawicki, to whom the conference organization was largely delegated, a special word of thanks is due, not only for his hospitality, but also for introducing the conference participants to the historical and archaeological treasures of the Aventine. Through the inspired readings of their poems, Hilary Davies, Dana Gioia, Jay Parini and Elena Buia Rutt made the event as much a literary festival as an academic conference. I am grateful to all four poets for their permission to include their work in this volume, along with Enitharmon Editions (‘In the Valley of the Lot’) and Graywolf Press (‘The Litany’). Jack Boothroyd and Joshua Wells and the staff at Routledge meticulously prepared the essays in this volume for publication. A special thank goes to Dr Tiziana Provvidera who has compiled the index of names. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Michael Paul Gallagher, with whom, on the terrace of the Bellarmino, overlooking the rooftops of Rome, I first discussed the idea of a conference on wonder. Francesca Bugliani Knox

Introduction Why wonder? Francesca Bugliani Knox

Freudig war vor vielen Jahren, Eifrig so der Geist bestrebt, Zu erforschen, zu erfahren, Wie Natur im Schaffen lebt. Und es ist das ewig Eine, Das sich vielfach offenbart: Klein das Große, groß das Kleine, Alles nach der eignen Art; Immer wechselnd, fest sich haltend. Nah und fern und fern und nah, So gestaltend, umgestaltend –­ Zum Erstaunen bin ich da.1 (Goethe, ‘Parabase’) ‘Zum erstaunen bin ich da’: Goethe’s concluding remark in his poem ‘Parabase’ is as forceful as it is elusive. It is a poem in praise of wonder, yet, at the same time, it points to its ambiguous nature. If ‘zum erstaunen’  – ‘to marvel’, ‘to be astounded’ – indicates the purpose of the poet’s existence – ‘I am here’, ‘I exist’ – the sense of the line must be ‘I am here to marvel at it [nature]’ or ‘I am here to wonder’ or ‘I am here to be astounded’. If, on the other hand, ‘zum erstaunen’ is exclamatory, the meaning of the line becomes, as indeed some translators prefer, ‘wonder of wonders, I am here!’ or ‘how amazing that I am here!’ In the latter case, the emphasis falls on the wonder inherent in, or caused by, the poet’s very existence. The ambiguity of Goethe’s line reflects the many senses of the word ‘wonder’. It commonly indicates something  – an object, thing or event  – that brings about astonishment or admiration. It can also denote, among other things, the feeling or emotion provoked by the perception of something new and sudden or, indeed, incomprehensible. The verb ‘to wonder’ is no less equivocal. Usually it means ‘to feel’ or ‘to be affected with wonder’, ‘to be struck with surprise or astonishment’ or ‘to marvel’. If, though, our astonishment is directed at something that confounds our everyday expectations, it denotes that state of mind in which we wonder just why or how

2  Francesca Bugliani Knox something is the way it is. This does not exhaust, by any means, the possible meanings. Occasionally it retains some of the connotations of wunder, the Anglo-­Saxon and Middle English word for an evil or shameful deed or even destruction, or the Old Frisian wunde, meaning ‘wound’. Wonder, as we shall see, implies a sense of rupture and unease. If it has these many connotations, some apparently contradictory ones at that, how can wonder be a subject of coherent interdisciplinary investigation of the kind that this volume aspires to? The complications seem to become all the greater when we bear in mind that ‘wonder’ does not have an exact one-­to-­one translation in many other languages. In French, étonnement conveys a sense of shock foreign to émerveillement; so, too, stupore relative to meraviglia in Italian or Staunen as distinct from Wunder in German. Nevertheless, there is a common theme to all these meanings. However it is understood and irrespective of historical and cultural context, wonder necessarily entails a heightened awareness of our immediate circumstances. This is experienced as a sudden inner excitement, exhilarating or disturbing, about something before us that is distinctive in some way – whether beautiful, strange, awful or mysterious. Thomas Aquinas, as Caroline Bynum has noted, observed that the angel captured Mary’s ‘attention of the soul’ by provoking her wonder at his sudden appearance (ST 3a, q.30, art. 4, 1r; Bynum 10). Descartes, for his part, called this heightened awareness ‘a sudden surprise of the soul’. Modern authors define it similarly, albeit in different terms. It is ‘a space which opens at the centre of our life’ (‘un espace qui s’ouvre au centre de notre vie’) (Sablé 8) or a ‘blow as if we were struck or stunned’, upsetting our normal expectations (Parsons 85). Wonder is not caused nor is it ‘initiated or controlled’ by us (Meyer-­Drawe 196). It cannot be taught or learned. It cannot be repeated in the same form from one moment to the next. It may be fleeting and ‘left derelict or lost’ (Vasalou 220), ‘passing and unremembered’ like a shooting star (Heschel 37). At other times, though, we linger in our wonder and enquire or admire, worry or contemplate. There is a ‘lifting of the veil’, and we acquire a new perspective on things or events (Heschel 37). If nurtured, it passes from being a passive reaction of surprise and excitement and, circumstances permitting, inspires creativity of many kinds: scientific, aesthetic, ethical, spiritual or otherwise. In an article entitled ‘Philosophy of Wonder’ published in 1969, Parsons defined wonder in this last guise as ‘active and outward’ (93). As philosophers, poets, artists, theologians and spiritual writers have often acknowledged, wonder is ‘at the source of all great human intellectual and literary achievements’ (De Koninck 5). In this volume, scholars and poets look beyond their immediate disciplines and explore diverse facets of wonder. The recurring themes derive, some more directly than others, from ancient philosophy and Jewish and Christian revelation. Beauty, philosophical problems, preternatural creatures and human nature itself, all topics taken up by the contributors, feature from almost the outset in the Platonic dialogues as objects of wonder

Introduction 3 (thauma). Jewish and Christian views of Creation, revelation and, in the case of Christianity, incarnation, as several contributors emphasize, broadened the notion of wonder to include admiration, epiphany or irruption of the infinite into the infinitesimal. The volume does not pretend to provide a comprehensive history of these themes or to articulate their conceptual intricacies in every detail.2 What it does aspire to do is to examine some significant aspects of wonder, some overlooked, others better known but still worth revisiting, from three perspectives: philosophical, theological and literary. This threefold approach, which informs the structure of the volume, will, it is hoped, encourage readers to appreciate connections often ignored in discipline-­specific studies and to see wonder and knowledge, imagination and reason as interrelated, rather than conflictual. This last point comes out in the discussions of poems to be found in the essays and, more conspicuously, in the inclusion of four poems by contemporary poets connecting the three parts and the afterword. Simultaneously, they act as interludes, recalling the leitmotiv of the preceding contributions and adumbrating ideas in the essays that follow. Hilary Davies’s poem ‘In the Valley of the Lot’ evokes the theme of wonder before nature and human existence and ushers in the essays in the first part of this volume, ‘Philosophical perspectives’, that discuss philosophical ideas of wonder, ancient, medieval, Renaissance and modern. What is the wonder that comes over us when we contemplate nature and the cosmos? Why do we feel a sense of wonder before the onset of life and death? What value should we give to wonder? Should we wonder? That philosophers have engaged with wonder through the ages is a well-­known but endlessly intriguing topic. Plato and Aristotle, as Guido Milanese explains in the opening essay, stated, with different emphases, that wonder was the beginning of philosophy. Yet the idea that all men ask themselves why things are as they are posed a challenge. If wonder implied the lack of knowledge and stimulated a desire to know, then wonder was only a transitory lure, not an aspiration. It was destined to cease once the object of admiration had become familiar. Even this very qualified appreciation of wonder, some thought, was excessive. Wonder, above all wonder associated with fear or terror, disrupted the soul’s tranquility. This was, broadly speaking, the conclusion reached by Pythagoras (according to Plutarch), Democritus, Cicero, Horace and the Stoics and Epicureans generally. Summarizing the Stoic position, Horace, for example, declared: ‘to wonder at nothing, Numicius, is just about the only way a man can become contented and remain so’(Epistles 1, 6, 1–­2).3 Most ancient philosophers, Milanese concludes, looked at wonder as a symptom of a ‘radical openness’, leading either to wisdom or to the destructive inner voices of depression and fear of death, for which the only remedy was philosophy. The conventional scholastic view in the Christian middle ages remained, for the most part, that wonder was an affection that provoked the search for an explanation. Thomas Aquinas distinguished between wonder as

4  Francesca Bugliani Knox amazement, stupor and admiration. He defined amazement, along the lines of Aristotle, as the wonder we experience when we cannot immediately understand something. Wonder of this kind motivated philosophy. Stupor, on the other hand, was a transitory shock which impeded philosophical investigation: ‘Wherefore amazement is a beginning of philosophical research: whereas stupor is a hindrance thereto’ (Thomas Aquinas, 1.2ae, q. 41, art. 4, 5r). At the other extreme was admiration, the wonder that we experience when we contemplate something – the miraculous, creation ex nihilo, God himself – that surpasses our rational powers of understanding, at least in this life. For medieval mystics such as the Victorines, Eckhardt and other Christian thinkers who held that the mind could pass beyond this limitation, wonder could encompass ad-­miratio, the contemplative gaze to which all spiritual endeavour aimed. One overlooked contribution to the concept of wonder came, as Dilwyn Knox explains, from the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno. He was the first to offer an original, if unsystematically presented, philosophy that went ‘beyond the reelaborations of Platonism, Aristotelianism or skepticism within a Christian context that had hitherto prevailed’. With this ‘new philosophy’ came the idea that philosophers should aspire to wonder, not as a transitory state leading to knowledge, not as the ignorant admiration that Christians bestowed on the miraculous nor, indeed, as the admiration of a mind made one with God, but rather in a ‘contemplative exercise’  – ‘the most profound and worthwhile of all for man’s perfection’ – focused on the everlasting, infinite, universe understood as ‘the vast, living, image of God’ (Bruno I.1: 205–­6). As such, it led the soul to a state of fulfilment, conceived, Knox suggests, along Platonic or Neoplatonic lines, in which, enrapt, it recognized itself as an instantiation of the universe and, therefore, as wondrous itself. Bruno’s philosophy, with its suggestion that the universe itself remained forever an inexhaustible object of wonder, anticipated later secularizing interpretations of religious experience. It also suggested that the philosopher should aspire, not just to a theoretical understanding of nature, but also, and more importantly, to an affective state of wonder and awe before the majesty of an infinite first principle. He expressed this conviction in verse in the proem to his Italian dialogue De l’infinito, universo e mondi (On the Infinite, the Universe and its Worlds): ‘So my trusty wings I spread to the air/­, and, fearing no obstacle of crystal or glass,/ I cleave through the heavens and pass into the infinite./ And as from mine to other globes I do soar/ and through the plane of aether pierce,/ I leave behind those distant stars that others see.’ (2:31). Philosophers in the next generation  – for instance, Descartes and ­Spinoza – adapted traditional interpretations to their own new philosophies. For Descartes, wonder, although a primary ‘passion of the soul’ guiding all other passions, acted only as a transitory stimulus as far as knowledge was concerned. Spinoza, for his part, did not regard wonder, this ‘mental modification, or imagination of a particular thing’, as a stimulus to knowledge

Introduction 5 (189). It was merely a reaction that we have when we find ourselves unable to recognize the cause of something. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that it promoted the ‘affective’ state of mind favourable to religion and thereby thwarted the sectarianism which had, as recent history had shown, undermined civil and political allegiance. With Kant, wonder acquired a deeper philosophical role. ‘Two things’, he famously wrote, inspired ‘ever new and increasing admiration and reverence [Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht] the more one contemplates them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’. Kant distinguished this sustained wonder (Bewunderung) inspired by these two great things from the fleeting astonishment (Verwunderung) that we experience when something surprises us or contradicts our expectations. Neither was transcendent. Both were immediately evident and, he remarked, ‘connected to the consciousness of my existence’ (Kant 133). The similarities with Bruno, coincidental though they may be, are striking. Nineteenth-­century poets and authors developed the connection of wonder with epiphany or revelation of some kind. Gerard Manley Hopkins is an obvious example. As Richard Kearney explains in his essay, Hopkins’s interest in epiphany comes from his fascination with the medieval theologian Duns Scotus. Like Thomas Aquinas, though with a very different emphasis, Scotus shied away from a mystical pursuit of unity with God in this life. The presence of God was instead conveyed through haecceitas: that is to say, the precious ‘thisness’ of each creature as it bears witness to the infinite in the infinitesimal. The ‘thisness’ of each thing brought to the fore the revelatory and incarnational message of Christianity, with God present as creator of ‘essences’. The concept of haecceitas is essential for understanding ‘epiphany’ in Hopkins and, as Kearney suggests, for epiphanic experience in general. Since haecceitas is intrinsic to ‘being’, which is prior to ‘existence’, it follows that existence expresses itself ultimately as epiphany. With Scotus’s concept in mind, Kearney explores the wonders of epiphany in Hopkins’s religious interpretation of the Epiphany in Bethlehem and explains the implications this interpretation had for his poetry. In his poem entitled ‘To R.B.’, Hopkins expressed as follows the epiphanic moment and its aftermath: ‘The fine delight that fathers thought; the strong/ Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,/ breathes once and, quenched faster than it came,/ Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song’ (70). Such moments call for a response, in Hopkins’s case a poetic one. Wittgenstein, too, like Hopkins, emphasizes wonder as an experience while conceding that it is difficult to articulate this experience. Both envisage the realm of wonder as, at least in part, aesthetic. In other respects, however, their interpretations diverge, as one might expect given their different sensibilities and concerns. Wittgenstein’s philosophical discussion of wonder is analytical and does not entail any idea of an epiphany revealing God’s presence in the world, which he denied. He defined philosophy, as Priyambada Sarkar explains in the next essay, as the logical clarification of thoughts and dismissed all metaphysical and ontological propositions as

6  Francesca Bugliani Knox nonsense. In his view, the experience expressed in ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’ cannot be put into words ordinarily for the simple reason that such special experience is only possible when we view the world from the viewpoint of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis). Since such a viewpoint ‘goes beyond the world’, defined as the ‘totality of facts’, philosophy should pass it over in silence. Things of this kind could be only ‘shown’. Yet to wonder at the existence of the world was, for Wittgenstein, to wonder at something which, inexpressible in philosophical propositions though it might be, was value laden and meaningful. The inexpressible manifests itself in the aesthetic domain: in poems, music, painting and other non-­propositional forms of expression. Sarkar compares Wittgenstein’s approach to that of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore whom he admired. Neither accepted that logical language put a limit to what could be expressed. Philosophy, it seemed, had to step back, leaving wonder in the realm of the mystical and religious, of which it could not speak. Or is this really so? In his essay, Philippe Nouzille explains how we should understand wonder and its importance for philosophy. Wonder is not a psychological attitude. In essence, as Schelling remarked, it is the near stupefaction of reason. It is reason itself that is called into question in the experience of wonder. A simple flower like the famous rose of the German mystic Angelus Silesius, for instance, ‘forgetful of itself, oblivious to our vision’, is what makes us wonder and tells us what wonder really is. Reason stumbles over a simple flower because the flower does not allow itself to be delimited by metaphysics or technology. This is wonder, the ‘grounding attunement’ as Heidegger called it, that we experience when in the presence of ordinary realities. The rose brings us face to face with pure existence, which has come from being to presence – and so face to face with what defies all the calculations and predictions of reason. Wonder is not what surprises or amazes us but rather what puts us in front of the truth of the world and of ourselves. The disclosure of being in the rose and other natural things, or indeed artefacts such as paintings and poetry, give rise to wonder. Hence, to say that wonder lies at the beginning of philosophy is to say this: ‘In the first beginning wonder was the grounding-­attunement, since φύσις [phusis] lit up in and as ἀλήθεια [aletheia]’ (Contributions to Philosophy 340) – in clear contradiction of Aristotle. Its object is the being of what is. Further, the advent of being brings with it a recognition of its non-­being, its nothingness, and ours. ‘The grounding-­attunement of the first beginning is deep wonder that beings are, that man himself is extant, extant in that which he is not’ (32). Some might venture to recast this philosophical perspective theologically: for instance, by turning to the language of creation and divine revelation. Philosophy, since it is philosophy, had no part in such an enterprise. Philippe Nouzille’s essay, the last in the first part of this volume, is followed by Dana Gioia’s poem ‘The Litany’. The final images of the poem suggest that life, the ‘shattered river rising as it falls’, is much more than the events we think it is made of, the explanations we give for it or the

Introduction 7 consolations we receive in it. Life is not a tedious refrain: it gives rise to a ‘luminous mist’ steaming from the ‘gorge’, which is unfathomable. This awareness of something mysterious, if not greater than ourselves, a something in which we participate, marks a change of focus in this volume from a philosophical to a theological perspective on wonder. In the first essay in the second part, ‘Theological Perspectives’, Brett Speakman identifies wonder as the primary and fundamental characteristic of what he calls ‘Chesterton’s natural theology’. The natural world reveals God’s creative act. Paradox and estrangement, Chesterton held, serve to jolt people out of their existential slumber and lead them to recognize the uniqueness of the created order and to seek the divine being responsible for its origin and existence. ‘The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder’, wrote ­Chesterton (7). Wonder can indeed be, as Chesterton suggested, a transformative experience. In his examination of the ideas of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Michel de Certeau, Dorothe Sölle and other major twentieth-­century theologians, philosophers and literary critics, Bernard Sawicki explores the concepts of ‘rapture’ and ‘rupture’ characteristic of the experience of wonder. They are, he explains, two facets of the same existential experience, calling for a response that has consequences for our personal, psychological, ethical and spiritual ‘development’. The transformative nature of rapture/rupture can occur in moments of aesthetic wonder, as Sawicki illustrates in his commentary on Miron Białoszewski’s contemplative poem about a colander and a stove, ‘Grey eminences of rapture’ (‘Szare eminencje zachwytu’). Pursuing this line of argument, Sawicki, drawing on Elmar Salmann’s theology, suggests that the simultaneity of rupture/rapture and the suffering that it entails goes beyond the transformative and passes into the saving power of the Paschal mystery. The transformative nature of rupture did not escape Hölderlin, as Heidegger observed: ‘Where danger is grows the saving power too’ [‘Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst/ Das Rettende auch’] (Hölderlin, ‘Patmos’; Heidegger, ‘The Turning’ 42). The interplay of disruptive and soteriological aspects of wonder is nowhere more evident than in the Jewish religious tradition. Scripture is intrinsically a source of awe and wonder and yet, at the same time, of course, a repository of truth and law. But quite unique to Jewish culture is the stark contrast, articulated by prophets, poets and philosophers themselves, between the wondrous and the demands of the law in the holy text. In his essay, Ariel Zinder discusses three types of creative responses to this tension within the rabbinical tradition: homiletical, liturgical and poetical. He shows how these responses exemplify its ambivalent attitude towards scriptural wonder and especially towards wonder expressed in poetry. His conclusion is that, from the first century AD to the present, Jewish poets have tried consistently to finesse this problem in various ways and imagine, in his words, ‘even just for a moment David and Moses singing their songs together’. In the rabbinical tradition, the first to consider wonder as fundamental to the

8  Francesca Bugliani Knox Jewish religion was the twentieth-­century theologian Abraham Heschel. In his book I Asked for Wonder, he wrote as follows: ‘We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our question.’ Rather: ‘We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore’(Heschel 19). ‘What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe’ (21). Faced with suffering and death, emptiness and evil in human affairs, such innocent wonder, however, seems far-­fetched. How wonder can be reconciled with suffering is the theme of Jean Ward’s essay ‘Scandalous Wonder: Contemplating the Cross with Isaac Watts’. The ‘scandalous wonder’ in question is the Incarnation and its ineluctable, terrible conclusion in the cross, an experience that the mind would rather avoid, preferring indeed not to ‘wonder’. It was St Paul (I Cor. 1:23) who referred to the cross as a ‘scandal’ – skandalon being the Greek for a stumbling block. How could shame and humiliation become ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God’ (I Cor. 1:24)? Was it not a ‘scandalous wonder’ that they should do so? This strangest of paradoxes, adumbrated by St Paul, is a recurring theme in English religious poetry that goes back to the first Christian millennium, notably to the Anglo-­Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, in which the cross itself speaks. To this tradition, too, belongs Isaac Watts’s hymn ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’, the text Ward examines in detail. Introducing her recent engagement in theopoetics, Heather Walton’s essay looks to reinforce the connection between poetry and theology. Theopoetics regards events in human life as sources of divine revelation and trusts that both the divine and the events in this life are mysterious, irreducible to dogma or scientific or philosophical proof. Inspired by the work of Richard Kearney, Michel de Certeau and Jean Rhys, Walton endeavours to bring out the numinous in the ordinary through poetic narrative and, in doing so, lead us to view political, cultural and religious concerns afresh. Style becomes essential to theology. ‘I am using creative writing to construct a theopoetics that honours small and ordinary things’, writes Walton. ‘I use simple words to catch at a mystery and hold it for a little while to wonder at it’ and then adds that, through creative writing, it is possible to convey the ambivalence of wonder, alternating between the pain of existence and the balm of amazement. Jay Parini’s poem ‘Creed’, evoking the sense of wonder at what exists, leads into the next part of the volume, ‘Literary Perspectives’. It expresses trust in life, in every living thing, however humble or grubby they may seem, in the stars above, in change and chance, in the creative act of poetry itself. The first of the essays in this part, by Piero Boitani, begins with the famous line ‘the poet’s aim is wonder’ in the satirical poem La Murtoleide (1619), written by the great Baroque poet Giambattista Marino. Boitani explains that wonder is both the source and purpose of poetry, illustrating this insight with examples from, among others, Aeschylus and Lucretius,

Introduction 9 Dante and Góngora, Leopardi and Eliot, set in philosophical and theological context. Wonder may figure not only as the inspiration or the goal of a poem, but also as a poetic theme in itself. At the heart of St  Francis’s ‘Canticle of the Creatures’ lies a cry of wonder and the praise of God. The poem, as Jon Sweeney explains, came to St Francis as a revelation, a mystical moment similar to the stigmata experience that had occurred six months earlier. A very different perspective appears in Emilia Di Rocco’s contribution. In her study of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, Di Rocco reveals a poet who, rather than seeing himself as the recipient of revelation from above, comes to experience the wonder of things around him by turning from the ‘work of the eye’ to the ‘heart work’. In Rilke’s poetry, the angel, not the poet, receives revelation. The angel is at the centre of a reversal that leads Rilke, aware that metaphysical realms of whatever kind are inaccessible, to affirm the value of our transient world and ‘to praise this world to the angel’. The poet’s praise of the world before the angel produces wonder. The two essays that follow concern poems and paintings that celebrate wonder in the ordinary world, inasmuch as it generates moral and political conviction. The constant theme of Peter Levi’s poetry, as Robert Fraser explains in his essay, is an epiphanic ordinariness, a concentration, in Levi’s words, on ‘what is’ rather than ‘what merely seems’. Although he has much in common with the Hopkins of ‘The Bugler’s First Communion’ and with Chesterton too, Levi’s evocation of wonder always has a decidedly political and egalitarian edge. For him epiphanies of nature conceal a call to insurrection and their simplicity and directness challenge pretence. The works of the New Zealander painter and poet Joanna Margaret Paul, discussed by Joanna Osborne, similarly exemplify how attentiveness and wonder at the many ordinary things of life can inform art. In Paul’s case, the transfixing artistic effects of wonder, contrary to what is commonly believed, can generate ethical sensitivity in the supposedly disenchanted world in which we now live. What connects these different perspectives on wonder? Elena Buia’s poem ‘A Space for God’ invokes a moment when: A space in the air opens, in the silence, and as you cross it you smile softly as when snow falls This is the moment of artless openness and humble receptivity, even of vulnerability. Whether or not it lies at the heart of the many facets of wonder examined in this volume, such an experience leads us to reflect on the significance of wonder and mystery. ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious’, wrote Albert Einstein. ‘It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to

10  Francesca Bugliani Knox wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed’ (Einstein 6). Pope Francis, too, from a very different angle has spoken of the indispensable place of wonder in our lives. ‘To enter into the mystery’, Pope Francis said in one of his homilies, evoking 1 Kings 19:12, ‘means the ability to wonder, to contemplate, the ability to listen to the silence and to hear the tiny whisper amid great silence by which God speaks to us’ (1–­2). To wonder entails ‘lowliness that is powerlessness and the renunciation of our idols’. The women who were Jesus’ disciples, Pope Francis said, teach us all of this. They kept watch that night, together with Mary, Mary who experienced wonder of so many shades, the wonder at being chosen, the wonder of the Visitation and the Epiphany, the wounded wonder at the foot of the cross. Mary and her companions, Pope Francis continues, ‘did not remain prisoners of fear and sadness, but at the first light of dawn they went out carrying their ointments, their hearts anointed with love. They went forth and found the tomb open. And they went in and entered into the Mystery which leads from death to life’ (2). The ‘Afterword’, to which Elena Buia’s poem stands as a preface, opens with a discussion of Pope Francis’s emphasis on ‘awe and wonder’ in religious contexts. Wonder is transient; it is, nevertheless, the ‘beginning of the habitual state of Christians’. The ‘Afterword’ also considers his thoughts on wonder in relation to literature, art and morality. It should be nourished and nurtured, Pope Francis suggests, for the benefits that it brings to our moral well-­being and to our engagement with the natural world. These are far from being exclusively religious sentiments. In an essay published in 1980, the philosopher Ronald W. Hepburn emphasized how wonder, ‘non-­utilitarian’ as it is, has close affinity with ‘attitudes that seek to affirm and to respect other-­being’ and promotes respect for the things around us by encouraging us to truly see and honour their otherness (15). Wonder enhances life, he wrote, overcomes solipsism, dispels cynicism, fosters altruism and humility, exposes manipulation in a world where disenchantment and relativism prevail. Conversely, a lack of wonder, to quote another philosopher, Howard Parsons, inhibits ‘compassion, commitment, aspiration and, worst of all, a sense of justice (101). Poets concur, a notable example being Mary Oliver in her poem ‘Mysteries, Yes’: ‘Truly, we live with mysteries too marvellous/ to be understood./­ . . . Let me keep my distance, always, from those/ who think they have the answers./ Let me keep company always with those who say/ “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads’ (62). Similarly, Emily Dickinson: Wonder – is not precisely Knowing And not precisely Knowing not –­ A beautiful but bleak condition He has not lived who has not felt –­ Suspense – is his maturer Sister –­ Whether Adult Delight is Pain

Introduction 11 Or of itself a new misgiving –­ This is the Gnat that mangles men. (Dickinson 455) In the search for knowledge, the role of the affective dimension of human experience escapes us too often. Wittgenstein wrote ‘man has to awaken to wonder – and so perhaps do peoples’ (5e).4 This volume would like to be a modest contribution to this end.

Notes 1 ‘Joyous, as it me behooveth,/ Did for years my soul aspire/ To experience and inquire/ How creative nature moveth./ Tis the eternal one and all/ Which appears as manifold,/ Small things great are,/ great things small,/ Everything has its own mould./ Same remaining in mutations./ Near and far and far and near,/ Forming thus by transformations,/ For amazement am I  here.’ (Translation by Paul Carus). 2 Lloyd, Rubenstein, Matuschek, Vasalou, Edwards and Deckard give intellectual histories of wonder. For historical wonders as objects of inquiry in the natural world, see Mary Baine Campbell and Daston and Park. Fuller focuses on spiritual approaches to wonder, Fisher on aesthetic ones. For modern philosophical discussions of wonder, see Hepburn, Parsons and Llewelyn. Vasalou provides a ‘grammar’ of wonder. Details of these publications are included in ‘Works cited’. 3 ‘Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici,/ solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum’. 4 ‘Zum Staunen muss der Mensch – und vielleicht Völker – aufwachen’ (5).

Works cited Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings and Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Berti, Enrico. In principio era la meraviglia: Le grandi questioni della filosofia antica. Roma-­Bari: Laterza, 2007. Bollert, David W. ‘The Wonder of Humanity in Plato’s Dialogues’. Kritike 4.1 (2010): 174–­98. Brewer, Keagan. Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 2016. Bruno, Giordano. ‘De immenso et innumerabilibus’. In Opera latine conscripta. Ed. Francesco Fiorentino, Felice Tocco, Girolamo Vitelli et al., 3 vols in 8 pts. Naples and Florence, 1879–­91, vol. 1, pt 1: 191–­398; vol. 1, pt 2: 1–­318. Bynum, Caroline Walker. ‘Wonder’. The American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1–­26. Campbell, Mary Baine. Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Carus, Paul. ‘Goethe’s Nature Philosophy’. The Open Court (1907): 227–­37. Chesterton, G.K. Tremendous Trifles. New York: Sheer and Ward, 1955. Daston, Lorraine, and Catherine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–­ 1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Deckard, Michael Funk, and Péter Losonczi, eds. Philosophy Begins in Wonder: An Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy, Theology, and Science. London: James Clarke, 2011.

12  Francesca Bugliani Knox De Koninck, Thomas. ‘L’emerveillement du Petit prince’. In Phénoménologie du merveilleux. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Quebec, 1977, 1–­15. Descartes, René. ‘The Passions of the Soul’. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1. Trans. John Cottigham et  al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 325–­404. Dickinson, Emily. ‘Wonder  – Is Not Precisely Knowing’. In Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. Ed. Helen Vendler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Edwards, Michael. De l’émerveillement. Paris: Fayard, 2008. Einstein, Albert, James Jeans et  al. Living Philosophies. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931. Fisher, Philip. Wonder, the Rainbow and the Aesthetics of Rare Experience. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Fuller, Robert C. Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Geppert, Alexander, and Till Kössler, eds. Wunder: Poetik und Politik des Staunens im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin, 2011. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, von. ‘Parabase’. In Projekt Gutenberg-­DE: Source: Gedichte: Ausgabe letzter Hand. Ed. Ernst Beutler. Zürich: Artemis-­Verlag, 1949. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Trans. and intro. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. ———. The Principle of Reason. Trans. Reginald Lilly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. ———. ‘Die Kehre’. In Identität und Differenz: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 11. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2006, 113–­24. Hepburn, R.W. ‘The Inaugural Address: Wonder’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volumes 54 (1980): 1–­23. ———. Wonder and Other Essays. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2017. Hölderlin, Johann Christian Friedrich. ‘Patmos’. In Hölderins Sämtliche Werke. Ed. Norbert von. Hellingrath, vol. 4. Berlin: Im Propyläen-­Verlag, 1943, 227. Cited in Heidegger, La svolta, 18. Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder. London: HarperPress, 2008. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ed. Robert Bridges. London: Humphrey Milford, 1918. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. Mary Gregor, intro. Andrews Reath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Llewelyn, John. ‘On the Saying that Philosophy Begins in Thaumazein’. Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 4 (2001): 48–57. Lloyd, Genevieve. Reclaiming Wonder: After the Sublime. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1918. Matuschek, Stefan. Über das Staunen: Eine ideengeschichtliche Analyse. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991. Meyer-­Drawe, Käte. ‘Staunen – ein sehr philosophisches Gefühl’. Etica & Politica/ Ethics & Politics XIII (2011/­1): 196–­205.

Introduction 13 Oliver, Mary. ‘Mysteries, Yes’. In Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. Parsons, Howard L. ‘A Philosophy of Wonder’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30.1 (1969): 84–­101. Pope Francis. ‘Easter Vigil in the Holy Night’. 4 April  2015, https://­w2.vatican. va/­content/­francesco/­en/­homilies/­2015/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20150404_ omelia-­veglia-­pasquale.pdf Ronfard, Bruno. Éloge de l’étonnement. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998. Rubenstein, Mary-­Jane. Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Sablé, Erik. Petit Manuel d’émerveillement. Paris: Éditions Dervy Paris, 2004. Sayers, Dorothy L. ‘Preface’. In The Surprise by G. K. Chesterton. London: Sheed & Ward, 1952. Schallum, Pierre, ed. Phénomenologie du merveilleux. Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2012. Silesius, Angelus. The Cherubinic Wanderer. Trans. Maria Shrady. New York: Paulist Press, 1986. Spinoza, Benedictus de. A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Ed. and trans. Edwin Curley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. trans. by the English Dominican Fathers. 3 vols. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947. Vasalou, Sophia, ed. Practices of Wonder: Cross-­Disciplinary Perspectives. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. ———. Wonder. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. Vergely, Bertrand. Retour à l’émerveillement. Paris: Albin Michel, 2010. Von Schirnding, Albert. Am Anfang war das Staunen: Űber den Ursprung der Philosophie bei den Griechen. Ebenhausen bei München: Langewiesche-­Brandt, 2008. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Ed. G.H. von Wright. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Part I

Philosophical perspectives

In the Valley of the Lot We came across the crayey Lot –­ What seas have lain here through the centuries –­ The cliffs are made of life Up whose sheer walls we steer. The fall beads fear, the song of far below And time’s drop. We drove along the edge of space, Blue, blue and white, your face light as a pearl Around its seed of dust. You saw, where I did not, Your road darkening to a dazzle Stripped out and strung like a chord Towards its perfect note. So the path led: the jolting track, The long-­forgotten well, The lichen knitting life and stone, Our journey’s door as dream Now opening green upon the arbour. O little oak trees in the forest, The garden of the earth was ours! And you sat in it, content. I felt The incandescence settle, start to thrum Like a halo in the wood which rode The shadows on its ring of fire. You stared silent into that soul glare, Time’s oil crushed from moss and lavender, The myrrh of longing and memory and coming home. What leaves rustled in your mind then, What herald bugled in the balsam air? As your frame merged with night

16  Philosophical perspectives I heard them thronging through the undergrowth, Lamb and ewe hustle, ghostly, Brush with their warm breath the limestone wall. They moved like a still wind of spirits Whispering to their shepherd of eternity. At the door you listened in the waiting forest Till the moon fell and the sheep bells Called from beyond the hinge of darkness, Out of the wood of unknowing Over the threshold between thicket and infinite Where world and soul forge one. Hilary Davies

1 The wonder of not wondering From Plato to Lucretius Guido Milanese

Memorable beginnings: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’), Dante’s Divine Comedy (‘In the midway of this our mortal life,/ I found me in a gloomy wood, astray/ Gone from the path direct’) and certainly Aristotle’s Metaphysics (‘All men by nature desire to know’).1 They ‘desire’ (oρέγονται), says Aristotle: it is a motion from something towards something else, from ignorance to – presumably – knowledge, and any motion must be caused by something, excluding God, in an Aristotelian universe. This something that moves is wonder (Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b11–­28): That it [philosophy] is not a productive science is clear from a consideration of the first philosophers. It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities2 and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe. Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant (thus the philosopher is in a sense a myth lover3 since myths are composed of wonders); therefore if it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy, it is obvious that they pursued science for the sake of knowledge, and not for any practical utility. The actual course of events bears witness to this; for speculation of this kind began with a view to recreation and pastime, at a time when practically all the necessities of life were already supplied. Clearly then it is for no extrinsic advantage that we seek this knowledge; for just as we call a man independent who exists for himself and not for another, so we call this the only independent science, since it alone exists for itself.4 The passage is a well-­known adaptation of a passage in Plato’s Theaetetus: For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy, and he who said that Iris was the child of Thaumas made a good genealogy. (155d)

18  Guido Milanese Aristotle’s contribution is clear: he underlines that wonder is inescapably linked with the desire of knowledge (‘he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant’), with three consequences: (1)  ‘it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy’; (2) there is some relationship between philosophy and myth and (3) that philosophy had a well-­defined place in the history of civilization (‘for speculation of this kind began with a view to recreation and pastime, at a time when practically all the necessities of life were already supplied’). Is wonder then a pleasure for Aristotle? It is, normally, a pleasure, as well as a stimulus to learning: And learning and admiring are normally pleasant; for admiring implies the desire to learn, so that what causes admiration is to be desired, and learning implies a return to stable natural condition. (Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 1371a)5 Aristotle says ‘normally’, a standard opening in rhetorical reasoning. More significant is what follows. The pleasure of admiring and of learning are not the same. The former is a pleasure with respect to something, while the latter is the pleasure of being in a natural state of mind. Being ignorant is not natural because it implies discomfort or uneasiness.

Aristotle So wonder, for Aristotle, is not really a pleasure. It can be regarded as a pleasure only with respect to the end of the process that it ‘moves’, sets in motion, this end being knowledge. Wonder is a provisional, transient condition of the human soul. It opens a process, and the conclusion of the process, at least insofar as partial knowledge is concerned, removes wonder: Yet the acquisition of it [knowledge] must in a sense end in something which is the opposite of our original inquiries. For all men begin, as we said, by wondering that things are as they are, as they do about self-­ moving marionettes, or about the solstices or the incommensurability of the diagonal of a square with the side; for it seems wonderful to all who have not yet seen the reason, that there is a thing which cannot be measured even by the smallest unit. But we must end in the contrary and, according to the proverb, the better state, as is the case in these instances too when men learn the cause; for there is nothing which would surprise a geometer so much as if the diagonal turned out to be commensurable. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 983a)6 The basic, if unstated, Grundfrage is whether the same resolution of wonder which happens with knowledge of particulars also occurs in a process

The wonder of not wondering 19 leading to absolute knowledge. Endless processes are not possible (ἀνάγκη στήναι, ‘it is necessary to come to a stop’) because they continue, impossibly for Aristotle, εἰς ἄπειρον (ad infinitum). Is this condition, this absolute knowledge, possible for us or only for God?7

Lucretius Lucretius was obsessed with wonder: ‘no wonder that  .  .  .’ (ni mirum) is used in 32 lines, warning the reader, as it were, to refrain from wonder: ‘And forbear herein to wonder that the current from this stone is not able to set in motion other things as well as iron’ (VI, 1056–­7). The adjective mirabile is used seven times by Lucretius and always with a word of warning to the reader (II, 308, 465; IV, 256, 898; V, 666, 1056). The passage where Lucretius elaborates his aversion for wonder is in the second book: Apply now, we entreat, your mind to true reason. For a new question struggles earnestly to gain your ears, a new aspect of things to display itself. But there is nothing so easy as not to be at first more difficult to believe than afterwards; and nothing too so great, so marvellous, that all do not gradually abate their admiration of it. Look up at the bright and unsullied hue of heaven and the stars which it holds within it, wandering all about, and the moon and the sun’s light of dazzling brilliancy: if all these things were now for the first time, if I say they were now suddenly presented to mortals beyond all expectation, what could have been named that would be more marvellous than these things, or that nations beforehand would less venture to believe could be? Nothing methinks; so wondrous strange had been this sight. Yet how little, you know, wearied as all are to satiety with seeing, any one now cares to look up into heaven’s glittering quarters! Cease therefore to be dismayed by the mere novelty and so to reject reason from your mind with loathing: weigh the questions rather with keen judgment and if they seem to you to be true, surrender, or if the thing is false, gird yourself to the encounter. (II, 1023–­43)8 The structure of the passage is the same as we saw in Aristotle’s text: a first stage (not knowledge) and a second stage (knowledge), where the latter stage is preferable to the former – the point is explicit in Aristotle and implied in Lucretius. Once you have reached knowledge, the greatest peril is, for Lucretius, to be seized again by wonder: For they who have been rightly taught that the gods lead a life without care, if nevertheless they wonder on what plan all things can be carried on, above all in regard to those things which are seen overhead in the ethereal borders, are borne back again into their old religious scruples

20  Guido Milanese and take unto themselves hard taskmasters, whom they poor wretches believe to be almighty, not knowing what can, what cannot be, in short on what principle each thing has its powers defined, its deep set boundary mark; for which reason they are led all the farther astray by blind reason. (VI, 50ff) There is, then, no pleasure in wondering, only danger. What pleasure there is comes with the freedom from wonder and is not part of the process itself. And wonder, far from being, as Aristotle says, pleasant in some (indirect) way, becomes terror for Epicurus. In an Epicurean world, science in an Aristotelian sense is nonsense. Knowledge is necessary only because we need to remove fear and terror from our souls: If we had never been molested by alarms at celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by the misgiving that death somehow affects us, nor by neglect of the proper limits of pains and desires, we should have had no need to study natural science. It would be impossible to banish fear on matters of the highest importance, if a man did not know the nature of the whole universe, but lived in dread of what the legends tell us. Hence without the study of nature there was no enjoyment of unmixed pleasures. (Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 11–­12)9 The Aristotelian claim about knowledge not being ‘productive’ is here reversed. Science (‘philosophy’ or even ‘knowledge’) is, indeed, productive, and its ‘product’ is human freedom from fears and terrors. This stable, natural condition (katástema) is not a process – a basic idea of Epicurean ethics. In this respect, at least, Epicureanism agrees with Aristotle’s idea mentioned earlier (see p. 18 above) that, after the stage of wonder, the stage of learning is directed towards a katástema in accord to nature.

Horace, Seneca, Panaetius, Posidonius For the Epicurean tradition, where ‘pure’ philosophy is a meaningless idea once the learner assimilates the basic tenets of the school, there is no room for residual or resurgent wondering. Philosophy is a productive activity, and its product is freedom. The philosopher remains in this stable state until, perchance, he is waylaid by wonder again. Lucretius was not alone in holding this view. The Greek geographer and philosopher Strabo (60 BC–­AD 24) noticed that ‘not wondering’ was a feature of ‘all the philosophers’, citing Democritus as the philosopher who first made this point.10 Horace (Epistles 1, 16) took the same stance: ‘Marvel at nothing’ – that is perhaps the one and only thing, Numicius, that can make a man happy and keep him so. Yon sun, the stars and

The wonder of not wondering 21 seasons that pass in fixed courses – some can gaze upon these with no strain of fear: what think you of the gifts of earth, or what of the sea’s, which makes rich far distant Arabs and Indians – what of the shows, the plaudits and the favours of the friendly Roman – in what wise, with what feelings and eyes think you they should be viewed? (Horace 287) We should not trouble ourselves too much about Horace’s philosophical source or sources here; after all, in Epistles 1, 14 he says that he does not feel bound to any school of philosophy (‘nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri’). True, as Mayer noticed, Horace’s ‘marvel at nothing’ here may be no more than an aspect of Horace’s aequus animus, and that it derives from more than one Hellenistic school, Epicureanism and the Stoa being the most plausible possibilities.11 Yet Horace, we should note, refers to marvel in the same context as Lucretius: that is, marvel provoked by natural phaenomena, particularly those which occur ‘in fixed courses’ (‘certis momentis’), where the adjective ‘fixed’(‘certus’) is characteristically Lucretian. The similarities between Horace and the Epicurean point of view, exemplified by Lucretius, Armstrong observes, give lie to interpretations of scholars like Mayer who prefer not to see any connection between the two.12 Perhaps, then, should we allow that Horace was, at least here, adopting an Epicurean tone or, even, that he was following an Epicurean source? The inference would be hasty.13 There was at least one other school, the Stoa, with which Horace was familiar, that spoke of wonder in similar terms. Seneca,14 for example, writes as follows: [21] Posidonius says that there are four classes of arts: those that are common and mercenary, the arts of entertainment, those of elementary education, and the liberal arts. The common arts are those of artisans, consist of manual work and are devoted to equipping us with the necessities of life; they have no pretensions to seemly or moral behaviour. [22] The entertainment arts are aimed at the pleasure of eye and ear. We may include among these the engineers who devise automatically ascending platforms, or tiers waxing silently heavenwards and other tricks that surprise one: solid floors that gape, things apart joining up of their own accord, edifices that tower above us sinking slowly into themselves. That is what dazzles the uneducated: they wonder at any sudden happening because they don’t know the cause of it. (Posidonius 149) The resemblances to the first kind of wonder that Aristotle mentions in Metaphysics 983a are strong. Both speak of men wondering about ingenious mechanical devices provoking exciting wonder amongst the uneducated. There is abundant evidence that Stoic philosophers, Panaetius and Posidonius being conspicuous instances, were disposed to the theme of athaumastía

22  Guido Milanese (Horaz 56–­7), as one might expect from their constant recourse to Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.15 The theme of wonder occurs only rarely in the fragmentary records of Stoic philosophy that has come down to us (no complete Stoic text in Greek survives), a historical accident that lends Lucretius II, 1023ff greater weight as a source for Horace’s ‘marvel at nothing’ than it perhaps merits.

Lucretius and Horace: the doxographic hypothesis Several scholars have suggested that one of Lucretius’s sources was a doxographical manual or resource of some kind.16 This would explain the striking resemblance between Lucretius’s and Horace’s opposition to the Aristotelian view of wonder as the ‘normal’ beginning of philosophy. Both authors begin their discussion of wonder in a similar way. Some people, says Horace, are able to watch without marvel the most impressive celestial phenomena. Lucretius, for his part, explains that people eventually cease to wonder at even the most marvellous things, such as the stars. The example of stars goes back, as we have seen, to the opening of Aristotle’s Metaphysics 982 (see p. 17 above). Both deem that absence of wonder is prerequisite for one’s personal equanimity (katástema), the greatest prize of philosophy. Lucretius urges his readers not to let their reason be disturbed by novelty and wonder. Horace observes that, if we do not wonder at things of great moment, such as the heavens, why should we wonder at lesser things? Both authors decry the possible defeat of human reason by pointless fear. These striking similarities and the many Stoic parallels lend weight to the possibility that both authors drew on a common doxographical source, a manual, a collection of doxai of some kind or even a commentary. The correspondence with Aristotle’s examples of the sun and the stars reinforces this hypothesis. We know little about doxographical works of this kind in Greek and Roman antiquity. Recently, we have come to know more about them, thanks to the discovery of doxographical works by Philodemus among the Herculaneum papyri, some written for his school, others notes taken by Philodemus himself when he was a student. Thanks to these texts the cultural framework of Roman Epicureanism becomes clearer.17 How many other such works were produced in Greek and Roman schools? We cannot say. All the same, I think it is likely that Lucretius and Horace used one or more philosophical manuals or a collection of commonplaces that included entries on the perils of wonder. Was this source or were these sources Stoic in inclination? I believe so. In Epicurus and in the Epicurean tradition the topic we are studying is unknown outside Lucretius. By contrast, strictures against wonder were a standard topic of Stoic philosophy and blended nicely with the eudemonistic strains inculcated by Panaetius. Perhaps, too, entries on wonder in stoicizing doxographical works of this kind might have deliberately taken issue with the Aristotelian interpretation of wonder as the beginning of philosophy in a parallel tradition of Peripatetic doxography.

The wonder of not wondering 23

The wonder of being free, sebasmós The wonder that provokes fear is not the only possible kind of wonder. An Epicurean recognized the wonder of his own liberation and of the perfect lives of those who before him attained freedom from the unfulfilled lives of the many. Lucretius celebrates their achievement with these words: At all this kind of godlike delight mixed with shuddering awe comes over me to think that nature by thy power is laid thus visibly open, is thus unveiled on every side. (III, 28–­30)18 A short but elegant treatise on ethics, possibly by Philodemus, that survives among the papyri of the library in Herculaneum captures the joy of contemplation in this freedom: . . . put in front of our eyes all the good(s) things that come from Epicurus and are generated by his teaching for men willing to receive them. (Capasso, Trattato etico-­epicureo)19 [Translation is mine.] Rather than wonder in the Aristotelian sense, this is veneration, sebasmós. We are gods, as Epicurus writes at the end of his letter to Menoeceus: You will live as a god among humans. A  man living among eternal blessings bears no resemblance to humans. (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus section 135)20 Why ‘the many’ are so reluctant to search for liberation is left unexplained. But then the same is true of Aristotle’s account of wonder. Wonder may be a universal impulse leading to knowledge, but few seem to avail themselves of it.21 Did the Stoics also ‘wonder’ at their freedom from wonder? Not really. The wise man of Stoic philosophy remained an impossible ideal, a philosophical abstraction that could not be attained. Yearn though he might to be rid of wonder, unlike the Epicureans, he would never marvel at accomplishing his goal.

Fear, wondering, not wondering The Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino has proposed a different interpretation of Aristotle’s wonder:22 Thaûma is above all the anguished astonishment, the stupefaction and the terror of man before the fading away of life, pain and death. The etymology itself of this powerful, disconcerting, word tells us this. Only

24  Guido Milanese when we grasp its authentic meaning does it become apparent why Aristotle asserts that the attainment of a philosophical truth leads us to a state of mind ‘opposite’ to that of thaûma, that is, it leads to a happiness that comes about through resolving problems concerning the meaning of the world and the purpose to which man’s actions should be directed.23 [Translation is mine.] Aristotle’s thaûma for Severino becomes, therefore, bewilderment, even terror. This interpretation is true to Severino’s view that our lives are circumscribed by Nothingness. His etymology is implausible and has had little impact on Aristotelian scholarship.24 Yet his proposal makes sense from an Epicurean point of view according to which atoms are in perfect aequilibrium (eu-­statheia) when the human being has no further questions to deal with. The wise man, that is, has reached a divine condition but wonder opens questions, implicitly paving the road to a return to myth.25 Wonder is danger, sheltering monsters: fear, anger, anxiety, desperation, death misunderstood. Or, to revert to Severino, wonder is the means by which Nothingness insinuates itself into our lives. Ultimately it is Heidegger’s Kehre, the turning(s) in one’s life.26 As in Lucretius’s horror, the Kehre is, in a sense, an event outside time: The turning of the danger comes to pass suddenly. In this turning, the clearing belonging to the essence of Being suddenly clears itself and lights up. This sudden self-­lighting is the lightning-­flash [. . .] Insight into that which is – thus do we name the sudden flash of the truth of Being into truthless Being. When insight comes disclosingly to pass, then men are the ones who are struck in their essence by the flashing of Being. In insight, men are the ones who are caught sight of. (Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology 44, 47)27 What then do the ancients tell us about wonder? Wonder is the symptom of a radical openness in human beings in two contrasting ways. It makes them receptive to what is outside them. Wonder in this guise enriches their experience, téchne, and eventually leads to wisdom. Yet it also makes them receptive to the destructive inner voice of fear, depression, death, for which the only remedy is philosophy. These ancient voices teach us to be radical in our questioning of the world around us and to accept the dangers that this entails. In ‘Die Kehre’ (‘The Turning’), Heidegger quotes Hölderlin to just this effect: Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst Das Rettende auch. (But where danger is, grows The saving power also.)

The wonder of not wondering 25

Notes 1 For the Greek text, I consulted Primavesi’s new critical edition (Primavesi). 2 Tredennick translates  ἀτόπων (‘perplexities’), chosen both by Tredennick and Jaeger, while Primavesi prefers ἀπόρων (‘things hard to deal with’). 3 I have modified the translation in order to follow Primavesi’s text. 4 Primavesi’s text differs from Tredennick’s and Jaeger’s, but the meaning is not altered. 5 Freese’s translation modified (‘And learning and admiring are as a rule pleasant; for admiring implies the desire to learn, so that what causes admiration is to be desired, and learning implies a return to the normal’). 6 Among recent contributions to the interpretation of this famous passage, see Cambiano and Broadie. According to Cambiano, ‘objects of wonder are in the first place men, rather than states of affairs, namely men who discovered something new, never perceived before’(34). By contrast, Broadie remarks that ‘however uplifting and enjoyable wonder may be, all who are serious about sophia must be willing to shed their wonder, since doing so is inevitable for those who emerge into “the better state” of finally understanding what they had set themselves to understand’ (66). For further valuable contributions, see Berti (In Principio era la meraviglia x; L’unità del sapere 107–­8; Aristotele 409). Aristotle refers to wonder in many other passages, the most impressive probably being On the Parts of Animals 645a5–­17. 7 On wisdom and wonder in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, see Schaeffer. 8 The translation, with the exceptions of ‘abate’ and ‘if they are a falsehood’, is by H.A.J. Munro. 9 In Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. 2, 667. 10 Democritus fragm. 168. Democritus did not probably use the word athaumastía. Cicero, De finibus V 29.87, records that Democritus called the ‘summum bonum’ euthumia (‘contentment’) or athambia (‘imperturbability’); see McGann 46 n. 4. Athaumastía is a word ascribable to Panaetius (= Latin sine admiratione), see Seneca, De Vita Beata 3, 44 (Grilli, 225 n. 1). 11 See Musurillo (196). 12 See Mayer. On Mayer and other scholars, see Armstrong (269). In addition to Heinze’s or Fraenkel’s classical work, I  would stress the importance of McGann (10–­24 and 46–­8) and Moles. There are excellent Italian studies in this field, for instance Grilli and Della Corte (‘Il soggiorno ateniese di Orazio’, ‘Areio Didimo’). Gigante’s note about Aristippus in Horace is particularly remarkable. Armstrong notices that the lack of a sufficient influence of Herculaneum studies on Horatian scholarship is partly due to ‘the lack of translations into English, French, and German’ (273). 13 See, for example, Ferri (118), who identifies an allusion to Lucretius in Horace’s Epist. I 6, 1–­4, without providing any evidence for his interpretation. Moreover, Ferri does not refer to Lucretius II 1023ff, but to I 151–­2, a much more generic comparison. 14 Seneca, Epistulae 88, 21–­8 = Posidonius fr. 90. 15 For the mutual relations between Posidonius, Panaetius and the Aristotelian tradition, see Sandbach (Aristotle and the Stoics 58–­63) and id. (The Stoics 123–­39). 16 See Rösler, Mansfeld (3143–­54) and Runia. Montarese discusses this issue in detail in his recent volume on Lucretius’s I, 635–­920 (20ff). Lucretius’s source remains a matter of scholarly debate; see Milanese (Lucida carmina) and Sedley for some contrasting views and further literature. 17 See e.g. Philippson and Della Corte (‘Areio Didimo’). 18 ‘His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas/ percipit atque horror, quod sic natura tua vi/ tam manifesta patens ex omni parte retecta est.’ Translation by Munro.

26  Guido Milanese 19 ‘Porre davanti ai nostri occhi tutti i beni che vengono da Epicuro e che sono generati dal suo magistero per uomini disposti a riceverli’. The treatise (PHerc. 346) has been edited, with Italian translation and commentary, by Mario Capasso. One of the most important Epicurean works about ‘those who won the battle’ is Carneisco’s work on a deceased philosopher. Also, in this case, Capasso’s commentary is a seminal work (Carneisco). 20 ζήσῃ δὲ ὡς θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις. οὐθὲν γὰρ ἔοικε θνητῷ ζῴῳ ζῶν ἄνθρωπος ἐν ἀθανάτ­ οις ἀγαθοῖς. [Translation is mine.] 21 The importance of Aristotle’s adjective pántes, ‘all’, needs to be emphasized, as Berti (Struttura e significato 32–­3) notes. On the Epicurean views about conversion for all as distinct from conversion for the few in relation to wonder and sebasmós, see Milanese (L’immagine di Epicuro’). 22 Severino (La filosofia contemporanea) is the first statement of this interpretation. 23 ‘Thaûma è  .  .  . innanzitutto, l’angosciato stupore, lo stordimento e il terrore dell’uomo dinanzi al divenire della vita, al dolore e alla morte. Lo dice la stessa struttura etimologica di questa parola potente e terribile. Solo scorgendone il significato autentico ci si spiega perché Aristotele affermi che il possesso della filosofia conduce ‘nello stato contrario’ a quello costituito da thaûma, ossia conduce alla felicità che sorge dal risolvimento dei problemi intomo al senso del mondo e dei problemi intorno al senso che l’agire dell’uomo deve avere’ (Severino, Il muro di pietra 116). 24 The standard etymological dictionaries do not record Severino’s proposal. For possible etymologies of thauma, see Chantraine (425), Pokorny (sub voce) and Frisk. 25 This is authentic Epicureanism, according to which death is the only difference between men and gods (see again the end of Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus cited at p. 23 above). I  propose to distinguish between ‘equipollence’ and ‘equivalence’ as a convenient tool to differentiate human-­god and god-­god (Milanese, ‘L’immagine di Epicuro’ 119–­20). 26 See Heidegger, ‘The Turning’. Another English translation of Heidegger’s ‘Die Kehre’ was published some years later in The Question Concerning Technology (36–­49). An Italian translation is worth mentioning for its long and useful appendix (Heidegger, La Svolta). 27 ‘Die Kehre der Gefahr ereignet sich jäh. In der Kehre lichtet sich jäh die Lichtung des Wesens des Seins. Das jähe Sichlichten ist das Blitzen’ (Heidegger, ‘Die Kehre’ 120); ‘Einblick in das was ist – so heißt der Blitz der Wahrheit des Seins in das wahrlose Sein. Wenn Einblick sich ereignet, dann sind die Menschen die vom Blitz des Seins in ihr Wesen Getroffenen. Die Menschen sind die im Einblick Erblickten’ (122).

Works cited Aristotle. The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric. Trans. J.H. Freese. The Loeb Classical Library no. 22. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926. ———. Metaphysics. Ed. W.D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. [Reprint, with corrections 1953, of 1924 edition.] ———. Metaphysics. Trans. Hugh Tredennick. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956. ———. Esortazione alla filosofia: Protreptico. Ed. Enrico Berti. Padova: Editrice R.A.D.A.R, 1972. Armstrong, David. ‘Horace’s Epistles 1 and Philodemus’. In Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans. Ed. David Armstrong [et al.]. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004, 267–­98. Bailey, Cyril, ed. Epicurus: The Extant Remains. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926.

The wonder of not wondering 27 Berti, Enrico. L’unità del sapere in Aristotele. Padova: Cedam, 1965. ———. Aristotele: Dalla dialettica alla filosofia prima. Milano: Bompiani, 1977. ———. Struttura e significato della Metafisica di Aristotele. Ed. Ignacio Yarza. Rome: Edusc [Edizioni Università della Santa Croce], 2006. ———. In principio era la meraviglia: Le grandi questioni della filosofia antica. Milano: Laterza, 2007. Broadie, Sarah. ‘A Science of First Principles: Metaphysics A2’. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum. Ed. Carlos Steel, and a new critical edition of the Greek Text by Oliver Primavesi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 43–­67. Cambiano, Giuseppe. ‘The Desire to Know: Metaphysics A1’. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum. Ed. Carlos Steel, with a new critical edition of the Greek Text by Oliver Primavesi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 1–­42. Capasso, Mario, ed. Trattato etico epicureo (PHerc. 346). Naples: Giannini, 1982. Carneisco. Il secondo libro del Filista (PHerc.102). Ed., trans. and comm. Mario Capasso, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1988. Chantraine, Pierre. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: Histoire des mots. Paris: Klincksieck, 1970. Della Corte, Francesco. ‘Il soggiorno ateniese di Orazio’. In Opuscula XIII, Genoa: Darficlet [Dipartimento di Archeologia, Filologia Classica e loro tradizioni], 1992, 69–­93. ———. ‘Areio Didimo, Orazio e la dossografia d’età augustea’. In Opuscula XIV, Genoa: Darficlet [Dipartimento di Archeologia, Filologia Classica e loro tradizioni], 2000, 95–­110. Epicurus. Principal Doctrines. In Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2 vols. Trans. R.D. Hicks. London: W. Heinemann, 1925. Ferri, Rolando. I dispiaceri di un epicureo: Studio sulla poetica oraziana delle Epistole. Pisa: Giardini, 1993. Fraenkel, Eduard. Horace. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Frisk, Hjalmar. Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1954–1972. Gigante, Marcello. ‘Orazio: la filosofia e le filosofie’. In Atti del Convegno di Venosa, 8–­15 novembre 1992. Venosa: Edizioni Osanna, 1993, 47–­57. ———. ‘Quel che Aristippo non aveva detto’. La parola del passato 271 (1993): 267–­80. Grilli, Alberto. Vita contemplativa: Il problema della vita contemplativa nel mondo greco-­romano. Brescia: Paideia, 2002. Heidegger, Martin. ‘The Turning’. Research in Phenomenology 1 (1971): 3–­16. ———. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Trans. and intro. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. ———. La svolta. Ed. and trans. Maurizio Ferraris. Genova: Il Melangolo, 1990. ———. ‘Die Kehre’. In Identität und Differenz: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 11. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2006, 113–­24. Horace. Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica. Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. The Loeb Classical Library no. 194. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929. Horaz. Briefe. Ed. Richard Heinze and Adolf Kiessling. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1914. Lucretius. De rerum natura libri sex. Trans. H.A.J. Munro. London: Bell and Sons, 1903 (1886).

28  Guido Milanese ———. De rerum natura. Ed., intro. and trans. Enrico Flores. Series: La scuola di Epicuro. Supplement 2. Naples: Bibliopolis, 2002–­2009. Mansfeld, Jaap. ‘Doxography and Dialectic: The Sitz im Leben of the Placita’. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36.4. Ed. Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990, 3056–­3229. Mayer, Roland. ‘Horace’s Epistles I and Philosophy’. American Journal of Philology 107 (1986): 55–­73. McGann, Michael John. Studies in Horace’s First Book of Epistles. Collection Latomus 100. Bruxelles: Latomus, 1969. Milanese, Guido. Lucida carmina: Comunicazione e scrittura da Epicuro a Lucrezio. Biblioteca di Aevum antiquum 3. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1989. ———. ‘L’immagine di Epicuro, la totalità della vita, la cultura romana’. In Il culto di Epicuro. Testi, iconografia e paesaggio. Ed. Marco Beretta, et al. Biblioteca di ‘Nuncius’ 75. Firenze: Olschki, 2014, 111–­37. Moles, John. ‘Poetry, Philosophy, Politics and Play: Epistles I’. Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace. Ed. A.J. Woodman and D.C. Feeney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 141–­57. Montarese, Francesco. Lucretius and His Sources: A Study of Lucretius, De rerum natura 1. 635–920 Sozomena 12. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Musurillo, Herbert. ‘A Formula for Happiness: Horace “Epist.” 1.6 to Numicius’. Classical World. A Quarterly Journal on Antiquity 67.4 (1974): 193–­204. Philippson, Robert. ‘Die Quelle der epikureischen Götterlehre in Ciceros erstem Buche De natura deorum’. Symbolae Osloenses 19 (1939): 15–­40. Plato. ‘Theaetetus’. In Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 7. Trans. H.N. Fowler. London: Heinemann, 1921. Pokorny, Julius. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Münich: Francke, 1994. Posidonius. Posidonius Volume III: The Translation of the Fragments. Ed. and trans. I.G. Kidd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Primavesi, Oliver. ‘Aristotle, Metaphysics A: A  New Critical Edition with Introduction’. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum. Ed. Carlos Steel. Symposia Aristotelica 18. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 385–­516. Rösler, Wolfgang. ‘Lukrez und die Vorsokratiker: Doxographische Probleme im I. Buch von De rerum natura’. Hermes 101.1 (1973): 48–­64. Runia, David T. ‘Lucretius and Doxography’. In Aëtiana: The Method and Intellectual Context of a Doxographer, vol. III. Studies in the Doxographical Traditions of Ancient Philosophy. Ed. Jaap Mansfeld and D.T. Runia. Leiden: Brill, 2010, 255–­69. Sandbach, F.H. Aristotle and the Stoics. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1985. ———. The Stoics. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1989. Schaeffer, Denise. ‘Wisdom and Wonder in “Metaphysics” A: 1–­2’. Review of Metaphysics 52 (1999): 641–­56. Sedley, David. Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Severino, Emanuele. La filosofia contemporanea. Milano: Rizzoli, 1986. ———. Il muro di pietra: Sul tramonto della tradizione filosofica. Milano: Rizzoli, 2006. Steel, Carlos, ed. Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum. Symposia Aristotelica 18. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

2 Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection Giordano Bruno* Dilwyn Knox

Frankfurt am Main, June  1590–­late January or early February  1591. Giordano Bruno has found lodgings in the Carmelite monastery, the ‘Karmeliterkloster’, a few minutes’ walk from the city hall, known then, as now, as ‘der Römer’.1 In a map engraved by Matthäus Merian the Elder some thirty years or so later, the monastery is indicated by the number 8 and stands across the road from the cloister of the Cistercian nuns, the ‘Weißfrauenkloster’, number 9. [Fig. 2.1] When not there, Bruno is usually at the premises of Johann Wechel, a printer connected, in ways not fully understood, with the prestigious printing company founded by his uncle or older cousin, André Wechel. The building no longer stands, but it was, very probably, housed within the Wechel family abode, known to contemporaries as Haus Reineck, located on the other side of the city, about fifteen minutes by foot from the Karmeliterkloster. At the time, it bordered on an open field, marked ‘Klapper feldt’ in Merian’s map.2 Here, Bruno passes the day putting the finishing touches to a trilogy of philosophical works in Latin, dedicated to Heinrich Julius, Duke of Braunschweig-­Lüneburg, and checking the text as it comes off the press. He likes to involve himself in the printing of his works, a habit nurtured during his stay more than ten years earlier at Geneva, where he had earned his livelihood correcting proofs. Just another fastidious author, we might think, intent on the minutiae of literary creation. The circumstances, however, are curious. Bruno is a Dominican friar or, more exactly, he is a Dominican who has deserted his order and declared himself ‘a philosopher’. His views on religion are notorious. So much so that on 2 July 1590, a few weeks after his arrival, the governing Council (Rat) of Frankfurt – a Lutheran city that tolerated confessional diversity, albeit with many a qualification in practice – rejected Bruno’s petition to lodge with Wechel (a Calvinist) ‘for some weeks’ while preparing his works for publication.3 Nonetheless, they permitted Wechel to find lodgings for him elsewhere in the city, and the Carmelites (Catholics), who, by virtue of an Imperial privilege granted in 1531, were not subject to civil authority, had obliged. The Senate’s disapproval of his presence in the city did not deter Bruno from airing his unconventional views.4 Johann Müntzenberger, Prior of the Karmeliterkloster, remarked – or so a witness testified a year and a half later to the Venetian Inquisitors

Figure 2.1 A detail of the map of Frankfurt am Main engraved in 1626 by ­Matthäeus Merian the Elder showing the Carmelite Monastery. Source: Reproduced by permission of the Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt.

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 31 prosecuting Bruno – that he ‘had fine wits and was well read, and that he was a universal man [Italian: homo universale]’ but that he ‘did not have any religion that he believed in’.5 Sometime in late January or early February 1591, Bruno had to leave the city in haste, for reasons unknown.6 Perhaps he had, as he was prone to do, exhausted the patience of his hosts. His departure did not, however, deter Wechel, in collaboration with another Frankfurt printing house, that of Peter Fischer, from publishing the trilogy, together with a fourth work on mnemotechnics. The first of the three works went on sale at the Frankfurt spring book fair that year. The remaining works followed in the autumn after a second, brief, visit by Bruno to the city.

