tang dynasty times

the experience of this sweet life (dante sighs)

 

 

Now he knows the dear price men have to pay
          Not to follow Christ, by the experience
          Of this sweet life and of its opposite

 

A best seller since medieval times, I've long wondered, why it is that everyone prefers Dante's Purgatorio anyway?

Am I the only one who-- while utterly unable to imagine hell-- often finds myself lost in dreams of paradise? I always think it would be the most wonderful thing in the world to construct my own image of paradise as inclusive and elaborately detailed as Dante's vision. But, alas, I suppose in an age where we no longer share a grounded education in the classics, it would be hard to write paradise in any enclopedic way; and by necessity anything I would write would be only personal anyway. 

The quote on my Jeanine Payer ring, "The experience of this sweet life," comes from Paradiso XX, 47-8, when Dante and Beatrice arrive at the sphere of Jupiter. A place of serenity, this is where they meet the souls of just lawgivers and righteous kings.

Gazing upward, the two standing side-by-side, watch as the lights of a myriad of illuminated souls form the words diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram ("cherish justice, you who judge the earth"); these lit souls then disband to come together again in the shape of a great eagle--symbol of the Roman empire but also symbol of Jupiter, the god of Justice. The souls begin to sing until their voices come together to speak as one voice, which spills forth from the mouth of the eagle-- commanding our hero to look at the eye of the eagle.

Doing as commanded, Dante sees forming the shape of the eagle's eyes six great kings who there serve as the highest ranking souls in the sphere. Looking closely, Dante is taken aback to find two pagans among the Christian righteous. The first pagan is the Roman Emperor Trajan and the second the Trojan Ripheus. The eagle laughed with "great sparkling and much cheer" at Dante's amazement, this laughter thereby indicating the inscrutability of God's Will (an important reminder of the limits of human understanding/ non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti). 

 **

Talking with Jesuit priest in training Matt Farley on his show Entitled Opinions, Robert Harrison suggested that as one moves back and forth across the Protestant-Catholic divide, one striking difference is in the weight given to "faith" versus "works." (for in the former, no matter how many good works one may perform, in the end it is faith that is truly crucial).

I think this is very true, and with its rich pagentry of feast days and saints, at Catholic Mass there is a kind of exhortation to "become saints to one another" through our good works. Saints are not necessarily perfected souls but are those whose actions toward others are understandable in terms of beatitude.

This is something I think Dostoevsky was the great master at depicting--- in the form of Alyosha Karamazov. And according to saintly Alyosha, if the greatest virtue is Love, this is something that must take the form of good works. To Alyosha, the opposite of Christ is not Satan but Misanthropy. And, it is in our mode of being out in participation with each other through which we set in motion our narratives of inter-connected salvation. (This being something expressed so beautifully in Cloud Atlas, I thought).

Back to the quote on my ring, though. I am going to summarize Dante scholar and translator Anthony Esolen's brilliant interpretation of the amazing manner in which the Roman enperor Trajan --a pagan!!-- found himself in this most exalted position in paradise.  

In Dante's worldview, there were only two categories of souls: that of saints and that of sinners. But Dante suffered over the seeming injustice that there were sinners in Limbo who were there by providence alone. All the unbaptised babies, for example, and those born before Christianity-- was it fair that they were in Limbo? 

The Roman emperor Trajan lived during the early Christian days. He did not persecute the Christians and let them live in peace (as long as they didn't practice openly). But this was not what attracted Dante. Rather it was the Medieval story concerning Pope Gregory the Great. Pope Gregory recognized Trajan for having stopped to console a poor widow who he came across while leading his armies to war. The widow's son had been murdered and though Trajan had bigger fish to fry, he stopped ("and turned around") and listened to her. Then, before moving on, he dealt justice. This story had deeply moved Pope Gregory and in scholar Esolen's words, Gregory came to love this image of the pagan emperor. So in love and so devoted was Gregory to this memory that he prayed intensely for God to do something so that Trajan could return to life once more in order to receive baptism.

And legend has it that this wish was granted to Gregory, and thereby Trajan was translated back to life. Gregory, then, was able to preach to him himself and from Trajan's own free-will, he was then baptised. Our man Dante, therefore, places the ex-pagan in one of the highest spheres of heaven.

This is a love story. For, as Esolen says: 

Had Trajan not humbled himself (and he was on the verge of not humbling himself) and inconveienced his army to hear out the woman, Gregory would not have fallen in love with his memory. Lacking that devotion, he would not have prayed; had he not prayed, he would not have moved God to the miracle...

