Out on the highways and the by-ways all alone
I'm still searching for, searching for my home
Up in the morning, up in the morning out on the road
And my head is aching and my hands are cold
And I'm looking for the silver lining,
Silver lining in the clouds
And I'm searching for
And I'm searching for the philosophers stone
And it's a hard road,
Its a hard road daddy-o
When my job is turning lead into gold
He was born in the back street,
Born in the back street Jelly Roll
I'm on the road again and I'm searching for
The philosophers stone
Can you hear that engine
Woe can you hear that engine drone
Well I'm on the road again and I'm searching for
Searching for the philosophers stone
Up in the morning, up in the morning
When the streets are white with snow
It's a hard road, it's a hard road daddy-o
Up in the morning, up in the morning
Out on the job
Well you've got me searching for
Searching for, the philosophers stone
Even my best friends, even my best friends
They don't know
That my job is turning lead into gold
When you hear that engine,
When you hear that engine drone
I'm on the road again and I'm searching
Searching for the philosophers stone
It's a hard road even my best friends
They don't know
And I'm searching for,
Searching for the philosophers stone
(Van Morrison, 'The Philosopher's Stone')
Alchemist's Lux Natura
Sophia (Italian/Vico)
[Lovers of Wisdom] believe that it is wrong to
oppose PhiloSophy with her offer of liberation and purification, so
they turn and follow her wherever she leads. (Socrates, Phaedo)
Lady
Philosophy has appealed to his intellectual faculties . Lady
Philosophy has shown him the place of reason as handmaiden to the
revelation of Beatrice is to be. (On Dante)
It is because
the mind is at the end of its tether that I would be silent. It is
because I think there is a way outa way down and outthat I would
speak. Sometimesmost timeI think that the way down and out leads out
of the university, out of the academy. But perhaps it is rather that we
should recover the Academy of earlier daysthe Academy of Plato in
Athens, the Academy of Ficino in Florence . At any rate, the point is
first of all to find again the mysteries. By which I do not mean simply
the sense of wonderthat sense of wonder which is the source of all
true Philosophyby mysteries I mean secret and occult; therefore
unpublishable; therefore outside the university as we know it; but not
outside Plato's Academy, or Ficino's. (N.O. Brown, "Mind At the End of
Its Tether," Phi Beta Kappa Graduation Address, Columbia University,
1968)
NOTES TOWARD A MUSEKAL PHILOSOPHY: How Lady Philosophy guided me to the Tower of Song
By the Spring of 1990, I was well into my quest-romance for the heart of PhiloSophy. Therefore, I would say (thinking back to what Socrates and Plato put down) that, yes, PhiloSophy is the highest form of music," but that the inverse is also trueMusic is the highest form of PhiloSophy." In fact, I said as much introducing my philosophical essays on radio in 1990:
In mixing PhiloSophy & Music (dialectics/argument and song), PhiloSophy is recognized as more musical and, conversely, music is recognized as more philosophical. I began to call these philosophical essays set to music the "Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack." The purpose of trying to fusePhiloSophy & Music (argument /dialectics and song) was to help heal, in my own eccentric way, the schism in Western Philosophy between logos, on one side, and mythopoiesis/eros
on the other. This attempted fusion, as I later discovered, was
actually the very project of Platos original uniting of Philosophys logos with poetrys eros. Therefore, my own philosophical quest on radio, was to make Philosophy a "music art" (Diotima), and to become what Socrates and Plato thought was the ideal for the philosopher; a musical man," who can sing the "power of philosophy" a Musekal PhiloSophy that floats through my head in the Tower of Song.
(from Essay-with-Soundtrack, "Notes Toward A Musekal Philosophy ...")
Misty mornin', don't see no sun;
I know you're out there somewhere having fun.
There is one mystery - yea-ea-eah - I just can't express:
To give your more, to receive your less.
One of my good friend said, in a reggae riddim,
"Don't jump in the water, if you can't swim." The power of philosophy - yea-ea-eah - floats through my head
Light like a feather, heavy as lead;
Light like a feather, heavy as lead, yeah.
See no sun! Oh.
Time has come, I want you -
I want you to straighten out my tomorrow! Uh.
I want - I want - I want you - (tomorrow).
Oh, wo-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!
I want you to straighten out my (tomorrow)!...
(Bob Marley, 'Misty Morning')
"the power of Philosophy"
Re-Vision Radio's Romantic Questing for the TOWER OF SONG
Recalling, then, the ancient Muse who visited the Romantics (like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Blake), Re-Vision Radio, strives--as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement"--to get one Common Idea across to its listening audience (who, again, like those of the Romantic poets, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility" and who have also thought long and deeply): that they particpate imaginatively with me and make "a present joy the matter of a song" (Wordsworth). If, as the Romantics maintained, the "end of philosophy is poetry," and because, until relatively recently in the history of Western culture, poetry is not separate from music, then on Revsion Radio the end of Philosophy is Song. This is, after all, how Wordsworth's "joy" was expressed--in the song/poem about his excursion that brought him to the deep gorge, where he witnessed, with the rising full moon, the epiphany of Imagiantion. "... the Mind of Man / My haunt, and the main region of my song..../ Beautya living Presence of the earth, / Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms . . . . / Paradise, and groves / Elysian, Fortunate Fields. . . . So come along with me, "take a walk with me," on this (peripatetic) philosophical journey:
Melancholy. Pensieroso
Come pensive Nun devout & pure Sober stedfast & demure All in Robe of darkest grain Flowing with majestic train Come but keep thy wonted state With even step & musing gait And looks commercing with the Skies
And join with thee calm Peace & Quiet Spare Fast who oft with Gods doth diet And hears the Muses in a ring Ay. round about Joves altar sing And add to these retired Leisure Who in trim Gardens takes his pleasure But first & Chiefest with thee bring Him who yon soars on golden Wing Guiding the Fiery wheeled Throne The Cherub Contemplation
Less Philomel will deign a song In her sweetest saddest plight Smoothing the rugged Brow of Night While Cynthia Checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustomd Oak
--William Blake
Il Penseroso is a famous pastoral poem by Milton, written in 1633 (later illustrated by Blake). The poem is in praise of the contemplative, withdrawn life of study, philosophy, thought and meditation, and is a counterpiece to L'Allegro, which praises the more cheerful sides of life and literature. Both pieces detail the passing of a day in the countryside according to both philosophies.
Can you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me?
Will you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me?
We'll go riding up to Kendal in the country
In the summertime in England.
Did you ever hear about
Did you ever hear about
Did you ever hear about
Wordsworth and Coleridge, baby?
Did you ever hear about Wordsworth and Coleridge?
They were smokin' up in Kendal
By the lakeside
Can you meet me in the country in the long grass
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me
With your red robe dangling all around your body
With your red robe dangling all around your body
Will you meet me
Did you ever hear about . . .
