Tag: Marguerite Porete
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I have been reading the Simone Weil critique, Thinking Poetically for the last few weeks, interspersed it seems with other activities and work.
In many ways it has prevented me from posting up here because the subject matter is so imperative to the creation of her poetry; and yet and the Poet/Philosopher’s experiences in Vichy as a woman writer are neither subtle nor intriguing.
Her writing is sometimes painful to read. At the end of this brief post I shall include the link to Weil’s poem Necessity which I had published in recognition of the 2009 International Women’s Day.
‘Necessity’ by Simone Weil
The cycle of days in the deserted sky turning
In silence watched by mortal eyes
Gaping mouth here below, where each hour is burning
So many cruel and beseeching cries;All the stars slow in the steps of their dance,
The only fixed dance, mute brilliance on high,
In spite of us formless, nameless, without cadence,
Too perfect, no fault to belie;Toward them, suspended our anger is vain.
Quench our thirst if you must break our hearts.
Clamoring and desiring, their circle draws us in their train;
Our brilliant masters, were forever victors.Tear flesh apart, chains of pure clarity.
Nailed without a cry to the fixed point of the North,
Naked soul exposed to all injury,
May we obey you unto death.(Simone Weil)
One of the themes of this site is ‘of waiting’, or to put it more succinctly: the writing of women who are entrapped (intellectually and spiritually) by the prisons their time has brought them to: many of them, Miriam Tuominen, Liliana Ursu, Nelly Sachs and Weil were writers that knew the shape of their prisons and created from them the most amazing poetic structures.
The other main theme is visibility of women critics and writers in our society. (Usually problematic).
There are strong sympathetic links in how prose is constructed between Porete and Weil, between Julian of Norwich and Weil and I suppose ‘heard ‘in the antiphons of Hildegard of Bingen.
I do not have time to elaborate on the themes, so I thought It would suffice to add in the Porete links and the link to Necessity and that I would complete this in second part with some brief notebook excerpts in the coming days.
Thinking Poetically Joan Dargan, State University of New York Press.1999
Necessity, by Simone Weil.
Barbro Karlen
Excerpts from Marguerite Porete. -
There are short posts with the most minimal information on Poethead giving glimpses (albeit briefly) of women’s visionary writing. They include Marguerite Porete, (a Beguine who was burned at the stake in the French Inquisition), and excerpts from the beautiful Anna Livia Plurabelle Soliquoy, which shares a set of images and ideas with Porete.
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I have mentioned the antiphons of Hildegard of Bingen and the gorgeous vision-laden writings of Ursu, Touminen and Julian Of Norwich. Mostly they were Women in the Wall (apart of course from the wonderful James Joyce whose tropes and archetypes do share similarities). I have been reading the Karlén for a week or two. I must admit studiously avoiding the poetry and focusing instead on the symbols, not least because I reluctantly accepted it as a gift from an old friend whom recommended it in the highest terms. Its not that I am unused to non-verbal communication, the use of word and tone by women, whose communication is not academic but it exhausts me and I do not know why.On a not unrelated note I see in the Guardian of last weekend that Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s The Yellow Wallpaper is going to be re-issued, the review of same was excellent because the reviewer discussed her initial reaction to the story in t The Gilman short Story can be accessed in Scribbling Women, Short Stories by 19th Century American Women, edited by Elaine Showalter/Christopher Bigby.
Back then to Karlén. I wonder if it because it is easier to read those whom are removed from us historically such as Porete and Julian of Norwich, that breaks the tension in reading visionary books?
“Whilst the storm is raging and completing its work, this book will tell you more about this artist. He was the artist who had decorated the whole of the king’s palace with images of eternal beauty. The artist whose wisdom and power was able to transfer the highest eternal beauty and justice down here to the lower planets. The artist who periodically came to the world of human beings, to bring them visions of eternal truth. I shall now write down the poem that the good king wrote whilst he lived here on earth. A poem that is about the artist who made the statue.”.
(From : A Moment in the Blossom Kingdom and When the Storm Comes , by Barbro Karlén.
I will excerpt some of the poem onto the blog tomorrow along with an excerpt from Liliana Ursu, a modernist writer in the immediate post WWII period.
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I am a demon for sitting and transcribing when I cannot get my brain to do the work, or when there’s a big anxiety level. I have been reading recently around the religious issue, as many seem to be. One of the offshoots of globalisation appears to be bigger budgets so that men can wear their religious hearts on their sleeves. I find the lack of dignity, and noise level deeply enervating wherein the metaphysical and mystic hearts of our religions are enslaved to a mass communication.
Would not it be great if the leaders told everyone to go back to the books ?
” Bethink yourselves….,
that those in power and who support the old empty forms of religion should understand that what they support and preach under the form of religion is not only not religion but is the chief obstacle to man’s appropriating the true religion which they already know, and which above all can deliver them from these calamities. So that the only certain means of man’s salvation consists merely in ceasing to do that which hinders him from assimilating the true religion which already hides in his consciousness.” -
This morning, I was up very early and drinking tea at my window with John Moriarty’s Curlew book before me. The book, What the Curlew Said, describes lightning as emanating from a cloud of ducks or rather, the author who is bodily expecting lightning instead experiences what his body had not expected, ducks landing on a mirrored lake.
Moriarty inserted into the body of his text the following paragraph by Marguerite Porret (Marguerite of Porete),
“Being completely free and in command of her sea of peace the soul is nonetheless drowned and loses herself through God- with him and in him. She loses her identity, as does the water from a river- like the Ouse or the Meuse- when it flows into the sea. It has done it’s work and can relax in the arms of the sea, and the same is true of the soul. Her work is over and she can lose herself in what she has totally become: Love. Love is the bridegroom of her happiness enveloping her wholly in his love and making her part of that which is. This is a wonder to her and she has become a wonder. Love is her only delight and pleasure.”¹
Interestingly, philosophical ideas like these are an integral part of Eckhart and in the ied in Paul Celan’s Poetry. Porete was burned at the Stake during the French Inquisition for refusing to disclaim her book. Maybe the Inquisitors thought to meet her elemental dissolutions, in this case: Water, with their holy fire? Happily, we have evolved since then, although unlike Eckhart, Porete was never posthumously rehabilitated from her excommunication, nor did anyone apologise for her torture and murder. Thus we have limited excerpts, free sites, and fought for scholarly articles: Fragments of an existence.
I always think of Joyce’s washerwomen when I see the trees at the side of the River Liffey. The mastery of imagery in Finnegans Wake is exposed in the beautiful Anna Livia soliloquy. If one alone reads and loses oneself in those images, it is enough. I have heard that the book is difficult, so I suggest breaking it down into small sections and thereby reading the entire.
It is useful to compare the words of Anna Livia as she moves through her cycle, and those words written by the Beguine, Porete in 1306. I like comparative exercises. Though I find hard to believe that such ideas can be so dangerous to religious organisations.
¹ Le miroir des simples ames anienties et qui seulement demeurent en vouloir et desir d’amour by Marguerite of Porete.
Additional links:
- Marguerite Porete, Le Miroir des simples ames aneaties et qui seulement demourent envouloir et desir d’amour
- John Moriarty ,‘What the Curlew Said, Nostos Continued’ John Moriarty .
- James Joyce: ‘Finnegans Wake‘
- Edit : 23/07/2012 . I am adding here a link to The International Marguerite Of Porete Society , http://margueriteporete.net/
Chris Murray 