Trajan, then, by providence born a pagan; through love was re-born and thereby came to know the sweetness of paradise ("this life")-- in addition to its opposite (Limbo, in his case).  

Cross-posted at Vox Nova

 

dante sighs (and a medieval theory of 氣)

 

Remember when Dante sighed?

Out to buy figs, young Dante was in a rush to get to the market. As he walked, he imagined the smell of Sicilian lemons; of sweet sugar from Egypt; of perfumed vinegars and syrups made from grapes.  Cherries, endives, oranges, spicy sausage; dried fruit, figs, dried fish, mint, orange blossoms and roses---cumin, peppers and of course Laura's saffron. Just thinking about the perfume of these things caused him to quicken his pace. And, turning the corner to the lively street that followed the great River Arno, he spotted her. Beatrice. It had been precisely nine years since the first time he had caught glimpse of her, at a time when they had both still been only children. But he recognized her in an instant.

And as a thousand birds took flight in his heart, the man stood there barely breathing. Time stopped. Breath quickened and he let out an amorous sigh (溜息→感嘆).

Too quickly, however, Beatrice's friend, with whom she had been walking arm-in-arm, urged her to continue walking. And so Dante's Lady walks away. Likened to Jesus' epiphany as he walked through the streets of Jerusalem, blessings are dispensed in her wake. And in this way, sighing deeply he knew he would never be the same again.

It was a sigh--make no mistake about it--that originated in the Body of Beatrice. For the vision of her created a

...sweetness to the heart

and

A suave spirit full of love

That straight to the soul,

Saying:  “Sigh”  (Tanto Gentile)

 

Seeing the world anew→ La Vita Nuova.

**

 

In an article from last year in the New York Review of Books,  Robert Harrison, reviews Slavitt's new translation of La Vita Nuova.

Saved by the Vision of Beatrice, he says,

What appears to the eyes then becomes spiritualized and, as spirit, enters the onlooker's inner being, inspiring the soul to emit a sigh. From this sigh of inspiration--this culminating intake and exhalation of breath--the poem we are reading is born.

 

氣象.

Nowadays we think of mood, spirit, dreams, love and behavior in terms of internal psychological states of being. But in medieval times, things were different, I think. Love and the spirits (其鬼不神), human destiny and the destiny of cities (the spirit of cities)--- all these things were inter-twined via shared moods and a "breathing and porous Medieval human heart.

Francois Jullien talking about daoist physiology brings up "breath phenomenon 氣象" and says that through one's in-haling and ex-haling, one breathes in landscape, atmosphere and social context and breathes out character, heart and correct behavior. It is not unlike a Confucian scholar whose meticulous actions-- perfectly attuned to the situation-- are guided by a Confucian sensibility, or sensitive negotiating of shared mood. It is the explanation for everything from falling in love, charisma and the heart's fascination to correct deportment and the Rites.

The ancients--East and West-- told us that it was the heart/mind (心）that mattered. The seat of spiritual power, it was equated with life itself. Thinking too much, they warned, will only give you a headache, and this fact was backed up by the finest research of Medieval physicians and theologians. Aristotelian philosophy had imparted to the Medievals that the heart was hot and dry-- often times burning hot; and that intelligence, emotion, passion and sensations all originated there, in that heat. Ibn Arabi further refined this by adding that, if the mind thinks (考）, the heart imagines （思・想）.

We find ourselves, therefore, back in a time when heart and imagination took center stage.

In addition to its heat, the Medieval heart was also believed to be extremely porous--something which inextricably connected inner with outer (and outer and inner). Heather Webb explains it thus:

 It was thought that the air we breathed mixed with the blood in our hearts to form generative spirits that, sent back into the world, connected us to one another and to the greater circulating universe. According to the Aristotelian and Aquinian theory, the heart should imperfectly mimic the circulations of the heavens"

Through our breath, then, and our persistently beating hearts, we are connected to those around us and to the turning of the universe itself. (and yes, the heart does not make checklists).

To speak in daoist terms, our hero-pilgrim Dante Alighieri walks through a landscape. Florence is engulfed in shared sighs as the Lover sees his beloved- and in that moment, Dante breathes her in deeply in to his heart. Then, ex-haling in a sigh, the world is forever changed. Our man goes with the flow. He sighs and a poem is born.

In a dream later that night, The God of Love (恋神) commands Dante: 'Vide Cor Meum': Look upon your heart. 