The universe as God’s epiphany The worthy Senators’ concerns were not unfounded. Take, for example, the best known of the three works, De immenso et innumerabilibus seu de universo et mundis (‘On the Infinite and the Numberless; or, On the Universe and Its Worlds’).7 Its aspirations are, deliberately, similar to those of Lucretius’s poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). It establishes, to Bruno’s satisfaction, that the universe is infinite and explains the moral lessons that follow from this conclusion.8 The similarities should not, though, be exaggerated. Compositionally, De immenso differs from De rerum natura in that, whereas Lucretius’s work is in verse throughout, each chapter of the eight books in De immenso includes a section of verse followed by a lengthy disquisition in prose. More to the point, the philosophies of the two authors had little in common. Bruno did not subscribe to an atomistic materialism of the kind that Lucretius, following Epicurus, had proposed. Or rather, Bruno transformed Lucretius’s atomism so that, in ways that seem far-­fetched nowadays, it became part of a vitalistic, panpsychic vision of the universe (Papi 91–­107; Monti). Lucretius’s ‘air’ became spiritus or soul, and his solid, indivisible atoms became, analogous to the dimensionless points of two-­dimensional geometry, dimensionless spheres, the centres of which coincided with their circumferences. Other contributions to what Bruno called his ‘new philosophy’ came from Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Stoicism, Hermeticism, Arabic and Jewish philosophy, Copernicus and, despite his professed aversion to it, Aristotelianism and its scholastic variants. From his reading of these various sources, Bruno concluded that the universe, infinite in extent and duration, was animated throughout by a Universal Soul (or, synonymously, World Soul). Populating it was an infinite number of solar systems, each with its own sun and, circling around it, planets and comets. These ‘principal bodies’, as Bruno liked to call them, floated weightlessly like specks of dust in an infinite expanse of aether, regulating, intelligent ‘animals’ that they were, their various circular motions to mutual advantage. From the sun at the centre of each solar system, planets absorbed the heat and light that they needed to sustain

32  Dilwyn Knox themselves and the things living on them. Conversely, from the planets, the suns absorbed moisture and cold. Each sun and each planet sustained forms of life similar to those on this earth, among them ‘rational animals’, a traditional philosophical term that included demons as well as the several species or races of human being. The former, in Bruno’s description of them, had rarefied bodies of pure aether or aether in combination with air, water or earth. When, on this earth or any other ‘principal body’, a cataclysm extinguished a species, new instances regenerated themselves ­spontaneously  – that is, ­ asexually  – thanks to the omnipresence of the Universal Soul, thereby ensuring the survival of the species in question. This vision of the universe was not only quite unlike Lucretius’s, but it also went far beyond, as Bruno himself boasted, the modest pretentions of Copernicus, who had only ventured, on mathematical and philosophical grounds, that the earth was a planet circling the sun located at the centre of a solitary cosmos. Perhaps we can sympathize with Prior Müntzenberger when he observed, or so the same witness told the Inquisitors, that Bruno ‘passed his time mainly in writing and going on about fantastic, bizarre things of his invention’.9 Philosophical ideas of these kinds, as Bruno well knew, were incompatible with the Christian faith. God had created the cosmos six thousand years or so before the coming of Christ. Scripture gave no hint of other worlds like our own, inhabited by men and women, let alone demons. How, anyway, could the existence of ‘rational animals’ on other celestial bodies be reconciled with God’s providential plan for Mankind: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Resurrection at the end of time? To these and many other objections, Bruno could reply that he spoke only as a philosopher and that his conclusions were based on reason alone, that, in the last count, he accepted the truths of the Christian faith and that his arguments had somehow led him to draw false inferences. Medieval and Renaissance philosophers before him, the Aristotelian Pietro Pomponazzi being the most celebrated case, had adopted this line of defence, and Bruno, at an early moment of his trial, did so too. ‘In some works I have spoken and argued too philosophically, improperly and not as a good Christian should.’10 His ambitions, however, went beyond the hesitant protestations of his predecessors. In De immenso, as in other works, as Miguel Granada (‘La perfección’ 222–­37) has shown, Bruno proposed that philosophy alone was the means whereby the soul could perfect itself and denied, by allusion, that Christianity could serve this purpose. In the opening chapter of the work, he declared: No trifling or futile contemplative exercise do we undertake [in this book] but rather one that is the most profound and worthwhile of all for man’s perfection. Herein shall we pursue the splendour, outpouring and communion of the divine and of nature, not in an Egyptian, Syrian, Greek or Roman individual, not in food, drink or some even less noble matter like the stupefied people of our age, or by fabricating

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 33 and dreaming up inventions; but rather we shall look for them in the majestic palace of the omnipotent, in the limitless extent of aether, in the infinite power of twofold nature, becoming all things and creating all things. Whence it is that we contemplate the vast number of heavenly bodies, or worlds as I call them, those great animate beings and divinities that sing the praises of11 the one most high and dance without limit of number or limit [of space] according to their own inclination and order, everywhere. Thus, from the eternal, limitless and innumerable effect of what is visible is glimpsed that everlasting and limitless intelligible majesty and goodness, which, in keeping with its dignity, is glorified by the presence and harmony of the innumerable gods, that is, the innumerable worlds, and by the declaration of, or rather discourse on, its glory unfolding before our eyes. No dwelling or temple of determinate limit will accommodate its limitless extent. No arrangement of a [finite] number of ministers could lead the fullness of its majesty to be acknowledged and honoured as it should. Let us, then, cast our gaze towards the omniform image of the omniform god and wonder at the vast living likeness of him. (BOL I.1, 205–­6) The gist of this magnificat is clear enough. The infinite universe was an epiphany of God, and, by contemplating it in wonder, the soul perfected itself. The full force of the passage, however, becomes apparent only when we ponder the details. God revealed himself in the universe, not in ‘some Egyptian, Syrian, Greek or Roman individual’. Who are these individuals? It is not difficult to guess. The Egyptian Moses; Christ, who was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, both towns, as indicated in the Gospel according to Luke (2:2–­4), being in what was known in the Roman Empire as Syria; the Greek St Paul; and the Roman St Peter and his successors. The blasphemy continues. We should not revere ‘food, drink or some even less noble matter’ as if it were divine. The allusion, it scarcely needs saying, is to the bread and wine of the Eucharist, which, despite or, better perhaps, because of the theological controversies that it incited during the sixteenth century, Bruno had mocked on other occasions.12 The phrase ‘some even less noble matter’ probably refers to reliquaries, about which he was equally scathing.13 Bruno, in other words, went far beyond the pervasive anticlericalism of the age and, equally, beyond the sporadic attempts of Renaissance philosophers to assert a degree of intellectual autonomy outside the constraints imposed by faith. Religion of the kind practised in the ancient world, as Epicurus had first taught according to Lucretius (I.62–­79 Bailey), had been the great impediment to understanding nature and the infinite extent of the universe. Its modern surrogate, Christianity, was, in Bruno’s view, no less pernicious. The allusions continue, with Bruno, a priest and theologian by profession, bending scripture to sacrilegious purposes. St Paul – hence his covert presence

34  Dilwyn Knox in the earlier quotation – is the main victim.14 In Romans 1:19–­23, Paul had famously denounced philosophers as ‘fools’ for their attempt to understand the ‘invisible things of God’ from nature alone.15 Quite the opposite, replies Bruno. The true ‘image’ or ‘representation’ of the imperceptible God was the universe, infinite in extent, temporarily and spatially, not as Paul had claimed (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3), the incarnate Jesus Christ. The universe was, as he wrote elsewhere (BOI I, 693) – a­ ppropriating a phrase in the Gospel according to John (1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; also, I John 4:9) – ‘the only begotten nature’ of God. Hence, the universe was that by virtue of which we were all in communion. No modest ‘dwelling or temple’ (domicilium atque templum), Bruno announces, can provide a fitting abode for God. This is an allusion to, or, more exactly, subversion of, Ephesians 2:21–­2, where Paul assures the recipients of his letter that, thanks to the coming of Christ, they now constitute, together with the saints, a community bound together by the Holy Spirit. They formed the ‘temple’ (templum) and ‘habitacle of God’ (habitaculum Dei) built on the cornerstone of Christ. Simultaneously, Bruno is alluding to the ‘habitacle of God’, defined as the abode of the elect, the so-­called Empyrean, which Christian theologians, again on the authority of Ephesians 2:21–­2, imagined as a spiritual region lying beyond the finite geocentric cosmos. Only a ‘majestic palace’, a universe infinite spatially and temporally, could appropriately bear witness to God’s absolute power. Well before Bruno’s day, scholastic authors had recognized the force of this argument and, to counter it, had devised an ingenious get-­out clause. God, infinitely powerful though He was, had chosen to create a finite cosmos. He could, after all, do anything He wanted. Bruno would have none of this and, later in De immenso, as in earlier works, dismissed the possibility out of hand (Granada, ‘Il rifiuto’). Both God and the universe were infinite and, as he wrote in his dialogue De la causa, principio et uno (On the Cause, the Principle and the One), published in London in 1584, ‘all that can be’ (BOI I, 602). Both, that is, were the actualization of all possibilities. They differed in that, whereas in the universe all possibilities were at any given moment actualized somewhere, in God’s supersubstantial being, in which form and matter, being and existence, act and potentiality were undifferentiated, all possibilities were actualized absolutely without distinctions of time and place. The universe, that is, was the explication of two infinite powers – one active, one passive – reconciled in God’s absolute unity. Hence, in our passage, Bruno exhorts his readers to contemplate God in ‘the infinite power of twofold nature, making (facere) all things and becoming (fieri) all things’. These two complementary powers corresponded, as he explained in other works, to, respectively, the Universal Soul and Universal Matter.16 By virtue of the Ideas or Forms intrinsic to it, the Universal Soul regulated the universe perfectly. Together these Ideas constituted what Bruno called the Universal Intellect, interpreted, not as a separate hypostasis, but as a faculty of the Universal Soul, in the same way intellect was a faculty belonging to the human

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 35 soul. Looking upwards, so to speak, the plurality of Ideas unified in the Universal Intellect corresponded to the undifferentiated unity of the Ideas in God’s Mind; while, looking downwards, they corresponded to the transient forms of individual things that they generated from within Universal Matter. Hence, at the end of the passage, Bruno refers to the universe as the ‘omniform (omniformis) image of the omniform (omniformis) God’. Bruno found this phrase, and much else, in the works of the fifteenth-­century Florentine Platonist Marsilio Ficino (Platonic Theology XI.4, §14), who had coined it as a summary of a passage in the Pimander (XI.16), a work of the most venerable authority. According to Ficino and, hence, later Renaissance authors, including Bruno, its author was none other than the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistos, a contemporary or near contemporary of Moses. The universe was numinous as a whole and also in its parts. The suns and earths were ‘gods’. Undergo change though they might, they did not suffer extinction thanks to God’s providential intervention, or so Bruno tended to think even if he conceded, uncharacteristically, that he was uncertain on this point (Granada, ‘Voi siete dissolubili’). They danced ‘without limits of number or limit [of space]’, he writes in our passage, and sang ‘the praises of the one most high’. The ‘presence [adsistentia] and harmony’ of this infinite number of ‘ministers’ (ministri) declared or, rather, since their actions were everlasting, ‘discoursed’ upon its glory. This was, needless to say, a reinterpretation of the time-­honoured analogy of the music or harmony of the spheres, conceived originally to extol the merits of a finite cosmos. The celestial bodies ‘danced’ because, like dancers, they moved intuitively according to an intelligent design, without ratiocination (BOI I  656–­7). Plotinus inspired the analogy (Enneads IV.4.8). Simultaneously, Bruno is hinting at two passages in Scripture: Psalms 19:1 (KJV, Vulgate 18:2): ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork’; and Daniel 7:10 (KJV), describing the angels as ministers standing in the presence of God: ‘thousand thousands ministered [Vulgate: ‘ministrabant’] unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before [‘assistebant’] him’. In fine, the true messengers of God were not the angels of Scriptural tradition, but rather the animate and intelligent celestial bodies populating the infinitude of solar systems. The allusion to Daniel 7:10 had extra bite inasmuch as, according to medieval and Renaissance scholastic authors, the angels, extrinsically or intrinsically, guided the celestial bodies in a finite, geocentric cosmos. As was so often the case, their Aristotelian and Christian prejudices had led them to ignore the truth displayed before their very eyes.

Christian stupor, philosophical wonder These two contrasting visions of God’s embodiment, the Jesus Christ of Christian imagination and the infinite universe of Bruno’s philosophy, provoked contrasting responses in the soul. Christian beliefs and the fear of

36  Dilwyn Knox death that they inculcated induced consternation and mindless obedience – stupor – in its adherents, both those of little learning and those who, learned in the ‘vulgar philosophy’ of the day, remained wedded to a finite, geocentric picture of the cosmos (Granada, ‘La perfección’ 227–­30). Bruno refers allusively to such people in the passage quoted above as the ‘stupefied’ (attoniti), a word borrowed from ‘Pythagoras”s account of metempsychosis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XV.153–­4):17 ‘O mankind, stupefied (attonitus) by fear of cold death,/ Why fear the Styx, the shades and empty names’. Lucretius, Bruno’s constant companion in De immenso, had similarly decried the fear of death and at much greater length (De rerum natura III.830–­1094). It was, however, Ovid that he had in mind on this occasion for, like Ovid’s Pythagoras but unlike Lucretius (III.417–­1094), who denied that souls survived bodily death (I.115–­6), Bruno held that only the body died. Ovid’s ‘Pythagoras’ had rightly taught that the soul was ‘without death’ and passed from one incarnation to the next. We should await mutation serenely, for death was no more than the dissolution of an ephemeral conjunction of an immortal soul with a mortal body (Metamorphoses XV.158–­75). Although he ostensibly commended Pythagoras’s conclusion (BOI I, 665; BOL I.3, 142–­3), Bruno interpreted metempsychosis differently from him and, indeed, from other classical authors. An individual soul was indestructible in the sense that it was, to simplify, an aspect of the Universal Soul.18 As such, it participated, to the degree that its bodily attributes permitted, in the Universal Soul’s animate and intellective powers. A soul incarnated in the body of, say, a snake developed snake-­like cognitive powers, whereas the soul of a human being, thanks to the articulation of its body, particularly of the hands, developed ratiocinative skills that a snake could not attain. On the death of the body, the individual soul immediately turned its powers to forming a new body, the limitations of which were determined by how it had conducted itself in its previous embodiment. It did not, that is, endure an intermediary shadowy existence in an underworld of the kind that ancient accounts of metempsychosis had depicted (BOL III, 257, 429–­30). This doctrine underpinned Bruno’s moral philosophy, in particular his notion of cosmic justice. A soul endowed with a human body that behaved like a pig had been a pig in a previous incarnation or, on account of its conduct, was doomed to become a pig in the next. To ensure a prosperous reincarnation, it had to strive to perfect its rational and intellective powers by progressing from the world of sense data to the intelligible principles underlying it. Hence, just before the De immenso passage quoted above, Bruno explained that the soul, enjoying as it did a body that allowed it to perfect its rational and intellective potential, was peculiarly well placed to accomplish this goal (BOL I.1, 202–­3). He could speak from experience. His own soul soared into the yonder, ‘a marvel’ to the attoniti that it left behind (BOL I.1, 202), and roamed over the infinite extent of aether. Or, to put the point prosaically, the universe offered the soul the means to understand nature and thereby perfect itself. By virtue of the principle, Aristotelian

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 37 in origin, that in the act of intellection, an intellect was identical with its object,19 the soul could become one with the Universal Soul/ Universal Intellect understood as God inasmuch as He engaged with Universal Matter to produce the universe. Bruno had achieved this ‘deification’, or so he declares when, in the verse section preceding our De immenso passage, he alludes to the Gospel according to John 14:6: ‘I am become the Lord, Law, Light, Prophet, Father, Author and the Way’ (BOL I.1, 202; Granada, ‘La perfección’ 232). In the same breath, Bruno is likening himself to Epicurus, whom Lucretius (V.1–­54) had praised for having purged the mind and, to euhemerize, for having been a greater god than Ceres or Bacchus. The comparison was all the happier for Bruno in that he associated Ceres and Bacchus, the gods of bread and wine, with the Eucharistic elements (BOL II.2, 181–­2). Ultimately, however godlike a perfected soul might become, God in himself – that is, the supersubstantial unity of the Universal Soul and Universal Matter and, hence, the unity of all other things – remained unknowable. Bruno makes this point shortly before the De immenso passage. The individual soul could discover particular truths, particular instances of the good, but not Truth or the Good (BOL I.1, 203–­4). The soul’s yearning to know God remained unsated, with the result that the universe remained forever an inexhaustible object of wonder. Hence the exhortation at the end of our passage: ‘Let us wonder at the vast, living, image of God’.20 Wonder, in short, was the state of mind engendered by the ‘contemplative exercise’ – ‘the most profound and worthwhile of all for man’s perfection’ – described in De immenso.

To wonder or not to wonder . . . Wechel no doubt read De immenso. Even if we suppose, improbably, that he did not notice the blasphemies in the opening chapter of De immenso, we can assume that Bruno regaled everyone in the workshop with extravagant accounts of his philosophy. He liked to hold forth. Prior Müntzenberger, whom we met earlier, is one witness among others to this effect.21 Another is Jakob van Brecht, a bookseller originally from Antwerp but living at the time in Venice. In his deposition to the Venetian inquisitors, dated 26 May 1592, Brecht related an event that probably took place during Bruno’s second, brief visit to Frankfurt in May 1591 – that is, following the publication of the trilogy. He had seen, but not read, some of Bruno’s ‘curious’ works and became eager to meet their author, which he eventually managed to do. Brecht had asked him what he was up to in the city and praised his works, which, Brecht told the Inquisitors, ‘were also praised by many other people’.22 Nothing sells books better than the outrageous, or so Wechel, overcoming his Calvinist scruples, may have thought, perhaps in desperation since business was not going well. The gambit was not successful. By the time of his death two years later, in July 1593, he was heavily in debt (Matthäus, ‘Der Frankfurter Drucker’ 172, 178–­80, 182). Fate

38  Dilwyn Knox proved no kinder to Prior Müntzenberger. The indulgence that he showed towards Bruno may have contributed to his downfall (Fischer 249–­51). His superiors summarily removed him in 1593 from the priorate that he had held since 1580. Bruno’s affront to contemporary religious sensibilities is obvious enough. Less obvious, but just as perplexing, at least at first glance, is his contention that philosophers should aspire to wonder. The conventional opinion of the time was that wonder, philosophically speaking, was no more than a state of mind that provoked the search for an explanation. On discovering the cause, once ignorance had given way to knowledge, wonder ceased. This was the position adopted by Aristotle in the first book of the Metaphysics, as in other works,23 and repeated by his commentators thereafter. ‘To wonder’, wrote Alexander of Aphrodisias (late 2nd–­early 3rd cent. AD), ‘is the mark of those who are ignorant’ (35–­6). Less flattering still were interpretations of the kind proposed by Epicureans, Stoics and other ancient philosophers. Wonder was a passion, and passions were detrimental to what the Epicureans called ataraxia and the Stoics apatheia: the passionless, tranquil state of mind, promoted by philosophy, free from concern and consternation. ‘Wonder at nothing  – this is almost the one and only thing, Numicius, that can make and keep a man happy’ (Horace, Epistles I.vi.1–­2). The Aristotelian and Horatian interpretations blend in a passage in Lucretius’s De rerum natura (II.1023–­47), one that contrasts strikingly with Bruno’s position. It may be difficult at first, Lucretius concedes, to believe that the universe is infinite. But then, if we had never seen the sky, the sun, the moon and the other heavenly bodies, we would, on seeing them for the first time, ‘marvel’ (miror) at them and consider them the most ‘marvellous’ (mirabilis) of things. However, accustomed as we are to this spectacle, we do not experience such feelings. We should not, then, allow the novel idea that the universe is infinite to strike fear into (exterreo) us and overcome our reason (ratio). Eventually we shall take it for granted. In the first chapter of this volume, Guido Milanese has discussed these ancient Greek and Roman interpretations of wonder, so there is no need to rehearse them here. Suffice it to say that during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Aristotelian and Stoic interpretations remained well known, even if Christian prerogatives divested them, in part, of their former authority. Horace, or so medieval commentators explained, was admonishing Numicius not to be seduced by worldly things or vanities.24 His maxim, in other words, concerned what was ethical rather than spiritual, the things of nature rather than those of grace.25 Towards the latter, wonder might be an appropriate response. Similarly, scholastic philosophers and theologians, following the rehabilitation of Aristotelian philosophy in the Latin West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, routinely invoked Aristotle’s interpretation of wonder and continued to do so well into the seventeenth century, yet they adjudged it incomplete. A case in point was Thomas Aquinas, whom Bruno had studied in his early career and continued to admire even as he rebelled

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 39 against everything that he stood for. There was, Thomas explained, wonder of the kind that Aristotle envisaged – that is, the wonder that excited the soul to discover the ‘natural causes’ (causae naturales) of things – but there was also the wonder produced by ‘a completely hidden cause’ (causa occultissima), namely the power of God, which no man ‘in the state of this life’ (in statu huius vitae) could ever fathom. Divine power produced what were called, properly speaking, ‘miracles’ (miracula), events that were ‘absolutely and in themselves wonderful [mira]’.26 In making this distinction, Thomas was gently chiding those who, like Augustine, insisted that Creation in its ordinary course of events was the greatest of God’s miracles and contained an endless number of miracles, great and small (Roessli). Do Bruno’s aspirations coincide, then, with Christian notions of wonder? Was the wonder that the majestic, infinite universe inspired in Bruno a Christian contamination in his otherwise resolutely naturalistic philosophy? Despite all the bluster about being a ‘philosopher’, had he reverted, as the many Scriptural allusions in the earlier passage might suggest, into the Christian mindset in which he had been brought up and trained? Not exactly. To make sense of wonder in his conception of things, we must turn to a philosophical tradition that scholarly surveys of wonder as a concept, a notable exception being that of Stefan Matuschek (9–­12, 17–­23, 46–­51), tend to overlook.27 Two kindred passages in Plato’s works provide the starting point. In the first, Symposium, 210A4–­212A10, Socrates describes how the lover ascends from perceptible to intelligible beauty and then suddenly beholds what he has been seeking, namely ‘a beauty wonderful in its nature’ (210E5: τι θαυμαστὸν τὴν φύσιν καλόν), on which all other beauty, corporeal and moral, depends. In the second, Phaedrus, 249B3–251B10, he recounts how the few souls who are prompted by sensible beauty to recollect the beauty of intelligible realities ‘are amazed and no longer themselves’ (ἐκπλήττονται καὶ οὐκέθ᾿ αὑτῶν γίγνονται). Plotinus’s reworking of these passages brings out just how far his master’s interpretation differed from that of Aristotle. The beauty of intelligible things – the virtues, truth, the Platonic Ideas – excited ‘wonder and a delicious consternation [θάμβος καὶ ἔκπληξιν ἡδεῖαν], longing, desire and shock mingled with pleasure’, just as, by analogy, lovers were excited by the beauty in a body (I.6.4). In short, wonder for Plotinus, as for Plato, was a state of mind to which the philosophical soul should aspire, not, as Aristotle had taught, seek to surpass. The soul’s true aspiration was affective, to love the beauty of the intelligibilia that collectively constituted the Neoplatonic Intellect and to remain enchanted by – in wonder of – them. Beyond the realm of intelligible realities lay the One, ineffable, unknowable, superessential, ‘a marvel’ (θαῦμα) beyond being (VI.9.5), on which all things, even imperfection and evil in some way, ultimately depended.28 Christian theology and metaphysics, particularly mystical theology, mutatis mutandis, proposed much the same and not by coincidence. Neoplatonic monotheism had lent itself to the needs of the Church Fathers as they sought to establish a Christian theology that accommodated reason to revelation. God

40  Dilwyn Knox was the sole origin of all things, including, in some way mysterious to us, evil. Unknowable in Himself, He was a God of love and, in return, we must try to know him, not theoretically but affectively (see Boitani in this volume; Matuschek 53–­65, 71–­81). This was the setting in which Christian Platonists of the Renaissance spoke of wonder. In his treatise On Learned Ignorance, the fifteenth-­ century theologian Nicholas of Cusa, whom Bruno acknowledged as an important influence, included a chapter entitled ‘On the Wonderful Art of God in the Creation of the Cosmos and the Elements’ (II.13). ‘So admirable’ were these created things that we could not discover the explanation of them all, leaving us ‘only to wonder (admiror)’. He ‘wishes that we be led to an admiration of so wonderful a world-­machine’, continues Nicholas, before offering his version of the Neoplatonic idea that wonder at the divine was insatiable: ‘However, the more we wonder at it, the more He hides it from us, since it is Himself alone that He wishes to be sought with wholehearted devotion’. The coincidences with Bruno’s position, putting aside Nicholas’s pious intentions, are conspicuous. More influential still, however, for Bruno’s interpretation of wonder, was Marsilio Ficino the philosopher who, almost single-­handedly, introduced Latin Christendom to the works of Plotinus and other Neoplatonists. Ficino was in Bruno’s thoughts as he wrote the De immenso passage quoted earlier. Indeed, as two of the most eminent Bruno scholars, Miguel Granada and Rita Sturlese, pointed out some years ago, it can be read as a reply to Ficino’s interpretation of human perfection.29 Adapting Thomas Aquinas (see pp. 38–9), Ficino had explained that the human soul’s yearning for infinity, its yearning to pass always beyond what it knew, could not be satisfied in this life. Since it had this innate yearning and since God did not create anything that could not achieve the perfection proper to it, we must conclude that it could do so in the next life. Therefore, concluded Ficino, the soul was immortal. Bruno demurred. In our De immenso passage, as elsewhere in other works, he explains how ­philosophy  – his ‘new philosophy’  – did permit the soul to achieve perfection in this life, even if only fleetingly and intermittently. Like all else, the soul, in human as in any other embodiment, was subject to the eternal vicissitude of things. Its perfection was not so much dispassionate knowledge, as Aristotle would have us believe, as the recognition that we were instantiations of the intelligible reality – the Universal Soul and its faculty, the Universal Intellect – informing the perceptible universe. The awe, wonder and rapture experienced in such moments derived from the sense that this unity in diversity in which we, as souls, participated derived from an absolute, infinite and incomprehensible unity.30 These convictions inspired Bruno’s response to Renaissance notions of Platonic love. In De gli eroici furori, published in London in 1585, he explained that it was by contemplating the perceptible universe, rather than the physical beauty of a young man, as Plato had advocated in the Symposium, or of a woman, as in Petrarchan poetry or Renaissance treatises on

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 41 ‘Platonic love’, that the soul  – the ‘heroic’ soul  – came to yearn after the intelligible principles of things. Drawn ever upwards, it came to understand the Universal Intellect, the locus of the Ideas, in its unity. In doing so, however, it relinquished its individual identity in accordance with the principle mentioned earlier (see pp. 36–7), that in the act of intellection the intellect was identical to its object.31 Beyond that, ‘in this state’, says Bruno, adapting Thomas Aquinas’s phrase to his own ends (see pp. 38–9), the soul could not pass (BOI II, 564–­7; similarly BOL II.2, 212). The supersubstantial principle or cause of all things remained unknown, the hidden God, ‘the one most high’, as he writes in the De immenso passage quoted earlier. Hence, too, in the sentence that immediately follows it, he writes that ‘Hermes Trismegistos calls Man [homo] a great miracle because he passes into God as if he himself were God, and tries to become all things just as God is all things’ (BOL I.1, 206). This sentence, including the reference to Hermes (Asclepius 6), as Granada (‘Giordano Bruno et la dignitas hominis’ 71) and Sturlese (118–­9) have pointed out, derives from Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology (XIV.3, §2), a work that Bruno frequently drew upon in other contexts without acknowledgement. In a chapter entitled ‘The sixth sign [of the soul’s immortality]: that the rational soul strives to become all things’, Ficino observed that it had been ‘the wonderful way’ in which the soul sought ‘to become all things’ that had compelled Hermes ‘in admiration’ to call Man ‘a great miracle’. Whereas, however, Ficino co-­opted Hermes to prove that this ‘great miracle’ was a distinct substance in accordance with Christian theology, Bruno – truer, as it happens, to Hermes’s intentions – did so to support his view that the individual soul, passing eternally from one embodiment to another, was an instantiation of the Universal Soul/ Universal Intellect, ‘God in things’ (Knox, ‘The World Soul’).

Bruno’s legacy Bruno, as will be apparent by now, was not a Christian theologian. Nor was he a Platonist. He accommodated aspects of Platonism, pagan and Christian, on sufferance. Near the beginning of the first chapter in De immenso, he specifies that an individual soul was distinct from its body. It was self-­ subsistent and indivisible. This was, he notes, the interpretation of the ‘Platonists’ (BOL I.1, 202). Yet in De immenso and other works, he denied, with strong doses of sarcasm, Platonism’s central tenet: the notion that the Ideas and intelligences apprehending them were transcendent realities existing independently of the corporeal world. In what sense, he quipped, could they be outside an infinite universe? His allegiance to other ancient philosophies was equally and consistently instrumental. Indeed he can claim to be the first thinker since antiquity to integrate metaphysics, physics, psychology and ethics into an original, if unsystematically presented, philosophy, one that aspired to go beyond the reelaborations of Platonism, Aristotelianism or scepticism within a Christian context that had hitherto prevailed.

42  Dilwyn Knox Quintessential to this ‘new philosophy’ was the idea that the universe was the ‘image’ of God and that, as such, it could lead the soul, if only intermittently, to a state of fulfilment in which, enrapt, it marvelled at the ‘majesty and goodness’ of the heavens. This earns Bruno a special place in the history of wonder as a concept. He is the harbinger of secular views, some of them discussed in essays later in this volume, that the wonder experienced by the soul when it understood itself in relation to the majesty of nature and of the universe marked the moments of its greatest fulfilment.32 The affinities with Kant, to mention just one example, are intriguing,33 all the more so in that Kant never mentioned Bruno or, as far as is known, read any of his works. ‘Two things’, Kant famously wrote in the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), ‘fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence [Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht] the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’. Neither was transcendent. Both were immediately evident and, he noted, connected ‘immediately to the consciousness of my existence’. The infinite extent of the heavens, in which an infinite number of ‘worlds’ and ‘systems of systems’ moved eternally in regular patterns, led him to realize that, as far as his animal nature was concerned, he was but a transient combination of a ‘vital force’ (Lebenskraft) and a parcel of matter destined to return to ‘the planet from which it came’. By contrast, through the ‘moral law’ – that is, the principle our consciousness of which entitles us to conceive ourselves as immaterial souls capable of moral perfection – he was assured of his identity as an intelligence distinct from his animal nature and from the sensible world in its entirety. Unconfined by ‘the conditions and boundaries of this life’, in this respect he ‘reached into the infinite’.34 Elsewhere, Kant distinguished the enduring wonder (Bewunderung) inspired by these two infinitudes, cosmic and individual, from the ephemeral astonishment (Verwunderung)  – equivalent, roughly speaking, to Aristotle’s concept of ­wonder – that we experience when something contradicts our preconceptions.35 Does a common source, perhaps, account for the resonances with Bruno? Exiled on Corsica, Seneca the Younger wrote to console his mother, Helvia. ‘Two things most fair’, he observed, combining two Stoic commonplaces (Meinel 99–­122; Costa 210), accompany us wherever we may be: nature, shared by all and understood as ‘God’ or ‘incorporeal reason’, and our individual virtue. These ‘two things’, equivalent respectively to the cosmos with its magnificent panoply of the heavens and its noblest part, the mind, ‘its contemplator and admirer’, remain with us for as long as we live (Dialogi XII.8). That Seneca, one of the classical authors, together with Lucretius and Horace, that Kant most admired (Kuehn 49), may have inspired, at least in part, his ‘two things’ has long been surmised.36 Bruno, for his part, read Seneca, including his Dialogi (Granada, ‘Giordano Bruno et la Stoa’; Dell’Omodarme), and, in the De immenso passage discussed in this essay, he echoes, intentionally or not, his message of consolation: the

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 43 soul fulfilled itself, became ‘deified’, by contemplating, in a state of wonder, the cosmos, the perceptible image of nature, defined as God immanent, of which it was an instance. For ‘a Neapolitan’, in his own words, ‘born and bred under a more benign sky’ (BOI I, 535), busying himself over proofs in Wechel’s Frankfurt workshop far from home, Seneca’s denial of the existential reality of exile would have had a poignancy inconceivable to Kant, who, throughout his life, never ventured more than sixty miles beyond his native city of Königsberg. For all, then, his protestations that he was ‘a philosopher’ and despite his outright rejection of Christian doctrines, ideals and practices Bruno retained a sense of the divine and the wonder due before it. He anticipated, that is to say, secular philosophies or world views which, in reaction to human ambitions to dominate, to ‘finitize’, the natural world through knowledge and technology, covertly appropriated religious sentiments to express the soul’s relationship to the non-­finite. Sometimes he spoke himself of his ‘new philosophy’ as a religion. It was the rebirth, he wrote in the Despatch of the Triumphant Beast, an Italian dialogue published in London in 1585, of the true ‘religion’ of the Egyptians that had lain suppressed for so many generations.37 In The Ash Wednesday Supper, published the year before, he proclaimed that his philosophy ‘not only contains the truth but even favours religion more than any other kind of philosophy’.38 More boldly still, he claimed that his philosophy of God immanent in an infinite universe was the true bread of life (BOI I, 433; BOL I.3, 199–­200). Christ-­ like, it ‘illuminated the blind’, ‘loosed the tongues of the dumb’, ‘cured the lame’, and so permitted the human spirit to ‘progress’ once more (BOI I, 454). He was, after all, as mentioned earlier, ‘the Way’ (see p. 37). Seen in this light, his philosophy is ‘pan-­theistic’ – more so, at any rate, than that of his fellow substance monist, Spinoza. The world was not divine, Spinoza insisted (Ethics, pt 3, prop. 52, scholium), and wonder, in its unalloyed form and defined, broadly speaking, in an Aristotelian vein as a reaction provoked by something unusual, was an affect that befitted the uneducated. Such people, unaware that the laws of nature were inviolable, believed in miracles (Tractatus theologico-­politicus VI.1, 3). The religious undercurrent in Bruno’s philosophy did not pass unnoticed. During the Pantheismusstreit (‘Pantheism Controversy’) of the late 18th and early 19th century, Bruno passed from being a heinous heretic to the courageous, if undisciplined, precursor of Spinoza and hence of ‘modern’ philosophy as a whole. Coleridge was one admirer. Copies of Bruno’s works, he observed, were hard to come by, but he succeeded nevertheless in obtaining a copy of De immenso. In an essay in 1809, he quoted, translated and commented on the very passage in De immenso discussed in this essay, praising it, despite ‘some intermixture of Error’, for its ‘sublime Piety’.39 Ten years later, his admiration for Bruno remained undiminished even though his intellectual affiliations had changed. ‘This man’, he wrote in 1819, ‘though a pantheist, was religious’.40

44  Dilwyn Knox

Notes * The abbreviations BOI and BOL used in this chapter refer to the editions of, respectively, Bruno’s Italian and Latin works listed in the section ‘Works cited’. Readers unfamiliar with Bruno’s life and works may find the survey in Knox, ‘Giordano Bruno’, a convenient resource for contextualizing biographical and philosophical details mentioned in this chapter. The translations, apart from those of passages in Kant’s works, are mine. 1 For the documents and details concerning Bruno’s two stays in Frankfurt and the publication of what is nowadays referred to as his ‘Frankfurt trilogy’, see Lombardi; Aquilecchia (661–­2); Canone (134–­8); Segonds (538–­41, 599); Ricci (432–­52); Becker (II, 767–­71); Matthäus (‘Der Frankfurter Drucker’ 173–­4; ‘.  .  . dz er sein pfennig’ 125–­41), the most detailed treatment to date; Lepri (forthcoming). 2 My thanks to Dr Roman Fischer of the Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, for identifying the probable location of Wechel’s business at the time of Bruno’s stay. 3 Lombardi (469), quoting the record of the Council’s deliberations held on 2 July 1590; Matthäus (‘. . . dz er sein pfennig’ 130), transcribes and reproduces the document. 4 Firpo (27–­9 [doc. 8], 253–­5 [doc. 51.1, §§7–­10]). 5 Firpo (29 [doc. 8], 255 [51.1, §10]). 6 On Bruno’s request, Wechel added a dedicatory letter, dated 13 February 1591, to De minimo, the first of the three works to be published. In this letter, he commented that Bruno had been ‘suddenly torn away from us by an unexpected circumstance’ before he had put the finishing touches to the last page of the work; see BOL I.3: 123. 7 For a collection of essays on De immenso, see Granada and Tessicini. 8 For Lucretius’s presence in De immenso, see Papi (7, 10–­12, 30, 91–­106, 243–­51); Monti; Haskell (‘The Masculine Muse’; ‘Conjuring with the Classics’ 22–­7). 9 Firpo (27, doc. 8). 10 Firpo (373, doc. 51, §228). At another moment in his trial, Bruno’s Venetian Inquisitors rejected his claim that he had set out only philosophical views and not heretical ones; see Firpo (143, doc. 19). 11 For the use of the dative in the original Latin, ‘et numinum uni altissimo concinantium’, compare Esdras 3:11: ‘Et concinebant in hymnis, et confessione Domino’. 12 BOI I, 588; II, 388–­9; BOL I.2, 291; II.2, 181–­2. 13 BOI II, 369–­70; BOL I.2, 316. 14 Bruno adapts Paul’s Epistles to his purposes in various works; see Meier-­Oeser (235–­6); Meroi. 15 Bruno’s De la causa, principio et uno, published in London in 1584, engages with the main themes of Nicholas of Cusa’s Trialogus de possest, which, in turn, explores the passage in Romans mentioned above. See Meier-­Oeser (235). 16 For (Universal) Matter and the formal or efficient cause acting upon it, i.e. the Universal Soul, as complementary powers fieri and facere, see BOL I.2, 344; III, 695–­6. 17 For Bruno’s adaptation of Ovid’s lines to the purposes of his philosophy in the De immenso passage discussed above and in other works, see Granada (‘La perfección’ 225–­30). 18 This is, at least, how Bruno tends to explain how individual Souls relate to the Universal (World) Soul. His position was, as he recognized, problematic; see Knox (‘The World Soul’). 19 E.g. Aristotle, De anima III.4, 429a13–­8, b30–­31; III.7, 431a1–­2, b16–­17; Meta­physics XII.7, 1072b20–­3; 1075a3–­5.

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 45 20 In the De minimo (II.4), the first work in the Frankfurt trilogy to be published, Bruno similarly spoke of the wonder that the universe could inspire; see BOL I.3, 199–­200. 21 In addition to Brecht’s testimony, we have the comments of Jacopo Corbinelli, an Italian exile living in Paris, who knew Bruno during his stay there in 1585–­86. In a letter dated 6 June 1586, addressed to Gian Vincenzo Corbinelli in Padua, he remarked that Bruno was ‘a pleasant companion, an Epicurean in his view on life’; see Yates (181). 22 Firpo (25–­31, doc. 8). Brecht met Bruno several times aftewards in Zurich and Venice. 2 3 Aristotle, Metaphysics A.2, 982b11–­2 1, A.2, 983a12–­2 0; Rhetoric I.11, 1371a31–­4; De caelo II.13, 294a12–­17. 2 4 An 11th-­c entury commentary on the Epistles, discussing Epistles VI.i.1–­9 , explains that Numicius was ensnared by his desire for food, sex, honour and money, especially the last two (Botschuyver 346). Similar interpretations occur in two 12th-­century commentaries; see Fredborg (217, 221). 25 For Horace’s Epistles interpreted in this way, see Fredborg 210–­18. The Aleph Scholia contrasts the Stoic idea that the virtues were given by nature with the Christian view that they were given by grace; see Botschuyver 406, Fredborg 214 n. 75. 26 Thomas Aquinas, II Sent., dist. 18, qu. 1, art. 3, solutio (Scriptum II, 455–­7). Similarly id., Summa theologiae Ia, qu. 105, art. 7, resp., ad 1m (Opera V, 479); id., Contra gentiles III.101 (Opera XIV, 312–­3), discussed by Daston and Park 122–­3. The early 16th-­century Dominican Francesco Silvestri discussed Thomas’s distinction at length in his commentary on the Contra gentiles; see Thomas Aquinas (Opera XIV, 313–­5). 27 The distinctive Platonic interpretation of wonder and its influence on Christian thought is ignored by, e.g., Fisher, Campbell, Daston and Park mentioned in the introduction to this volume. Hepburn 17 touches upon the Platonic or Neoplatonic position, broadly conceived. 28 Superficially, this interpretation resembles Aristotle, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b24–­6. If, Aristotle says, the contemplative pleasure enjoyed continuously by God is of the same kind as we sometimes enjoy, then it is ‘wonderful’ (θαυμαστός); if greater than the pleasure that we enjoy, then it is even ‘more wonderful’ (θαυμασιώτερος). Since we can, at most, only intermittently experience the pleasure that he enjoys, we cannot fully understand it. This does not contradict the account of wonder in the first book of the Metaphysics (see p. 38 above). Christian authors tended, however, to interpret the passage Neoplatonically. Commenting on it, Francisco Súarez (XXV, lxiii–­lxiv), a contemporary of Bruno, explained that the philosopher delighted in contemplating ‘separate substances’, especially the ‘first substance’, i.e. the angels and, especially, God, and, ascending to him, experienced wonder (admiratio) at his perfection. This type of wonder presumably corresponds to the second of the three types of wonder that Súarez (XVIII, 213–­4), as discussed by Blum and Blum (40–­2), distinguished in his commentary on the third part of Thomas’s Summa theologiae (IIIa, qu. 15, art. 8, arg. 1): (1) wonder arising from the ignorance of a cause; (2) wonder arising from something great and unique, albeit known; and (3) wonder arising from the ignorance of how an effect emanates from its cause. 29 Granada (‘Giordano Bruno et la dignitas hominis’ 71–­2 and ‘La perfección’ 227) and Sturlese (107, 118–­9). 30 Hence, I tend to think it would be best to qualify Miguel Granada’s conclusion (‘La perfección’ 228–­9, 237–­45) that, despite his hostility towards Aristotle’s and Averroes’s cosmological and metaphysical ideas, ‘Bruno is Averroist (and peripatetic) in his conception of the perfection of Man and of philosophy, independently of the modifications that he imposes in his articulation of these two

46  Dilwyn Knox concepts’. Bruno’s emphasis, recognized by Granada, on the universe as a source of awe and on wonder marking a state of fulfilment, albeit transitory, for heroic souls is, ultimately, Platonic (Christian or pagan). Averroes’s (and peripatetic) ideas on perfection through philosophy are better seen, in my opinion, as ancillary rather than formative. 31 E.g. Aristotle, De anima III.4, 429a13–­8, b30–­1; III.7, 431a1–­2, b16–­7; Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b20–­3, 1075a3–­5. 32 For an account mentioning such views (without reference to Bruno), see Hepburn. 33 For Kant on wonder, see Matuschek (187–­9, 192–­4) and Frierson. I owe a special word of thanks to Sebastian Gardner for his generous advice on Kant’s interpretation. 34 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (129 [V. 161–­2]). Do ‘admiration’ and ‘reverence’ here refer to both ‘the starry heavens’ and ‘the moral law’ alike? Or do they corellate with, respectively, ‘the starry heavens’ and ‘the moral law’? The latter is philosophically more articulate: ‘wonder leads to awe’, etc. The former reading, however, has some support in a passage in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (69 [VI. 49–­50]): ‘the moral predisposition’, i.e., ‘moral ‘law’, in us is the one thing ‘in our soul’ that ‘we cannot cease viewing with the highest wonder (Verwunderung) and for which admiration (Bewunderung) is legitimate and uplifting as well’. 35 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment §§29, 62 (154, 236–­8 [V. 272, 364–­5]); Doran (268–­9). In Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View 42 (I.1, §13; VII.150–­1), Kant describes Verwunderung as the reaction that those of weak reason were partial to when faced with something extraordinary. 36 Vaihinger, Lippman, Bickel and Sala (348–­9). 37 BOI II, 363–­4, 371–­2; Scapparone 1646–­8. 38 BOI I, 528. Similarly BOI I, 436, 710. 39 Coleridge (The Friend II, 79–­82). For Coleridge on Bruno and particularly his reading of De immenso, see Gatti (‘Coleridge’s Reading’; ‘Giordano Bruno’; and Essays 201–­19). 40 Coleridge (The Philosophical Lectures 323–­7); Gatti (‘Coleridge’s Reading 137; and Essays 202–­3).

Works cited Aquilecchia, Giovanni. ‘Bruno, Giordano’. In Dizionario biografico degli italiani 14 (1972): 654–­65. An online version is available on the ‘Treccani’ website. Alexander of Aphrodisias. On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1. Trans. W.E. Dooley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. Becker, Christoph. Giordano Bruno: Die Spuren des Ketzers. Ein Beitrag zur Literatur-­, Wissenschafts- ­und Gelehrtengeschichte um 1600. 3 vols. Stuttgart: ibidem-­ Verlag, 2007. Bickel, Ernst. ‘Kant und Seneca. Der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir’. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Neue Folge 102 (1959): 289–­92. Blum, Elisabeth, and Paul Richard Blum. ‘Wonder and Wondering in the Renaissance’. In Deckard and Losonczi, Philosophy Begins in Wonder, 1–­42. Botschuyver, Hendrik Johan, ed. Scholia in Horatium ‫ בא‬in codicibus parisinis latinis 17897 et 8223 obvia, quae ab Heirico Autissiodorensi profecta esse videntur. Amsterdam: van Bottenburg, 1942. Bruno, Giordano. Opera latine conscripta. Ed. Francesco Fiorentino, Felice Tocco, Girolamo Vitelli, et al. 3 vols in 8 pts. Naples and Florence, 1879–­91. Reprinted, Stuttgart, 1961–­62.

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 47 ———. Opere italiane. Ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia, intro. Nuccio Ordine, comm. various authors. 2 vols. Turin: UTET, 2002. Canone, Eugenio. ‘ “Hic ergo sapientia aedificavit sibi domum”: il soggiorno di Bruno in Germania (1586–­1591)’. In Giordano Bruno: Gli anni napoletani e la ‘peregrinatio’ europea. Immagini, Testi, Documenti. Ed. Eugenio Canone. Cassino: Università degli Studi di Cassino, 1992, 111–­38. Ciliberto, Michele, ed. Giordano Bruno: Parole, concetti, immagini. 3 vols. Pisa: Edizione della Normale, and Florence: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 2014. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Philosophical Lectures. Ed. Kathleen Coburn. London: Pilot Press, 1949. ———. The Friend. Ed. Barbara E. Rooke. 2 vols. London: Routledge  & Kegan Paul, 1969. Costa, C. D[esmond] N. See Seneca, Four Dialogues. Deckard, Michael Funk, and Péter Losonczi, eds. Philosophy Begins in Wonder: An Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy, Theology, and Science. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2011. Dell’Omodarme, Francesca. ‘Seneca Lucio Anneo’. Ciliberto, ed. Giordano Bruno, 1745–8. Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Evans, Robert John Weston. The Wechel Presses: Humanism and Calvinism in Central Europe, 1572–­1627. Oxford: The Past and Present Society, 1975. Firpo, Luigi, ed. Le procès, Italian text, with French trans. Alain-­Philippe Segonds, notes Luigi Firpo and Alain-­Philippe Segonds. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2000. Fischer, Roman. ‘Frankfurt’. In Monasticon Carmelitanum. Die Klöster des Karmelitenordens (O. Carm.) in Deutschland von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Edeltraud Klueting, Stephan Panzer and Andreas H. Scholten. Münster: Aschendorff, 2012, 242–­88. Fredborg, Karin Margareta. ‘Sowing Virtue: Commentaries on Horace’s Epistles from the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’. The Journal of Medieval Latin 25 (2015): 197–­244. Frierson, Patrick. ‘Kant and the End of Wonder’. In Philosophy Begins in Wonder. Ed. Deckard and Losonczi, 285–­309. Gatti, Hilary. ‘Coleridge’s Reading of Giordano Bruno’. The Wordsworth Circle 27 (1996): 136–­45. ———. ‘Giordano Bruno nella cultura inglese dell’ 800’. In Brunus redivivus: Giordano Bruno nell’800 europeo. Ed. Eugenio Canone. Pisa: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 1998, 19–­66. ———. Essays on Giordano Bruno. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Granada, Miguel Angel. ‘Giordano Bruno et la dignitas hominis. Présence et modification d’un motif du platonisme de la Renaissance’. Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 12 (1993): 35–­89. ———. ‘Il rifiuto della distinzione fra potentia absoluta e potentia ordinata di Dio e l’affermazione dell’universo infinito in Giordano Bruno’. Rivista di storia della filosofia, nuova serie 49 (1994): 495–­532. ———. ‘Giordano Bruno et la Stoa. Une présence non reconnue de thèmes stoïciens?’ In Le Stoïcisme au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle. Ed. Pierre-­François Moreau. Paris: Albin Michel, 1999, 140–­74.

48  Dilwyn Knox ———. ‘ “Voi siete dissolubili, ma non vi dissolverete”. Il problema della dissoluzione dei mondi in Giordano Bruno’. Paradigmi, nuova serie 18 (2000): 261–­89. ———. ‘La perfección del hombre y la filosofía’. In Cosmología, teología y religión en la obra y en el proceso de Giordano Bruno. Ed. Miguel A. Granada. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2001, 221–­45. (Republished in Miguel A. Granada, Giordano Bruno: Universo infinito, unión con Dios, perfección del hombre. Barcelona: Herder, 2002, 297–­329.) ———. ‘Giordano Bruno. De immenso, I, 1–­3, con alcune reflessioni su Bruno e Schopenhauer’. In Verità e dissimulazione: L’infinito di Giordano Bruno tra caccia filosofica e riforma religiosa. Ed. Massimiliano Traversino. Naples: EDI, 2015. Granada, Miguel Angel, and Dario Tessicini. Giordano Bruno, De immenso. [Provisional title.] Pisa: Fabrizio Serra, forthcoming. Haskell, Yasmin. ‘The Masculine Muse. Form and Content in the Latin Didactic Poetry of Palingenius and Bruno’. In Form and Content in Didactic Poetry. Ed. Catherine Atherton. Bari: Levante, 1998, 117–­41. ———. ‘Conjuring with the Classics. Neo-­Latin Poets and Their Pagan Familiars’. In A Guide to Neo-­Latin Literature. Ed. Victoria Moul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 17–­34. Hepburn, Ronald W. ‘The Inaugural Address: Wonder’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Supplementary Volumes 54 (1980): 1–­23. Kant, Immanuel. Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings. Trans. Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni. Intro. Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ———. Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View. Ed. and trans. Robert B. Louden. Intro. Manfred Kuehn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. Mary Gregor. Intro, revised, Andrews Reath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Knox, Dilwyn. ‘Bruno: Immanence and Transcendence in De la causa, principio et uno, Dialogue II’. Bruniana & Campanelliana 19 (2013): 463–­82. ———. ‘Giordano Bruno’ (Summer 2019 Edition). In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Online. ———. ‘The World Soul and Individual Souls. Two Notes on Giordano Bruno’s Lampas XXX statuarum’. In From Wittenberg to Rome, and Beyond. Giordano Bruno: Will, Power, and Being. Law, Philosophy, and Theology in the Early Modern Era. Ed. Massimilano Traversino. Paris: Garnier, 2019. (Forthcoming.) Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A  Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lepri, Valentina. ‘Johann Wechel, Giovan Battista Ciotti e le ultime edizioni di Bruno’. Rinascimento, seconda serie 47 (2008): 367–­88. Lippmann, Edmund Oskar von. ‘Zu “Zwei Dinge erfüllen das Gemüt mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht . . . der bestirnte Himmel über mir, und das moralische Gesetz in mir”’. Kant-­Studien 34 (1929): 258–­61, and ibid. 35 (1930): 409–­10. Lombardi, Franco. ‘Una nota sul soggiorno di Giordano Bruno in Francoforte sul Meno’. In Medioevo e Rinascimento: Studi in Onore di Bruno Nardi. 2 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1955, 467–­73. Matthäus, Michael. ‘Der Frankfurter Drucker Johann Wechel’. Gutenberg-­Jahrbuch 84 (2009): 169–­83. ———. ‘ “. . . dz er sein pfennig anderstwo verzere.” Giordano Brunos Aufenthalte im Frankfurter Karmeliterkloster in den Jahren 1590/­91 und sein Nachleben in

Wonder and the philosopher’s perfection 49 Frankfurt bis zum Jahr 1900’. Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 61 (2009): 125–­57. Matuschek, Stefan. Über das Staunen: Eine ideengeschichtliche Analyse. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991. Meier-­Oeser, Stephan. Die Präsenz des Vergessenen: Zur Rezeption der Philosophie des Nicolaus Cusanus vom 15. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Münster: Aschendorff, 1989. Meinel, Peter. Seneca über seine Verbannung. Trostschrift an die Mutter Helvia: Mit einem Exkurs: Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. Bonn: Habelt, 1972. Meroi, Fabrizio. ‘Il vasaio e l’argilla. Bruno e l’epistolario paolino’. In Autobiografia e filosofia: L’esperienza di Giordano Bruno. Ed. Nestore Pirillo. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2003, 69–­86. Monti, Carlo. ‘Incidenza e significato della tradizione materialistica antica dei poemi latini di Giordano Bruno. La mediazione di Lucrezio’. Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 2 (1994): 75–­87. Papi, Fulvio. Antropologia e civiltà nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1968. Ricci, Saverio. Giordano Bruno nell’Europa del Cinquecento. Roma: Salerno, 2000. Roessli, Jean-­Michel, ‘Mirabilia, miraculum’. In Augustinus-­Lexicon, vol. 1-­. Ed. Cornelius Mayer et al. Basel: Schwabe, 1986-­, vol. 4, 25–­9. Sala, Giovanni B. Kants Kritik der praktischen Vernunft: Ein Kommentar. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004. Scapparone, Elisabetta, ‘Religione’. Ciliberto, ed. Giordano Bruno, 1643–­8. Segonds, Alain-­Philippe. [Notes supplementing those of Luigi Firpo.] Firpo, ed. Le procès, 533–­650. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Four Dialogues: De vita beata, De tranquillitate animi, De constantia sapientis, Ad Helviam matrem de consolation. Ed., trans. and comm. C. D[esmond] N. Costa. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1994. Sturlese, Rita. ‘Le fonti del Sigillus sigillorum del Bruno, ossia: il confronto con Ficino a Oxford sull’anima humana’. Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 2 (1994): 89–­167. Súarez, Francisco. Opera omnia. Ed. Michel André and Charles Berton. 28 vols. Paris: Ludovicus Vivès, 1856–­78. Thomas Aquinas. Opera omnia, vol. 1-­. Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta, 1882-­. ———. Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi. Ed. Pierre Mandonnet and Marie Fabien Moos. 4 vols. Paris, Lethielleux, 1929–­47. ———. In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio. Ed. Marie-­ Raymond Cathala and Raimondo Spiazzi. Turin: Marietti, 1950. Vaihinger, Hans. ‘Ein berühmtes Kantwort bei Seneca?’ Kant-­Studien 2 (1899): 491–­3. Yates, Frances A. ‘Giordano Bruno. Some New Documents’. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 5 (1951): 174–­99.

3 Wonder, epiphany, haecceity in Gerard Manley Hopkins Richard Kearney

‘Wonder’ is a word of many meanings. To wonder about something is to think about it, to reflect and inquire, to ruminate and surmise. It often signals a certain intimate curiosity, as when one says to a friend, ‘I wonder what is going on in your mind’. To wonder also means to be astonished or enthralled at something which baffles our conventional understanding of things, as when we confess that we are ‘full of wonder’ or exclaim that an idea or happening is ‘wonderful’. But there is, additionally, the more playful sense of wondering as simply wandering, letting the mind roam off on its own, in reverie or dream, as in ‘I was just wondering’. And, finally, there is the darker resonance of wonder, when encountering something at the edge: unsettling, traumatizing, wounding – a meaning captured in the etymological link of Germanic and Anglo-­Saxon usage, between Wunder and Wunde (‘wound’). One finds a similar interplay of light and dark, joy and hurt, in the root complicity of ‘blessing’ with blessure. This polysemy of wonder is closely related to the layered meaning of ‘epiphany’ which Gerard Manley Hopkins expresses regarding both his authorial experience of poetic creation and his religious reading of the primal scene in Bethlehem. In what follows, I explore the wonders of epiphany in certain writings of this exceptionally gifted religious writer.

Hopkins on epiphany On 6 January  1889, the Feast of the Epiphany, Hopkins made his last known entry in his spiritual diary. It was written at the Royal University in Dublin, just five months before his death from typhoid fever. Its subject was, appropriately, the event of epiphany. In very poor health and in the midst of his annual Ignatian retreat, Hopkins consoled himself with the fact that, if his own journey to the University on Stephen’s Green was ‘inconvenient and painful’, so too was the Magi’s ‘journey to Bethlehem’ (The Sermons 220). ‘To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life/ Among strangers’ is how one of his poems begins, identifying his plight with his migrant biblical predecessors. And yet, like those voyagers in the night, Hopkins himself was to experience an illumination in the midst of darkness – ‘so much light, more than I can

Wonder, epiphany, haecceity 51 easily put down’ (221). From that moment in January, though his health grew worse, his ‘spirits got better’ (221)1 and on his deathbed on 8 June, he pronounced his last words to his family: ‘I am so happy, I am so happy’ (quoted in Mariani 24). In his January entry on the Epiphany, we find Hopkins reconstructing the wise men’s journey with, to use the phrase of Christopher Devlin, editor of The Sermons, ‘detective ingenuity’, worthy of Kierkegaard’s reconstruction of Abraham’s journey in Fear and Trembling. But, in this instance, we are dealing with a very different kind of event – not the sacrifice of a son, Isaac, on a mountain but the birth of a son, Jesus, in a cave. During the course of his extensive reflections on the Epiphany, Hopkins makes what I take to be six key observations. First, Hopkins makes much of the fact that the three Magi were strangers from afar – gentiles or ‘Persian Magians’, as he put it, who may have come from the ‘borders of India’ (The Sermons 265). They came, he notes, in secret, unrecognized and unannounced; and it is telling that, right after their visitation, the holy family themselves take flight into another foreign land, Egypt. There is a certain mixing of wonder and estrangement. Second, the strangers came after the event of the birth itself – twelve days later, to be precise. The Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January is known in Ireland as ‘Little Christmas’, marking the culmination of the Christmas cycle, and in the Eastern Orthodox tradition it is actually considered to be the real revelation of Christ’s incarnate birth. The first event of Christianity is, in short, a revelation après coup by and for strangers. Epi-­phany as aftermath. Or what Hopkins will call a poetics of ‘aftering’.2 Third, Hopkins notes that the divinity of the child is recognized by the Magi, thanks to a certain hermeneutic reading of signs. The visitors read the stars that guide their path in a way which Herod and the great multitude did not. So, for Hopkins, the three foreigners are the first Christian hermeneuts, so to speak, practising an astronomical mix of ‘ordinary science’ and ‘extraordinary science’ – the latter serving as a certain ‘white magic’ or secret art which ‘bridges the gulf between human and superhuman knowledge’ (The Sermons 264). By contrast, notes Hopkins, the ‘star was nothing to ordinary observers, perhaps not visible at all to them’ (264). It is the three wise interpreters who can say – like certain poets and sages after them – we have seen’ (264). Hopkins explains: ‘They [the Magi] speak of their art, their observation, magisterially’; and the stellar illumination in the dark may well have been ‘only visible after the practice of their art, [after] some sort of evocation, had been gone through’ (265). In short, epiphanies come and go and may require a certain poetic-­hermeneutic art in order to decipher the infinite in the infinitesimal, the wondrous in the ordinary. Epiphanies are not faits accomplis but invitations to discernment. Calls for responses. Or, as Hopkins says in his poem ‘To R.B.’, the engendering moment of incarnation ‘breathes once and, quenched faster than it came,/ Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song’ (Poems 70). Paul Mariani, Hopkins’s biographer, offers this helpful gloss: ‘The moment of conception, of poetic

52  Richard Kearney inspiration . . . was all that was necessary to generate a poem, even if it took months, even years . . . for the poem to come to fruition. The seed had been planted, and the poem would come in its own good time –­ . . . “The widow of an insight lost she lives” [Hopkins’s poetic line]’ (30–­1). Fourth, the Magi bring sweet-­smelling gifts of frankincense and myrrh to mark the sensible nature of the Incarnation – word made flesh. And this emphasis on the carnal character of the Epiphany is further confirmed by the presence of animals and the ‘scandalous’ fact that the divine child is manifest as the very least of beings (elachistos), naked and homeless in a lowly feeding manger.3 Here we have the epiphanic paradox, par excellence, of wonder in the wounded, the highest in the lowest, the first in the last. Fifth, the Epiphany, Hopkins observes, is surrounded by darkness. The nativity occurs in a cave in the depth of winter since there is no room in the inns of Bethlehem. And it is rapidly followed by a further and more ominous kind of darkness  – the perilous flight into Egypt and Herod’s slaughter of innocents. In other words, from the very outset, Epiphany is a momentary irruption of light in opacity. Or, as Hopkins reflects, the star of Bethlehem shines ‘at night’. A basic point he carries home in citing Marie Lataste’s mystic vision of Mary presenting her son on the ‘twelfth day’ of the Epiphany: ‘ce désert ne sera plus un désert, mais une douce oasis, ou vous vous reposerez . . . après une longue course, après de rudes épreuves’ (The Sermons 335).4 Epiphany, Hopkins intimates, is always mediated – in this instance, by the Madonna, as well as by the Magi  – not to mention nocturnal shepherds and animals. Divinity descends into time and space, persons and places. It marks a plural, dialogical transition between dark night and natal light, water and drought, torment and rest. Lastly, Hopkins proposes that the Epiphany be read in the light of what he considers to be two other epiphanic events in Jesus’s life: the baptism by John in the Jordan and the conversion of water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana. Two related wonders involving the miraculous power of water, one of the four primary material elements. In the immersion in the Jordan, Jesus performs a second kenotic birth, a further conversion of human to divine after his first nativity in Bethlehem. He comes to baptism, observes Hopkins boldly, disguised as a sinner and leaves cleansed and reborn. Once again, we witness the epiphanic paradigm of descent into darkness (kenosis) and ascent into light (anabasis), a double move repeated over and over throughout Jesus’s life – right up to the final rising from the empty tomb. At Cana, concludes Hopkins, we meet another disguise and a different conversion: this time with Jesus, the guest, serving secretly as host by providing wine which everyone present assumes comes from the householders. Jesus ‘conceals the miracle . . . at the moment’, Hopkins observes, ‘and increases it afterwards’ (The Sermons 271).5 This temporality of before and after is central, as we will see, to the deep rhythm of ‘epiphany’; for just as Jesus tells his mother ‘non dum venit hora mea’ (‘my hour has not yet come’) – thereby marking a lapse in the revelation of his transforming power – so,

Wonder, epiphany, haecceity 53 too, the conversion of water into wine is not witnessed right away but only afterwards (nachträglich) in the effects of the wine on the unsuspecting guests. This notion of temporal lapse or delay, we shall note, is pivotal to the logic of ‘epiphany’ in Hopkins. Indeed, the very preposition epi-­ in Greek carries this sense of something extra, additional, surplus. A beyond the bounds which signals a new temporality of before and after, too early and too late, already and not yet, as in the terms ‘epilogue’ and ‘epigraph’. This is what Levinas, talking of revelation, calls a paradox of posterior anteriority: the opening of ordinary chronological time to ‘kairological’ time.6 One might recall again here the context of Hopkins’s attention to these serial epiphanies in the life of Christ, namely his own personal struggle to emerge from bouts of crippling depression. Such ‘dark nights of the soul’ were graphically captured in Hopkins’s so-­called ‘terrible sonnets’ – ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’, ‘Carrion Comfort’, ‘No worse, there is none’  – viae negativae which found their poetic counterparts in the viae affirmativae of poems such as ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’ or ‘Glory Be to God for Dappled Things’. We will return to these next, noting how, for Hopkins, wonder is often born from woundedness.

Hopkins on haecceity Hopkins’s reading of Epiphany has telling implications, I suggest, for understanding his deep fascination with Duns Scotus’s notion of haecceitas. Though Hopkins himself does not make a direct connection, I  think that what he has to say about these two key notions makes the hypothesis not only telling but compelling. The strange and difficult concept of ‘haecceity’, which has puzzled commentators for centuries, names the precious ‘thisness’ of each creature as it bears witness to the infinite in the infinitesimal. In his sonnet ‘Duns Scotus’s Oxford’, Hopkins describes the town he revisits – six hundred years after his Franciscan predecessor – in terms of the same concrete particulars that Scotus himself would have witnessed in his day: Towery city and branchy between towers; Cuckoo-­echoing, bell-­swarmed, lark-­charmed, rook-­ racked, river-­rounded; And he pays his learned magister this highest accolade: He . . . who of all men most sways my spirits to peace; Of realty the rarest-­veined unraveller; a not Rivalled insight . . . (Poems 41) Hopkins offers his most consistent account of Scotist haecceitas in the third chapter of his ‘Spiritual Writings’. Entitled ‘On Personality, Grace and Free

54  Richard Kearney Will’, it addresses the question: how can God move a human will to attain a destiny beyond the powers of its nature while leaving it free to act? His answer is that our freedom operates at the level of personality prior to actual existence. Several different personalities can be uniquely different as free persons while sharing the same universal human nature – an actualized nature which each human needs in order to ultimately display itself in a common public world, namely to become manifest, one to another. This freedom of personality is described by Hopkins as pitch (gradus) – a notion which plays a pivotal role in his poetics and which he defines as follows: ‘Pitch is a pre-­ existing determination of man towards his eternal destiny by his creator, but in such a sort that the man is left free to determine himself’ (Devlin 338). This priority of pitch to natural existence seems to imply that there is a ‘world of possible being’, prior to actual existence, in which God sees and loves each unique person as fulfilling its divine calling before one actually does so. In other words, personality is first conceived a singular pitch in the mind of God but requires our free consent, with the aid of ‘elevating grace’, to be brought to full realization afterwards. For pitch to be fully ‘selved’ as a unique act of existence, it needs to add (epi) reality to possibility, a second birth to the first birth, so to speak, in order to become visibly manifest (phany) in natural reality. Or, to put it in terms of Hopkins’s reading of the Epiphany, the manifestation of the divine child to the Magi occurs after the initial birth of the child – on the twelth day. Hopkins pointedly asks if this intriguing notion of pitch ‘is not the same as Scotus’s ecceitas?’ (The Sermons 151). Christopher Devlin put all this in more metaphysical terms: ‘Pitch can only exist in an existing substance, yet its distinctiveness is so much more than merely conceptual that it must be considered as a reality apart from the nature in which it exists . . . A possible pitch is certainly identical with the Divine Essence in so much as it is an idea in God’s Mind. But in so much as it is an intention ad extra in God’s Will, it exercises an influence outside the Divine Essence’ (339–­40). Thus, in regard to time, Scotus made allowance for the extra perfection that can come to a finite substance which is already perfect in spirit, though not yet in fact (340). After possibility comes actuality, after essence comes existence, after nativity comes epiphany, after Creation comes Redemption. Hence the significance of Hopkins’s cryptic but telling note on the temporal deferral of epiphany: ‘Twelve days = 6 + 6 – Creation and Redemption’ (The Sermons 265). The nativity is revealed in its after-­effects. To repeat his explanation: ‘The star may have been an altogether preternatural appearance, only visible after the practice of [the Magi’s] art some sort of evocation had been gone through, not necessarily always there’ (265). In short, there is no Christianity without witness, no revelation without a certain art of interpretation and action. Hopkins himself would consider poetry as one such art, in his own life, performing epiphanies of ‘instress’ and ‘inscape’ and disclosing the process of divine incarnation in nature, in a process which he called, revealingly, ‘aftering’ or ‘over and overing’. Epiphany  – whether it be through

Wonder, epiphany, haecceity 55 the witness of art or action  – involves the ‘lifting of one self to another’, the natural to the divine and vice versa: ‘as if a man said: that is Christ playing at me and me playing at Christ . . . that is Christ being me and me being Christ’ (Devlin 341). Epiphany thus reveals itself, for Hopkins, as that moment of poetic theopoiesis where, as he writes in ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’, ‘Christ plays in ten thousand places,/ Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his/ To the Father through the features of men’s faces’ (Poems 54). But how exactly does ‘pitch’ relate to ‘being in Christ’? Here, Hopkins emphatically returns to the notion of ‘thisness’. He is aware that for Scotus, haecceitas was the ‘final determinant in the scale of natures that descend the tree of Porphyry by way of communicable genus and species: it is that which stops the common nature in one member of the species from being communicable to other members’ – that is, from being translated into common universal properties (Devlin 341). Haecceitas is what makes someone or something this and no other. Or as Gilles Deleuze explains: ‘Duns Scotus created the concept of haec, “this thing” . . . and you will yield nothing to haec unless you realize that that is what you are, and that you are nothing but that’ (A Thousand Plateaus n. 23; 262). And he adds: ‘Not content to merely analyze the elements of an individual he went as far as the conception of individuation as the “ultimate actuality of form” ’ (Difference and Repetition 38).7 ‘Haecceity’, in sum, is where the buck stops once and for all, where the person is manifest in his or her irreducible uniqueness and individuality. Where one says, ecce: behold who comes, this one very particular person! And everyone is one such person, which is why James Joyce names his unique universal hero of Finnegan’s Wake H.C.E.: Here Comes Everybody!8 Hopkins exploits the felicitous homonymy here between the Latin-­ Romance spelling of ecceitas (without a ‘h’) and the exclamation, ecce – as in ‘Ecce Homo’ when Pilot announces Jesus to the crowd in Jerusalem, or ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ when John the Baptist announces Jesus at the Jordan. (Hopkins explicitly cites this Latin greeting in his 6 January entry on the Epiphany.) Individuality as haecceitas is intrinsic to being but prior to existence since no natural existence is de se haec. More precisely, for Hopkins as for Scotus, ‘being’ (in the divine) is not only ‘existence’ (in nature) but also and quintessentially a ‘process of coming into existence from a state of possibility in the creator’s mind’ – that is, ‘qua essence or esse conceived by God’ (The Sermons 341). Scotus conceived individuality, accordingly, as the culmination of a process of becoming the ‘ultima realitas entis’. Its cause, like its pitch, remains a secret, a mystery to humans: ‘The intrinsic cause of haecceity is to be sought only in the divine will’ (‘Ratio intima haecceitatis non est quaerenda nisi in Divina voluntate’) (Duns Scotus, Parisiensia II, xii, 5; quoted in Hopkins, Devlin 342). Pitch, as Hopkins admits at one point, ‘is really a thread or chain of pitches between the actual self and the ideal self’ (Devlin, 349).9 The Scotist double idea of finite being as i) already there and ii) always still coming more fully into existence (‘semper in fieri’) is intimately linked

56  Richard Kearney to the concept of personalitas (Devlin 342). And it leads Hopkins to some fascinating if highly complex reflections on the relation of proportionality between a) divine personality vis-­a-­vis human personality and b) the infinite vis-­à-­vis the infinitesimal. These reflections pertain not only to the naked incarnate child, witnessed in the Epiphany, but also to the words of the Psalmist, ‘One depth makes answer to another’ (‘abyssus abyssum invocat’). Hopkins boldly affirms that the ‘blissful stress of selving in God is, when translated ad extra, the stress of creation’ and can only fully be understood in terms of the Trinity; but he breaks off at this point, apparently unable to say more in prose. No metaphysical account of the analogy or univocity of divine-­human being can, it seems, adequately articulate this mystery. Perhaps only poetic language – and, in Hopkins’s case, a singularly innovative and idiosyncratic one – can hope to fathom this unfathomable secret. Philosophy and theology can make no ultimate sense of these incommunicable and untranslatable imponderables. (Indeed, Duns Scotus’s own repeated attempts to do so merely earned him the epithet of ‘dunce’ from his contemporaries.) And, finally, where even poetry fails, the best we can do, Hopkins suggests, is to embrace loving actions which accompany faltering words, beyond all logical propositions (342). Here, ultimately, Hopkins reckons with the mystery of continuous creation (ensarkosis) – the perpetual coming of word into flesh – an audacious notion which both Scotus and Hopkins endorsed (Devlin 349). At the limit of thought and language, the most Hopkins can stammer is this: ‘So that this pitch might be expressed, if it were good English, the doing be, the doing choose’ (345). In the heel of the hunt, Hopkins, the classics scholar and professor, opts for Scotist praxeology over ontology, suggesting that Aristotle and Thomas were mistaken to place final felicity in the ‘intellect’ rather than in free individual expression: that is, in our unique selving in song and action, in our sensible effects and affects. This is what Hopkins, following Scotus, calls in ‘Pied Beauty’ the love of things themselves, amor obiecti, the praise of ordinary dappled things – ‘all things counter, original, spare, strange’ (Poems 30). At which point, the famous Scotist univocity of being – natural, human and divine – may be said to consort with a plurivocity of expression. The ‘haecceity’ of each creature proclaims itself multiply and uniquely: ‘Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: / Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; . . . / Crying, What I do is me: for that I came’ (‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’, Poems 54).