William Blake
T. S. Eliot
In the summer
In the countryside
They were smokin'
Summertime in England
Won't you meet me down Bristol
Meet me along by Bristol
We'll go ridin' down
Down by Avalon
Down by Avalon
Down by Avalon
In the countryside in England
With your red robe danglin' all around your body free
Let your red robe go.
Goin' ridin' down by Avalon
Would you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Would you meet me?
In the Church of St. John . . .
Down by Avalon . . . .
Holy Magnet
Give you attraction
Yea, I was attracted to you.
Your coat was old, ragged and worn
And you wore it down through the ages
Ah, the sufferin' did show in your eyes as we spoke
And the gospel music
The voice of Mahalia Jackson came through the ether
Oh my common one with the coat so old
And the light in the head
Said, daddy, don't stroke me
Call me the common one.
I said, oh, common one, my illuminated one.
Oh my high in the art of sufferin' one.
Take a walk with me
Take a walk with me down by Avalon
Oh, my common one with the coat so old
And the light in her head.
And the sufferin' so fine
Take a walk with me down by Avalon
And I will show you
It ain't why, why, why
It just is, it just is, it just is
Would you meet me in the country
Can you meet me in the long grass
In the country in the summertime
Can you meet me in the long grass
Wait a minute
With your red robe . . .
Danglin' all around your body
Yeats and Lady Gregory corresponded . . . And James Joyce wrote streams of consciousness books . . . T.S. Eliot chose England . . . T.S. Eliot joined the ministry . . . Did you ever hear about . . . Wordsworth and Coleridge? Smokin' up in Kendal They were smokin' by the lakeside . . . Let your red robe go . . . Let your red robe dangle in the countryside in England We'll go ridin' down by Avalon In the country In the summertime With you by my side Let your red robe go . . . You'll be happy dancin' . . . Let your red robe go . . . Won't you meet me down by Avalon In the summertime in England In the Church of St. John . . .
Did you ever hear about Jesus walkin' Jesus walkin' down by Avalon? Can you feel the light in England? Can you feel the light in England? Oh, my common one with the light in her head And the coat so old And the sufferin' so fine Take a walk with me Oh, my common one, Oh, my illuminated one Down by Avalon . . . Oh, my common one . . . Oh, my storytime one Oh, my treasury in the sunset Take a walk with me And I will show you It ain't why . . . It just is . . .
Oh, my common one With the light in the head And the coat so old Oh, my high in the art of sufferin' one . . . Oh, my common one Take a walk with me Down by Avalon And I will show you It ain't why . . . It just is. Oh, my common one with the light in her head And the coat so fine And the sufferin' so high . . . All right now. Oh, my common one . . . It ain't why . . . It just is . . .
That's all That's all there is about it. It just is. Can you feel the light? I want to go to church and say. In your soul . . . Ain't it high? Oh, my common one Oh, my storytime one Oh, my high in the art of sufferin' one Put your head on my shoulder . . . And you listen to the silence. Can you feel the silence?
(Van Morrison, 'Common One')
RE-VISION RADIO Presents Philosophy as Quest-Romance:
I've been walking by the river I've been walking down by the water I've been walking down by the river
I've been feeling so sad and blue I've been thinking, I've been thinking, I've been thinking, I've been thinking, I've been thinking, I've been thinking, Ah there's so much suffering, and it's Too much confusion, too much, too much confusion in the world
Take me back, take me back, take me back Take me way back, take me way back, take me way back Take me way back, take me way back, take me way back Take me way back, take me way back, ah! Take me way, way, way, way, way, way, way back, huh! Help me un.....help me understand Take me, do you remember the time darlin' When everything made more sense in the world (yeah) Oh I remember, I remember When life made more sense Ah, ah, take me back, take me back, take me back, take me back Take me back, take me back, take me back, take me back Take me back (woah) to when the world made more sense Well there's too much suffering and confusion And I'm walking down by the river Oh, let me understand religion
Way, way back, way back When you walked, in a green field, in a green meadow Down an avenue of trees On a, on a golden summer And the sky was blue And you didn't have no worries, you didn't have no care You were walking in a green field In a meadow, through the buttercups, in the summertime And you looked way out over, way out Way out over the city and the water And it feels so good, and it feels so good And you keep on walking
And the music on the radio, and the music on the radio Has so much soul, has so much soul And you listen, in the nightime While we're still and quiet
And you look out on the water And the big ships, and the big boats Came on sailing by, by, by, by And you felt so good, and I felt so good I felt I wanna blow my harmonica
Take me back, there, take me way back there Take me back, take me back, take me back Take me way, way, way back, way back To when, when I understood When I understood the light, when I understood the light In the golden afternoon, in the golden afternoon In the golden afternoon, in the golden afternoon In the golden afternoon when we sat and listened to Sonny Boy blow In the golden afternoon when We sat and let Sonny Boy, blow, blow his harp
Take me back, take me back, take me back Take me way, way, way, way, way, way, way Back when I, when I understood, when I understood, yeah Oh, ah, take me way back, when, when, when, when, when, when When, when, when, when, when, when, when I was walking down the Walking down the street and It didn't matter `Cause everything felt, everything felt, everything felt Everything felt, everything felt, everything felt, everything felt Everything felt, everything felt, everything felt so right, ha And so good Everything felt, so right, and so good Everything felt, so right, and so good Everything felt, so right, and so good, ah Everything felt, so right, and so good Everything felt, so right, and so good, so good In the eternal now, in the eternal moment In the eternal now, in the eternal moment In the eternal now Everything felt so good, so good, so good, so good, so good And so right, so right, so right, just So good, so right, so right, in the eternal In the eternal moment, in the eternal moment In the eternal moment, in the eternal moment When you lived, when you lived When you lived, in the light When you lived in the grace In the grace, in grace When you lived in the light In the light, in the grace And the blessing. (Van Morrison)
"The Seeds & Fruits of English Poetry"
Re-Vision Radio's Romantic Quest for Origins:
The Troubadours & the Beloved
In its Romantic Quest for Origins--the origin of Sixties love-song--, Re-Vision Radio takes you back to the Troubadours (of the Provence) and their amour courtois, which we now call "romantic love." However, our quest for Eros doesn't stop there; for the Troubadours, themselves, quested south over the Pyrennes to Arab Andalusia (al-Andalus) to learn from the Arab (and Jewish) poet-singers, who had a long tradition of praising the "Beloved." (Thus the Western "courtly love" tradition
owes its beginnings to the Andalusian poet-singers. Many of these were
young Arab women--"proficient in Arabic popular sung poetry"--, who had
been taken as booty from the battle of Barbastro by the Christian
knights and given to the court of then young William IX of Aquitaine,
who later became the first Troubadour.)