It all happens in the heart and like that of the ancient daoists, Dante's world was one largely un-interested in Nirvana or Enlightenment-- or any other project which saw our human lives as a resource to be shaped, utilized, improved and perfected. People didn't really seek to be the "best me they could be." Nor did they go to elaborate lengths to avoid pain. For those in Dante's world, one needn't empty oneself or seek to detach oneself from emotions as their world was not a world of independent self-enclosed brains. Dwelling in a world that itself was bleeding and wounded (wounded Christ heart), poets and philosophers considered that the best one could do was to bravely and vigiliantly, shape one's self around the recognition of necessity and keep an open heart-- a generous heart (Sacred Heart).

And from out of one's own heart's wounds art can be created; in sighs we are inspired and in dreams and visions we are re-born ～into la vita nuova and la dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life.)

 Recommended: Alain Badiou: A Life in Writing

**

A classic word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence (to sigh 溜息→感嘆 ): "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace 色 in that melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels--Barthes

Ponte dei Sospiri (溜息橋)

         

absence / absence
Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object -- whatever its cause and its duration -- and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment-- Barthes

 Queen Dido.

You will recall, the last we saw the two lovers, they were overwhelmed and lying in each other's arms-- whispering softly in Japanese: 愛していますよ, she says, "I love you."

That eros （愛神）had intoxicated her in a cloud of longing and desire -- that cannot be denied. I ask, though, that you recall the cave scene (caves as female body/sexuality) when "torches of lightning blazed," and the "prisoners of lust" ("enthralled by shameless passion') make love

That was the first day of her ruin and the first cause for sorrows; for she is not moved by her appearance or reputation, now Dido no longer thinks of her love as a secret: she calls it marriage; she hides her fault by this name

Is everyone finally getting the picture?

They have made love, and she now believes they are married. Aeneas, for his part is probably thinking, "Hey, who said anything about marriage?"

And that is amour （恋愛）.

Turning back to daoism for a moment, last night I re-read a friend's work on the topic for the third time. And, if daoism urges us to put aside our various mental constructs (of Self, of how we think the world should be, etc.) and go back to the purity and honesty of childhood, I am left asking again, what if anything was Dido's reaction than a fit of love and abandonment? I wonder, if the ancients had this one 狂気の愛 (amour fou).

Burning incense and tossing oracle bones, I read Barthes like the Gialbo reads the yijing:

A classic word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence (to sigh 溜息→感嘆 ): "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace 色 in that melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels.

So there she is-- walking over the Bridge of Sighs (溜息橋), but finds herself utterly unable to just turn around and walk back to the other side. And so in my reading, Dido does nothing （無為）-- or she does something 有為 (it's all in what direction you are facing on the bridge) but walking forward (or backward) she lies down in the flames; cursing all Trojans.

Regarding the wuwei world （無為自然）I found one japanese explanation I liked a lot-- though, I warn you I have no idea if this works for those dwelling in the State of Chu. And that is this, the kanji wei (為/为) means, "to do" and "to become" but in Japanese at least, the more common meaning of the kanji is "for the purpose of"-- and one blogger wrote how it is this that is the point of wuwei. Do not perform any action which you do for the purpose (...の為に）of something else. This means, basically, to always act in terms of ends (ends in themselves)-- never in terms of means. Being un-strategic and without ado... About Dido's heart, Brodsky said, "her love was like a fish."

Is she not the real hero of the epic?

I was listening to an In Our Time program on free will and not surprisingly, Aeneas was mentioned. Discussing the surprising lack of interest the hero has received by Hollywood, one of Bragg's guests mentioned that it may in part have been due to the hero's lack of free will. Indeed, out of all the ancient heroes, Aeneas is considered to be almost totally lacking in free will. Pious Aeneas and his duty. Controlled by destiny, there is almost no wiggle room in his mind.

But, of course, this is not the only reason Aeneas-among the ancient heroes-- has been looked down upon and sometimes even derided. For as Hubert Dreyfus said (and I agree), it's hard not to dislike him really.

For as my friend, the Count remarked :

 Zeus has nothing to do with it. This is the sod part.(And it can be admirable: look at Odysseus, who is always, always, in every instance, the better man. Baby, he says to Calypso, you are everything a man would ever wish, but I love another. Calypso hates it, and can’t come to terms with it for seven long years. But in the end she does. And she does because at least she knows she is not being lied to, made a fool of, cheated. Usually — sometimes — even a woman spurned can admire character in a man).

For more, see In Praise of Heroes Not saying Stupid Things.