Hopkins, epiphany and the everyday wonder of being One last remark on these allusive and elusive matters. The reference to pitch as ‘abyss’ aptly echoes here the Scotist claim that the ground of individuality is an intrinsic lack of being (carentia entitatis)  – a void which results in a creature from its being created. Each finite creature is marked by this paradox of a simultaneous possession of positive being and a lack of further

Wonder, epiphany, haecceity 57 possible being, which ensures our constant becoming. Hopkins’s notion of singular ‘pitch’ is an attempt, I would like to suggest, to translate Scotus’s view that each finite being is individuated by the intrinsic degree (‘gradus sibi instrinsecus’) to which it both possesses a positive perfection of its ‘nature’ and simultaneously lacks a further possible perfection of its ‘being’, still to come in nature. As such, pitch can be compared to a hole or series of holes, in a violin, for example, ‘into which a peg can be fitted so as to tighten the string; the holes would be the carentia, the peg would be an ideal self, the string would be human nature’ (Devlin 343). Hopkins usually equates pitch and personality, but once, speaking of pitch as pre-­existent, he introduces the key notion of temporal delay or process. Pitch, he concedes, ‘is not truly self; self or personality truly comes into being when the self, the person, comes into being [existence] with the accession of nature’ (Devlin 343). The human self, on this account, is a doubled self, stretched like a violin string between the perfect possession of its ‘nature’ and the desire for ever further perfection of ‘being’ – a perfection perhaps never fully achievable or understandable, as Scotus held, until we partake of the ‘beatific vision’. For us mortal ‘potsherds’, immortal wonders are still mediated through mortal wounds. Hence, the deep inclination (pondus) of each broken finite creature to seek ultimate fulfillment in God as final cause. And if, Hopkins implies, we may glimpse moments of beatific vision in this life – in certain states of epiphany – the human self may even be said to express itself as a triple self, echoing the vera imago of the Trinity in one’s own ideal soul. The person of Christ being the incarnate self of divinity which invites each mortal being to participate – ‘since he was what I am’. Namely, the Father generates the Son through the Spirit not only in the Epiphany witnessed by the Magi two thousand years ago but each and every time infinite being crosses finite being, here and now, and wounded wonder illuminates everyday lives: I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond Is immortal diamond. (‘That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire’, Poems 68)10 But epiphanies  – whether they be then or now, uppercase or lowercase  – express the fact that individual ‘haecceity’ is intrinsic to ‘being’ (divine) prior to ‘existence’ (actual) and so requires a delay to become manifest – an ‘overing’, a following through, a re-­doing, a witnessing. Existence expresses itself ultimately as epi-­phany in that it does not confer individuality on something as matter on form, as Aquinas held, but rather brings out what is already there as ‘being’, after the event of first creation. Poetic invention, in sum, is discovery! Or as Hopkins portentously put it in his undergraduate essay on Parmenides: ‘Nothing is so pregnant and straightforward to the

58  Richard Kearney truth as simple yes and is’ (The Sermons 293).11 Hopkins’s poetics, in two words, signals a ‘yes’ to the ‘is’ of ‘haecceity’. A consent – in and through darkness – to the everyday wonder of being. Epi-­phany as ana-­phany. Epi-­ theism as ana-­theism. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. (‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’, Poems 54)

Notes 1 Forty days before his death, on 8 April, Hopkins wrote, ‘I’m ill today but no matter for that my spirits are good’ (The Sermons 221). He died on 9 June 1889 at the age of 44 and was buried in a collective Jesuit grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. 2 On Hopkins’s notion of poetic ‘aftering’, see Kearney, Anatheism: Returning to God after God and ‘God after God: An Anatheist Attempt to Reimagine God’ (6–­7). 3 Both Kierkegaard’s For Self-­Examination and Judge for Yourself and Benjamin’s Ursprung des Deutchen Trauerspiels make much of the ‘scandalous’ character of the Epiphany. Kierkegaard speaks of the image of Christ as a ‘archi-­image’. The Danish term means literally a proto-­image which is also an after-­image – an image to be followed, followed up on, imitated (enterfolgelse) after the event, through witness, writing, reading, remembering. In other words, a repetition, not backwards but forwards. Following Benjamin’s Trauerspiel, Frances Maughan-­Brown reads this archi-­image accordingly as allegory rather than symbol. For while symbol fuses and confuses meanings in a halo of simultaneous, full presence, allegory calls for spacing and temporizing, a certain delay and deferral which dwells on what comes after, on the fragment or remnant. Christ is to be experienced not as a pure origin or simple fullness, but as someone who comes ‘after’, twelve days after the beginning, marking the beginning as something which never ends, which is always an after-­image. As Kierkegaard himself put it: ‘(Christ) himself helps us by not saying ‘Look at me’ but ‘Consider the lilies; look at the birds!’ He pointed away from himself’ (182). 4 Hopkins became fascinated by the visions of Gasgony peasant mystic Marie Lataste during a retreat in November 1878. He commented that ‘her life was all grace and miracle, and her writings full of living sanctity and vigorous perceptions of things hidden to the wise’ and wrote a detailed commentary on her vision, entitled ‘The Epiphany’, which he introduces as follows: ‘Marie Lataste one Twelfth Night is led by her angel to the stable of Bethlehem’. Christopher Devlin, the editor of Hopkins’s Sermons and Devotional Writings, provides long extracts of Lataste’s Epiphany vision and of Hopkins’s comments on it (Hopkins, The Sermons 325–­37). Lataste here takes her place beside the Magi strangers from afar.

Wonder, epiphany, haecceity 59 5 Hopkins summarizes his trinity of conversions thus, under the overall entry of ‘Sunday of Epiphany’: ‘Christ’s three manifestations: at Bethlehem, at the baptism, at Cana. 1) consider to whom; in i) to the Magi and by them to the Gentiles; in ii) to St John Baptist, his disciples, and the Jews; in iii) to Christ’s disciples . . . 2) Consider as what: in i) as a child, helpless (the nativity); in ii) as in the disguise of a sinner [the baptism in Jordan]; in iii) as in the disguise of common social life [marriage feast at Cana]. 3) By what means: in i) of inanimate nature in the star; in ii) of the divine Persons; in iii) of his own incarnated power’ (The Sermons 259). 6 See Levinas (54; ch. 1). On the ‘kairological’-­eschatological time of Epiphany, see Kearney (Anatheism). The paradoxical structure of time which Paul called ‘eschatological’ is exemplified in the Palestinian formula for ‘remembering the one who is still to come’. This temporal enigma has been identified with ‘messianic’ time by contemporary thinkers such as Levinas, Benjamin, Derrida, and Agamben. They refer, in their respective ways, to a special form of ‘anticipatory memory’ which recalls the past into the future through the present – what Hopkins called ‘aftering’ or ‘over and overing’: an ana-­aesthetic process which enables us to bear witness to how each simple mortal thing ‘does one thing and the same:/ Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves  – goes itself’ (Hopkins, ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’, Poems 54). On the question of epiphanic temporality and remembering forwards, see also Kristeva (Time and Sense 3–­22) and Benjamin (‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ 230). 7 Deleuze develops the notion of haecceity in What Is Philosophy? (21), where he speaks of the relationship between concept and the flow/ change of being. A concept is not abstract but is the complex of interconnected thoughts or the expression of ‘inseparable variations’. Deleuze insists on an infinite speed which surveys the finite heterogeneous components of thought which the concept consists of. For Deleuze, the singularity of events – the novel moment where several things come into relationship as haecceity  – is expressible in the concept because they are both heterogeneous assemblages that interrelate on a ‘plane of immanence’, i.e. non-­hierarchical relationality. What Deleuze does is use the same logic and rules that describe the univocity of being to describe the concept. I am grateful to John Bagby for bringing to my attention Deleuze’s treatment of haecceity. 8 On the relation between Joyce’s H.C.E. and Scotus’s ‘ecce’/­‘eccéité’, see Kearney (‘Épiphanies: Hopkins, Scotus, Joyce’ 111). See also Kearney, ‘Epiphanies in Joyce’. 9 Christopher Devlin offers the following useful gloss on this notoriously difficult question: ‘He [Hopkins] was following Scotus in thinking of self or individuality as the independent possession of one’s human nature; but he was also following Scotus in thinking that one’s independence as a human nature rests on one’s deeper dependence as a human being  – and the more perfect the nature the deeper the independence. Further, for both Scotus and Hopkins, the independent possession of one’s nature is exercised by the will as arbitrium, while the deeper dependence is in the attraction of the ‘voluntas ut natura’ to the infinite, which is its origin’ (Devlin 349). Regarding Scotus’s use of the word personalitas, Devlin adds: ‘Scotus’s thought will be found to conclude at the same point as GMH’s – namely, that we are created in Christ . . . Personality then, for both, is a movement from the ideal to the actual, and back from the actual to the ideal – though it is an ideal which can never be actually reached because it is identical with God himself and the processions of the Trinity. Personality is thus a journey into ever increasing never-­ending ‘self-realization’ (349–50).

60  Richard Kearney 10 See Mariani’s brilliant reading of this poem as well as his illuminating comments on the pivotal role of the Trinity in Hopkins’s theological poetics and the motif of light-­dark mysticism in both his life and work. ‘Hopkins – like St John of the Cross before him – had to learn that it was only in darkness that the “infinite God himself becomes the Light of the darkened soul and possesses it entirely with His Truth”. Then and only then, “at this inexplicable moment”, did the deepest night become day and faith itself turned into understanding’ (28). The epiphanic moment, where desolation becomes consolation in a flash, is poetically captured in the resurrection moment of drowning as rebirth: ‘Away grief’s gasping, joyless days, dejection./ Across my foundering deck shone/ A beacon, an eternal beam.’ (‘That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire’, Poems 68). 11 On Scotist ‘haecceity’, see Casey (163), Hans Urs von Balthasar (353–­77) and Ballinger (ch. 3, especially 193–­8). See also Kristeva’s recent critical retrieval of the Scotist notion of ‘haecceity’. She invokes a Scotist ethics of singularity over the Thomist scholasticism of universality to support an ‘interactive’ rather than ‘integrative’ approach to the disabled. ‘We know today’, she writes, ‘that if the modern sense of happiness is freedom, freedom is not necessarily “integrative,” “collective,” and “standardized,” but that it is concomitant with the singular. Duns Scotus had already maintained this against Thomas Aquinas . . . The discovery of Duns Scotus goes back to his reading of the words that God addresses to Moses: “I am The One who is” ’. The unpronounceable calling of the name would be the index of utter singularity’ (‘A Tragedy and a Dream’ 121). The link between Hopkins’s poetics of epiphanic wonder and Kristeva’s ethics of singularity opens a rich field for philosophical research into Duns Scotus’s concept of ‘haecceity’ as it relates to the enigmatic chiasmus of wonder and woundedness.

Works cited Ballinger, Philip. The Poem as Sacrament: The Theological Aesthetic of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Leuven: Peeters, 2000. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. ‘Oxford, Ignatius and Scotus’. In The Glory of the Lord.: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 3. Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles. Ed. John Riches. Edinburgh: Clark, 1986, 353–­77. Benjamin, Walter. ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’. In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968, 253–­64. ———. Ursprung des Deutchen Trauerspiels. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998. Casey, Gerard. ‘Hopkins  – Poetry and Philosophy’. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 84.334 (1995): 160–­7. Deleuze, Gilles, and Pierre Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. ———. Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. ———. What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Devlin, Christopher. ‘Scotus and Hopkins’. In G.M. Hopkins, The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ed. Christopher Devlin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959, 338–­51. Gilson, Étienne. Jean Duns Scot. Paris: Vrin, 1952. Goémé, Christine, ed. Jean Duns-­Scot ou la revolution subtile. Paris: FAC editions, 1982. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. London: Humphrey Milford, 1918.

Wonder, epiphany, haecceity 61 ———. The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ed. Christopher Devlin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. Kearney, Richard. Anatheism: Returning to God After God. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. ———. ‘Epiphanies: Hopkins, Scotus, Joyce’. In Métaphysique et Christianisme. Ed. Philippe Capelle. Paris: PUF, 2015, 97–­130. ———. ‘Epiphanies in Joyce’. In Voices on  Joyce. Ed. Anne Fogarty and Fran O’Rourke. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2015, 239–­59. ———. ‘God After God: An Anatheist Attempt to Reimagine God After God’. In Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God. Ed. Richard Kearney and Jens Zimmermann. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, 6–­18. Kierkegaard, Søren. For Self-­Examination and Judge for Yourself (FSE). Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Kristeva, Julia. Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature. Trans. Ross Guberman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. ———. ‘A Tragedy and a Dream: Disability Revisited’. In Carnal Hermeneutics. Ed. Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015, 115–­27. Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1960. Mariani, Paul. ‘The Mystery and the Majesty of It: Jesuit Spirituality in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins’. Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 47.2 (Summer 2015). Maughan-­Brown, Frances. Kierkegaard’s Sermons on the Lily and the Birds. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018.

4 Wonder in ethics and aesthetics Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore Priyambada Sarkar Wittgenstein’s expression ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’ in ‘A Lecture on Ethics’ (47/­8),1 along with his characterization of the existence of the world as ‘mystical’ in the Tractatus Logico-­Philosophicus (6.44), has intrigued his commentators.2 How could a treatise on philosophical logic contain remarks on the mystical? How could wondering about the actual world be mystical? What exactly did Wittgenstein mean by the expression ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’? Did he want to refer to a special kind of experience? It is also important at this point to mention that for Wittgenstein, in his early career, this particular statement concerning wonder at the existence of the world is nonsensical, as it fails to meet the canons of ‘sensicality’ in the Tractatus.3 Yet in ‘A Lecture on Ethics’ Wittgenstein considers this statement also as ‘absolutely valuable’ because there are no factual criteria for it.4 How this wondering about the world can be nonsense, on the one hand, and absolutely valuable, on the other, will become, I  hope, more comprehensible if seen in the light of one of Wittgenstein’s favourite poets, Rabindranath Tagore. Wittgenstein revealed his admiration for Tagore during the summer of 1927, when Moritz Schlick invited him to attend the philosophical meetings of the members of the Vienna Circle that he had founded. Initially reluctant to join any assembly of philosophers, Wittgenstein eventually accepted the invitation but only on the understanding that the discussion would not have to be philosophical and that he could discuss whatever he wished. To the surprise of his audience, when asked to clarify his remarks in the Tractatus, he often turned his back on the members of the circle and read poems from Tagore’s Gitanjali, suggesting, by doing so, that what he had left unsaid in the Tractatus was more important than what he had said (Monk 243). This chapter is divided into three parts. The first clarifies Wittgenstein’s remarks on wondering as being ‘absolutely valuable’ and beautiful on the one hand and utterly nonsensical on the other. The second explains why Tagore’s poetry helps us understand Wittgenstein’s views on wonder. The third part identifies the similarities in the poet’s and the philosopher’s interpretations of wondering at the point of intersection between ethics and aesthetics. I should add here, however, that I do not wish to imply in

Wonder in ethics and aesthetics 63 any way that Tagore’s writings directly influenced Wittgenstein’s view on this matter.5

Wittgenstein: ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’ In ‘A Lecture on Ethics’ delivered to the Heretics Society in Cambridge in 1929, Wittgenstein gave as an example of absolute value judgment his ‘experience par excellence’, namely the experience that, he said, could be ‘described’ with the words ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’ (47/­8). He then added that this absolute value judgement led him to use such phrases as ‘how extraordinary that anything should exist’ or ‘how extraordinary that the 8).6 The Tractatus, first published in 1921, had world should exist’ 47/­ included similar remarks: ‘It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists’ (6.44). Later on in the lecture he described the experience of wondering at the existence of the world in, as he says, a ‘slightly different way’: ‘It is the experience of seeing the world as a miracle’ (50/­11). Wittgenstein is here equating wonder at the existence of the world with viewing the existence of the world as a miracle. If what is mystical (i.e. what cannot be expressed ‘sensically’ in language) is that the world exists, then the object of his wonder is something mystical. This corresponds with the following statement in the Notebooks 1914–­16: ‘Aesthetically, the miracle is that the world exists. That there is what there is’ (86e). What kind of wondering at the world makes the world a miracle? According to Wittgenstein, it is viewing the world ‘sub specie aeterni’ (Tractatus 6.45), not through but outside propositional language. This viewpoint is particularly common in ethics, aesthetics and religion. Now, if ‘the wonder that the world exists’ is an example of absolute value judgement and is experience par excellence and mystical, then it is nonsense. It cannot be put into words. In the Tractatus, the distinction between what can and cannot be put into words constitutes the cardinal problem of the book and of philosophy as a whole. In a famous letter to Russell, he wrote: The main point is the theory of what can be expressed (gesagt) by propositions, i.e. by language (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by propositions, but only shown (gezeigt); which I believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy. (quoted in Monk 164) Again in a letter to Paul Engelmann: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely the second part that is the important one . . . I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion, because they contain the most direct expression of the point of the book. (Engelmann 143–­4)

64  Priyambada Sarkar Similarly in the preface to the Tractatus he emphasizes that the whole ‘sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: ‘what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence’(Tractatus 3). At the end of the book, he repeats the point: ‘What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence’ (Tractatus 7). To understand, then, why Wittgenstein thinks that ethics, aesthetics and religion cannot be expressed in words, we need to take a look at the important distinction between the expressible (‘what can be put into words’) and the inexpressible (‘what cannot be put into words’) in his early philosophy. Wittgenstein, at the time of writing the Tractatus, was convinced of the a priori order of the world as well as of thought and language.7 This a priori order which is common to world, thought and language can be revealed only by setting a limit to thought. But it is logically impossible to do so, he observed, since to draw a boundary on thought would be to lead one to think the unthinkable. A boundary, however, can be drawn on thought by setting a limit on language (Tractatus 3–­4). Distinguishing what can and cannot be ‘sensically’ expressed in effect sets a limit to thought since language and thought are co-­extensive in the domain of the ‘sensical’. What can be expressed in language, therefore, remains within the realm of the ‘sensical’ and what lies on the other side is ‘nonsense’. ­Figure 4.1 illustrates the distinction between ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’. At this time, Wittgenstein held that there was a sharp distinction between what can be stated ‘sensically in language’ (sinnvoll) and what cannot be stated ‘sensically in language’ of which there are two types, senseless (sinnlos) and nonsensical (unsinnig). ‘Sensical’ propositions are those which picture the ‘state of affairs of the world’. This means that there is a special kind

Proposions

sensical (sinnvoll): empirical proposions; scienfic proposions

nonsense proposions

senseless (sinnlos): proposions of logic and mathemacs nonsensical (unsinnig): aempts to express the inexpressible

logical form, pictorial form ethics, aesthecs, religion metaphysics proposions of the Tractatus

Figure 4.1 Diagram illustrating the distinction between ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’ in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.

Wonder in ethics and aesthetics 65 of correlation between psychic elements in the mind of the user of language, elements of language and objects in the world. A sentence which pictures a state of affairs in this way is true or false depending on whether this state of affairs is the case or not, that is to say, depending on whether or not the sentence pictures a fact. This idea leads to the conclusion that many collections of words which might seem ‘sensical’ sentences are not in fact so. Sentences which are not pictures or representations of states of affairs are ‘nonsense’ sentences. The propositions of logic and mathematics do not picture situations in the world. Therefore, for Wittgenstein, they are sinnlos, or ‘senseless’. This does not mean that they are of no significance (Tractatus 4.4611). They do not say anything, yet they ‘show’, and ‘showing’ is significant. This ‘senselessness’ is the direct consequence of Wittgenstein’s theory of language and meaning in the Tractatus. Another type of ‘nonsensicality’ arises from ‘an attempt to express the inexpressible’, from an attempt, that is, to put into words what in essence cannot be put into words.8 In this category, too, we find the notion of logical/ pictorial form on the one hand and ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics and religion on the other. For Wittgenstein, these forms of ‘nonsensicality’, into which the Tractatus itself seems to fall, are what is ‘mystical’. ‘There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical’ (Tractatus 6.522). These are all, according to the Tractatus, ‘nonsensical’, but their ‘nonsensicality’ is different from that of the propositions of logic. The former attempt to express something which is inexpressible, whereas the latter, i.e. the propositions of logic, do not. Here one understands why the proposition ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’ is ‘nonsense’ from the point of view of the Tractatus as it does not picture any particular state of affairs or event of the world. Moreover, this proposition is also nonsensical because the word ‘wonder’ is being misused. We wonder at a thing which is not natural or normal, i.e. at something that is the opposite of what is taken to be normal. Hence, to say ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’ implies that the normal state of affairs is that the world does not exist, which is a state of affairs that we cannot conceive. In Wittgenstein’s words: If I say “I wonder at the existence of the world” I am misusing language. Let me explain this: It has a perfectly good and clear sense to say that I wonder at something being the case, we all understand what it means to say that I wonder at the size of a dog which is bigger than any one I have ever seen before, or at any thing which, in the common sense of the word, is extraordinary. In every such case I wonder at something being the case which I could conceive not to be the case  .  .  . In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been

66  Priyambada Sarkar pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. (Lecture on Ethics 47/­8, 8/­9). Now, how does this ‘nonsensical’ wonder possess ‘absolute value’? For Wittgenstein, as mentioned earlier, absolute value judgements do not have factual criteria, and they go beyond the facts. If anyone tries to put them into words, the result is a chimera: Suppose one of you were an omniscient person and therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the world dead or alive and that he also knew all the state of mind of all human beings that ever lived. And suppose this man wrote all he knew in a big book. Then this book would contain the whole description of the world; and what I want to say is that this book would contain nothing that we would call an ethical judgment or anything that would logically imply such a judgment. It would of course contain all relative judgments of value and all true scientific propositions and in fact all true propositions that can be made. But all the facts described would, as it were, stand on the same level and in the same way all propositions stand on the same level. (Lecture on Ethics 45/­6) ‘Wonder at the world’s existence’ is, therefore, not reducible to statements of facts. All facts ‘stand on the same level’; none express anything that, is ‘higher’ than what is in the world (Tractatus 6.42; 6.432). Wonder at the existence of the world possesses absolute value since it involves ‘viewing the world sub specie aeterni’, where all things seem to be equal. It provides a holistic overview of the world that cannot be factually represented by ordinary language. To consider an object from the viewpoint of eternity is not to understand it in terms of causality or with respect towards a particular end. What happens, though, when we view the object ‘sub specie aeterni’? The object becomes the whole world. Wittgenstein uses the analogy of a stove: As a thing among things, each thing is equally insignificant: as a world each one equally significant. If I have been contemplating the stove, and then am told: but now all you know is the stove, my result does indeed seem trivial. For this represents the matter as if I had studied the stove as one among the many things in the world. But if I was contemplating the stove, it was my world and everything else colourless by contrast with it. (Notebooks 83e) When one views the stove aesthetically or from the point of view of eternity, it becomes the whole world. Similarly, if one views the world ethically,

Wonder in ethics and aesthetics 67 then it too ‘waxes or wanes as a whole’ (Tractatus 6.43) and becomes a completely different world. Thus viewing ‘from eternity’, which, for early Wittgenstein, amounts to aesthetical contemplation, enables us to see and know that each one belongs to the world as a whole, where everybody is on the same level. This perspective binds ethics and aesthetics together. Wittgenstein states clearly: ‘The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics’ (Notebooks 83e). With this background, one does finally understand how the proposition ‘the miracle is that the world exists’ could serve as the paradigm example of ethical and aesthetical judgments. Wittgenstein elucidates: ‘Das Künstlerische Wunder ist, daβ es die Welt gibt’ (Notebooks 86, 86e). Wright and Anscombe translate it, ‘Aesthetically the miracle is that the world exists’. Later, McGuinness transcribes it as ‘for an artist (or for art) ‘the miracle is that the world exists’ (Approaches to Wittgenstein 27). Wittgenstein uses the same example for both ethical and aesthetical judgments to point out that viewing from eternity is ‘viewing with a happy eye’ since ‘the beautiful is what makes happy’ (Notebooks 86e). The experience of value, be it ethical or aesthetical, arises from such wholeness, from the perceived harmony between the individual and the world (Friedland). Thus, wondering at the existence of the world shows the underlying connection between ethics and aesthetics. Wittgenstein elucidates what he means by ‘viewing sub specie aeternitatis’: ‘It seems to me that there is a way of capturing the world sub specie aeterni other than through the work of the artist. Thought has such a way – so I believe – it is as though thought flies above the world and leaves it as it is – observing it from above, in flight’ (Culture and Value 5e). Explaining ‘viewing sub specie aeterni’ in terms of ‘viewing from above in flight’ might remind us that Wittgenstein was an aeronautical engineer at the beginning of his career. It also provides us with the insight that such viewing leaves everything in the world ‘as it is’. It cannot bring about any change in the facts or events of the world. And when you see from above, everything seems to be on the same level. Thus the ‘wonder at the existence of the world’ is wonder at something which is value laden and meaningful. Such special experience is only possible when we view the world from eternity. It cannot, however, be put into words ordinarily for the simple reason that such viewing ‘goes beyond the world’ as the totality of facts. An attempt to express it in words is nonsensical.

Comparing Wittgenstein and Tagore What is this experience that Wittgenstein says corresponds to the expression ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’? From Wittgenstein’s point of view in the Tractatus, we can understand that it lacks sense. Yet, for Wittgenstein, it corresponds to an experience that he considers both absolutely

68  Priyambada Sarkar valuable and beautiful. What experience does he have in mind? Tagore’s poetry, I believe, can help us. Why should anyone expect the poems of Rabindranath Tagore to throw light on Wittgenstein’s dense and cryptic remarks? The pairing is unlikely. Tagore is acclaimed as ‘poet of the world’,9 who wishes to foster a philosophy of harmony in his many writings. Wittgenstein, a philosopher of language, examines the relationship of thought, language and reality. What connection can there possibly be? Wittgenstein was unhappy with the introduction to the Tractatus, which Bertrand Russell, who had taught him at Cambridge, had written. Russell, he felt, had missed the point of the book, namely the distinction between ‘saying’ and ‘showing’, between what can be put into words and what cannot. For Wittgenstein, only expressions which are descriptions of facts are expressible in sensical language. We should not talk about whatever transcends ‘the world as the totality of facts’ (Tractatus 1.1); we should pass them over in silence (7). Things of this kind can only be ‘shown’. This is the realm of the aesthetic. Here is where literature becomes relevant to the understanding of the experience that Wittgenstein says corresponds to the expression ‘I wonder at the existence of the world’. In a poem, for example, not everything is stated. We have to grasp or feel what is not stated through what is stated. Speaking of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein divulged in his letter to Ludwig von Ficker, ‘The work is strictly philosophical and at the same time literary’ (Engelmann 78). Indeed, we know that originally he wanted to publish the Tractatus in the literary journal Der Brenner. Similarly, he commented: ‘I believe I  summed up where I  stand in relation to philosophy when I  said, “Philosophy really ought only to be composed in the way in which a work of literature is” ’ (Culture and Value 28). Poets stress the indirect meaning of words through symbols, allusions and metaphors. Poetic language, they tend to emphasize, is valuable precisely because it is non-­discursive. In the Tractatus, too, as we have seen, there are important things which cannot be stated in ‘factual language’; the unstated manifests itself in what is stated. Consequently, the response that Wittgenstein requires of his readers is that they respond to what is not there. Both Wittgenstein and Tagore, then, rely, although in different ways, on indirect methods of communication. For Wittgenstein, the inexpressible manifests itself in the suggestiveness of language, in the indirect, in poems, music, drawing and painting. Tagore also talked about the manifestation of ‘surplus in man’ in poems, music and other art forms.10 Both Tagore and Wittgenstein agree that there are limits to rational thought and language and that not everything can be stated in rational discourse. But neither accepts that rational argumentation sets the limit to what can be expressed. They believe that there is ‘a beyond’ that is inexpressible. ‘The inexpressible does indeed exist. It shows itself, it is the mystical’ (Tractatus 6.5232). The wonder at the existence of the world is wondering at this inexpressible beyond.

Wonder in ethics and aesthetics 69 This is what is meant by ‘mystical’. Tagore conveys this mystical experience well when he writes, ‘The invisible screen of the commonplace was removed from all things and all men, and their ultimate significance was intensified in my mind’ (The Religion of Man 94). Moreover, as we shall see later, both Tagore and Wittgenstein emphasize the importance of wonder as the intersection of ethics and aesthetics. Wonder as mystical experience Tagore’s poem entitled ‘Awakening of the Waterfall’ (Morning Songs 67) depicts joys, joys unbounded, experienced by the poet at the existence of the world: ‘How have the sun’s rays in my heart/ Entered this morning! How have the songs/ Of morning birds into the dark cave broken! Who knows why, afterlong, my soul has woken!’ (Selected Poems 45). In his memoir, Jiban smriti, Tagore tells us how he was inspired to express this experience poetically: Where Sadar Street ended, I  could see some trees belonging, I  think, to the Free School Garden. One morning, I stood on the balcony and looked out in that direction. The Sun was rising behind the foliage of those trees. As I looked, suddenly, in a moment, a curtain seemed to be drawn away from before my eyes; I saw the universe bathed in an exquisite radiance, tremulous with joy and beauty. The mantle of depression that had overcast my heart, layer on layer, was pierced in an instant: the light of the universe spread through all my inner being. That very day, the poem ‘Awakening of the Waterfall’ seemed to burst forth and flows like the fountain itself. (My Life 30) Tagore often refers to mystical experiences of this kind. Regarding this particular experience, he says in his Hibbert lectures: The invisible screen of the commonplace was removed from all things and all men, and their ultimate significance was intensified in my mind; and this is the definition of beauty. That which was memorable in this experience was its human message, the sudden expansion of my consciousness in the super personal world of man. The poem I wrote on the first day of my surprise was named “The Awakening of the Waterfall”. The waterfall, whose spirit lay dormant in its ice-­bound isolation, was touched by the sun and, bursting in a cataract of freedom, it found its finality in an unending sacrifice, in a continual union with the sea. After four days the vision passed away, and the lid hung down upon my inner sight. In the dark, the world once again put on its disguise of the obscurity of an ordinary fact. (The Religion of Man 94)

70  Priyambada Sarkar This wondering at the existence of the world is not everyday wondering. It is wondering at the ultimate significance of the whole world and of oneself. In another poem, Tagore speaks of the wonderful experience of his heart embracing the whole world: ‘My heart unfolded today/ To embrace the world/ All the humanity of this earth/ Have come to join my life’. (‘Song of the Dawn’ [‘Prabhāt Utsav’] in ‘Morning Songs [Prabhāt Sangeet] 71). The wonder here focuses on the unity of world with self. True, it is impossible to ‘picture’ the experience of one’s heart embracing the world or of the awakening of one’s vital consciousness. And yet we can attempt to express something which, according to the Tractatus, is inexpressible in ‘factual language’ and commit ourselves to what, again from the point of view of the Tractatus, are ‘nonsensicalities’. The latter are important, valuable and beautiful because they are artistic representations born out of ‘viewing the world sub specie aeterni’. The philosopher and the poet are of one mind. Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same In a proposition placed in parentheses in the original German version of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein writes, ‘Ethik und Ästhetik sind eins’ (6.421). Pears and McGuinness translate ‘eins’ as ‘one and the same’. ‘One’ does not necessarily connote ontological identity. Rather, according to some interpreters, it suggests unity at their meeting point, unity in the intersection. Other commentators interpret ‘eins’ as representing unity and interdependence (Stengel 611–­3). We can, however, turn to Wittgenstein for help on this point. In ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, he observes, ‘I am going to use the term ethics in a slightly wider sense, in a sense in fact which includes what I believe to be the most essential part of what is generally called aesthetics’ (43/4). Ethics and aesthetics are not, therefore, identical. Ethics includes only a part, albeit ‘the most essential part’, of aesthetics. Wittgenstein defined ethics as follows: ‘Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important, or . . . ethics is the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living’ (43/4). Engelmann, Wittgenstein’s closest associate in the early stage of his philosophical career, writes about this sentence: I guess that the statement of the Tractatus, “Ethics and Aesthetics are one”, is one of the most frequently misunderstood propositions of the book. Surely it cannot be assumed that this wide-­ranging and profound thinker had meant to say that there is no difference at all between Ethics and Aesthetics! But the statement is put in parentheses, said by the way, as something not really meant to be uttered, yet something that should not be passed over in silence at that point. And this is done in the form of a reminder recalling to the understanding reader an insight which he is assumed to possess in any case. (Engelmann 143)

Wonder in ethics and aesthetics 71 As Engelmann says, for Wittgenstein, ethics and aesthetics overlapped but were not identical (see also Pook 65–­6). The ‘wonder at the existence of the world’ is aesthetic as well as ethical, because it is a world viewed sub specie aeternitatis and because it provides us with the ‘right view’ of the world. Wittgenstein’s ‘Ethik und Ästhetik sind eins’ finds a counterpart in the philosophy of Tagore. For Tagore, beauty exceeds what is necessary, which is why we recognize it as wealth (Selected Writings 172). According to P.J. Chaudhury, Tagore’s concept of beauty is metaphysical in the sense that it is born out of man’s desire ‘to fraternize with the outer world of life and nature’ (81). It is the creation of our surplus in personality: ‘this surplus gain called beauty that we obtain from the world’ (Selected Writings 166) when our soul, in Tagore’s words, ‘is active in establishing an intimate relation with its surroundings’ (quoted in Chaudhury 33). Beauty is based on a philosophy of discipline and restraint: The creation of beauty too is beyond the means of the intemperate imagination. No one lights an evening lamp by setting the whole house on fire. No one has to have mastery over fire because it goes out of control at the slightest opportunity. The same applies to our appetites. If we let them flare up to the full, it burns beauty to cinders when it is required merely to set it aglow. (Tagore, Selected Writings 166) When we are able to see things detached from self-­interest and we are able to overcome the passionate longing of the senses, we can see true beauty present everywhere. Only then do we realize that what we find unpleasant does not necessarily lack beauty; its beauty may reside in truth. He explains that both beauty and goodness ‘exceed what is necessary’: In goodness, too, we discover that wealth [i.e. as in beauty]. When we see a brave man abandon his self-­interest or sacrifice his life for the sake of moral principle, we witness a marvel that is greater than our pain and pleasure, larger than our self-­interest, nobler than our lives. By virtue of this wealth, goodness does not count loss as loss, or stress as stress. It remains unhurt by any injury to self-­interest. That is why goodness as much as beauty induces us to willing sacrifice. Beauty expresses God’s plenty in all the world’s functions; goodness does the same in human life. Goodness has made beauty more than something to be seen with the eye or understood with the intellect; it has rendered beauty, for humanity, as something deeper and more far reaching; it has turned divine things into intensely human possessions. (Tagore, Selected Writings 172) For Tagore, that which is really good is both useful and beautiful and not beautiful just because it is of use. ‘Experts in ethics try to propagate the

72  Priyambada Sarkar benign through moral counsel from the standpoint of its benefits to the world’, he says. ‘Poets reveal the benign to the world in its ineffably beauteous form’ (172).‘That which had been untrue to us, because we had not felt its truth, the poet brings that within the range of our vision. He enlarges the sphere of beauty, truth and joy’(‘Sense of Beauty’ 59). Tagore concludes with the following explanation of how goodness, truth and beauty are interconnected: Whatever is beneficent is in deepest unison with the whole world, in secret harmony with the mind of all humanity. When we see this beautiful accord of the true and the beneficent, the beauty of truth no longer eludes our perception. Compassion is beautiful; so are forgiveness and love, they bear comparison with the hundred petalled lotus and the full moon. Like the hundred petalled lotus and the full moon they are in unassailed harmony with themselves and with the world around them . . . The image of beauty is the fullest manifestation [my emphasis] of the good and the image of the good the consummate self of beauty. (Selected Writings 172) This might be the reason why, for both Wittgenstein and Tagore, ethics and aesthetics cannot be put into ordinary ‘factual language’. Like Wittgenstein, Tagore thinks that they transcend the boundaries of language and somehow make themselves understood by means of the suggestiveness of language. He genuinely believes that ‘poets reveal the benign to the world in its ineffably beauteous form’. ‘The truly benign’, Tagore writes, ‘serves our need and it is beautiful: that is, it has an unaccountable attraction that surpasses its use’ (Selected Writings 171–­2). It is interesting to note that for Tagore, as for Wittgenstein, viewing from an aesthetic point of view is viewing sub specie aeternitatis. When we look at a rose and find it beautiful, it becomes the whole world. Its unity of form, colour, texture and smell coincides with the unity of the universe, and thus it takes us beyond temporality. This unity tunes with the inner unity of self and of the universe (Tagore, Personality 82–­3). Ethics and aesthetics are ‘one and the same’ in both thinkers. The wondering at the existence of the world as mystical experience at a point of intersection between the ethical and the aesthetic is exemplified in the works of Tagore. This gives us an inkling of why Wittgenstein chose to read the poems from Tagore’s ‘Song Offerings’ (Gitanjali) while he was asked to explain the Tractatus to members of the Vienna Circle.

Notes 1 The first page number refers to Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics (2015), which uses MS139b as the authoritative text of the lecture; the second page number refers to ‘Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics’ 1965. The two texts are almost identical.

Wonder in ethics and aesthetics 73 2 See, for example, among others, Atkinson, McGuinness (‘The Mysticism of the Tractatus’), Tyler (The Return to the Mystical), Zemach and Bear. 3 The criterion of ‘sensicality’ in the Tractatus specifies that only propositions which are descriptions of the world are ‘sensical’ propositions. Since the proposition ‘the wonder that the world exists’ does not describe a particular fact or event of the world, for reasons given later, it is not a sensical proposition. 4 In this lecture Wittgenstein distinguishes relative value judgments from absolute judgments of value. Relative value judgments are reducible to statements of facts. The statement ‘he is a good orator’ is of relative value since there are factual criteria: for example, the speaker’s ability to express his thoughts in a language clearly or his command of subject matter, which correspond to the word ‘good’ in the statement. Absolute judgments of value – for example, ‘you ought not to tell lies’ and ‘I wonder that the world exists’ – have no factual criteria. 5 Choudhary suggests a ‘direct influence’ of Tagore on Wittgenstein (231), Tyler (‘Rabindranath Tagore and Ludwig Wittgenstein’) an ‘impact’ of Tagore’s work on Wittgenstein. 6 ‘The verbal expression which we give to these experiences,’ he says, ‘is nonsense’ (Lecture on Ethics 47/­8). 7 Logic presents an order, the a priori order of the world, i.e. the order of possibilities which must be common both to the world and to thought and language. (Tractatus 2.0121–­41). 8 In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein does not use the expression ‘attempt to express the inexpressible’ contained in the diagram, though the notion is implied in what he says there. The expression first appears a decade after the completion of the Tractatus: ‘we cannot express what we want to express’ (Lecture on Ethics 50/­7). 9 Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, the editor of the monthly Catholic journal Sophia, referred to Rabindranath Tagore as ‘world-­poet of Bengal’ for the first time on 9 January 1900. 10 ‘Surplus is a man’s creative will. Man is creative because there takes place an incessant explosion of freedom’ (quoted in Neogy 49).

Works cited Atkinson, James R. The Mystical in Wittgenstein’s Early Writings. London: Routledge, 2009. Bearn, Gordon C.F. Waking to Wonder: Wittgenstein’s Existential Investigations. New York: State University of New York Press, 1997. Chaudhuri, Sukanta, ed. Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Writings on Literature and Language. Intro. Sisir Kumar Das. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Chaudhury, Prabas Jiban. Tagore on Literature and Aesthetics. Calcutta: Rabindra Bharati, 1965. Choudhary, R.K.S. ‘Wittgenstein and Tagore’. Indian Philosophical Quarterly 33 (2006): 231–­42. Engelmann, Paul. Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967. Friedland, Julian. ‘Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Ethical Value’. Ethic@ 5.1 (2006): 91–­102. McGuinness, Brian. ‘The Mysticism of the Tractatus’. Philosophical Review 75 (1966): 305–­28. ———. Approaches to Wittgenstein. New York: Routledge, 2002. Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990.

74  Priyambada Sarkar Neogy, Prithwish, ed. Rabindranath Tagore on Art and Aesthetics: A Selection of Lectures, Essays & Letters. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1961. Pook, David Olson. ‘Working on Oneself: Wittgenstein’s Architecture, Ethics and Aesthetics’. symplokē 2.1 (Winter 1994): 49–­22. Stengel, Katherine. ‘Ethics as Style: Wittgenstein’s Aesthetic, Ethics and Ethical Aesthetics’. Poetics Today 25.4 (2004): 610–­25. Tagore, Rabindranath. Personality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1919. ———. The Religion of Man: The Hibbert Lectures for 1930. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931. ———. ‘Sense of Beauty’. In Angel of Surplus. Ed. Sisir Kumar Ghose. Calcutta: Visva Bharati, 1978. ———. Prabhat Sangeet/ Morning Songs: Collected Works of Rabindranath Tagore, vol. 1. Calcutta: Govt. of West Bengal, 1980. ———. Selected Writings on Literature and Language. Ed. Sukanta Chaudhury. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. ———. Selected Poems. Ed. Sukanta Chauduri. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ———. My Life in My Words. Ed. Uma Das Gupta. New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2006. Tyler, Peter. The Return to the Mystical: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Teresa of Avila and the Christian Mystical. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. ———. ‘Rabindranath Tagore and Ludwig Wittgenstein: Two Sentinels on the Borderlands of Modernity’. Journal of Dharma 40 (2015): 29–­48. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Notebooks: 1914–­16. Ed. G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1961. ———. ‘Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics’. The Philosophical Review LXXIV (1965): 3–­26. ———. Culture and Value. Ed. G.H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. ———. Lecture on Ethics. Ed. and commentary by Edoardo Zamuner, E.V. Di Lascio and D.K. Levy. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. ———. Tractatus Logico-­Philosophicus. Trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. Intro. Bernard Russell. London: Routledge Great Minds, 2014. [Translation first printed 1961]. Zemach, Eddy. ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of the Mystical’. The Review of Metaphysics 18.1 (1964): 38–­57.

5 A mysticism of a dead leaf A brief apology for an ordinary phenomenon Philippe Nouzille

Is it possible to wonder at everything, or is wonder reserved for the great things, events or realities that we can observe? Is it possible to wonder at a particular nothing and so wonder at everything, or do we have to wonder at nothingness and at the all, as such? The difference between a particular nothing and nothingness itself is like an abyss, as is the difference between everything and the all. And it is the same in both cases because it is a matter of the ontological difference between being and beings and, as Heidegger has reminded us, there is a close connection between being and nothingness. Wonder is the beginning of philosophy not only in its historical origins, but also as the principle which guides it for as long as it remains faithful to its task of understanding what is. In his comments on the famous passages on wonder in Plato (Theaetetus 155d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics A2982b), Heidegger insists on the fact that Plato designates thaumazein as pathos, a disposition which he translates as Stimmung, meaning ‘attunement’ (‘Was ist das  – die Philosophie?’ 22). Wonder is thus an attunement, in fact a grounding attunement, like angst and ennui, by which we come face to face with both being and nothingness. That is the reason why wonder is also truly an archē, a guiding principle as well as a historical starting point. But it should also be remembered that pathos also means suffering. Wonder occurs because there is something which wounds us. Before it is transformed into the marvellous, whatever evokes wonder in me presents itself at first as rupture and suffering, and it is in this and not in any other way that wonder breaks out of the ordinary. A phenomenon is marvellous because of its excess. It is too great, too radiant, too noisy to be grasped and understood at the first attempt, or perhaps ever. The marvellous is Disneyland for a child who becomes totally confused in the mind because there is too much to see. Translated into the terms of phenomenology, we have an intuition which goes beyond signification, and hence, Jean-­Luc Marion uses the term ‘saturated phenomenon’ (Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness 199–­247). The simplest example of saturation is the sun, which dazzles anyone who tries to look at it. And this is true even when the sun disappears during an eclipse, which is a marvellous spectacle, indeed, but one in which pathos is not

76  Philippe Nouzille simply a metaphor but very much a reality for anyone who looks at it with the naked eye. Likewise, an event is too great for all its constituent elements to be described in their totality. For example, who has ever seen the battle of Waterloo as a whole, in the way in which it unfolded and even more as an event; that is to say, who has ever seen the totality of the new world which the battle of Waterloo opens up and which exists only after the battle has taken place? The face of ‘the other’, which Levinas has taught us to reconsider in philosophy, is another of these extraordinary phenomena we constantly need to confront. This is also first and foremost a phenomenon of rupture, which gives rise to a bad conscience. It is also a form of pathos which, beyond being an attunement which grounds an ethic, often leads to sentimentality and pathos in the modern sense of the term. Faced with the excess which is characteristic of saturated phenomena and which leads to wonder, the great temptation is to liken them to what might seem to be excess par excellence and is the subject matter of theology, namely the revelation of God. Indeed, Marion (The Visible and the Revealed) at first included divine revelation in discussions of saturated phenomena. Later he maintained that revelation does not correspond to any of the four great types of saturated phenomena which he had discerned earlier. Instead, he saw divine revelation as a higher level of saturation, a saturation of saturation, in that it draws together those four other types. When discussing wonder it is easy to slip into a theological discourse, especially if wonder is taken only in its positive sense of marvelling and awe, if the thaumazein is stripped of its pathos or if one believes that what is revealed to us is so great and marvellous that it is worth the cost of burning one’s eyes a little. This slippage is very problematic from a phenomenological point of view, and it is well to remember the criticisms which Jocelyn Benoist, for example, has addressed to Marion. He says, ‘It is clear that your project is the same to some degree as that which can be called a “phenomenological deduction” of revelation’.1 But this slippage is equally problematic from a theological point of view in that it associates the marvellous with the divine order. It is as if it were self-­evident that the marvellous, the great, the beautiful tell us something of God or that God is necessarily to be related mainly to the marvellous, the great and the beautiful. It is well known that a facile apologetic, but one which has never succeeded in convincing anyone, would have us believe that this is the case. It is also well known that a certain recent trend in theology, following the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar, has tried to persuade us of its truth and that many people have allowed themselves to be taken in by it without seeing its inherent problems. But one would do well to reject this and read again what a writer like Éric Chevillard has noted, not without a touch of humour: ‘In front of the florist’s display, this stout nun gets excited about the beauty of the world. “Don’t we have here the proof of the existence of God?” she says to me. I forgo pointing out to her that she herself is wearing an ugly sweater, a very sad skirt, dark stockings and terrible black clodhoppers’.2 The medievals were wiser than all our

A mysticism of a dead leaf 77 modern apologists when they refused to make the beautiful a transcendental ‘convertible’ with being and truth. And what Milan Kundera calls ‘the scandalous beauty of evil’ in reference to Stravinski’s The Rite of Spring should not be forgotten either. ‘Until Stravinsky’, Kundera writes, we ‘could not imagine the beauty of the barbaric. Without its beauty, the barbaric would remain incomprehensible . . . Saying that a bloody rite does possess some beauty – there’s the scandal, unbearable, unacceptable. And yet, unless we understand this scandal, unless we get to the very bottom of it, we cannot understand much about man . . . It is because it is beautiful that the girl’s murder is so horrible’ (89–­90). The beautiful is not ‘convertible’ with being or the good because beauty belongs as much to evil as to God. On the contrary, it may be that, in the depths of evil and horror, God is to be found, or a theological argument at least as persuasive as in the bright kingdom of splendour. That is the experience that Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust, describes in his memoir Night, and Jürgen Moltmann was justified in quoting it because it states well how God does not absent himself from the most atrocious evil. To the question ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’, posed in front of a gallows on which a child has just been hanged by the SS in the concentration camp where he was held, he ‘heard a voice answer from within him: “Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows” ’ (Wiesel 65; Moltmann 273–­4). But by speaking in this way, we remain in the realm of excess: excess of beauty, excess of horror, that is, within the problems concerning saturated phenomena and the extraordinary. It is as if philosophy, which begins with wonder, could do nothing more than turn to theology in order to compensate for its own incapacity to deal with what is given to it. In other words, taking up again the question with which we began, it is as if philosophy found itself trapped in the alternative between all or nothing and could only be up to its task when confronted with that alternative, inevitably having to step back in order to let theology take the floor. It is, then, as if wonder gave rise to philosophy only to show its futility or inability. Unless the opposite is true, namely that philosophy is up to the task which wonder entrusts to it only if it does not succumb to the temptation of the excess (all or nothing) that not only saturates the vision and prevents it from seeing the extraordinary phenomenon which is given in it, but above all, in the alternative between all or nothing, conceals what is the proper subject matter of philosophy. What then is the true nature of wonder, and why is it so important for philosophy? It is not a simple psychological attitude. It is not the opposite of being bored because there is nothing new under the sun. Wonder consists in what Schelling, as Pareyson observed, described as the near stupefaction of reason (Schelling 165; Pareyson 385–­437). For it is reason itself that is called into question in the experience of wonder. One might say that wonder is the principle of philosophy because it is the opposite of the principle of reason. If there is precisely nothing new under the sun, it is because reason is opposed

78  Philippe Nouzille to the idea of novelty. Reason, with its principle that states that nothing is without a reason, justifies everything that comes our way. What novelty, therefore, can be expected when everything is foreseen or foreseeable, when everything has its rational justification? Wonder occurs only in the presence of the unjustifiable, and that is why we will probably wonder more at evil than at the order that can be found in the world. That is why wonder has more to do with the Dionysian than with the Apollonian, with darkness rather than with sunlight. A God who is pure sunlight is likely to be able to dazzle us but in no case surprise us. There is, therefore, a real element of suffering in wonder because it signifies a rupture in the rational order, a limit that reason discovers for itself and does everything to conceal again. A distinction has to be made, therefore, between two kinds of wonder: between, on the one hand, mere surprise in the face of what has not yet been explained and that which resists all explanation on the other, primarily between what is simply marvellous and wonder. The simply marvellous precedes reason; it belongs to a world in which anything is possible: where elephants can fly and toads have the power to change into charming princes. Disneyland, which has been mentioned already, is this world: it defies rational calculation; it is a world in which nothing is foreseeable, in which everything gives rise to awe but not to genuine wonder. By contrast, Jurassic Park, another theme park that cinema leads us to look at anew, gives rise only to surprise. Here is a world totally ruled by reason. It is a world which claims, for sure, to show nature at its most brutal, before the advent of humans and human reason. But it is a form of nature which in reality is no more than a scientific re-­creation and therefore rational. When the character Dr Ellie Sattler discovers a leaf of a tree which had not appeared since the Cretaceous period, she is surprised in the sense that she expects that it must have an explanation because, in her scientific world, there is always an explanation, and whatever cannot be explained simply does not exist. The main focus of the film is the catastrophe in which the dinosaurs escape from human control: an event, that is, in which the unforeseen takes place. But even here, the unforeseen is by no means unforeseeable because one of the scientists invited to visit the park is a mathematician who specializes in chaos theory, a person for whom the unforeseen is normal and quantifiable. For him, even female dinosaurs which produce offspring without the need for a male are part of the logic and of an order that remains totally rational. That can cause surprise but not wonder because reason, as such, is not called into question in Jurassic Park. So this mathematician can exclaim, ‘I hate to be right all the time’.3 What is it, then, that will make us wonder? There is no need to go looking for extraordinary phenomena, such as a leaf of a tree from the Cretaceous period, in order to experience wonder. Nor is there need for saturation. A  simple flower like the famous rose of the German mystic Angelus Silesius, which is without a why and flowers simply because it flowers, is enough: ‘the rose does have no why; it blossoms without reason, Forgetful of itself, oblivious to our vision’ (43).4 That

A mysticism of a dead leaf 79 is what makes us wonder; that is what calls reason into question at its very root because of this lack of a why. Reason stumbles over a simple flower because the flower does not allow itself to be enframed by metaphysics or technology. It has no meaning. It exists in this refusal to have a meaning. Some magnificent lines by Alberto Caeiro, the heteronym for another poet, the Portuguese Fernando Pessoa, should always command our attention: . . . Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have? Of being green and bushy and having branches And of giving fruit in their own time, which doesn’t make us think, To us, who don’t know how to pay attention to them. But what better metaphysics than theirs, Which is not knowing what they live for Not even knowing they don’t know? “Inner constitution of things . . .” “Inner meaning of the Universe . . .” All that stuff is false, all that stuff means nothing. It’s incredible that someone could think about things that way. It’s like thinking reasons and purposes When morning starts shining, and by the trees over there A vague lustrous gold is driving the darkness away. . . . The only inner meaning of things Is that they have no inner meaning at all. (Pessoa 21–­2) Wonder as a ‘grounding attunement’ is the ‘spraying forth’ in Dasein of the vibration of being as event.5 There is wonder because there is event, and an event is always an event or an advent of being. Silesius’s rose and Pessoa’s trees, which are without a why, exist. They bring us face to face with pure existence, which has come from being to presence and so face to face with what defies all the calculations and predictions of reason. As disclosures of being, the rose and the tree are immediately true, or rather, they give rise to truth. To say that wonder lies at the beginning of philosophy is to say this: ‘In the first beginning wonder was the grounding-­attunement, since φύσις [phusis] lit up in and as ἀλήθεια [aletheia]’ (Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy 340), and its object is the being of what is: ‘The grounding-­ attunement of the first beginning is deep wonder that beings are, that man himself is extant, extant in that which he is not’ (Contributions to Philosophy 32). In fact, wonder at being turns back towards humans themselves: they wonder not merely at things but at their very own being alongside those things. The simple blooming of a rose, which is itself its own reason, is the expression of phusis, of that which gives of itself. Here we have the most radical contrast possible with what nature has become for us (in the

80  Philippe Nouzille modern world) and for which once again Jurassic Park offers us a beautiful metaphor in its portrayal of submission to technical reason: ‘nature has become an object, and indeed one of a cognition that exhibits and secures natural processes as calculable stuff’ (Heidegger, The Principle of Reason 56). It is clear that what gives itself in this way as phusis is and strikes us precisely by being. But at the same time this same being that is without a why also appears in a state of exceptional fragility. If, according to the principle of reason, nothing is without a why, this also means that nothingness is without a why. And whatever gives itself as without a why verges on nothingness. More powerfully than the magnificence of a sunset over the sea or in the mountains, more powerfully than the sublime by which I am cowed in my smallness, the nothingness of a rose without a why speaks to me of my own finitude and my own nothingness. That is why, in the first place, it is natural realities like roses and trees that, if we refuse to make them into objects, will be wondrous phenomena for us that can stupefy our reason. It is worth recalling here what Giorgio Agamben said about landscape, namely that it is ‘inappropriable’ (80–­94). The Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet, for his part, speaks of ‘the enigma of a meadow or a tree or an orchard’.6 What is noteworthy for us is that this expression appears in a book devoted to Giorgio Morandi, a painter of objects rather than landscapes, and in a paragraph about a vase. Jaccottet turns to metaphors based on landscape as a way of trying to understand Morandi’s paintings and remarks that Morandi’s work is ‘as mysterious as grass’.7 The most ordinary objects painted by Morandi also give rise to wonder even though they are artefacts because, like grass, they allow the nothingness from which they come and to which they return, already covered in dust, to be visible, as Jaccottet notes. And he makes Morandi say, ‘All those who have drawn and painted, since the first marks ventured on the walls of caves, have been doing, whether consciously or not, the same thing: opposing fragile signs against the menacing void’.8 At play in wonder, therefore, is this: a manifestation of being in its closeness to nothingness. The most humble realities are doubtless the best way of showing this because they speak at one and the same time of both the fragility of beings and the abundance of being which, to use Husserl’s term, ‘appresents’ itself unceasingly in them. Here, therefore, there is a dignity in things but not, however, a value because to speak of value is to go back to the world of calculation and exchange. There is dignity in the ordinary and the everyday: we should know how to express how the ordinary and the everyday belong to the truth. Poetic language is doubtless the most open to the logos of the phusis. So, to conclude, I will focus on some pages by a French poet, Pierre-­Albert Jourdan, whose work is unfortunately too little known. In a prose text, La Marche, he writes: I feel a certain fascination for the gesture of the painter Mi Fou,9 bowing ceremoniously before a stone. Double silence! . . . Naked dialogue,

A mysticism of a dead leaf 81 untranscribable conversation. But what is it? It is there, simply placed there; it goes beyond us and we greet it. We, mere passing guests, are there to greet it. It is also the almond branch in the vase, the yellow tiles in van Gogh’s bedroom; it is there in the plaited straw of this empty chair. It is suddenly greater than all manifestations . . . In short nothing, and the immense does not show itself in any other way.10 And Jourdan immediately adds, ‘How could words manage to combine this all of the presence, this dazzling gift, with, at the same time, this undertow of sadness, this taste of ashes?’ (112–­3).11 Where the excess of saturation fails, it is because it hides the taking back that accompanies the giving; it strives to be a Parousia when it is a question not of a simple presence, but of a présance, of a becoming present that immediately fades away. That is why the alternative with which we began, to wonder either at the all or at nothingness has no place. On the contrary, wonder arises from the meeting of the all and noth ingness. Jourdan also says, speaking to the landscape, ‘You give me nothing, landscape, that you do not squander already, and that is exultation’.12 And as we are at the point at which ratio gives way in the face of the logos of the phusis and of aletheia, Jourdan can ask, ‘Do you believe it’s possible to live the truth? You will have no other intuition of it’.13 Jourdan multiplies expressions which brush aside what reason never ceases to produce: there is no limit, no purpose, no urgency, no conclusion, no difference. It is understood that beings are not there for us (115), precisely as the rose does not bloom for us, nor even for itself, but for no one, beyond all representation. Some might wish to rephrase what I have written in religious terms, and doubtless some elements of the discussion are useful for rethinking the world theologically as, for example, creation and the issue of the possibility of divine revelation. But perhaps philosophy will not go as far as that. It will be content to listen once more to Pierre-­Albert Jourdan when he says: ‘To believe or not to believe: the important thing does not lie in balancing these two, these continual hesitations in the inner motions of the “I”. What is important is the SEEN. This sudden impact and its vibrating for a while’ (115).14 It is very much a matter of seeing what gives itself in nature as phusis, not to observe it scientifically as happens in Jurassic Park. That is why a leaf of a tree takes on a wholly different meaning. It is not now subjected to scientific observation as a leaf from the Cretaceous period that surprises but does not arouse wonder. An ordinary dead leaf causes the impact described by Jourdan and truly gives rise to genuine wonder. Jourdan concludes with these words: ‘What mysticism? A mysticism of the dead leaf? It looks weird.’15

Notes 1 ‘Il est clair que votre projet s’identifie néanmoins dans une certaine mesure à celui de ce que l’on pourrait appeler une ‘déduction phénoménologique’ de la Révélation’ (Benoist 89). Here, as in the case of all the texts listed in the French original in works cited, the translation is mine.

82  Philippe Nouzille 2 ‘Devant l’étalage du fleuriste, cette grosse bonne sœur s’exalte de la beauté du monde. N’avons-­nous pas là la preuve de l’existence de Dieu? me dit-­elle. Je renonce à lui faire remarquer qu’elle porte en ce qui la concerne une vilaine laine, une bien triste jupe, des bas sinistres et d’effrayants croquenots noirs’ (Chevillard 101–­2). 3 Jurassic Park. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Universal Pictures, 1993 (at 61’ ca). 4 This text is commented by Heidegger (The Principle of Reason 35ff). 5 ‘Attunement is the spraying forth of the enquivering of be-­ing as enowning in Da-­sein’ (Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy 16). 6 ‘l’énigme d’une prairie, d’un arbre, d’un verger’ (54). 7 ‘œuvre aussi mystérieuse que l’herbe’ (39). 8 ‘Tous ceux qui ont dessiné et peint, depuis les premiers traits risqués sur les parois des cavernes, ont fait, consciemment ou non, la même chose : opposer de frêles signes, un bruissement de vent dans les feuillages, au vide menaçant’ (34). 9 Chinese painter (1051–­1107). 10 ‘J’éprouve une certaine fascination pour le geste du peintre Mi Fou s’inclinant cérémonieusement devant une pierre. Double silence ! . . . Dialogue nu, échange intranscriptible. Mais qu’est-­ce que c’est ? C’est là, simplement posé là, qui nous dépasse et que nous saluons. Nous, hôtes de passage, nous sommes là pour saluer. C’est aussi bien la branche d’amandier dans le vase, le carrelage ocre de la chambre de Van Gogh; c’est là dans la paille tressée de cette chaise vide. C’est plus grand soudain que toutes les démonstrations . . . Rien en somme et l’immense ne se manifeste pas autrement’ (112–­3). 11 ‘Comment les mots parviendraient-­ils à conjuguer ce tout de la présence, ce don fulgurant avec, aussitôt, ce ressac de la tristesse, ce goût de cendre?’ (113). 12 ‘Tu ne me donnes rien, paysage, que tu ne dilapides déjà, et c’est l’exultation’ (113). 13 ‘Croyez-­vous possible de vivre la vérité ? Vous n’en aurez pas d’autre intuition’ (113). 14 ‘Croire, ne pas croire, l’important n’est pas dans ce balancement, ces hésitations continuelles dans la mouvance même du moi. L’important c’est ce vu. Cet impact soudain et cela vibre longtemps’ (115). 15 ‘Quelle mystique? Une mystique de la feuille morte? Elle a une drôle d’allure’ (115).

Works cited Agamben, Giorgio. The Use of Bodies: Homo Sacer IV, 2. Trans. Adam Kotsko. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015. Angelus Silesius. The Cherubinic Wanderer. Trans. Maria Shrady. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986. Benoist, Jocelyn. L’idée de la phénoménologie. Paris: Beauchesne, 2001. Chevillard, Éric. L’autofictif-­Journal 2007–­2008. Talence (Gironde): L’Arbre Vengeur, 2009. Heidegger, Martin. The Principle of Reason. Trans. Reginald Lilly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. ———. ‘Was ist das – die Philosophie?’ Identität und Differenz. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 11. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2006. Jaccottet, Philippe. Le bol pèlerin (Morandi). Geneve: La Dogana, 2001.

A mysticism of a dead leaf 83 Jourdan, Pierre-­Albert. Le bonjour et l’adieu. Ed. Yves Leclair. Paris: Mercure de France, 1991. Kundera, Milan. Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts. Trans. Linda Asher. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Marion, Jean-­Luc. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. ———. The Visible and the Revealed. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Moltmann, Jürgen. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Trans. R.A. Wilson and John Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1974. Pareyson, Luigi. Ontologia della libertà. Torino: Einaudi, 1995. Pessoa, Fernando. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro. Trans. Chris Daniels. Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2007. Schelling, F.W.J. Philosophie der Offenbarung, vol. I, VIII. Sämtliche Werke, vol. XIII. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1858. Wiesel, Élie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Part II

Theological perspectives

The Litany This is a litany of lost things, a canon of possessions dispossessed, a photograph, an old address, a key. It is a list of words to memorize or to forget – of amo, amas, amat, the conjugations of a dead tongue in which the final sentence has been spoken. This is the liturgy of rain, falling on mountain, field, and ocean –­ indifferent, anonymous, complete –­ of water infinitesimally slow, sifting through rock, pooling in darkness, gathering in springs, then rising without our agency, only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew. This is a prayer to unbelief, to candles guttering and darkness undivided, to incense drifting into emptiness. It is the smile of a stone Madonna and the silent fury of the consecrated wine, a benediction on the death of a young god, brave and beautiful, rotting on a tree. This is a litany to earth and ashes, to the dust of roads and vacant rooms, to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun, settling indifferently on books and beds. This is a prayer to praise what we become, “Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.” Savor its taste – the bitterness of earth and ashes.

86  Theological perspectives This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished, for you, my love, my loss, my lesion, a rosary of words to count out time’s illusions, all the minutes, hours, days the calendar compounds as if the past existed somewhere – like an inheritance still waiting to be claimed. Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux, my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox, the shattered river rising as it falls –­ splintering the light, swirling it skyward, neither transparent nor opaque but luminous, even as it vanishes – were not our life. Dana Gioia

6 The extraordinary of the ordinary G.K. Chesterton, imagination and the wonder of a natural theology Brett H. Speakman In her preface to G.K. Chesterton’s play ‘The Surprise’, detective fiction writer and playwright Dorothy L. Sayers wrote, ‘To the young people of my generation G. K. C. was a kind of Christian liberator. Like a beneficent bomb, he blew out of the Church a quantity of stained glass of a very poor period, and let in gusts of fresh air in which the dead leaves of doctrine danced with all the energy and indecorum of Our Lady’s Tumbler’ (­Sayers 5). For many of his contemporaries, as well as for countless readers who followed, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–­1936) has refracted vibrant colours through the prism of theological understanding and illuminated insights from the bottom upwards. Similar to Alice stepping through the looking glass and seeing the world in reverse, Chesterton offered a vision of the world that continues to alter the lens of human existential perception and significance, in which familiar sites become unfamiliar and ordinary things become extraordinary. ‘Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary’, Chesterton wrote in his seminal work, Orthodoxy. In this chapter, I  would like to propose that Chesterton introduced a distinctive natural theology that contained wonder as its primary and fundamental characteristic. For him, the natural world was imbued with the fingerprints of an active and creative God, and Chesterton’s purpose was to awaken people out of their existential slumber in order to consider anew the uniqueness and astonishment of the created order. Through a disposition of childlike humility, as well as the employment of the literary devices of paradox and estrangement, Chesterton aimed to clear the clouded lens through which his readers had come to view the natural world in order that they might seek the divine being responsible for its origin and existence

Grammars of natural theology The term ‘natural theology’ refers generally to the theological endeavour of making a case for the existence of God and reflecting upon God’s attributes through reason and ordinary engagements with nature, independent of any source of divine revelation encountered within religious scripture or

88  Brett H. Speakman any form of mystical experience. As Augustine summarized it, ‘Some people read books in order to find God. Yet there is a great book, the very appearance of created things. Look above you; look below you! Note it; read it! God, whom you wish to find, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made’ (Augustine 123). Although the subject itself may seem quite expansive and inclusive within this framework, historical natural theology narrowed the parameters further by rendering a taxonomy comprised primarily of three philosophical and scientific areas: the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence, with contemporary considerations affixing the moral argument as a fourth category. Whilst its merits and conclusions continue to be debated, natural theology has been successful in demonstrating that the existence of God is at least a logical and metaphysical possibility. However, for our purposes here, William Alston brings us even closer to an understanding of a Chestertonian employment of this theological discipline: ‘We begin from the mere existence of the world, or the teleological order of the world, or the concept of God, and we try to show that when we think through the implications of our starting point we are led to recognize the existence of a being that possesses attributes sufficient to identify Him as God’ (Alston 289). Whether expressed through Anselm of Canterbury’s ontological argument or the cosmological argument of Thomas Aquinas’s quinquae viae (‘five ways’), natural theology has been an important discipline since at least the time of Augustine. The Enlightenment period ushered in a new era in which the teleological argument looked at the intrinsic design of Creation and argued for a mechanical universe overseen by a transcendent God yet devoid of his immanence. A good example of natural theology’s response to this line of argumentation is demonstrated in the work of Joseph Butler (1692–­1752). Butler sought to convince the Deist using his own reasoning by arguing that the scriptural teaching was directly analogous to the work of God in nature – and since the Deist accepted the latter, he had no ground for rejecting the former. Thus, Butler pointed out that, whilst nature displays seeds falling into the ground and dying, followed by life every spring, the scriptures present the crucifixion followed by the resurrection (Montgomery 25). At the other end of the natural theology spectrum, the subsequent Romantic period sought to swing the pendulum back from the cold confines of the scientific laboratory and into the warm, glowing embers of the imagination and the vibrancy of nature. Yet, for many, the Romantic period ushered in an age in which nature itself became the telos of human desire and longing. No longer did it point beyond itself to its Creator, but rather it became an object of worship and celebration in and of itself. It is here where I  suggest that Chesterton initiated an imaginative shift in natural theology that avoided the extremes of both the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Like the Enlightenment thinkers, he employed an a posteriori and inductive methodology of looking at the beauty of creation as a pointer upward towards its Creator, and like the Romantics, he found it in a living, vibrant and glorious

The extraordinary of the ordinary 89 creation permeated with divine presence. In this sense, Chesterton provided an anabatic methodology, or a ‘way of ascent’, using metaphysical tools and analogical predication to argue from finite things to the existence of God. He did not end at the intrinsic design of the natural world nor did he consider the beauty of creation as the ultimate telos. Rather, he distinguished himself by synthesizing the transcendent God of the Enlightenment with the immanent God of the Romantic period through the recovery of a doctrine of analogy. The result was an inauguration of a wonder-­filled and estranged natural theology that gazed upon a creation imbued with imagination and permeated with divine holiness.

A natural theology of wonder At the beginning of the 20th century, Chesterton lamented the existential and epistemic condition of his contemporaries in a post-­Darwinian world: Why did anybody have to remind us that [natural things] were amazing? Why was there . . . a sort of daily fight to appreciate the daylight; to which we had to summon all the imagination and poetry and labour of the arts to aid us? If the first imaginative instinct was right, it seemed clearer and clearer that something else was wrong. And as I indignantly denied that there was anything wrong with the window, I  eventually concluded that there was something wrong with me. (The Common Man 242–­3) Chesterton believed that it was the increasing pride of empirical knowledge in a time of scientific and technological advancement that led to an absence of mystery and awe in response to the natural world. As a result, he was left to ponder the following predicament: ‘That though all other wonder dies/ I wonder at not wondering’ (The Collected Poems 58). It was through his natural theology that Chesterton sought to provide a prescription for this epistemic and existential myopia. Before we look at the ways in which he attempted to recover wonder, it is necessary to understand the distinctive attributes of Chesterton’s metaphysical perception of the natural world. Chesterton’s natural theology locates its foundation in Thomistic metaphysics and its emphasis on the reliability of the senses to perceive reality or, as he termed it, the philosophy of ‘common sense’ (St Thomas Aquinas 30). As he explained further, ‘Long before [a child] knows that grass is grass, or self is self, he knows that something is something. Perhaps it would be best to say very emphatically (with a blow on the table), “There is an Is” ’ (133). Moving beyond any Humean or Kantian skepticism, Chesterton summarized Aquinas’s epistemology as the joining together of the two agencies of ‘reality’ and the ‘recognition of reality’ into a ‘sort of marriage’ (148). Furthermore, his metaphysical realism believed that one is able to view the natural world and eventually come to an understanding of its divine origin.