Re-Vision Radio has (serendipitously) taken the "Spanish Caravan" and wants to take you back--"way, way, back"--to medieval Andalusia ("again and again"), since it has discovered (by circuitous route) an underground musical line of influence from Andalusia
(after the Spanish Reconquista, 1492) to exile in north and west Africa
(with Gypsy-influenced Flamenco), then to the Caribbean (Afro-Cuban
rhythms), then to America (with Black American behop jazz in the
1940s), and finally (along with the Arab-influenced guitar) to
Rhythm'n'Blues and Rock'n'Roll.
Therefore, you could say that Re-Vision Radio has taken, by way of the "Spanish Caravan," the real "road-not-taken"--to mysterious Andalusia, where you can hear its wondrous influence "again and again."
Carry me Caravan take me away
Take me to Portugal, take me to Spain
Andalusia with fields full of grain
I have to see you again and again
Take me, Spanish Caravan
Yes, I know you can
--Jim Morrison & Doors, 'Spanish Caravan'
"The poets and singers of the Troubadour tradition envisioned love as inspiration to song."
"The subject tonight is love, and for tomorrow night as well. As a matter of fact, I know of no better topic for us to discuss until we die." (Hafiz)
Because Re-Vision Radio would go back--"way, way, back"--to the Troubadour's "Twelfth-century Renaissance" and their Grail Quest, it broadcasts a version of the 19th-century Romantic Internalized Quest-Romance. Thus, Troubadour-Poet Dante, guided by "Lady Philosophy" on his Quest-Romance for "the Beloved" (The Divine Comedy, dramatically structured in philosophical dialogue and song--canto), must have been in ear-shot of the Tower of Song, since a gate opened and he heard the heavenly music, just like Re-Vision Radios fellow travelers hear the music amplify and fade:
"Then, as I leaned, hearkening to that first sound, Methought a voice sang ... sweetly interwound With music; and its image in my ears Left such impression as one often catches From songs sung to an organ, when one hears The words sometimes and sometimes not, by snatches. (Dante, Divine Comedy)
"Let us bring to bear the persuasive powers of sweet-tongued Rhetoric and . . . let us have as well Music, the maid-servant of my house, to sing us melodies of varying mood." (Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy)
Re-Vision Radio's Philosophical Quest-Romance charts a course (by way of the aboriginal "song-lines" of the planet) through many a dark night in search for great Orpheus, hoping to find the key to the mystery of PhiloSophy & Music and the inspiration of the Muses--those funny voices and their visiting angel band heard in the daring night" in the Tower of Song. Thus, Re-Vision Radio's music puts "Philosophy in a New Key."
"Minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours, and trouveres told stories about life and death through the songs they carried from village to village. They wrote the poetry and set them to music and travelled with their jongleurs who accompanied them on a variety of instruments, mostly strings. When the dull nights of winter arrived, and during periods of time when the nobles were isolated from the poor during the plague, people sang songs and told stories, many about love and romance, some of them humorous, heroic, and sometimes bawdy, to pass the time. Many of the songs were written in praise of the idealized woman."
It could be said that the Troubadours created the first Western soul-based culture in Southern France. The decades between 1150 and 1250 are known as the classic age of the Troubadours. The pan-European Troubadour culture (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Arabia) was commonly known as the Courtly Love Tradition of the "Twelfth-century Renaissance." Its Religion of Amor could be called the "Cult of the Eros-Rose. For the Troubadours, the way back to lost paradise was through the god Eros and his sacred rites. As for the origins of this popular counter-cultural tradition, they are complex. Some scholars hold that the first Troubadours made their way dwn, across the Pyrennes, to the great culture of 11th-century Moorish Spain, where they found the first love poetry. Furthermore, there a numerous links to the mystic poetry of the Sufis of Islam. And from farther east, connections have been seen with the Tantric Shakti cult of India. Closer to the epicenter of Troubadour activity in Southern France, theres been considerable evidence to support a borrowing from Celtic mythology, such as the Grail cup coming from the archetypal Celtic cauldron, the magical elements, and the Celtic Otherworld in the medieval romances. But the most important contribution to the Troubadour tradition was the high status of women in Celtic society, which became embodied in the sovereign Lady of the troubadour cult of woman. Other sources have been discovered, such as that of the Greek Eleusinian Mystery cults, Neoplatonism and, especially, Alchemy. There is considerable evidence that a number of the Troubadours were associated with the Albigensian/Cathar heresy. Some authorities point to a secret mystery cult behind the Troubadours. At the heart of this great heresy was the Troubadour/Cathar Gnostic Sophia, the feminine aspect of the Godhead. There is also the legend (lately popularized) that the Grail-Quest was initated by Mary Magdalene, who was supposed to have brought the Grail chalice to the South of France. The chivalric, more masculine element in Courtly Love has been greatly diminished, and in its place the more feminine been put in their place. From Eleanor of Acquitaine on, women figured centrally in the Troubadour/Courtly Love tradition. As far as Im aware, it was a woman who became the first Troubadour. Sappho (612 B.C.E.) was the first to celebrate Eros with music, the power or god of love: Eros once again limb-loosener whirls me / sweetbitter, impossible to fight offyou burn me! The history of the art of Love (/Eros/Amor/Amore) is a long and complicated affair. In the allegory of the rose, The Romance of the Rose, the Courtly Love tradition, implicit in the lyrics of the Troubadours and Minnesingers, spread all over Christianized Europe. There are many poets, philosophers, and writers who carried on and developed the concept of eros. Theres Socrates and Plato, Sappho, then Ovid, Capellanus, and the Latin poets. And the Arabic poets should not be forgotten. The original Troubadours of the Twelfth-century Renaissance were succeeded by Dante and his mentors, first Persian and then Italian. Then the Italian Renaissance Platonists, like Bruno, Mirandola, and Ficino, carried the torch of love into the Western heart. Finally, 19th century Romanticism brought it into the modern period and prepared the way for our contemporary 1960s Troubadours.
"The cultivation of passionate love began in Europe as a reaction to Christianity (and in particular to its doctrine of marriage) by people whose spirit, whether naturally or by inheritance, was still pagan. But this would be mere theory and highly disputable were it not that we are in a position to trace the historical ways and means to the rebirth of Eros. . . . Passionate love was then given a name which has since become familiar. It was called cortezia, or courtly love."
