“The soul of man being made of nothing, which God took from nowhere,
man has followed this nothingness, which is nowhere, and he has gone
out of his ego into wanderings, by immersion in the simple essence
of God, as in his own ultimate source; and he has died in God. To
die in God is to be blessed; and, for each one according to his own
merits, it involves a great difference both in grace and glory. This
blessedness is to understand God and to be understood by God, in the
joyful unity of the divine persons, and to have flowed by this unity
into the super-essence of God. Now this unity brings joy when we look
inward, and bears fruit in our outward life, and so the fountain of
unity flows; that is to say, the Father begets the Son, the eternal
truth, who is the image of the Father, in which He sees Himself and
all things. This image is the life and cause of all creatures, for in
this image is everything, according to the divine mode of being; and
by this image all things are perfectly made, and all things are wisely
ruled upon that model; and according to this image everything is set
apart for its own end, so far as it is possible for God to do so; for
every creature has received the means of attaining blessedness. But the
reasonable creature is not the image of the Father, according to the
effluence of his created mode of being, for that effluence flows forth
in as far as it is a creature, and that is why it enjoys and loves with
measure in the light of grace or of glory. For no one possesses the
divine nature actively according to the divine mode, except the divine
persons themselves, since no creature can work according to an infinite
mode, for if it worked thus it would be God and not a creature.
“By His own image God has made His creatures like unto Himself in
their nature, and in those who have turned to Him, He has made the
likeness even greater--higher than nature in the light of grace or of
glory, each one according to the capacity which he has by the state
of his soul or by his merits. Now all those who feel this inward
contact, who have an enlightened reason and the eagerness of love, and
to whom love’s infinite freedom has been revealed, enter into joyful
contemplation in the super-essence of God. Moreover, God is united to
His essence in a joyful manner, and contemplates that very essence
which He enjoys. According to the mode of the enjoyment, the divine
light constantly fails in the infinite essence; but in contemplation
and in a fixed and steady gaze the vision cannot be darkened, for we
shall forever behold that which we enjoy. Those for whom the light
constantly fails are those who rest in enjoyments, in the midst of
those wild solitudes where God possesses Himself in perpetual joy;
there the light grows dim in rest and in the infinitude of the sublime
essence. There God is His own throne, and all those who possess God in
grace and in glory in this degree are the thrones and the tabernacles
of God, and they have died in God in an eternal rest.
“From this death there arises a super-essential life--that is to say,
a life of contemplation--and here the gift of intelligence begins. For
God, who without ceasing contemplates the very essence which He enjoys,
and who grants the impatience of love to those whom He makes like unto
Himself, gives also rest and enjoyment to those who are united with
Him. But where there is union of being and complete immersion, there
is no more giving or receiving. And because He grants an enlightened
reason to those whom He makes like unto Himself, He also gives a
boundless splendour to those who are united to Him. That boundless
splendour is the image of the Father. We are created in this image,
and we are capable of being united to it in a grandeur more lofty than
thrones, if we only contemplate, above our own human weakness, the
glorious face of the Father--in other words, the sublime nature of
deity. Now this unfathomed splendour is a common gift to all spirits
who rejoice in grace and in glory. It thus streams forth for all like
the splendour of the sun, and yet those who receive it are not all
equally enlightened. The sun shines more clearly through glass than
through stone, more clearly through crystal than through glass, and
each precious stone shines and shows its beauty and its power and its
colour in the light of the sun. Even so is each man enlightened both in
grace and in glory, according as he is capable of receiving so sublime
a gift; but he who is most enlightened in grace yet has less than he
who is least enlightened in glory. Nevertheless the light of glory is
not an intermediary between the soul and this unlimited splendour, but
our spiritual condition, our earthly state, and our inconstancy disturb
us, and so we have to gain merits, which those who dwell in glory have
no need to gain.
“This sublime splendour is the simple contemplation of the Father, and
of all those who behold and rejoice, and look fixedly in one direction
by means of an incomprehensible light, each one according as the light
is bestowed upon him. For that measureless light shines ceaselessly
into all our thoughts; but the man who lives here, in this earthly
state, is often overwhelmed with images, so that he does not always
actively and steadily behold the super-essence of God by means of this
light. But in receiving this gift he virtually possesses it, and he can
contemplate whenever he wills. Since the light by which we contemplate
is unlimited, and that which we contemplate of an unfathomed depth, the
one can never reach the other; but this fixed gaze of our contemplation
remains eternally turned towards the infinite, in the joyful presence
of the sublime Majesty, where the Father, by His eternal wisdom, gazes
fixedly into the depths of His own infinite being.”
