M. MAETERLINCK’S INTRODUCTION TO HIS TRANSLATION OF “THE ADORNMENT OF
THE SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE.”
I
Many works are more correctly beautiful than this book of Ruysbroeck
L’Admirable. Many mystics--Swedenborg and Novalis among others--are
more potent in their influence, and more timely. It is very probable
that his writings may but rarely meet the needs of to-day. Looking
at him from another point of view, I know few more clumsy authors.
He wanders off now and then into strange puerilities, and the first
twenty chapters of _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_, although
they are perhaps a necessary preparation for what follows, contain
little more than mild and pious commonplaces. Outwardly, at least,
he has no order, no logic of the schools. He is full of repetitions,
and sometimes seems to contradict himself. He shows the ignorance of
a child along with the wisdom of one who might have returned from the
dead. Over his involved syntax I have toiled more than once in the
sweat of my brow. He introduces an image, and forgets it. There are
some of his images which the mind cannot realise, and this phenomenon,
so unusual in an honest work, can only be explained by his awkwardness
or his extraordinary haste. He knows few of the tricks of language,
and can speak only of the unspeakable. He is almost entirely ignorant
of the habits, skilled methods, and resources of philosophic thought,
and he is constrained to think only of the unthinkable. When he speaks
of his little monastic garden, he can hardly tell us enough about what
goes on there; on that subject he writes like a child. He undertakes
to teach us what transpires in the nature of God, and writes pages
which Plato could not have written. Everywhere we find a grotesque
disproportion between his knowledge and ignorance, his capacity and
desire. You must not expect a literary work; you will see only the
convulsive flight of an eagle, dizzy, blind, and wounded, over snowy
peaks. I will add one word more by way of friendly warning. It has
been my lot to read books generally considered most abstruse: _The
Disciples at Saïs_, and the _Fragments_ of Novalis, for instance; the
_Biographia Literaria_ and the _Friend_ of Samuel Taylor Coleridge;
the _Timaeus_ of Plato; the _Enneads_ of Plotinus; the _Divine Names_
of St. Denys the Areopagite; the _Aurora_ of the great German mystic,
Jacob Böhme, with whom our author has more than one point of analogy.
I do not venture to say that the works of Ruysbroeck are more abstruse
than these works; but their abstruseness is less readily pardoned,
because we have here to do with an unknown writer in whom we have no
previous confidence. I thought it necessary to give an honest warning
to idlers on the threshold of this temple without architecture; for
this translation was undertaken only to please a few Platonists. I
believe that those who have not lived in close fellowship with Plato
and with the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria will not proceed far in
reading it. They will think they are entering the void; they will feel
as if they were falling steadily into a bottomless abyss, between black
and slippery rocks. In this book there is no common light or air; as a
spiritual abode it will be insupportable to those who come unprepared.
Do not enter here from literary curiosity; there are hardly any dainty
nick-nacks, and the botanist in search of fine images will find as few
flowers here as on the polar ice-banks. I tell them that this is a
boundless desert, where they will die of thirst. They will find here
very few phrases which one may handle and admire after the way of
literary critics; nothing but jets of flame or blocks of ice. Do not
seek for roses in Iceland. Some flower may still linger between two
icebergs--and indeed there are strange outbursts, unknown expressions,
unheard-of analogies, but they will not repay you for the time lost
in coming so far to pluck them. Before entering here one must be in a
philosophic state as different from our ordinary condition as the state
of waking is from that of slumber. Porphyry, in his _Principles of the
Theory of Intelligibles_, seems to me to have written a warning which
might fitly stand at the beginning of this book--“By our intelligence
we say many things of the principle which is higher than the
intelligence. But these things are divined much better by an absence
of thought than by thought. It is the same with this idea as with that
of sleep, of which we speak up to a certain point in our waking state,
but the knowledge and perception of which we can gain only by sleeping.
Like is known only by like, and the condition of all knowledge is that
the subject should become like to the object.”