Garden of Love
Le Chant d'Amour (The Song of Love)
"The Grail Quest"
Far from having faded away centuries ago this radical poetic tradition of Romantic Love--love with both a sexual and spiritual dimension embodied in the Beloved--still blooms in the counter-culture of Sixties and post-Sixties popular love song. Thus, this essay is not just another take on "love in the Western world," but in fact an attempt to envision an alternative view of Western spirituality, which, in its Christoid dichotomy of divine and earthly, sacred and profane, spiritual and sexual "love," has violently divided asunder the archetypal Lovers and turned the pre-Christian "Garden of Love" into a Wasteland, one that is today not only mirrored in the Medieval Romances and the Grail-Quest cycle, but also literally in the physical destruction of the natural environment--an environment in which "Everybody Knows that the naked man and woman/are just the shinning artifacts of the past" (L. Cohen, 'Everybody Knows'). I suggest that the Troubadour's "Religion of Love," or what Im calling the "Cult of Eros-Rose," may be part and parcel of a deep psychological longing and, thus, a quest-romance to rejoin heavenly and earthly love to regain the paradise lost in Eden. Therefore, the Troubadour's "Religion of Amor" is an attempt to heal the sacred vs. profane split in the Western psyche. This means that my radical inversion of Christianitys profane love and "sinful pleasure into sacred pleasure and "sacred love" continues the quest inspired by the Troubadours:
"Also during the Middle Ages in the same South of France where womans sexual power was once venerated in the Paleolithic cave sanctuaries, there flourished the poets known as troubadours and trobaritzes, whose songs of courtly love honored woman as mans spiritual inspiration and celebrated erotic love between woman and man . It is a powerful legacy, this legacy of romance and ritual that the medieval troubadours and trobaritzes left us despite the condemnation of the pleasures of sex by the Church. And it is a legacy that, as we have seen, stems from more ancient roots: from a time when sexuality was associated with the sacred rather than the profane and the obscene."
The Troubadours wrote and sang secular versions of the "love" exclusively dedicated to deity. This romanticization of "spiritual" love means that in the Garden of Love earthly love isnt to be left behind, only to serve as a transcendent stepping stone for a qualitatively different and greater love at the point where the heavenly paradise is attained (as, in fact, some have interpreted Dantes quest from Beatrice to the Virgin Mary), but rather "earthly" love finds not its negation but its fulfillment in kind with spiritual love, a love that belongs once again to the half-human and half-divine daemon, Eros, and not to the eros-denied Christ. This deification of "earthly" human love, which simultaneously brings "earthly" love up and "heavenly" love down to meet each other (in the Garden of Love), can be seen as implied when the poet of the Roman attributes to this love the "transcendent emotions of mystic rapture." And within the Garden of Love parameters of this eroticization of Christian love, the poets of Medieval Romance initiated, and their heirs, the Romantic poets, completed the reunion of "earthly" and "heavenly" love. The Troubadours and Courtly Love tradition emphasized the passion of love, which was a transfiguring force, not love purely profane and natural....
[From Essay-with-Soundtrack, "The Trobadours & the Beloved." For troubadour theme picts, see bottom of this page.]
Take off those working clothes Put on these high heeled shoes Don't want no preacher on the TV baby Don't want to hear the news
Shut out the world behind us Put on your long black dress No one's ever gonna find us here Just leave your hair in a mess I've been searching long enough I begged the moon and the stars above For sacred love
I've been up, I've been down I've been lonesome, in this godless town You're my religion, you're my church You're the holy grail at the end of my search Have I been down on my knees for long enough? I've been searching the planet to find Sacred love
The spirit moves on the water She takes the shape of this heavenly daughter She's rising up like a river in flood The word got made into flesh and blood The sky grew dark, and the earth she shook Just like a prophecy in the Holy Book Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal Thou shalt not doubt that this love is real So I got down on my knees and I prayed to the skies When I looked up could I trust my eyes? All the saints and angels and the stars up above They all bowed down to the flower of creation Every man every woman Every race every nation It all comes down to this Sacred love
Don't need no doctor, don't need no pills I got a cure for the country's ills Here she comes like a river in flood The word got made into flesh and blood Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill But if you don't love her your best friend will
All the saints up in heaven and the stars up above It all comes down, it all comes down It all comes down to love,
Take off your working clothes Put on your long black dress And your high heeled shoes Just leave your hair in a mess
I've been thinking 'bout religion I've been thinking 'bout the things that we believe I've been thinking 'bout the Bible I've been thinking 'bout Adam and Eve I've been thinking 'bout the garden I've been thinking 'bout the tree of knowledge, and the tree of life I've been thinking 'bout forbidden fruit I've been thinking 'bout a man and his wife
I been thinking 'bout, thinking 'bout Sacred love, sacred love . . .
(Sting, 'Sacred Love')
"The Luminous Union"
"The Kiss"
The overcoming of the Christoid dichotomy of sacred/heavenly love and profane/earthly love means that we can never definitively sort out (despite what both the theological and rationalist interpreters of medieval "love poetry" claim) whether the poet's impassioned address is to a "divine" or "human" Beloved....
On one level, then, the greatest romance of the Courtly Love tradition, The Romance of the Rose, is a story of the poet's love for his "Lady," and, on another, a Quest for the Philosopher's Stone. So the poet's "veiled love" turns out to be his concealed, or Hermetic Love (given the acknowledged alchemical allegory of the text). Thus, in the Roman, the sexual and the religious metaphors--the Freudian and Jungian interpretations--come together in hermeneutic intercourse with the reader's mind, leaving the reader in divine ambiguity (because of the allegory's Hermetic crypticism); ambiguity over the poet's "veiled love," ambiguity about sexual and spiritual love, over sensuality and intellectuality, love and ideas, and, finally, over precisely who the Beloved" really is. Is she divine or human? Is she mistress or muse-- alchemical partner, soror mystica, or sore mistress?
"In this way the conflict inherent in the love relation is recognized as essential to it, and at the same time spiritualized. True, the real woman is still there, but she becomes more and more the pretext of an erotic and aesthetic exaltation. Thus a situation arises in which we are never sure whether the yearning is addressed to a real human being or to the phantom of an anima. Yet the love of the Troubadours . . . cannot have been a mere fiction. . . ." (The Dream of Poliphilo: The Soul in Love)
.... The point of all this controversy over ancient textual exegesis come to this: With the recognition of this profound ambiguity in not only the Troubadour/Courtly Love poet-singers but also the high mysticism of Catholic saints, then, comes a re-visioning, also, of the songs of our sixties folk and folk-rock Troubadours. On Re-Vision Radio, you will "hear" a familair song in a new light--the love-light of the Troubadours. Think about it: with all those enigmatic references to a love object in many sixties and post-sixties songs, from "Sweet Lorraine" to "Layla,"--actually inspired by the 12th-century Persian romance of Layla & Majnun (itself adapted from the already-famous story of the ill-starred lovers from the Arabic tradition)--just who is the "you" to which the passion of the singer is addressed?
[from Essay-with-Soundtrack, "The Troubadours & the Beloved"]
You're the Queen of the slipstream
With eyes that shine
You have crossed many waters to be here
You have drank of the fountain of innocence
And experienced the long cold wintry years.