Barthes ends his meditation thus:

The absence of the other holds my head underwater; gradually I drown, my air supply gives out: it is by this asphyxia that I reconstitute my "truth" and that I prepare what in love is Intractable.

A thousand years imagining paradise

I have tried to write Paradise
Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise-- Ezra Pound

The winds of paradise-- surely they are musical, floral, and exqusitely fragrant. 

They say, Cleopatra herself lived in a cloud of incense and in a dream of purple.  Perfumed in Frankiscence, myrrh, lotus, sandalwood, and rose water... she traveled the Nile on a boat with purple sails so perfumed, that the winds were love-sick with them …

Surely the winds of paradise are like that--perfumed and love-sick. And closing my eyes and taking a deep breath of the fragrance. I am immediately transported.

Paradiso.

I've long wondered, why it is that everyone prefers Dante's Purgatorio to his Paradiso?

Am I the only one who-- while utterly unable to imagine hell-- often finds myself lost in dreams of paradise?

Like a Persian garden, I imagine the fragrance of roses, jasmine and gardenias intoxicates. There is music, gently perfumed breezes and unending picnics. My Adonis flies a kite as philosophers wander nearby discussing Aristotle with my friend Señor Borges. As they talk, they are looking for the name of God in the pattern of the rose petals. They are just close enough to hear-- just close enough to be able to join in in the conversation too. The great Sam Hamill is there reciting poems from Almost Paradise as Tullio draws maps of imaginary worlds in black ink.

Averroes and Avicenna are there. Izumi Shikibu and Lady Rokujo are also there debating with each other in the most charming way-- as are all Genji's lovers. But so too is Beatrice and Hannah Arendt (Heidegger, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear, didn't make it this far). My lover the Emperor sits not too faraway (while the object of my affection sits closer still). The philosophers speak in all the great languages that could once be heard in the teeming markets of Chang'an. 

And, of course, Anna Karenina and her Beloved the Count sit cuddling under a great Chinar tree. 

Picnics that never end include Persian yogurts and every type of biryani; the finest oolong tea, like champagne, from the misty mountains of Formosa, or green tea served in heirloom teabowls by Tea Masters with long lineages. The tea is served with beautiful sweets from my favorite shop in the Province of the Clouds faraway-- everything the verdant color of new grass. There is Japanese chocolate and dimsum from Hongkong so delicious I brush away tears of delight. The 豆腐花 so divine-- well, I know that I must be in Paradise....And pizza, in a garden with a view.

In the distance, a great ziggurat rises toward the shimmering blue sky. Containing every book ever written, it stands as a place of great possibility.Beijing is there with Borges writing his books. I rarely  go there. For I prefer my unending picnicking under the Chinar trees listening to the sound of flowing water. A book of poems, by Conrad Roth, lies there on the blanket-- just within reach. Icarus he writes,

the wind sang in his wings,
and his wings wandered
and wended their wanton way to the sun—

It's not just Icarus either, for everyone is wearing wings--rainbow wings.

There are long tunnels covered in wisteria-- white, yellow and purple... They remind me of the covered walkways at the Summer Palace outside Beijing that I have read about. Long covered walkways which the Dowager Empress in Qing China would walk for her exercise-- sometimes reading a book as she walked along. Long, shady flower tunnels-- all leading toward ancient wisteria trees, which one could circumnambulate like Mount Kailash, before choosing one of five other flower tunnels each leading in a different direction to travel down. 

I am, however, still lazily sitting on a large quilt with a friend who has a giant pink peony tucked behind his ear. He is urging me to try another sweet as music from a harpsichord draws my attention toward the towering mountains in the distance. There, I see the two little children in their kimono with the wings as they alight from a colorful dragon boat on the river with the 10,000 curves. They begin slowly walking toward me.

Watching them, I recall that Makiko-- 10,000 miles away in Turfan-- is probably seeing paintings depicting the same birds of paradise on the walls of the Buddhist temple caves there.

The Buddhist bird of paradise is known in Sanskrit as Kavalinka (迦陵頻伽). It is the bird whose singing begins before it even hatches from its egg. Little voices of paradise, their song was thought to be so beautiful, they were likened to angels.

Angels, arias and manicured gardens being common to most people's ideas of paradise....

On the other side of the river of lights is the Double Greeting Wanton Shop with its $10 prostitutes and BBQ pork. You can take a number at the counter and have your fortune told in the back. The Ambassador is there, sitting with Professor Wang. Splitting a piece of Hungarian cheesecake, they are waiting their turn, happy.