It is most difficult, I repeat, to understand such things without
preparation; and I believe that, in spite of our preparatory studies,
a great deal of this mysticism will seem to us purely theoretic, and
that the most of these experiences of supernatural psychology will be
accessible to us only in the character of spectators. The philosophical
imagination is a faculty which is educated very slowly. We are here,
all at once, on the confines of human thought, and far within the
polar circle of the mind. It is strangely cold here; it is strangely
dark; and yet all around there is light and flame. But to those who
come without having trained their mind to these new perceptions, this
light and these flames are as dark and cold as painted images. We
are dealing here with the most exact of sciences. We have to explore
the most rugged and least habitable promontories of the divine
“Know Thyself”; and the midnight sun hangs over the tempestuous sea,
where the psychology of man mingles with the psychology of God. We
have constantly to keep in mind that we are dealing here with a very
profound science, and not with a dream. Dreams are not unanimous;
dreams have no roots; while the glowing flower of divine metaphysic,
which is here full blown, has its mysterious roots in Persia and
in India, in Egypt and in Greece. And yet it seems unconscious as
a flower, and knows nothing of its roots. Unhappily it is almost
impossible for us to put ourselves in the position of the soul which,
without effort, conceived this science; we cannot perceive it _ab
intra_ and reproduce it in ourselves. We lack that which Emerson would
call the same “central spontaneity”; we can no longer transform
these ideas into our own substance; the utmost we can do is to take
count, from the outside, of the tremendous experiences which are
within the reach of only a very few souls during the whole existence
of a planetary system. “It is not lawful,” says Plotinus, “to inquire
into the origin of this intuitive science as if it were a thing
dependent on place and movement; for it does not approach from here,
nor set out from there, in order to go elsewhere, but it appears or
does not appear. So that we must not pursue it in order to discover
its secret sources, but wait in silence until it suddenly shines out
upon us, preparing ourselves for the sacred sight, as the eye waits
patiently for the rising of the sun.” And elsewhere he adds: “It is
not by imagination nor by reason, which is itself obliged to draw its
principles from elsewhere, that we represent to ourselves intelligible
things (that is to say, the highest of all), but rather it is by our
faculty for beholding them, the faculty which enables us to speak of
them here below. We see them therefore by awaking in ourselves, here
on earth, the same powers which we shall have to awake when we are in
the world of pure intelligence. We are like a man who, on reaching the
summit of a rock, perceives with his eyes objects which are invisible
to those who have not made the ascent along with him.”
But although all beings, from the stone and the plant up to man, are
contemplations, they are unconscious contemplations; and it is very
difficult to rediscover in ourselves some memory of the previous
activity of the dead faculty. In this respect we resemble the eye
in the Neo-Platonic image. “It turns away from the light to see the
darkness, and by the very action it ceases to see; for it cannot see
the darkness with the light, and yet without it, it sees not at all;
and so, by not seeing, it sees the darkness as far as it is capable of
seeing it.”
I know the judgment which most men will pronounce on this book. They
will think it the work of a deluded monk, of a pale solitary, a hermit,
dizzy with fasting and worn with fever. They will take it for a wild,
dark dream, crossed with vivid lightning flashes,--nothing more.
This is the common idea which people form of the mystics; and they
forget too often that they alone are the possessors of certainty. If
it be true, as has been said, that every man is a Shakespeare in his
dreams, we might well ask whether every man is not in this life an
inarticulate mystic, a thousand times more transcendental than those
who have confined themselves within the bonds of words. Is not the
eye of the lover or of the mother, for instance, a thousand times
more abstruse, more impenetrable, and more mystical than this book,
which is poor and easily explained, after all, like all books, for
these are but dead mysteries, whose horizon will never be rekindled?
If we do not understand this, perhaps the reason is that we no longer
understand anything. But, to return to our author, a few will recognise
without difficulty that, far from being half-maddened by hunger,
solitude, and fever, this monk possessed, on the contrary, one of the
wisest, most exact, and most subtle philosophic brains which have
ever existed. He lived, they tell us, in his hut at Grönendal, in the
midst of the forest of Soignes. It was at the beginning of one of
the wildest centuries of the middle ages,--the fourteenth. He knew
no Greek, and perhaps no Latin. He was alone and poor; and yet, in
the depths of this obscure forest of Brabant, his mind, ignorant and
simple as it was, receives, all unconsciously, dazzling sunbeams from
all the lonely, mysterious peaks of human thought He knows, though he
is unaware of it, the Platonism of Greece, the Sufism of Persia, the
Brahmanism of India, and the Buddhism of Tibet; and his marvellous
ignorance rediscovers the wisdom of buried centuries, and foresees
the knowledge of centuries yet unborn. I could quote whole pages of
Plato, of Plotinus, of Porphyry, of the Zendic books, of the Gnostics,
and of the Kabbala, the all but inspired substance of which is to be
found intact in the writings of this humble Flemish priest.[1] We find
strange coincidences and disturbing agreements. We find more, for he
seems, at times, to have presupposed with exactitude the work of most
of his unknown predecessors. Just as Plotinus begins his stern journey
at the crossroad where Plato, fearing, paused and knelt down, so we
might say that Ruysbroeck awakened from a slumber of several centuries;
not, indeed, the same kind of thought (for that kind of thought never
sleeps), but the same kind of language as that which had fallen asleep
on the mountains where Plotinus forsook it, dazzled by that blaze of
light, and with his hands before his eyes, as if in presence of an
immense conflagration.