There's a dream where the contents are visible
Where the poetic champions compose
Will you breathe not a word of this secrecy, and
Will you still be my special rose?
Bridge
Goin' away far across the sea
But I'll be back for you
Tell you everything I know
Baby everything is true
Will the blush still remain
On your cheeks my love
In the light always seen
In your head?
Gold and sliver they placed
At your feet my dear
But I know you chose me instead
Goin' away...
You're the Queen of the slipstream
I love you so ...
You're the Queen, you're the Queen
Oh, the Queen of the slipstream, darlin'
Queen of the slipstream ....
(Van Morrison, 'Queen of the Slipstream')
_______________________
Down the mystic avenue I walk again
Remembering the days gone by
And I'm knocking with my heart ...
She gives me religion
She gives me religion
And the angel of imagination
Opened up my gate
She said "come right in
I saw you knocking with your heart."
And the angel of imagination
She lit your fiery vision bright
Let your flame burn into the night
I saw you knocking with your heart
She gives me religion
She gives me religion
It's all right ...
(Van Morrison, 'She Gives Me Religion')
You're like a cool breeze, on a summer's day
You are a river running through the desert plain
You are my shelter, from the pouring rain
You were my comfort, even before the pain
I can hear the sound of five drummers in the wind
The leaves blowing in the breeze, ring out like guitars
A tin can rolls across the gravel like a tambourine
I am but a vessel, so I sing, because you are
Chorus In my head, you're always in my head
In my dreams, you're always in my head
In my pain, you're always in my head
In my peace, you're always in my head
A rainbow of rhythm stretches across the sky
An airplane in the distance, plays a beautiful cello line
It's no coincidence; it's in tune with the music in my head
If you were a shoulder you're where I would rest, but I am your vessel so I hear, you
Chorus
In my head, you're always in my head
In my fears, you're always in my head
In my joy, you're always in my head
In my tears, you're always in my head
You're like a cool breeze, on a summer's day
You are a river, running through a desert plain
You've been my shelter, from the pouring rain
You were my comfort, even before the pain?cause I hear you
Chorus
How can I live a day without you
In my head,
(How can I live a day without you)
you're always in my head
(How can I live a day without you)
In my fears,
(How can I live a day without you)
you're always in my head,
(You're always in my head)
In my joy,,.
(How can I live a day without you)
you're always in my head ,(How can I live a day without you)
In my tears,
(How can I live a day without you)
you're always in my head,
(You're always in my head)
How can I live one day without you?
How can I live one day without you?
How can I live one day without you?, yea
You're always in my head
ooooooh You are, you are love
You are, you are light
You are, you are joy
You are, you are peace
And I am, you are me (fade)
(India Arie, 'Always In My Head')
Angelic Anima
Eros & Psyche
Thus . . . Here's what is said to have been
the all-important question for those of the Troubadour "Dialectic of
Love" school:
"Who is the Beloved"?
Is
she a goddess (muse; anima archetype)? Or is she a flesh-and-blood
woman? Or, here's another option: reflecting on the wonderful, hermetic
ambiguity of the poetry of the Troubadours, could she be both--an angel in human form?
What do you think? Who is the Beloved?
In this way the conflict inherent in the love relation is recognized as essential to it, and at the same time spiritualized. True, the real woman is still there, but she becomes more and more the pretext of an erotic and aesthetic exaltation. Thus a situation arises in which we are never sure whether the yearning is addressed to a real human being or to the phantom of an anima. Yet the love of the Troubadours . . . cannot have been a mere fiction. . . . (from The Dream of Poliphilo: The Soul in Love.
"Such an initiation does not indeed signify anything in the nature of a monastic conversion to divine love; it is a unique initiation, which transfigures eros as such, that is, human love for a human creature." It is furthermore said that the late Italian Troubadours of the cult of the fedeli d' amore (to which the young Dante belonged) effected "an adequate harmony between mortal and immortal love" and "introduced the idea that a beloved woman could symbolize an angelic Intelligence." For these Italian troubadour-poets the Eternal Feminine was called "Madonna Intelligenza," which reflected the cult's thorough-going "Sophiology," its fidelity to the mystic Sophia, or "Sophia aeterna"--conceived as the "Holy Spirit," or the "Angel-Intelligence" of the poet-philosopher.... To reiterate, unlike the "Beloved" of the purely idealizing chaste poets, she was no discarnate phantom to these Italian troubadour-poets. She was, in fact, what Beatrice was for Dante; "she was and remained for him the earthly manifestation, the theophanic figure, of Sophia aeterna." The Lady" or the "Beloved" of the Troubadour poet is, then, in the last analysis, a real one but at the same time she was "in person" a theophanic figure, the Sophia aeterna or Madonna Intelligenza. Who is the Beloved? "She is twofold simultaneously, both female angelic phantom and flesh-and-blood woman." Thus a wise warning to the either/or interpreter of the fedeli d' amore poetry: the Beloved is
"both individual person and . . . an archetype. If we fail to grasp this twofold dimension simultaneously, we lose the reality both of the person and of the symbol ... We can only go astray if we ask, as many have done in connection with the figure of Beatrice in Dante: is she a concrete, real figure or is she an allegory?"
Fortunately, we will not go astray, if we listen for the echo of the original Troubadours of the "Religion of Love" in our contemporary Troubadours--in the Tower of Song.
.... What is significant here is that when this incarnation of the "Great Goddess of Eternal Wisdom" (V.M.) appears, she comes both as lover and teacher, divine initiatrix, for she "divulges the entire secret of the sophianic religion of love." It is pointed out by the poet-lover that the verses that provoke her philosophical lesson are enigmatic, reminding of the "arcane language of our Troubadours." The Beloved is "a sublime and divine, essential and sacrosanct Wisdom [Sophia], which manifested itself visibly to the author of these poems with such sweetness as to provoke in him joy and happiness, emotion and delight." Hence the entire sophianic poem, The Diwan, can be read as a celebration of his meeting with the mystic Sophia:
"From the very first the figure of the young girl was apprehended by the Imagination on a visionary plane, in which it was manifested as an 'apparitional Figure' of Sophia aeterna. Thus, it is revealed, by the mystic-poet of the Sufic fedeli d'amore cult, that "The young woman in turn is the typification of an angel in human form...." ("She's an angel of the first degree / She's an angel...")
(from Essay-with-Soundtrack, "The Troubadours & the Beloved")
"I'm not some stone commission Like some statue in the park I am flesh and blood and vision I am howling in the dark."
(Joni Mitchell, 'Come In From The Cold')
"The Grail Maiden"
You can't stop us on the road to freedom You can't keep us 'cause our eyes can see Men with insight, men in granite Knights in armor bent on chivalry She's as sweet as tupelo honey She's an angel of the first degree She's as sweet as tupelo honey Just like honey from the bee... She's as sweet as tupelo honey --she's an angel, she's an angel...