A great part of this book on _The Kingdom of Lovers_ is written in
singular verses. The three-lined and breathlessly monotonous rhythm
is rather like that of the _Stabat Mater_, only that the third line of
every strophe reproduces the same rhyme throughout the entire work, and
rests on an abstract idea from which the two preceding lines rise, like
twin flowers of obscurity and restlessness. We can imagine this hollow
music floating through the spiritual dreams of the maids of Memlinck,
while their secret senses, their faces, and their little hands all
unite in ecstasy; but unhappily a translation cannot reproduce its
taste of darkness and of bread soaked in the night, nor catch the image
of the tear-brightened gloom, of ice mingled with fire, of oppression
without hope, which we feel throughout the work. I shall therefore
translate only one of these dark poems, the subject of which is the
“Gift of Intelligence.”
“He who seeks that gift to light him
Must rise beyond his nature,
To the highest height of being.
Brightness without measure
There shall he perceive it
In primal purity.
Through his soul will flow
The light of heavenly truth,
And he in it shall vanish.
That universal radiance
Enlightens the pure-hearted
According to their merits.
Then can they behold
With gaze that knows no limit
The very face of joy.
For ever shall we gaze on
That which we there enjoy
And lose ourselves in vision.
Far off has gone the Lover;
We turn our eyes for ever
Towards the blessed vision.
Yet has he reached the goal
And the lover has the loved one
In the lonely realm of union.
So shall we thus remain
And ever strive to follow
To that wondrous depth divine.”
I should have liked to translate many other passages from this
remarkable volume; but I shall close with a translation of the chapter
entitled “Of the gift of sweet-savoured wisdom”:--
“The seventh divine gift is that of sweet-savoured wisdom. It is
granted on the highest peak of introversion, and it penetrates the
intelligence and the will according as they are turned towards the
absolute. This savour is without source and without measure, and it
flows from within outwards, and drinks in the body and the soul (in
proportion to their respective capacity for its reception) even to
the inmost sense--that is to say, even to a physical sensation. The
other senses, like sight and hearing, take their pleasure outside, in
the marvels which God has created for His own glory and for the needs
of men. This incomprehensible savour, above the mind and in the vast
breadth of the soul, is without measure, and it is the Holy Spirit,
the incomprehensible love of God. In lower regions than the spirit,
sensation is limited. But as its powers are inherent, they overwhelm
everything. Now, the eternal Father has adorned the contemplative
spirit with joy in unity, and with active and passive comprehension
in which the self is lost, and the spirit thus becomes the throne
and the rest of God; and the Son, the eternal Truth, has adorned the
contemplative intelligence with His own brightness, so that it may
behold the face of joy. And now the Holy Spirit desires to adorn the
contemplative will, and the inherent unity of its powers, so that the
soul may taste, know, and feel how great God is. This savour is so vast
that the soul imagines that heaven, earth, and all that is in them must
dissolve and sink in nothingness before its unbounded sweetness. These
delights are above and beneath, within and without, and have entirely
enveloped and saturated the kingdom of the soul. Then the intellect
beholds the pure source from which all these delights flow forth.
This awakes the attention of the enlightened reason. It knows well,
however, that it is incapable of knowing these unimaginable delights,
for it observes by means of a created light, while this joy is entirely
without measure. Therefore the reason fails in its attention; but the
intellect, which is transformed by this illimitable splendour, beholds
without ceasing the incomprehensible joy of beatitude.”
It remains now to say a word about the different translations of
Ruysbroeck’s work. Twenty years ago, Ernest Hello, who, with Villiers
de l’Isle Adam and Stéphane Mallarmé, is the greatest French mystic
of our time, published a brief volume in which he collected under
headings, chosen mostly as his fancy dictated, various passages of our
author, translated from a Latin translation written in the sixteenth
century by Laurentius Surius, a Carthusian monk of Cologne. This
translation of Surius, noble and subtle in its Latinity, gives with
strict and admirable care the sense of the original; but with its
over-anxiety, its prolixity, and its weakness, it resembles, when
we contrast with it the crude colours of the original Flemish, some
distant image seen through sullied panes. When his author uses one
word, Surius generally employs two or three, and even then, still
dissatisfied, he very often paraphrases once more that which he
has already translated in full. The hermit utters cries of love so
passionate that they are sometimes almost like blasphemies; Surius is
frightened as he reads them and sets down something different. There
are times when the old hermit looks outside himself, and in speaking of
God searches for images drawn from the garden, the kitchen, or from the
stars. Surius does not always venture to follow these flights, and he
tries to weaken the meaning or flatters himself that he is ennobling it.
“He escapes me like a truant,”
says one of the Flemish Beguines in speaking of Jesus, and others add:--
“Christ and I keep house together,
He is mine, I His;
Night and day His love outwears me;
He my heart hath stolen;
In His mouth He holds me,
What care have I outside!”