In Dante's Paradise--there is no concept of enlightenment. The soul is not a resource and people do not aim for detachment or perfection of any kind. All that is required is love and hope. That's it. Faith and Fidelity are just other names for it.

And in this place of perfect paradise where poetry has been resurrected, being beautific is an intellectual occupation.

Kant would be displeased, not doubt, but in the realm of souls, reality is nothing but thought and spirit. And this, then, becomes the definition of inner freedom. For the burning hot Medieval heart; true love, true play, and any true heart's occupation (whether according to Kierkegaard or Proust or even Plato) will --no matter what-- be an end in and of itself. Souls being guided by their metaphysical pursuit of the Good/God ---generate a reality that necessarily determines itself (rather than being externally or causally generated). Along with kant, Hume too doesn't have a keg to stand on.  

So, then, in addition to unending picnics, I imagine there is also an exquisite calendar of ceremonies, where just like in the world of Genji, sutras are read, incense is burned and dances performed by little children in wings-- not because anything will come of it, but merely because it is beautiful and therefore Good.

Paradise like a perfect picture-- just as Lady Murasaki described. A vase filled with perfumes

   

dante to the fedeli d'amore

I dreamt of Caesar again last night. In Dante's Limbo, we were on the borders of Hell. I guess I had not heard that the Pope had already closed the Gates of Limbo. Or did he?

Well, in my dream, I was an angel descended from Paradise (a thousand years imagining paradise). No doubt, this must have greatly surprised my Caesar since he has come to believe that I spend my evenings flying round Japan on my broomstick... but guess what? I do that too.

It was my wings that gave away my angelic state. Sheer like the thinest, most finest silk in the world, they were shimmering rainbow wings (fairylike and reminsicent of Yang Guifei's famed dress of feathers):

Her most beautiful dress, a gown "shimmering like sunlight" was made of rare feathers brought as tribute to the Emperor. It was a fairylike robe which she wore to perform the famous Rainbow Dance (still preserved in modern Japan) before the Emperor. A dress of feathers was the dream of every woman of the Tang Court.

Touching down in Great Limbo, I found him there. Dressed like Dante all in white, he introduced himself to me as Caesar. And, thereby recognizing him in his ghostly person, I stepped forward and told him: On the edge of Hell, Limbo is the place where shades are punished by having many great desires but no hope.

Virgil was there, of course, as was Plato and Socrates. There was Euclid and Ptolemy; Hippocrates and Galen were there as well. Seneca and Zeno; Averroes and Avicenna. If truth be told, indeed, the company was so good in Limbo that-- at first-- one could hardly feel sorry for those who found themselves there.

And, none were sinners per se. But they lacked faith. And for no other evil then this, they find themselves forever Lost with no hope; living in longing.

Then in my dream I stepped very close to him and pulled out a scroll of an illustration a friend had once shown me from an old Bible. A tree of death (or the tree of sin). I there pointed to the very worst sin-- that of faithlessness (despair or apostasy).

And that was it.

The mood of the dream was very comforting-- everything was lit up in warm sunlight and my wings were pure shimmering splendor. Unfortunately, aftre waking from the dream I became increasingly downcast as I realized that the dream was not about caesar at all.

To have desire but no hope, being reminded of this state of limbo on the edge of hell, I thought of Dosteovsky's concept from Brothers K about hell being nothing more than the inability to love. And when you really think about it, what is truly necessary for love but hope and faith?

This is Dante writing to the Fedeli d'Amore:

To every heart which the sweet pain doth move,
  And unto which these words may now be brought
  For true interpretation and kind thought,
Be greeting in our Lord's name, which is Love.
Of those long hours wherein the stars, above,
  Wake and keep watch, the third was almost nought,
  When Love was shown me with such terrors fraught
As may not carelessly be spoken of.
He seemed like one who is full of joy and had
  My heart within his hand, and on his arm
  My lady, with a mantle round her, slept;
Whom (having wakened her) anon he made
  To eat that heart; she ate, as fearing harm.
  Then he went out; and as he went, he wept. (tr. D. G. Rossetti)

**

 

Adonis and I arrived safe and sound in the western part of his empire last night. Blasting music and dancing in pure joy, his grandma said: "Not many kids can move their hips like that, you really should sign him up for a hip-hop class"... and looking at him shaking his booty, I remembered the way the kids danced in Africa. Just like my baby.