But the organic method of their thought differs strangely. Plato and
Plotinus are before all things princes in the sphere of dialectic. They
reach mysticism by the science of reasoning. They use the discursive
faculties of their mind, and seem to distrust their intuitive or
contemplative faculties. Reasoning beholds itself in the mirror
of reasoning, and endeavours to remain indifferent to every other
reflection. It continues its course like a river of fresh water in the
midst of the sea, with the presentiment of a speedy absorption. In our
author we find, on the contrary, the habits of Asiatic thought; the
intuitive faculty reigns alone above the discursive purification of
ideas by means of words. The fetters of the dream have fallen off.
Is it for this reason less sure? None can tell. The mirror of the
human intellect is entirely unknown in this book, but there is another
mirror, darker and more profound, which we hide in the inmost depths
of our being; no detail can be seen distinctly, and words will not
remain on its surface; the intellect would break it if it could for a
moment cast thereon the reflection of its merely secular light; but
something else is seen there from time to time. Is it the soul? is it
God Himself? is it both at once? We shall never know; yet these all
but invisible appearances are the only real rulers of the life of the
most unbelieving among us. Here you will perceive nothing but the dark
reflections on the mirror, and, as its treasure is inexhaustible, these
reflections are not like anything we have experienced in ourselves,
but, in spite of all, they have an amazing certainty. And this is why
I know nothing more terrifying than this honest book. There is no
psychological idea, no metaphysical experience, no mystical intuition,
however abstruse, profound, and surprising they may be, which it would
be impossible to reproduce if necessary, and to cause to live for a
moment in ourselves, that we might be assured of their human identity;
but here on earth we are like a blind father who can no longer recall
the faces of his children. None of these thoughts has the childlike
or brotherly look of a thought of this earth; we seem to have lost
our experience of God, and yet everything assures us that we are not
entered into the house of dreams. Must we exclaim with Novalis that
the time has passed away when the Spirit of God was comprehensible,
and that the divine sense of the world is forever lost? That of old
all things were manifestations of the Spirit, but that now we see only
lifeless reflections which we do not understand, and live entirely on
the fruits of better times?
I believe we must humbly confess that the key of this book is not to be
found on the common pathways of the human mind. That key is not meant
to open earthly doors, and we must deserve it by withdrawing ourselves
as far as possible from the earth. One guide, indeed, we may still
meet at these lonely cross-roads, who can point out the last way-marks
towards these mysterious isles of fire, these Icelands of abstraction
and of love. That guide is Plotinus, who attempted to analyse, by
means of the human intellect, the divine faculty which here holds
sway. He experienced the same ecstasies (as we say in a word which
explains nothing) which are in their essence only the beginning of the
complete discovery of our being; and in the midst of their trouble and
their darkness, he never for one moment closed the questioning eye of
the psychologist who seeks to explain to himself the most abnormal
phenomena of his soul. He is thus like the last outwork of the pier,
from which we may understand something of the waves and the horizon of
that dim sea. He tries to extend the paths of the ordinary intellect
into the very heart of these desolations, and this is why we must
constantly revert to him, for he is the one analytical mystic. For the
sake of those who may be tempted to undertake this tremendous journey,
I give here one of the pages in which he has attempted to explain the
organism of that divine faculty of introspection:--
“In the intuition of the intellect,” he says, “intelligible objects
are perceived by the intellect by means of the light which the First
One spreads over them, and in seeing these objects, it sees really
the intelligible light. But, as it gives its attention to the objects
on which the light falls, it does not perceive with any exactness the
principle which enlightens them, while if, on the contrary, it forgets
the objects which it sees so as to contemplate only the brightness
which makes them visible, it sees the light itself and the principle
of the light. But it is never outside of itself that the intellect can
contemplate the intelligible light. It then resembles the eye which,
without contemplating an exterior or alien light, and indeed before
it has even perceived it, is suddenly struck by a brightness which
belongs to itself, or by a ray which darts from itself, and appears to
it in the midst of darkness: it is just the same when the eye, so as to
see no other objects, closes its lids and draws its light from itself,
or when, pressed by the hand, it perceives the light which it has in
itself. Then, although seeing no outside thing, it still sees; it sees
even more than at any other time, for it sees the light. The other
objects which it saw before, although they were luminous, were not the
light itself. So, when the intellect closes its eye in some degree to
other objects, and concentrates it on itself, then, seeing nothing, it
yet sees, not an alien light which shines in alien forms, but its own
light, which all at once shines inwardly with a pure radiance.”
