96th Birthday of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

BECAUSE

PEACE

and     justice

are 

POSSIBLE
http://www.wilpf.org

Easter

Jesus is the center.  He gives us the ability to hope, to love meaningfully, to forgive others and ourselves, and to live with the reality of death.  In his incarnation, the Son of God eats, tells stories, has friends, gets into it with the powers that be, prays, suffers, and dies for us, all of us, only to overthrow death.  He offers us friendship.  He’s the vine and we’re the branches.  It’s a continuous, nourishing, living relationship.  He fixes what seems unfixable—humanity.  Faith, that faith which moves mountains and yet seems in the eyes of our world to be completely foolish, say the faith of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter; faith that seems to run counter to what is commonly thought of today as common sense, practicality, and the overwhelming reality of evil in the world—we must live by that faith alone.  What a gift, that faith in love, because God is love!  We are made to be vessels of faith.  Only with the eyes of faith do we see the real world: its possibilities, its redemption.

Viernes Santo (Good Friday)

De la cruz dice la Esposa

A su Querido
Que es una palma preciosa
Donde ha subido,
Y su fruto le ha sabido
A Dios del cielo,
Y ella sola es el camino
Para el cielo.

Es una oliva preciosa
La santa cruz,
Que con su aceite nos unta
Y nos da luz.
Toma, alma mía, la cruz
Con gran consuelo,
Y ella sola es el camino
Para el cielo.

Es la cruz el árbol verde
Y deseado
De la Esposa que a su sombra
Se ha sentado
Para gozar de su Amado,
El Rey del cielo,
Y ella sola es el camino
Para el cielo.

El alma que a Dios está 
Toda rendida,
Y muy de veras del mundo
Desasida
La cruz le es árbol de vida
Y de consuelo,
Y un camino deleitoso
Para el cielo.

                   --"La Cruz"  Sta. Teresa de Jesús

La Hierberia, Part 5

And so we conclude, with shrubs and trees…

Cipres (cypress): A tree with firm, opposed leaves; the male cones in terminal recemes, while the female part develops into to a fruit (cone) in the form of a nut--grey, woody, and with scales.  There are twenty species, found in the temperate and cooler regions of the Northern Hemisphere.  The majority of the species are found in the Americas.  Remedies: As an astringent, deodorant, and diuretic, prepare a decoction with 10 grams of pieces of cypres wood in 1 liter of water.  This may be used hot or cold as a tea or external wash.

Acacia: The name given to several trees of the genus Acacia, Caragana, Mimosa, and Robina.  The rosewood stands of the Indies, Brazil, or Honduras are the original source of the diverse mimosa/acacia trees of Mexico and Aztlán.  The wood, in colors that range from reddish-brown to rose-purple, has grain of various tones and is used in cabinetmaking.  Remedies: For cough, bronchitis, and sore throats suck on bits of the resinous sap, and if only powdered sap is available mix a teaspoon full in a cup of any herbal tea.

Añil (Mexican indigo): A perennial shrub of the family of legumes, with a straight stalk, compound leaves, reddish flowers in spikes or clusters, and fruit in bow-shaped pods, with hard lustrous seeds, brownish, green or sometimes grey.  The Mexican variety of añil has been used as a dye since before the conquest of Mexico.  The Mexica and the Mayans called it by various names: haceoitli, huiquilitl, xiuquilitl, and palceoitli.  Remedies: For dandruff and illnesses of the hair, after having bathed the affected area and scrubbed the sick part with “black soap,” rub with a mixture of fresh mashed indigo leaves and salt.  For wounds and external ulcers, apply the same mixture on the affected part, in the form of plasters.

Franchipán (frangipani, jasmín de las Antillas): The plant is a bush or small tree of the family Apocinacias, with fragrant pink, white, and purple flowers and an orange-yellow center.  It grows all the way from Mexico to Columbia and is found in parks and gardens as an ornamental plant.  It prefers warm climates.  Remedies: As a laxative, drink any herbal tea combined with a teaspoon of gum or resin extracted from the wood of the bush; do not sweeten the beverage, and drink it lukewarm.  For chest infections, mildly heat and apply the white milky substance that is produced by breaking off the leaves to the chest, and go to bed.  (Make sure to do an allergy test first on a small patch of skin.)  Cover up well, to induce a little sweating.

Cabeza de Angel: A Mexican bush 1 to 5 meters long, with oblong, foliated leaves 2.5 to 5 centimeters long, and showy purple/red flowers with a “hairy” appearance.  This plant--above all the root--is the source of the glycoside calliandreine which the Indians of Mexico use to impede the fermentation of pulque when it is used to make the drink tepache.  Remedies: For bronchial infections and fever, drink an infusion of three grams of the root in half a liter of boiling water with a teaspoon of honey added as it cools.