I had fallen in love with someone else and so had broken off my engagement with his father... but going to visit him down there-- he was like a different person. In Africa. He danced in pure joy too. Sometimes people would come up to him in the streets and shops in Mafeteng and want to dance-- right there.. And-right there-- he would dance. I thought, it is a diferent universe here. Once we were driving way into the mountains of the Kingdom in the clouds and these two little girls were dancing by the side of the road smiling and smiling as they danced in the wind. There was no music. My baby dances like that. Sometimes when I think about South Africa, I think it must be how it feels like in Heaven-- a place where people can change. 

--Out of Africa (in LA)

 

Just noticed Namit's post at 3Quarks on Islamic Mysticism: the Mystic Tide. Recommended.

 

a medieval heart

 

The ancients told us that it was the heart that mattered. Thinking too much, they warned, will only give you a headache. And this fact was backed up by the finest research of Medieval physicians and theologians. Aristotelian philosophy had imparted to the Medievals that the heart was hot and dry-- often times burning hot; and that intelligence, emotion, passion and sensations all originated there, in that heat. Ibn Arabi further refined this by adding that, if the mind thinks (考）, the heart imagines （思・想）.

We find ourselves, therefore, back in a Medieval time when heart and imagination took center stage.

In addition to its heat, the Medieval heart was also believed to be extremely porous--something which inextricably connected inner with outer (and outer and inner). Heather Webb explains it thus:

 It was thought that the air we breathed mixed with the blood in our hearts to form generative spirits that, sent back into the world, connected us to one another and to the greater circulating universe. According to the Aristotelian and Aquinian theory, the heart should imperfectly mimic the circulations of the heavens"

Through our breath, then, and our persistently beating hearts, we are connected to the world around us. One breathes in landscape, atmosphere and social context and breathes out heart and poetry. 

****

Remember when Dante sighed?

Out to buy figs, young Dante was in a rush to arrive at the market. As he walked he imagined the smell of Sicilian lemons; of sweet sugar from Egypt; of perfumed vinegars and syrups made from grapes.  Cherries, endives, oranges, spicy sausage; dried fruit, dried fish, mint, orange blossoms and roses---cumin, peppers and of course saffron. Just thinking about the perfume of these things caused him to quicken his pace. And, turning the corner to the lively street that followed the great River Arno, he spotted her. Beatrice. It had been precisely nine years since the first time he had caught glimpse of her, at a time when they had both still been only children. But he recognized her in an instant.

Then, as she approached him-- not surprising, given the story-- their eyes locked.

And as a thousand birds took flight in his heart, the man stood there barely breathing. Time stopped. Breath quickened and he let out an amorous sigh (溜息→感嘆).

Too quickly, however, Beatrice's friend, with whom she had been walking arm-in-arm, urged her to continue walking, and so Beatrice-- with just the most prefunctory greetings to her beloved-- walked away. Somehow, though, she felt absolutely sure that she would never be the same again.

Seeing the world anew.

In a dream later that night, The God of Love commands Dante: Vide cor tuum: Look upon your heart. 

Dante. His world was largely un-interested in Nirvana or Enlightenment-- or any other project which saw our human lives as a resource to be shaped, utilized, improved and perfected. People didn't really seek to be the best me they could be. Nor did they go to elaborate lengths to avoid pain. For those in Dante's world, one needn't empty oneself or seek to detach oneself from emotions as their world was not a world of independent self-enclosed brains. Dwelling in a world that itself was bleeding and wounded (wounded Christ heart), poets and philosophers considered that the best one could do was to bravely and vigiliantly keep an open heart-- a generous heart (Sacred Heart).

And through one's own heart's wounds, from out of this would true art be created.

Dante was very clear about this.

But, the Middle Ages was a long time ago. So, imagine my surprise when visiting a psychic down on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood not that long ago, I was told: You have forgotten your Medieval heart. Your Gypsy heart.

**

In the Comedia, hopelessness is the greatest Sin of all and only in Hell, is a person's heart closed. Heart becomes cold and likewise --as Dante tells us again and again-- hell is not a hot place but rather is a full of ice. For in Hell, people harm themselves by hurting others.

While in Paradise, people picnic.

All art by Tullio DeSantis

 

 

dante's dream

 

Scholars continue to study the beautiful love letters that were exchanged between the young Ibn Arabi and his Lady in the window. A rich and glorious tapestry of love and the exquisite color of their desire; I admit that I too cannot get them out of my mind. And, I am particularly taken with a phrase that our young hero would repeat to his Lady: If I hand you my heart, you won't drop it, will you?