90  Brett H. Speakman Yet neither Aquinas nor Chesterton presumed that people merely observe the natural world and immediately come to the realization of God’s existence. Rather, they maintained that this sense-­experience epistemology must be accompanied by a period of reflection, which would then lead to the disclosure of the existential dependence of empirical realities on a being which transcends them. As Frederick Copleston noted concerning this form of methodology, ‘Any natural knowledge which we have of a being or beings transcending the visible world is attained by reflection on the data of experience’ (Copleston 109). Therefore, Chesterton’s metaphysical realism is not merely the fortuitous by-­product of a commonsense epistemology, but rather it is in congruence with the doctrine of creation, which declares things to be both ‘good’ and intelligibly planned by the divine mind. Within this epistemic framework, Chesterton’s ‘metaphysics of wonder’ renders three important and distinctive considerations for understanding his natural theology. The first point concerns the ontological relationship between the ‘one and the many’. For Thomas, and subsequently for Chesterton, all things are similar in that they share in ‘being’, yet they are distinct and separate entities at the same time. This doctrine of analogy proves to be essential both for Chesterton’s overall natural theological method and to provide the linguistic and literary framework in which to employ the rhetorical device of paradox. In his essay Christendom in Dublin (1932), Chesterton states his belief that such an anti-­monistic pluralism is a precondition of poetry and also, what I would argue, his notion of wonder in all areas of existence: ‘Poetry is that separation of the soul from some object, whereby we can regard it with wonder, whereas Pantheism turns all things into one thing, which cannot wonder at itself’ (33–­4). Thus, the shared ‘being’ of all things in Creation provides the necessary ontological pre-­condition to posit a divine source for existence, whilst the distinctiveness of each entity provides the premise upon which humans can observe other beings and be filled with wonder and awe at their unique beauty and majesty. Secondly, Chesterton observed the contingent nature of all individual entities within the material world as they come into existence and then eventually cease to exist: ‘Looking at Being as it is now, as the baby looks at the grass, we see a second thing about it; in quite popular language, it looks secondary and dependent. Existence exists; but it is not sufficiently self-­existent’ (St Thomas Aquinas 138). Unlike the aseity of God, finite beings must rely on a source outside themselves for their initial appearance and sustained existence within the world. A final important component is Chesterton’s belief that all contingent beings are not static or complete, but rather they are in a process of change towards a teleological consummation. This transient process became a primary indication for Chesterton that a Creator was the progenitor of the natural world, since change towards completeness indicates a purpose behind their existence. Without purpose or intentionality, mutable phenomena are merely caught within an aimless ebb and flow of Heraclitean flux.

The extraordinary of the ordinary 91 As Chesterton concludes, ‘But we do not need even St. Thomas, we do not need anything but our own common sense, to tell us that if there has been from the beginning anything that can possibly be called a Purpose, it must reside in something that has the essential elements of a Person’ (St Thomas Aquinas 141). Hence, for Chesterton, his natural theology seems to pursue the following tripartite threads of an interwoven argument: contingent being indicates a Creator because it could not come into existence from nothing; a mutable being indicates a Creator because it seems to be moving towards a completeness and purpose; and the teleological ends further indicate a Creator because purpose is an essential characteristic of a person. Unlike the natural theology of Enlightenment deism, God is not here a deus absconditus at the end of a sequence of being, but rather he is ‘revealed and active in every phenomenon and experience’ (Milbank 11). The significance of this methodology goes beyond mere scientific observation to permeate Chesterton’s understanding of aesthetics. The contingency and mutability of finite being is directly related to Chesterton’s narrative ontology, whereby life itself has the character and feel of a fairy tale, resulting in a sense that it carries an entelechy. The narrative arc of all living beings indicates a beginning, middle and ending to existence, both individually and collectively. Although these individual stories are refracted and specific to each individual in a localized sense, they provide the lens through which each person is able to understand the overarching narrative of the world. For Chesterton, this storied reality indicates further a dependency on the existence of an author or creator who composes the narrative and directs its ordered ends. ‘I had always felt life first as a story’, he confessed, ‘and if there is a story there is a story-­teller’ (Orthodoxy 108). Therefore, within the purview of Chesterton’s natural theology, ‘everything is waving madly at us to indicate its divine origin and storied character’ (Milbank 11).

The problem of materialism and the solution of imagination It would be misleading to think that Chesterton’s natural theology relied primarily on the elevated common sense of Thomist ontology. Rather, it is what Aidan Nichols terms ‘the visionary dimension of Chesterton’s metaphysics’ that acknowledges the significance of sacramental signs or symbols as a means of predicating the transcendence behind the natural objects that appear to the senses (Nichols 80). In particular, it is his metaphysical vision that synthesizes philosophical inquiry and mythopoetic expression rooted within the imagination. Nichols summarizes the significance of these two areas as ‘a universal philosophy that abstracts from concrete things in the search for general and underlying structures, on the one hand, and on the other, a mythopoetic imagination that discerns divine presence and action as the matrix of the most important concrete things’ (Nichols 85). Therefore, at the centre of Chestertonian natural theology is the primacy of the imagination to seek the hidden transcendence behind the created

92  Brett H. Speakman order by reawakening the capacity of wonder within the human person or, as Chesterton termed it, ‘transcendent common-­sense’ (The Defendant 112). The imagination provides the means necessary to elicit such a state of astonishment: ‘What is now needed most is intensive imagination. I  mean the power to turn our imaginations inwards, on the things we already have, and to make those things live. It is not merely seeking new experiences, which rapidly become old experiences. It is really learning how to experience our experiences. It is learning how to enjoy our enjoyments’ (Illustrated London News 20 October 1924). However, in Chesterton’s view, the greatest enemy of imagination is that pervasive and powerful materialism that resulted from the belief that the modern world could be mastered and understood completely through mathematical calculation and scientific methodology. In what he termed ‘Disenchantment’, Max Weber typified this pervasive thinking by claiming that there were ‘no mysterious incalculable powers at work’ in the world, and thus no need for recourse to the supernatural (Lansman and Velody 13). It is this disenchantment thesis that Chesterton hoped to refute through his essays, articles, poems and fiction. Chesterton believed that this materialistic view of the natural world, through its day-­to-­day realism, slowly oscillates individuals into a state of blind apathy. Similar to the repeated use of a knife which eventually needs sharpening, the continuous encounters between human senses and familiar objects renders a dulling effect on our appreciation and vision of the material order. Our existential perception is so impaired that we are unable to see anymore the wonders and miracles that exist and take place on a daily basis or even to consider any potential metaphysical origins. As Chesterton diagnosed the infirmity, ‘Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming’ (Tremendous Trifles 98). Thus, the primary endeavour of the Christian imagination is to situate each person in a position where they might learn to recognize and appreciate again those mysterious and astonishing things they previously knew when encountering them for the first time (Peters 59). One of the principle characteristics of materialism with which Chesterton takes issue, beyond its denial of the metaphysical, is its emphasis upon the repetition in nature that lulls human beings into this realm of familiarity. For Chesterton, the presence of repetition is problematic on two distinct but related levels. First, he is suspicious of the absolute claims of material science that a repetition in nature necessitates the formulation of scientific law. On the one hand, he affirms that there are really laws of mental relations, e.g. mathematical and logical reasoning. Yet he denies that there are necessary laws dealing with the observations of scientific method; rather, there are ‘only weird repetitions’ that take place within the natural order (Orthodoxy 89). Philosophers and scientists considered that the ordinary sequences of events in nature furnished a compelling and sufficient argument for positing unalterable cosmic law. However, Chesterton believed that no such conclusion could be drawn from this observation. Aidan Nichols illuminates

The extraordinary of the ordinary 93 an important feature of Chesterton’s view towards this form of repetition, ‘Where the repetition of cosmic sequence is concerned, we do not so much count on it as bet on it’ (Nichols 65). This slim aperture of epistemic doubt resides in the fact that Chesterton believed that repetition may be an indication of an act of ‘will’ rather than necessary scientific law (Orthodoxy 108). For example, the vitality of children, a reflection of the imago Dei within them, allows them to take pleasure in doing the same action repeatedly or having an adult perform it over and over again. In the same manner, the Creator of nature, who must be much more vital than children, may ‘exult in monotony’ to the extent that repetition might continue for millennia by mere choice and then suddenly cease (Orthodoxy 107). As Chesterton noted in his exposition on the ‘Ethics of Elfland’, ‘the repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore’ (Orthodoxy 107). The appeal and potency of this apologetic argument is not in the sense that it provides an airtight case in syllogistic form, but rather in its creative and persuasive manner to sow the seeds of epistemic doubt within its readers. Is repetition a sign of the absence of God as materialism might posit or rather a sign of his immanence and active participation within Creation itself? The second area of repetition that proves problematic for Chesterton is the often-­overlooked continual daily human encounter with natural and artificial entities. It is this latter form that most troubles Chesterton, due to its ability to dull the senses and cloud metaphysical vision. As he diagnosed this infirmity in his essay ‘The Twelve Men’: That the more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing the less he knows it . . . He goes on seeing less and less of its significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones. (Tremendous Trifles 66–­7) Whilst it might seem more plausible to deduce that the more a person encounters something the more they would know it, Chesterton argues that the effect actually moves in the reverse. The more familiar we become with an object, whether natural or artificial, the less we are able to truly see its significance. Eventually, this familiarity leads to a condition of ennui, tedium and the dissipation of wonder. And for Chesterton, ennui is ‘the great sin, the sin by which the whole universe tends continually to be undervalued and to vanish from the imagination’ (Lunacy and Letters 56). In contradistinction to preceding methods employed throughout the history of the Church, Chesterton reveals the distinctive premise of his particular form of natural theology: ‘Religion has for centuries been trying to make men exult in the “wonders” of creation, but it has forgotten that a thing cannot be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible. So long as we regard

94  Brett H. Speakman a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot properly wonder at it’ (The Defendant 48). Consequently, for Chesterton, imagination and wonder are inseparable. His essential point for life and, even more acutely, for natural theology was that one can, and ought to, choose to wonder even in the face of what is dull or ugly. Nothing, he believed, is in itself boring or prosaic, but individuals choose a position of passive existence that leads to an unconscious indifference to life. ‘I am confident,’ Chesterton once wrote, ‘that there is no future for the modern world, unless it can understand that it has not merely to seek what is more and more exciting, but rather the yet more exciting business of discovering the excitement in things that are called dull’ (Spice of Life 164). In fact, he believed that the very existence of civilization was at stake if its people could not stand in awe of the rising sun or the everyday food consumed for the nourishment of their bodies.

The path towards a childlike disposition For Chesterton, this primary method of re-­enchanting the natural world through the imagination finds its inception within human ontology. The sense of epistemic wonder is interwoven within the fabric of each person when they are born, a gift received with the dawn of consciousness itself, and finds its full fruition within the experiences of childhood. As he noted in his Autobiography, ‘What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world’ (Autobiography 35). Thus, for Chesterton, childhood is not significant so much for its contribution to the psychological development of an individual or for moments of sentimental nostalgia for innocent days long since passed, but rather for its role in disclosing a shared cosmos. In this sense, he saw it retrospectively as ‘real life; the beginnings of what should have been a more real life; a lost experience in the land of the living’ (Autobiography 50). It is this childlike vision of the world that Chesterton feels adults have lost and that needs to be recovered, primarily through the imagination and its expression by means of aesthetic mediums: ‘At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder’ (Autobiography 86). What Chesterton admires in a writer’s or artist’s engagement with the imagination is the ability ‘to cleanse the inner eye from the filming effects of excessive familiarity or of cultural distortion, so that our perceptual limits may approximate more fully to those of integral nature’ (Nichols 114). In so doing, true imagination, Chesterton said, is founded in the astonishment and wonder that results from shining that ‘white light’ of clarity upon objective reality. Here is Chesterton’s meaning when he says that ‘nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical’ (All is Grist 194–­5).

The extraordinary of the ordinary 95 The fact must not be overlooked, however, that this invitation to imitate the child is essentially a call to humility. Indeed, Chesterton believed that humility is the foundation for greatness in every area of life, especially in relation to our understanding of the natural world. He maintained that, ‘Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point . . . to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are  – of immeasurable stature’ (The Defendant 103). This emphasis on humility relates back to our preceding discussion about the slight epistemic doubt Chesterton has cast concerning our understanding of natural laws and the repetition found in nature. It is not an example of mere existential doubt or epistemic skepticism, but rather a disposition of humility before a vast and expansive universe filled with the most miraculous and sublime entities. Consequently, it is the purpose of real art and real religion to prevent people from losing the humility and gratitude which are thankful for the ordinary objects of our experience in the world. Reflecting on his own life, he recalled childish humility as the very source of wonder that is necessary for imagination: ‘But in substance what I said about the dandelion is exactly what I should say about the sunflower or the sun, or the glory which (as the poet said) is brighter than the sun. The only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy even of a weed’ (Autobiography 305). Concerning this passage, Thomas C. Peters observes, ‘Here is a remarkable statement, pregnant with all of Chesterton’s doctrine of imagination. Humility – a true sense of my unworthiness in relation to the Creator and the created universe  – is the key to wonder, the door into true imagination’ (Peters 39). Thus, for Chesterton, the increase of epistemic and existential pride through a dissection, manipulation and partitioning of nature into repetitive laws often leads to an opposite, downwards trajectory of not seeing reality as it is meant to be seen, resulting in the full expression of wonder and imagination being diminished. Yet how does Chesterton propose to get people to realize this need for humble gratitude and to see the wonder of a contingent creation? He attempts to do so by utilizing the literary devices of paradox and estrangement.

The acquiescence of paradox The primacy of paradox within Chesterton’s oeuvre finds its justification both theologically and philosophically. The teachings of Jesus are replete with paradoxical notions of the last being first, the weak being strong, and those individuals who wish to save their lives must lose them in the end. Perhaps the most paradoxical element of the Christian narrative can be found in the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement, doctrines that stayed at the forefront of Chesterton’s metaphysical theology. Moreover, in classical Christianity, the doctrine of God’s attributes elicits a paradoxical interrelation of Divine immanence and Divine transcendence that acts as a symbolic line of demarcation between Chesterton’s natural theology and

96  Brett H. Speakman that of his predecessors. Similar to his notion of the relationship between the ‘one and the many’ as a precondition for eliciting wonder, this apparent enigmatic divine relationship is a foundational point for understanding Chesterton’s methodology as it seeks to reconcile the extremes encountered within Enlightenment and Romantic natural theologies. As Nichols explains, ‘Transposing that ontological statement into terms of the human knowledge of God, the distance between the divine realm and human understanding which transcendence entails can co-­exist, then, with an area of contact between the Creator and created spirit based on the immanence that transcendence makes possible’ (Nichols 99). The intention behind Chesterton’s use of paradox was not simply to draw attention to himself or necessarily to a particular point he was making. Rather, he viewed the purpose and derivative of paradox as the ability to awaken the mind (Aquinas 116). Although this rhetorical device was popular amongst his contemporaries, such as Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton’s distinct employment of it sought to combine his moral metaphysics with the intellectual and existential effects of its literary form. As Hugh Kenner notes in his study on Chesterton’s use of paradox, ‘The special rhetorical purpose of Chesterton is to overcome the mental inertia of human beings, which mental inertia is constantly landing them in the strange predicament of both seeing a thing and not seeing it’ (Kenner 43). In particular, Chesterton’s use of paradox is distinctive for two purposes. First, it aims at what Platonists term anamnesis, the awakening of unregistered acquaintance, or what Father Brown in ‘The Three Tools of Death’ calls ‘that strange light of surprise in which we see for the first time things we have known all along’ (Nichols 94; The Innocence of Father Brown 235). Secondly, such deployment of rhetorical paradox often serves as, in Yves Denis’s term, ‘a pedagogy for man on his way to the new vision of faith’ and acts as a method of persuasion (Denis 155). For example, there is a mechanical form of rhetorical paradox in the common detective story that mirrors the existential state of many individuals as they encounter everyday life. The reader is maneuvered through a familiar world filled with common scenes and objects that lull them into a state of passivity, before they are awakened from this condition by astonishing crimes committed by the most unlikely of characters (Kenner 18). Thus, in Chesterton’s detective-­fiction story ‘The Invisible Man’, Father Brown discovers the perpetrator to be the postman, whose daily appearance is completely overlooked due to a familiarity and complacency regarding his ubiquitous presence and occupation. On the other hand, Chesterton did not merely wish to awaken individuals to concealed truths within the numinous realm of ideas, delivered through the guise of humorous transmission, but in the more important area of metaphysical paradox that identifies sacramental elements within objective reality. In both instances, the literary techniques employed are similar: a build-­up of argumentation or persuasive discourse is suddenly concentrated in a phrase that shocks. In Chesterton’s hands, paradox is a particularly

The extraordinary of the ordinary 97 striking way of bringing home to people the implications of analogical predication, whereby likeness at the heart of difference is the all-­pervasive feature of relations between all beings, both human and divine (Nichols 90). Therefore, since being itself is analogical, all systematic thinking has a paradoxical cast. Alison Milbank explains the implications of paradox for Chesterton’s natural theology: ‘The result of this analogical way of thinking is a world that offers a network of analogies consisting of unity with difference, and consequently an infinite opportunity for paradox. Indeed, the reader of a paradox is presented with the difference between two things, and seeks for that which unites them – their relation. This relation takes him or her back beyond the two contrasted things to their cause, which is God’ (Milbank 91). And as Kenner concludes, Chesterton’s ultimate purpose in drawing attention to such metaphysical paradox is to elicit from his readers ‘praise, awakened by wonder’ (Kenner 102).

A new encounter with the familiar Whilst the employment of paradox relied primarily upon the constructs of logic and reason to awaken people to forgotten realities, the imagination was the epistemic tool used to re-­enchant a world that had become too familiar. In his discussion of one of the primary functions of the imagination, Chesterton wrote, ‘. . . the function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders’ (The Defendant 60). In a post-­Darwinian world that sought to provide meaning to the natural order, the imagination was employed to re-­introduce a sense of the sacred in an increasingly secularized world, primarily through the use of estrangement. Like paradox, this idea of estrangement, or defamiliarization, seeks to shock the reader out of their perceptual and ontological myopia in order to bring clarity, understanding and expansion to their vision of the world. In his employment of making ‘settled things strange’, Chesterton was a master at writing stories in which ordinary objects and sites like clothing, lamp posts and houses are rendered eerie and strange. He accomplishes this effect by avoiding the direct naming of the object so that an event or familiar phenomenon is viewed as if for the first time. Chesterton attributes this technique to the London constructed by his beloved Charles Dickens. In the most celebrated example of estrangement, Chesterton recalls Dickens sitting in a London coffee room and reading the word MOOR EEFFOC through a glass door viewed from the inside. This doorway inscription read backwards sends a shock through Dickens as it restores an early memory of coffee shops visited near St Martin’s Lane during the melancholy days of youth (Charles Dickens 47). As J.R.R. Tolkien explained, ‘It was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle’ (Tolkien 54).

98  Brett H. Speakman Throughout his own work, Chesterton employed this technique to force his readers into looking at the world through new lenses, which would induce within them a sense of wonder. Thus, he writes about the story of a man who leaves his suddenly unrecognizable, prosaic home and circumnavigates the globe in order to return to the same place and find his home as if it were new to him, or Professor Lucifer barely missing the ball and cross atop St Paul’s Cathedral with his flying ship in Chesterton’s novel The Ball and the Cross (1905). This depiction becomes the ‘very act by which the readers make the reconnection in their mind that reorders and renews their understanding of that familiar London landmark’ (Milbank 33). His writings are replete with these examples where things within the natural world are presented strangely in order to view them afresh. Like paradox, this literary technique can force the reader to emerge beyond the immanent frame in which the most wondrous elements of existence are obscured or faded behind a matrix of mathematical and scientific methodology.

The end is the beginning This sense of wonder at the existence of all things, including life itself, was not the point of consummation for Chesterton’s natural theology. Rather, this sudden, astonished realization of existence resulted in a feeling of immense joy for him. In the words of Aidan Nichols, this is Chesterton’s novel argument for God’s existence, an argumentum e gaudio: ‘This argument may be termed the “argument from joy.” According to Chesterton, joy as a response to being is the principal signal of transcendence that human experience offers, the most persistent and eloquent of what the sociologist of religion, Peter Berger, has called “rumours of angels” ’ (Nichols 107). Joy, Chesterton argued, lies deeper than happiness or unhappiness, pleasure or pain. All of these are reactions to particular conditions or events in life, whereas joy is the reaction to the fact that there should be such a thing as existence at all: ‘It is the whole aim of religion, of imagination, of poetry and the arts, to awaken that sense of something saved from nothing’ (Come to Think of It 262). Consequently, the experience of joy, the antithesis to a state of ennui, provides an aperture that opens the individual to the transcendent realm of God. ‘Intimately related to wonder before the fact of being, joy is an implicit affirmation of the doctrine of Creation and hence of the truth of theism’ (Kenner 109). For Chesterton, the natural result of this immense joy, along with a childlike disposition, was the feeling that the existence of all things was a gift. Thus, as Chesterton traced the steps between wonder, humility and gratitude, he concluded, ‘Thanks are the highest form of thought. Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder’ (A Short History of England 59). If he was thankful, Chesterton felt that he needed to be thankful to whomever was responsible for existence. Thus, his natural theology is essentially a search for origins that follows the anabatic trajectory from paradox and strangeness to wonder, from wonder to joy and gratitude and, finally, to the existence of God. Therefore, this feeling of wonder is certainly not an end in and of itself, but

The extraordinary of the ordinary 99 the ‘initial step’ along the path that beckons towards the adventurous search for its author. As Chesterton himself noted, ‘[A person] sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them’ (St Francis of Assisi 85).

Works cited Alston, William. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Augustine. ‘Sermon, Mai, 126, 6’. The Essential Augustine. Ed. and trans. Vernon J. Bourke. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1974. Chesterton, G.K. Charles Dickens. London: Methuen & Co., 1907. Chesterton, G.K. The Defendant. London: J.M. Dent, 1907. ———. Tremendous Trifles. London: Methuen, 1909. ———. A Short History of England. London: Chatto & Windus, 1917. ———. St Francis of Assisi. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1923. ———. London Illustrated News. 20 October 1924. ———. The Collected Poems of G.K. Chesterton. London: Cecil Palmer, 1927. ———. Orthodoxy. London: John Lane, 1927. ———. Come to Think of It. London: Methuen, 1930. ———. Christendom in Dublin. London: Sheed & Ward, 1932. ———. The Common Man. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1950. ———. Lunacy and Letters. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958. ———. Autobiography. London: Arrow Books, 1959. ———. St Thomas Aquinas. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962. ———. The Spice of Life and Other Essays. Beaconsfield: D. Finlayson, 1964. ———. All Is Grist: A Book of Essays. New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1967. ———. The Innocence of Father Brown. London: Penguin Books, 1987. Copleston, Frederick. Aquinas. Harmondsworth: Penguin Book, 1961. Denis, Yves. G.K. Chesterton: Paradoxe et Catholicisme. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978. Kenner, Hugh. Paradox in Chesterton. London: Sheed & Ward, 1948. Lansman, Peter, and Irving Velody, eds. Max Weber’s ‘Science as a Vocation’. London: Unwin, Hyman, 1989. Milbank, Alison. Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real. London: T&T Clark, 2007. Montgomery, John Warwick. ‘A Short History of Apologetics.’ In Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources. Ed. Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012. Nichols, Aidan. G.K. Chesterton, Theologian. Manchester, NH: Second Spring, 2009. Peters, Thomas C. The Christian Imagination: G.K. Chesterton on the Arts. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000. Sayers, Dorothy L. ‘Preface’. In The Surprise. Ed. G.K. Chesterton. London: Sheed & Ward, 1952. Tolkien, J.R.R. Tree and Leaf: Including the Poem Mythopoeia. London: Unwin, Hyman, 1988.

7 Between rapture and rupture An exploration of wonder Bernard Sawicki

This essay aims first at exploring the concepts of ‘rapture’ and ‘rupture’ inasmuch as they point to two facets of the same moment in the unfolding experience of wonder. ‘Rapture’ connotes the sudden, almost violent, intervention from outside on the person who experiences wonder. ‘Rupture’ defines what happens in, and is experienced by, the ‘wondering subject’. The essay also suggests that, as a consequence of the almost physical impact caused by the external cause of wonder, the ‘wondering subject’ undergoes a transforming existential experience and is therefore changed. This happens in everyday life as much as in the realm of aesthetics, a place where beauty and theology meet and where wonder appears as a distinctive element common to both art and ethics. The essay ends with a practical application of these ideas to the reading of poetry.

‘Rapture’ and ‘rupture’ The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar and the philosopher and historian Michel de Certeau offer us insights into, respectively, the concepts of ‘rapture’ and ‘rupture’. Balthasar identified what he calls ‘a dynamic moment’ as one of the founding elements in the structure of beauty. According to him, the moment of ‘rapture’ (Entrückung) is of greatest importance in an aesthetic experience besides the two traditional components of beauty, namely form (Gestalt) and radiance (Herrlichkeit). In this connection, Balthasar recalls some significant words from the Christmas Preface in the Roman Catholic Mass. In the Preface, the initial experience of the wondrous mystery of the Incarnation is completed by the dynamic activity of ‘being caught up in love’ or ‘snatched up by this into the love of invisible things’: In the wonder of the incarnation Your eternal Word has brought to the eyes of faith a new and radiant vision of Your glory. In Him we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.1

Between rapture and rupture 101 The idea of ‘rapture’ thus becomes a key aspect in Balthasar’s theological aesthetics, together with, in his words, the phase of ‘perception’ (erblicken), which involves interaction between God and Man, since no ‘perception of God’ is possible without the ‘lux tuae claritatis’ and without the grace that allows us to see (The Glory of the Lord 1982, 125). The covenant in the Old Testament was made in the realm of signs accessible to the senses. It involved a particular experience of ‘rapture’ among the Chosen People, since the Word, as Balthasar explains, can be fully accepted by a human person only if the human spirit is, so to speak, ‘enraptured’ by the Spirit of God or, in other words, through the bestowing of God’s Spirit upon the human spirit (The Glory of the Lord 1999, 58). This experience of ‘rapture’ has, however, two aspects: on the one hand, the people are ‘enraptured’ by God, but God Himself is also somehow ‘enraptured’ by the people (Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord 1991, 60). An important analogy of this relationship between God and His people is, according to Balthasar, the erotic dynamism between man and woman. Here, Balthasar breaks ‘rapture’ down into its constitutive elements, for which he uses explicitly erotic vocabulary, like ‘relationship between sexes’ (Geschlechtsverhältnis) and ‘physical relationship’ between man and woman (Fleisch-­Verhältnis) and likens the relationship between man and woman to that between Christ and the Church (‘das Zueinander von Christus und Kirche’) (Balthasar, Alter Bund 91–­2). In this way of speaking, love is seen, experienced and understood as fire (Feuer) and embers (Glut) (255). God’s love is passionate and violent and, as in the Preface quoted earlier, God does everything to draw us towards Himself. Such love unites enlightenment and power, wonder and action. As a result, ‘rapture’, as described by Balthasar, generates ’rupture’. De Certeau, a French Jesuit and scholar, elaborated systematically the dialectical, and even paschal, character of ‘rupture’. He used the term ‘founding rupture’ (rupture instauratrice) to define a ‘blow’ from the outside (or above) that ‘will change the established order’ and inaugurate a new order (The Practice of Everyday Life 85, 86). He writes: Memory mediates spatial transformations. In the mode of the ‘right point in time’ (kairos), it produces a founding rupture or break. Its foreignness makes possible a transgression of the law of the place. Coming out of its bottomless and mobile secrets, a “coup” modifies the local order.2 According to de Certeau such a ‘rupture’ is a feature of language, in particular of ‘the mystic phrases’. As he puts it: An apology for the “imperfect” surrounds the mystic phrases and places them within a rhetoric of excess . . . Grammatically, impropriety takes the form of the solecism or barbarism . . . In point of fact it is authorized by the ancient tradition of the lingua barbara. (The Mystic Fable 145)3

102  Bernard Sawicki This impropriety of language, de Certeau adds, has a double aspect: lexical and stylistic (145). The ‘rupture’ appears in the act of will (I want – the mystic volo) as a performance, operating through the metamorphosis of linguistic utterances (The Mystic Fable 168ff). ‘Mystics is the anti-­Babel’, he explains. ‘It is the search for a common speech, after its breakdown, the invention of a language “of God” or “of the angels” that would compensate for the dispersal of human languages’ (216).4 These reflections of de Certeau refer mainly to language. But, according to him, ruptures, explosions, transgressions or breaches of limits or boundaries are characteristic also of the rhythm of every event of our lives, a feature of everyday experience, in which we are all immersed (Mai senza l’altro 24–­5). Equally, these ‘ruptures’ may also be part of institutional structures. Above all, as ‘a detachment’ that permits the construction of a different system, wonder, through the experience of ‘rupture’, comes to expression in a deed which simultaneously belongs to both ethics and poetry; it is at the same time an invitation and a welcome, something available yet elusive.

The call of life in the experience of wonder Other writers and thinkers suggest that the simultaneous processes of deconstruction and restoration present in the experience of wonder are somehow implicitly present in the very nature of life; it is almost a response to a call. For some, it has the character of an original purification, or, as Erik Sablé puts it: To be filled with wonder means to forget all thoughts, all knowledge, all systems. It means to be there, facing the world, as on the first day, at the first moment – pure, new, naked . . . And to watch . . . Watch until the moment when appearances vanquish. Then man is struck [foudroyé] by this simple fact: ‘there is being, I exist, I am’.5 Here again, the element of dynamic action, of violence, appears as characterizing the experience of wonder. Bertrand Vergely defines it as ‘a call’. According to him, at the heart of every experience of wonder or astonishment, ‘there is a life which lives in us, there is a life which calls to us’. ‘Responding positively to this call’, he comments, ‘brings about an astonishing liberation; stifling it, on the other hand, brings suffering’.6 This dynamic power residing in wonder calls for a response on our part. And the call is inexorable; it must be answered. For Vergely, this insistent call is associated with beauty: ‘Beauty of dialogue with the life that we feel living in us’. Life, he remarks has ‘come from beauty for beauty’.7 ‘The world’, he writes, ‘would not be so revolting if it were not so beautiful’.8 To make the connection between wonder and violence may seem surprising or even perverse, but, as Vergely writes, ‘violence’, at least in French, is etymologically inscribed in the word ‘wonder,’ étonnement, which

Between rapture and rupture 103 originates from the term tonnerre (thunder), is a thunderbolt or peal of thunder (Vergely 197). And, he adds, ‘it is with that “peal of thunder”, that we need to philophise . . . The real is sudden and violent, in the image of Zeus, the thunder God’.9 Zeus is the God of thunder/ lightning, and Iris, his rape victim, incarnates a foudroyant idea, a ‘startling thought’ (198). As the daughter of Thaumas and Electra, she unites the ideas of wonder (‘thaumas’) and immensity (Electra being an Oceanid, a water nymph). Such intersection of wonder and the immensity of things embraced or expressed by thought make thought foudroyant.10 According to Sartre, too, violence is present in what he calls an act of perception (Gély 50–­1). And that perception may lead, in turn, to projection and an impulse to act (Gély 201). In a similar vein, William Desmond writes about the ‘impossible burden of transcendence’ (267): namely ‘a sense of transcendence as other that is impossible to subject completely to the measure of our thought’ (268). Everything is indicative of the fact that, as humans, we are positioned between the ideal and the real, between our aspirations and our conditions as they in fact exist (Desmond 267–­70). We are caught in a ‘tension between autonomy and transcendence’, which moves us on (269). In the same line, Paul Ricoeur comments that utopia is characterized by its claim to be a break, an irruption. It has the capacity to open up a breach in the thickness of the real (L’ideologie et l’utopie 405). He also notices that great artistic creations always begin with a scandal; false images and idols need to be broken for true art to be created (Ricoeur, Histoire et vérité). Poetry, in short, attacks and demolishes our stereotypes; it shocks us and changes our preconceptions and thus teaches us to see the world differently (Pieron 95). The opportunity that the experience of wonder offers to be turned from the experience of ‘rupture’ into deed  – an opportunity suggested by de Certeau as well as by the several authors mentioned  – is a fundamental motif in Dorothee Sölle’s The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. In her book, Sölle connects wonder with ideas to be found in the mystical tradition, developing her own version of a spiritual path. Hers is an attempt to illustrate a mystical journey for today’s culture, a journey where mysticism and transformation are indissolubly interconnected (89). Here we find yet another approach to the discussion of the action of a power external to a person during a moment of wonder which entails inevitably both amazement (‘rapture’) and ‘rupture’. In Sölle’s words: Every discovery of the world plunges us into jubilation, a radical amazement that tears apart the veil of triviality . . . But it is not enough to describe this amazement as an experience of bliss alone. Amazement also has its bleak side of terror and hopelessness that renders one mute. (The Silent Cry 80)11 In particular, the mystical journey Sölle envisages has three features. It begins with wonder or wonderment (staunen), a via positiva leading to a

104  Bernard Sawicki state of amazement and happiness. It then goes through a phase of ‘letting go’ (loslassen) (91): that is to say, a via negativa, a stage of ‘banishment’ (Abgeschiedenheit), of ‘farewell to the customs and norms of one’s culture’ (92), a dark night in which we miss  God and experience a ‘letting go’ of ‘possession’, ‘violence’ and ‘ego’ (93). Finally, there follows a third stage, a via transformativa, which is at the same time a resistance, leading to healing (93). Here, then, resistance turns out to be not so much a problem as a cure – even salvation itself. For Sölle, ‘salvation’ means ‘that humans live in compassion and justice cocreatively; in being healed they experience also that they can heal’ (93). Sölle maps out a path in three stages symbolized, in order, by the rose, the dark night and the rainbow. It is a path of compassion and justice, of unity which transcends change and death-­oriented reality and is shared with – and realized in – various forms of resistance. In this journey (93), the two stages of ‘letting go’ and ‘resistance’ follow, she claims, from an initial experience of wonder, understood as ‘being amazed’. And this seems quite natural and just. Since, in her view, wonder is originally a positive experience, it should in the end have positive consequences, even though the way to these consequences passes through a dark stage, crucial for the success of the journey. This is what we expect intuitively, and this is what lies at the heart of Sölle’s rewriting of the mystical ‘way’.

The existential impact Thinkers of different disciplines offer insights on ‘wonder’ which reach different but mutually complementary solutions to the issues discussed hereto with the help of theologians and philosophers. Such is the case of Kazimierz Dąbrowski and his psychological theory of ‘positive disintegration’. By positive disintegration, Dąbrowski means a ‘restructuring of the underlying organization of affective and cognitive functions’. He calls it ‘disintegration’ because the lower level of functioning must break down before it is replaced by a new organization of a higher level. ‘Where there is no restructuring’, he explains, ‘there is no development’ (Dąbrowski, Theory of Levels of Emotional Development, vol.1, 15). Dąbrowski’s theory is relevant here for two reasons. It includes all that has been set out so far in this essay about wonder and its implications. It also embeds it in an essentially human existential context, suggesting that the experience of ‘wonder’ has far-­reaching consequences in our personal ‘development’. Human beings, Dąbrowski seems to suggest, are constructed in such a way that they simply need the dynamism of wonder in order to grow, or more precisely, the apparently disruptive moments of wonder are, in fact, a necessary means of growth. Could it be that the ‘positive’ elements of wonder  – fascination, delight, Sölle’s via positiva accompanied by ­happiness – are a way of smuggling in something decisively less positive but necessary for human personal development? It might be claimed that in

Between rapture and rupture 105 this way Dąbrowski’s theory of ‘positive disintegration’ could complement Sölle’s explanation of the later stages of the mystical journey. How, then, do the experience of wonder and ‘positive disintegration’ relate? According to Dąbrowski: Even among people not uncommonly gifted, internal shocks and sometimes a long-­lasting disorganization of mental life may be a way towards new experiences of great value in personal development  .  .  . The mental development of a human being is not harmonious nor painless. It is a drama, accompanied by difficult moments of feeling lost and disoriented; doubts and sadness are present . . . The authentic mental development of a human being is a transition to Higher Forms levels. (Elementy filozofii rozwoju 5–­9)12 The experience of wonder may offer humans the opportunity of reaching a further stage in their existential journey, through a new way of seeing reality and of making new syntheses. As Dąbrowski continues: the process of positive disintegration . . . provides a basic stimulus for coupling and correlating many definitions of concepts such as: integration and disintegration, subjectivism and objectivism, empiricism and normativity, adjustment and maladjustment. In many cases two contradictory concepts begin to create a ‘harmonious’ combination of what have been seen hitherto as contradictions. (12) Finally, the passion and enthusiasm which are usually set in motion by the mere occurrence of wonder can be understood in the light of Dąbrowski’s psychology of human development, which has many aspects – physical growth, motor language development, intellectual development, social development and moral development. In such a moment, we do not want to lose the experience of delight: the spark for a new flame has been struck. It is possible to connect this spark with Dąbrowski’s idea that human beings have a passion/ desire for personal development, for personal growth. He writes: The passion for development is stronger than the passion for life . . . This passion generates, on the one hand, suffering, agony, fears, depressions and obsessions, inner conflicts but, on the other hand, it gives an urge towards the unknown, where everything is subordinated to the objectives of development. (Elementy filozofii rozwoju 25) Could it be that the moment of occurrence of wonder sets in motion the ‘desire for development’ which, for Dąbrowski, is always even more intense and absorbing than the desire for life itself?

106  Bernard Sawicki In short, Dąbrowski’s ‘positive disintegration’ indicates a ‘creative personal development, moving towards a new, higher reality’ (Dąbrowski 139). Such ‘disintegration’ remains part of an experience of wonder with its elements of both ‘rupture’ and ‘rapture’; nevertheless, it may also be seen as opening the door to genuine personal integration and even to proceed a few steps beyond that threshold. In this case, the analogy with Sölle’s vision is apparent.

Wonder in literature: an example The exploration of the process of wonder and, in particular, its element of ‘rupture’ reaches its ‘climax’ in the literary criticism of Harold Bloom. In The Anxiety of Influence, Bloom discusses what is entailed in the dynamics of reception of a literary work by the ‘creative’ reader – whom Bloom identifies mainly as a young poet reading an older poet. Bloom presents this reception as a very drastic, almost visceral process; it implies a personal, antagonistic relation between the creative reader and the author/ poet whose work he or she is reading. Bloom does not refer to it directly as an experience of wonder but rather as a violent confrontation: hence, the title The Anxiety of Influence. The reader’s moment of positive amazement or delight is prima facie ignored. We are left with the dynamic and fatal power of the writer and the creative reader’s need to fight against that power or to go beyond it, to be better, in a sense to win. Without entering into details of Bloom’s description of the whole process of reception of the text – or, rather, of confrontation with it – it is appropriate in this case to look closely at its first phase, which involves a sort of ‘rupture’. Here Bloom uses the term clinamen, borrowed from Alfred Jarry. Clinamen is a ‘poetic misreading’ or a ‘misprision proper’ (14). It is an illusion, a rapid alternation of presence and absence and an incomplete beginning of a new imaginary world which slowly detaches itself from the world created before by the precursor of the poet (Kania 120). Etymologically, however, clinamen in fact contains a moment of wonder. As Bloom explains: I take the word from Lucretius, where it means a ‘swerve’ of the atoms so as to make change possible in the universe. A  poet swerves away from his precursor, by so reading his precursor’s poem as to execute a clinamen in relation to it. This appears as a corrective movement in his own poem. (14) This inexplicable, ‘disinterested’, unforeseen moment of ‘swerve’ is decisive. Since Bloom locates it in the process of the reception and interpretation of a text, so it may seem for him to have a subjective character. However that may be, and although the moment of ‘swerve’ (clinamen) is eventually a stimulus for a far-­reaching, dramatic and violent reaction, clinamen is at

Between rapture and rupture 107 first delicate and a source of amazement – of love almost. In its first uncontrolled occurrence, this ‘swerve’ out of the norm is characterized by an unforeseen deflection of the reader’s imagination (Kania 121). It is a small but decisive moment in Bloom’s vision of the whole process of creativity, which he defines as a ‘catastrophic influence’ resulting from the antagonistic deconstruction of the literary text by its creative reader. It is worth noting that clinamen inaugurates a range of relations between the reader and the text. It is a transforming struggle and the stages of the struggle, as identified and named by Bloom, clearly relate, I  would argue, to some Christian theological themes. According to Bloom, clinamen is followed by tessera (when ‘a poet completes his precursor antithetically’), kenosis (‘discontinuity with precursor’ and ‘emptying-­out of the poet and of the precursor’), demonization (‘movement towards a personalized countersublime in reaction to the precursor’s sublime’), askesis (‘a movement of self-­purgation to attain a state of solitude’) and apophrades (‘the return of the refuted dead author but only as if the poet had written the precursor’s poem’) (14–­6). Bloom’s claim seems to be that the consequences of an experience of wonder, this time through reading, set a person on a particular path which is dramatic, passionate and somehow inevitable.

A return to theology Bloom’s account of the process of influence through reading invites us to return to some traditional themes in Christian spirituality. It offers, for example, a new key to understanding the Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, the core of the Christian message. Here, the ideas of ‘rupture’ and ‘rapture’ may serve as ways of making connections between life, art and theology. I suggest this more as a theme for further research than as a fully fledged theory. Some steps, however, have already been taken. In his work Der geteilte Logos, Elmar Salmann posits a Christological connection between wonder, ‘rupture’ and ‘rapture’. He sees the Cross as ‘a revelation of the glorification, rupture (Brechung) and block, [a revelation] of the dialogical opening and bringing to completion of the various forms of the wisdom of God’.13 ‘What first has appeared as a block, a waste or a rupture’, he explains, ‘proves now to be unlocked, embraced and healed by God’s dialogic space’.14 And ‘theology is attention to the unbelievable, for wonder . . . for the legend from which’, he specifies, ‘all can be read afresh’.15 Salmann also talks about a creative ‘rupture’ (Bruch) as Christ and God the Father live only in the difference: more precisely, in the ‘rupture’ of time, space and being. As a result, Christianity proves in the light of nothingness to be ‘a fragile passage in God, similar to what mends the crack in a vessel’.16 The Passover, he suggests, is this passage through rupture (446, 447). In his article ‘Amore e violenza’ (‘Love and violence’), Salmann boldly  – and, in the view of some, controversially – sets love and violence together,

108  Bernard Sawicki seeing this connection as an intrinsic dimension of any real experience of love. Fascination, enchantment turn into ‘rupture’: There is no revelation, no impact between Divine sphere and our dwelling without abolishing this division, without the intrusion of a surprising and terrifying presence, without a fierce struggle between life and death, presence and refusal, spirit and body.17 If developed further, these ideas might also lead to a more vivid identification and appreciation of the power that artistic and literary works have to raise and evoke wonder. Let us take an example which will also help to gather together the ideas set out in this paper. The example is a poem by Miron Białoszewski, ‘Szare eminencje zachwytu’ (‘Grey eminences of rapture’): Jakże się cieszę, że jesteś niebem i kalejdoskopem, że masz tyle sztucznych gwiazd że tak świecisz w monstrancji jasności, gdy podnieść twoje wydrążone pół-­globu dokoła oczu, pod powietrze. Jakżeś nieprzecedzona w bogactwie, łyżko durszlakowa! Piec też jest piękny: ma kafle i szpary, może być siwy, srebrny szary – aż senny . . . a szczególnie kiedy tasuje błyski albo gdy zachodzi i całym rytmem swych niedokładności w dzwonach palonych polanych biało wpływa w żywioły obleczeń monumentalnych.18 (How I rejoice that you are sky and kaleidoscope that you have so many plastic stars, that you shine so in a monstrance of brightness, if the hollowed

Between rapture and rupture 109 half-­globe round your eye is raised, under the air. How unstrained in wealth you are, draining spoon! A stove is beautiful too: it has tiles and gaps, it may be gray, silver gloomy – even sleepy . . . but especially when it mixes its glints or when it sets and with the entire rhythm of its inaccuracies in burned bells doused in white it sails into the elements of monumental raiment.) The poem is the potential meeting point of two experiences of wonder: the one expressed by the poet’s persona, who is the speaker, and the other experienced by the reader, who, however, is not necessarily identified with the poet and may, in fact, be unsympathetic or critical of the poet. The starting point is clear: the speaker looks at the spoon, which has holes in it, and then at the stove, seeing them as means of revelation. In the course of the poem these ordinary, even banal, everyday objects take on extraordinary significance. They seem to belong to another, better world. In particular, the coded meaning of the everyday household objects is intertwined with similar objects in nature and the wider cosmos. In fact, the elements and materials of which these objects are made take on cosmic and mystical significance. This moment of ‘rapture’ recorded by the poet is conveyed to the reader gradually but inevitably through an accumulation of expressions and images associated with space and light, such as ‘the sky and the kaleidoscope’, ‘stars’ (even if artificial), ‘glitters’ and ‘the monstrance of brightness’. Because it is not clear which object is being described by the poet, the expressions and images used in these first few lines build the impression of something sublime and beautiful, shining and heavenly. And this is the first moment of ‘rapture’. Suddenly, the brightness is interrupted by the disclosure of what the everyday object really is. The spoon immediately brings the reader down from the realm of heavenly brightness; the impressions so far created by the poet and received by the reader seem to be overturned, a delightful vision disrupted. But Białoszewski, oscillating between common objects and their beautified

110  Bernard Sawicki and sublimated appearance, now introduces the image of the ‘stove’, attractive and pleasing in its appearance. This is the second moment of ‘rapture’, enhanced by the anthropomorphic features of the stove presented with a sort of intimacy and which eventually take on a cosmic and mystical dimension. The imagery of light comes to the fore once again. The stove ‘shuffles’, ‘glitters’ and is later compared to the setting sun. Everything is seen again as splendid, immense, stupendous. It is accompanied by rhythm, bells and the purity of the colour white. The poem has thus come full circle back to the sublime sphere with which it began. But this overall movement of ‘rapture’ has clearly also brought to the fore a sense of ‘rupture’. The first ‘rupture’ concerns the higher sphere of brightness. Once it has been dimmed by the revelation of the identity of the everyday objects (the spoon and the stove), the brightness remains somewhat damaged, deprived of its original and supposedly lasting sublime quality. It has been somehow unmasked and has had its value reduced. It may be that the purpose was to make those common objects, the spoon and the stove, regain their integrity and beauty. But even when the stove is re-­imagined as something sublime, it still lacks certain qualities. One experiences here another ‘rupture’, a sense of nostalgia, almost of heaviness and inadequacy at the way in which the stove is described: its ‘grey’ color ruins the bright beauty of the spoon as it is described earlier in the poem. It induces drowsiness. Although appealing and evoking affection by the way in which it is depicted, the stove is not so sublime and elevated as the spoon seemed to be. The original exaltation of ordinary things intended by the poet must be broken. Common objects such as spoons and stoves are too heavy and too ordinary to inhabit the highest spheres of brilliance, at least for very long. And so, necessarily, a ‘rupture’ appears, perhaps as a sign of discord between heavenly beauty and mundane reality or as a necessity in the Paschal mystery of healing and salvation. This example and the insights of the authors mentioned earlier lead to the concluding remark that the experience of wonder entails more than aesthetic pleasure. Wonder draws us into a profound existential experience. It is thus a very distinctive moment ‘between’ art and ethics, which involves being not only active but also acted upon – even to the point of suffering. Its crucial dimension, we have suggested here, is the simultaneous interaction between ‘rapture’ and ‘rupture’. Emily Dickinson expresses this interaction beautifully: For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy. For each beloved hour Sharp pittances of years,

Between rapture and rupture 111 Bitter contested farthings And coffers heaped with tears. (Dickinson 37)

Notes 1 www.catholicdoors.com/­prayers/­english2/­p00745.htm (accessed 8 May 2015). The original text contained in Balthasar’s German version reads: ‘Quia per incarnati Verbi mysterium nova mentis nostrae oculis lux tuae claritatis infulsit: ut dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur’ (Praef. De Nat.) (Herrlichkeit 112). The translation given in the published English translation of Balthasar’s book reads: ‘Because through the mystery of the incarnate Word the new light of your brightness has shone onto the eyes of our mind; that knowing God visibly, we might be snatched up by this into the love of invisible things’(The Glory of the Lord 1982, 120). 2 ‘La mémoire médiatise des transformations spatiales. Sur le mode du “moment opportun” (kairos), elle produit une rupture instauratrice. Son étrangeté rend possible une transgression de la loi du lieu. Sorti de ses insondables et mobiles secrets, un “coup” modifie l’ordre local’ (De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien 129). 3 ‘Une apologie de l’ “imparfait” encadre les phrases mystiques et les situe dans une rhétorique de l’excès . . . Grammaticalement, l’indécence a la forme du solécisme ou du barbarisme. En fait, il est autorisé par la tradition ancienne de la “lingua barbara” ’ (De Certeau, La Fable mystique 201–­2). 4 ‘La mystique, c’est l’anti-­Babel; c’est la quête d’un parler commun après sa fracture, l’invention d’une langue “de Dieu” ou “des anges” qui pallie la dissémination des langues humaines’ (De Certeau, La Fable mystique 216). 5 ‘S’émerveiller, c’est oublier toutes les pensées, tous les savoirs, tous les systèmes. Être là, face au monde; comme a su premier jour, au premier instant. Pur, neuf, nu . . . Et regarder . . . Regarder jusqu’au moment où les apparences basculent. Alors on est brusquement “foudroyé” par ce simple fait: “Il y a de l’être. J’existe, je suis”, et au même instant le monde s’illumine’ (41). The translation is mine. All translations are mine for those works which have not been published in English, with the exception of Dąbrowski’s book (see n.12). 6 ‘Il y a une vie qui vit en nous, il y a une vie qui appelle en nous. On vite une étonnante liberation de soi quand on répond à cet appel, on souffre quand l’étouffe’ (Vergely 11–­2). 7 ‘Beauté du dialogue avec la vie que l’on sent vivre en soi . . . une vie venue de la beauté pour la beauté’ (Vergely 12, 13). 8 ‘Le monde ne serait pas si révoltant s’il n’etait pas si beau’ (132). 9 ‘C’est avec ce coup de tonnerre qu’il faut philosopher . . . le reel est foudroyant, à l’image de Zeus, le dieu de la foudre’ (197). 10 ‘Iris la rapide incarne la pensée foudroyante. Fille de Thaumas et d’Electre elle est au croisement de l’étonnement (thaumas en grec veut dire merveilleux) e d’Électre (la fille du dieu Océan). La pensée deviant foudroyante quand elle est la rencontre entre l’étonemment e l’immensité des choses’ (199–­200). 11 ‘Ich denke, daß jede Entdeckung der Welt uns in einen Jubel stürtzt, ein radikales Staunen, das sie Schleier der Trivialität zerreißt  .  .  . Es genügt aber nicht, das Stauen nur als Glückserfahrung zu bennennen. Es hat auch seine dunkle Seite des Entsetzens und der Aus-weglosigkeit, die sprachlos macht’ (Mystik und Widerstand 124). 12 Translations from Dąbrowski’s book are mine.

112  Bernard Sawicki 13 ‘Das Kreuz erscheint . . . als Offenbarung der Verherrlichung, der Brechung und Einbehaltung, der dialogischen Öffnung und Rundung der verschiedenen Formen der Weisheit Gottes’(Salmann 33). 14 ‘Was bisher als Aus oder Abfall, als Bruch erschien, erweist sich nun als vom dialogischen Raum Gottes unschlossen, einbehalten, erlöst’ (Salmann 33). 15 ‘Theologie ist Aufmerksamkeit für das Unglaubliche, das Wunder  .  .  . für die Legende, vor der her alles neu zu lessen wäre’ (Salmann 249). 16 ‘Christentum erscheint im Licht des Nichts als fragiler Ubergang, als Hut des Bruchs der Gefässe, in Gott selbst, im Vorgang der Schopfung als Zerdehnung innergöttlicher Synchronie’ (Salmann 446). 17 ‘Non c’è rivelazione, impatto tra sfera divina e dimora umana senza l’intruzione di una presenza sorprendente e terrificante, senza una lotta intestina tra vita e morte, presenza e rifiuto, spirit e carne’ (Salmann, 2000 470). 18 Original poem by Miron Białoszewski, Utwory zebrane tom 1 Obroty rzeczy (Warszawa: PIW, 1956), 55. The translation is by Bernard Sawicki.

Works cited Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Herrlichkeit: Eine theologische Ästhetik, Bd. I: Schau der Gestalt. Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1961. ———. Herrlichkeit: Eine theologische Ästhetik, Bd. III/­2, 1.Teil: Alter Bund, Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1966. ———. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing the Form. Trans. Erasmo Leivà-­Herikakis. Edinburgh: Clark, 1982. ———. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 6, Theology: The Old Covenant. Trans. Brian McNeil and Erasmo Leivà-­Herikakis. Edinburgh: Clark, 1991. Białoszewski, Miron. ‘Szare eminencje zachwytu’ (‘Grey eminences of rapture’). In Utwory zebrane tom 1 Obroty rzeczy. Warszawa: PIW, 1956, 55. Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A  Theory of Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. Dąbrowski, Kazimierz. Elementy filozofii rozwoju (The Elements of Philosophy of Development). Wydawnictwo, Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Higieny Psychiczne, 1989. Dąbrowski, Kazimierz, and Michael M. Piechowski. Theory of levels of emotional development vol. 1, Multilevelness and positive disintegration. Oceanside, NY: Dabor Science Publications, 1977. De Certeau, Michel. La Fable mystique, XVIe-­XVII siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 1982. ———. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Oakland: University of California Press, 1984. ———. L’invention du quotidien, tome 1. Arts de faire. Nouvelle édition, établie et présentée par Luce Giard. Paris: Gallimard, 1990. ———. The Mystic Fable: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Trans. Michael B. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. Mai senza l’altro. Trans. Valerio Lanzarini. Magnano: Edizioni Quiqajon Comunità di Bose, 1993. Desmond, William.  Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art. New York: State University of New York Press, 2003. Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Intro. Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1924.

Between rapture and rupture 113 Gély, Raphaël. Les usages de la perception. Louvain-­Paris-­Dudley, MA: Éditions Peeters, 2005. Jarry, Alfred. Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician. New York: Exact Change, 1996. Kania, Marta Matylda. Żywioły wyobraźni: O wyobrażaniu i przeobrażaniu [Elements of Imagination. On Imagining and Transforming]. Cracow: University of Cracow, 2014. Pieron, Jean-­Philippe. Les puissances de l’imagination. Paris: CERF, 2012. Ricoeur, Paul. Histoire et vérité. Paris: Éditions du Seuil Paris, 1955. ———. L’ideologie et l’utopie. Paris: Éditions du Seuil Paris, 1997. ‘The Roman Catholic Missal in English’. 11 February  2017. www.catholicdoors. com/­prayers/­english2/­p00745.htm Sablé, Erik. Petit Manuel d’émerveillement. Paris: Éditions Dervy Paris, 2004. Salmann, Elmar. Der geteilte Logos. Zum offenen Prozeß von neuzeitlichem Denken und Theologie. Rome: Studia Anselmiana 111, 1992. ———. ‘Amore e violenza’. In Presenza di spirito: Il cristianesimo come gesto e pensiero. Padova: Edizioni Messaggero, 2000, 461–­72. Sölle, Dorothee. Mystik und Widerstand. Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe, 1997. ———. The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. Trans. Martin and Barbara Rumscheidt. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. London: Penguin Books, 2010. Vergely, Bertrand. Retour à l’émerveillement. Paris: Albin Michel, 2010.

8 Between the poet and the legislator Wonder and ambivalence in Midrash and Hebrew poetry Ariel Zinder In all scriptural religions, sacred texts are considered to communicate God’s words or messages and serve as the epitome of guidance and truth, comprising an endless wellspring of wisdom and beauty.1 Scripture could be, and indeed is, depicted as awe inspiring and a source of wonder.2 Jewish tradition is no exception in this regard. Over the centuries, many prophets, poets and philosophers have expressed their state of wonder when facing the holy writ, the Torah, and some of them even took this wondrous quality as an inspiration to their own writing and exegesis. Yet seemingly, within mainstream rabbinic Judaism, this initial stance of wonder is rarely represented as a sufficient attitude towards the Torah. From the early days of the Talmud to the present, rabbinic (Orthodox) Jewish leaders and thinkers have discussed their sense of the wonder of scriptures only up to a certain point – beyond which must stand other attitudes towards the Torah: those of learning, comprehension and obedience.3 Three kinds of creative responses to the problematics of wonder stand out from within this tradition. The first is the response of a certain strand in homiletical (Midrashic) discourse from early medieval Jewish culture, another is taken from liturgical poetry of medieval times and the third comprises a brief encounter with a poem of 20th-­century Israeli poet Zelda. Naturally, these specific texts cannot truly represent the vast tradition of Jewish response to wonder but I believe they do point to the recurrence of these problematics. Despite the differences in genre and era, I suggest that all these responses embody an ambivalent attitude towards scriptural wonder in general and especially towards wonder expressed in poetic form.

Moses, David and Midrash We begin our journey with a Midrashic unit composed in Palestine during the first centuries AD. The unit appears in the collection known as Devarim Rabbah, which was redacted sometime between the sixth and eight centuries.4 All Midrashic units in this collection refer to verses from the book of Deuteronomy, as does the following unit, which refers to Deuteronomy 30:11. In a characteristic fashion, the exegesis of this verse begins by

Between the poet and the legislator 115 exploring a different verse, in this case, Psalms 139:6. Both verses address the notion of wonder and thus create the opportunity of comparing the respective speakers in both verses: Moses of Deuteronomy and David of Psalms. The comparison between the two appears quite often in rabbinic literature. As Avigdor Shin'an (2005) notes, no two other biblical figures are compared more often in Midrashic literature than these two. The abundance of comparisons and the details therein clarify that what was at stake in such comparison was not only the ancient leaders themselves, but also their legacy and their function as role models for later Jewish culture. Indeed, in the following Midrash, one of the features that sets them apart is their capacity for wonder: ‘For this commandment that I command thee this day, is not beyond you, neither is it far off’. That is what scripture says: ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain unto it’ [Psalms 139:6]. [David said:] ‘It is covered As it is said [Lamentations 1:9]: ‘she came down wonderful’ Therefore, ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me’ –­ That is the knowledge of Torah. The basic technique of Midrash is a stringing of biblical verses all containing the same word, thus creating a meditation upon that word and fleshing out its (sometimes quite surprising) meanings. The key words in this Midrash all stem from the root pala (noun: Pélé), implying wonder – being incredible, distinct or inscrutable (Conrad). The Midrash introduces the root through the words of the poet of Psalm 139, recognized here and elsewhere in rabbinic literature as biblical King David. As discussed next, it is no coincidence that David is depicted here as a man of wonder. The various forms of the root Pélé appear in the Hebrew Bible approximately 80 times; about half of these are in the Book of Psalms, David’s poems of thankfulness and awe. In the specific verse discussed in the Midrash, David addresses Peli’ot, the plural form of ‘wonder’, to express his awe and helplessness in facing a source of wisdom or knowledge – which in this homily is easily identified with Torah. Then, to explain David’s attitude, the Midrash presents a different verse, this time from Lamentations. The original verse speaks of the way Jerusalem fell ‘with wonder’, in this context meaning in a devastating fashion, beyond comprehension. Thus, David seems to stand in this homily as one whose awe in facing the Torah is absolute and confounding. At this point in the homily, Moses is introduced: . . . And God said to David: ‘You say “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me”

116  Ariel Zinder But before you it was Moses who said [Deut. 30:11]: “For this commandment that I command thee this day, is not beyond [Niflet, wondrous, difficult to attain] thee; Neither is it far off” ’5 Indeed, Moses knows a thing or two about the wonder of Torah. In this homily, and in fact in the plain sense of the biblical verse itself, he serves as the one who must warn against it. Moses’s point here is that God’s command is not, or should not, be considered as far off or absent. Therefore, one must not turn to helpless cries but rather to positive action and especially to obedience to God’s law. This directive is clearly stated in the next biblical verse. Moses says that Torah is not far off but rather ‘very nigh unto you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it’ (Deut. 30:14). God reaffirms Moses’s conclusion in our Midrash since He is the one quoting Moses’s words. God plays a dominant role in this Midrash, and since he sides so clearly with Moses, David’s position of awe seems to be dismissed in favor of Moses’s model. The homily thus boils down to a binary opposition and places it in a clear hierarchical structure: the man of law comprises a superior role model to the man of awe; the great didactic figure is preferred over the wondering poet; those who follow the Torah and its rules are preferred over those who gape at its splendor.6 This claim should be understood before deconstructing the binary opposition of poetry and law. The anonymous rabbi who composed this homily clearly deemed David’s exclamation as wrong or misled. But what is wrong with it? What does this Midrash find in David’s words that is so blameworthy?

King David and the dangers of wonder In previous discussions of such preference for the law over other forms of knowledge and power, scholars have noted the way the Midrash rabbis tended to downplay the importance of biblical royal leaders as part of their political and ideological opposition to traditional royal leadership that the sages strove to replace (Shin'an). Another recurrent feature of Midrash is its restriction of direct theological reflection on the wonders of the divine and its overall restriction of the identification of the Torah with supernal, wondrous entities (Idel). These aspects of rabbinic thought would definitely explain why Moses is preferred over David since the latter indeed fits the role of a royal leader and a metaphysician of sorts. However, albeit important, these explanations lack a further reflection on David’s position as a poet of wonder within these homilies and in the rabbis’ overall historical imagination. What role does David’s poetic craft of wonder play in this attitude of the rabbis? A short detour to another Midrash – this time to a passage in 2 Samuel 6  – suggests some answers. The chapter recounts King David’s

Between the poet and the legislator 117 journey with the Ark of the Covenant from Beit Shemesh to Jerusalem. This journey includes a tragic scene involving one of the King’s helpers, Uzzah: (5) And David and all the house of Israel played before God with all manners of instruments made of cypress-­wood, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with sistra, and with cymbals. (6)  And when they came to the threshing-­floor of Nacon, Uzzah put forth his hand to the Ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen stumbled. (7) And the anger of the God was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error;7 and there he died by the Ark of God. (8) And David was displeased, because the God had broken forth upon Uzzah; and that place was called Perez-­uzzah, unto this day. As the biblical account continues, this event scares David, who decides to stop the journey and resumes it only three months later. A Midrash addressing this event and its consequences appears in the Babylonian Talmud (Sotta 35:1), expands upon this short account and reveals a critical stance towards the King: [The sage] Rava said about this homily: ‘why was David punished? Because he called the words of Torah “songs”, as it is said [Psalms 119:54]: “Your statutes have been my songs.” ’ God said to David: of the words of Torah it is written, [Proverbs 23:5] ‘you just flutter your eyes at it, and it is gone’, and you [dare] call these words ‘songs’? Therefore, I  will cause you to fail the statute that even the babies know. For it is written [Numbers 7:8–­9], ‘Four wagons and eight oxen he gave to the descendants of M’rari . . . But to the descendants of K’hat he gave none, because their duties involved the holy articles, which they carried on their own shoulders.’ Once again, God chastises King David. This time, David is accused of two misdeeds. One is his statement that God’s statutes are ‘songs’ to him. I return to this point next, but for present purposes, we can assume that God is blaming David for taking the rules and words of the Torah lightheartedly. Since God hears David’s words and realizes that David simply is not fluent enough in the Torah and its statutes, he decides to punish him with a second failure – one that provokes tragic events caused by David’s ignorance. Thus, God causes (or allows) David to provide a wagon for the ark, in clear opposition to the rule that ‘every baby knows’, the edict forbidding the Levites from carrying the sacred ark on a wagon and requiring them to carry it on their shoulders alone. The result is devastating. The oxen stumbles, the wagon shifts, and Uzzah is killed trying to save the ark from falling off the wagon.

118  Ariel Zinder Is David just ignorant, then? Not exactly, for he is acquainted with the statutes of Torah as his exclamation makes clear. The problem seems to be one of attitude and genre. He relates to the Torah’s words as ‘songs’, thus framing his relation to them in terms of poetry and creativity rather than study and obedience.8 The verse God himself quotes in this homily clarifies God’s requirement of such obedience, noting that one should study Torah day and night, at all times, without rest. Indeed, were one to merely ‘flutter his eyes’ at the Torah, it would be gone. Apparently, God considers a break in the obedient toil of Torah, even for the sake of a poetic exclamation of devotion and wonder, to be a fluttering of the eyes, a moment of laxity and unrestrained conduct. The consequences are devastating. In many ways, this Midrash echoes the notions of the previous one. David is depicted as unknowing and even as one who chooses to take pride in his ignorance through poetic exclamations of wonder and devotion. Especially revealing in the Midrash about Uzzah is the bold fashion in which the consequences are spelled out. David’s poetic position causes him to disregard the rules of Torah and to put others in mortal danger. One cannot stop to wonder or compose lyric poetry when faced with the high voltage of sacred reality. The only way to deal with this danger is complete adherence to the rules, and the only way to comprehend the rules is through constant, vigilant study aimed not at the poetics of scripture but at its teachings.

Dialogue with the divine: David’s achievements But are things really that simple in these two Midrashic texts? Did the rabbis responsible for these creative exegetical pieces strive to dismiss David’s position altogether? And did they succeed? Although David is scolded in both homilies, he also has two major achievements. One is the achievement of spiritual bravery. By this, I  mean that David’s words quoted in these homilies are not merely sporadic poetic verses but rather parts of larger trajectories aimed at overcoming religious failure. In the first homily, David’s exclamation of wonder is taken from a Psalm that proceeds from unknowing to knowing, from ‘Such wonderful knowledge is beyond me’ (v. 6) to ‘I thank you because I am wonderfully made; your works are wonders’ (v. 14). And in the second Midrash, David indeed fails, but the story in 2 Samuel 7 depicts a few men carrying the ark with David dancing before them ‘with abandon before Adonai’ (v. 14). In both cases, David fails but also finds a creative, devotional response to failure and finally achieves a close relation to God. David’s second achievement in both homilies is that he attains a divine response through his poetry. After all, as harsh as God’s words to David seem, God does respond. God speaks to the helpless poet, answers him and takes part in the relationship that David so devoutly desires. God seems to be saying to David, ‘I hear your address to me, and I will answer you, saying I do not wish to talk about it’.9 The man of awe may not be as perfect a role

Between the poet and the legislator 119 model as Moses, but his spiritual life is lively and dialogical to a far greater extent than that of stern Moses, who speaks as a monologic preacher, raining truths on his crowd and expecting no answers at all. When read this way, the initial binary opposition of Moses and David, law and awe, seems destabilized and deconstructed. When considering David’s implicit achievements, it is no longer clear who might serve as a better role model for religious life. But here a note of method is in order. This reversal of the explicit argument of the homilies occurred when the homilies were considered as more than didactic. In fact, the reversal occurred only once a ‘literary’ mode of reading was introduced. For the sense of spiritual bravery is uncovered only once the homilies are regarded intertextually as poetic utterances intertwined with other narratives and other poetic verses. Furthermore, the dialogic nature of David’s position is uncovered only once the homilies’ dramatic settings are taken seriously as a fictional account of an actual conversation. Hence, these homilies are read one way through a ‘Mosaic’ method of stern didactic effort, and another way through a ‘Davidic’ method of poetic sensitivity. The homilies start out as literal discussions of the religious conduct of great leaders, but they evolve into discussions of us, our own ways of reading, our constant question of interpretation: what shall we do with the splendor of the text? What shall we do with its electricity, its lethal power? Shall we follow Moses or David? Thus, even those Midrashic strategies that strive to set law over awe and settle the question once and for all end up revealing the deep ambivalence towards these issues in rabbinic literature. The pull of adherence and study was strong, but so was the pull of creative response and literary complexity. In certain ways, this is old news. The rabbis themselves described their exegetical activity in the twin terms Halacha (rules of conduct) and Aggadah (interpretive sayings with no legal implications). As scholars noted, the two notions not only differed but also overflowed into each other, each nourishing the other (Bialik, ‘Halacha and Aggadah’). Furthermore, scholarly attention to the poetics of rabbinic literature has already established the far-­reaching and subversive qualities of the literary activities of these sages (Levinson; Handelman). Yet the earlier discussion reveals the surprising place poetry occupies in this double bind. Poetry is depicted through the poet David as the embodiment of danger and religious laxity, but also as the vehicle of recuperation and dialogue with the wondrous divine realm.

Liturgical poetry: two samples of Piyyut So far, we have followed discussions of poetry that take place within rabbinic literature. Now we turn to the actual poetry produced within this rabbinic culture. This step will take us out of the Yeshiva, the study hall of the rabbis, and into the synagogue, the place of prayer. One of the most fascinating features of Jewish culture in the era under discussion is the existence

120  Ariel Zinder of a rich, complex oeuvre of liturgical poetry that was performed during communal prayer every Saturday and every Jewish holiday. This genre of liturgical poetry is called Piyyut, a name derived from the Greek poiesis. On one hand, the poets writing such poems were strict adherents of rabbinical culture; in many poems, they reiterate the content of rabbinic homilies and discussions, placing these in poetic rhyme and meter. On the other hand, however, the major poets were also deeply committed to the poetic perspective and the revolutionary shift that poetic language can impose upon any content. In other words, they were followers of Moses while being while being members of the guild of David. Examining this tension in Hebrew liturgical poetry extends far beyond the scope of this article.10 Here I  wish to discuss two specific samples of Piyyut that address the wonder of scripture directly. Both poems, I suggest, tackle the problematics we saw in the Midrash but strive towards a compromise between law and awe, rather than tilting the scale in one direction. Since Piyyut mainly concerns biblical events and figures of the Pentateuch, the poems I examine do not represent David himself, but they do remain faithful to his legacy of poetic wonder.