“Love is the Supreme Poetry of Nature”: Novalis’ Magical Idealist Poetics

Georg Phillip Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801), better known by his pen name Novalis, was one of the founders of the German Romantic literary movement, and despite his death at a very early age, remained its spiritual center.  He believed that the Romantics were destined to issue in a new golden age, where science, religion, art, philosophy, politics, and economics would all be united through the alchemy of poetry. Die Welt muss romantisiert warden (The world must be romanticized), Novalis wrote (“Fragmente des Jahres 1798,” No. 807, Gesammelte Werke, vol. III, p. 22).  The Romantics saw themselves at the forefront of a movement that had the potential to change not only literature, but learning, society, and the individual forever.

     At the heart of the early Romantic movement was a rejection of the stereotyped forms and concepts of Neoclassicism in favor of an art that would draw its inspiration from nature, imagination, and feeling.  In his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Novalis explored the idea that the poet is not a person with a special occupation, but one who sees the world in a certain way.  He believed that this way of seeing was open to all, and that poetry itself was a kind of “key” to this new vision of the world.

     Under the influence of the philosopher Johann Gottleib Fichte, who is today seen as one of the founders of the philosophical school called “German Idealism,” Novalis began to explore the idea of the artist as one who projects his subjective self into the world through the process of creating.  He was unable to accept Fichte’s extreme idealism—the proposal that the world around us is nothing but our idea of it, that there is no noumenal universe.  Novalis had been raised in a deeply pietistic environment and would filter the new intellectual ferment surrounding him through his own intense Christian faith.  This would lead him to form a unique philosophical understanding of the relationship between personal consciousness and the world at large.  He accepted the idea that our subjective view of the world shapes the way we perceive reality; hence his belief that the poet actually experiences a different world than the pure scientist or the pure economist, for example.  Die Welt ist ein Universaltropus des Geistes, ein symbolisches Bild desselben (The world is a universal trope of the spirit, a symbolic picture of it) (“Fragmente un Studien 1797-1798 [Teplitzer Fragmente],” No. 76, Novalis Werke, p. 403).  But he also believed that this did not necessarily mean the world does not have its own independent reality.  In fact, he extended Fichte’s concept of self-consciousness as a social phenomenon, his foundational intersubjectivity, to nature itself, giving nature an existence independent of human subjective consciousness precisely because it (nature) possesses certain constituent elements analogous to self-consciousness.  He believed that one could only bridge the gap between our consciousness and the consciousness of others (including nature) through love, that power which allows us to understand “the other” as deeply as we understand ourselves.  Since we can only truly “know” others and nature in this way, he saw poetry, the artist’s attempt to bridge this gap, as founded on the faculty of love.  This love was not sentiment but a philosophical viewpoint.  He called his philosophy “Magical Idealism,” to reflect his belief that subjectivity (as opposed to empiricism) held the key to understanding and actually had the power to alter our relationships with the material universe surrounding us.

     A number of scholarly articles have recently appeared on Novalis’ Magical Idealism, and specifically on its usefulness in helping us to rethink our relationship to nature in the context of the current environmental crisis.  “Being, Knowledge and Nature in Novalis,” by Allison Stone in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 46, no. 1 (2008), and “Nature as a You: Novalis’ Philosophical Thought and the Modern Ecological Crisis,” by Christian Becker and Reiner Manstetten in Environmental Values, vol. 13, no. 1 (2004) are two examples.  Rather than try and duplicate or somehow summarize those efforts by professional philosophers—something I am not—I simply wish to explore one small aspect of Novalis’ Magical Idealism: its implications for how the lyric poet views nature.

     Novalis, in his fiction, fragments, and aphorisms, and in his Das Allgemeine Brouillon, translated into English as by David W. Wood as Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia (2007), states the belief that we know others and nature by connecting our subjective awareness (the Ich) with their autonomous person (the Du) through the faculty of love.  It is easy to understand how this might be true in the case of other people (anyone who has ever been in love has experienced that moment when another’s subjective self is revealed to the lover).  But can we say that nature has a self-consciousness?  Without resorting to anthropomorphism, as some French Romantic writers did, or pantheism, as some German Idealists would later do, Novalis recognized in nature certain elements, certain activities, analogous to those carried out by the subjective mind.  It was in this analogy to the human persona that he found a revelation of nature’s “personal-ity.”  Nature actualizes itself according to patterns, sustains itself through a certain order, and perpetuates and expands on itself through spontaneous creativity.  For Novalis, the most self-conscious of these activities is nature’s creativity.  Just as the artist projects his or her personal consciousness into reality through creative activity, so, too, does nature.  Just as the artist does not simply “imitate” nature; so, too, nature is capable of spontaneously creating and remaking itself without the artist.  Ein blühendes Land ist doch wohl ein königlicheres Kunstwerk, als ein Park (A flowering countryside is probably a more royal work of art than a park) (“Glauben und Liebe oder der König und die Königin,” No. 7, Novalis Werke, p. 354).