Most of you, Dear Readers, will agree I am sure that it is the Medieval romantic trope par excellance. This image of the Lover ripping out his beating and bleeding heart and presenting it to the Beloved-- we see it over and over again in Medieval literature. A "macabre literalization of the metaphoric seat of love: the heart itself," says Robert Harrison in his book the Body of Beatrice.

The heart.

We forget now in our age of mind and reason that for a long time it was the heart that was thought to be what really mattered.

It all reminds me of Dante's dream from La Vita Nuova.

Exactly nine years had past since he had first caught glimpse of her as a nine year old child. Now aged 18, she walks in lovliness and in virtue. And, passing him on the street one day, she turned to greet him (salute as greeting, salute as "saving," in Italian).

Dante was overcome. And fell into sweet sleep.

Dreaming, the room became infused with a flame-coloured light as the God of Love, the Lord of Amor 愛神 appeared before Dante's eyes. Veiled in deep red, sighing and in great longing, Dante sees that in Amor's arms is his beloved, Beatrice, also draped in crimson.

Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold
my heart in his hand, and held in his arms
my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.
Then he woke her, and that burning heart
he fed to her reverently, she fearing,
afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

Vide cor tuum: Look upon your heart. Thus commands Amor. And Dante looks and sees there that his heart, held tightly in Amor's fist, is red and on fire. Then, in fascination and amidst many sighs, the Lord wakes Beatrice and commands that she eat the Lover's heart. Amor feeds this heart to Beatrice as Dante watches in red. The act completed, Amor unexpectently turns sad. And gathering tightly to his chest the Lady held tightly in his arms, he thereby acsends to heaven in tears.

A mystery to be sure, even in Dante's lifetime, people were puzzled by his dream. Robert Harrison, in his book, describes how Dante's contemporary Cino da Pistoia interpreted the dream that Amor sought to show Dante that true love sees the lover desiring to have his heart be uttrely known to the Beloved. And he shows this by offering Dante's heart to Beatrice for consuming.

Another contemporary, however, advises that Dante try and "wash his testicles with plenty of water to disperse the noxious vapors that bring on the delirium of such visions."

恋愛.

I personally think (and I am basing this on my reading of Ibn Arabi's letters-- themselves so full of longing and sighing) that Amor begins to weep because he knows this is as close as Dante will ever get to his Beloved-- as she is doomed to die. For as Barthes says,

Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object -- whatever its cause and its duration -- and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment

This is seen in both the tears of God and the sighing of the poet. Like a Tibetan prayer wheel sending up a prayer to heaven with each turn of the wheel, so too do sighs and tears express the movement of inner to outer; the transcendence of our immediate and bodily felt sensual or spiritual desires upward.

Barthes:

A classic word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence (to sigh 溜息→感嘆 ): "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace 色 in that melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels.

And as Dante sighs, Dante is deeply and forever moved by love:

From then on I say that Amor governed my soul, which as soon so soon wedded to him and began to acquire over me such certainty and command, through the power my imagination gave him, that I was forced to carry out his wishes fully.

What is so fascinating about this is that Dante admits that everything that came to pass did so through the free will of his own heart. That is, Dante freely surrendered to Amor. 

Heart can only count to one.

It surrenders or it doesn't.

And, in an age which no longer prioritizes heart and where imagination hardly stands a chance, I have wondered in my darker moments, about the state of love. Do you think-- if we turn off our TVs-- we are still able to fall in love like Dante did-- in longing and amidst great sighs?  

**

Here is Patrick Cassedy's inspired version of the Sonnet, Vide Cor Meum and even as joy becomes bitter tears, the poet is at peace; for "see my heart," he says.

Chorus: And thinking of her
Sweet sleep overcame me
I am your master
See your heart
And of this burning heart
Your heart
(Chorus: She trembling)
Obediently eats.
Weeping, I saw him then depart from me.
Joy is converted
To bitterest tears
I am in peace
My heart
I am in peace
See my heart 

 

 

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wings of desire (a parable)

Have you ever heard the story of when Ibn Arabi went to the market to buy some figs?

Hot and dusty, it was summer in Al-Anadalus. Seville, to be precise, which was after all the center of the world. Well, at least it was the greatest empire standing that far to the West during those Moorish times.

The largest and most prosperous land in Europe, water flowed through the city of Seville in countless canals; flowing water pouring out of countless fountains; there were great libraries and bath houses. It was a place where a philosopher could always find a job. 