The gift of scripture: Elazar Bi-­Rabbi Qilir The first poem stems from a long poetic composition written by late-­ sixth-­century poet Elazar Bi-­Rabbi Qilir, who lived somewhere in ancient Palestine and wrote hundreds of liturgical poems. The poem was written especially for the festival known in Hebrew as Shavu’ot, or the festival of weeks. According to Jewish tradition, this festival celebrates the actual day in which God gave the Torah to Moses, thus offering a perfect opportunity for poets to put forth their attitude towards scripture in general. The poem is written in Hebrew and is organized around an alphabetical acrostic from the first Hebrew letter to the last. It has a simple rhyming scheme, repeating the sound Qim at the end of each verse. The rhyming words, in translation, are marked in bold letters, for reasons soon to be explained:11 And so ‘Moshe went down from the mountain to the people’ [Ex. 19:14] With him were duties and laws, Engraved ever so clearly Those weaned from mother’s milk – it suckled Its breasts exuding wisdom  5 Gushing life forward And sweeter than honey and honeycomb Shimmering splendor to the eyes Binding wounded bones Good, honest and righteous

Between the poet and the legislator 121 10 Worth more than pearls, most Desired Written with the finger of He who dwells in the Heavens Cleansing of sin, for those who obey It justifies all who study it Its speakers are written in His book 15 Its scribes write words of justice It is a tree of life for those who hold it, A garland and a necklace of splendor Full of virtues, not empty Archaic, from an age before the seas 20 God raised through it the heights and the depths He sounded it to the lily of the valleys And pronouncing it sweetens the palate The artifice of this poem is quite magnificent as it is comprised of dozens of biblical gems all strung on the thread of the originality of the poetic structure. Almost none of this poem’s content is Qilir’s invention. However, it is his composition: namely, he chose the materials, located them within the text and arranged them within a rhyme and rhythm scheme. Two aspects of the poem in particular bear directly on the matter of law and awe. One involves content: this poem is describing the Torah, the same Torah that Moses was quoted before as saying was not beyond man’s world and reach. Does his poem align itself with such a claim? The answer seems to be ambivalent, which is exactly what makes Qilir’s poem so interesting. On the one hand, Torah as represented in the poem is written, engraved, studied and spoken of. It indeed is a gift from the heavens. It is a coherent gift, a body of knowledge that can be taught and used in courthouses. In that sense it is attainable, moderately wondrous, nonparadoxical and worthy of constant study. But the graven, accessible side of the Torah is discussed mainly in the second half of the poem, from verse 13 onwards. The first half is quite different. In the first few verses, the Torah is depicted metaphorically as a suckling mother, as gushing waters of life, and as a radiating light. These metaphors imply the unknown depths of the Torah and its wondrous, life-­ supporting, almost miraculous ability to give eternally. This depiction of the Torah sounds much closer to David’s cry, ‘it is too wonderful, I cannot attain it,’ just as the baby would cry when faced with the overwhelming power of his mother’s milk or as any person would when faced with the radiance of the sun. Thus, once again, various approaches converge: the Torah is splendor and a guide, awe inspiring and law inspiring. Notably, the form that this duality takes in this poem is not one of a binary opposition but rather of complementary juxtaposition. The poet begins with wonder and ends with justice and learning, devoting an equal number of verses to each perspective. The result is a representation of the duality of Torah in a well-­balanced manner. Thanks to this, the poet allows

122  Ariel Zinder readers or listeners to maintain in their imagination this double-­sided Torah, both wellspring and rule, and to enjoy this duality instead of deciding that one side is more important than the other. Another point of interest in this poem involves rhyme. As mentioned before, the poem is mono-­rhymed. The first word to end with this sound and set the tone for the rest of the poem is the word Huqim, which literally means ‘rules’. This is not a coincidence. Poets like Qilir, as noted earlier, were obligated to the rabbinical code of study identified with Moses. Hence, Qilir signifies that Moses came down from the mountain carrying what was first and foremost a tablet or book of rules. Yet the other verses begin pouring in one after the other, blending the original ‘rules’ with words such as ‘sweet’, ‘suckling’, ‘gushing’ and the like – words not easily identified with codes or rules. This clever move diminishes the dichotomy of law and poem, or duty and wonder. Once again, through this rhyme scheme, these two dualities seem to be at peace with each other. Even if this combination of law and poem is not explained discursively in the poem, it is clearly conveyed by the artistic form, and, as it is couched in sounds reaching the ear, it also induces a bodily sense of pleasure meant to heal schism or ambivalence created by scripture and exegesis.

The poetry of divine law: Judah Halevi My next Piyyut comes from a later age and a different historical context. We leave Elazar Qilir and move on to the renowned Andalusian poet Judah Halevi (1075–­1141), one of the leading figures in the golden age of medieval Hebrew poetry in Muslim Spain. This historical leap is not easily executed. Between the early poet Qilir and the later Halevi stand a few centuries and a broad shift of interest within Jewish religious culture. While Qilir’s world was one of Byzantine occupation, which Jews considered oppressive and antagonistic, Halevi lived and flourished in medieval Spain, the western-­ most tip of the great Muslim empire, a haven of intellectual and creative activity in which Jews and Muslims were constantly engaged in mutual inspiration and learning (Heath; Tanenbaum). One crucial difference between these two historical contexts was the place poetry occupied in both. While Qilir’s world mainly involved Talmudic and Midrashic prose, in Halevi’s cultural universe poetry was considered the topmost form of eloquence and wisdom and a mandatory part of an intellectual’s education and conduct. Furthermore, in Halevi’s society, Torah was not the only form of desired knowledge; philosophy, inherited from Greek, was readjusted to fit the requirements of monotheistic religious discourse. All this, it seems, would make poets such as Halevi thoroughly acquainted with notions of wonder. One would assume that the tension of law so prevalent in Midrash would disappear. And, indeed, within the non-­liturgical poetry composed in Halevi’s era, many poems were devoted to the wonders

Between the poet and the legislator 123 of the world and seemingly uninterested in the pull of religious law. But once these same poets wrote pieces to be performed at the synagogue, they encountered similar dilemmas and problems that their predecessors tended to, such as the problems of wonder and obedience. Thus Halevi, in this next liturgical poem, considers the wonders of Creation but does not neglect the wonder of scripture and of the divine word. The first three strophes of the poem are as follows:12 The words of God are pure, more precious than rubies Enshrined in hearts, entwined in souls All things toil to weariness when pursuing His praise How might a mortal man follow his endless eternity? As high as sky from land are His ways beyond man How might lacking one knowledge and short-­handed wisdom Grasp the exalted, impregnated ways of God’s glory? He who speaks is silent before Him and his thoughts are lost But through God’s actions he can compose poems at length And through God’s Torah he can sound forth his voice All tongues elevate and glorify and adorn Him All souls magnify, whether in thanks or in instruction Were this poem not written in such perfect rhyme and meter, and were it not so heavily indebted to poetics of classical Arabic poetry, it might be mistaken for a Davidic Psalm. The heartfelt words of praise in this poem dwell on unknowing and on the wondrous bond that nevertheless exists between the human and divine realms. The poet even seems to follow directly in the path of the second Midrash, when later in the poem, he says, like David before him: ‘His wonders cannot be counted/­ . . . every day they offer Him songs.’ Yet a careful reading reveals a similar sense of caution and tension between this sense of awe and its twin sense of obedience and adherence to the law. This is first implied in the opening statement, quoted almost verbatim from Psalms 12:7 (‘The words of God are pure’) and Proverbs 3:15 (‘She is more precious than rubies’): ‘The words of God are pure, more precious than rubies’. Later in the poem, Halevi stresses the ineffable nature of God Himself. But the poem begins – as fitting for the Festival of Weeks – with a depiction of God’s words, God’s sayings, God’s Torah. And this, it seems, is no ineffable matter. God’s sayings are ‘pure’, ‘worthy’ and dwell quite securely in the bosoms of believers. Notably, these opening verses not only comprise the beginning of the poem; their rhyme returns later at the end of each of the poem’s strophes. These initial verses form the message to be echoed throughout the poem, which brings out, not the wondrous, hidden nature of God’s sayings, but rather their clarity.

124  Ariel Zinder However, the ‘Mosaic’ dictum is revealed not only here but also in the third strophe. These lines begin with the topos of human language’s failure in portraying divine greatness. After posing the problem, the poet goes on to advocate a well-­known philosophical dictum, stating that if you cannot describe God, you must meditate on His workings. But then comes a surprise. The poet goes on to say that another way of overcoming the limitations of the human tongue is to speak of the Torah, to sing the praise of scripture or perhaps pronounce scripture itself as a poem of praise. In other words, in Halevi’s able hands, scripture itself remains faithful to the code of Moses, that is to say, it is not portrayed as wondrous in itself. But scripture does become a vehicle of a different wonder  – that of God Himself. This quite neatly settles the argument between Moses and David by suggesting that neither was completely right. Scripture is not wondrous in itself, but it does provide access to wonder. From this suggestion, Halevi proceeds to his next ingenious poetic move, which appears in the last verse: ‘All souls magnify, whether in thanks or in instruction’. Literally, the poet is describing the tongues of believers performing two verbal religious duties: thanking God and instructing others. His poetic statement, however, is more daring. He points to the linguistic fact that in Hebrew, the two words meaning ‘instructing’ and ‘giving thanks’ are almost identical. One is pronounced Lehodot and the other Lehorot. From this poetic perspective, instructing and giving thanks, being of the law or of the poem, are not opposites but rather very similar devotional activities. Indeed, this poetic artifice eventually intervenes in the old argument between poetry and law, accomplishing what homilies or sermons cannot. Halevi’s poem reveals the poem inside the law and the law inside the poem and creates, for a fleeting poetic moment, a world within which the person of faith may both be drawn to wonder and retract from it, simultaneously.

Voices from Sinai: Zelda’s wonder In her last poetry collection, Israeli poet Zelda (1914–­1984) included the following poem: I shall not float in space, Unbridled Lest a cloud shall devour The thin line in my heart Separating good from evil I have no existence Without the lightning and the voices I heard at Sinai13

Between the poet and the legislator 125 This poem was written in a wholly different setting than those of Qilir and Halevi. Zelda was a modern-­day poet, writing for readers and not for synagogue choirs. Yet as an Orthodox Jew, she repeatedly addressed the unresolved friction between her creative impulse and her religious duties. And like the two ancient poets, she, too, sought creative, symbolic solutions to this tension. In this poem, she begins with a declaration that echoes the stark legal language of the Ten Commandments, claiming that she ‘Shall not float in space’ – as if such floating were a sin. The next verse clarifies this statement: floating in space means for her taking part in an ‘unbridled’ existence, one that indeed might be dangerous and harmful to her and perhaps to others as well. This danger is then explicitly stated as she warns against the power of the unbridled existence to ‘devour’ her ethical watch keepers. So far, this poem reproduces God’s claim in the Uzzah Midrash. Those who float unbridled, free from study and obligation, end up mistaking wrong for right–­ a potentially lethal mistake. But then, the poet concludes her poem with an emotional existential statement: ‘I have no existence/ without the lightning and the voices/ I heard at Sinai’. According to the inner logic of the poem, this is where the poet should have posited the state or ethos that is diametrically opposed to floating unbridled. This might seem to be the point where she should discuss the bridled position, that of being reined in by commands and clear-­cut rules. But instead, the poet alludes only to the lightning and the ‘sounds’ of Sinai. Are these metaphors for the Torah? If so, they seem to point not so much to the clarity and endurance of the revealed word but rather to its blinding, ecstatic nature, striking the mind and the soul rather than instructing it. In other words, the event at Sinai sounds much more like a flash of divine intuition than a moderate acceptance of divine instruction. It is this flash that keeps in place the ‘thin line’ in her heart, so crucially ‘separating good from evil’. Once again, we encounter a complex attitude towards law and awe, and once again, poetry is right at its heart. For, as scholars have noted, this poetic statement by Zelda was clearly not only a matter of religious devotion, but also the statement of an observant poet trying to explain her commitments, commitments that were so different from those of her secularist colleagues. Very gently Zelda implies that, in her world and in her poetic universe, being ‘without Sinai’ means floating in the empty and dangerous skies, producing poetry that might be dazzling but is ultimately unbound and devoid of direction. But while she makes this statement, she writes in free verse, just like her secularist colleagues, thus literally creating a space of unbridled rhythm, fluctuating according to some unseen motivation and devoid of any sustainable form spelling out a sense of order and closure. By adding Zelda to the aforementioned poets, I do not intend to suggest that she was somehow influenced by them. There is no evidence that she even knew the poems discussed earlier. Rather, I suggest that all three poets share a common problem to which all three sought symbolic solutions.

126  Ariel Zinder In different manners, the problematics of wonder and obedience are to be found in many religious cultures. The tension accompanying this problem in Jewish religious culture is, however, unique. For among the scriptural languages, Judaism is one of the very few systems that has produced such a complex and elaborate scriptural interpretive scheme aimed predominantly at the production of both detailed rules and spiritual teachings. Pulling in both directions at the same time might, indeed, prove to be quite trying, and it was and still is in observant circles in Jewish culture. It is perhaps unsurprising that poetry is discovered lurking in the background whenever these matters are addressed. Poets seemingly felt this tension quite personally. It also seems that, for a very long time, Jewish poets have been seeking ways to come to terms with this tension so that they could see – even just for a moment – David and Moses singing their songs together.

Notes 1 I wish to thank Tamar Kadari for her insightful comments on earlier versions of this essay. I also thank the editors of the present volume for their keen interest in the Jewish perspective on poetry and wonder. 2 Many sources underlie scriptural wonder in Christianity and Islam. For a concise introduction to the matter, see Cohen and Berlin, especially chapters 1–­3. 3 One of the most striking instances of this position is found in the work of the 20th-­century theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel was among the very few Jewish thinkers who placed wonder as a fundamental Jewish response to the world and to scripture. He begins his God in Search of Man (1959) with a thorough discussion of sublimity, wonder and mystery. Yet Heschel, too, hurries to state that ‘The sense of wonder, awe and mystery is necessary, but not sufficient to find the way from wonder to worship, from willingness to realization, from awe to action’ (108). 4 The Midrash quoted here appears in the Lieberman edition of Devarim Rabba. For a brief introduction to the various editions of this collection, see Herr. 5 Devarim Rabba, Nitzavim, 5. For the Hebrew text, see Liebermann (116). The English translation here and elsewhere is mine, except for biblical passages taken (with slight variations) from The Holy Scriptures, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917. 6 An ongoing argument exists among Midrash scholars as to the attitudes of the rabbis towards poetry and poetic sensitivity. In his classic discussion of biblical parallelism, James Kugel claimed that the rabbis’ disregard for the poetics of parallelism amount to a ‘willful forgetting’ of this and other aspects of biblical poetry. On the other hand, Goldin and Kadari claim that the Midrash on specific biblical poems, such as the Song of the Sea or the Song of Songs, provides vibrant examples of the rabbis’ poetic sensibility that should be seen as the foundation of liturgical poetry. I do not intend to side with one position or the other but merely to add a different perspective while discussing the specific aspect of the poetry of wonder. 7 The phrase translated here ‘for his error’ reads in Hebrew ‘Al hashal’ – an unfamiliar and mysterious word. Other translators have suggested that it means ‘for reaching out his hand.’ 8 In a striking echo of this negative aspect of ‘song’ (Heb. Zemer), the rabbinic sage Rabbi Akiva (Akiva ben Josef) is quoted in the Tosefta (an early rabbinic source) as chastising one who ‘trills verses of the Song of Songs at a banquet and

Between the poet and the legislator 127 makes a kind of song thereof’ claiming that such a person ‘has no share in the world to come’ (Tosefta Sanhedrin 12.10). Akiva’s intention, as Tamar Kadari points out, was to restrict the understanding of the Song of Songs to a learned (rather than literal and poetic) interpretation. 9 In these homilies, grammatically, God seems to be saying, ‘I choose Moses’; rhetorically, however, he is saying, ‘I choose to tell you about it.’ This double rhetorical move of referring to someone while exclaiming a refusal to refer brings to mind Paul de Man’s famous distinction between grammar and rhetoric – the first being the imaginary production of a simple signified message and the latter being the deflective, unexpected engendering of further signifiers (de Man 1973). 10 For a basic introduction to Piyyut, see Fleischer. For a discussion of the literary nature of Piyyut, see Lieber and Novick. 11 I wish to thank Tzvi Novick for his wonderful contribution to the translation of this text and for many other useful comments on the paper. 12 For the Hebrew text, see Brody 3:78. 13 Used by permission of Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers Ltd. For an alternative translation of the poem, see Falk (231).

Works cited Bialik, Haim Nahman. ‘Halacha and Aggadah’. Trans. Leon Simon. In Revealment and Concealment: Five Essays, 45–­88. ———. Revealment and Concealment: Five Essays. Jerusalem: Ibis, 2000. Brody, Haim. Diwan des Abu-­l-­Hasan Jehudah ha-­Levi. London: Gregg International Press, 1971 (first published 1910). Cohen, Mordechai Z., and Adele Berlin, eds. Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Conrad, Johann. ‘Pele’. In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 11. Ed. Botterweck, Ringgren, and Fabry. Trans. David E. Green. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002, 533–­46. De Man, Paul. ‘Semiology and Rhetoric’. Diacritics 3.3 (1973): 27–­33. Falk, Marcia. The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems, Zelda. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004. Fleischer, Ezra. ‘Piyyut’. In The Literature of the Sages, [Compendia rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, Section 2, The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud, part 3]. Ed. Shmuel Safrai. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006, 363–­74. Goldin, Judah. The Song at the Sea. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971. Handelman, Susan. The Slayers of Moses. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983. Heath, Peter. ‘Knowledge’. In The Literature of Al-­Andalus. Ed. Maria R. Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin and Michael Sells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 96–­125. Herr, Moshe David. ‘Deuteronomy Rabbah’. In Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed., vol. 5. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, 620–­1. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God in Search of Man. New York: Meridian Books, 1959. Idel, Moshe. ‘Midrash vs. Other Jewish Hermeneutics’. In The Midrashic Imagination. Ed. Michael Fishbane. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, 45–­8.

128  Ariel Zinder Kadari, Tamar. ‘ “Friends hearken to your voice”: Rabbinic Interpretations of the Song of Songs’. In Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings. Ed. Klaas Smelik and Karolien Vermeulen. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Kugel, James L. The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Levinson, Joshua. ‘Literary Approaches to Midrash’. In Current Trends in the Study of Midrash. Ed. Carol Bakhos. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 189–­226. Lieber, Laura. Yannai on Genesis: An invitation to Piyyut. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2010. Liebermann, Saul, ed. Midrash Debarim Raba. Jerusalem: Wahrman, 1974. Novick, Tzvi. ‘The Poetics of Yannai’s Sixth: Between Scripture, God, and Congregation’. In Giving a Diamond: Essays in Honor of Joseph Yahalom. Ed. Wout van Bekkum and Naoya Katsumata. Leiden: Brill, 2011, 69–­81. Shin'an, Avigdor. ‘King David of the Sages’. In From Bible to Midrash: Portrayals and Interpretative Practices. Ed. Hanne Trautner-­Kromann. Lund: Arcus, 2005, 53–­78. Tanenbaum, Adena. The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

9 Scandalous wonder Contemplating the cross with Isaac Watts Jean Ward

1 When I survey the wond’rous cross On which the Prince of Glory dy’d, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride. 2 Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ my God; All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood. 3 See from his head, his hands, his feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down; Did e’er such love and sorrow meet? Or thorns compose so rich a crown? 4 His dying crimson like a robe Spreads o’er his body on the tree; Then am I dead to all the globe, And all the globe is dead to me. 5 Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all. (Watts, Hymn 3:7. ‘Crucifixion to the world by the cross of Christ’, Gal. 6:14.) Is there a universal, human ‘religious instinct’? Basil Hume thinks so, and he draws on what he calls the ‘intuition’ of St  Anselm to demonstrate it. In Hume’s Benedictine outlook, informed by the Psalms and the Church Fathers, one of the most important characteristics of the religious instinct is a ‘sense of awe’ resulting from an intuitive awareness that there is something

130  Jean Ward greater than ourselves. Closely linked with this is ‘a sense of bafflement in the face of the unknown’, which Hume associates with the medieval mystical theology of The Cloud of Unknowing. The consequent ‘sense of wonder’ belongs both to the ‘religious instinct’ and to ‘aesthetic experience’. Paraphrasing C.S. Lewis, Hume says that wonder is ‘the power to detect shafts from the glory of God as they impinge upon our sensibility’ (5). Hume’s reflections provide, perhaps unexpectedly, a useful starting point for my considerations here, not only because of the breadth of view that they imply – the human capacity for wonder being seen as a key element in a religious instinct shared by all – but also because of the way that they find common ground between religious and aesthetic experience in the sense of wonder. It would not be difficult to trace a ‘theology of wonder’ in Judeo-­Christian tradition. To see that ‘the sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose’ and yet find in this nothing wonderful, but only a world-­weary sense that ‘there is no new thing under the sun’ (Eccl. 1:5, 9)1 is presented in the Book of Ecclesiastes as the discouraged outlook of an over-­strained mind that has lost the youthful capacity to delight in the world. It contrasts with the motif of renewal and the new in both the Psalms: ‘thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s (Ps. 103:5) and in the New Testament: ‘Behold, I  make all things new’ (Rev. 21:5). The spirit of the Lord ‘renews the face of the earth’ (Ps. 104:30), and in Christian tradition the attitude of joy and wonder in the natural world continues, for example, in Benedictine spirituality and in the Celtic monastic tradition: David Jones remarked in the early Celtic monks and hermits, ‘a consciousness of the beauty of the created world not always found in ascetics’ (254). This same awareness is evident in the ‘Cantico delle Creature’ of St  Francis, which perhaps is not far in spirit from St Ignatius’s ‘cry of wonder’ in the first week of his Spiritual Exercises at the way that ‘the heavens, sun, moon, stars, and the elements; the fruits, birds, fishes, and other animals’ have all ‘been at [his] service’ (30). Given that Ted Hughes considered the Exercises the ultimate in training and strengthening the imagination (25), we should not be surprised to find parallels to this in poetry as, for example, in the childlike, ecstatic delight of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’ (Poems 70). As suggested by Angela Leighton with reference to Les Murray’s poetry: ‘Being ‘agog’ might be, for the poet, the best kind of thinking’ (160). So, as the theme of this book suggests, wondering may be the common ground where the religious, the philosophic and the poetic meet. But though the way of thinking implied by Hume’s idea of wonder is broad, it could seem that it turns a blind eye to those unavoidable aspects of experience that arouse dread or fear. While the attitude of wonder is neither necessarily uncritical nor naively confined to appreciation only of the good and the beautiful, yet we may associate it most readily with a childlike joy in discovering the world. Thus we cannot help but pose the question: is such a sublime, apparently untroubled delight in creation as we find, for example,

Scandalous wonder 131 in Psalm 8, in ‘The Canticle of the Creatures’ or in Hopkins’s ‘Pied Beauty’ (69–­70) out of touch with the inevitable human experiences of suffering, desolation, meaninglessness and death or with the sense of the power of evil in human history? In this context, we may do well to recall that even St  Francis’s hymn of praise and innocent communion with ‘Brother Sun’ and ‘Sister Moon’, with Water, Fire and Mother Earth, does not overlook the presence of sickness, trial and sin in the world. Even more noticeably, beside such poems as ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’ and ‘Pied Beauty’, we find in Hopkins’s oeuvre not only a sequence of ‘terrible sonnets’ of utter spiritual desolation, but also a linking of astonished admiration at the beauty of the created world with a presaging of the bitter agony involved in Christ’s redemption of that world (‘The Windhover’, Poems 69). When we look more closely, expressions of wonder, of which Psalm 8 is the locus classicus, turn out never to be free of a sense of the smallness and weakness of human beings. St Ignatius’s ‘cry of wonder’, for example, is provoked not only by the beauty and variety of creation, but also by the astonishing fact that this outpouring of love continues despite the exercitant’s perception of wickedness and sin – of the power of evil in the affairs of an individual human being. In the discussion that follows, I intend to try, at least, to look at the idea of a wonder that is of this kind, a wonder that takes account of the presence and power of evil in the world. This is the ‘scandalous wonder’ of my title: the Incarnation with its inevitable conclusion in the cross, in which all terrible experience is inscribed: experience on which the mind would rather not linger, preferring indeed not to ‘wonder’. The discussion will focus on a hymn by Isaac Watts (1674–­1748): ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’, undoubtedly the most popular and well-­known hymn in all this writer’s prolific output. When we study the feast days and memorials of the Church, we find an appalling array of grisly deaths commemorated in the general and local calendars: St Lawrence (10 August), for instance, roasted on a grid; St Ignatius of Antioch (17 October), torn to pieces by wild animals; St  Edmund Campion (25 October), hanged, drawn and quartered, to mention only the last of the atrocious harms inflicted on him. Campion represents a group of martyrs, the Catholic recusants of Elizabethan England, whose courage and ‘absolute reasonableness’ drew the admiration of the poet Geoffrey Hill; yet at the same time, as Hill also observes, the imagination shrinks from contemplation of their fate (21). Some, indeed, consider it best not to try to overcome such reluctance, arguing that by singing the praises of those who died in unspeakable ways, by not allowing us to forget what those ways were, the Church perpetuates a cult of cruelty and violence (Pagnoulle 96). Admittedly, this argument has a certain force. One would surely much prefer not to be reminded of the methods of martyrdom that diabolical ingenuity has invented and continues to invent, and no doubt it is possible to focus too much attention on these things. Nevertheless, to ignore them altogether might be unjust, denying the memory of the martyrs out of a selfish

132  Jean Ward desire not to have one’s mental comfort disturbed. I would suggest that the Church throughout the ages may have found a way to steer between these two extremes, and we find the origin of this balance in the New Testament: Jesus, ‘for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God’ (Heb. 12:2). The Epistles of St Paul constantly exhibit this balance, and it is notable that not only the particular hymn by Isaac Watts that I wish to consider here, but also the whole collection from which it comes, makes explicit allusion to these writings (Hymns and Spiritual Songs: cf. Eph. 5:18–­9).2 The importance of St Paul to the hymn ‘When I Survey’ was made obvious in the original edition by a title and Bible reference which few subsequent editors have included  – Donald Davie and Helen Gardner being noteworthy exceptions. Watts’s original title reads ‘Crucifixion to the world by the cross of Christ’, and this is followed by a reference to the particular Pauline Epistle alluded to: Galatians 6:14. This shorthand, if we follow it to its source, reveals the following context: ‘But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’ Here is the suggestion, then, in St Paul, that it is possible, indeed right and good, to ‘glory’ in the cross of Christ. We should not forget, either, that it is from St Paul that the idea of the cross as a ‘scandal’ – skandalon – stumbling block – originates (I Cor. 1:23). For shame and humiliation to become ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God’ (I Cor. 1:24) is a ‘scandalous wonder’ indeed. I want to argue that there is a strain in religious poetry in English that goes back to the first Christian millennium, a way of thinking and seeing in which this strangest of paradoxes, adumbrated by St Paul, is the explicit subject, and that Watts’s hymn, whether or not he intended it, belongs in this tradition, whose earliest surviving example is the supremely beautiful Anglo-­Saxon poem known as ‘The Dream of the Rood’, in which the cross itself speaks, telling the story of the Crucifixion. As J.A.W. Bennett tells us, the origins of this poem are associated with the development of the Good Friday liturgy and the institution of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the seventh century (9–­10). This Feast continues to be observed on the same day, 14 September, in both Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, and it might seem a far cry from the religious sensitivities of an 18th-­century dissenter like Isaac Watts. But let us look at some of the often-­ quoted words of the Sermon on the Adoration of the Cross by St Theodore the Studite (749–­826), found as a reading in the Roman Catholic breviary for the Friday of the second week of Easter:3 How precious the gift of the cross, how splendid to contemplate! In the cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: it is wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return. This was the tree on

Scandalous wonder 133 which Christ, like a king on a chariot, destroyed the devil, the Lord of death, and freed the human race from his tyranny. This was the tree upon which the Lord, like a brave warrior wounded in his hands, feet and side, healed the wounds of sin that the evil serpent had inflicted on our nature. A  tree once caused our death, but now a tree brings life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree. What an astonishing transformation! That death should become life, that decay should become immortality, that shame should become glory! Well might the holy Apostle exclaim: Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I  to the world! The supreme wisdom that flowered on the cross has shown the folly of worldly wisdom’s pride. The knowledge of all good, which is the fruit of the cross, has cut away the shoots of wickedness. (Oratio in adorationem crucis: PG 99, 691–­4, 695, 698–­9) It is the same Pauline paradox, explicitly invoked by St  Theodore in this eighth-­century sermon, that informs both The Dream of the Rood and Watts’s most famous and well-­loved hymn, whose title makes reference to the very same passage as St Theodore here quotes. There is some internal evidence to suggest that the congruences are attributable not only to a common New Testament source, but also to the existence of a religious and poetic tradition. We see this very obviously in the opening two lines of the hymn, with their idea of ‘surveying’ the cross. In his discussion of Watts in The Eighteenth-­ Century Hymn in England, Donald Davie particularly ponders the significance of this word. Quoting from the Oxford English Dictionary, he draws attention to such meanings as ‘to look at from, or as from, a height . . .; to take a broad, general or comprehensive view of . . .; to consider or contemplate [my emphasis] as a whole’ (42). To survey the cross, then, Davie implies, is to contemplate it, as in St Theodore’s sermon, and this is what the venerative practices connected with Good Friday and with the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross are designed to encourage. If we recall the situation introduced at the beginning of The Dream of the Rood, in which the speaker tells of ‘the most treasured of dreams’, a vision of ‘the strangest of Trees,/ Lifted aloft in the air, with light all around it’ (Gardner 25), then even though the devotional tradition said to lie behind the poem would suggest looking up rather than down, from an attitude of prostration, still the same sense of space and of the ‘general or comprehensive’ is implied, the same ‘contemplating as a whole’ as Davie suggests informs the word ‘survey’ in Watts’s hymn. The speaker looks up at the ‘Tree’ lifted high, ‘aloft in the air’, where ‘Hosts of angels gazed on it/ In world-­without-­end glory’. Equally significantly for our discussion, ‘Holy souls in heaven hailed it with wonder [emphasis added]’ (Gardner 25). If we return with this in mind to ‘When I survey the wond’rous cross’, we shall surely discover in the

134  Jean Ward formulation of the second line, ‘On which the Prince of glory died’, some echo of the vision of the saviour as the ‘young Hero’, the ‘royal King’, ‘strong and steadfast’, who came in The Dream of the Rood as a brave and eager warrior to mount the ‘high gallows’ (Gardner 26; in Theodore’s sermon, ‘like a king on a chariot’). In the version of Watts’s hymn presented in Davie’s Augustan Lyric (1974) and in The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1981) the mood of the line ‘Where the young Prince of glory died’, comes still closer to the Anglo-­Saxon poem.4 John M. Hull has suggested, with regard to the development of the art of surveying and of commerce in the 17th and 18th centuries, that by implication, in the opening line of Watts’s hymn, the one surveying adopts a position of superiority in relation to the object surveyed.5 But Hull goes on to say that here the object, the cross, turns the tables, so to speak, and becomes the one surveying, turning the ‘pride’ of the speaker to ‘contempt’, forcing him to rethink his whole life and being in relation to the object which now, we might say, extending Hull’s argument, he ‘contemplates’ from below. Rather than ‘surveying’ from above like some potential buyer of land or inheritor of fortune, the speaker becomes like the humble ‘transgressor/ Stained by [his] sins’ whose vision of the cross is recorded in The Dream of the Rood (Gardner 25). The direction of his gaze is altered: he must look up if he is to notice what ‘flows . . . down’ from the cross. In this new perspective, he begins to ‘see’, a word that implies spiritual rather than merely physical vision, in contrast to ‘survey’, with its implications of pride, power and control; thus he is able to perceive the true riches of Christ’s ‘love and sorrow’, in whose light even the ‘richest gain’ is ‘but loss’. In the final stanza, the possibly possessive, arrogant implications of the word ‘survey’ in the first line are pushed completely aside; any kind of possession, even ‘were the whole realm of nature mine’, becomes an irrelevance and the reversal of values is complete (see Hull 113–­7). Hull does not make a point of the Pauline subtexts in the language of this hymn, but one must surely be reminded here of Philippians 3:8: ‘I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord’. Nor does Hull remark any connections with what Bennett calls ‘poetry of the Passion’ in English, yet he notes that at the end of the hymn, the cross ‘which once I ventured to survey now looms up, larger than the cosmos’ (117), and surely the feeling expressed in its final stanza is not far at all in spirit from the aspiration of the one who has ‘surveyed’ the cross in The Dream of the Rood: here below I wait For the coming of the day when the Cross of my Lord Which here on this earth my own eyes have looked on, From this fleeting life will fetch my soul away. (Gardner 29) The association of Watts’s hymn with a tradition of contemplation of the cross seems abundantly clear when we consider it with reference to

Scandalous wonder 135 St  Theodore’s sermon and the ancient Anglo-­Saxon poem. But the same association is suggested by some aspects of the hymn’s grammatical structure that are so seemingly obvious and natural that their implications might easily be overlooked. First, there is the dominance of present tenses that is established in the first stanza and continued throughout the hymn: ‘When I  survey  .  .  .’; ‘I count but loss  .  .  .’; ‘pour contempt.’ Where past tenses occur, they do not indicate a past event that is cut off from the present, but one that is constantly before the eyes of the one whose ‘surveying’ becomes ‘seeing’. True, what is contemplated is the cross ‘on which the Prince of Glory died’, but that ‘dying’ is ever present, and it is now, in the time of contemplation, that its ‘sorrow and love flow mingled down’. The question, grammatically linked with the past, ‘Did e’er such love and sorrow meet/ Or thorns compose so rich a crown?’ has a present perfect meaning: was there ever a moment to be compared with this one that ‘presents’ itself before the eyes of the questioner? Thus there is present meaning throughout the hymn, even when the grammatical form implies the past, and the meaning takes shape within the soul in its contemplation-­adoration of the cross. Equally worthy of note is the fact that the one sentence in the hymn which has the form of a question is scarcely a question at all in its meaning. Even if formally we might term it rhetorical, it does not have the coldly rhetorical function of persuading to intellectual assent, nor does it evidently have an addressee other than the person who poses the question. Instead, it is both an exclamation and an evocation of wonder, awakening the soul to ‘love and sorrow’: sorrow for ‘all my pride’ and for ‘the vain things that charm me most’, love for the suffering Christ. It is both the expression of surrender to the ‘amazing’ love of God and a summons to that surrender by which the soul, in an act of utter self-­giving (‘my soul, my life, my all’), becomes united with Christ. Though the hymn contains not only a question, but also several imperatives, there is no sense of any person being addressed other than the ‘Lord’ of the second stanza. Significantly, Watts included this hymn among those ‘Prepared for the Lord’s Supper’; with a shock of unexpected recognition, I realize that to describe it as a ‘Dialogue between the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ’ would be by no means unfitting. If this begins to sound more reminiscent of saints like St  John of the Cross or St Teresa of Avila than of a non-­conformist divine of the English Enlightenment, then perhaps Watts’s hymn prompts us to re-­examine certain assumptions. This brings us to the question of the fourth stanza, which, as Davie points out, has frequently been omitted, perhaps as an expression of religious feeling that ‘subsequent generations have found indigestible’ (The Eighteenth-­Century Hymn in England 43). And, indeed, although this stanza is included, for example, in the Anglican New English Hymnal, few of the versions of ‘When I survey’ that are available online contain it. Yet this stanza is surely essential to the whole, being the one in which the Pauline idea expressed in Galatians 6:14 is most clearly realized: ‘Then am I  dead to all the globe/ And all the globe is dead to me’. If the stanza is,

136  Jean Ward or has been to many, ‘indigestible’, however, this is probably due to the conceit which precedes Watts’s paraphrase of St  Paul. In a hymn whose vocabulary is generally so simple, at least apparently so, the extravagance of this conceit is something of a surprise: blood ‘spread o’er his body on the Tree’ like a royal ‘robe’ turned shroud (all this is implied by the punning phrase ‘dying crimson’, crimson dye being obtained only at great expense and sacrifice of life – albeit insect life).6 Davie calls it an idealization – in the sense of turning something into an idea  – declaring somewhat startlingly that this is a technique learned from the baroque, from the ‘idealizing and yet sensuously saturated art of the Counter-­Reformation’ (44). In support of this perception, he reminds us that Watts was ‘indebted to “the Christian Horace” ’, the Polish 17th-­century Jesuit Matthew Cassimire Sarbiewski,7 and he identifies what he considers to be a baroque disjointedness in the syntax of ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’, linking the opening ‘when’ clause of the hymn not only with the main clause of the first stanza but also with the ‘then’ clause of the fourth (‘Then am I dead. . . . ’) (The Eighteenth-­ Century Hymn in England 43–­4). In this context, and in view of what I  said earlier concerning ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ as a kind of ‘dialogue between the soul and the Bridegroom Christ’, it is also worth noting the frequency of motifs of bridal mysticism – a particular characteristic of the Counter-­Reformation, though not, of course, confined to it – in Watts’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs. These include a whole series based on the Song of Songs, and in Hymn 1:75, for instance, this is combined with wonder at the cross and a recalling of Christ’s wounds:8 1 The wondering world enquires to know Why I should love my Jesus so: ‘What are his charms,’ say they, ‘above ‘The objects of a mortal love!’ 2 Yes, my beloved, to my sight, Shews a sweet mixture red and white: All human beauties, all divine, In my beloved meet and shine, 3 White is his soul, from blemish free; Red with the blood he shed for me; The fairest of ten thousand fairs: A sun amongst ten thousand stars. 4 His head the finest gold excels, There wisdom in perfection dwells; And glory like a crown adorns Those temples once beset with thorns.

Scandalous wonder 137 5 Compassions in his heart are found, Hard by the signals of his wound; His sacred side no more shall bear The cruel scourge, the piercing spear. 6 His hands are fairer to behold Than diamonds set in rings of gold; Those heavenly hands that on the tree Were nail’d, and torn, and bled for me. . . . Similar motifs are found, for example, in Hymn 2:75, where two stanzas in particular might even remind us of a well-­known celebration of human erotic love, Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’: 3 There, where my blessed Jesus reigns In heaven’s unmeasur’d space, I’ll spend a long eternity In pleasure and in praise. 4 Millions of years my wondering [emphasis added] eyes Shall o’er thy beauties rove, And endless ages I’ll adore The glories of thy love. Watts’s poem, indeed, turns Marvell’s on its head, making a divine love song of a human erotic one: for Marvell’s human lover, ‘vast eternity’ is a ‘desert’ (see Grierson 73–­4), while for Watts’s loving soul, it is a ‘heaven’ of ‘pleasure and praise’, in which the soul will be forever united with its divine bridegroom.9 Following this line of thought, we might consider that the ‘beauties’ and the ‘glories’ referred to are – like the ‘love and sorrow’ flowing from ‘His head, his hands, his feet’ in ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ – the wounds of Christ, transformed into the proofs and source of love. A similar idea is to be found in Hymn 2:12, which explicitly combines the motif of wonder with that of Christ’s wounded side: 4 He took our mortal flesh to show The wonders of his love; For us he paid his life below, And prays for us above. 5 ‘Father, (he cries) forgive their sins, ‘For I myself have dy’d,’ And then he shews his open’d veins, And pleads his wounded side.

138  Jean Ward Davie concludes his discussion of Watts’s most well-­loved hymn by suggesting that whereas ‘in any age there has to be a point at which order, harmony, composure are bought too dearly at the expense of fellow-­feeling with torment and suffering’, and whereas in many of his hymns, Watts sacrificed fellow-­feeling to poetic elegance,10 no such thing can be said of ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’. Poetry, perhaps, makes the contemplation of the unbearable possible, but by giving the title ‘Watts’ atrocity hymns’ to the chapter in which he considers this astonishingly beautiful poem, Davie lays the emphasis on the unbearable rather than the lyrical. By declaring that the ‘atrociousness’ of the Crucifixion – its ‘scandalous wonder’, to use the terms of my own title – ‘is nearer being acknowledged’ in the baroque image of ‘his dying crimson, like a robe’ than in what he implies are more decorous phrases on the same subject in other of Watts’s hymns, such as ‘hung ’twixt earth and skies’ (The Eighteenth-­Century Hymn in England 46), Davie opts by implication for an art of utter personal involvement, abandonment even: ‘Love so amazing, so divine/ Demands my soul, my life, my all’. He seems clear that ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ can only be appreciated by setting it in the context of an art that was deeply foreign to the prevailing taste of Watts’s times, and he surely is not mistaken in his initially somewhat surprising placing of this hymn in the baroque tradition. He might, however, be wrong to deem this tradition so entirely un-­English (my expression, not his). What is even more interesting for the purposes of the present discussion than his attribution of baroque qualities to the hymn is his remark that the qualities he identifies, the disjointedness of syntax and passionate feeling far in excess of what is generally found in Watts’s poetry, might be ‘forced on the poet by the ardour of his meditations’ (44). Here, whether he realizes it or not, Davie implies a tradition much older than the Baroque and one that has important representations, perhaps surprisingly, in English poetry. In the introduction to his anthology Augustan Lyric, Davie points out that not all the hymns which were so important a part of the lyric poetry of the 18th century can stand the test of being ‘abstracted from the catchy tune that comes to mind’ along with the words (5–­6). But even if we regard this as an unfair test for poetry that was designed from the outset, as the title Hymns and Spiritual Songs indicates, to be sung, ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ would nevertheless surely pass it. Watts, as Davie tells us, was a ‘cultivated Latinist’, like Cowper and the Wesleys (6); all were ‘learned and sophisticated men who sought for their hymns a diction meaningful to unlearned congregations’ (9). As Watts in his own Preface tells us: ‘I have aimed at ease of numbers, and smoothness of sound, and endeavoured to make the sense plain and obvious. If the verse appears so gentle and flowing as to incur the censure of feebleness, I may honestly affirm, that sometimes it cost me labour to make it so.’ The simplicity that we find, for example, in the unforced, perfect naturalness of the rhymes, Davie affirms, ‘is the product of art’ and of ‘heroic abnegation’ of devices that he had shown himself abundantly capable of deploying (16).

Scandalous wonder 139 It might seem surprising that such a well-­loved hymn as Watts’s, a hymn which can be read as a pure piece of poetry without the support of the tune, written by a poet who, as Davie has it, ‘represents  .  .  . the one unavoidable tradition of English poetry’ (Augustan Lyric 16), is not included in all anthologies of religious verse. It is not to be found, for instance, in R.S. Thomas’s Penguin Book of Religious Verse (1963) or in Joseph Pearce’s Flowers of Heaven (1999), nor is it in David Cecil’s The Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1940), though the editor includes a small selection of other work by Watts. I wonder, then, in another sense of this key word, if it is not too fanciful to suggest that the decision as to whether or not to include ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ in such anthologies might depend on another, prior decision or assumption: that of where the tradition – if not ‘the one unavoidable tradition of English poetry’, then at least the tradition of religious poetry in English – may be considered to begin. Pearce’s subtitle, One Thousand Years of Christian Verse, defines the limits from the outset: it was to be an anthology of the second millennium to celebrate the arrival of the third (Preface 19), but the editor does not explain why he chose to disregard the first. Thomas arranges his material by topic rather than chronologically, implying a beginning, however, by the inclusion of a handful of anonymous medieval English lyrics. Cecil’s anthology opens with the Middle English mystic Richard Rolle. Whereas Helen Gardner (The Faber Book of Religious Verse, 1972) and Donald Davie (The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, 1981), who do include Watts’s hymn, begin their selections with a translation of a considerably older piece of poetry: that is, the Old English meditation on the cross known as The Dream of the Rood, which has played so prominent a part in our discussion, and which, like Watts’s hymn, presents the agony and dying of Christ as transfigured into glory.11 Davie would certainly claim for ‘When I  Survey the Wond’rous Cross’, as Paul Murray does for Aquinas’s Eucharistic hymns, that it is an exception to the general rule that ‘the words of hymns, when detached from the music that accompanies them, are not particularly impressive’ (Murray 158). Watts’s hymn, like Aquinas’s Adoro te devote or Panis angelicus, ‘in terms of beauty and meaning, of imagery and lyric power’, is a poem in its own right (see Murray 158). Furthermore, as Davie suggests in the introduction to his Augustan Lyric, it belongs to ‘a body of religious poetry which is the least religiose of any that one can think of’ (29). As such, one might possibly add, it is part of ‘a body of religious poetry’ that is unexpectedly uniting. ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ is almost as likely to be sung today in a Roman Catholic church as in a Methodist one (even if not necessarily in both cases including its ‘baroque’ stanza). The reason for this is probably to be found in the pre-­Reformation resources of Christian tradition on which the hymn draws, for these are resources that, whether consciously or not, the whole Church shares. For Bennett, the 18th-­century hymn-writers ‘cease to be sectarian’ only when they ‘follow the pattern of ancient devotions’, as he implies that Watts does in ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ (182). John Hull is

140  Jean Ward certainly right, drawing on Hilton, to observe that this hymn is free of the ‘penal and substitutionary theory of the atonement which was to become so important in the Victorian period’ (118), but what he does not note is that it is free of this theory and its terrifying concomitant image of God the Father (see Ratzinger 230–­4) because it inherits a different tradition of thinking about the cross: one that, while it appears much more congenial to modern sensitivities, has an ancient origin, for it evidently informs The Dream of the Rood, written so many centuries before Watts and still more before our own. In the strange, almost oxymoronic formulation ‘the wond’rous Cross’, the object of wonder is above all the love that ‘flows’ from ‘his head, his hands, his feet’; the ‘glorious Wounds’ that remain even in heaven because they remind us of that love. As far from Roman Catholicism as the author of this hymn was, he might nevertheless agree with the formulation of Pope Francis, more than three centuries after ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ was written, in his homily for the canonization of Blessed Pope John Paul II and Blessed Pope John XXIII in 2014: ‘The wounds of Jesus are a scandal, a stumbling block for faith, yet they are also the test of faith. That is why on the body of the risen Christ the wounds never pass away: they remain, for those wounds are the enduring sign of God’s love for us’.

Notes 1 All biblical texts in this article are quoted in the King James version. 2 ‘And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord’ (Eph. 5:18–­9). 3 The fact that this meditation on the cross is placed among the readings for the Easter season (albeit on a Friday) rather than in Lent certainly deserves attention, though it is a matter outside the scope of the present discussion. 4 Bennett similarly argues that ‘If, as David Jones affirmed, the second line . . . originally ran, in defiance of metre, ‘On which the young prince of Glory died’, then the nexus with the Anglo-­Saxon poet who had pictured the figure on the Rood as just such a prince is undeniable’ (182). Bennett appears to be misquoting Jones, however: the version of Watts’s line in the essay ‘Wales and the Crown’, in which Jones writes of the association of the figure of Helena with ‘that instrument on the hill Where that young Prince of Glory died’ (Epoch and Artist 44), scans perfectly. It is also almost identical to the versions in Augustan Lyric and The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse. 5 ‘To survey is to measure exactly, usually with a view to estimating the value of an estate or property. To survey also means to carry out an inspection of an area from a vantage point or to offer a comprehensive description of something or other. The important feature which all these meanings have in common is that the one who conducts the survey is superior to that which is surveyed. The one who surveys is the owner or master of that which is measured, inspected or laid out.’ (See Hull 113.) 6 As Hull points out (116), the metaphor used by Watts here also occurs elsewhere: for example, in Hymn 1:7, which includes the following lines: ‘Ye perishing and naked poor/ Who work with mighty pain/ To weave a garment of your own/ That will not hide your sin/ Come, naked, and adorn your souls/ In robes prepared by God/ Wrought by the labours of his Son/ And dyed in his own blood.’

Scandalous wonder 141 7 On Watts and Sarbiewski, see Gőmőri. 8 Hymn 1:75. The description of Christ the beloved, Cant. 5. 9–­12, 14, 15, 16. 9 I am grateful to Małgorzata Grzegorzewska for pointing this out to me. 10 As, for example, with the lines: ‘knotty Whips, and ragged Thorns/ His sacred Body tore!’ in ‘Look on him whom they pierced’ (Augustan Lyric 50, Hymn 2:95), heavily criticized by Davie as sacrificing feeling to elegance. 11 In Davie’s anthology, the translator is named as Michael Alexander. Gardner does not name the author of the translation in her anthology, but to judge by the note on p. 342, it is she herself, and it is this version that I have quoted throughout.

Works cited Bennett, J.A.W. Poetry of the Passion: Studies in Twelve Centuries of English Verse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Cecil, Lord David. The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940. Davie, Donald, ed. Augustan Lyric. London: Heinemann, 1974. ———. The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. ———. The Eighteenth-­Century Hymn in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Gardner, Helen, ed. The Faber Book of Religious Verse. London: Faber and Faber, 1972. Gőmőri, George. The Polish Swan Triumphant: Essays on Polish and Comparative Literature from Kochanowski to Norwid. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Grierson, Herbert J.C., ed. Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921. Hill, Geoffrey. Collected Critical Writings. Ed. Kenneth Haynes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ed. W.H. Gardner and N.H. Mackenzie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. Hughes, Ted. Winter Pollen. Ed. William Scammell. New York: Picador, 1995. Hull, John M. Towards the Prophetic Church: A Study of Christian Mission. Norwich: SCM Press, 2014. Hume, Basil. The Intentional Life: The Making of a Spiritual Vocation. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2003. Ignatius of Loyola. Spiritual Exercises. Trans. Louis J. Puhl. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1951. Jones, David. Epoch and Artist. New York: Chilmark Press, 1959. Leighton, Angela. ‘Incarnations in the Ear: On Poetry and Presence’. In Poetic Revelations: The Power of the Word III. Ed. Mark S. Burrows, Jean Ward and Małgorzata Grzegorzewska. London: Routledge, 2017, 149–­63. Murray, Paul. Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Pagnoulle, Christine. ‘Music Alone Survives? Collapsing Faith in Some Sonnets by G.M. Hopkins and Geoffrey Hill’. Cahiers Victoriens et Eduoardiens 42 (1995): 91–­107. Pearce, Joseph, ed. Flowers of Heaven: One Thousand Years of Christian Verse. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005.

142  Jean Ward Pope Francis. ‘Homily for the Canonisation of Blessed Pope John Paul II and Blessed Pope John XXIII’. 27 April  2014, http://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­francesco/­en/­ homilies/­2014/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20140427_omelia-­canonizzazioni.html Ratzinger, Joseph. Introduction to Christianity. Trans. J.R. Foster. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004. First published in German, 1968. Theodore the Studite. Oratio in adorationem crucis: PG 99, 691–­4, 695, 698–­9. Ebreviary. Thomas, R.S., ed. Penguin Book of Religious Verse. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. Watts, Isaac. Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707. Project Gutenberg.

10 This world of wonders Theology, poetics and everyday life Heather Walton

This essay takes as its starting point recent theopoetic engagements with wonder in everyday life. Focussing initially upon the significant work of Richard Kearney in this area, it goes on to argue that wonder must always be considered alongside those experiences of absence and loss which it inevitably throws into sharp relief. This theme is then explored in relation to the fiction of Jean Rhys, the theoretical work of Michel de Certeau and, in particular, with reference to the author’s own recent theopoetic work.

God’s good greening Some of the most important work in contemporary theology is currently being undertaken in the mode of theopoetics.1 This approach seeks to form a creative relationship between ancient sacred traditions, particularly those which explore the mystery of divine making, and the meaning-­making practices through which we encounter the sacred today. The hope inspiring this project is that a radical and political theology can be constructed that will articulate both the joys and the violence of the way we live now. Rooted in flesh and matter, this theological form reaches out to touch a divine mystery. Amongst ‘theopoetic practitioners’, Richard Kearney has made it his special concern to contemplate the persistent, ubiquitous and startling presence of wonder in the world. Two of Kearney’s essays, in particular, offer succinct theopoetic testimony to the bright flashes of glory with which life is charged. ‘Epiphanies of the Everyday’ and ‘Enabling God’ are constructed from a joyous admiration of the sacred vitality of the everyday world. Together, they represent a recasting of eschatological promise as something that addresses us through wonder in the midst of ordinary circumstances. It can be heard, touched and felt: in the cries of the street, the softness of skin and the greening power of an endlessly generative and creative conviviality. To evoke this convivial communion, Kearney uses a ‘biblical-­ish’ image and presents the coming of God as being just like a good party. This

144  Heather Walton goes on through the night till we touch the tips of a glorious morning – with no hangovers or work the next day (‘Enabling’ 54). Reading him, I imagine a kind of holy Bloomsday,2 a perfect 16 June in Dublin. On this day we roll out of bed to a celebratory fried breakfast, wander through sunny streets with a lover, watch the seagulls swooping and dipping their wings in the Liffey before meeting friends in the pub. Here, our lively political discussion transforms into poetry, morphs into music, develops into  dancing and leads us, bright eyed and breathless, out on to the streets again just as the white light of early morning is breaking. In this carnival, we discover the everyday world to be overflowing with life abundant, pointing us towards a joyous and uproarious consummation of all things. Kearney’s work in these brief essays is refreshing: full of the greening power he celebrates. This is a force which infuses life into little things, things that are simple and common, and yet draws us through and with them into the most glorious of mysteries. In evoking this sacred energy the form in which Kearney writes becomes an essential aspect of his theological project. Not only does he employ evocative and image laden prose, he also draws upon the works of favourite poetic authors whose words become integral to the body of his texts. The results are works that carry the reader from intellectual engagement with doctrinal thinking to engaged participation in an imaginative construction: He does not . . . attenuate the (possible) content of God talk so much as gently shift its potency from the propositional to the imaginal. This hermeneutical motion supports the sense of those who believe that theology must risk a return in style to the heteroglossia of Scripture and . . . to the affective and aesthetic genres of the spiritual imaginations – if it is to stand a chance of postmodern rebirth. (‘Kearney’s Endless Morning’ 355) This stylistic move is important. In theopoetics how we write is as important as what we say – the two cannot be separated. However, this is not an easy challenge to embrace. It certainly took me a long time to discover my own voice and to begin to write in a form that was coherent with my theological practice. This was partly because I spent the first half of my career in the seminary world and it is very busy. Also seminaries tend to emphasize the importance of learning and teaching. I thought of myself then, I guess, as a maths teacher rather than a mathematician. Now, having passed into another sphere of the Academy and another stage of life, I have come to revalue the creative work that was always an accompaniment to my theoretical writing. As a life writer I use a different genre and affective register to that employed by Kearney. However, although my style may be more colloquial I am addressing a similar challenge. I too am using creative writing to construct a theopoetics

This world of wonders 145 that honours small and ordinary things. I  use simple words to catch at a mystery and hold it for a little while to wonder at it. Here is a passage from Not Eden, my recent book of spiritual life writing, that touches on God’s greening generativity: My friend Chloe and I sat in the sweet sunshine on the daisy covered grass in Canongate churchyard. It was Saturday morning and we had newspapers and milky lattes. Just feet away from us tourists were toiling up the Royal Mile but we were alone in this green place with the famous dead. Just to impress them I  said, ‘Jacques Maritain believed that if you admit the existence of the tiniest speck of moss clinging to a gravestone then life’s generative power has overwhelmed you and you have fallen into the terrifying hands that made us all’. My good friend looked into her wax paper cup and then she said, ‘I have always thought that God was like a huge, lazy, lovely, red haired woman. Her place is a mess. She leaves her coffee cups unwashed and spots of mould start to form in the dregs and traces. Each cup contains a cosmos to itself. She has this effect on things. She isn’t tidy enough to stop them growing.’ My friend was right I think. There is decay, dust, dirt. This makes a place for the spores to settle. (119–­20)

The dust and the darkness The tone of Kearney’s writing on everyday life is luminous and joyful but he is not one of those silly, cheerful people you want to strangle. He knows the sorrows of the world and his celebration of material existence in the everyday, does not contest the fact that life can be unbearably cruel. Indeed his celebration of eschatological hope is made with an awareness that it is the weak and the vulnerable who bear not only divine promise but also the suffering of the world. ‘Too often we forgot the fact that God is manifest in the least ones calling for a cup of cold water, asking to be fed, clothed, cared for, heard, loved’ (‘Epiphanies’ 11). Indeed it is precisely because the lives of the little ones are shot through with suffering that Kearney attempts his eschatological revisioning. He is seeking to construct a vision of hope that is congruent with the realities of life and to do so he is refashioning the resources of the theological tradition. However. I do have some worries about Kearney’s eschatological imaginings; some concerns about his enticing picture of the culmination of late-­night partying in a new dawn; a ‘morning that never ends’ (‘Enabling’ 54). He presents this bright morning as a consummation of the humble in which ‘no creature, however small or inconsequential, [is] left out in the cold, hungry, thirsty, uncared for, unloved, unredeemed’ (‘Enabling’ 54). I  am not

146  Heather Walton unduly perturbed by the outrageous optimism this picture represents, there is a place for such visions of consummation in religious thinking. I am more worried that whilst we engage with Kearney in constructing eschatological promise out of everyday wonder we might unwittingly participate in, what Catherine Keller describes as, the Western ‘cultural passion to annihilate the darkness, whether evil, mystical, epidermal – or uteral?’ (‘Kearney’s Endless Morning’ 360). In speaking of the epidermal and the uteral, Keller is drawing attention to Kearney’s use of the image of the Chora – womb and matrix – out of which the great morning will be born. She is also referring back to her own work on creation out of chaos in which she asserts that our origins (and thus presumably our endings) are not to be located in pure realms of light (Face of the Deep). Keller asks that we recognize the ambivalence and chaos of the choric space and acknowledge the tragedy and evil woven in wondrous fabric of the world. Are these to be overcome? New dawned . . .? In my experience, the darkness of existence always, and simultaneously, emerges in sharp relief when we are encountered by wonder in the world. Through imaginative and symbolic resources of creative writing, we find the resources that equip us to address us this ambivalent epiphany. So, for example, when I read Keller’s critique, I am drawn back to the expressive work of Jean Rhys. I love her writing for its patterning of light and darkness as always together – interrelated. Light under a closed door, between the slats of blinds  – Rhys is a very cinematographic author. This is well illustrated in this famous passage from Wide Sargasso Sea in which, after the death of her mother, the child Antoinette finds comfort in the material of everyday life at her convent school: Great splashes of sunlight as we ran up the steps of the refectory. Hot coffee rolls and melting butter. But after the meal, now and at the hour of our death. Let perpetual light shine on them. This is for my mother . . . then I remembered how she hates a strong light and preferred the cool shade. It is a different light they told me but still I would not say it. Soon we were back in the shifting shadows outside. More beautiful than any perpetual light could be  .  .  . Everything was brightness or dark. The walls, the blazing colours of the flowers, the nuns’ habits were bright but their veils, the Crucifix hanging from their waists, the shadows of the trees were black. That was how it was light and dark. Sun and shadow, heaven and hell. (56–­7) In her autobiographical novel Good Morning Midnight, light and dark are also married in the title and throughout. Rhys ends this work with a carefully constructed alternative, ‘Bloomsday’. A  dark-­light Molly Bloom’s3 day in which the heroine takes as her lover, clasps to herself, the appalling

This world of wonders 147 form of damned humanity. Her cry ‘Yes, yes, yes’ (159) is not one of awakening and generation. It is an acknowledgement and acceptance of mortality. A ‘yes’ not of passion but ‘compassion’ that comes from one lost soul to another ‘poor devil of a human being’ (159), stranded beyond paradise in the beautiful but dangerous and blighted garden of a world gone wild. Theopoetics, with its project to loose theology from its propositional captivity, also draws upon imaginative and symbolic resources to give expression to this variegated creativity. It is able to acknowledge the darkness that dwells along with light rather than overcoming it with an endless morning. In my own life writing, I try to express the passionate relations of light and darkness as I construct what Kearney describes as a microtheology (‘Enabling’ 42) out of the life material of a girl growing up in a common way, in a common place. In the following extract I seek to explore, also through images of mother-­daughter relations, the dark, uteral qualities that Keller wishes to see retranscribed in theological imagining. In our new house everything was very carefully chosen, saved for and modern. The wallpaper, the washing machine the carpets and the cups all mixed in well together. They settled down and were at home. But a dress hung in my Mother’s new wardrobe that she never wore. The dress did not fit easily into its hanging space. It had a full, full skirt. This was stiffened with sewn-­in netting and when the door opened the skirt unfurled and blossomed out. There was a faint scent to it too. The dress was made from sateen cotton. The background was white and it was patterned all over with huge red roses. The roses were not scarlet and neither were they crimson red. They were as deep and as dark as blood . . . My mother was beautiful. Her hair was ash blonde, her lipstick was frosted sugar. Her skin was pale and flawless. She wore shifts or shirt-­ dresses, miniskirts, slacks, polo necks  – and she had saved for a pair of Mary Quant shoes. Her earrings were daisies and if ever a flower appeared on her clothing it was simple and with open petals. Not ever a dark red rose. So it seemed as if we were living in a happy, daylight world of soft dolly mixture colours. The special dress was too complicated and had no proper place here – apart from where it was hung. Squeezed into its narrow, dark casing. But this was only half the truth of the world . . . [Once] she told me that when she was a girl she had sat with her own mother one bright spring day and they had made flowers from tissue paper. They were not small or delicate blooms but as big as tea plates. And they had hung them all around the living room so that it had blossomed like a tropical paradise. Like the hothouses in Canal Gardens at Roundhay Park. There were more flowers in that wee space than in

148  Heather Walton Leeds market. They had made the flowers because her mother loved life, and gaiety, and every colourful, fantastic thing. But she was too ill to go outside anymore and enjoy the real flowers coming into bloom. And soon after she was too ill to do anything anymore . . . And my poor mother was just 14 years old. So then came the years of the dancing and the lovely dresses and the courting of the handsome young man. And the crying at night time and the long blank days in which the sun never rose. It was never one thing or the other. Never just the sunshine or just the shadows. It was always a mixture of things. Such a beautiful dress and the strong slim, fiancé with his dark hair and white shirts and shining shoes, his hand on her elbow – gentle. Going to the seaside and walking arm in arm along the pier. Tennis on a Saturday afternoon. Cinema and Hotel dances and creeping in through the bathroom window of the Nurses’ Home after the front door was locked. And the great aching longing that came at night, in the silence.

When dawn does not come I have been exploring here how, as a theologian and writer, I seek to engage with wonder in the world in a manner that also acknowledges the loss, absence and destruction that mark the shadow side of existence. A major sub-­theme in my life writing is always infertility. The empty womb a choric space of unbecoming. This is partly due to my own experience. I spent ten years of my life trying to conceive and being unable to do so. However, infertility is not only a physical condition; it is also an epistemological location. This is my particular window on the world, and I  have learned to see things differently by looking through it. From the beginning, infertility appeared as a theological rather than a medical problem to me. How do I place this experience within the context of the world I love and wonder at? So glorious, so alive, vital, green and gold and God enabling? How do I do this? I found many voices in creative writing that were able to speak my pain, but it was much rarer to encounter theological writing that engaged honestly both with wonder and with loss. However, in the writings of the radical and dissident Jesuit Michel de Certeau, I did discover insights that appeared to embrace both poles of my existence whilst articulating a profound sense of the deep, dark joy of things. For de Certeau’s writing is elaborated from loss. This absence, for him, found profound expression in the narrative4 articulated in Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory. For Lacan, in order to become human, we have to break the bond of union with the maternal. This is necessary for such blissful absorption precludes the development of subjectivity; the primal jouissance we enjoy is deathly. Identity is achieved at the cost of renouncing our primal home. Although we thus enter the world of language and culture, we do not rest content in the symbolic order. We feel ourselves to be exiled,

This world of wonders 149 wounded and forever seeking something we cannot name but know we have foregone. Our lives unfold around an absence at the heart of things. Desire, which is born from loss, impels our wandering quest to encounter the sacred from which we have been separated. This understanding is the hermeneutical key through which de Certeau seeks to understand history, human life and, in particular, our longing for God. For his reflections on this topic are not confined to the loss and desire experienced by individual subjects. He is interested in historical spiritual sites of instability and transition and, principally, in the restless movement of everyday life. As Graham Ward argues, de Certeau’s powerfully articulated descriptions of exile and absence represent a challenge to the realised eschatology of the rational utopia . . . broken up by Certeau’s profound analysis of loss, mourning and desire . . . But the question can then emerge, what makes possible this absence which provokes desire and peregrinage? What space, place, body (they are all related) is presupposed in order that there can be practices of everyday life at all? The “One may no longer be found’, as Certeau writes . . . but that all the kenotic desire which follows from this ‘is obviously a part of the long history of that One’ is nevertheless affirmed. There is an ‘elsewhere’, there is another country which ‘remains our own, but we are separated from it.’ (Cities 178) Ward appreciates the profundity with which de Certeau names the longing for the One that cannot be found and the manner in which he situates this deep within everyday practice. He, nevertheless, feels impelled to suggest that faith requires we supplement absence with a clearer sense of the divine beloved whose withdrawal has created the space in which our pilgrim journeys unfold. A  spirituality of departure, of homelessness and journeying requires a theological underpinning – to go out, to be sent, to proceed in the name of God. For there is nothing otherwise spiritual about social destitution (‘The Voice’ 528). His criticism is that de Certeau has not sufficiently grounded his quest in an intimation of the sure but unseen sacramental presence that sustains the journey. But Ward’s efforts to redress de Certeau’s failure to proceed in the name of God and illuminate the darkness of the spiritual space he creates do not fully take into account the significance that de Certeau accords to the everyday as a site of epiphanic promise and eschatological hope. It is in this sphere that desire is experienced not only as absence and loss, but also as generative and generous creativity. We may have become used to seeing everyday life as the routine order imposed by an oppressive system upon its passive and compliant subjects. But in de Certeau’s opinion, this perspective fails to recognize that desiring subjects cannot ever be fully governed, pacified and controlled. They will always resist with what de Certeau calls ‘sweet obstinacy’ (Practice

150  Heather Walton of Everyday Life 213): bend the rules, live a little, laugh a little and find the energy not to go under but go to the movies. Just by living in their own idiosyncratic ways, decorating a room, telling a joke, cooking, walking, gathering on street corners, wasting time, wandering about people are constantly turning the grids of the city, the grids of cultural control into living spaces. They engage in a process of making, often a making do, a poesis right at the heart of an order that appears to have overwhelmed the possibility of such agency and achievement. For de Certeau, these practices are epiphanic. They astonish and evoke admiration at their intricate arts. See how sweet and stubborn and beautiful this everyday life is. It fills us with wonder. That Ward has failed to recognize the theological significance of this important element in the work of de Certeau is certainly the opinion of Philip Sheldrake. He struggles against ‘too strong an emphasis upon ecclesial’ readings of de Certeau and the over spiritualization of his work on everyday life. For Sheldrake believes that de Certeau looks at the everyday as a Jesuit, trained in the Ignatian way of proceeding through, in which the ordinary becomes a potential site of revelation. For Sheldrake, de Certeau has perceived that the everyday is positioned not only in opposition to the state, but also in contrast to the sacramental and scriptural economies. Indeed, its revelatory potential depends upon its place beyond such boundaries. Sheldrake writes: In de Certeau’s Conclusion to his collection of essays on political themes, Culture in the Plural, the ‘everyday’ has an almost transcendent, even mystical quality. As he puts it ‘daily life is scattered with marvels’ and these wonders are to be found everywhere, not least on the streets. Luce Giard [a close friend and collaborator] notes that de Certeau was predisposed to see wonder in the everyday ordinary by the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. She also suggests elsewhere that The Practice of Everyday Life discloses ordinary life as mystical and was a kind of reflection on ‘other ways’ of believing beyond the explicit boundaries of the Church. (Spiritual City 107) I am in close sympathy with Sheldrake’s thinking here but wish also to register that Ward takes very seriously the sense of dereliction and abandonment that marks de Certeau’s work, whereas Sheldrake does tend to elide this through his incorporation into de Certeau’s epiphanic vision. For myself, as I have stated, an engagement with wonder in the world will always throw into sharp relief the absence and the loss with which they are entwined. In The Mystic Fable, de Certeau’s final and unfinished project on mysticism, I find words that address my own immersion in loss in a manner that pierces very deeply. ‘What should be there is missing’ (1). The adored missing body. Writing ‘sings its loss without being able to accept it’ (4). In this final extract from my writing, I seek to sing this loss in my own theological voice.

This world of wonders 151

The flowering rod Eve works in the garden. Everything bursts its bounds here. There is too much fruit to gather. What does not fall directly into the hand must be left to rot on the tree. Eve is pregnant and lazy, but the garden must be tended. It has to be worked even if that means just pruning what has grown too quickly so that it can bear even more in the years to come. Eve swells in the opulent garden and remembers the command: ‘All the earth is yours So work and feed Fill your swelling stomach Eat and breed’ What a vulgar little rhyme. How very like God to be prosaic. She rephrases the injunction: ‘Be Fruitful and multiply Fill the earth and subdue it.’ Much more satisfactory . . . Everything has its mirror image. Eve spelled backwards is Eve. Eve is a small dark person who is not pregnant. She sits still, and the cells within her do not multiply. She does not experience the cancer of birth. She does not tend or tame the earth because she knows that to subdue anything will in the end destroy it. Besides which, Eve is not safe to work in a walled garden. This is a very wild place . . . I was Eve working in the garden tying in the raspberry canes, and my hands and my lips were stained by mulberries too soft and sweet to gather. I wanted to bear good fruit, but something happened in the night, and there was blood on the grass in the morning, and nothing would grow any more. So now I am that other Eve. A small, dark person who lives by her wits in the savage garden. You have been told that the universe is a place of constant growth and regeneration. I am compelled to contradict you and say that it is a barren, wasted place. For all the things that grow, there are partners in things that never came into being. I am their mother, and even if they are forgotten, I shall remember them. I am their witness. Once the Spirit said to me, ‘See how much is given’.

