Max, this piece is beautiful. It also recalled for me the work of Peter Kingsley, namely, “The Dark Places of Wisdom” and “Reality.” And I could not help but appreciate that to call up Sophia necessitates a mythopoetic style of writing, in Gebserian terms, which you do here quite brilliantly.
The whole poem is well worth the read Max. I read it aloud on YouTube but really didn’t do it justice. Plus I broke down in the middle of it and cried! Haha! Here is a good link to the poem. https://internetpoem.com/george-macdonald/a-hidden-life-poem/
"So it will not be necessary to unveil allegory in explaining the canzone, but simply discuss the literal meaning. By my lady I mean that same lady whose symbolic meaning I fully revealed in the previous canzone, namely that most virtuous of lights, Philosophy, whose rays make flowers bloom so they might bear the fruit of mankind’s true nobility."
Max, this piece is beautiful. It also recalled for me the work of Peter Kingsley, namely, “The Dark Places of Wisdom” and “Reality.” And I could not help but appreciate that to call up Sophia necessitates a mythopoetic style of writing, in Gebserian terms, which you do here quite brilliantly.
P.S. I haven’t forgotten to email you.
Such a beautiful encounter. George MacDonald, who loved Novalis, this I know for sure, penned this in his poem A Hidden Life.
“God, and not woman, is the heart of all.
But she, as priestess of the visible earth,
Holding the key, herself most beautiful,
Had come to him, and flung the portals wide.
He entered: every beauty was a glass
That gleamed the woman back upon his view.
Shall I not rather say: each beauty gave
Its own soul up to him who worshipped her,
For that his eyes were opened now to see?
Already in these hours his quickened soul
Put forth the white tip of a floral bud,
Ere long to be a crown-like, aureole flower.
His songs unbidden, his joy in ancient tales,
Had hitherto alone betrayed the seed
That lay in his heart, close hidden even from him,
Yet not the less mellowing all his spring:
Like summer sunshine came the maiden's face,
And in the youth's glad heart the seed awoke.
It grew and spread, and put forth many flowers,
Its every flower a living open eye,
Until his soul was full of eyes within.”
Each morning now was a fresh boon to him;
Each wind a spiritual power upon his life;
Each individual animal did share
A common being with him; every kind
Of flower from every other was distinct,
Uttering that for which alone it was-
Its something human, wrapt in other veil.”
-George MacDonald
oh! that's magnificent. thank you!
The whole poem is well worth the read Max. I read it aloud on YouTube but really didn’t do it justice. Plus I broke down in the middle of it and cried! Haha! Here is a good link to the poem. https://internetpoem.com/george-macdonald/a-hidden-life-poem/
thank you, Shari 😊
"So it will not be necessary to unveil allegory in explaining the canzone, but simply discuss the literal meaning. By my lady I mean that same lady whose symbolic meaning I fully revealed in the previous canzone, namely that most virtuous of lights, Philosophy, whose rays make flowers bloom so they might bear the fruit of mankind’s true nobility."
—Dante, Convivio, IV.1
this was unexpected, and very beautiful.