Again he says: “The soul which studies God must form an idea of Him
whom it seeks to know; being aware, moreover, to what greatness it
desires to unite itself, and persuaded that it will find blessedness
in that union, it must plunge into the depths of divinity, until,
instead of contemplating itself, or the intelligible world, it becomes
itself an object of contemplation, and shines with the brightness of
conceptions which have their source above.”
We have here almost all that human wisdom can tell us; almost all that
the prince of transcendental metaphysicians could express; as for other
explanations, we must find them in ourselves, in the depths where all
explanation disappears in its expression. For it is not only in heaven
and earth, but above all in ourselves, that there are more things than
all philosophies can contain; and as soon as we are no longer obliged
to formulate the mysteries within us, we are more profound than all
that has been written, and greater than all that exists.
I have translated this book, then, solely because I believe that the
writings of the mystics are the purest diamonds in the vast treasure
of humanity. A translation may indeed very easily be useless, for
experience seems to prove that it matters little whether the mystery
of the incarnation of a thought takes place in darkness or in light;
it is enough that it has taken place. But, however this may be, the
truths of mysticism have a strange privilege over ordinary truths;
they can neither grow old nor die. There is no truth which did not,
one morning, come down upon this world, lovely in strength and in
youth, and covered with the fresh and wondrous dew which lies on
things yet unspoken: to-day you may pass through the infirmaries of
the human soul, where all thoughts come day by day to die, and you
will not find there a single mystic thought. They have the immunity of
the angels of Swedenborg, who progress continually towards the spring
of their youth, so that the oldest angels appear the youngest; and
whether they come from India, from Greece, or from the North, they
have neither country nor date, and wherever we meet them, they are
calm and real as God Himself. A work grows old in exact proportion to
its anti-mysticism; and that is why this book bears no date. I know
that it is unusually obscure, but I believe that a sincere and honest
author is never obscure in the eternal sense of the word, because he
always understands himself, and in a way which is infinitely beyond
anything that he says. It is only artificial ideas which spring up
in real darkness, and flourish solely in literary epochs and in the
insincerity of self-conscious ages, when the thought of the writer is
poorer than his expression. In the former case, we have the rich shade
of a forest; in the latter, the gloom of a cavern, in which only dismal
parasites can grow. We must take into account that unknown world which
our author’s phrases were meant to enlighten through the poor double
horn-panes of words and thoughts. Words, as it has been said, were
invented for the ordinary uses of life, and they are unhappy, restless,
and as bewildered as beggars round a throne, when, from time to time,
some royal soul leads them elsewhere. And, from another point of view,
is the thought ever the exact image of that unknown thing which gave it
birth? Do we not always behold in it the shadow of a conflict like that
of Jacob with the angel, confused in proportion to the stature of the
soul and of the angel? “Woe to us,” says Carlyle, “if we have nothing
in us except that which we can express and show to others.” I know that
on these pages there lies the shadow cast from objects which we have no
recollection of having seen. The monk does not stop to explain their
use to us, and we shall recognise them only when we behold the objects
themselves on the other side of this life; but meanwhile, he has made
us look into the distance, and that is much. I know, besides, that many
of his phrases float almost like transparent icicles on the colourless
sea of silence, but still they exist; they have been separated from
the waters, and that is sufficient. I am aware, finally, that the
strange plants which he cultivated on the high peaks of the spirit are
surrounded by clouds of their own, but these clouds annoy only gazers
from below. Those who have the courage to climb see that they are the
very atmosphere of these plants, the only atmosphere in which they
can blossom in the shade of non-existence. For this is a vegetation
so subtle that it can scarcely be distinguished from the silence
from which it has drawn its juices and into which it seems ready
to dissolve. This whole work, moreover, is like a magnifying glass
turned upon darkness and silence; and sometimes we do not immediately
discern the outline of the ideas which are still steeped therein. It
is invisible things which appear from time to time, and some attention
is obviously needed for their recognition. This book is not too far
off from us; probably it is in the very centre of our humanity; it is
we, on the contrary, who are too far from the book; and if it seems
to us discouraging as the desert, if the desolation of divine love in
it appears terrible, and the thirst on its summits unendurable, it is
not that the book is too ancient, but that we ourselves are perhaps
old and sad and lacking in courage, like gray-haired men in presence
of a child. Plotinus, the great pagan mystic, is probably right when
he says to those who complain that they see nothing on the heights of
introspection: “We must first make the organ of vision analogous and
similar to the object which it is to contemplate. The eye would never
have perceived the sun, if it had not first taken the form of the
sun; so likewise the soul could never see beauty if it did not first
become beautiful itself; and all men should begin by making themselves
beautiful and divine, in order that they may obtain the sight of the
beautiful and of divinity.”