152  Heather Walton Now she whispers of what has been denied. So much has been denied. How many cold stars, how many frozen deep or burning hot stars for just this one green earth? And yet without them what motion, what fire or ice, except that which has been borrowed? Perhaps one day she will lead me out of here, show me a place to clamber out beneath the barbed wire fence and inherit a green and golden portion. In dreams sometimes I  do seem to taste her milk and honey. But when awake, I  am captured by the strange beauty of this wilderness. See how sweetly blow my poppies. How brightly they flower even in the churned-­up earth, growing amongst the twisted metal, from the patch of earth that is stained dark. There are wild roses too. Wreaths and wreaths of briars. How beautifully grows the bindweed. It grows between the links of the wire mesh fence. It grows right to the top of the wire mesh fence. The only flowers they can see when they press their cheeks to the fence which is too high to be climbed, and there is no escape from the beams of the arching lights. Mine are the only flowers that can grow in such a place. They are necessary. And there in the corner blooms a fragment of the true cross. Blossoms coming straight out from the bare wood. I confess that it does not grow very strongly, but it is a miracle that it grows at all. You will have been told not to believe that this is the cross upon which the saviour hung. To you it seems a false and pagan relic. I am not so sure. To me it is a mysterious thing, and it certainly is alive – though in a way I cannot understand. Standing close, I  can see that it is stained with blood. Perhaps this is holy blood? And perhaps also it is the blood of all those who treasured it, kissed it, fought over it, haggled for it, traded it, stole it, passed it from hand to hand and touched it in the hope of a healing that never came. I suppose that some of them were children. The blossoms have a lovely scent. (Not Eden 135–­7)

Notes 1 The term theopoetics incorporates a wide range of approaches (see Keefe–Perry, Ways to Water, for an introduction to the field). However, Christian authors working in this way all tend to employ deeply incarnational perspectives which may be drawn from ancient traditions such as theosis and/ or contemporary theological perspectives such as those expressed in death of God theology, feminist theology and process thought. These are combined with a style of writing that privileges the poetic over the referential and seeks to generate new theological meanings which address significant political, cultural and religious concerns.

This world of wonders 153 2 Kearney employs a range of creative sources in his writing. In this essay, he owes a particular debt to his fellow Irish writer James Joyce. 3 Rhys’s narrator echoes Molly Bloom’s ecstatic ‘yes’. 4 I read Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory more as a modernist narrative of trauma and exile than a ‘scientific’ theory.

Works cited De Certeau, Michel. The Mystic Fable: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. De Certeau, Michel, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Kearney, Richard. ‘Enabling God’. In Manoussakis ed., After God: Richard Kearney and the Continental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy, 339–­54. ———. ‘Epiphanies of the Everyday: Toward a Micro-­Eschatology’. In Manoussakis ed., After God: Richard Kearney and the Continental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy, 3–­20. Keefe-­Perry, L. Callid. Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014. Keller, Catherine. Face of the Deep. A Theology of Becoming. London: Routledge, 2003. ———. ‘Kearney’s Endless Morning’. In Manoussakis ed., After God: Richard Kearney and the Continental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy, 355–­61. Manoussakis, John Panteleimon, ed. After God. Richard Kearney and the Continental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. Rhys, Jean. Good Morning Midnight. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. ———. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1982. Sheldrake, Philip. The Spiritual City: Theology, Spirituality and the Urban. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Walton, Heather. Not Eden: Spiritual Life Writing for This World. London: SCM Press, 2015. Ward, Graham. ‘The Voice of the Other’. New Blackfriars 77 (1996): 518–­28. ———. Cities of God. London: Routledge, 2000.

Part III

Literary perspectives

Creed I believe in him, my father, who came down from Scranton with a brand new wife to Exeter, PA –­ to have her and to hold till death did part. I believe in all their sons and daughters to the end of time and farther on. I believe in every living thing, especially the worms that make their way through seasons of the skin, by light or shade, digging small runnels in the soil and subsoil, knowing that the birds won’t find them easily and change their slither-­world again. I believe in change as well, however painful. It’s where we live, my good friend says: always eternal in the moment’s burn if not burned out by calendars, a waste of pages. I believe in stars that dangle over barns and burrows, ditches, scummy ponds; I believe in keepers of the watch by night, those lonely shepherds and their sheep who graze, their wild-­eyed children who rise up to live and learn by several degrees of chance, becoming what they must become by choice or merely accidents of time and place. Signore, I believe in almost everything except in those who can’t believe, who say that he is dead, my only father, who came down from Scranton on the drizzle-­cloud of his unknowing and gave life to me, which I pass on. Jay Parini

11 Wonder and the power of the word Piero Boitani

The frontiers of poetry are wonder and silence. Wonder lies at the source of creating poetry and at the end of the poetic act, when the work of poetry passes into the sight, hearing and soul of the reader. Silence is the void from which wonder draws the word and into which the word sinks when it stops being pronounced. It is also – the danger poetry constantly runs – the moment of an always-­possible failure. For poetry possesses the same characteristics as all human activities and the human being itself – it is born, grows, is always in danger of meeting a terminal obstacle, dies. Giambattista Marino, the great Baroque poet, formulated in an exemplary manner the theory that wonder represents the frontier at the end of poetry’s course: ‘È del poeta il fin la meraviglia’, he wrote: ‘The poet’s aim is wonder’ (395). The question here is not simply one of Baroque poetics. If poetry is not capable of raising its reader’s wonder, to hold for an instant his or her always-­distracted attention, then really, as Marino writes rhyming with meraviglia, ‘vada alla striglia’; ‘let it be thrashed’. Aristotle already understood this. In several passages in the Poetics and the Rhetoric, he underlined that to thaumastón, the marvellous, is necessary in narrative and tragedy as well as poetry, because human beings find ‘learning and admiring’ pleasant (Poetics 1452a, 1460a; The Art of Rhetoric 1371a31–­b 5, 1404b10–­2). The sections that follow give some instances of how this might work and show how wonder and the power of the word are tied to each other.

Wonder as the telos of poetry In Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound (ll. 89–­90), the Titan tied to the rock contemplates the ocean, which he calls ‘ποντίων  .  .  .  κυμάτων/ ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα’ (‘the infinite smile of the waves of the sea’). The image is so unexpected, both in the tradition and in this particular play, that the listener is momentarily transfixed. He forgets everything he might have known of the sea as a physical entity made up of water and mineral salts, of the sea as life’s cradle, as vehicle of history, navigation, transport, trade – in sum, everything he knows of physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, economics and

158  Piero Boitani historiography  – to bask for a second in the numbing enigma of poetry, asking himself how waves could possibly smile and then agree that, yes, on a day of shining sunlight the glimmering reflection of billows and foam might indeed appear, once he has decided to relate it to human feelings, like a smile. And in this conclusion the reader, now conquered, is confirmed by Lucretius, who, at the beginning of his poem on nature, writes, echoing Aeschylus, that the waves of the sea ‘smile’ – ‘rident aequora ponti’ (On the Nature of Things I, 8) – to the generating power of Venus. The decisive point here is the leap from natural to human which poetry prompts us to make. That leap, the poetic metaphor, is the carrying over, a transfer, of one thing into another, and it is by means of this element of surprise that poetry achieves its aim of generating wonder. Neither Aeschylus nor Lucretius are Baroque poets, yet both elicit their readers’ wonder by means of their words. Rilke’s angel, the ideal recipient of poetry, is ‘staunender’, ‘more astonished’, when the poet tells him of ‘things’ (Rilke Werke 2, Duineser Elegien IX, 57). Here are two more examples, with varying degrees of transference, of wonder and words. One comes from Lucretius, whom we have just met. A dozen lines after the ‘smiling waves’, Lucretius is still celebrating Venus, who instills love in all creatures and thus makes it possible for living species to perpetuate themselves through desire. Here, he uses an expression he borrows from the Annals of the archaic poet Ennius (II, 117–­21): Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile quicquam (since you alone rule the nature of things and without you nothing rises to the divine banks of light, nothing becomes joyful or amiable.)1 (Lucretius I, 21–­3) Lucretius is never banal or given to conceits. Instead of employing what for us would be the locus communis for ‘being born’ – that is, coming to light  – he intensifies Ennius’s already powerful expression, ‘luminis oras’, by adding the qualifying adjective ‘dias’, divine. Since Lucretius never refers to the divine casually, we can assume that the adjective is metaphorical, because it indicates not Olympus, the reign of the gods, but this earth of ours. ‘Divine’ will therefore stand for ‘sublime’, so extraordinary and immense that it appears supernatural. The universe becomes a boundless shore of light – or rather, in the plural to underline its infinity, the divine banks and shores of light. The three words make the reader see light as an effulgent ocean breaking on its shore. My second example comes from the Bible. When God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, he immediately seizes on the moment of creation to interrogate the interlocutor. ‘Where wast thou when I  laid the foundations of the earth?’ he asks, ‘when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons

Wonder and the power of the word 159 of God shouted for joy?’ (AKJV, Job 38:4–­7). What happens here is even more stupefying. By virtue of a technique characteristic of Hebrew poetry, according to which the content of the second half of a verse is a variation of the content of the first half, the morning stars and the sons of God – that is, the angels – assume a common identity by virtue of their hymning voices. People in the past were so astonished by this verse that they found in the first half a confirmation that the Bible knew of the music of the spheres first propounded by Pythagoras. Finally, the famous opening of Psalm 19: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. (Psalms 19:1–­4) The concrete cosmic images and the names of the constellations mentioned in other Psalms have all vanished from this poem. We no longer have morning stars singing together, no sons of God shouting for joy, no communion as in the Book of Job. All seems to have become pure word, story, language: the sky is an annunciation, the heavens a narrative. And yet, immediately afterwards, even the sounds disappear, and the words that spread to the end of space and time, reverberating from day to night and from night to day, are silent. The contradiction between the speech of the first verses and the silence of the later ones is, of course, only apparent, whether because the language of the cosmos is thought to be, in accordance with the Babylonian and Assyrian tradition, a silent writing, or because it is conceived as soundless speech from the very beginning. Scarcely has the reader, however, noticed the absence of celestial objects and their light, scarcely has he or she had time to adjust to the metaphor of the sky’s narration, than he or she is confronted by the silence of the firmament. Stupor, at this point, seizes him. Nor can an educated reader avoid associating it – leaving aside history, archeology and philology – with Pascal’s ‘silence éternel de ces espaces infinis’ (Pascal 187). Yet perhaps it was St Augustine who pinpointed the feeling with which one reacts to a passage like this. Wonder, for him, becomes horror and tremor, awe and trembling. He exclaims in the Confessions: Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface, see, is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness. It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love. (XII, xiv)

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Wonder and power of the poetic word: antiquity Wonder is not only the telos of poetry but also its origin. In other words, poetry begins, like science and philosophy, with wonder. In the Theaetetus (155D), Plato stated very clearly that the source of the love for wisdom, philosophia, is wonder, to thaumazein. But it was Aristotle who developed this idea more fully and transmitted it to subsequent thinkers. In the second chapter of the first book of the Metaphysics, Aristotle maintains that: it is because they wonder that human beings, both now and at first, began to philosophize. In the beginning they wondered about the curious things that were near at hand, and then gradually moving forward they started to puzzle over the larger matters too, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those to do with the sun and stars, and with the coming to be of the cosmos. Now he who puzzles and wonders takes himself to be ignorant; for that reason the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, since myth is composed of wonders. (A.2, 982b12–19) Plutarch, Strabo and others in late antiquity would be influenced by these lines (Hepburn). Two things, however, should be noted about them. The first is that Aristotle’s main concern is with philosophy, and so wonder has for him a primary cognitive value. The second is that, unlike Plato, he extends his considerations to love of myth, philomythia, maintaining (in the vulgate version β) that the philomythos, the lover of myth, is somewhat of a philosophos because myth is made of wonders. A different version (α) of the last sentence of the passage reads ‘in a sense the lover of wisdom (philosophos) is a myth-­lover (philomythos), too, since myth is composed of wonders’. The latter meaning would rest, to quote Sarah Broadie, ‘on the less obvious point that philosophers often have reason to be grateful to myth for highlighting explananda which the mythical imagination makes sense of in its own fashion, and even for providing proto-­theories which invite philosophical critique’ (Metaphysics Alpha 63). In both cases, however, what is clear is that by philomythos, Aristotle means primarily the poet or the artist in general because it was the poets, from Homer and Hesiod onwards, or earlier still Orpheus, Musaeus and Linus, who told myths which would later be explored by natural philosophers. Thomas Aquinas, who evidently read the Latin translation of version β, does in fact comment that ‘hence the first who dealt with the principles of things “per modum quemdam fabularem”, in mythical manner, are called theologizing poets (poetae theologizantes), as was Perseus and others called the Seven Sages’ (In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio l. III, 55). If the philomythos is, in the first place, a poet or an artist, what Aristotle is saying is that, in either case, poetry, natural science and philosophy have the same source in wonder, so much so that (in version α) poetry precedes scientific

Wonder and the power of the word 161 and philosophical investigation in searching for explanations of, for instance, the genesis of the universe itself. This is no small claim for poetry, myth and narrative. It puts them on a par with science and philosophy and, coupled with the statement in the Poetics that poetry is more serious and philosophical than history because it deals with universals (1451b58–­9), it represents Aristotle’s most notable departure from his teacher, Plato. Aristotle, we know, composed poetry himself, and we even have a moving fragment of a letter he must have written in old age, in which he says that the ‘more isolated and lonely’ he is, the philomythóteros he becomes: that is, the more he loves stories (Demetrius 144; Renehan 285–­90). Thus, we can envisage him at the end of his life turning to poetry as Socrates had done before him (Phaedo 60c–­61b) and as Homer was thought to have done when, in old age, he composed the Odyssey: ‘as genius ebbs’, the author of the Sublime wrote, ‘it is the love of storytelling (philomython) that characterizes old age’ (Longinus 12). Aristotle reading the Odyssey in his dotage strikes me as a beautiful image both of wonder and of the power of the word. It goes hand in hand with the equally aged Goethe saying to Eckermann that ‘the highest that man can attain in these matters [they were talking about the theory of colours] is Erstaunen, astonishment’ (Eckermann, 18 February 1829). In ancient Greece, one writer was able to make old age the occasion of supreme poetry: Alcman. In the surviving fragment of a choral lyric, he tells the maidens he had led into the dance in the past that he can no longer do so. He envisages himself as a cerylus, the male of the halcyons or kingfishers. When old and unable to fly on their own, these birds apparently entrust themselves to the halcyon hens, flying, as it were, aboard their wings: No longer, honey-­toned, strong-­voiced girls, can my limbs carry me. If only, if only I were a cerylus, who skims over the wave’s bloom with the halcyons, with resolute heart, holy, sea-­purple bird’. (Greek Lyric 416) Alcman would ordinarily lead the dance, singing the song composed by him for the occasion. His incapacity to take part in it implies for him relinquishing the performance of his poetry, the ritual and sacred moment when it becomes public movement and voice: it means losing at least half of the resonance that the poem has for him. For this reason, he desires to be at least like the kingfisher which, when carried by the hen of the species, can continue to fly over the sea foam. Flying like this means bringing the fragility of old age back to a youth now past but still accessible through the young women of the chorus; it means becoming strong and resolute once more. Above all, it means regaining the ‘purple’ colour of the sea depths, caressing the surface, carrying the reflection of the ocean. Thanks to the halcyon hens,

162  Piero Boitani it means at least being present to poetry, still possessing its light, composing it as though skimming across the water. Sadness dominates the first line of the fragment. Then, when the wish is expressed, a quiet joy takes over  – as if it were the enraptured exultance of vicarious flight. This reaches a climax with the two key expressions of the composition: halipórphyros, ‘sea-­ purple’, and epí kýmatos ánthos, ‘over the flower of the waves’. The former, a word used twice before Alcman in the Odyssey (VI, 53; XIII, 108: note ‘a marvel’, thauma in the latter case), might best be translated as ‘sea-­bright’ or ‘sea-­glaring’. It is startling when applied to a bird, turning it into a reflection of the sea. But the latter is the true surprise: the ‘flower of the wave’ possessing the same wonder-­ producing power as Aeschylus’s ‘smile of the sea’. How remarkably evocative are these lines by an aged poet of ancient Greece!

Wonder, claritas and the word: the Middle Ages The central figures in medieval speculation on wonder are, in philosophy and theology, Richard of St  Victor and Thomas Aquinas and, in poetry, Dante. Let us begin with Dante, who has a remarkable paragraph about wonder in the Convivio (IV, xxv, 5): Ché lo stupore è uno stordimento d’animo per grandi e maravigliose cose vedere o udire o per alcuno modo sentire: che, in quanto paiono grandi, fanno reverente a sé quelli che le sente; in quanto paiono mirabili, fanno voglioso di sapere di quelle. (‘For awe is the amazement of the mind at seeing or hearing, or in some way perceiving, great and marvelous things. Insofar as they seem great, they instill reverence for them in him who perceives them; insofar as they seem marvellous they make him yearn for knowledge about them’.)2 The concluding idea that the marvellous leads to the desire for knowledge echoes Aristotle and Thomas, at least in his comments on Aristotle’s interpretation. For both of them, wonder incited the soul to look for causes, the explanation of things. Exclusively Dantean, however, is the emphasis on ‘amazement’, a stunned condition (stordimento), rather than just wonder, and the observation, so succinctly expressed, that it led to reverence when inspired by greatness and to knowledge when inspired by wonder. One could even maintain that the entire Comedy is built around this principle and that the closer Dante gets to the vision of God, the greater his amazement (stordimento) becomes, to the point that it verges on what is called stupor in English. Take, for instance, the moment he and Virgil emerge out of Hell onto the shore of Purgatory. The pilgrim feels great delight at beholding the pure, serene sky again, and the stars of the southern hemisphere. After

Wonder and the power of the word 163 meeting Cato, they move towards the shore, while dawn appears, pushing away the darkness of night (Purgatorio I, 115–­7). It is a miraculous moment: L’alba vinceva l’ora mattutina che fuggia innanzi, sì che di lontano conobbi il tremolar de la marina. (Dawn was defeating now the last hour sung by night, which fled before it. And far away I recognized the tremblings of the sea.)3 The famous last line of this terzina is obviously indebted to Virgil and Ovid: ‘splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus’, the former had written in the Aeneid (VII, 9), ‘mare fit tremulum tenui cum stringitur aura’, the latter in the Heroides (Ovid XI, 75). Indeed, Dante seems to conflate the two lines, making the sea tremble like Ovid but spreading light on it like Virgil. He adds, however, the element of distance and subjectivity, the ‘di lontano conobbi’, as he glimpses in the dawn light the wavering water in the distance, marking his new horizon of hope. What emerges here is a new claritas, an aurora, an annunciation. I use the word claritas advisedly to convey the element of lucidity present in both the aesthetic experience of poetry and in aesthetic theory. In medieval aesthetics, claritas is one of the qualities that characterize the beautiful – in Aquinas’s classic formulation, ‘ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur: integritas, consonantia, claritas’ (Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, art. 8). Different views of claritas are elaborated by medieval philosophers, but they can, according to Umberto Eco (43–­51), be grouped into two broad categories: the first, represented by Robert Grosseteste and Bonaventure, inspired by a physical-­aesthetic cosmology, the second, concentrated on the ontology of form, represented most conspicuously by Albert the Great and Aquinas (48). For Grosseteste, light is proportion itself, ‘beautiful in itself, for its nature is simple and all things are like it’ (49). Bonaventure, too, focuses on light, describing it as ‘common by nature to all bodies, celestial and terrestrial’ (50). By contrast, Albert thinks that resplendentia or claritas is a formal principle: ‘beauty’, he writes, ‘does not consist of the components or the materials, but in the resplendence of the form’ (25). Aquinas, and after him Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, proceed in the same ontological direction: for Aquinas, claritas is the perfection, the splendor, of form; for Dedalus, ‘radiance’ is the quidditas, the ‘whatness’ itself, of a thing (Joyce 212–­3). Of the many scholastic definitions of claritas, Dante probably was acquainted with the theories of Albert, Aquinas and Bonaventure. In any case, in the Comedy, he always chooses images of light that shine with a special brilliance. If a reader moves from the first canto of Purgatorio through to Paradiso, he or she will encounter, in canto XIV of the Paradiso, another, more fully developed image of the dawn. Dante describes the appearance of

164  Piero Boitani a new light around and above the circles of blessed souls with which he and Beatrice have already come into contact: Ed ecco intorno, di chiarezza pari nascere un lustro sopra quel che v’era, per guisa d’orizzonte che rischiari. (Paradiso XIV, 67–9) (Look! Round those circles, matched in clarity, a lustre, more than what was there, was born, as though a new horizon, brightening.) The ‘clarity’ of the first line recalls the moment when the pilgrim catches sight of the ‘chiarezza’, the ‘raggio’, the ‘candor’ and the ‘folgor’, by means of which Solomon, earlier in the same canto, described the splendour that the bodies of the blessed will assume at the resurrection of the flesh (Paradiso XIV, 37–­60). In short, this dawn appears as the fulfilment of the one we encountered in the first canto of Purgatorio. Sketched with the utmost simplicity, it catches the essence of both the new brightness and of the ­horizon – its clarity is expressed with clarity, claritas. Yet Dante the poet is such that he follows up this image of incipient aurora light with three – three – of incipient twilights at sunset, of full nocturnal starlight dominated by the Milky Way and of the specks of dust shining in a sunbeam surrounded by the shade. By the end of canto XIV of Paradiso, we are astonished – stunned, in fact – like someone who feels, as our passage from the Convivio says, ‘stordimento d’animo’. This Dantean play with light and claritas continues all the way to canto XXX. Then the physical correlatives of light, the stars, disappear from the poem, and Dante concentrates on the intellectual light of the Empyrean and of God. When we reach the last canto, we find both the pilgrim and the poet transfixed by wonder. Neptune surfaces here from the depths of time precisely when he contemplates from the ocean deep the shadow of the Argo, the first human ship to sail the seas. Two terzinas (in Paradiso XXXIII, 94–9,) mark this supreme moment, the second making clear (by means of ‘così’, ‘so’) that the first is but a simile: Un punto solo m’è maggior letargo che venticinque secoli a la ’mpresa che fé Nettuno ammirar l’ombra d’Argo. Così la mente mia, tutta sospesa, mirava fissa, immobile e attenta, e sempre di mirar faceasi accesa. (One single point in trauma is far more, for me, than those millennia since sail made Neptune marvel under Argos-­shade.

Wonder and the power of the word 165 And so my mind, held high above itself, looked on, intent and still, in wondering awe and, lit by wonder, always flared anew.) In my view, this passage owes something to Richard of St Victor’s Benjamin maior, where contemplation is defined as ‘libera mentis perspicacia in sapientiae spectacula, cum admiratione suspensa’ (I, 4, 5–6) (‘a free capacity to understand the spectacles of wisdom with suspended wonder’).4 Later in the same chapter, the whole mechanism of the second terzina seems to be foreshadowed. ‘The mind’, Richard now writes, ‘is wont to take avidly the truth long looked for and then found, wondering in exultance and clinging to that wonder at greater length’.5 But the person who really understood the beauty of these lines was another poet, T.S. Eliot: One can feel only awe at the power of the master who could thus at every moment realize the inapprehensible in images. And I do not know anywhere in poetry more authentic sign of greatness than the power of association which could in the last line, when the poet is speaking of the Divine vision, yet introduce the Argo passing over the head of wondering Neptune . . . It is the real right thing, the power of establishing relations between beauty of the most diverse sorts; it is the utmost power of the poet. (Dante 55) Eliot passes from the reader’s awe to the wondering Neptune. Had he quoted the second terzina as well, he would certainly have caught the pilgrim’s suspended yet ever-­increasing wonder ‘flaring’ in its core. Eliot is struck by the claritas: ‘the real right thing’, as he says. And he understands a very important point, namely that Dante ‘could at any moment realize the inapprehensible in images’.

Wonder, inspiration and the ineffable I cannot quite say whether in that primary source of poetry, wonder, inspiration comes before or after, or if it is born together with astonishment verging on stupor, as something inarticulate that asks for words to express the object and at the same time the wondering. Or if wonder and inspiration manifest themselves from the very beginning in an articulated form as some musicians, painters, and poets have told us: a sequence of notes, of words, of images. What is certain is that from silence there suddenly emerges, as it were, a breath, a wind, a murmuring  – what, in short, is often called inspiration. The Hebrew Genesis sees it at the beginning itself of everything, when the ruah elohim – God’s wind, breath, storm, spirit – moves its wings, runs over or incubates the waters of the primordial abyss. Immediately, the yet-­indistinct voice becomes well-­defined Word, creating Verbum,

166  Piero Boitani Logos (yahi or, let there be light; vahihi or, and there was light) (Biblia Hebraica Gen. 1:2–­3). From silence come words, from darkness light. The Greek Genesis, which has no word for divine Creation as such, says that ‘in the beginning God made (epóiese) heaven and earth’ (Septuaginta): God’s poiéin, for the seventy translators of Alexandria, is not so different from the poiéin of a poietés, a poet. I should perhaps leave it to a Greek, Plato, to explain how inspiration works in the manía, the furor of poetry (Boitani). Instead, however, I would like to follow T.S. Eliot’s example and shall therefore try to forestall a frequent misunderstanding. It is often thought that the highest, most sublime poetry expresses the ineffable. This is a logical mistake, not just a theoretical one. The ineffable is destined to remain unsaid: it cannot be expressed, and therefore it is not expressed. I  would say instead that a certain kind of poetry tries, and succeeds, to say what has remained hitherto unsaid. In the Paradiso, Dante fights a formidable battle against the inarticulate, a struggle he calls aringo (Paradiso I, 18), a ‘wrestling match’ (Foster 52). He carries out the task of describing the heavens and the divine to an extent unparalleled in poetry before his day or indeed in scripture, even Moses and Paul. Dante is fully aware of this and indeed says so without fear when he maintains, at the very beginning of the Paradiso, that he was in the highest sphere, the one that receives the most light from God, and saw things there ‘that no one/ who descends knows how or can ever repeat’ (Paradiso I, 5–­6). This last line is a daring echo of Paul’s words in the second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 Cor 12:1–­4), where the apostle says in the third person that he was ‘caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter’ (RKJV). Dante surpasses Paul: Veramente quant’io del regno santo nella mia mente potei far tesoro, sarà ora materia del mio canto (Paradiso I, 10–­2). (As much, though, truly of that holy realm as I could keep as treasure in my mind will now become the substance of my song.) In short, Dante is saying, ‘I shall relate everything that I  can remember, everything that I understood’. Dante then speaks about what was ineffable before. The struggle with the inarticulate is carried out in a different fashion, then. It is tension always risking defeat but a fight carried out in words, sentences, lines. T.S. Eliot, who attempted something similar in the Four Quartets, made this point memorably in the fourth, ‘Little Gidding’: And every phrase And sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others,

Wonder and the power of the word 167 The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. (42–­3) This does not apply to poetry of the divine only. It is appropriate to every single word of poetry that has ever been written. Consider the following examples from several European languages. Milton in ‘Lycidas’ writes what can perhaps be thought of as the two best lines in English: Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth. And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth. (ll. 163–­4) The tone is elegiac at its best, going far beyond an elegy. And there is Malherbe, in French, in the same period, trying to console Monsieur Du Perrier for the death of his young daughter: Mais elle était du monde, où les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin; Et rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L’espace d’un matin. (ll. 13–­6) Nor should we forget Góngora, in Spanish, also in the 17th century, in a sonnet celebrating the dead Doña Guiomar de Sá (‘En la muerte de Doña Guiomar de Sà’) and intimating that she is now in heaven, ‘in those new fields, one of those flowers made glorious by that better Dawn whose transient hoarfrost the stars are’. Forget, or at least take little notice, of the Baroque conceit, and listen to ‘the complete consort dancing together’: Ya en nuevos campos una es hoy de aquellas flores, que ilustra otra mejor Aurora, cuyo caduco aljófar son estrellas. (Góngora 205) Two centuries later, Leopardi frequently discoursed on wonder; indeed, he maintained that it was the main source of pleasure in poetry (Zibaldone 6, 172 976–­7). His claritas is on a par with Dante’s. ‘Quando beltà splendea/ negli occhi tuoi ridenti e fuggitivi’ (‘When beauty shone indeed/ In

168  Piero Boitani the elusive laughter of your eyes’), his poem ‘A Silvia’ sings with absolute simplicity (Leopardi, Poesie e prose 17–­8). ‘La sera del dì festa’ (‘The Evening after the Holy Day’) opens with four lines inspired by a famous simile in Iliad VIII (ll. 555–­60), but the first two and a half have an incantatory rhythm which sounds like the first bars in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata: Dolce e chiara è la notte e senza vento6 e queta sovra i tetti e in mezzo agli orti posa la luna. (Leopardi, Poesie e prose 50–­1) (The night is soft and clear, and no wind blows; The quiet moon stands over roofs and orchards).7 ‘La Ginestra’, his last canzone, depicts the view of the night from the barren slopes of Mount Vesuvius covered by dried lava. A Petrarchan (‘fiammeggiar le stelle’) and a Dantean (‘seren’) reminiscence light up the entire scene: the stars blaze, high in the pure blue sky, mirrored in the distance by the sea, and all around the world sparkles through the serene void. The extraordinary claritas of the passage culminates in the bright emptiness of space: in purissimo azzurro veggo dall’alto fiammeggiar le stelle, cui di lontan fa specchio il mare, e tutto di scintille in giro per lo vòto seren brillare il mondo. (Leopardi, Poesie e prose 128) ‘Per lo vòto seren brillare il mondo’. Once more, the reader is astonished by the simplicity and the resonance of the line, a perfect eleven-­syllable, four-­stressed verse in which the whole infinite is summed up in music and light. In a completely different but equally stupefying and enigmatic manner, Mallarmé depicts the double transparency of the day and of the ice, the forgotten, hardened lake under the frost of which lurks the frost of a diaphanous glacier. Above is the ‘drunken wing’ of the day – movement and life – while beneath is the frozen lake mirroring flights that never took off – death and immobility: Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui Va-­t-­il nous déchirer avec un coup d’aile ivre Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre Le transparent glacier des vols qui n’ont pas fui! (Virginal, vivid, beautiful, will this be The day that shatters with a drunken wing The lake beneath the frost, still mirroring Flights that were never made, transparency?)8

Wonder and the power of the word 169 Valery Larbaud, who was born only a few years before Mallarmé died, remembered, when he was a middle-­aged man, ‘La Rue Soufflot’ in Paris, the broad street that leads from the Boulevard St Michel to the Panthéon. There, everything is still the same, he says in a ‘romance’ of fourteen lines published in 1922 and addressed to an old flame of his: the old college and the church of Saint-­Étienne-­du-­Mont where they saw Verlaine’s coffin enter had not changed. In spite of voyages across the sea, their life has been but ‘un petit voyage en rond et en zigzag dans Paris’. Even afterwards, after death – he proclaims – they will remain there, invisible and forgotten, but always living in the city of their childhood and of the first love. They will live in the étonnement – the surprise, the amazement – of a twelve-­year-­old and the encounter that makes them still murmur amidst the crowd: ‘Because you know I have always loved you’: Avec l’étonnement des douze ans et de la rencontre, Qui nous fait murmurer encore dans la foule: ‘Porque sabes que siempre te he querido’. (Larbaud 976) Here, wonder (étonnement) becomes love and love our wonder. For what seized Larbaud to write one of the best lines ever in the Spanish language at the end of a poem written in French? It is a mystery and the miracle of poetry. However, the miracle is based on a sentence of the utmost simplicity: ‘you know that I have always loved you’. José Bergamín, a 20th-­century Spanish poet undeservedly little known abroad, created his best poem, a sonnet entitled ‘Al volver’, on the same solid basis of simplicity (Rico 1158). He opens the composition by stating that the place where he was born to hope is also where he hopes to die – Bergamín, in exile under Franco, returned to Spain in 1970 – and moves then, in the second stanza, to autumn, the traditional image for the transience of human life and dying. He gives it a new twist, however, by singing that it ‘keeps its step,/ entranced in light and air’. The trees look like blades, but there is in them a special joy that kindles the poet’s own bienaventuranza, his bliss. ‘All passed away, all remained the same’, the poem predictably continues. But then something happens, the imagination leaps, the words of poetry glitter; suddenly it looks ‘as if autumn, burning in the effulgence/ of his mirage, flourished’ into spring. The paradox of autumn’s splendour turning into the bloom of spring is cut down by Bergamín’s awareness that this spring will be his last. In Spanish, the images of burning and light climax in the uniquely splendid last line of this sequence, which he places at the beginning of the sonnet’s final tercet so as to underline it with strength and, at the same time, open the final vista of non-­being’s abyss: como si el otoño floreciera, ardiendo en el fulgor de su espejismo, última para mí, la primavera.

170  Piero Boitani ‘Ultima para mí, la primavera’ (‘the last, for me, spring’). What takes place in these three lines is that the poet’s own mind ‘se extasía’ like autumn earlier on. It is this entrancement that makes the vision perceptible and ­effable – that generates our wonder.

Wonder and the frontiers of poetry One final example will shed some light, I hope, on the mystery of inspiration and of the wonder which becomes word. It has to be an example which comes from the world of poetry and deals with poetry. Almost inevitably, it will be Keats’s ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (Keats 61–­2). We have to remember, in the first place, that in order to meditate, often in a rhapsodic and enigmatic fashion, on the nature of art and poetry, Keats needs an object, be it a living being or a work of art, a poem, which will awaken his imagination. Here, it is Chapman’s Homer; elsewhere in the sonnets, it will be the Elgin marbles, Shakespeare’s King Lear, the canto of Paolo and Francesca and the myth of Argos. In the odes, it will be the nightingale and the sublime Grecian urn. We must also remember that Keats, unlike his contemporaries Shelley and Byron, had no Greek and that he, like all Englishmen of his time, knew Homer only through the 18th-­century Augustan translation by Alexander Pope. Until, that is, he encountered George Chapman’s versions of the Iliad, first published in 1598, and of the Odyssey, published together with Homer’s other works in 1616. In October 1816, a 17th-­century copy of Chapman’s Homer was lent to his friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, who lived a short distance away. Clarke invited the poet to visit him so they could look at the precious volume and, on the evening of 11 or 12 October, Keats joined Clarke. The two friends spent hours reading aloud ‘the famousest’, as Clarke later wrote, passages of Homer’s two poems. At dawn, Keats walked the two miles back home. At ten in the morning, on his breakfast table, Clarke found a letter from his friend. It was the text of the sonnet, which was published in a magazine later in 1816 and the following year in a volume of his poetry: On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-­brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken;

Wonder and the power of the word 171 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –­ Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Two observations on the structure of this miraculous poem. It consists of two quatrains and two tercets, with an abba abba cdc dcd metric scheme. Structure and scheme correspond perfectly to the rhythm of the two quatrains, the first eight lines. An incantatory music, slowly revolving upon itself, adagio, stretches over the list of realms, states, kingdoms and islands. Then, it tightens up, adagio con moto, on the great mass of earth, the ‘wide expanse’ where Homer reigns, and on Chapman’s name. At the beginning of the first tercet, the music leaps, staccato, with ‘Then’. The two tercets, though keeping the metric scheme, are in fact made up of a sequence of two lines, then three lines, then one line. First, after the initial ‘Then’, comes the observation of the sky, two lines complete by themselves, lento assorto. After these, we encounter three agitated, dramatic lines, presto, on Cortés and his men. Finally, the single concluding line, short and, as it were, coming to rest in only three stresses after the preceding pentameters. The sonnet’s first line rises from silence with the slow voice of enchantment; the last one, immovable, is a prelude to silence in silence, ‘in the stillness between two waves of the sea’ (T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’). The frontier of poetry is music – into which poetic composition tends to merge. Let me now pass onto the poem’s texture, themes and images. It seems obvious to me that the imaginary world behind the sonnet is that of the Odyssey. Its first three lines describe a voyage around fantastic countries and Western isles which only the Odyssey could have suggested. However, those ‘realms of gold’, those ‘goodly states and kingdoms’ are not just the Ogygias and the Skerias and the Ithacas of Ulysses. They belong from the first instant to the world of poetic imagination or, as Aristotle would say, of mythos. At the end of the first quatrain Keats tells us that those Western islands around which he has ‘been’ are the possession of poets, to whom the god of poetic singing himself, Apollo, has entrusted them ‘in fealty’, as if they were his barons. Myth is made of things that produce wonder, we remember with Aristotle. This is then the first frontier of poetry  – not just one poem, the Odyssey, from which almost all Western narrative literature descends, but rather poetry itself, dominated by Apollinean melos: remote, fabulous kingdoms, islands scattered across the sea, archipelagos of fantasy and lyric. The following quatrain pursues the same geographical image but shifts it onto the immense continent of which the poet has only heard, the world of ‘deep-­ browed’ Homer, who rules over it not as Apollo’s liege, but as absolute sovereign. This does not yet appear as a known frontier, but rather like an unknown, remote expanse with vague contours, such as most of America must have

172  Piero Boitani appeared to the Europeans who had just heard of it. Keats confesses that his knowledge of Homer is imprecise and indirect, but in order to say this, he recurs to another image, proclaiming that he has never breathed the ‘pure serene’ – the shining, fine, thin air – of that distant continent. ‘Pure serene’ comes from Henry Francis Cary’s version of Dante’s Comedy, The Vision, and precisely from Purgatorio I and Paradiso XV. A passionate reader of Dante, Keats could only access the Comedy, as with Homer, in Cary’s translation, praised by Coleridge and soon to become an exemplar for all English Romantics. After geography and myth, the new frontiers of poetry are tradizione e traduzione, tradition and translation. At this point, I have to make a final short detour to show how, in fact, the total absence of frontiers is characteristic of poetry. We have just seen how Keats’s ‘pure serene’ derives from Dante. This, of course, already implies the absence of a border. Yet that expression is to be found precisely in Chapman’s Homer, in the translation of book VI of the Odyssey. There, Chapman describes Mount Olympus, to which Athena returns after inspiring Nausicaä in a dream to take care of her dowry: . . . the firm continent [Mount Olympus] That bears in endless being the Deified kind, That’s neither soused with showers, nor shook with wind, Nor chill’d with snow, but where Serenity flies Exempt from clouds, and ever-­beamy skies Circle the glittering hill, and all their days Give the delights of blessed Deity praise. (Chapman 530) The central lines of this passage pick up Odyssey VI, 44–­5: ‘μάλ᾽ αἴθρη/ πέπταται ἀνέφελος, λευκὴ δ᾽ ἐπιδέδρομεν αἴγλη’: ‘the clear air/ stretches away without a cloud, and a great radiance/ plays across the world where the blithe gods/ live’ (169). Lucretius, in the line that immediately follows the one on the smile of the waves quoted at the beginning of this essay, puts it as ‘placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum’, ‘heaven grown peaceful glows with outpoured light’. But in De rerum natura (III, 18–­22), when he celebrates Epicurus, he translates the Odyssey passage in an astonishing fashion, almost more powerful than Homer’s original and once more with recourse to the ‘smile’ of the sky: Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae Quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether Integit, et large diffuso lumine ridet. (Rises to vision the majesty of gods, And their abodes of everlasting calm

Wonder and the power of the word 173 Which neither wind may shake nor rain-­cloud splash, Nor snow, congealed by sharp frosts, may harm With its white downfall: ever, unclouded sky O’er roofs, and laughs with far-­diffused light.)9 There was, however, another great poet who was duly struck by the lines of Odyssey, book VI, quoted earlier. Unlike Keats, he knew Greek and read Homer in the original. This is Goethe. Between 3 and 17 April  1787, he wandered around the public gardens of Palermo (Italienische Reise 231, 240). He thought he had found there the ‘Urpflanze’, the ‘first’ plant he had long sought, but above all he suddenly recognized in those gardens, as he wrote in his Italian Journey, the ‘Urlandschaft’, the primeval landscape, the one that Homer had described in recounting Athena’s return to Olympus. In the Italienische Reise, Goethe summed it up in two words: ‘dunstige Klarheit’ (‘vague clarity’). Four days later, he specified that what gives the whole a ‘wonderful grace’ is a ‘starker Duft, der sich über alles gleichförmig verbreitete’, ‘a stronger aura which is uniformly spread over everything’ and makes objects stand out in light blue tonality. In Goethe’s poetry this will become: ‘Ein weisser Glanz ruht über Land und Meer,/ Und duftend schwebt der Aether ohne Wolken’, ‘a white glow rests over land and sea, and the fragrant air stretches without clouds’ (Weimarer Dramen, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche 847) – a longer, Homeric rather than Dantean, version of ‘pure serene’. Goethe felt he was in Alcynous’s garden on the island of the Phaeacians. His entire trip from Naples to Sicily had been dominated by the Odyssey. Now, on 15 April, he hurried into town to buy a copy of the poem in Greek with Latin translation and decided to resume work on the Nausikaa, where those lines appear. There are no frontiers in poetry, either across time or across space. Homer, Lucretius, Dante, Chapman, Goethe, Cary, Keats form an unbroken line running through 25 centuries of European history and irrespective of the geographical variations of Europe (Curtius 12). Keats proclaims he never breathed Homer’s ‘pure serene’ until he heard Chapman speak out loud and bold. This is no small praise for a translation, especially one that was already 200  years old. A  translation, if you can call Chapman’s Homer a translation rather than a rewriting of the original, opened up to the poet the great expanse of Homer’s poetry, finally inciting the astonishment of which we had an intimation in the enchantment of the realms of gold and the western islands. Hearing Chapman, Keats suddenly feels like an astronomer ‘when a new planet swims into his ken’. ‘Ken’, sight, is a word rooted in the semantic sphere of knowing, and what Keats points to by using it is the discovery, the coming to know, of a new celestial body. Through the process of association typical of the poet, he conjures up the image of the new planet swimming, as if in a heavenly ocean, into the telescope of a ‘watcher of the skies’. The anonymous ‘watcher of the skies’ in the ninth line of Keats’s sonnet has, in fact, a precise identity. He is William Herschel, a German musician

174  Piero Boitani who moved to England seeking fortune in Handel’s wake and who became the foremost English astronomer of the time. Keats was well acquainted with Herschel’s astronomical ideas. In April 1781, the seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, had swum into Herschel’s ken. Discovering Homer is like discovering Uranus, and poetry, as Aristotle intimated, shares a common border with science – wonder. For this is the feeling Keats underlines in the last four lines of the poem where, as if in a great circle, he returns to the travels of the beginning, assimilating the poets’ western islands and the ‘wide expanse’ over which Homer rules to what had hitherto been astronomically and geographically unknown. The journeys of the imagination now become historical explorations, and the seas he had sailed on with his mind coalesce into the Pacific Ocean. Why Keats, who was well acquainted with the history of the American discoveries, confused Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who in September  1513 became the first European ever to set his eyes on the Pacific from the heights of Darién, in modern-­day Panama, with Hernán Cortés, who in November  1519 contemplated the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City) from the vantage point of the mountains around it, we do not know. The fact is that he compares the discovery of Chapman’s Homer to the sight of a new, immense, ocean, one of the culminating moments of the European exploration and conquest of the New World. The ‘eagle eyes’ of Keats’s Cortés stare at the endless expanse of the unknown sea in a stance typical of astonishment. His men’s reaction is a reflection of his. They look at each other, in their eyes a surmise, a supposition, a conjecture: in short, an ‘overwhelming question’ that borders on folly. Extreme wonder reigns in the captain’s eyes, fixed on the watery floor – painful, wild uncertainty pierces the soldiers’ mutual glances. Yet before that last horizon, they all remain silent – astonished and mute on the peak of Darien. They stand in front of a planet that has suddenly doubled in size, beholding ‘the infinite smile of the waves of the sea’.

Notes I have slightly altered Rouse’s translation, which has ‘shining borders of light’. 1 2 I have followed Lansing’s translation. 3 The translation here and elsewhere is by Robin Kirkpatrick, unless otherwise stated. 4 The translation is mine. 5 ‘veritatem quidem diu quesitam tandemque inventam mens solet cum aviditate suscipere, mirari cum exultatione eiusque admirationi diutius inherere’ (I, 4, II. 31–33). The translation is mine. 6 ‘Just as in the sky about the gleaming moon the stars shine clear when the air is windless, and into view come all mountain peaks and high headlands and glades . . .’ (Homer, The Iliad). 7 The English translation of ‘A Silvia’, ‘To Sylvia’ and ‘La sera del dì festa’ is by John Heath-­Stubbs (Leopardi, Poems by Giacomo Leopardi).

Wonder and the power of the word 175 Translation by Louis Simpson. 8 9 I have used here the metrical translation by William Ellery Leonard (Lucretius, Of the Nature of Things).

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Wonder and the power of the word 177 Septuaginta. Vetus Testamentum Graece Iuxtus LXX Interpretes. Ed. Alfred Rahlfs. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007. Thomas Aquinas. In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio. Turin-­Rome: Marietti, 1964. ———. Summa Theologiae. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1971. Virgil. Aeneis. Ed. G.B. Conte. Bibliotheca Teubneriana. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2009.

12 Wonder and the radical vision of Francis of Assisi Jon M. Sweeney

A volume on the theme of wonder cannot overlook Francis of Assisi’s contribution to the praise of the divine in creatures and creation. Historians, hagiographers and writers of spirituality have been exploring Francis of Assisi’s life and works since the day he died in October 1226, but three aspects of the Poverello’s oeuvre still remain unclear: his unorthodox interpretation of the divine; his vision of nature, which can be seen as bordering on the heretical; and his sense of wonder, all as they relate to his one great poem – the first surviving poem in the Italian vernacular – the ‘Canticle of the Creatures’.

St Francis’s interpretation of the divine ‘Every artist is an unhappy lover’, says the narrator in one of Iris Murdoch’s novels, The Black Prince (2). This is to repeat the ancient idea that poets and painters and sculptors create beautiful things out of personal anguish. Artists create from an open wound, like the legend of the pelican that pecks at her breast in order to feed her children. But there is more to Murdoch’s idea than that. There is a spiritual anguish, which she calls ‘unhappiness’, when artists recognize their object of love but also recognize that there is a profound separation between them, subject and object. This is a central tension in Francis of Assisi’s imagination. It lies behind the scenes in what he does and does not say. At the heart of Francis’s poetry is this anguished understanding  – or a willingness not to understand  – a tension between the God who is revealed in experiences of the world and the God who is also concealed as a mystery to be protected, even hushed. The ‘Canticle of the Creatures’ cannot be understood without realizing that Francis wrote it only six months after he experienced the stigmata on Mount La Verna. This tension of essential separation between lover and loved opens new ways of understanding the sense of wonder in Francis’s poem. His ‘theology’  – for good reasons, we never actually call it that  – was unlike anything taught in the schools. There is no Anselm of Canterbury or Peter Lombard in Francis. Francis never read them; in fact, he disdained the reading of them. His view of God was principally subjective, based on his own experience. By the standards of the day, then, it was thoroughly

Wonder and the radical vision 179 unconventional. Rather than ‘anti-­intellectual’, we might say that he was ‘anti-­theological’. Rowan Williams recently described the writings of Julian of Norwich in these terms: ‘Julian’s immense appeal to most readers’, he said, ‘is that she represents in some sense a theology that leads into contemplative awareness; uninterested in winning arguments and consolidating formulae, she speaks repeatedly of what she sees and what is “shown” ’ (1). Williams goes on to say that Julian’s writings are full of theological themes, that she was aware of doctrine and that she was much more than a poetic or devotional writer when she spoke and wrote about God. But Julian is anti-­theological in that she never sets out to settle conundrums. In fact, the very puzzles and paradoxes of theological discourse are perhaps, to quote Williams, ‘the result of our failing to grasp that the entire logic of salvation depends on the basic fact of unconditional and unconstrained love’ (4). The same might be said of Francis. To him theology meant the assured sense of a direct experience of God that he shared with the desert fathers and mothers. This makes theologians, as well as keepers of the magisterium, uncomfortable, in direct proportion to the degree that it excites interest among the faithful. Sometimes Francis’s theology comes through as revealed, sometimes it comes through as an optimistic sort of praise, and sometimes it is simply expressed as silence. To sense something as revealed was as rare then as it is now. Francis often seems to have heard God’s voice intimately. But how dare he? Most of us have an easier time understanding Seamus Heaney’s sense of resignation at the total lack of divine communication: ‘Silent, beyond silence listened for’ (‘Clearances’ 32). And yet, notwithstanding this intimacy, in his writings Francis remains, like a psalmist, separated from the object of his love and praise. He may have ‘heard’ what the rest of us have not, and do not, but that is not the subject of his poems. Never, for example, does he praise sacred wounds or six-­winged seraphs, despite the stigmata experience. Instead he praises Brother Wind and Sister Moon. The ‘Canticle of the Creatures’ came to Francis as a revelation. Like the stigmata experience that took place six months beforehand, composing the Canticle was a mystical moment that was familiar to him. Perhaps revelation always works this way: the already receptive and attuned are the ones who receive. This is how a Jewish mystic friend of mine interprets the miracle of the burning bush: causing a bush to burn without being consumed is not such an amazing trick. It is no parting of the Red Sea. However, imagine what it took to receive it. It took patience and attention. For how long does it take to notice that something is on fire and yet not being consumed? Perhaps God was checking to see if, in Moses, he was dealing with someone who could stand still and pay attention for at least five minutes! (Kushner 24–­5). Likewise, perhaps Francis received the Canticle because he, too, was ready to do so. As William Blake said, ‘As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers’(702). Francis’s life was filled with discovering the revelatory, incarnational ways of God. What was unorthodox about the Canticle can easily pass us

180  Jon M. Sweeney by because many generations of artists and philosophers from the Enlightenment onwards have taught us to view nature positively, as almost divine. In his day, however, a vision of the world in which every aspect of the created world was singing God’s praise was unusual. There is a similarity to Dante’s vision in the final scenes of the Divine Comedy. Just as the Pilgrim struggles to take his eyes off the beautiful Beatrice even as he reaches the point of the beatific vision, so, too, for Francis, the beauty of the world conveys what can be known of the divine. The revelation – if we can call it that – came through creation. In contrast, I don’t see in Francis any of the blinding-­yet-­illuminating light that graces Socrates when he falls deeply in love in the Phaedrus. There is no madness or otherworldliness to the love that Francis sees, experiences and depicts in the Canticle. When madness and otherworldliness transformed him six months earlier in the stigmata, he was a poet left dumb by what he could neither process nor share. The man of vision and imagination was a different sort of lover and poet, one who allowed himself to be seen by his lover in silence. Perhaps this is why Oscar Wilde said in De Profundis, ‘Christ’s place indeed is with the poets’ (Wilde 174). The Canticle is surely the real miracle in Francis’s life, overshadowed though it may be by the less important, but more arresting, stigmata that preceded it. The suffering of those mysterious wounds does not have to be more important than other aspects of Francis’s life. In fact, Francis and his first followers seem to have found whatever happened to him on La Verna Mountain as less important than many of the other miraculous moments he was privileged to be a part of. Perhaps that is why he never spoke of it. In both instances – the stigmata and the reception of the Canticle – Francis was like a man who, in the words of Pope Francis on the feast of the Sacred Heart a few years ago, understood how ‘more difficult than loving God is letting ourselves be loved by him’ (‘Morning Meditation’).

St Francis’s vision of nature We can easily miss today how radical, almost heretical, his vision of nature in the Canticle might have seemed in 1225. Up until his time, saints tended to shy away from the corporeal world in which they lived. If they wrote anything with poetical intentions, it was to praise God. The single exception is probably St Gregory Nazianzus, the fourth-­century archbishop of Constantinople, who wrote not only verse, but also some 17,000 poems. The majority of these were on theological and moral topics, but Gregory also wrote a handful about his own life and even one in iambic trimeters on the subject of how to write a poem. Francis had probably never heard of St Gregory, let alone read his works. As far as Francis’s contemporaries were concerned, vernacular poetry was the preserve of the troubadours and Goliards, singers and dramatists of love and dark aspects of life. As a teenager and a man

Wonder and the radical vision 181 in his young twenties, Francis envied these troubadours, not so much the Goliards – he did not understand their cynicism. In his early religious life, Francis, too, was a renunciate. After a few years, however, he began to embrace, as he had before becoming a religious, a more sensuous approach to the created world. It was only in about the fifth year of new appreciation of nature that Francis began to receive the charism of what would later develop into the Canticle. He was grabbed by the Spirit that challenges and consoles but also inspires with vision that is not just uncommon but dangerous. The Canticle is not his only poem. There are at least two earlier works, even though they are more liturgical than lyrical. Lesser known than the Canticle, Francis wrote a series of Latin ‘Admonitions’, and the 27th of these (‘Where there is charity and wisdom,/ there is no fear or ignorance./ Where there is patience and humility,/ there is no anger or disturbance’) is in the form of a poem. It, in fact, inspired a famous prayer-­poem that was long attributed to Francis. This is, of course, the so-­called ‘Prayer of Saint Francis’ (‘Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; Where there is hatred, let me sow love’ and so on), an anonymous poem that can only be traced back to the year 1912. Also among his Latin writings are ‘Praises of God’, written almost immediately after receiving the stigmata. ‘Praises of God’ weaves together phrases from the Hebrew Psalter and can easily be sung. It also occupies a special place in the writings of St Francis in that we have a holograph copy of it written on a small piece of vellum, together with the only other work of his that survives today. This document was addressed to Brother Leo, his confidante and confessor. From the time that Francis gave it to Leo in late 1224, Leo carried it on his person for 30 years, until entrusting it to the Sisters of San Damiano. We cannot but hear the Te Deum laudamus, ‘Thee, O God, we praise’ in its phrasing: You are the holy, Lord God who does wondrous things. You are strong; you are great; you are the most high, You, the Almighty King, our Holy Father . . . It was the late winter of 1225, and Francis’s health was deteriorating rapidly. Brother Elias took him to the hermitage in Cortona, a place that they always enjoyed visiting, but their stay was brief. Then Elias began to insist on medical treatment for Francis’s eyes, which were constantly swollen and full of fluids, but Francis wanted to be near Clare in Assisi. So like an anchoress, in a cell attached to a church, he spent some 50 days and nights next to San Damiano. It was then that he wrote the Canticle. ‘Most high, almighty, good Lord God,/ to you belong all praise, glory, honor, and blessing’, he begins. So far, so good. But then his radical view came to the fore. Had Francis not been of unimpeachable personal character, had he not already been considered a living saint when he wrote it, he would surely

182  Jon M. Sweeney have been subject to scrutiny. He went on to exhort and praise as divine what many considered trapped in evil: Praised be you, O my Lord and God, with all your creatures, and especially our Brother Sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light. He begins to sound almost like someone who is remembering the ancient pantheon. But then we see that he is praising what is holy, God immanent/ incarnate in the world around him: He is fair and shines with a great splendor: O Lord, he signifies you to us! Praised be you, Most High, for Sister Moon and the Stars, you set them in the heavens, making them so bright, luminous, and fine. Praised be you, O my Lord, for our Brother Wind, and for air and clouds, calms and all weather through which you uphold life in all creatures. Praise the Lord for our Sister Water, who is useful to us and humble and precious and clean. Praise the Lord for our Brother Fire, through whom you give us light in the darkness. He is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong. Praise the Lord for our Mother Earth, who sustains and keeps us, and brings forth the grass and all of the fruits and flowers of many colors (Francis of Assisi 247) Francis taught this opening of the poem to his companions, asking them to sing it. The Canticle reveals one of our first lyric poets of the natural world. One hears Umbria in this poem, as Francis expresses his life and experience with these ‘siblings’. He was probably remembering the ‘Song of the Three Young Men’ from the apocryphal portion of the Book of Daniel, and its imperative mood. We know from his personal breviary, which Brother Leo passed on to the Sisters of San Damiano and is still kept in Assisi, that he sang this biblical text, one that most Christians do not even realize is in their Holy Scriptures: Let the earth bless the Lord: praise and glorify him forever! Bless the Lord, mountains and hills, praise him forever! Bless the Lord, every plant that grows . . . springs of water . . . seas and rivers . . . whales, and everything that moves in the waters . . . every kind of bird . . .

Wonder and the radical vision 183 all animals wild and tame . . . all the human race . . . Israel . . . priests . . . his servants . . . spirits and souls of the upright . . . faithful, humble-­hearted people, praise and glorify him forever! (Dan. 3:74–­87) But it is interesting to consider how Francis’s was an awareness highly tuned to only four of the five senses – and not only in the Canticle. He clearly uses sight and sound. He uses smell when he insists that the friars always use some small portion of their garden for flowers. He uses touch – always – demonstrating its importance when embracing a leper and feeling its necessity when he wants to feel the ground under his naked body. But Francis leaves out the sense of taste. He always leaves out taste, because he follows the position of St Jerome, who believed that Adam and Eve did not eat of the forbidden fruit in the garden simply or primarily out of pride and desire for knowledge, but because they succumbed to gluttony. Taste, then, the basest of all the senses according the medieval mind-­set, is what led our original parents to sin of other kinds, including lust, for they immediately noticed their nakedness. This is the remnant of Francis the renunciate: in his poems he praises fruits for their colours, but never their taste. In the Canticle, Francis sees order and patterns in the created world. This vision, his wonder at the natural world, his sense that wind, water, and fire were his siblings were gifts that came to him, not from teachers or priests, but from God. In the beginning was sight, a new understanding of balance, order and harmony.

Sense of wonder Sometimes a religious chooses not to write poetry so as not to replace the praise of God with introspection. This is what led the young Thomas Merton, just after he had published a book of poems with the publishing house New Directions, to beg the abbot of the monastery that he had just joined to order him not to write poetry (see Merton’s journal entry for 9 March 1947, 41–­2). Francis no doubt stopped reading and listening to secular poets – probably those of southern France – after his conversion. So when he turned again to verse years later, he required a new voice to describe his wonder at creation, a wonder that was neither secular nor ecclesiastical in a traditional way. What was radical to those who first heard the Canticle – the voice and its message – was Francis’s wonderment at the world. This was a late vision, composed six to eighteen months before his death, and a rediscovery of the divine and human connection with creation with all its creatures. It was as if he were agreeing with what Simone Weil, a kindred spirit, would much later say: ‘Where does religious feeling come from? From the fact that there is a world’ (quoted in McCullough 1). Francis composed simple tunes for his verses. Thomas of Celano, his first biographer, depicts his compositional moments in a way that reveals Celano

184  Jon M. Sweeney to be a poet himself: ‘When the sweetest melody of spirit would bubble up in him, he would give exterior expression to it in French, and the breath of the divine whisper which his ear perceived in secret would burst forth in French in a song of joy’ (‘Second Life’ 127). Celano continues: ‘He would pick up a stick from the ground and putting it over his left arm, would draw across it, as across a violin, a little bow bent by means of a string; and going through the motions of playing, he would sing in French about his Lord’ (St  Francis of Assisi 467). A  few months after praising Brother Sun and Mother Earth – after he and his companions had sung the original Canticle throughout Umbria – he decided to add another verse. The occasion was a quarrel between Guido, Bishop of Assisi, and a local governor. During a storm, they quarreled so fiercely that Guido excommunicated the governor, and the governor, in return, forbade his citizens to communicate (enter into contract) with the bishop. Francis, or so the Mirror of Perfection, sometimes attributed to Brother Leo, tells us that he grieved when he heard of the quarrel and grieved all the more because ‘no one had come between them to try and make peace.’ So he added the following lines: Praise be you, O my Lord, for all who show forgiveness and pardon one another for your sake and who endure weakness and tribulation. Blessed are they who peaceably endure, For you, Most High, shall give them a crown. A few months later, Francis became vividly aware that death was now a constant companion and added it to the siblings – sun, moon, wind, water, fire and earth – that he had mentioned at the beginning of the Canticle: Praise to you, O Lord, for our Sister Death On his deathbed, according to The Legend of the Three Companions, a biography some 20 years later, Francis confessed that he had sinned in his mistreatment of the body: ‘Brother Ass’ as he had sometimes come to call it in his last days. God’s creation, as Augustine and countless theologians after him declared, was his greatest miracle and was to be loved and praised in its every aspect, even death. It was something wonderful, ‘the great mystery’ of God’s love for us, as Pope Francis called it in his Easter Vigil homily 2015, a mystery that every Christian must endeavor to come to terms with: To enter into the mystery demands that we not be afraid of reality: that we not be locked into ourselves, that we not flee from what we fail to understand, that we not close our eyes to problems or deny them, that we not dismiss our questions. To enter into the mystery means going beyond our own comfort zone, beyond the laziness and indifference

Wonder and the radical vision 185 which hold us back, and going out in search of truth, beauty and love. It is seeking a deeper meaning, an answer, and not an easy one, to the questions that challenge our faith, our fidelity and our very existence. (‘Easter Vigil’) St Francis’s experiences of divine intimacy beyond the realms of ordinary consciousness remained unspoken. But then, after the experience of the stigmata, he turned to what could be spoken of in poetry: the wonder of the world that he encountered.

Works cited Bible. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Blake, William. ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’. In Complete Poems and Prose of William Blake. Ed. David Erdman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Francis of Assisi. The Complete Francis of Assisi: His Life, The Complete Writings, and The Little Flowers. Ed. and trans. Jon M. Sweeney. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2015. Heaney, Seamus. ‘Clearances’. In The Haw Lantern. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1987. Kushner, Lawrence. God Was in This Place and I Did Not Know. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1993. McCullough, Lissa. The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil: An Introduction. New York: I.B. Taurus, 2014. Merton, Thomas. Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and Writer: The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. 2, 1941–­1952. Ed. Jonathan Montaldo. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Murdoch, Iris. The Black Prince. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2003. Pope Francis. ‘Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae: The Difficult Science of Love’. The Holy See, 7 June 2013. http://­w2.vatican.va/­ content/­francesco/­en/­cotidie/­2013/­documents/­papa-­francesco-­cotidie_20130607_ science-­love.html ———. ‘Easter Vigil in the Holy Night’. Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis. The Holy See, 4 April 2015. https://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­francesco/­en/­homilies/­2015/­ documents/­papa-­francesco_20150404_omelia-­veglia-­pasquale.html Thomas of Celano. St  Francis of Assisi Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources. 4th Revised Edition. Ed. Marion A. Habig. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983. Wilde, Oscar. De Profundis. In The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, vol. 2: De Profundis. ‘Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis’. Ed. Ian Small. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Williams, Rowan. The Anti-­Theology of Julian of Norwich: The 34th Annual Julian Lecture. Norwich: The Friends of Julian of Norwich, 2014.

13 Rilke’s poetics of wonder Looking at the picture books of beauty in the Duino Elegies Emilia Di Rocco

On a stormy January afternoon in 1912, when a strong north wind (bora) ‘was blowing, but the sun was shining and the sea was radiantly blue, crested with silver’, Rilke decided to go for a stroll. While walking up and down the path of the Duino Castle, he suddenly heard a voice calling out of the storm: Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich den aus der Engel Ordnungen? (Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?) (Thurn und Taxis 38) Rilke stood still and asked himself: ‘What is this?’ ‘What is coming?’ He noted down those words and other lines that spontaneously flowed from him (Thurn und Taxis 34–­5). He knew the god was coming, and by the evening he had written the first of the Duino Elegies. He copied it in a turquoise volume – ‘dolce colore d’oriental zaffiro’ – and sent it to Marie Thurn und Taxis on January 23.1 At the end of his long journey across a spiritual wasteland, Rilke had finally found his divine source of inspiration. A voice calling from the wind marks the beginning of the Duino Elegies: a spark of wonder had awoken and inspired the poet, putting an end to his creative sterility and lack of inspiration. The voice also bestowed on this event a sense of mystery. Years later, announcing the completion of the Elegies to Marie von Thurn und Taxis on 11 February 1922, Rilke wrote: ‘All in a few days, it was a nameless storm, a hurricane in the spirit (like that time at Duino), all that was fiber in me and fabric cracked’ (Letters 290). On the same day, in a letter to Lou Andreas Salomé, Rilke exulted along similar lines: ‘I have been allowed to survive until this. Through everything. Miracle. Grace. – All in a few days. It was a hurricane, as on Duino at that time’ (Rainer Maria Rilke and Andreas Salomé 331). The princess’s account and Rilke’s letters to her and Salomé in 1922 express vividly Rilke’s excitement at experiencing a sense of wonder – the fruit of man’s interaction with the world. That experience connected the origin of the Duino Elegies to a specific place and gave the poems a name. All these accounts would suggest a totally new beginning in Rilke’s career after the completion and publication of his Notebooks of Malte Laurids

Rilke’s poetics of wonder 187 Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, 1910). Retrospectively, however, the new opening looks rather like a natural development of Rilke’s poetic itinerary. This will become clear, I hope, by following the thread of his ‘poetics of wonder’ and its evolution.

Wonder and Rilke’s earlier works Rilke’s ‘poetics of wonder’ runs parallel to the emphasis present throughout his oeuvre on the interaction between heaven and earth. In order to ‘map out’ the meaning and role of wonder in the Duino Elegies it is therefore appropriate to take into account the wider context of Rilke’s writings – not only his poetry, but also his prose and his correspondence. In a well-­known letter written to Witold von Hulewicz later in life, Rilke himself draws a possible line of development: [The Elegies] reach out infinitely beyond me. I regard them as a further elaboration of those essential premises that were already given in the Book of Hours, that in the two parts of the New Poems tentatively played with the image of the world and that then in the Malte, contracted in conflict, strike back into life and there almost lead to the proof that this life so suspended in the bottomless is impossible. In the Elegies, starting from the same postulates, life becomes possible again, indeed, it experiences here that ultimate affirmation to which young Malte, though on the difficult right path ‘des longues études’, was yet unable to conduct it. Affirmation of life-­AND-­death appears as one in the Elegies. (Letters 372–­3) In the Duino Elegies, building on the Book of Hours (Das Stundenbuch), the two books of the New Poems (Neue Gedichte) and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rilke focuses his attention and his poetics on life. He concentrates on the human realm, on what he calls that ‘great unity’ that encompasses ‘the true figure of life’ extending through the spheres of both life and death and where ‘the “angels” are at home’ (Letters 373). In this ‘great unity’ – where, he writes, ‘Death is the side of life averted from us’ – in a wider ‘purely earthly, deeply earthly, blissfully earthly consciousness’ (Letters 373), rather than in some other world, is to be included all that we see and touch in this world. It is precisely here in this ‘great unity’ that, as I hope to show, Rilke’s poetics of wonder finally finds its natural home. The letter to Witold von Hulewicz is the key to understanding the role of wonder in his poetry. His earlier works already contain themes, images, topoi and motives related to wonder that would reappear in the Elegies: the night and the stars, as well as death, birds and their flight, lovers, the fountain and the tower, only to mention the most conspicuous. Within this wider context, the Notebooks of Malte and in particular the poem ‘Turning Point’

188  Emilia Di Rocco (‘Wendung’) lead to the ‘turning’ that inspired and eventually prompted Rilke to outline his poetics of wonder in the Duino Elegies. Malte helps us understand the development: I am learning to see. Why, I cannot say, but all things enter more deeply into me; nor do the impressions remain at the level where they used to cease. There is a place within me of which I knew nothing. I do not know what happens there. (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge 4) It took some time for Rilke to become aware of what was happening in his ‘inner space’ (‘Weltinnenraum’) and for the real turning to take place. After his journey to Egypt in 1911, where the whole process began, the supremacy of the heart gradually replaced that of the eyes. As he revealed to Magda von Hattingberg, there, in the desert, at night, when the moon was shedding light on the unending landscape, he went through an extraordinary experience while staring at the Sphinx. It was the same kind of experience we have while looking at the sea or at the sky on a starry night, encouraging us to believe in the existence of connections and consonances that otherwise we would not be able to imagine. On that occasion, the face of the Sphinx, although in part destroyed, acquired for Rilke the features of the whole cosmos. He felt that in order to make sense of that experience he had to ‘arrive at places in [his] amazement where [he] had never been before’ (Rilke and Benvenuta 9).2 When such an experience occured, he intimated, the poet was called to seek refuge in the abyss of his soul in order to receive the full revelation of its splendour – just like Petrarch on top of Mount Ventoux in front of the beauty of nature, as Rilke mentions in his essay On the Young Poet. This abyss of the soul, as yet unexplored, would later become much more familiar to him than foreign places. And it was, indeed, by contemplating the landscape – an act that led the mind beyond the horizon of the visible world into an imaginary realm – that he reached the threshold of his ‘inner space’ where splendour revealed itself. He described a similar experience in a passage of The Letter from a Young Worker, a passage replete with echoes from Augustine’s Confessions (X, viii).3 The mysterious way towards his ‘inner space’ (‘Weltinnenraum’)4 was thus paved: a journey from appearance to essence which will characterize the Duino Elegies. But before he could get to the Duino Elegies and reach a genuine poetics of wonder a further step was needed, namely the ‘turning’ mentioned in his poem ‘Wendung’ (1914): Work of the eyes is done, Go and do heart-­work on all the images, imprisoned within you; for you overpowered them, but even now you don’t know them (Selected Poetry 274).

Rilke’s poetics of wonder 189 Augustine and Petrarch probably inspired Rilke’s description here of the dialectics between the ‘work of the eyes’ and the ‘heart-­work’. ‘Wendung’ (1914), where the prompting to direct one’s love inwards appears, was above all the outcome of a long and difficult process of growth. During that process, Rilke acknowledged the possibility of a new metaphysics of presence founded on gazing, visual perception and loving responsiveness, each amplifying the other. In the writings predating the completion of the Duino Elegies, Rilke gradually ‘turned’ towards a heartfelt absorption in his ‘inner space’. Egypt had opened his mind to profound things, and from that moment onward, as he explains in one of his letters to Benvenuta (23–­9), the impression that the journey had made on him was so profound that, whenever he felt in later life moved by nature, stars or lofty things, his heart started to flutter.