(Van Morrison, 'Tupelo Honey')
Knight-poet & Beloved
Sophia Aeterna
Again, who is the Beloved? Is she a flesh-and-blood woman? Or is she a goddess (muse; anima archetype)? Or, here's another option: (reflecting on the wonderful, hermetic ambiguity of the poetry of the Troubadours), could she be both--an angel in human form?
You can't stop us on the road to freedom
You can't keep us 'cause our eyes can see
Men with insight, men in granite
Knights in armor bent on chivalry
She's as sweet as tupelo honey
She's an angel of the first degree
She's as sweet as tupelo honey
Just like honey from the bee...
She's as sweet as tupelo honey
--she's an angel, she's an angel...
(Van Morrison, 'Tupelo Honey')
"The Day Dream"
Re-Vision Radio's Quest for "Impossible Love"
In search of the "Beloved," Re-Vision Radio, quests back--"way, way back"--to Plato's myth (in the Symposium) of the primordial Androgyne. According to the myth, human beings were once androgynous--both male and female. These round beings--"man-woman children of the Moon"--were so powerful that the gods became jealous and cut them in half. From then on, each half passionately longed for its lost other half.
"Each of us, when separted, having one side only ... is but the identure of a man, and is always looking for his other half.... And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself ... the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as they say, even for a moment...."
Thus, this may be the origin of the belief--found in many cultures--that every male and female on earth has a "heavenly counterpart." This, of course, is associated not only with the modern psychological idea of the "psychic other" (Jung) in each gender (anima/animus), but also the popular (new-age) idea of the "soul mate."
This ancient mythic theme has taken many forms over the ages. Sometimes the person dreamt of a supernatural lover and sometimes the person actually meants the supernatural lover, who oftentimes was actually a "fairie." (Given that the medieval narratives of Tristan & Iseult were taken from an older Celtic legend, the mythogem of the "fairie" is retained in that Iseult's mother was a sorceress--she prepared the magic love-potion--and by hints that Iseult was a fairy-queen.) The legend became especially popular as a subject of poetry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the Romantics. Keats' "Eve of St. Agnes" and ""La Belle Dame Sans Merci" are good examples of the poetic treament of the theme. In the former, the lady to be wed meets the supernatural lover through a dream, and in the latter, darker poem, a knight is pinning away to death because he met a beautiful, wild-looking woman in a meadow who, although she spoke a language he could not understand, sang him a mysterious song. He is bewitched and finally kisses her to sleep, and then falls asleep himself. Awakening later, the woman was gone, and the knight is left alone on the cold hillside. In these poems, the more tragic aspects of Romantic love--lost love--are emphasized.
"Abaelard & Heloisa"
"Tristan & Isolde"
Heloise & Abelard's Impossible Love
Athough these two pairs of famous lovers in the Western world probably are the source of the romances of the high Midddle Ages, including the Grail, or "Arthurian" stories (the adulterous lovers Tristan and Iseult become Lancelot and Geneviere), the difference between Tristan/Isolde and Abelard/Heloise is that the latter really existed. Proving that life--in this case, the facts of Heloise's and Abelard's love-life--is just as dramatically interesting and profound in its thematic scope as purely fictionalized accounts.
Heloise and Abelard lived 900 years ago. Their storya mixture of philosophical learning, spiritual quest, erotic passion, love-song, treachery, and lost loveis probably the most memorable among the romantic stories from the high Middle Ages. It became fictionalized when it passed into the hands of the poet Jean de Meung who, in 1275, became the first person to mention the couple in writing when he incorporated their story into his epic poem the Romance de la Rose. In a very short time these two real-life lovers became the model for the later romances.
We, today, know them through their letters, which not only reveal Heloise (who identified herself with Mary Magdalene!) to be one of the most learned women of her time, but the more profound and spiritually superior of the two. Spiritually superior because it is Helosie who, although Abelard (who sent her to a convent where she became a famous abbess) is her brother superior in Christ, remains true to her heart's (human) love and (despite a lifetime of proding and duress) never, ever denies her ideal--her impossile love! She therefore, in denying Christian love as greater, paradoxically achieves a self-sacrifice that makes the case for "romantic love" as being equal in transformative power to spiritual love. Indeed, reading between the lines of her letters, it could be argued that Heloise is the first individual in the Western world to unite profane- with sacred love.
(In a similar way, it could be argued--in another favorite theme for The Tower of Song--that Abelard, her lover, united not only eros and ideas, but philosophy and song. This scholar-lover not only wrote philosophical treatises, but love-songs, which Heloise claimed made her fall in love with him. Thus, Abelard from Brittany, the great dialectician of his time who sought to reconcile faith with reason, seems to belong to the poetic tradition of the "Dialectic Love" school. However, he is thus connected to the greater and older tradition of Orphic scholarship. From the Re-Vision Radio Manifesto: Orpheus, lover of Euridyce, was both a master rhetorician and "singer of love songs." From Abelard's Autobiography: "... and so with our lessons as a pretext we abandoned ourselves entirely to love. Her studies allowed us to withdraw in private, as love desired, with our books open before us, more words of love than of our reading passed between us, and more kissing than teaching. My hands strayed more often over the curves of her body than to the pages, love drew our eyes to look on each other more than reading kept them on our texts.")
"Magdalene reading ..."
"Lady Reading Letters of Heloise & Abelard"
Heloise's profane love--the love of Eros,
not Christ--for Abelard binds them by its own nature; it doesn't need
any public sanction, much less the Church's sacrament of marriage. Now
as an abbess, she makes her sacrilegious point to her estranged lover
with a combination of philosophical thought and and eroticism, which
one feels can only have come out of those now longed-for sessions
behind closed doors of her uncle's house:
"God is my
witness that if Augustus, emperor of the whole world, thought fit to
honor me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me for ever it
would be sweeter and more honorable to me to be, not his empress, but
your whore." (Heloise, First Letter)
It is Heloise's (Mary
Magdalene's?) premiere example that has become the standard for what we
mean as "true love" between a man and a woman. Indeed, she shows the
rest of us, despite the suffering and grief that it brings in its wake,
the value and virtue to our souls of impossible love.
Therefore,
given that we still seem plagued by both the old- and new-age
dichotomy between "sacred" and "profane" love, the Gypsy Scholar would
offer the example of Heloise/Magdalen and the following question
(for the next time you hear from a-newage-Rumi-enthusiast friend, who tells
you, when your all-too-human love has fallen apart, that "after all,
it's just romantic love and not the proper love for God")
Which is it: is it profane . . . or is it sacred love?