     In a discussion of Shakespeare’s awareness of nature in his art, Novalis speaks of gleichsam die sich selbst beschauende, sich selbst nachahmende, sich selbst bildende Natur ist (as it were, self-inspecting, self-copying and self-screening Nature) (“Fragmente und Studien [Vermischte Fragmente und Studien],” No. 92, Novalis Werke, p. 533).  We may attempt to impose our will on nature, but nature also has a will of its own.  We cannot will a hurricane, nor can we even guarantee that a tree will survive the winter.  The true artist, or as Novalis would say, the true poet, recognizes this autonomous capacity in nature.  The poet produces art out of his or her own subjectivity, but in his or her depiction of nature, he or she cannot deny nature’s own spontaneous creativity.

     In Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, a novel fragment, Novalis proposes that true knowledge of nature can only be the result of a spiritual, poetic approach to its mysteries.  The novices of Sais attempt to study nature scientifically, becoming obsessed with comparing, classifying, and categorizing natural objects.  (It is important to note that Novalis received his formal education as a scientist and saw his mental maturity as a personal journey from scientist poet to poet scientist.)   The wise master under whose tutelage the novices receive their training gently leads them from a study of the singularity of natural objects to an understanding of their natural unity, their poetic unity.  When the novices are sent out to gather specimens of rocks and leaves and other natural objects, a simple-minded but lovable child among them seldom finds anything.  One day he returns with an ordinary-looking stone, and the master places it in the midst of all the others that have been gathered for study, acting as if it is a final puzzle piece.  Der Lehrer nahm es in die Hand, und küßte ihn lange, dann sah er uns mit nassen Augen an und legte dieses Steinchen auf einen leeren Platz, der mitten unter andern Steinen lag, gerade wo wie Strahlen viele Reihen sich berührten.  Ich werde dieser Augenblicke nie fortan vergessen. Uns war, als hätten wir im Vorübergehn eine helle Ahndung dieser wunderbaren Welt in unsern Seelen gehabt (The teacher took it into his hand, and kissed him for a long time, and then he regarded us with wet eyes and put this stone on an empty place in the midst of the other stones, exactly where many rows of them met together in a radial pattern.  I will never forget that instant.  It was as if we had an unbearably bright glimpse, in our very souls, of a marvelous and previously unseen world) (“Die Lehrlinge zu Sais,” Novalis Werke, p. 97).

     The child’s pebble, a symbol for both love and poetry—and the agent of the kairos for which the disciples have been waiting—allows the pattern of stones to represent other forms which the master cherishes: the sun, stars, snowflakes, crystals.  By introducing the concept of metaphor, the master initiates the novices into poetry.  By demonstrating to the novices that each object in nature must be valued as much as any other, since all are connected in patterns and forms, and all belong to God’s creation, he teaches them the mystery of unity that is love.  In his book To Live is to Love, Ernesto Cardenal celebrates this unity:

     All beings love each other…All beings that are alive are in communion with each other.  All plants, all animals, all beings are fraternally united by the phenomenon of mimesis…Everything in nature is incomplete, and everything therefore is self-giving and embrace… (To Live is to Love, p. 21).

     This is Dante’s l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle, the arrival at communio, the intersection at the center of the radius.

     The spirit of poetry and an understanding of nature must both derive from the same source, the template of unity.  For Novalis, unity is a fundamental law of the universe.  Unity has the ability to abolish the distance between subject and object, and as such, it is another word for love.

     Poetry is the attempt to portray nature in a manner neither completely objective nor completely subjective.  Poetry must be a synthesis of both; with the poet’s subjective creativity meeting nature’s spontaneous creativity in the only way possible—through that union of our own self-knowledge with knowledge of nature as the autonomous other (with all the independence, the alterity, which belongs to that “otherness”).  This experience can only be uttered as a celebration of love and unity: nature revealing itself to the poet and the poet manifesting that revelation—his or her own unique experience of that revelation—through the inspired act of poetry.

Bibliography

Becker, Christian and Reiner Manstetten, “Nature as a You: Novalis’ Philosophical Thought and the Modern Ecological Crisis,” Environmental Values vol. 13, no. 1 (2004).

Cardenal, Ernesto, To Live is to Love, trans. Kurt Reinhardt.  New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.

Novalis, Gesammelte Werke.  Zurich: Bühl-Verlag, 1946. V vols.

Novalis, Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia, trans. and ed. David W. Wood. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.

Novalis, Novalis Werke, Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Gerhard Schulz. Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1969.

Stone, Allison, “Being, Knowledge and Nature in Novalis,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 46, no. 1 (2008).

Bettina von Arnim April 4, 1785-January 20, 1859

Bettina, companion on the journey to the East, I celebrate your birthday today. Visionary, artist, campaigner for the rights of the oppressed, lover of beauty and light--you embody all that is beautiful, strong and enduring in the German Romantic Movement.  Sophia, priestess of our hearts, you are a minnesinger of the golden age.