Wonder and the Duino Elegies: the first elegy Echoes of his experience in Egypt5 recur side by side, in the Duino Elegies, with images and topoi taken from the world of nature. They confirm what Rilke wrote in his correspondence with Benvenuta about the sense of wonder and amazement he had felt since that journey. The first elegy, which sets the tone for the whole collection, reads almost as a microcosm of Rilke’s poetics of wonder. In the opening lines, he draws the reader’s attention to the connection between beauty and terror: Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying. (Duino Elegies 3) These lines are a key to understand one aspect of wonder in the Elegies. The language and the ideas have strong Neoplatonic overtones.6 The relation that they establish between beauty and terror conveys a particular aspect of wonder, pleasure mixed with suffering, awe with astonishment. In the first elegy, ‘herrlich’ and ‘schrecklich’ in the German text ‘form one semantic family’ (Cacciari 8), evoking the mixed feeling of wonder and awe, astonishment and dismay before the divine. It is exactly the same mixed feeling that Plotinus illustrates in the Enneads (I, 6, 4) to explain man’s reaction in front of something beautiful. The technical term Plotinus uses to describe this feeling is thámbos, which can be traced back to another technical term, tháuma. According to Plato’s Theaetetus (155d2–­5) and Aristotle’s Metaphysics (A.2, 982b11–­7) this word, tháuma, is at the origin of philosophy

190  Emilia Di Rocco and correlates the pursuit of truth with the appearance of the beautiful. In Greek, both tháuma and thaumázein do not simply refer to wonder. They also signify something that elicits awe and dismay. They fall within the same semantic field as deinós, a term that designates somebody or something terrible, as in Sophocles or as in Plato, both terrible and worthy of respect (Curi 78–­80). By establishing a relationship between beauty and terror, the lines from the first elegy quoted earlier point to this specific kind of wonder encompassing, as it does for Plotinus, both pleasure and pain, astonishment and awe. The first elegy lays the foundation for Rilke’s poetics of wonder throughout the entire collection also in terms of images, motives and topoi. Two examples are germane to the theme of wonder: the image of saints kneeling down (Duino Elegies 5) and the motif of a mythical figure, Linus (Duino Elegies 7–­9). The image of saints kneeling down, a description of Rilke’s mental attitude and posture before the divine, signals the coming of wonder in his earlier poetry (Weigand 14). The legendary figure Linus concerns more directly the Duino Elegies. But who is Linus? How does he relate to the theme of wonder? Linus is mentioned by Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on the passage of the Metaphysics where Aristotle affirms that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. First, Thomas equates the philosopher with the lover of myth and explains that the philosopher and the poet are alike since both are concerned with wonders (Boitani, Prima lezione sulla letteratura 52–­105). He then calls ‘theologizing poets’ those thinkers who sang the principles of divine things in and through myths. It is at this point that Thomas mentions Linus as one of the first who, together with Musaeus and Orpheus, were famous for their learning. It may sound unlikely that Rilke had Thomas in mind while writing the first elegy – and we do not know the sources for Rilke’s lines. Yet it is worth noting that, in myth, Linus personifies lamentation and is associated with music. In the Theban version of the myth he is mentioned as a great musician. Not surprisingly, then, in the lines dedicated to this mythical hero who died young, Rilke recounts the birth of music – that is, poetry. At the same time, by alluding to the tradition of the ‘theologizing poets’, he points to a special kind of poetry, namely that which sings ‘first things’ and is brought about by wonder: Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus, the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness; and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god had suddenly left forever, the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us. (Duino Elegies 7–­9) The mention of Linus serves as a first introduction to Rilke’s poetics of wonder in the Elegies and the appreciation of the poetry of the ‘small

Rilke’s poetics of wonder 191 thing’ – one way through which man finds out how to be ‘at home in the interpreted world’ (Calvo 25–­101). This, at least, is what the beginning of the ninth elegy suggests.

Angelocentric wonder in the Duino Elegies The first elegy opens with a cry and ends with the transformation of that cry into the lamentation for Linus and the birth of music, anticipating thereby a similar transformation in the entire collection. The last elegy opens, in fact, with a cry of jubilation to the angel and, after a journey into the landscape of lament, ends ‘where shimmering in the moonlight/ is the fountainhead of joy’ (Duino Elegies 67) – ‘a mighty stream’ among men. At this point, we encounter Rilke’s affirmation that life and death, sorrow and happiness are inseparable: . . . if the endlessly dead awakened a symbol in us, perhaps they would point to the catkins hanging from the bare branches of the hazel-­trees, or would evoke the raindrops that fall onto the dark earth in springtime. –­ And we, who have always thought Of happiness as rising, would feel the emotion that almost overwhelms us Whenever a happy thing falls. (Duino Elegies 67) These lines are the context for Rilke’s ‘angelocentric’ poetics of wonder. Not only is the ‘song’ addressed to the angel. The angel is also at the focus of Rilke’s inversion of the elegiac mode in the Duino Elegies. It becomes an affirmation of the world, limited and transient though it is. Entry into a metaphysical realm and wooing the angel become impossible (Wich-­Schwarz 76–­101). What brings about wonder is the praising of the earth, the praising of creation to the angel. Rilke claimed that he was inspired by Islamic rather than Christian angeology. Yet, as implied in the phrase the ‘days of Tobias’ (KJV, Tob. 5:4–­6), it is Raphael of the Hebrew and, hence, Christian story who is the first angel he evokes in the opening of the second elegy. Further, Raphael, like the other angels described as ‘mirrors’, has Neoplatonic overtones. The angels are: Early successes, Creation’s pampered favorites, mountain-­ranges, peaks growing red in the dawn of all Beginning, – pollen of the flowering godhead, joints of pure light, corridors, stairways, thrones, space formed from essence, shields made of ecstasy, storms of emotion whirled into rapture, and suddenly, alone,

192  Emilia Di Rocco mirrors: which scoop up the beauty that has streamed from their face and gather it back, into themselves, entire. (Duino Elegies 11, ll. 10–­7) Peter Dronke has identified the source of these lines in the Divine Names as Dionysius the Aeropagite (IV, 22),7 a reference that helps us understand Rilke’s angelocentric poetics of wonder. As intermediaries between Man and God, angels know earthly things according to their natures as intellects created in God’s image, while man can know Wisdom only through Its creative act, that is through perceptible things. Man’s knowledge of Him, Dionysius explains, depends on applying to Him what he, Man, can predicate of the created universe (Celestial Hierarchies VII, 2). Raphael has a distinctive role in this economy since he, like his fellow archangels, mediates between the higher and the lower angelic ranks. The angel stands at the centre of the poetics of wonder because, in Rilke’s view, the angel needs to be astonished by the poet and not vice versa. The seventh and the ninth elegies show this. To astonish the angel means, for Rilke, to make him familiar with pure existence (Dasein) by naming the single things of the created world. In other words, to astonish the angel means drawing his attention to this world, to praise to him all that is great and divine here, all that ‘once stood among mankind,/ in the midst of Fate the annihilator’ and ‘bent/ stars down to it from their safeguarded heavens’. ‘Pillars, pylons, the Sphinx, the striving thrust/ of the cathedral, gray, from a fading or alien city’: in order to astonish the angel, they will have to stand ‘rescued’ in his eyes. ‘Wasn’t all this a miracle?’ asks Rilke in the seventh elegy: Be astonished, Angel, for we are this, O Great One; proclaim that we could achieve this, my breath is too short for such praise. (Duino Elegies 45) To astonish the angel means to make him acquainted with what and who we are, with how we have handled our frighteningly glorious depths. Now, though, he is distant. The world, as described in the seventh elegy, has undergone a metamorphosis. It has been transformed into an ‘inner space’ (‘Weltinnenraum’), and consequently, as described in the seventh elegy, the angel has departed from this world, leaving an unbridgeable gap between himself and human beings: Don’t think that I am wooing. Angel, and even if I were, you would not come. For my call is always filled with departure; against such a powerful current you cannot move. Like an outstretched arm is my call. And its hand, held open and reaching up

Rilke’s poetics of wonder 193 to seize, remains in front of you, open as if in defense and warning. Ungraspable One, far above. (Duino Elegies 47) All that we are left with is the joy of Dasein and Hiersein: that is, the outcome of the transformation of the world in our inner self. It is only from our ‘depths’ that we can address the angel and astonish him, only when we pronounce the word within our mind, when we praise the Hiersein (Cacciari 10–­2).

Wonder in the Duino Elegies VII and IX Towers, pylons, cathedrals and the Sphinx figure recur as objects of wonder throughout the elegies, together with images of the natural world. The night and the stars, which do not cease even after death, are enduring objects of wonder directly connected with man’s consciousness of his existence. So, in the seventh elegy, Rilke writes: . . . But also the lofty summer nights, and the stars as well, the stars of the earth. Oh to be dead at last and know them endlessly, all the stars: for how, how could we ever forget them! (Duino Elegies 43) The stars, as the ninth elegy also later intimates, are part of the ‘unsayable’, ‘unutterable’ things that we can take to the other realm together, perhaps, with the suffering and the heaviness of love. Possibly, they are the objects of a wonder that opens the mind and leads it to guess ‘the existence of something lying beyond the confines of such sensuous representations’, something ‘in which, perhaps, although unknown to us, the ultimate source of the accordance’ between space (‘form of sensuous intuition’) and understanding (‘faculty of concepts’) can be found (Kant 193). Beside stars, towers, too, are privileged objects of wonder. ‘A large part of my nature is always opening up in wonder,’ Rilke wrote to Magda von Hattingberg on 18 February 1914: ‘The amazement I have felt before towers, and again and again, how the stars and my life itself have amazed me’ (Rilke and Benvenuta 84). From this fusion of art, divine Creation and human life arises astonishment. To towers and stars we might add the Sphinx and also the Nile, temples and ruins, columns and all that recalls Egypt, where Rilke discovered an intensified feeling of wonder in front of the infinite world. Once the poet has learned to see, all these objects become a source of astonishment. Their innermost nature, laid bare through his profound insight, reveals a new world that cannot be instantly understood or ‘unravelled’ ‘(Parsons 87).

194  Emilia Di Rocco Several expressions in the seventh elegy, and later also in the ninth, celebrate the glory of being, here and now (Dronke, ‘Un’immagine dell’eternità’ 26; Calvo 244), concentrating time into a single point, the ‘unsayable point’ between two moments (‘zwischen zwei Weilen’) (Duino Elegies 42). One example in the seventh elegy is the line ‘Hiersein ist herrlich’, echoed in the line ‘Hiersein viel ist’ of the ninth elegy. Both sentences abolish linear time and introduce the concept of ‘transformation’ which, in Rilke’s view, is the only way to discover happiness within ourselves. It is also the beginning of the process that reaches a climax in the ‘astonishment’ of the angel. The line ‘Hiersein ist herrlich’ in the seventh elegy appears as the culmination of a gradual process that starts with spring (Duino Elegies 41) and, step by step, reaches the ‘dreamed-­of temple of the future’ and the summer. Then, through accumulation – suggested by the repetition of ‘not only’ (‘nicht nur’) and ‘but’ (‘sondern’) from lines 18 through 29 – the poet maps out an itinerary that takes the reader through summer days and images of nature into the night and the starred heaven, revealing the world in a cosmic dimension. This eventually leads the reader to the realm of death where the spirits ‘keep seeking the earth’. The glory of ‘being here’ is affirmed against this background and opens the way for wonder and the angel. The beginning of the ninth elegy recalls the myth of Apollo and Daphne, with its thematic implications of fame and glory, as well as art, poetry and music. Here, Rilke develops a conceptual framework for the question that is at the root of the poem and of the poetics of wonder in the Duino Elegies: Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all other green, with tiny waves on the edges of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze) – : why then have to be human – and, escaping, escaping from faith, keep longing for fate? To such a simple question there is one simple answer: not because ‘happiness exists’, ‘not out of curiosity’, nor ‘as a practice for the heart’, But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all. Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing. (Duino Elegies 55) These lines contribute much to the understanding of how, in the world of the Elegies, wonder arises from a sense of contingency, so much so that

Rilke’s poetics of wonder 195 some critics refer to it as ‘existential wonder’ focused on the phenomenal world, the diversity of which it values and enjoys (Hepburn 10, 15).

Conclusion Rilke’s angelocentric poetics of wonder in the Elegies focuses on man and the universe. It introduces a shift from a metaphysical to a natural viewpoint as Rilke contemplates this world and looks upon it in admiration. Indeed, it soars beyond it, traversing the cosmos, symbolized by the stars epitomizing heaven’s grandeur. Set against the background of lofty summer nights, infinite, unforgettable (‘wie sie vergessen’), unsayable (‘die sind besser unsäglich’) and conveying its remoteness and mystery to the human realm, the stars determine our response to the objects we contemplate, generating in us a feeling of wonder (Duino Elegies 41). It is an experience of this kind that Rilke describes in his letters to Magda von Hattingberg on his journey to Egypt. And it was this experience, too, that he translated into poetry in the Duino Elegies. The adjective ‘unsayable’ serves to separate and yet at the same time unite heaven and earth, the world of the angel and the world of man. In the ninth elegy, Rilke declares that ‘the art of looking,/ which is learned so slowly’ cannot be taken into the other realm. Sufferings, ‘the heaviness,/ and the long experience of love’ (Duino Elegies 55; Calvo 249) perhaps can be. These are: . . . just what is wholly unsayable. But later, among the stars, what good is it? – they are better as they are, unsayable. For when the traveller returns from the mountain-­slopes into the valley he brings, not a handful of earth, unsayable to others, but instead some word he has gained, some pure word, the yellow and blue gentian. (Duino Elegies 55–­7) What then, in the end, constitutes ‘wonder’ in the Duino Elegies? Where should we look for it? The exploration of wonder in the Elegies starts with a cry. That cry turns then into a whisper and eventually leads to a whispered affirmation of the Hiersein, of life on earth and of wonder, here and now: ‘Here is the time of the tellable, here its home’ (Duino Elegies 56) (‘Hier ist des Säglichen Zeit, hier seine Heimat’). Not an affirmation of the earth or the stars – they are better ‘unsayable’ – but ‘the yellow and blue gentian’, the word that the wanderer has gained, the word that maybe we can pronounce when we invoke the angel: house, bridge, door, pitcher or, at most, column, tower. These are the only objects that can astonish the angel, and we can astonish him only when we strongly assert our ‘being here’ (Cacciari 30–­3): Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one, you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe

196  Emilia Di Rocco where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him something simple which, formed over generations, lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze. Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood by the rope-­maker in Rome or the potter along the Nile. (Duino Elegies 57) This is where astonishment begins and ends: here and now, in a specific place and at a fixed time, as a consequence of our and the angel’s interaction with this world. But above all, wonder, which entails being astonished, rests on the spoken word – ‘Praedica verbum’, to quote the title of one of the sermons of Meister Eckhart which probably inspired Rilke’s ­poetics – and on transformation. Transient things can be saved by transforming them endlessly in our invisible heart, by speaking the word in ‘the innermost and highest part of the soul’, where time never penetrates and where ‘God creates the whole of this world’. Here, where ‘the light of any image [never] penetrated’, we experience the word that is pronounced within and ‘become aware’ of what is in us (Eckhart 123–­4). This is what the earth asks us – ‘the most transient of all’ – to do: ‘What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?’ asks the poet, to which the only possible answer can be: ‘Earth, my dearest, I will’ (Duino Elegies 59). The earth has won him over. If it is true that in his last days Rilke told Nanny Wunderly, ‘Never forget, my dear, that life is a thing of splendour’ (Salis 229), I think he would have subscribed to what Wittgenstein wrote in his Notebooks: ‘The miracle (‘Wunder’) is that the world exists. That what exists does exist’ (86e). I also think that he would still maintain what he wrote in 1906 to Elizabeth and Karl von der Heydt from Capri: I am one of those who hear the beautiful and recognize its voice, even where it scarcely lifts above the noises . . . I know God did not set us among things in order to select, but rather so thoroughly and largely to keep on taking that in the end we can simply receive nothing else at all but beauty in our love, our alert attentiveness, our not to be pacified admiration. (Letters 1892–­1910) Bewunderung (in the German original) is an astonishment which does not cease when the novelty wears off (Kant 102). Rilke’s receptiveness to being astonished never abandoned him since when, reading in the picture books of the beauty of this world, he had begun to learn to see and to love. This world, and the miracle of its existence, was for Rilke the source and object of wonder. The inner word as he expressed it in poetry later became unquestionably and openly the powerful vehicle with which, in the Duino Elegies, he astonished the angel and brought wonder to the world.

Rilke’s poetics of wonder 197

Notes 1 By quoting Dante (Purgatory 1, 13) Marie von Thurn und Taxis suggests Rilke’s ‘rebirth’ after the period of creative sterility following the publication of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The second elegy and fragments of three more elegies, as well as the opening lines of what was to be the last poem, date back to that same period. At this early stage, the poet also envisaged a clear plan for the whole cycle, as his letter to the princess dated 11 February 1922 confirms. 2 A similar experience is also described when Rilke writes to Magda about his stay in Ronda, Spain. 3 ‘What is granted and conceded to us here  .  .  .  [is] something that fills us with happiness, completely and right to the outer margins of our senses! To make the proper use of things, that’s what it comes down to. To take the Here and Now in one’s hand, lovingly, with the heart, full of wonder, as, provisionally, the one thing we have: that is at once . . . the gist of God’s great user’s guide, this is what Saint Francis of Assisi meant to record in his hymn to the sun which as he lay dying he thought more splendid than the cross, whose only purpose in standing there was to point towards the sun’ (Letters to a Young Poet 54–­5). 4 Rilke’s ‘ Weltinnenraum’ has significant analogies with Augustine of Hippo’s experience recalled by Petrarch in his letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro (Tutti gli scritti 1232). August Stahl offers an interesting survey of Rilke’s engagement with Augustine of Hippo. On Rilke and St Augustine, see also Jaime Ferreiro and Di Rocco. 5 During his journey to Spain, Rilke lived an experience similar to the one he had had in Egypt. 6 ‘Engel Ordnungen’ calls to mind the title of the famous work, Neoplatonic in inspiration, by pseudo-­Dionysus, De coelesti hierarchia, devoted to the angels who, incidentally, in the second elegy are called ‘mirrors’. 7 For echoes from Dante in this passage, see Boitani (Dante e il suo futuro, 142).

Works cited Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Trans. H. Chadwick. London: Oxford University Press, 1998. The Bible. Authorized King James Version with Apocripha. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Boitani, Piero. Prima lezione sulla letteratura. Bari: Laterza, 2007. ———. Dante e il suo futuro. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013. Cacciari, Massimo. The Necessary Angel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Calvo, Francesco. L’esperienza della poesia. Bologna: il Mulino, 2004. Curi, Umberto. L’apparire del bello. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013. Dionysus the Areopagite. On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology. Ed. C.E. Rolt. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1920. Di Rocco, Emilia. ‘ “Du siehst, daß Ich ein Sucher bin”. In the footsteps of Augustine: Rilke reads the Confessions’. Strumenti critici 32.2 (2017): 189–­208. Dronke, Peter. ‘Tradition and Innovation in Medieval Western Colour-­Imagery’. In The Medieval Poet and His World. Ed. Peter Dronke. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984, 55–­103. ———. ‘Un’immagine dell’eternità. Da Boezio a T.S. Eliot’. In Dall’antico al moderno: Immagini del classico nelle letterature europee. Ed. Peter Dronke. Trans. Piero Boitani and Emilia Di Rocco. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015, 19–­30.

198  Emilia Di Rocco Ferreiro, Jaime. Rilke y San Agustin. Madrid: Taurus Ediciones S.A., 1972. Hepburn, Ronald W. ‘The Inaugural Address: Wonder’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Supplementary Volumes 54 (1980): 1–­23. Kant, Immanuel. Analytic of Teleological Judgement: Critique of Judgement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 190–­212. Meister Eckhart. Selected Writings. London: Penguin, 1994. Parsons, Howard L. ‘A Philosophy of Wonder’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30.1 (1969): 84–­101. Polledri, Elena. Tutti gli scritti sull’arte e sulla letteratura, with German text. Milan: Bompiani, 2008. Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters 1892–­1910. Trans. Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton. New York: Norton, 1945. ———. Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 1910–­1926. Trans. Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton. New York: W.W. Norton, 1969. ———. Rilke and Benvenuta: An Intimate Correspondence. Ed. Magda von Hattingberg. Trans. Joel Agee. New York: Fromm, 1987. ———. The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, 1989. ———. Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-­Salomé: The Correspondence. Trans. Edward Snow and Michael Winkler. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2006. ———. Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus. Ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, 2009. ———. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Trans. Michael Hulse. London: Penguin, 2009. ———. Letters to a Young Poet. Trans., ed. and ann. Charlie Louth. London: Penguin, 2012. Salis, J.R. von. Rainer Maria Rilkes Schweizer Jahre. Ein Beitrag zur Biographie con Rilkes Spätzeit. Frauenfeld: Huber, 1952. Stahl, August. ‘ “Salus tua ego sum” Rilke (1875–­1926) liest die “Confessiones” des heiligen Augustinus’. In Augustinus: Spuren und Spiegelungen seines Denkens, vol. 2. Ed. Norbert Fischer. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2009, 229–­52. Thurn und Taxis, Marie, von. The Poet and the Princess: Memories of Rainer Maria Rilke. Athens: Amun Press, 2017. Weigand, Hermann J. ‘Das Wunder im Werk Rainer Maria Rilkes’. Monatshefte für Deutschen Unterricht 31.1 (1939): 1–­21. Wich-­Schwarz, Johannes. Transformation of Language and Religion in Rainer Maria Rilke. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Notebooks 1914–­1916. Ed. G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe. New York and Evanston, IL: Harper Torchbooks, 1969.

14 Poetry, radicalism and wonder Peter Levi, priesthood and David Jones Robert Fraser

The Jesuit order in England has arguably produced three poets of note: Robert Southwell (1561?–­1595), Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–­1889), and Peter Levi (1931–­2000). Levi is the least well known of these, and his priestly credentials became somewhat muddied when he left the order to marry in 1977. In all three cases, however, there existed a peculiar, tense dynamic between poetry and priesthood. In this chapter, I  shall confine myself largely to the poems Levi wrote under the name ‘Peter Levi SJ’. He did not change fundamentally as a poet after that, but the framework of his writing was somewhat different, and it is with that framework, or rather with the interplay between the frame and the work, that I am concerned. I shall also be looking briefly at his relationship with the Anglo-­Welsh poet David Jones and the ways in which it informed and altered his thinking and his work. The theme of that work is often wonder, or rather the distinctive form of it which occurs in the presence of natural settings. Much of it possesses a particular spiritual lightness and weight that is not simply Christian, but also priestly. The result is a series of epiphanies or showings forth which contain both a religious and, potentially, a political dimension. Peter was from a family of Sephardic Jews who had once traded in carpets from Istanbul, though by 1878, his paternal grandfather had migrated to London, where Peter was born and grew up in the respectable northwest suburb of Ruislip. On marrying for a second time, his father, Bert, had converted to his wife Mollie’s Catholic faith; the household, according to Peter’s biographer Brigid Allen, had thus ‘bristled with crucifixes, holy-­water stoups and statues.’ As his sister Gillian, a Bernardine nun in an enclosed order, recalled ‘It wasn’t enough for my parents just to practise their religion, they had to let it hang out of the window’ (Allen 10). To those who met him, as I did briefly in the Oxfordshire village of Stonesfield in 1987, Peter always gave off a flavour of this mixed background. His features were heavy lidded and exotic, and he carried with him a sort of effortless and gentle polyglot charm that sometimes seemed at odds with the bluff Englishness he had assumed in later life. These various personae were combined in his classicism, since in addition to the Latin in which he had become fluent as a Jesuit scholastic, Levi was also a considerable Greek scholar, who devoted much of his life to a never­to be-­completed commentary on the travels of Pausanias. What remains of

200  Robert Fraser this project is his two-­volume translation of those travels, light enough to be taken around Greece in a backpack. He was also fluent in modern Greek and a close friend and admirer of George Seferis, the Nobel-­prize winning poet and diplomat, with whose poetry his own has affinities that I  shall examine in a moment. Like Seferis, he was a bitter opponent of the Colonels who governed Greece ruthlessly and undemocratically between 1967 and 1974 and who he believed were betraying much that was most valuable in Greek tradition and culture. As a result, he was treated with suspicion during his frequent periods in Greece while the Colonels were in power. This did not make life easy for him, especially with British officials minded to remain on good terms with the repressive regime. In 1970, he accepted an invitation from the British Council in Athens to repeat a lecture on the work of Seferis that he had already delivered in Princeton. The high-­ups in the Council made attempts to cancel the lecture; eventually, they settled on the compromise of allowing him to deliver his talk in English and to hand out copies in Greek. When the evening arrived, Levi lectured to a packed hall. Wishing to avoid embarrassment all around, Seferis chose not to attend, although his wife Maria did so. The council transferred the official responsible for arranging the event to distant Bucharest.1 Peter’s reaction to the whole episode was one of amusement concealing a buried rage. There is a deep connection, I think, between the asperity of this political stance and the spiritual insights that lie at the root of much of his early work. For all his distinction and personal grandeur, Peter was, at heart, a democrat, one of whose deepest impulses, both as priest and as poet, was a desire to serve. He combined these vocational promptings with a temperamental sympathy for the underdog. In the hot summer of 1976, towards the end of the period I am covering, he worked for a while as a chaplain in Brixton jail during one of the most sweltering summers on record, ministering to IRA terrorists, among others (Allen 1–­6). His reaction was to wonder why it was not he, the Catholic priest, who had been jailed. Right from the beginning, there is in his life and work a combination of elevation with a search for, and empathy with, the excluded and the scorned. Images of suppression, of imprisonment and release, came naturally to him. In 1958, 12 years before his gesture of solidarity with Seferis, he was working as a classics teacher at Stonyhurst, a boys’ boarding school and Jesuit foundation in Lancashire. It was, he wrote that Christmas, a ‘stone prison’ where he waited ‘for the young gaolers and the wise,/ fearing always violence, dissolution,/ the island exiles with wind-­haunted eyes’ (Collected Poems 60). His words beg the question of who the prisoners in this castle of instruction were, and who held the keys. In a slightly later poem, first published in Dialogue, a Marxist-­ inspired magazine focussing on Eastern Europe, the unromantic scratchings of his pupils’ pens turn into pleas of protest as he compares them with the lonely outpourings of poets held in prison without trial. Suddenly it is the boys who are the prisoners, and he the gaoler, though instinctively one senses a desire, in his poem ‘For Poets in Prison without Trial’, that the position be reversed (61). Outwardly conforming, a committed member thus far of the Society of Jesus, there is from the very beginning a polite rebel in him trying to get out.

Poetry, radicalism and wonder 201 Suspicious of glamour and of status, Levi is anxious to perceive both the drabness within the sublime and the sublimity amidst the drab. ‘I can,’ he writes in ‘Proposals for a Poetic Revolution’, ‘praise no one but the simply wise and good’ (Collected Poems 45–6). His overriding theme, it seems to me, right from the beginning, is a sort of epiphanic ordinariness, a concentration, in his own words, on ‘what is’ rather than ‘what merely seems.’ He has that much in common with the Hopkins of ‘The Bugler’s First Communion’ and with Chesterton, too, but in Levi there is always this extra political and egalitarian edge. For Levi, the straightforward epiphanies of nature always contain a potential for insurrection. Their very simplicity and directness unmask pretence. One of his earliest nature pieces is entitled ‘Political Poem’: A dandelion’s head erect howls in the tortured intellect, a cloud can murder men and press whole armies into feebleness, the smell of hyacinth drunk in is the revolution’s origin. Two crickets creaking in the grass. can freeze the continental mass, one vixen round her litter curled can freeze to death an age of the world, zoo goats on an artificial crag are the revolutionary flag. (Collected Poems 59)* In ‘The Muses’ he subverts the effete reputation of poetry by invoking working-­class heroines. He talks of the maturing of an individual poem as an ageing process, whereby the baptized poem achieves spiritual perfection by means of a demotic bodily decay. His guardian angels are not nymphs, but hags, skivvies and chars: These old women are my muses. Fruit has fallen behind their eyes. Look, I can always achieve The body of an unchristened poem, I build asleep, I build it in my sleep.

*  All poetry from Collected Poems, 1955–1975. London: Anvil, 1976 is included with permission of Deirdre Levi and Carcanet Press Limited: https://­www.carcanet.co.uk/­cgi-­bin/ ­indexer?product=9780856461354

202  Robert Fraser It is clearer but is bloodier than glass. But the form of a new poem is a virgin unearthly diamond looking up to the sun for the first time. These worn out women are my true muses. I believe in the rough skin of their hands, and the buckets and the wash-­rags in their hands. When I have built the form of this poem May the asthmatic muses christen it. (Collected Poems 98) The form of this poem echoes the theme: prosaically, he repeats the noun ‘hands’ in the 12th and 13th lines rather than casting around for a euphonious rhyme. Only Levi, too, it seems to me, would convert a poem about an autumn garden into a hymn to its potential for becoming winter, as if dearth were its apotheosis. I’m reminded of Seferis’s poem ‘A Word for Summer’, in which the mask of plenitude falls away to reveal the stark boughs beneath. ‘We’ve returned’, says Seferis as November tightens its grip, ‘we always set out to return/ to solitude: a fistful of earth, to the empty hands’ (Seferis 167). Seferis shares with Levi this intimate and earthy ethic of realism. Only Levi, it seems to me, would choose as a tribute for his future wife, Deirdre, a sequence devoted to pigs. The pigs are biblical, but they are also porkish, earth bound, and for the most part happy. Like Levi himself, they incline to fat. ‘If a pig had a philosophy’, begins the last stanza, ‘it would be like mine.’ (Collected Poems 231). Although given to moments of vanity, Levi is drawn to humility, both in poetic style and in life. There is even an aesthetic of mortification in some of the earliest poems, as if negation were their destined fulfilment. ‘Words dry, then wither,’ he begins one poem and then, in a repeated refrain, speaks of the objective of his art as ‘to die into a dark more absolute’. There is a touch of St John of the Cross’s dark night of the soul here, as if the poem’s self-­ denial were congruent with his own personal and priestly chastening. The approach is very different from so much of Hopkins, in which the requirements of mental and verbal discipline are summoned through an almost baroque metrical lushness. In Hopkins’s poem to ‘The Windhover’, the radiant kestrel will be better for buckling under, but you get the sweep and majesty of his presence first. In Levi’s ‘Ruined Abbeys’, a memento mori which is both an improvisation around Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 and a meditation on the dissolution of the monasteries to whose remnants Shakespeare compares his wasting body, the angelic forms suspended from the arches are compared with birds and thence with exhausted minerals: Angels like birds caught in mid-­flight were incoherent at twilight;

Poetry, radicalism and wonder 203 birds are dead meteors, this age puts out no stony foliage, but my face is a figurehead split by the weather in the south, the stony ivy twines in my mouth, angels are finished, birds are dead: and yet the ivy on the tree is my life, is what I shall be. (Collected Poems 145) Viewed one bleak August, the Cistercian abbeys of Rievaulx and Fountains speak not simply of the mortification of the flesh, but of acts of religious and political suppression. Religious and political insight thence cohere. In reading Levi, you are aware of Roman Catholicism as a form of faith that for two centuries was not simply proscribed but actively persecuted in Protestant England. Catholicism for Levi is a religion of outsiders and the historically marginalized. When Seferis died in 1971, Levi wrote him an elegy that brought several of their insights together, expressing their shared belief in vernacular beauty, the strength and authenticity of the common people and the common soil. He is speaking of Seferis’s commitment to the land of Greece: Who thought deeply, loved also what was living. Virtue was in the mountains, in the stony villages, magpie in meadow, Swiftly the shade, swiftly the afternoon. The shepherd sees the city it is in his eye. The oracle is water. Stone shall prophesy. I am lost in this deserted extent. Eagle his eye so brilliant in air he will consume away the shepherd’s eye. There is a succession of times in God, but my identity is seasonal: aspires, is blood and feathers, mows mid-­air, nor do I live for what is living, I am frightened to awaken those who sleep, or brush their eyes with nameless flowers. In sleep the soul recovers its nature. But virtue is in the mountains, in the stony villages. (Collected Poems 218) In his poetry, Levi speaks far less often of God than had, say, Hopkins. If we desire some clue to his theology, his understanding of his vocation as a priest and of the relationship of faith to the art of poetry, it is to his prose works and his sermons that we must look. To my mind, his most succinct, earnest and eloquent summation of these matters was the homily that he

204  Robert Fraser delivered in December 1974 in Westminster Cathedral at the Solemn Requiem Mass for the Anglo-­Welsh poet and painter David Jones, who had died in a nursing home in Harrow on 28 October that year, just shy of his 79th birthday. Jones had been a reclusive and somewhat eccentric figure, deeply damaged by his experiences on the Western Front, where he had served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He had excelled at both poetry and the graphic arts; certainly Levi regarded him as a very great poet who was also a lustrously representative one. They had been introduced in 1963 by David Pryce-­Jones, affluent, upper-­crust, cosmopolitan author, journalist and authority on the Arab world (Allen 170). Joined by faith and a humble dedication to their craft, the two had taken to one another, despite marked differences in their social backgrounds, temperament and way of life. When, at the age of 33, Levi was finally ordained as a priest, it was Jones who had designed his ordination card, featuring a mélange of quotations from the Latin Ordinary of the Mass and the sacrament of Baptism. Around the edge in grey ran a Latin dedication to Levi himself: ‘PETRUS LEVI E SOCIETATE IESU SACERDOS ORDINATVS GRATIAS AGIT DEO’ [‘Peter Levi ordained priest in the Society of Jesus gives thanks to God’]. Framed within this was a collage of texts from the missal, with interpolations in English. The first three Latin words were drawn from a rubric near the beginning of the Mass: ‘With outstretched hands he [the priest] continues’. This was followed by a longer, though fragmentary, quotation from the prayer of supplication after the consecration of bread and wine, with part of the text spatially transposed. Here is the relevant missal text in full, with the excerpts quoted by Jones set in capitals between square brackets. The word ‘munera’ or ‘offerings’ has been moved by Jones to the end of the passage, though it is qualified by the earlier quae: Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris, et [ACCEPTA HABERE, SICUT ACCEPTA HABERE DIGNATUS ES] munera pueri tui justi Abel, et sacrificium patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et [QUOD TIBI OBTULIT SUMMUS SACERDOS TUUS MELCHISEDECH], sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam. [Deign to regard with gracious and kindly attention and [HOLD ACCEPTABLE, AS THOU DEIGNED TO ACCEPT] the

Poetry, radicalism and wonder 205 offerings of Abel, Thy just servant, and the sacrifice of Abraham our Patriarch, and [THAT WHICH THY HIGH PRIEST MELCHISEDEC OFFERED TO THEE], a holy Sacrifice and a spotless victim.] Immediately following this was a sentence in Jones’s own English, with the single word ‘anamnesis’ or ‘remembrance’ written in Greek: ‘Of Liber [‘free’] & the Naiads: poured out of Ceres: broken in remembrance of him who freed the waters.’ The final snippet from the missal was derived from the blessing – or exorcism of salt, water and oil – before their use in baptism (again the words reproduced by Jones in caps with square brackets): ‘Oremus Deus, qui ad salutem humani generis, [MAXIMA QUAEQUE SACRAMENTA IN AQUARUM SUBSTANTIA CONDIDISTI]. (‘Let us pray. O God, for the salvation of mankind [YOU BUILT YOUR GREATEST MYSTERIES ON THIS SUBSTANCE, WATER].’) At the very bottom of the page, Jones had written the message ‘from David the artist to Peter the poet’ in Welsh.2 The eclectic learning and the omnivorous curiosity had deeply appealed to Levi, all the more so because they were earthed both in a devout faith and in an authentically Celtic ethnicity. Jones’s conception of the role of a priest was very much in step with his own. For all that, in his 1974 funeral sermon, Levi had to tread carefully. Personal eulogies have never been encouraged in the Roman Catholic Church, the understanding being that private praise may act as a distraction from veneration of the divine. In Levi’s own words, ‘It is not a tradition of the Church that a sermon at the Mass for any dead man should be a panegyric.’ Under these circumstances, Levi’s address contrived to be both an exposition of doctrine and a tribute. It contained one of his most concerted declarations of his conception of the priesthood, one grounded in ecclesiastical convention, but at the same time deeply sincere. Perhaps that should be re-­phrased as ‘and thus deeply sincere.’ A requiem mass, he insisted, is a ritual of repetition: We are doing here what is done elsewhere and what has been done. When the priest comes to the holy words of Christ’s institution, to the consecration of the sacrament, his will is and his meaning is simply to do what the Church does, there is nothing personal in what he intends, any more than in what he accomplishes. He means what is meant by the assembly of the saints of God in this church. (In Memory of David Jones 187) For his text, Levi chose a verse from the fifth chapter of the Book of Exodus in which God stipulates the requirements for the Passover lamb:

206  Robert Fraser it was to be a yearling, male in gender and without blemish of any kind: in the words of the Vulgate, ‘erit autem agnus absque macula, masculus anniculus.’ Jones, he was suggesting, had been that lamb, partly because of the purity of his poetic ideal, the unblemished dedication of his personal and artistic life. Partly because, as a private soldier in the war of 1914–­1918, he had been one of a generation that had been led to the slaughter. And partly, even perhaps principally, because he belonged to that great expunged aboriginal element in the British Isles: the Welsh. This was an important element in Levi’s estimate at the time, not only concerning Jones, one that had slowly come to dominate much of his thinking. For Levi, Jones had been ‘a last innocent witness to the cultural massacre of the Welsh people by the English and the modern world’. After the text of the sermon had been issued as a pamphlet by the Tablet newspaper in 1973, Levi reprinted it as an appendix to his second volume of memoirs, The Flutes of Autumn in 1983. It sits perfectly there since, in addition to being an account of his earliest years, his childhood in Ruislip, his education at school and at Oxford, his training as a Jesuit and, more sketchily, his decision in 1977 to marry and to leave the order, The Flutes of Autumn represents a sustained meditation on a carefully argued theme: the ruthless suppression of the weak by the strong, the ethnic conflicts and imbalances of power that have constituted such a recurrent element in British history. Levi had obviously been considering this matter for some time. As a result, this is at moments a disturbingly angry book. ‘How’, Levi cries out at one point when contemplating the history of the British Isles, ‘can it have taken so many beginnings stamped out, so many massacres and invasions, and the utter disappearance of languages and cultures, to produce the Britain we live in?’: This history is continuous, disastrous, endlessly repetitive. Neither God not man can think it was worthwhile. The generations never born, the ancient British language lost, Cornish evaporated, the British herded and murdered by the Saxons, the Saxons by the Danes and the Vikings, the English by the Normans, then the Irish and the Welsh suffering the same. The English learned to treat inferiors from the way they treated one another and then the Irish; they practised that lesson on the American Indians, then on the Irish again, on slaves of every colour, and finally on the Scots, hounded after 1745 like animals, blasted from the sea, driven from the land and some transported into literal slavery in America. (The Flutes of Autumn 93–4) There is something visceral about Levi’s prose here, as if he is laying a ghost. At one point he recounts how, during the wars against the invading Danes, each captured Viking was flayed alive and his skin nailed to the nearest church door, then adds in blind fury ‘justifiably in my opinion.’ (The

Poetry, radicalism and wonder 207 Flutes of Autumn 96). For Levi, the culmination of this whole endemically cruel process was the mass mutual slaughter let loose in 1914, the year of Jones’s enlistment. Levi had, he states, spent most of his life trying to take in the implications of that moment. To emphasize this point, he takes as the title of his book a translated phrase from ‘Grodek’, the poem written in that year by the Austrian writer Georg Trakl, shortly before Wittgenstein arrived on the Eastern Front to find his friend had taken his life with a drug overdose: ‘Und leise tönen im Rohr die dunkeln Flöten des Herbstes . . .’ [‘And in the reeds the dark flutes of autumn mutter their undertone . . .’]. The flutes of autumn, Levi explains, represent for him the ‘successive waves of destruction’ of one race and people by another, of which one is reminded over and over again during the course of a life’s reading (177). In this passionate book, Levi avoids dwelling on the fate of the Jews, yet Hitler’s death camps had been built in his lifetime and liberated – and their existence horrifying disclosed to a disbelieving world – when he was in his mid-­teens. The horrid facts were revealed to him by a school friend, whose father was serving with the allied troops in Europe. ‘. . . he was at the head of the first column to reach Dachau, and the photographs he sent home to his son were the first I understood of what Dachau contained. They were worse for being simple snapshots. My friend passed them to me secretly, under the desk, as if they were things no one ought to see, things that never should have seen the sun’. (The Flutes of Autumn 27–8). Levi had been raised to regard his mother’s ardent Catholicism as the defining element in his background. His latent sense of his paternal Jewishness had, however, been aroused by a meeting in 1958 with his very much older and physically tiny cousin Doris Caroline Abrahams (1901–­1982), best known as the satirical novelist and ballet critic Caryl Brahms. Caryl was the daughter of Pearl Abrahams, née Levi, sister to Peter’s father, Bert. She had a much more direct take than he on the family’s Jewish roots, since her mother had been born in Constantinople to Peter’s grandparents Moses and Sultana prior to their moving to England. Two of her most cherished possessions were the silver chalice that had held the home-­made raisin wine, and the velvet cloth that had covered the bread, when her parents had observed the weekly supper on the eve of each Sabbath. She gave the cloth to Peter, who, in an elegy for her written in 1982, described the cloth and imagined the ritual: Wine pouring into motionless cut glass Beside bread under velvet and gold thread With Hebrew lettering white on blood red. (The Rags of Time 51) Excavation into cultural roots and buried ethnicity are very much themes of The Flutes of Autumn, where Levi portrays his discovery of these things as products partly of his roaming over the countryside as a young man and partly of his later scholarly immersion in archaeology. In a chapter devoted

208  Robert Fraser to a period in his early 30s studying theology at Heythrop College, a Jesuit seminary then in Oxfordshire, he talks of walking across the countryside in an obsessive search for lost places and peoples. Theology had come second to such searching. ‘Religion’, he declares, in a conscious or unconscious echo of his elegy to Seferis, ‘was like a flock of birds moving across winter fields and among stony villages.’ (The Flutes of Autumn 125). His discovery of landscape, in Britain as well as Greece, was thus infused with wonder. But it was a wonder complicated by his recognition of tragic facts sometimes lurking beneath the soil. At the same time, he was reading Theodor Mommsen’s History of Rome and considering the detrimental legacy of the Roman occupation of Britain. In the relevant chapter of The Flutes of Autumn, he quotes with approval the speech by the Scottish general Calgacus in AD 85, reported by Tacitus in chapter 30 of his work Agricola: ‘they made a desert and they called it peace.’ ‘By then,’ he admits, ‘I had come to think of the Romans as a nauseating people.’ (127) Yet he himself had been raised in and trained by the Roman Church, of which he had been a priest. In later years he came to think of his sympathies as more Celtic than Roman. Had he been magically transported back to AD 664 and attended the Synod of Whitby at which the rival claims of the Roman and Celtic churches were hammered out, there is little doubt in my mind that he would have spoken on the Ionian – that is, the non-­Roman – side. Such sympathies were partly the long-­term result of the influence of David Jones and partly the product of his radicalization in Greece. The stony villages of Oxfordshire and the stony villages of Attica told him the same story of resistance to cultural stifling and control. When I met him, four years after the writing of his passionate memoir, he was living in one of the stoniest of the lot. Stonesfield, on the edge of the river Evenlode, has ancient slate quarries that abound in fossils from the Middle Jurassic and provide some of the earliest evidence for the existence of the dinosaurs. Where was God in all this? There is thus in Levi’s work a profound tension between a vision of a God present in his creation and a far more inscrutable deity whose purpose is hard to discern. Certainly in his later verse, when the deity features, it is frequently as an entity beyond and above what is manifest in the world, more transcendent than immanent. Inscape and instress, the mainstays of Hopkins’s poetic vision of the divine, were not really Levi’s way. Faith and the traditions of the church had come to mean ways across the bridge between the world and God, between a creator in whom all times are successive and his creatures whose experience was necessarily seasonal. At times, especially in his later poetry, he seems to be torn between concerted belief and more ambivalent horizons. The poet and the priest are on speaking terms, but they do not always seem to agree. On Christmas Day 1967, he broadcast a Christmas sermon in couplets for BBC radio. ‘Where are you God?’ the text cries out, and twice it concedes ‘I do not understand

Poetry, radicalism and wonder 209 my religion.’ (Collected Poems 188). By the end of the recording, Levi was in tears. In the introduction to his Pausanias translation, published in 1974, there are four sentences that seem to be as much about the translator as they are about the author translated and which hint at developments a little later in Levi’s life. He is talking about Pausanias’s attitude towards traditional religion and myth. ‘There is no doubt,’ he says, ‘that he was a true believer in the most sacred of these traditions: he accepted the warning of a dream and understood the punishment of a god. He was perhaps like his greatest editor, Sir James Frazer (whose entire lifework had its roots in Pausanias), in that all his scholarship and topography and encyclopaedic curiosity were a burden undertaken in an attempt to satisfy a deeper anxiety that had once been apprehended in religious terms. The collapse of ancient religion, or some deeper collapse, were the unspoken object of his studies.’ (Pausanias, vol. 2, 2–­3). These remarks are deeply perceptive about Frazer and maybe about Pausanias too: in the mouth of the translator, they appear to hint at a destabilizing self-­knowledge. When Levi wrote those words, the closure of his priesthood was a mere three years away.

Notes 1 Conversation with John Villiers, Norfolk, 10 January  2017. Before his peremptory transfer, Villiers had been responsible, as assistant representative, for organizing the programme of cultural events for the Athens branch of the council. 2 For the translation and completion of the quotations, I  am indebted to Levi’s biographer Brigid Allen, who has also commented on various aspects of this essay.

Works cited Allen, Brigid. Peter Levi: Oxford Romantic. Oxford: Signal Books, 2014. Brahms, Caryl, and Ned Sherrin. Too Dirty for the Windmill: A Memoir of Caryl Brahms. London: Constable, 1986. Levi, Peter. Collected Poems, 1955–­1975. London: Anvil, 1976. ———. The Flutes of Autumn. London: Zenith, 1983. ———. In Memory of David Jones: The Text of a Sermon Delivered in Westminster Cathedral at the Solemn Requiem for the Poet and Painter, David Jones, on 13 December 1974. London: The Tablet, 1975. Reprint Levi, 1983, 187–­91. ———. The Rags of Time. London: Anvil, 1994. Pausanias. Guide to Greece volume 2. Trans. and intro. Peter Levi. 2 vols. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. Seferis, George. Collected Poems 1924–­1955. Trans., ed. and intro. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherard. London: Jonathan Cape, 1969.

15 ‘The flowers remember/ the sugar bowl remembers’ Quotidian wonder and the painter/­ poet Joanna Margaret Paul1 Joanna Osborne The artistic practice of Joanna Margaret Paul (1945–­2003), a painter and poet of Aotearoa/ New Zealand, illustrates how attentiveness and joyful wonder at the many ordinary things of life can inform art. The transfixing effects of such wonder generates an ethical sensitivity towards the world. She sought to communicate this sensitivity, in and through her art, as an interconnectedness within the familiar arrangements and silences of her everyday life and her relation to the natural world. The idea of a solitary, studio-­based painter striving for a great work of art or vision of a wondrous transcendence was foreign to Paul: In my work, I’m dealing with repositories of life, where it’s lived . . . I am trying to capture an idea from life, pursuing it in a poem or a painting or a collage or a photograph . . . Working quickly on a small scale has meant I’ve often used watercolour or gouache on paper, a medium that’s considered second-­rate and minor these days . . . [I am] aggressively in support of the ‘minor’. (quoted in O’Brien, Lands and Deeds 68) A still life was more than an arrangement of objects to be studied, and she disliked being regarded as a traditional still-­life painter. ‘Because I’m working with my children and with the house and garden’, she stated, ‘I’m surrounded by the web of living and simply try to isolate something from [this] continuum’ (‘Web of Living’). She attempted not to represent everyday objects as they were, but to convey her emotional response to the variations in her everyday surroundings. She was a prolific maker who worked across media with the ‘interconnectedness  .  .  . of a visual imagination’ (Paul and Barrie). When unable to approach her subject matter through visual means, she turned to poetry and vice versa. With the astuteness of a poet who understands the weight and balance of words, she often presented within a single work the tension between written word and visual image.

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Origins Paul was born on 14 December 1945 to booksellers and publishers Blackwood Paul and Janet Paul (née Wilkinson). She graduated in English and Philosophy from the University of Auckland in 1968 and then in Fine Arts from Elam School of Art a year later. In 1971 she married the painter Jeffery Harris (from whom she separated in 1984) and brought up their children while continuing her artistic career. She received the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago, Dunedin (1983) and the Rita Angus Residency in Wellington (1993) and was based in Whanganui for the remainder of her life. Philosophy and theology were her favourite reading, and she was also politically active in matters important to her, for example, architectural conservation and environmentalism. Upon her untimely death in 2003, she left over a thousand pieces of art: in oil, water colour, drawing, photography and Super 8 film, poetry and prose. Much of the poetry and prose remained unpublished in her lifetime. Important influences on her visual art were the American modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe, the Italian still painter Giorgio Morandi, the French painter and printer Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cezanne and the New Zealand painters Rita Angus (1908–­1970) and Frances Ellis (1900–­1977). Speaking of the expatriate artist Frances Hodgkins (1869–­1947), she admired the way she ‘kept colour line  & tone distinct, allowing full play to their energies . . . & her peculiarly female domestication of the landscape thru a window’ (Paul and Eagle 92). She often used this compositional device in her own work. She acknowledged her mother, also a painter, as the person who taught her how to see as an artist. A year in London with her family in 1964, where she studied drawing and painting at the Sir John Cass School, and a trip to Greece sparked, in her words, an ‘intense responsiveness to the visual world’ that never left her (Paul and Barrie). This pivotal time was also marked by the death of Paul’s father in 1965 and her conversion to Roman Catholicism. Later, she turned to Quakerism. Paul’s disposition as a painter and poet of the everyday was informed by her association with the women’s art movement in the late 1970s. Although she considered herself a woman artist, she preferred the title ‘painter/ poet’, which reflected her wish to emphasize both aspects of her creativity (‘Illustrated Talk on Being a Feminist Artist’). She had reservations about feminism: ‘I don’t think I am a feminist artist/ at best or at worst – a lower case feminist’ (‘Illustrated Talk on Being a Feminist Artist’), yet broadly speaking, her art belongs within the parameters of the cultural feminism of her day. As a woman painting is not a job, not even a vocation. It is part of life, subject to the strains, and joys, of domestic life. I cannot paint unless the house is in order. Unless I paint I don’t function well in my domestic roles. Each thing is important. The idea that one sacrifices other values

212  Joanna Osborne for art is alien to me, and I think to all women whose calling it is to do and be many things. To concentrate all meaning and all energy in a work of art is to leave life dry and banal. I don’t wish to separate the significant and everyday actions but to bring them as close as possible together. It is natural for women to do this; their exercise and their training and their artistry is in daily living. Painting for me as a woman is an ordinary act – about the great meaning in ordinary things. Anonymity pattern utility quietness relatedness. (quoted in Eagle 12–­3) Paul’s statement on the ‘great meaning in ordinary things’ accompanied her contribution to a show curated by her friend, artist and activist Alison Mitchell [Allie Eagle], which was the first public iteration of feminist concerns in the New Zealand art scene.2 As an assertion of the ‘personal is political’, her statement refers to a way of working that also celebrated lived experience of the everyday. There was a stark difference between her work and the overt political work of other women artists in the 1970s. Jill Trevelyan writes of Paul’s ‘quiet assertion of female difference and sustained exploration of female subjectivity’ (20) as her political voice. In response to the death of her second child, Imogen Rose, in 1976, Paul produced two seminal works. The first was a series of poems entitled Imogen (1978), published by Hawk Press, and the second an installation Unpacking the body (1977) exhibited in the Women’s Environment at the Canterbury Society of Arts in 1977, later published in book form.3 Imogen died of a heart defect; an operation to correct the problem had been unsuccessful. Paul spent six months of research in a medical library, trying to come to terms with her grief and preparing for the installation that was an etymological and object-­based inventory of medical terminology in relation to the anatomy of the human body, domestic objects and things in nature (­Figure 15.1). She placed white painted objects within pink frames, with lists of corresponding words and meanings above them. This work expressed her belief in ‘art as motherhood’ (‘Illustrated Talk on Being a Feminist Artist’). She writes: ‘If there is a thesis somewhere it is that knowledge and feeling must run together’ (‘Unpacking the Body’). Paul was influential within the women’s art movement in Aotearoa/ New Zealand, and her work connects with the postmodernism that interested her contemporaries. Her art and poetry also convey an understated spiritual sensibility. She was, as Trevelyan says, ‘a romantic much drawn to mysticism, [who] often returned to the Modernist idea of the artist as a conduit’ (21). For Paul, painting was ‘an avenue for empathy’ with her surroundings (Paul and Eagle 93), and visual responsiveness was her ‘responsibility’ to the world (Barrie). In this way, she sought an understanding of the divine: Through the shaped spaces of the bed frame; through the flower

Quotidian wonder 213 carved in the wood & through the window pane; through the pierced veranda hood, the foliate rose I see the straight & curved branches parting of a tree. Without the lens heaven,/ the heavens less understood. (Like love poems 17)

A religious aesthetics: ritual, liturgy and poetry In ‘On Not Being a Catholic Writer’, Paul lists the poets, writers and thinkers who influenced her religious life and work. Here, her thoughts approach a theological phenomenology in poetic turns of phrase that express her way of experiencing a relationship with the divine mystery in the world. She presented what she called a ‘sacramental theology’ in her painting and poetry, drawn from both Catholic and Reformed liturgy. A sense of the sacramental can also be found in her ethical and political activism, where we can sense the influence of what she called the (Roman) ‘Catholic mystical creaturely tradition of nature in God and God in nature’ (‘What are the Churches

Figure 15.1 Joanna Margaret Paul. Unwrapping the body, artist’s book [HEAD caput CUP] c. 1978, Bothwell, Dunedin. A Women’s Picture Book, ed. by Marian Evans, Bridie Lonie and Tilly Lloyd. Wellington: Government Printing Office, 1988, 86.

214  Joanna Osborne Saying about Genetic Engineering?’). She was an original thinker who drew upon disparate, yet poetically complementary, strands of theological tradition, and she was aware of the arguments that hold Christianity accountable for the subjugation of nature. Her love of Catholic ritual and liturgy ran against the Presbyterian sensibility that she inherited from her childhood: ‘sparely furnished rooms, cool paintings, guarded praise, no schwärmerei [enthusiasm], thank God’ (‘On Not Being a Catholic Writer’ 134), but, as she wrote, she was both ‘ironic and romantic. Catholicism was an absolute demanded dedication & “sacrifice”. Had deep roots . . . sacralised thing (those things my painter’s eye dreamed­)’ (‘From Rooms and Episodes’ 44). ‘The beauty of the ­sacraments – spirit and thing together, the necessity of art’ had been one of the things that had drawn her to the Catholic faith (‘On Not Being a Catholic Writer’ 135). She admitted that she had a ‘female diffidence or Presbyterian reticence’ about herself, writing: ‘My poems I think all tread the same line of feeling and restraint. Thus my sacramental theology – a distrust of extravagance, a liking for the holding forms of ritual and liturgy and poetry’ (‘On Not Being a Catholic Writer’ 136). The subject matter of Paul’s still life art, as Allie Eagle has noted in her correspondence with Paul, acquires an almost religious symbolism: Your choice of Catholicism seemed linked to your sense of the poetry & forms found in liturgical symbolism . . . I think of the drawings you’ve done: bowls, chalices, containing forms  .  .  . your Imogen  & your Unpacking the body 1977  .  .  . utilitarian household forms evoking deeper questions – even contemplating Christ – perhaps? . . . [Joanna:] Yes;  & yet the images are all implicit in the language of the body. I invented nothing but drew out, if under the pressure of experience, the poem buried in names. (Paul and Eagle 85) Paul once intimated that she was ‘speaking in the feminine as an artist in that teasing phrase of Hélène Cixous’s (‘Illustrated Talk on Being a Feminist Artist’). She was no doubt referring to Cixous’s ‘écriture féminine’ in connection with her own practice. Paul often emphasized the connection between the body and external things: ‘waterflow thru concrete ducts and valves  .  .  . image the physical inside (‘Joanna Paul: Shibusha’ 10), where the surface of the wall of a house is also the surface of a body. Along with Cixous, she also mentioned the influence of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. As Abigail Bray points out, Bachelard sympathized with Cixous on this point: ‘ “writing the body” is also the contemplation of matter . . . It is, broadly speaking, a phenomenological exploration of the materiality of the feminine as thinking itself’ (73). Paul was aware of a phenomenological relationship with the world: ‘As a painter/ poet I sometimes feel like a sieve or fine skin on the natural world

Quotidian wonder 215 which presses through my consciousness’ (‘On Not Being a Catholic Writer’ 137). In this sentence, Paul also framed her phenomenology in terms of spiritual connection to the world, here expressed in the processes of perception and consciousness at play in her practice. She described this as a ‘circular process’ or an ‘interreaction’, of ‘vesting the outside with the inside’ or of bringing herself to the object and then presenting her perception to the viewer (Barrie). Paul did not aspire to represent an object or scene realistically, but was interested in representation as a way of ‘processing relationship’ (Wedde 14). Wedde describes how she deliberately blurred the distinctions between the viewer and the viewed, subject and object and body and world (14). This ‘interreaction’ that Paul describes was a daily exercise. She provides a summary statement: ‘All my films, poems, paintings play more or less between inner and outer events’ (‘Joanna Paul: Shibusha’ 10). She rejected the idea of ‘grand views and [the artist’s] distant command of them’ (Wedde 14). Her works illustrate this blurring the boundary between viewer and view. Her drawing and collage On Roundness (1984) (­Figure  15.2) recalls the concluding chapter on ‘the phenomenology of roundness’ in Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. Among the various painters and poets that Bachelard

Figure 15.2 Joanna Margaret Paul. On Roundness. 1984, ink, watercolour, pencil and collage, Private Collection, Dunedin.

216  Joanna Osborne mentions in this context, Bachelard singles out Joë Bousquet for his dictum: ‘Life is round’ (Bachelard 232). Paul renders this notion through a white tabletop scene with collage: pencil lines intimating circular objects, a glass of water, an orange-­red piece of fruit and a curved line of deep green. Things that are round are the furnishings of a life upon the white page. The page, Paul named, in a haptic sense, ‘a symbol for the self’ (Barrie). As one would cut through a piece of fruit ‘the page . . . becomes me in itself’, she said. ‘As I draw a line on it . . . I’m cutting into something which has a palpable life’ (Barrie). Paul’s friend Bernadette Hall likened her art to ‘entering a state of being’: she was ‘always making’, again and again, ‘the flower, the book, the thread, the window, the frame, the table, the urn’ (Hall 2015). To borrow the words of Bachelard’s poets: ‘Her secret was/ Listening to flowers/­ . . . / Wear out their color’ (Bachelard 177). Paul made a film entitled Roses (1975), where the camera pans a sunlit garden bed of flowers, incrementally moving closer to individual roses – to the point where the camera touches the flower  – with a movement that transforms the image into flashes of intense pink and deep shadow. Towards the end of the sequence, the film emulsion itself is manipulated by hand, with brushstrokes of black over pink, converting the image into an energetic photographic drawing. It is as if the roses are singing. In the words of another of Bachelard’s poets, René-­Guy Cadou: ‘You can hear the prattle of the flowers on the screen’ (Bachelard 177). Paul’s film is a celebration of colour – the colour of one of her icons, the rose – that establishes a multidisciplinary connection between drawing and film. She wrote of her preference for films ‘in which the camera dreams’ (‘Joanna Paul: Shibusha’ 10). Her work Roses is a dynamic expression of connectivity to the essence of her visual material – with an obvious joy and musical rhythm, the camera unquestionably dreams. The poet abides and dreams, Bachelard says, within an interior space; ‘a room which the author bears within [herself]’ (229): ‘The cell of myself fills with wonder/ The white-­washed wall of my secret’ (Pierre-­Jean Jouve, quoted in Bachelard 228). ‘As a form of solitude’ followed by ‘the whiteness of the walls, alone, [protect] the dreamer’s cell’ (Bachelard 228). For Paul, too, whiteness is both a refuge and a ‘ground’ for poetry. The white spatial silences in her work also read as ciphers for wonder.

A phenomenology of white space The white spaces that Paul left exposed in her paintings and drawings became a feature of her style and emphasized attentiveness to the particularities of everyday life. Writing to Eagle, she remarked: ‘More and more I  see my marks as simply energizing and articulating the white space of the paper’ (Paul and Eagle 93). To convey her point, she left spaces of white in her letter, like musical pauses. They become

Quotidian wonder 217 a ‘ground of multiplicity’ and a ‘lens of religious intuition’, she continues. (Paul and Eagle 93). Her use of white was part of her attempt to produce ‘visual poetry’: I have tried to pay attention to the effects of light, the way light explicates the world; the complementary burr produced by adjacent colours, the way this creates line, & a linear mesh that articulates the painting; the sense in which this linear interface of object/ area can be used to define spaces with the same or greater clarity than objects  – the possibilities here for a visual poetry. (Paul and Eagle 92) In her reflections on her art, she spoke of how colour could convey the sacred. It had symbolic significance, but more often it had specific emotional connotations. In her poetry, Paul continuously returns to the colour, word and notion of white or whiteness. In ‘A sick girl’, which recalls her film Roses, whiteness emerges as a form of solace: the peonies shatter the shade with their red bodies their hotness splinters my eyes til the white curtain returns its kind whiteness (Like love poems 43) Gregory O’Brien has described the presence of white in Paul’s work as ‘silence in music’ and ‘a vision too intense’ (‘Always Quartettish Thoughts’ 31). Peter Ireland puts it succinctly, and in spiritual terms, as a: conversation with the particulars of the physical world [that] was often conducted in the great and potent silence of negative space  – that apparent emptiness ‘between’ lines of text, pencil marks or wads of colour that is no less an active part in the formal dynamic than anything positively marked or made. Absence become presence. This mystical relationship mirrored the one she herself experienced with her work, and now, through that work, mirrors the one she has with us. (97) Morandi was an influential figure for Paul as she found in him a ‘shape to part the space’ (‘blessings on Morandi’). His focus was on the domestic and ordinary, an anonymity which contrasted with the grand painterly statements of modernity. For her, Morandi was instead ‘the poet of still-­ life [and] the poet of the confined life’ (‘Web of Living’). The restraint in Morandi’s art appealed to her, as did his tendency of revisiting the same objects over and over again. Paul’s poem ‘blessings on Morandi’ from

218  Joanna Osborne her Imogen series demonstrates, in the form of a poem, this equivalence of space with shape. The lines of verse create a space in the centre, in the form of a vessel, acknowledging the presence of her daughter’s death by absence (­Figure 15.3). In a movement from the intimate to the immense, Paul juxtaposes cosmic intimate space with the cosmic space of the heavens in a late series entitled Dante’s Rose and the Sublunary Wardrobe (2002). The work is a series of 11 chalk pastel tondos that take the viewer from the intimate space of a wardrobe full of layered vibrant colour through a pale window frame to the white rose of Dante’s heaven. It is her love of literature that shapes the religious content of this series. Domestic space swells with meaning as it draws associations from Dante’s cosmic poem and the spheres of an Aristotelian cosmology. In the Paradiso, Dante’s rose is located in the Empyrean  – the place beyond the corporeal universe  – where God and the saints reside. In Paul’s work, the sublunary sphere is the contents of a wardrobe and the frame of a window. Set against heaven, these domestic spaces contain an aura of the extraordinary in their intimacy – the portrait of an individual life in the colour of clothing becomes a site for wonder. Bachelard lists the wardrobe as a ‘veritable [organ] of the secret psychological life’ (78). ‘Does there exist’, he asks, ‘a single dreamer of words who does not respond to the word wardrobe?’ He then continues: ‘Every poet of furniture  .  .  . knows that the inner space of an old wardrobe is deep. A  wardrobe’s inner space is also intimate space, space that is not open to just anybody’ (78). The wardrobe of Paul’s series of tondos is open. We see the contents of colour and then garments themselves. We see an inner life. But it is through the exaggeration of poetry that through opening the wardrobe, intimacy becomes the transcendent space of whiteness. Here again there is an echo of Bachelard: ‘To open [the wardrobe] is to experience an event of whiteness’ (Bachelard 81). As Paul draws her viewers’ through the window towards the wonderful rose of Dante’s Paradiso, whiteness becomes whiter than snow.

Figure 15.3  Joanna Margaret Paul. ‘Blessings on Morandi’. Imogen. Days Bay, Eastbourne, NZ: Hawk Press, 1978.

Quotidian wonder 219

The enchantment of everyday life One of her significant late series, Frugal Pleasures (1999), is a celebratory inventory of everyday objects. At breakfast one morning, she happened to be reading Horace’s Satires4 and came across some lines describing how he passed the day by visiting the local market, inspecting the merchandise and returning home to a frugal meal. Her response, which has echoes of one of her favourite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was to observe that ‘organic knobbly things seemed doubly precious in a world of supermarket uniformity &, under the long shadow of genetic engineering, spoke of a “vanished simple good” ’ (‘The Vanished Simple Good’ 35) (­Figure  15.4). The nine works of Frugal Pleasures read ‘like a rhyme’ (35), she writes, with lines of Latin flowing from one work to the next. For Paul, this series blurred the boundaries of nature and culture, the sacred and profane. A luminous table that ‘hints of ceremony, even if it is not marble’, and of ‘wealth . . . [and] . . . frugality’, also reflects her ‘sacramental theology’ of ‘feeling and restraint’ and conveys her view of the threat to the ‘simple good’(35) (­Figure 15.5).

Figure 15.4 Joanna Margaret Paul. Frugal Pleasures [Still life with statuette and Latin text], 1999, gouache and watercolour on paper: 313 x 352 mm. David and Keren Skegg Deposit, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, L2011/­43.

220  Joanna Osborne

Figure 15.5 Joanna Margaret Paul. Frugal Pleasures [Still life with apples and plums on a tray, with Latin text], 1999, gouache and watercolour on paper: 319 x 403 mm. David and Keren Skegg Deposit, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, L2011/­46.

Wonder was implicit in Paul’s poetic/ painterly sensibility. It was part of her ‘intense responsiveness’ to the world around her. Her art moves away from the ideas of art as producing objects to be viewed to art conceived as relationships. In this sense she seems to epitomize critic Suzi Gablik’s pioneering vision for ‘The Reenchantment of Art’ that valued an ‘aesthetics of interconnectedness’ (‘The Reenchantment of Art’ 180). For Gablik, a relational philosophy that drew from ‘deep ecology’ and ‘systems theory’ informed a ‘more fieldlike conception of the self’ and an embodied ‘process-­ orientated’ and participatory art, in which often ‘the relationship is the art work’ (‘Leaving the “Cult of Separation” ’ 39). Another parallel is Jane Bennett’s view that wonder might be a viable alternative to the rhetoric of disenchantment. For Bennett, ‘the affective force’ of ‘moments of enchantment’ in everyday life ‘might be deployed to propel ethical generosity’ (3). Her notion of enchantment is set within and informed by ‘a picture of the world as a web of lively and mobile matter-­forms of varying degrees of complexity’ (131), a picture that is poetically consonant with Paul’s artistic endeavour.

Quotidian wonder 221 Bennett’s tales of everyday attentiveness are ones that find the contemporary world ‘sprinkled with natural and cultural sites that have the power to “enchant” ’ (3). The enchantment requires the experience of an ‘encounter’, but such an encounter can be encouraged by ‘sensory receptivity to the marvellous specificity of things’ (4). The enchantment that Bennett describes is very similar to the sensibility that Paul, commenting on the role of wonder in her work, says: springs from a sense of the oneness of things and wonder at the uniquely different order of each living thing. As a child I felt a kind of rapture at the beauty of a young pear tree. As a painter I’ve been drawn continuously to the behaviour of trees – the lovely angles and intervals repeated among branches and twigs, and peculiar to each species (‘Cherished Nature’). Given her convictions, Paul’s judgement on Hopkins’s much-­loved poem ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’ is unsurprising: ‘This poem is a profound statement of the specificity of things . . . the I AM in all things. This Jesuit poet writes from his own first hand wonder and hard looking’ (‘Cherished Nature’). She was impressed by Hopkins’s ability to create ‘a language-­equivalent to precise observation’ (‘Cherished Nature’) and referred to Duns Scotus’s notion of haecceity or ‘thisness’. For her, love, rather than reason, was a defining characteristic of human nature: ‘love recognises while reason classifies. Love recognises the particular,’ and following Hopkins’s turn of phrase, ‘this face; this rose’ (‘Cherished Nature’). Love accompanies wonder. The views of Hopkins and Duns Scotus inspired Paul to defend and celebrate the sanctity of nature. As an activist in her later years, she argued energetically against genetic engineering. Abhorring any hint of Manichaean language, she called for an acknowledgement of the ‘web of life’ which posited a ‘sacred unity, blue print (logos) and balance at the cellular and cosmic level’ (‘Boundaries’). She encouraged a ‘habit of deep analogical thinking about the earth’ – one that recognized ‘the delicate economies of nature and the human body’ (‘Boundaries’) and the ‘oneness of things’. Although she rejected the idea of inanimate nature imposed upon by the human mind, she saw in science the potential to ‘evoke awe’ in the ‘recognition of the teleological fitness of living systems discerned in detail’ (‘Boundaries’). Paul’s commitment to an ethics of relationality arises from her sensibility to wonder and is in line with Bennett’s ideas. The latter acknowledges that, by making us aware of the complexity of the material world, a ‘mood of enchantment’ (3) contributes to our reflections on ethical issues. In her words, ‘to be enchanted is to be struck and shaken by the extraordinary that lives amid the familiar and the everyday’ (4). The everyday encounters that Bennett describes as facilitating wonder might only distantly agree with Bachelard’s poetics of intimate space and a notion of aesthetics defined by interconnectedness. But these voices converge in Paul’s art and shape

222  Joanna Osborne an interpretation of her romantic notion of enchantment and wonder. Her oeuvre sets out a topography of a life, a life/ art connection, where her still-­life studies read as metaphors for relationships as well as the artist’s relationship to the objects themselves. Her practice was a poetic celebration of the ordinary at the threshold of wonder.