Re-Vision Radio's Quest for "Impossible Love" crosses over to
The Borderlands
In various legends, the heavenly counterpart or supernatural lover--sometimes called the "demon lover"--is able to temporarily pass between worlds
into the human world to meet his or her lover. One such legend, of
Celtic origin (with its mythology of the pagan, magical "Otherworld"), is that of the "Borderlands."
Although the legendary theme ranges from the more positive to the
negative aspects of passionate love with a non-human lover,
nevertheless the spiritual dimension of "Romantic love" can be felt in these tellings. This is, in fact, the great legacy of the Troubadour's more esoteric conception of amor. Here we discover that there is more to the Troubadour's paganistic and feministic "Religion of Love" than almost all scholar's have missed, and that is a "sacramental vision of nature."
"Furthermore,
this secret doctrine is not a message, but more an alternate state of
mind, a new way of being in the world. Hidden in the verse of
Troubadour poetry is a sacramental vision of nature, a sort of eroticized perception, in which nature and the body is affirmed as the way to the Goddess." (From Essay-with-Soundtrack, 'The Troubadours & the Beloved')
....
But I will be your pillow Where eer your head will lie And Ill be
the star you can only catch In the corner of your eye And Ill be
the sound of laughter In the first low flower of dawn And Ill be
the touch to brush your cheek And wake you in the morning.... And
the maid she opened up her eyes And smiled up through the trees For
as she listened she could almost hear His voice upon the breeze-o....
The young man sat above the town In the glow of the setting sun With his head held cradled in his hand, His back against a stone Sayin, Why have I so little time In this wretched place to stand When I cant take the girl I love Back home to the borderland-o
For I watch her dance upon the hill And I live but for her song And she never dreamed I waited here So silent and so long But her golden hair it strikes me dumb And her brown eyes strike me blind And the thought Ill neer see her again Is torturing my mind-o
The girl walked down the hill nearby Toward home and the end of day And she caught the sound of the young mans words And she stopped upon her way And no voice had she ever heard so sweet As the voice of the stranger lad And she stood there as if turned to stone And listened from the shadows
And the young mans words reached out to her Where she stood upon the lea And they built her ships upon the clouds And castles on the sea And as he spoke her eyes did flash And burn as with a flame And the maid she stepped around the stone As if hed called her name-o
Oh, pray lament no more, she said, Her voice like a gentle sea For I have heard your every word And I know theyre meant for me And if you speak in truth, my lad, And you love me as you say There can be no reason we must part, Not even for a day-o
Oh the young man started at her words And he stood up straight and tall Siad, I never meant for you to hear me Speak this way at all For you can never have me, love, Its useless to deceive For I must return the the borderlands Oh, I am bound to leave you
Oh, I care not where youre bound, my lad, I care not where youre from For the one thing that Im certain tis this maidens heart youve won So take me with you where you must I freely go your way And I will lie here in your arms To greet the light of day-o
So tenderly he laid her down And next to her did lie The wind that whispered through the trees Was sweet as a lullaby And bending down, he folded her Into a soft embrace And with a touch he sent her fast asleep With a smile upon her face
Oh, sleep content, my love, he said, I cannot cause you pain For the dawn will find me far away And I wont be back again And though Id take you if I could I am not what I seem For I must return to the borderlands oh, I am bound to leave you
For I am not of your world, my love, I come from another time And I crossed here from the borderlands Between your world and mine And twas there that I first heard your voice And longed for your face to see And I gathered all the powers I had And stepped out on your lea-o
And you know I watched you quietly As you danced upon the hill And though I dared not call to you I loved you stronger still But no longer do I have the power No longer can I stay And Ill be pulled back into my time By the dawning of the day-o
But I will be your pillow Where eer your head will lie And Ill be the star you can only catch In the corner of your eye And Ill be the sound of laughter In the first low flower of dawn And Ill be the touch to brush your cheek And wake you in the morning
So saying this he bended low And he kissed her once goodbye And as the dawn broke on the hill He vanished like a sigh And the maid she opened up her eyes And smiled up through the trees For as she listened she could almost hear His voice upon the breeze-o
I know you hear me, love, she spoke As she lay on her grassy bed For I felt your touch and I felt your kiss And I heard the words you said But the next time that our worlds combine Can not be very far And Ill be waiting then to take your hand And dance among the stars-o
(Danny Carnahan, 'The Borderlands')
The film, The Lake House, despite its flawed internal logic (its confused timeline, particularly the time paradox at the end), at least has this virtue going for it:
It is a contemporary metaphor of the old Romantic theme of "impossible love." Though the supernatural aspect of this theme is gone, the film substitutes the modern theory of time travel and two earthly lovers for the old supernatural theme of an other-worldly dimension that collides with the earthly time, when a demon-lover encounters a human lover. And like the lovers in the song above, the lovers in the film must wait for the right time when their worlds come together again. Yet, whether a supernatural or natural "impossible love," the main theme of Romantic "impossible love" is still the basic organizing idea. This is evidenced by that premiere Romantic writer of "impossible love," Jane Austen, whose novel Persuasion is an integral part of the film's thematic background. (Kate and Alex, at their first encounter, discuss the novel and how its impossible lovers get a second chance to meet.)
"There could have been not two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison." This is the passage that Kate reads from Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, which Alex leaves for her to find under the floor-boards of the Lake House.
Thus, in spite of the film's flaws it nevertheless has this going for it. This must be one of the reasons why Roger Ebert gave it a "thumbs up:" "What I respond to in the movie is its fundamental romantic impulse."
To substantiate my claim of the film's "impossible love" metaphor, I offer the following dialogue between the main character, Alex Wyler, and his brother Henry, after Alex thinks he's lost his beloved.
Henry: Hey, come on! This is a good thing. You know, you need a real woman . . .
Alex: Henry, listen!
Henry: --A woman.
Alex: Listen to me! While it lasted, she was more real to me than any of that stuff. She was more real to me than anything I've ever known. I saw her. I kissed her . . . I love her! And now she's gone--she's gone.
"The Temple of Love"
"The Lovers"
Because the Tower of Song is not only the "Temple of Music" but also the "Temple of Love,"
all inferior love is transformed within its precincts and, thus,
(unlike the poor knight in the poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci") "they don't let a woman kill you / In the Tower of Song."
Here, in the Tower of Song, the transcendent quality of the Troubadour's "Romantic Love" (fin amour) is finally realized.
"The Love of Souls"
The Troubadour's Romantic Quest for the Symbolic Rose:
from the "Rose of High Romance" to the "Mystic Rose"
rose fractal
THE SYMBOLIC ROSE
Troubadours were especially amorous about roses (pagan flower of
Venus-Aphrodite, representing earthly beauty for its own sake),
using them as metaphors for their Lady in poetry-songs. Later, in the
versified prose of The Romance of the Rose, Guillaume de
Lorris made the Lady the first hyrid "rose-woman" of love literature.