Walking toward one of the city's legendary markets, our young philosopher smiled in anticipation. He knew the future was bright and, though he was only sent to buy figs, he knew so much more awaited his senses. He could spend hours in the city markets-- in delight listening to people speaking in dozens of languages and catching in the wind the fragrance of fruit from the Levant and sweet sugar from Egypt; there were perfumed vinegars and syrups made from grapes. Wines. Cherries, endives, oranges, spicy sausage; dried fruit, dried fish, mint, orange blossoms and roses---cumin, peppers and of course saffron. 

Just thinking about the perfume of these things caused him to quicken his pace. And, turning the corner into the narrow and covered streets which led to the market, for no reason whatsoever, our hero looked up.

It was at that precise moment that the woman had flung open the window of her bedroom. She needed air and so had spontaneously-- on a whim-- opened the window from her room on the second floor.

Not surprising-- given the story-- their eyes locked.

And as a thousand birds took flight in his heart, the woman stood there barely breathing. Time stopped. Too quickly, however, time started again as she heard someone in the house approaching her room (opening windows being something not encouraged in her world) she quickly shut the window and went back to her chores. Somehow, though, she felt absolutely sure that she would never be the same again.

Our hero, Ibn Arabi, by that time had started running- back in the direction from which he had come. Being the man he was-- even so young-- he sat down and immediately composed a love poem. And attaching it to a letter penned in almost impossible beauty, he had one of his servants deliver the sealed letter to her home. Of course, she knew at once it was from him.

Then, for precisely one year, every morning at precisely the same time, he would walk to the market to buy figs. And every morning, at precisely the same time, she would fling open her window. Their afternoons were consumed by the writing of love letters to each other.

And like the love letters they penned to each other, their desire too required an answer. "I will soon go mad if I cannot taste your lips," She actually said this (for we have the letter to prove it). To wait is to be enchanted... this being something that Medieval physicians declared could lead a person into madness (see Averroes' study of love as affliction)

Only a few of their letters survive today. A taste of what must have been pure intoxication, the two became quickly overwhelmed in a Sea of Love. Or so it seemed, at least. Scholars have tried to analyze their few surviving letters and the general consensus seems to be that she sought to make herself known to him. As he sought to know her.

I want to understand. I do understand. I understand, I understand

And so in this way, they circled each other-- like planets circling the sun; like dervishes circling God. In love, there is a great desire to be known by the Beloved. Just in the same way that the Beloved seeks to know the soul that he feels belongs to him. As the poets insist, true love is a great mirror reflecting one's soul at the same time reflecting the soul of the Beloved in unio mystica.

All of this being part of a playful game of hide-and-seek that God plays with Himself, says the hindu and sufi mystics. Perhaps no one in history worked out a theory for this like our young philosopher. Indeed, his theories on divine love made him famous throughout the Islamic world. Born 100 years before Dante, scholars posit that it was Ibn Arabi's poetry and philosophy which would inspire, illuminate and be reborn within Dante's poetry of Beatrice. Beatrice's Body. Beatrice's soul.

Stranger things have happened, I am sure you will agree. Ibn Arabi's theories of love-- born from their love letters-- became a dialectic of love, which itself became a religion of love, characterized by angel's wings and planets circling the sun (both images which came themselves straight out of their letters). Desire transfigured by imagination-- imagination, says Arabi being the function of the heart. As the brain thinks and body moves, so does heart imagine and desire. And this is expressed in the form of heavenly angels--their wings beating in desire, they leave feathers behind in bed.

**

When I think of them-- Lover and Beloved-- I cannot help but wonder what became of them. Well, I know what became of him, but what of the woman in the window? Her angel's wings beating in desire, I imagine sometimes that she did go mad from longing... falling in love, falling in despair, falling ill. Falling out of her window.  

I wonder too whether people still fall in love in the same way. In times past, we know from poems and novels that people did fall in love precisely in the way described above. A veiled glimpse ignites a fire causing two people to circle each other as Lover desires Beloved; each seeking to know the Other. This all being something which took place within the landscape of the heart itself. It was something imagined-- over weeks upon weeks; months upon months. Imagined as "'spirits take bodies and bodies become spirits'"

People reported that like the other magical incantation-- abbracadbra-- that just whispering the words out loud "I-love-you" had the power to move mountains. It even had the power to cure gout. I wonder, looking at their letters, whether people are still capable of this i fedeli d'amore (or in this translation below) a "wondrous" Religion of Love.

"Wonder"

A garden among the flames!

My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.

My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.

Paintings by the great Farah Ossouli.