Notes 1 The quotation is from an inscription in Joanna Margaret Paul’s painting ‘in memoriam Christopher Canter 1954–­1999 spring’ and cited in the epigraph to Like Love Poems: Selected Poems by Joanna Margaret Paul. The author would like to acknowledge the Joanna Margaret Paul Estate for giving permission to reproduce the poems ‘through the shaped spaces of the/ bed’s frame’, ‘a sick girl’ and ‘blessings on Morandi’, as well as the image On Roundness, and those from the series Frugal Pleasures and the artist’s book Unwrapping the Body. 2 The show, curated by Allie Eagle [Alison Mitchell] and entitled Woman’s Art: An Exhibition of Six Women Artists (1975), included the works of artists Jane Arbuckle [Zusters], Joanne Hardy, Helen Rockel, Rhondda Bosworth, Stephanie Sheehan and Joanna Harris [Paul]. 3 Unwrapping the Body (Dunedin: Bothwell, c. 1978 photographs and poetry text) by Joanna Paul was first realized as an installation in the CSA Gallery, Christchurch, 1977. Then again Unpacking the Body (1996; presented by Alan Loney 2009). 4 ‘Whenever I please/ I go out alone. I check the price of vegetables and grain. I wander into the frivolous circus of an evening and after into the Forum. I stop at the soothsayers. Then I return home to a dish of fritters, chickpeas and leeks . . . the white marble table carries two wine cups and a ladle. There is a cheap salt cellar and a bowl and an oil flask from [Campania]. Then I sleep/ (not worried at all about getting up in the morning)’. Horace, Satires I. 6. 111–­9. In Joanna Margaret Paul, Frugal Pleasures. 1999, water colour on paper, David  & Keren Skegg Deposit, Hocken Collections, University of Otago, Dunedin.

Works cited Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Trans. Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments Crossings and Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Bray, Abigail. Helene Cixous: Writing and Sexual Difference. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Bugden, Emma et al., eds. Beauty, Even: A Tribute to Joanna Margaret Paul, 1945–­ 2003. Wellington: City Gallery Wellington, 2004. Eagle, Allie [Alison Mitchell], ed. Woman’s Art: An Exhibition of Six Women Artists. Christchurch: Robert McDougall Art Gallery, 1975. Gablik, Suzi. ‘The Reenchantment of Art: Reflections on the Two Postmodernisms’. In Sacred Interconnections: Postmodern Spirituality, Political Economy, and Art. Ed. David Ray Griffin. New York: State University of New York Press, 1990, 177–­92. ———. ‘Leaving the “Cult of Separation”: New Images of What It Means to Be an Artist’. ReVision 23.4 (2001): 38–­9. Hall, Bernadette. Email correspondence with author, March  2015. ‘Re: Answers’. Message to author. 11 March 2015. E-­mail.

Quotidian wonder 223 Ireland, Peter. ‘A Shape to Part the Space: Joanna Margaret Paul (1945–­2003)’. Art New Zealand 108 (Spring 2003): 58–­9, 97. O’Brien, Gregory. ‘Joanna Margaret Paul: Beyond Sensation’. In Lands and Deeds: Profiles on Contemporary New Zealand Painters. Auckland: Godwit Publishing, 1996. ———. ‘Always Quartettish Thoughts’. In Beauty, Even: A Tribute to Joanna Margaret Paul, 1945–­2003. Ed. Bugden et al., 29–­33. Paul, Joanna Margaret. ‘Frances Hodgkins’. Craccum 43.12 (1969): 9. ———. Imogen. Days Bay: Hawk Press, 1978. ———. ‘ “Unpacking the Body” ’. In Vv. Aa., ‘The Women’s Environment at the 1977 Women’s Convention’. Spiral 3 (1978): 39–­40. ———. ‘Web of Living’. Critic 59.21 (27 September 1983): n.p. ———. ‘Joanna Paul: Shibusha’. Cantrills Film Notes 47–­8 (August 1985): 10–­1. ———. ‘On Not Being a Catholic Writer’. In The Source of the Song: New Zealand Writers on Catholicism. Ed. Mark Williams. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1995, 134–­46. ———. ‘The Vanished Simple Good (Joanna Margaret Paul writes of the making of this series of paintings)’. Takahe (April 2000): 31–­5. ———. ‘From Rooms and Episodes: 2 – Written at St Omer’. Brief 32 (2005): 42–­55. ———. Like Love Poems: Selected Poems by Joanna Margaret Paul. Ed. Bernadette Hall. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006. ———. ‘Boundaries: An Essay on Genetic Engineering’. In Joanna Margaret Paul & Other Voices, Consider the Lily. Cultural, Theological,  & Rational Arguments Against Genetic Engineering of Life [ca 2000], unpublished manuscript. MS-­ Papers-­9473-­212. Paul, Joanna, 1945–­2003: Papers. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. ———. ‘Cherished Nature’. In Mischief in Creation. Ed. Joanna Margaret Paul. Undated, unpublished manuscript. MS-­Papers-­9473-­033. Paul, Joanna, 1945–­ 2003: Papers. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. ———. ‘Illustrated Talk on Being a Feminist Artist’. 1996. Unpublished notes. MS-­ Papers-­9473–­114. Paul, Joanna, 1945–­2003: Papers. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. ———. ‘What Are the Churches Saying about Genetic Engineering?’ In Mischief in Creation. Ed. Joanna Margaret Paul. Undated, unpublished manuscript. MS-­ Papers-­9473-­033. Paul, Joanna, 1945–­2003: Papers. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Paul, Joanna Margaret, and Eagle, Allie [Allison Mitchell]. ‘Joanna Paul and Allie Eagle: Letters from Room to Room’. In A Women’s Picture Book: 25 Women Artists of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Ed. and afterword by Marian Evans, Bridie Lonie and Tilly Lloyd. Wellington: Government Printing Office, 1988, 79–­98. Paul, Joanna Margaret, and Lita Barrie. Interview with Joanna Paul. Women’s Art Archive, 1984, Compact Cassette CA000053/­001/­0042, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington New Zealand. Trevelyan, Jill. ‘ “To See the Moment Is to Farewell It”: The Drawings of Joanna Margaret Paul’. In Joanna Margaret Paul: Drawing. Ed. Jill Trevelyan and Sarah Treadwell. Auckland: Auckland University Press and Mahara Gallery, 2006, 7–­23. Wedde, Ian. ‘Rain on the Hills’. In Beauty, Even: A  Tribute to Joanna Margaret Paul, 1945–­2003. Ed. Emma Bugden et al. Wellington: City Gallery Wellington, 2004, 14–­17.

Part IV

Afterword

A Space for God In this house recently no one talks about God. And yet sometimes suddenly, turning like foals the millstone of the days, a space in the air opens, in the silence, and as you cross it you smile softly as when snow falls. Elena Buia Rutt

16 ‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’ Notes on Bergoglio’s aesthetics Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) has frequently spoken of the decisive role of wonder in spiritual life. Only two weeks or so after he was elected pope on 13 March 2013, taking the name of Pope Francis, he remarked that the experience of ‘awe and wonder’ flows from the encounter with ‘the living Christ’. This experience, he explained shortly after in his homily at Domus Sanctae Marthae (St  Martha’s House), ‘draws us outside of ourselves with joy’. ‘It [wonder] is not’, he noted, ‘a mere enthusiasm like that of sports fans when their favourite team wins, but something deeper’, similar to the crowds’ amazement at Peter’s healing of the crippled man or the wonder of the disciples at the appearance of the resurrected Christ. The state of wonder, of astonishment, he noted, is not permanent; it is, nevertheless, the ‘beginning of the habitual state of Christians’. Wonder is the necessary first step towards attaining peace in the Lord. First wonder, therefore, then the spiritual consolation that follows and, finally, inner peace. Francis encouraged the congregation to ask for God’s gift of spiritual consolation and peace of mind that starts ‘with this joyful wonder of our encounter with Jesus Christ’ (‘Peace is Priceless’).1 In saying this, Bergoglio paid homage to his predecessor. He has often repeated the words of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: ‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea’, Ratzinger wrote in his Encyclical Deus caritas est, ‘but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction’ (217). ‘I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment’, Bergoglio wrote in turn in Evangelii Gaudium, ‘to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since “no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord” ’ (I, 3).2 Wonder opens the door to the joy of the Gospel which – to quote the beginning of Evangelii Gaudium – ‘fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus’ (1). Two years later, in his homily at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, he mentioned again the ‘wonder of our first encounter with Christ’(‘Vespers with Priests and Religious’). Liturgy should help the faithful enter into God’s mystery and experience the wonder of encountering Christ, Bergoglio told priests of the diocese of Rome during an annual Lenten meeting. People, he said, should feel the wonder and allure ‘that the apostles felt when they were called, invited.

228  Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox It attracts – wonder attracts – and makes you ponder’, the pope said and added, ‘For me the key of ars celebrandi takes the path of recovering the allure of beauty, the wonder both of the person celebrating and the people, of entering in an atmosphere that is spontaneous, normal and religious, but isn’t artificial’. ‘That way’, he concluded, you recover ‘a bit of the wonder’.3 Bergoglio was at that time weaving the theme of ‘awe and wonder’ also throughout his second Encyclical. In Laudato Si’  (‘Praise be to you, my Lord’), he specified that the response to the world of his ‘inspiration and guide’, Francis of Assisi, was, in his words, ‘so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus’. Nor was his poverty and austerity mere ‘veneer asceticism’. It was something much more radical: that is, ‘a refusal to turn reality into an object’ (11). The world was for Francis of Assisi not a problem to be solved, but rather a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise. Bergoglio suggests that, like his namesake, we are all endowed with that ‘openness to awe and wonder’. If we nurture this ‘capacity for wonder’, and the inner peace which follows from it, we can contribute to a culture of care and deeper understanding of the world around us, approaching it with the heart of what it is to be human – speaking ‘the language of fraternity and beauty’ and thus promoting ecology and the common good. If, on the other hand, we approach nature and the environment without this ‘openness to awe and wonder’, if we no longer speak ‘the language of fraternity and beauty’ in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of ‘masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters’ (11). Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) had warned that ‘the ear of the heart must be free of noise’ in order to hear the ‘divine voice echoing in the universe’. Recalling the wonderful words of Sirach in praise of the Creator (Sir. 42:22; 43:27–­8), he had reaffirmed that alongside revelation properly so called, contained in sacred scripture, there was ‘a divine manifestation in the blaze of the sun and the fall of night’(‘General Audience’). Nature, too, in a certain sense, was ‘the book of God’. Developing Wojtyla’s thought further, Bergoglio explained that paying attention to this manifestation, we learn to see ourselves in relation to all other creatures. When we can see God reflected in all that exists, our hearts are moved to praise the Lord for all his creatures and to worship him in union with them. This is expressed beautifully, he says, in the poetic hymn of Saint Francis of Assisi. Like the wonderful words of Sirach, Saint Francis’s Laudes Creaturarum (‘The Canticle of the Creatures’) sums up the praise, sung in every age and under every sky, to the Creator who reveals himself through the immensity and splendour of his works: Altissimu, onnipotente bon Signore, tue so’ le laude, la gloria e l’honore et onne benedictione. (Most High, omnipotent, good Lord All praise, glory, honour are yours And all the blessings)

‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’ 229 Ad te solo, Altissimo, se konfano, et nullu homo ène dignu te mentovare. (To you alone, most High, they belong And no man is worthy to utter your name) Laudato sie, mi’ Signore, cum tucte le tue creature, spetialmente messor lo frate Sole, lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per lui. Et ellu è bellu e radiante cum grande splendore: de te, Altissimo, porta significatione. (Praise be to you, my Lord, With all your creatures, especially our lord and brother Sun Who is light and through whom you give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour Of you, most High, he is the emblem.) Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per sora luna e le stelle: in celu l’ài formate clarite et preziose et belle. (Praise be to you, my Lord, for sister moon and every star: In the heavens you made them bright and precious and fair.) Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per frate vento et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo, per lo quale, a le tue creature dài sostentamento. (Praise be to you, my Lord, for brother wind And for the air above, cloudy or serene, and for every kind of weather Through which you give nourishment to your creatures.) Laudato sì’, mi’ Signore, per sor’aqua, la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta. (Praise be to you, my Lord, for sister water, so useful and humble is she, precious and chaste.) Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per frate focu, per lo quale enallumini la nocte: et ello è bello, et iocundo et robustoso et forte. Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per sora nostra matre terra, la quale ne sustenta et governa, et produce diversi fructi con coloriti fiori et herba. Laudato sì’, mi’ Signore per quelli ke perdonano per lo Tuo amore et sostengono infirmitate et tribolazione.

230  Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox (Praise be to you, my Lord, for brother fire, through whom you light up the dark, and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong. Praise be to you, my Lord, for our Sister Mother Earth who sustains and governs us, producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs. Praise be to you, my Lord, for those who grant pardon for love of you and bear sickness and trial.) Beati quelli ke’ l sosterranno in pace, ka da Te, Altissimo, sirano incoronati. Laudato sì’, mi’ Signore, per sora nostra morte corporale, da la quale nullu homo vivente po’ skappare: guai a quelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali; beati quelli ke troverà ne le tue sanctissime voluntati, ka la morte seconda no ‘l farrà male. (Blessed are those who endure in peace, By you, most high, they will be crowned. Praise be to you, my Lord, for our sister death, from whom no living human being can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Blessed are they she finds doing your most holy will. No second death can do them harm.) Laudate e benedicete mi’ Signore et rengratiate e serviateli cum grande humilitate. (Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks, And serve him with great humility.)4 This sense of wonder and thankfulness for God’s creation can, in Bergoglio’s view, make our impulses more in tune with what is valuable in our human nature (Amoris Laetitia §151, 112). Hence he invites us to associate with those who safeguard the childlike in their hearts. ‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’, Bergoglio recommended again three years later (‘General Audience’).

Wonder and Bergoglio’s aesthetics Bergoglio highlights the role of ‘awe and wonder’ when speaking of spirituality and ecological issues – Laudato Si’ has been defined, after all, ‘an environmental encyclical’. A  brief outline of Bergoglio’s ‘aesthetics’, however, based mainly on an interview which appeared in La Civiltà Cattolica and the observations that followed it, demonstrates that, for Bergoglio, wonder comes into play in artistic creativity and responses to works of art.5

‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’ 231 Creativity During the interview, Bergoglio discussed optimism. He said that he doesn’t like the word as it conveys primarily a psychological attitude. Instead he prefers to speak of ‘hope’. When Bergoglio smiles, he does not do so because he is an optimist, but rather because, as a believer, he experiences a hope which never disappoints. ‘Think of the first riddle in Puccini’s Turandot’, he said all of a sudden. Up to that moment in the interview, he had made no mention of literary or artistic works. But the reference to Puccini’s opera was incisive. Facing her suitor Prince Calàf, Turandot poses her first question: ‘What is born each night and dies each dawn?’ ‘Hope,’ Calàf answers. In these famous lines from Turandot, one is reminded of how man desires hope and yet hope is an iridescent shadow disappearing with the dawn. Calàf’s answer is correct, but only in the context of Puccini’s opera. For Bergoglio, Christian hope is quite different. ‘Christian hope’, he commented, ‘is not a shadow and it does not deceive. It is a theological virtue and so, by definition, a gift from God which cannot be reduced to optimism, which is solely human’. And he added: ‘God does not defraud hope, he cannot denounce himself. God is full of promise’(Spadaro, ‘Intervista’ 470–­1). Bergoglio’s impromptu reference to Turandot to make his point is just one indication that he considers art and creativity integral parts of his spiritual and pastoral life. On other occasions, he has mentioned works of art to illustrate his views. He cited, for example, El Divino Impaciente (‘A Saint in a Hurry: The Story of Saint Francis Xavier’) by Spanish journalist and writer José María Pemán during his homily to the Jesuits to mark the feast of St Ignatius in 2013 (‘On the Occasion of the Feast of St Ignatius’). Similarly, he mentioned the French writer Joseph Malègue when he commented that many people exercise holiness in their everyday lives and vocations. Among his favourite readings, he mentions, in addition to Dante and Borges, the epic poem Martín Fierro by the Argentine journalist, poet and politician José Hernández, the poetry of the Piedmontese poet Nino Costa and The Great Exodus by Luigi Orsenigo, as well as novels by the Argentine writer Leopoldo Marechal: for example, Adàn Buenosayres, The Banquet of Severo Arcángelo  and  Megafón o la guerra. In particular, the literary references that Bergoglio uses help to clarify more effectively ethical and theological issues. For example, he posed the following question to himself: ‘When does a formulation of thought cease to be valid?’ To this he replied, ‘When it loses sight of the human or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself’ (Spadaro, ‘Intervista’ 476). He exemplifies this ‘deceived thought’ as Ulysses encountering the song of the sirens; Tannhäuser in an orgy surrounded by satyrs and bacchantes and Parsifal, in the second act of Wagner’s opera, in the enchanted palace of Klingsor (476). The church, too, he adds, has experienced moments of decline in its capacity to think. We must not, for instance, confuse the ‘genius’ of Thomas Aquinas with the age of ‘decadent Thomist textbooks’ (476). Bergoglio believes, in

232  Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox short, that the church must take ‘creativity’ seriously when thinking about human beings and the ways in which they ‘are in search of themselves’. As a teacher, he had encouraged his students’ creativity and sensitivity to fiction so that by reading or writing, they could enter a psychological space in which ethical and human values were evoked, explored and experimented with. ‘So, Holy Father, is creativity important for the life of a person?’ he was asked during the interview. To which he replied, with a smile: ‘For a Jesuit it is extremely important! A Jesuit must be creative’ (473). For Bergoglio ‘creativity’ and ‘genius’, then, are part of ordinary life provided that life is lived with energy and intensity. They spring not only from a curious and appreciative mind but also from a sense of wonder at our existence and at the world and people around us. Unsurprisingly, in the interview, Bergoglio emphasized the importance of fruitfulness, of generating new things through the imagination. Art as vision of life Like Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII), Bergoglio is aware that religion speaks to the imagination and in the imagination often finds its language and symbols. An obstacle, a serious one, to our faith, however, is that today we find it hard to ‘imagine’ the truth that we believe. We do not possess images which are sufficiently powerful. Our imaginative capacity tends to be stifled by the austerity of abstract concepts. This is why Bergoglio likes ‘popular piety’ (Spadaro, ‘La biblioteca’ 493–­4). It is a gold mine of strong images stemming directly from people’s collective imagination. Similarly, art, too, provides a vision of life sustained by the imagination. It posits a concentrated experience of life that puts us in touch with the human soul and partly reveals it. During the interview, Bergoglio remarked that ‘in every age of history, humans try to understand and express themselves better.’ He continued: ‘So human beings in time change the way they perceive themselves.’ He illustrated this point by giving simple, easily understood examples taken from the arts rather than by delving into complicated abstractions about human life. ‘After all, it’s one thing for a man who expresses himself by carving the “Winged Victory of Samothrace”, yet another for Caravaggio, Chagall and yet another still for Dalí (Spadaro, ‘Intervista’ 476). The forms for expressing truth are manifold, a point that has consequences for the transmission of the Gospel in its timeless meaning but also that literature, music and the arts, inasmuch as they relate to our experience of life, are reference points for the church. By paying attention to the arts, in short, the church can better understand how human beings perceive themselves. Literature invites us to reflect on the different ways in which what we say conforms with truth. At a meeting with ecclesial movements during the vigil of Pentecost, Bergoglio said, ‘Don’t speak so much, but speak with all your life’ (‘Vigil of Pentecost’). This is an implicit reference to Alessandro

‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’ 233 Manzoni’s historical novel The Betrothed, in particular the part he loves the most: that is, the conversion of the Unnamed. There we read that ‘one’s life is the touchstone of profession’ (398).‘Such demonstrations [of humility] (who knows it not?) are neither difficult nor uncommon’ writes Manzoni in chapter 22, before continuing: And it requires no greater effort of subtlety for hypocrisy to make them, than for raillery to deride them and hold them cheap on every occasion. But do they, therefore, cease to be the natural expression of a wise and virtuous principle? One’s life is the touchstone of profession; and the profession of this sentiment, though it may have been on the tongue of all impostors and all the scoffers in the world, will ever be worthy of admiration, when preceded and followed by a life of disinterested self-­sacrifice. (398) Writing about the life of Federigo Borromeo, Manzoni insists on the importance of a correspondence between words and life: In Federigo, as archbishop, was apparent a remarkable and constant carefulness to devote to himself no more of his wealth, his time, his care in short of his whole self, than was absolutely necessary. He said, as everybody says, that ecclesiastical revenues are the patrimony of the poor; how he shows he understood such maxim in reality, will be evident from this fact. (398) He also meditates poetically throughout the novel on the truth of words, their value in relation to the inner depths of human beings, their power to mediate. True, Manzoni often expresses caution and perplexity about the use of words, and his last strong statement is that words are true witnesses to the truth only when confirmed by deeds. At the beginning of chapter 26, during the conversation between Federigo and Don Abbondio, the narrator comments: And, to speak the truth, even we, with the manuscript before us, and pen in hand, having nothing to contend with but words, nor anything to fear but the criticisms of our readers, even we, I say, feel a king of repugnance in proceeding; we feel somewhat strange in setting forth, with so little trouble, such admirable precepts of fortitude and charity, of active solicitude for others, and unlimited sacrifice of self. But remembering that these things were said by one who also practised them, we will confidently proceed. (472) Bergoglio has four favourite authors: José Hernández, Joseph Malègue, the Russian writer and philosopher Fëdor  Dostoevsky and, as already

234  Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox mentioned, Alessandro Manzoni. He holds close to his heart some of their characters and the kind of humanity they represent. This includes the humble lives of Renzo and Lucia in Manzoni’s The Betrothed and the gaucho humanity of the characters in Hernández’s epic Martín Fierro. It encompasses ‘les classes moyennes de la sainteté’ – the modest, simple, humble, unknown people who have a strong sense of the goodness and mercy of God, to be found in the pages of Malègue, as well as the brutal social life of the Dostoevskian anti-­hero in Notes from Underground. This character from the ‘underground’, who increasingly pushes the individual into obscurity, lives an inner life which is, albeit in its hollowness, spiritual. All these characters are in search of a meaning in their lives. Diverse though they are, they all attract Bergoglio because for him, as for Dostoevsky in this novel, it is not a given that ‘two plus two is four’. ‘Man’, one reads in the novel ‘has such a passion for the system and for logical deduction that he is disposed to knowingly alter the truth, not to see the visible, not to hear the audible in order to legitimize his own logic’ (Spadaro, ‘La biblioteca’ 494). For Bergoglio, the abstract idea is secondary to the particulars before us. The complex unity of the polyhedron, with all its different parts, attracts him more than the unity of the sphere, in which all points on the circumference are equidistant from the centre (Bergoglio, ‘Address to the Council of Europe’). Each person has idiosyncrasies, each their own charism. Popular art Genuine openness to awe and wonder feeds the imagination. It also breeds solidarity and kinship. This is why Pope Francis cherishes popular art. ‘I adore tragic artists’, said the Pope in the interview, not because he is attracted to tragedy as literary genre per se, but rather because, in his view, great artists are able to present with beauty the tragic and painful realities of life experienced by all. It is not élite, refined tragedy which moves Bergoglio, but ‘popular’ tragedy. Hence, his definition of a ‘classic’, borrowed from Cervantes: a ‘classic’ is the work everyone can feel as his own (Spadaro, ‘Intervista’ 471–­2). A passion for neorealism accompanies Bergoglio’s perception of art as closely connected to people’s lives. This is why Bergoglio likes the epic Argentinian poem Martín Fierro, written by José Hernández in 1872, despite the fact that – by his own admission – it is by no means a masterpiece. Hernández’s poem gives shape to the desire for a society where there is a place for everyone: the port merchant, the coastal gaucho, the shepherd from the north, the artisan from the northeast, the aboriginal and the immigrant. No one wants to expel the other from the land and retain everything for himself. His tone when discussing Martín Fierro calls to mind the democratic and popular romanticism of Walt Whitman, a contemporary of Hernández, who brought to life the carpenter from Dakota, the miner from California, the mechanic and the builder, the boatman and the cobbler.

‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’ 235 This emphasis on the ‘popular’ is in line with Bergoglio’s pastoral and ecclesiastical vision. Art is not a workplace for experiments outside a lived context. Although art is at ‘the frontier of advancement’ – that is, lives on the border and is audacious – it does not belong to an élite circle. It is not ‘art for art’s sake’ in its narrow sense of being part of a separate, cultured, erudite, scholarly, ‘bourgeois’ world (Spadaro, ‘La biblioteca’ 492). Bergoglio’s radically ‘popular’ conception of art extends to its production and enjoyment. Artists are not isolated from others: the creation of art and cultivation of beauty is communal. Hopkins: echoes and wonder During the interview, Bergoglio mentioned Gerard Manley Hopkins as one of his favourite authors. In particular, he spoke of Ethel Mannin’s Late I Have Loved You, a novel inspired, although not explicitly, by Hopkins’s life. True, Hopkins is unlike Bergoglio in many ways. Hopkins was English, refined, an observer and lover of solitude, a man with a tormented mind but at the same time enchanted by the beauty which opened a space for God. Bergoglio is an Argentinian, gregarious, empathetic. Jesuits are not all alike. Hopkins and Bergoglio may, indeed, seem at first glance to be opposites temperamentally. On closer inspection, however, affinities come to the fore. Some biographical analogies are worth noting. First, poverty and marginalization were major concerns even if their reactions were different. Hopkins expressed dismay and shock, whereas Bergoglio empathized. Second, they both underwent moments of personal crisis, which Bergoglio has experienced and speaks of as ‘those gloomy moments when everything looks dark and a feeling of isolation takes hold of us, in those moments of listlessness and boredom which at times overcome us in our priestly life moments of sadness, when everything becomes dark and the intoxication of isolation seduces us, those apathetic and tiresome moments we sometimes experience in the priestly life’ (‘Anointed with the Oil of Gladness’). Finally, they both appreciate the uniqueness of being and are reluctant to consider things and, more importantly, people en masse. In Hopkins’s poem entitled ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ (Hopkins 52–­4), two echoes face each other, expressing two different perceptions of existence, almost a confrontation between what St Ignatius Loyola called moments of ‘consolation’ and ‘desolation’. Bergoglio, according to his spiritual formation as a Jesuit, pays special attention, like Hopkins, to such inner motions affecting the way in which we make decisions. The feelings that they generate are for him only partly psychologically determined. They are the place where the Lord ‘moves and attracts’ human beings and where they experience both their vocations and their temptations. Bergoglio knows that human beings experience an ‘accumulation of mixed feelings’ and notes that we often make our decisions by listening not to the freedom and beauty of the spirit – what Hopkins calls the ‘golden echo’ – but by following the voice of fear, the ‘leaden echo’.

236  Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox Hopkins’s ‘To What Serves Mortal Beauty?’ (1885) suggests another point of similarity. In the poem, beauty ‘does set danc-­/ ing blood’ and ‘keep warm/ Men’s wit to the things that are (58)’. Here, Hopkins’s poetic imagery emphasizes the interdependence of thought and feeling. Bergoglio agrees. He considers the separation between intelligence and affectivity, between mind and heart, a disease of the soul. In talking to his fellow Jesuits, Bergoglio once said that the Ignatian spirituality of insight challenges the schism between reason and emotion typical of Protestant Reformation. The affinities between Hopkins and Bergoglio lead us to reflect more explicitly on the connection between wonder and literature. Everything in Hopkins is streaked by a kind of ‘shock’, something sudden, disruptive or surprising. This ‘shock’ resonates with passages from the Easter homilies of Bergoglio, for whom to celebrate Easter is, in his words, ‘to believe once more that God constantly breaks into our personal histories, challenging our conventions, those fixed ways of thinking and acting that end up paralyzing us’ (‘Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter’ 2018). The ‘earthquake’ at the resurrection becomes a symbol of profound upheaval in Bergoglio’s 2017 Easter homily. ‘Unexpectedly,’ he said, ‘those women felt a powerful tremor, as something or someone made the earth shake beneath their feet’ (‘Easter Vigil in the Holy Night’ 2017). The ‘earthquake’ releases first a cry of human anxiety, then the proclamation of the word of the Lord to be heard everywhere. And he continues: In the resurrection Christ rolled back the stone of the tomb, but he wants also to break down all the walls that keep us locked in our sterile pessimism, in our carefully constructed ivory towers ‘break down all the walls that keep us locked in our sterile pessimism, in our carefully constructed ivory towers that isolate us from life, in our compulsive need for security and in boundless ambition that can make us compromise the dignity of others. This ‘earthquake’ provokes the same feeling of wonder and astonishment which conquers the soul when reading Hopkins’s poem ‘God’s Grandeur’. The poem presents the world as ‘charged with the grandeur of God’. But what does Hopkins mean exactly by ‘charged’? He certainly wants to convey the idea of the overpowering nature of God’s glory. However, the imagery invites a more ‘electrifying’ interpretation. The world appears as ‘a thundercloud charged with beauty and menace, outward expressions of the creative love and the potential wrath of God’ (Minogue 98). The words which follow – ‘flame’, ‘shining’, ‘lights’, ‘bright’ – support this interpretation. In his homily, Bergoglio used a more prosaic but equally effective image to convey the same idea. The Gospel is a source of energy: ‘when I want to use electricity from a plug, if the device I have doesn’t work’ he said, ‘I look for an adaptor. We must always seek to adapt, to make ourselves suitable for the

‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’ 237 newness of the Word of God. We need to be open to newness (‘The God of Surprises’). The ‘explosive quality’ which Attilio Bertolucci (1174ff) recognized in Hopkins’s poetry is echoed in one of Bergoglio’s talks to students. He asked his audience to consider all the beauty and explosive force of the truth of God and of mankind. In short, to be open to ‘wonder’.

Conclusion: wonder and The Spiritual Exercises In Bergoglio’s view, openness to ‘wonder’ is essential to enter the mystery of Easter. It also nurtures creativity and the response to works of art since both are part of our quest to ‘recreate’, ‘renew’ and ‘transfigure’ what is. When we try to identify why Bergoglio is so attentive to the theme of ‘wonder’, the philosopher Romano Guardini comes to mind. Like Bergoglio, Guardini emphasizes the place of wonder in the liturgy. Like Bergoglio, too, he believes that a work of art does not have a purpose but only a meaning. A work of art ‘is’ and ‘reveals’. The views of previous popes, too, may have influenced Bergoglio. In a letter addressed to artists generically, Wojtyla wrote as follows: May the beauty which you pass on to generations still to come be such that it will stir them to wonder! Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude. From this wonder there can come that enthusiasm of which Norwid6 spoke in the poem to which I  referred earlier. People of today and tomorrow need this enthusiasm if they are to meet and master the crucial challenges which stand before us. Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity, every time it loses its way, will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path. In this sense it has been said with profound insight that ‘beauty will save the world’. (Letter to Artists) But for Bergoglio, wonder is more than a reaction to beauty. It is a deeply felt spiritual motion, a gift touching us from above in many ways and according to various circumstances. Wonder can be associated with a newly found horizon or with a decisive redirection in life. It is also the outcome of being surprised by God’s mercy and love. Wonder can arise from the shock of witnessing the terrible suffering of Christ on the cross or the consoling recognition that creation is sacred. What is the inspiration for these ideas? The answer, probably, is Bergoglio’s familiarity with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola.7 The exercises encourage the experience of wonder in various ways. For example, praying with principle and foundation ushers in the wonder of discovering a new horizon in life. The contemplative exercises of the second week strengthen the sense of wonder in finding greater freedom in following

238  Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox Christ. The exercises of the first week bring to the fore not only the awareness of the ugliness of sin, but also the surprise of being loved by a self-­ giving God  – the ‘scandalous wonder’ of the saving cross of Christ. The recognition of the pain and malice of personal sin leads, in Ignatius’s words, to ‘a cry of wonder’ at a loving creation. (§60). Continuing, he invites us to realize how it [Creation] has allowed us to live and sustained us, why the heavens, sun, moon, stars and the whole earth – fruits, birds, fishes and other animals – have served us. The exercises of the third week intensify the wonder experienced in the first week: wonder at the abundance of God’s love in Jesus, wonder that Jesus undertook this ‘for my sins’, wonder at how God strengthens us through his own helplessness, wonder at one’s own desire to return love. The contemplation for attaining love in the fourth week proclaims the sacredness of all reality: the wonder of finding God in all things.8 Experiencing wonder in various ways and circumstances depends on our ability ‘to taste things internally’. In the interview, after expressing his enthusiasm for Mozart as performed by Clara Haskil, Bergoglio added: ‘It fills me: I  can’t think of it, I  must feel it’(471). We savour art primarily through our feelings rather than through reason. Sometimes, indeed, feeling overrides theoretical analysis. Bergoglio wrote in 2005, ‘Wisdom is not simply knowledge. To know also means to taste. There is knowledge . . . and there are flavours.’ Wisdom is, therefore, ‘felt’ knowledge (Spadaro, ‘La biblioteca’ 498). Underlying Bergoglio’s concern for wonder and the way in which he responds to art is the guiding principle of the Spiritual Exercises: namely, ‘For it is not much knowledge (‘abundantia scientiae’), but the inner feeling and relish of things (‘sed sentire ac gustare interne’) that fills (‘satiat’) and satisfies (‘satisfacit’) the soul’ (§2).9 For Ignatius, ‘feeling’ (‘sentire’) in one way or another is linked to the appearance of God in the soul and life of a person, and this includes in particular the deeply felt motion of wonder. In the Spiritual Exercises, wonder is repeatedly a step towards more inner freedom and finally inner peace. If we consider that the fruit of inner peace is the freedom and inclination to love ‘in deeds rather than words’ (§230), as Ignatius teaches, then we understand also the full ethical significance of Bergoglio’s recommendation that we should ‘learn from wonder’, that we should ‘nurture astonishment’.

Notes 1 As reported also in ‘Pope reflects on wonder as invitation to know God’ (Catholic News Agency, Vatican City, 4 April 2013, 12:14 p.m.) www.catholicnewsagency. com/­news/­pope-­reflects-­on-­wonder-­as-­invitation-­to-­know-­god. 2 The reference is to Montini (Pope Paul VI), Gaudete in Domino (297). 3 As reported in the National Catholic Reporter, on 19 February 2015 in the Paul VI Hall, Pope Francis delivered a talk on how ‘liturgies need help people experience awe and the mystery of God’. www.ncronline.org/­blogs/­francis-­chronicles/­ liturgies-­need-­help-­people-­experience-­awe-­mystery-­god-­pope-­says.

‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’ 239 The translation is by Francesca Bugliani Knox. 4 5 The outline is based on Spadaro (‘Intervista a Papa Francesco’); Papa Francesco (La mia porta è sempre aperta); Spadaro (‘La biblioteca di Papa Francesco’). The English translation, with small adaptations, is taken from the existing English versions listed in work cited. In all other cases, the translations are the authors’. 6 Polish poet and author Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–­1883). 7 The text used here is the one contained in Ivens, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises. 8 ‘Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. All is yours. Dispose of it according to your will. Give me your love and your grace; this is enough for me’ (§234). 9 In the original Spanish: ‘no el mucho saber harta y satisfece al ánima, mas el sentir y gustar de las cosas internamente’.

Works cited Bergoglio, Jorge Mario (Pope Francis). ‘Peace is Priceless’. Morning meditation in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae (4 April  2013), L’Osservatore Romano. 15 (10 April 2013). https://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­francesco/­en/­cotidie/­ 2013/­documents/­papa-­francesco-­cotidie_20130404_peace-­priceless.html. Also recorded in the Catholic News Reporter: ‘Pope reflects on wonder as invitation to know God’. 4 April  2013. www.catholicnewsagency.com/­news/­pope-­reflects-­ on-­wonder-­as-­invitation-­to-­know-­god ———. ‘Vigil of Pentecost with the Ecclesial Movements’. Address of the Holy Father Francis, Saint Peter’s Square on Saturday, 18 May  2013. http://­w2.vatican.va/­ content/­francesco/­en/­speeches/­2013/­may/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20130518_ veglia-­pentecoste.html ———. ‘On Occasion of the Feast of Saint Ignatius’. Homily of Holy Father Francis in the Church of the Gesù, Rome, 31 July  2013. http://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­ francesco/­en/­homilies/­2013/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20130731_omelia-­sant-­ ignazio.html ———. ‘Evangelii Gaudium. Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World’. 24 November  2013. http://­ w2.vatican.va/­ content/­ francesco/­e n/­a post_exhortations/­d ocuments/­p apa-­f rancesco_esortazione­ap_20131124_evangelii-­gaudium.html ———. La mia porta è sempre aperta: Una conversazione con Antonio Spadaro. Milano: Rizzoli, 2013. ———. My Door Is Always Open (with Antonio Spadaro): A  Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change. In Association with La Civiltà Cattolica. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. ———. ‘The God of Surprises’. Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae (Monday, 20 January 2014). L’Osservatore Romano 4 (24 January  2014). https://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­francesco/­en/­cotidie/­2014/­documents/­ papa-­francesco-­cotidie_20140120_god-­of-­surprises.html ———. ‘Anointed with the Oil of Gladness’. Homily for the Blessed Mass of Maundy Thursday 17 April  2014. Holy Chrism Mass. https://­ w2.vatican.va/­ content/­f rancesco/­e n/­h omilies/­2 014/­d ocuments/­p apa-­f rancesco_20140417_ omelia-­crisma.html

240  Antonio Spadaro and Francesca Bugliani Knox ———. ‘Laudato Si’. Encyclical Letter on the Care for Our Common Home’. 18 June  2014. http://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­dam/­francesco/­pdf/­encyclicals/­documents/­ papa-­francesco_20150524_enciclica-­laudato-­si_en.pdf ———. ‘Address of Pope Francis to the Council of Europe’. Strasburg, France, Tuesday, 25 November 2014. https://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­francesco/­en/­speeches/­2014/­ november/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20141125_strasburgo-­consiglio-­europa.html ———. ‘Liturgies need help people experience awe, mystery of God’. In the Paul VI audience Hall on 19 February  2015 as recorded in the National Catholic Reporter: www.ncronline.org/­blogs/­francis-­chronicles/­liturgies-­need-­help-­people-­ experience-­awe-­mystery-­god-­pope-­says ———. ‘Vespers with Priests and Religious’. Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis. St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, Thursday, 24 September 2015. https://­m.vatican. va/­content/­francesco/­en/­homilies/­2015/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20150924_ usa-­omelia-­vespri-­nyc.html. Also ‘Pope Francis’s Homily at St Patrick’s Cathedral’. New York Times. St Patrick, 24 September 2015. www.nytimes.com/­2015/­09/­24/­ nyregion/­pope-­francis-­homily-­at-­st-­patricks-­cathedral.html ———. Amoris Laetitia. Post-­ Synodal Apostolic Exhortation. 19 marzo 2016. https://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­dam/­francesco/­pdf/­apost_exhortations/­documents/­ papa-­francesco_esortazione-­ap_20160319_amoris-­laetitia_en.pdf ———. ‘Easter Vigil in the Holy Night’. Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis. Holy Saturday, 15 April  2017. https://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­francesco/­en/­homilies/­ 2017/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20170415_omelia-­veglia-­pasquale.html ———. ‘General Audience’. 20 September  2017. https://­w2.vatican.va/­content/­ francesco/­en/­audiences/­2017/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20170920_udienza-­ generale.html ———. ‘Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter’. Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis. Vatican Basilica, Holy Saturday, 31 March  2018. https://­ w2.vatican. va/­content/­francesco/­en/­homilies/­2018/­documents/­papa-­francesco_20180331_ omelia-­veglia-­pasquale.html Bertolucci, Attilio. ‘Il gesuita Hopkins’. In Opere. Milano: Mondadori, 1997. Francis of Assisi. ‘Laudes Creaturarum’. In Antologia della poesia italiana. Ed. Cesare Segre and Carlo Ossola, vol. 1. Torino: Einaudi 1997, 22–­4. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Gerald Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. Ed. W.H. Gardner. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953. Ivens, Michael. Understanding the Spiritual Exercises. Leominster: Gracewing, 1998. Manzoni, Alessandro. The Betrothed. London: George Bells and Sons, 1878. Minogue, Kathleen. ‘Nature and Spirit in Hopkins’. The Month (March  1998): 96–­100. Montini, Giovanni Maria (Pope Paul VI). Gaudete in domino. Apostolic Exhortation, 9 May 1975, 22: AAS 67. Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI). Deus caritas est. Encyclical Letter, 25 December 2005, 1: AAS 98 (2006). Spadaro, Antonio. ‘Intervista a Papa Francesco’. In Civiltà Cattolica 3918. III (13 settembre 2013): 449–77. Published as a volume, with commentary: Papa Francesco, La mia porta è sempre aperta. Una conversazione con Antonio Spadaro. ———. ‘La biblioteca di Papa Francesco’. La Civiltà Cattolica 3935. II (2014): 490–­8. Wojtyla, Karol (Pope John Paul II). Letter to Artists. 4 April 1999, no. 16. ———. ‘General Audience’. 2 August  2000. https://­ w2.vatican.va/­ content/­ john-­ paul-­ii/­en/­audiences/­2000/­documents/­hf_jp-­ii_aud_20000802.html

Index

Abraham, the first Patriarch 51, 205 Abrahams, Doris Caroline 207 Aeschylus 8–9, 162; Prometheus Bound 157 – 8 Agamben, Giorgio 59n6, 80 Akiva, ben Josef (Rabbi Akiva) 126n8 Albert the Great 163 Alcman 161 – 2 Alexander of Aphrodisias 38 Alexander, Michael 141n11 Allen, Brigid 199 – 200, 204, 209 Alston, William 88 Andreas-Salomé, Lou 186 Angus, Rita 211 Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret 67 Anselm of Canterbury, St 88, 129, 178 Aquilecchia, Giovanni 44n1 Aquinas, Thomas, St 2, 5, 40 – 1, 45n26, 57, 60n11, 88 – 91, 139, 160, 162 – 3, 231; on ‘theologizing poets’ 190; and wonder 3 – 4, 38 – 9 Arbuckle, Jane 222n2 Aristippus 25n12 Aristotle 4, 6, 20 – 1, 40, 42, 46n31, 56, 75, 157, 162, 171, 174, 190; Severino on 23 – 4; and wonder 3, 17 – 19, 25n6, 25n7, 38 – 9, 45n28, 160 – 1 Armstrong, David 21, 25n12 Atkinson, James R. 73n2 Augustine of Hippo, St 39, 88, 184, 188 – 9, 197n4; and wonder 159 Austen, Jane 17 Averroes 45  n30 Bachelard, Gaston 214 – 16, 218, 221 Bagby, John 59n7 Ballinger, Philip 60n11 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 7, 60n11, 76; and ‘rapture’ 100 – 1, 111n1

Barrie, Lita 210 – 12, 215 – 16 beauty 39, 40, 69, 71 – 2, 76 – 7, 98, 110, 130 – 1, 228, 235 – 6; of creation 88 – 90, 102, 180, 188 – 9, 196; of a work of art 237 Becker, Christoph 44n1 Beethoven, Ludwig van 168 Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), Pope 227 Benjamin, Walter 58n3, 59n6 Bennett, Jane 220 – 1 Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter 132, 134, 139, 140n4 Benoist, Jocelyn 81 Benvenuta see Hattingberg, Magda von Bergamín, José 169 Berger, Peter 98 Berlin, Adele 126n2 Berti, Enrico 25n6, 26n21 Bertolucci, Attilio 237 Bialik, Haim Nahman 119 Białoszewski, Miron 7; ‘Szare eminencje zachwytu’ (‘Grey Eminences of Rapture’) 108 – 10 Bible 115 – 17, 121, 158 – 9, 182; Col. 1:15 34; 1 Cor. 1:23 – 4 8, 132; 2 Cor. 4:4 34; Dan. 3:74 – 87 183; Dan. 7:10 35; Deut. 30:11 116; Eccl. 1:5, 9 130; Eph. 2:21 – 2 34; Eph. 5:18 – 19 132; Gal. 6:14 132, 135; Gen. 166; Heb. 1:3 34; Job 38:4 – 7 158; John 1:14, 18 34; John 3:16, 18 34; I John 4:9 34; Luke 2:2 – 4 33; Phil. 3:8 134; Prov. 3:15 123; Ps. 12:7 123; Ps. 19:1 35; Ps. 19:1 – 4 159; Ps. 103:5 130; Ps. 104:30 130; Ps. 139:6 115; Rev. 21:5 130; Rom. 1:19:23 34; 2 Sam. 6 116; Sir. 42:22 228; Sir. 43: 27 – 8 228; Song 126n6, 136 Bickel, Ernst 46n36

242 Index Bi-Rabbi Qilir, Elazar 120 – 2, 125 Blake, William 179 Bloom, Harold: The Anxiety of Influence 106 – 7 Bloom, Molly 146, 153 Blum, Elisabeth 45n28 Blum, Paul Richard 45n28 Boitani, Piero 8, 40, 166, 190, 197n7 Bonaventure, St 163 Bonnard, Pierre 211 Borges, Jorge Luis 231 Borromeo, Archbishop Federigo 233 Bosworth, Rhondda 222n2 Botschuyver, Hendrik Johan 45n24, 45n25 Bousquet, Joë 216 Brahms, Caryl see Abrahams, Doris Caroline Bray, Abigail 214 Brecht, Jakob van 37, 45n21, 45n22 Broadie, Sarah 25n6, 160 Bruno, Giordano 4, 5, 29 – 46; and Coleridge 43; cosmology of 31 – 2, 35; Christian doctrines, views of 43; and Ficino 40 – 1; at Frankfurt 29, 31, 37; and Kant 42; and Lucretius 31, 36; metempsychosis, interpretation of 36; and Nicholas of Cusa 40; Platonism and Neoplatonism, in relation to 4, 31, 39 – 42, 45n27; and Seneca 42 – 3; stupor and philosophical wonder, his distinction between 35 – 7; on wonder 4, 33, 37 – 43; works by title (The Ash Wednesday Supper 43; De gli eroici furori 40 – 1; De immenso 31 – 4, 36 – 7, 40 – 1, 43; De la causa, principio et uno 34; Despatch of the Triumphant Beast 43; On the Infinite, the Universe and its Worlds 4) Buia Rutt, Elena 10; ‘A Space for God’ 9, 225 Butler, Joseph 88 Bynum, Caroline 2 Byron, George Gordon 170 Cacciari, Massimo 189, 193, 195 Cadou, René-Guy 216 Caeiro, Alberto 79 Calgacus (Caledonian chieftain) 208 Calvo, Francesco 191, 194 – 5 Cambiano, Giuseppe 25n6 Campbell, Mary Baine 11n2, 45n27 Campion, Edmund, St 131

Canone, Eugenio 44n1 Canter, Christopher 222n1 Capasso, Mario 23, 26n19 Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) 232 Carneisco 26n19 Carus, Paul 11n1 Cary, Henry Francis 172 – 3 Casey, Gerard 60n11 Cato the Elder 163 Cecil, David 139 Certeau, Michel de 7 – 8, 100, 103, 111n2, 111n3, 111n4, 143; exile and absence in 148 – 9; and ‘rupture’101 – 2, 143, 150; Sheldrake on 150; Ward on 149 – 50; and the wonder of everyday life 150; works by title (The Mystic Fable 150; Practice of Everyday Life 150) Cervantes, Miguel de 234 Chagall, Marc 232 Chantraine, Pierre 26n24 Chapman, George 170 – 1, 174; Odyssey 172 – 3 Chaudhury, Prabas Jiban 71 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 7, 9, 87 – 99, 201; ennui and joy, his distinction between 93, 98; his childlike vision 94; imagination and wonder, inseparable 94 – 5; influence of Aquinas on 89 – 90; and natural theology 88 – 9, 90 – 1; paradox, his use of 95 – 7; wonder (capacity of 92; natural theology of 89, 94, 98 – 9); works by title (Autobiography 94; Christendom in Dublin 90; Come to Think of It 98; The Defendant 92, 94 – 5, 97; Lunacy and Letters 93; Orthodoxy 91 – 3; Spice of Life 94; St Francis of Assisi 99; St Thomas Aquinas 90 – 1; Tremendous Trifles 92 – 3) Chevillard, Éric 76, 82n2 Cicero 3, 25n10 Cixous, Hélène 214 claritas 163 – 4 Clarke, Charles Cowden 170 Cohen, Mordechai Z. 126n2 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 46n39, 46n40, 172; on Bruno 43 Conrad, Johann 115 Copleston, Frederick 90 Corbinelli, Gian Vincenzo 45n21 Corbinelli, Jacopo 45n21

Index  243 Cortés, Hernán 171, 174 Costa, C. D[esmond] N. 42 Costa, Nino 231 Cowper, William 138 Curi, Umberto 190 Dąbrowski, Kazimierz 104 – 6, 111n5; and positive disintegration 104 Dalí, Salvador 232 Dante Alighieri 8–9, 17, 162 – 7, 172 – 3, 197n1, 231; claritas in 163 – 4; wonder and stordimento in 162, 164 – 5; works by title (Convivio 162; Divina Commedia 17, 162 – 3, 172, 180; Paradiso 172 (I 5 – 6 166; I 10 – 12 166; I 18 166; XIV 67 – 9 164; XIV 37 – 60 164; XXXIII 94 – 9 164); Purgatorio 172 (I 115 – 17 163) Daston, Lorraine 11n2, 45n26, 45n27 David 7, 119, 120 – 1, 123 – 4, 126; dangers of wonder in 116 – 18; and Midrash 114 – 16 Davie, Donald 132 – 6, 138 – 9, 141 Davies, Hilary 3; ‘The Valley of the Lot’ 15 – 16 Deckard, Michael Funk 11n2 Deleuze, Gilles 55, 59n7 Dell’Omodarme, Francesca 42 Della Corte, Francesco 25n12 Demetrius (unidentifiable) 161 Democritus 3, 20, 25n10 Denis, Yves 96 Derrida, Jacques 59n6 Descartes, René 2, 4 Desmond, William 103 Devlin, Christopher 51, 54 – 5, 57 58n4, 59n9 Di Rocco, Emilia 9, 197 Dickens, Charles 97 Dickinson, Emily: ‘For each ecstatic instant’ 110; ‘Wonder – is not precisely Knowing’ 10 – 11 Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro 197 Dionysius the Aeropagite 192, 197 Doran, Robert 46n35 Dostoevsky, Fëdor 233 – 4 Dronke, Peter 192, 194 Duns Scotus (John Duns) 53, 56 – 7, 59n8, 59n9, 60n11, 221; haecceitas in 5, 54 – 5; and Hopkins 54 – 7 Eagle, Allie see Mitchell, Alison Eckermann, Johannes Peter 161

Eckhart von Hochheim (Meister Eckhart) 4, 196 Eco, Umberto 163 Edwards, Michael 11n2 Einstein, Albert 9, 10 Elias of Cortona 181 Eliot, T.S. 8–9, 165 – 7, 171; Dante 165; ‘Little Gidding’ 166 – 7, 171 Ellis, Frances 211 Engelmann, Paul 63, 68, 70 – 1 Ennius 158 Epicurus 22, 26, 31, 33, 37, 172; Bruno on 37; katastema in 20; on wonder (sebasmos, freedom from 23); wonder as terror 20; works by title (Letter to Menoeceus 23; Principal Doctrines 20) Falk, Marcia 127n13 Ferreiro, Jaime 197 Ferri, Rolando 25n13 Ficino, Marsilio 40; on his difference from Bruno 41; on his influence on Bruno 35, 40; Platonic Theology 35, 41 Ficker, Ludwig von 68 Firpo, Luigi 44n4, 44n5, 44n9, 44n10, 45n22 Fischer, Peter 31 Fischer, Roman 38, 44n2 Fisher, Philip 11n2, 45n27 Fleischer, Ezra 127n10 Foster, Kenelm 166 Fraenkel, Eduard 25n12 Francis of Assisi, St 178 – 85, 197, 228 – 30; his theology 179; on wonder and his radical vision 183, 185; works by title (‘Admonitions’ 181; ‘Canticle of the Creatures’ 9, 130 – 1, 178 – 80, 181 – 4; ‘Praises of God’ 181) Francis, Pope (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) 10, 13, 140, 180, 184, 227 – 39; Encyclical letters by title (Evangelii Gaudium 227; Laudato Si’ 228, 230); and Francis of Assisi 228 – 30; and Hopkins 235 – 7; on wonder 227 – 30 (and artistic creativity 231 – 5; and the Spiritual Exercises 237 – 8) Franco, Francisco 169 Frazer, James 209 Fredborg, Karin Margareta 45n24, 45n25

244 Index Freese, John Henry 25n5 Friedland, Julian 67 Frierson, Patrick 46n33 Frisk, Hjalmar 26n24 Gablik, Suzi 220 Gardner, Helen 132 – 4, 139, 141 Gardner, Sebastian 46n33 Gardner, William Henry 141, 235, 240 Gatti, Hilary 46n39, 46n40 Gély, Raphaël 103 Gigante, Marcello 25n12 Gioia, Dana 6; ‘The Litany’ 86 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 173; erstaunen in relation to wonder 1, 161; ‘Parabase’ 1 Goldin, Judah 126n6 Gőmőri, George 141 Góngora, Luis de 8–9, 167 Granada, Miguel Angel 32 – 7, 40 – 2, 44n7, 44n17, 45n29, 45n30 Gregory Nazianzus, St 180 Grierson, Herbert J.C. 137 Grilli, Alberto 25n10, 25n12 Grosseteste, Robert 163 Grzegorzewska, Malgorzata 141n9 Guardini, Romano 237 Guido, Bishop of Assisi 184 haecceitas (haecceity) 5, 53 – 8, 221 Halevi, Judah 122 – 5 Hall, Bernadette 216 Handel, George Friedrich 174 Handelman, Susan 119 Hardy, Joanne 222n2 Harris Paul, Joanna 211, 222n2 Haskell, Yasmin 44n8 Haskil, Clara 238 Hattingberg, Magda von 188 – 9, 193, 195, 197 Heaney, Seamus 179 Heath, Peter 122 Heath-Stubbs, John 174n7 Heidegger, Martin 7, 26n26, 26n27; Kehre, meaning in 24; wonder as ‘grounding attunement’ 6, 75, 79, 82n5; works by title (Contributions to Philosophy 79; The Principle of Reason 80, 82n4; The Question Concerning Technology 24; ‘The Turning’ 7) Heinrich Julius, Duke of BraunschweigLüneburg 29

Heinze, Richard 25n12 Hepburn, Ronald W. 10 – 11, 45n27, 46n32, 160, 195 Hernández, José 231, 233 – 4 Herschel, William 173 – 4 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 2, 7, 8, 126n3 Hesiod 160 Heydt, Elizabeth von der 196 Heydt, Karl von der 196 Hill, Geoffrey 131 Hitler, Adolf 207 Hodgkins, Frances 211 Hölderlin, Friedrich 7, 24 Homer 160 – 1, 170 – 4 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 5, 9, 50 – 61, 199, 201 – 3, 208, 219, 235 – 7; and Bergoglio 235–7; and haecceity 53–8; wonder as epiphany in 5, 50–8; works by title (‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’ 221; ‘The Bugler’s First Communion’ 201; ‘Duns Scotus’s Oxford’ 53; ‘God’s Grandeur’ 236; ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’ 130; ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ 235; ‘On Personality Grace and Free Will’ 53 – 4; ‘Pied Beauty’ 131; ‘To R.B.’ 5; ‘To What Serves Mortal Beauty’ 236; ‘The Windhover’ 131, 202) Horace 3, 25n12, 25n13, 38, 42, 136, 219, 222n4; and wonder 20 – 2 Hughes, Ted 130 Hulewicz, Witold von 187 Hull, John M. 134, 140n5, 140n6 Hume, Basil 129, 130 Husserl, Edmund 80 Idel, Moshe 116 Ignatius of Loyola, St 231, 235; Spiritual Exercises 237 – 8 Ignatius of Antioch, St 131 imagination 89, 91 – 5, 97 – 8, 232, 234 Isaac 51 Ivens, Michael 239 Jaccottet, Philippe 80 Jaeger, Werner 25n2, 25n3 Jarry, Alfred 106 Jerome, St 183 John of the Cross, St 60n10, 135, 202 John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła), Pope 140, 228 John the Baptist 52, 55, 59n5

Index  245 John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli), Pope 140, 232 John, St (the Evangelist) 34, 37 Jones, David 130, 140n4, 199, 207 – 8; and Peter Levi 199, 204 – 6 Jourdan, Pierre-Albert 80 – 1 Jouve, Pierre-Jean 216 Joyce, James 55, 59n8, 153n2, 163 Julian of Norwich 179 Kadari, Tamar 126n1, 126n6 Kania, Marta Matylda 106 – 7 Kant, Immanuel 5, 46, 89; Bewunderung in 42, 196; on wonder 5, 42 – 3, 193 katastema 22 Kearney, Richard 5, 8, 58 – 9, 147, 153n2; his theopoetics 143 – 6 Keats, John 173 – 4; ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’ 170 – 2 Keefe-Perry, L. Callid 152n1 Keller, Catherine 146 – 7 Kenner, Hugh 96 – 7 Kirkpatrick, Robert 174 Knox, Dilwyn 4, 41, 44n*, 44n18 Kristeva, Julia 59n6, 60n11 Kuehn, Manfred 42 Kugel, James 126n6 Kundera, Milan 77 Kushner, Lawrence 179 Lacan, Jacques 148, 153n4 Lansing, Richard H. 174n2 Lansman, Peter 92 Larbaud, Valery 169 Lataste, Marie 52, 58n4 Lawrence, St 131 Leighton, Angela 130 Leo of Assisi 181 – 2, 184 Leonard, William Ellery 175n9 Leopardi, Giacomo 8–9, 167 – 8, 174 Lepri, Valentina 44n1 Levi, Bert 199, 207 Levi, Deirdre 201 Levi, Gillian 199 Levi, Moses 207 Levi, Mollie 199 Levi, Peter 9, 199 – 209; and David Jones 204 – 6; educational background of 199 – 200; family of 199; Jewish roots of 207; political stance of 200; wonder in 199, 208; works by title (The Flutes of Autumn 205 – 6, 208;

‘The Muses’ 201 – 2; ‘For Poets in Prison without Trial’ 200; ‘Political Poem’ 201; ‘Proposal for a Poetic Revolution’ 201; ‘Ruined Abbeys’ 202 – 3; ‘Where are you God?’ 208) Levi, Sultana 207 Levi Abrahams, Pearl 207 Levinas, Emmanuel 53, 59n6, 76 Levinson, Joshua 119 Lewis, Clive Staples 130 Lieber, Laura 127n10 Liebermann, Saul 126n5 Linus 160, 190 – 1 Lippman, Edmund Oskar von 46n36 Llewelyn, John 11n2 Lloyd, Genevieve 11n2 Lombardi, Franco 44n1, 44n3 Loney, Alan 222n3 Longinus 161 Lucretius 8–9, 17, 19 – 24, 25n13, 25n16, 33, 37, 42, 44n8, 106, 158; and Bruno 31 – 2, 36, 38; De rerum natura 19, 20, 158, 172 – 3; and Horace on wonder 21 – 2; sebasmos in 23; and wonder 19 – 20 Malègue, Joseph 231, 233 – 4 Malherbe, François de 167 Mallarmé, Stéphane 168 – 9 Man, Paul de 127n9 Mannin, Ethel 235 Mansfeld, Jaap 25n16 Manzoni, Alessandro 232 – 4 Marechal, Leopoldo 231 Mariani, Paul 51, 60n10 Marino, Giambattista 8, 157 Marion, Jean-Luc 75 – 6 Marvell, Andrew 137 Matthäus, Michael 37, 44n1, 44n2 Matuschek, Stefan 11n2, 39 – 40, 46n33 Maughan-Brown, F. 58n3 Mayer, Roland 21, 25n12 McCullough, Lissa 183 McGann, Michael John 25n10, 25n12 McGuinness, Brian 67, 70, 73n2 Meier-Oeser, Stephan 44n14, 44n15 Meinel, Peter 42 Merian the Elder, Matthäus 29 Meroi, Fabrizio 44n14 Merton, Thomas 183 Midrash 114 – 25 Milanese, Guido 3, 25n16, 26n21, 26n25, 38

246 Index Milbank, Alison 91, 97 – 8 Milton, John 167 Minogue, Kathleen 236 Mitchell, Alison (Allie Eagle) 212, 214, 216 – 17, 222n2 Moles, John 25n12 Moltmann, Jürgen 77 Mommsen, Theodor 208 Monk, Ray 62, 63 Montarese, Francesco 25n16 Monti, Carlo 31, 44n8 Morandi, Giorgio 80, 211, 217, 222n1 Moses 7, 33, 35, 60n11, 119, 120, 122, 127n9, 166, 179; and David 114 – 16, 124, 126 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 238 Munro, Hugh Andrew Johnstone 25n8 Müntzenberger, Johann 29, 32, 37 – 8 Murdoch, Iris 178 Murray, Leslie Allan 130 Murray, Paul 139 Musaeus 160, 190 Musurillo, Herbert 25n11 Neogy, Prithwish 73n10 Neoplatonism 39, 40, 45n27, 191, 197n6 Nicholas of Cusa 40, 44n15 Nichols, Aidan 91 – 4, 96 – 8 Norwid, Cyprian Kamil 239 Nouzille, Philippe 6 Novick, Tzvi 127n10, 127n11 Numicius 3, 20, 38, 45n24 Núñez de Balboa, Vasco 174 O’Brien, Gregory 210, 217 O’Keeffe, Georgia 211 Oliver, Mary: ‘Mysteries, Yes’ 10 Orpheus 160, 190 Orsenigo, Luigi 231 Osborne, Joanna 9 Ovid 36, 44n17, 163 Pagnoulle, Christine 131 Panaetius 20 – 2, 25n10, 25n15 Papi, Fulvio 31, 44n8 paradox 95 – 7 Pareyson, Luigi 77 Parini, Jay 8, 155 Park, Catherine 11n2, 45n26, 45n27 Parmenides 57 Parsons, Howard L. 2, 10, 11n2, 193 Pascal, Blaise 159

Paul VI (Giovanni Montini), Pope 238 Paul, David Blackwood 211 Paul, Imogen Rose 212 Paul, Janet (née Wilkinson) 211 Paul, Joanna Margaret 9, 210 – 22; her Catholicism 214; influences on 211, 214; life of 211; and women’s art movement 212 – 14; wonder of ordinary things in 212, 217, 219 – 22; works by title (‘Blessings on Morandi’ 218; ‘Boundaries’ 221; ‘Cherished Nature’ 221; Dante’s Rose and the Sublunary Wardrobe 218; Frugal Pleasures 219 – 20; Imogen 212, 218; ‘Like love poems’ 213; ‘On not being a Catholic writer’ 213–15; On Roundness 215–16; Roses 216–17; ‘Unpacking the body’ 212) Paul, St 8 – 9, 33 – 4, 44n14, 59, 132, 136, 166 Pausanias 199, 209 Pearce, Joseph 139 Pemán, José María 231 Pessoa, Fernando 79 Peter Lombard 178 Peter, St 33 Peters, Thomas C. 92, 95 Petrarch, Francesco 188 – 9, 197 Philippson, Robert 25n17 Philodemus 22 – 3 Pieron, Jean- Philippe 103 piyyut 120 Plato 3, 4, 39, 161, 166, 190; Phaedrus 39; Symposium 39, 40; Theaetetus 17, 75, 160, 189 Plotinus 35, 40, 189, 190; Enneads 189; and wonder 39 Plutarch 3, 160 Pokorny, Julius 26n24 Pomponazzi, Pietro 32 Pope, Alexander 170 Posidonius 20, 21, 25n14, 25n15 Primavesi, Oliver 25n1, 25n2, 25n3 Pryce-Jones, David 204 Puccini, Giacomo 231 Pythagoras 3, 36, 159 Reineck, Haus 29 Renehan, Robert 161 Rhys, Jean 8, 143, 146 Ricci, Saverio 44n1 Richard of St Victor 162, 165 Rico, Francisco 169

Index  247 Ricoeur, Paul 103 Rilke, Rainer Maria 9, 158, 186 – 97; and wonder 9, 158, 186 – 97 (angelocentric wonder 191 – 3, 195); and Neoplatonism 189; Weltinnerraum, importance of 188–9, 192; works by title (Duino Elegies 186–8, 195; Elegy I 189, 190–1; Elegy VII 193–4; Elegy IX 194–5; Elegy X 191; The Letter from a Young Worker 188; Letters 187–8; Notebooks of Malte Laurids 186–8; ‘Wendung’ 188–9 Rockel, Helen 222n2 Roessli, Jean-Michel 39 Rolle, Richard 139 Rösler, Wolfgang 25n16 Rouse, William Henry D. 174n1 Rubenstein, Mary-Jane 11n2 Runia, David T. 25n16 Russell, Bertrand 63, 68 Sablé, Erik 2, 102 Sala, Giovanni B. 46n36 Salis, Jean R. von 196 Salmann, Elmar 7, 107, 112n13, 112n14, 112n15, 112n16, 112n17 Sandbach, Francis Henry 25n15 Sarbiewski, Matthew Cassimire 136, 141n7 Sarkar, Priyambada 5, 6 Sartre, Jean-Paul 103 Sattler, Ellie 78 Sawicki, Bernard 7, 112 Sayers, Dorothy L. 87 Scapparone, Elisabetta 46n37 Schaeffer, Denise 25n7 Schelling, Friedrich 6, 77 Schlick, Moritz 62 Sedley, David 25n16 Seferis, George 200, 202–3, 208 Seferis, Maria 200 Segonds, Alain-Philippe 44n1 Seneca, Lucius Anneus, the Younger 20, 25n10, 43; and Kant on wonder 42; and wonder 21 Severino, Emanuele 23–4, 26n22, 26n23, 26n24 Shakespeare, William 170, 202 Shaw, George Bernard 96 Sheehan, Stephanie 222n2 Sheldrake, Philip 150 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 170 Shin’an, Avigdor 115 – 16

Silesius, Angelus 6, 78–9 Silvestri, Francesco 45n26 Simpson, Louis 175n8 Socrates 39, 161, 180 Sölle, Dorothe 7, 105–6; The Silent Cry 103–4 Southwell, Robert 199 Spadaro, Antonio 231–5, 238–9 Speakman, Brett H. 7 Spielberg, Steven 82 Spinoza, Baruch 4, 13, 43 Strabo 20, 160 Stravinsky, Igor 77 Sturlese, Rita 40–1, 45n29 Súarez, Francisco 45n28 Sweeney, Jon M. 9 Tacitus 208 Tagore, Rabindranath 6, 63, 68 – 72, 73n5; on beauty 71–2; and Wittgenstein 62, 67 – 70; and wonder 69 – 70; works by title (‘Awakening of the Waterfall’ 69; Gitanjali 62; Jibansmiriti 69; The Religion of Man 69; Selected Writings 71 – 2; ‘Sense of Beauty’ 72; ‘Song of the Dawn’ 69) Tanenbaum, Adena 122 Teresa of Avila, St 135 Tessicini, Dario 44n7 thambos 189 thauma 3, 23 – 4, 26n23, 75 – 6, 162, 189, 190 Theodore the Studite, St 132 – 3 Thomas of Celano 183 – 4 Thomas, Ronald Stuart 139 Thurn und Taxis, Marie von 186, 197 Tolkien, John Ronald R. 97 Torah 114 – 18, 120 – 5 Trakl, Georg 207 Tredennick, Hugh 25n2, 25n4 Trevelyan, Jill 212 Tyler, Peter 73n2, 73n5 Vaihinger, Hans 46n36 Van Gogh, Vincent 81, 82n10 Vasalou, Sophia 2, 11n2 Velody, Irving 92 Vergely, Bertrand 102 – 3, 111n6, 111n7; wonder and violence 102 – 3 Victorines 4 Villiers, John 209n1 Virgil 162 – 3

248 Index Wagner, Richard 231 Walton, Heather 8 Ward, Graham 149 – 50 Ward, Jean 8 Watts, Isaac 8, 131 – 41; ‘When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross’ 129 Weber, Max 92 Wechel, André 29 Wechel, Johann 29, 31, 37, 43, 44n2, 44n6 Wedde, Ian 215 Weil, Simone 183 Wesley, Charles 138 Wesley, John 138 Whitman, Walt 234 Wich-Schwarz, Johannes 191 Wiesel, Elie 77 Wilde, Oscar 96, 180 Williams, Rowan 179 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 62 – 73, 196, 207; compared with Tagore 67 – 73; and wonder 5, 6, 11, 62 – 7 Wonder: in antiquity 17–28; as beginning of philosophy 3, 6, 17, 22, 75, 79, 190; in the eighteenth century 42, 46n33, 129 – 42; and epiphany 5, 33, 50 – 8, 146; and the ineffable 39, 166 – 70; and inspiration 9, 165 – 6, 170; and knowledge 3 – 4, 11, 17 – 20, 23, 38, 40, 89, 162,

238; and loss 148 – 50; meanings of 1 – 2; in the Middle Ages 3 – 4, 38 – 9, 53 – 7, 162 – 5, 178; in Midrash and Hebrew poetry 114 – 18; and mystery 7, 9 – 10, 56, 89, 126n3, 143, 145, 184 – 5, 195, 227, 237; in the nineteenth century 5, 10 – 11, 50 – 8, 110; philosophical wonder 35 – 7; positive disintegration in 105 – 6; quotidian wonder 56 – 8, 80, 96, 109 – 10, 143 – 6, 149 – 50, 210 – 11, 219 – 20; and radical vision 178 – 85; rapture and rupture in 100 – 13; in the Renaissance 39 – 42; in the seventeeth century 2, 4, 43; as a source of poetry 106; as a source of theology 87 – 8, 143 – 5, 147, 152n1; and spirituality 277 – 40; and suffering 129 – 42; in the twentieth century 10, 62 – 74, 75, 79 – 80, 87 – 99, 143 – 6, 186 – 98, 210 – 24 Wright, Georg Henrik von 67 Wunderly, Nanny 196 Zelda (Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky) 114, 124 – 6 Zemach, Eddy 73n2 Zimmermann, Jens 59n6 Zinder, Ariel 7 Zusters see Arbuckle, Jane