And, later still, Dante picks this red rose to represent his Lady,
Beatrice, and transforms it into the "heavenly white rose" at the end
of the Divine Comedy. Thus one could say that , in one sense, the symbolic rose of love progresses from sensual (red)
to spiritual love (white). In another sense, it could be said that
Dante's symbolic rose is the culminating blossom of what the Troubadours had
already planted in the Garden of Love with their conception of fin amour--the reconcilation of earthly and divine love; or the blend of the red and white rose.
The
rose has been a frequent or pervasive symbol in world poetry from "la
rosa sempiterna" of Dante to Eliot's "burnt roses" in "Little Gidding."
Indeed, as the semiotician (and rose novelist!), Umberto Eco noted:
"the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meaning that by now it hardly
has any meaning left: Dante's mystic rose, and go lovely rose, the Wars
of the Roses, rose thou art sick, too many rings around Rosie, a rose
by any other name, a rose is a rose is a rose, the Rosicrucians." (Reflections on the Name of the Rose)
For the Troubadour of the "Twelfth-century Renaissance," the Beloved, known by Rose and many other names, was the figure who initiated the poet-lover into the religion of amor/eros--"The Religion of Love. It is said of the Beloved--"Rosebud"--of Romance of the Rose that
the
Lover is not only the poet but also Everyman . . . . The Rose is not
only the Poet's Beloved; she is also Every Lover's ideal Lady.
It is significant that the Roman begins with the Poet's Dream, a dream that is truer than so-called reality:
Many
a man holds dreams to be but lies, / All fabulous; but there have been
some dreams / No whit deceptive, as was later found / And was assured
that dreams are oft times true. So the poet cries out in ecstasy:
Then burst on my astonished eyes / A dreaman Earthly Paradise: / And
suddenly my soul seemed riven / From earth to dwell in the highest
heaven.
And because "The poets and singers of the Troubadour tradition envisioned love as inspiration to song," the Troubadour can be heard today in the Tower of Song:
There's a dream where the contents are visible Where the poetic champions compose Will you breathe not a word of this secrecy? Will you be my special Rose?
The Beloved, as the new hybrid of "Rose-Woman," was perceived by the poet-lover through the organ of the "theophanic imagination" (the Poetic, or Creative Imagination) as both flesh-and-blood woman and archetype (goddess/amima).
Dante's sunlit rose is Beatrice's flower, the flower of mortal love revealed as symbol and agent of the immortal."
But in whatever form, by whatever name, she can be traced back to the Cathar-Troubadour's "Sophia" (wisdom), or the cult of the Fedeli d' amore's "Mystic Sophia," the "Sophia Aeterna." The Sophiology of this "Cult of the Eternal Feminine" conceived her as the "Holy Spirit" or the "Angel-Intelligence" of the poet-philosopher/lover.
Thus, in the Sufic form of the Fedeli d' amore, the Andalusian Ibn Arabi, poet-mystic of the Diwan, relates, in alchemical metaphors, how it all started "One Night" (a mystical trope from the Koran), and how he transmuted his desire into a flame,
"A
fire which neither consumes itself nor consumes him, for its flame
feeds on his nostalgia and his quest, which can no more be destroyed by
fire than can the salamander."
Because of his "Lady" (the Mystic Sophia), he declares himself a devotee in the "Religion of Love":
"O
marvel! a garden among the flames . . . / My heart has become capable
of all forms. . . . / I profess the religion of Love, and whatever
direction / Its steed may take, Love is my religion and my faith."
The Garden of Love ("The Romance of the Rose")
The Gypsy Scholar's Philosophy as Quest-Romance
Lady Philosophy or Sophia
I saw the light of ancient Greece / Towards the One. I saw us standing within reach / Of the sun. Let go into the mystery of life / Let go into the mystery / Let go into the mystery / Let yourself go. (Van Morrison, The Mystery)
[Lovers of Wisdom] believe that it is wrong to oppose PhiloSophy with her offer of liberation and purification, so they turn and follow her wherever she leads. (Socrates, Phaedo)
The horses that take me to the ends of my mind / were taking me now: the drivers had put me / on the road to the Goddess, the manifest Way / that leads the enlightened through every delusion. // I was on that road. Wizard mares / strained at the chariot and maidens drove it. / The axle whined in the hubs / like a Panspipe / hanging fire in the whirl of the wheels, / propulsion of these priestess-daughters of the Sun. Parmenides, On Nature (Poem of Ascent to Heavens and the Sun)
Lady Philosophy has appealed to his intellectual faculties . Lady Philosophy has shown him the place of reason as handmaiden to the revelation of Beatrice is to be. (On Dante)
The Religion of Love may be entirely a phenomenon of the human heart, but it secretly carries within its symbolic rose other meanings, one of which is the inseparability of religion and politics, since the "white rose of heaven is tinged with political theory.
For the poet-philosopher of the Fedeli dAmore, such as Dante, philosophical truth is not found in rational proofs but in mystic realities of the Visionary Imagination; not fidelity to strict laws of logic, but rather fidelity to the service of love. The poetic cult of the Fedeli dAmore was the first to define the Italian conception of courtly love, one which sought to reconcile carnal and spiritual love. Dante carried on the quest to unite Philosophy & Love addressing the incarnation of Philosophy as Lady Philosophy, or Madonna Intelligenza, which title reflects the idea that a beloved woman could symbolize an angelic Intelligence. It is said of the young Dante:
Lady Philosophy has appealed to his intellectual faculties . Lady Philosophy has shown him the place of reason as handmaiden to the revelation of Beatrice is to be.
The Eternal Feminine, as Madonna Intelligenza, reflected the cult's thorough-going Sophiology, its fidelity to the mystic Sophia or Sophia aeterna (eternal Sophia) which was conceived as the Holy Spirit, or the Angel-Intelligence of the poet-philosopher. Because of the pan-European character of this cult, we find Andalusian troubadour mysticism speaking of the Lady of Thoughts, who is the spiritual and angelical part of the troubadourhis true self. . . .
The Gypsy Scholar discovered that his mixing of dialectic & love(song) is actually a kind of intuitive revival of the Fedeli dAmores analysis of love and love of analysis, which, it is said, carried on a very personal dialectic, eminently suited to revealing the source of the total devotion professed by the Fedeli d' Amore. The Gypsy Scholar also discovered that the Dialectic of Love was also practiced by the poets of the Provence in Southern France: . . . the problem of amour as we find it in Provence and the Romance of the Rose has deepened into a Philosophy which gave rise, within the poem, to philosophic speculation and a peculiar dialectic. Thus, this description reflects what the Gypsy Scholar conceived of as his Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack . . . .
This amateur literary essay, though admittedly tentative and speculative in its exposition, is not just another take on "love in the Western world", but in fact is an argument for another or alternative view of Western spirituality, which, in its Christoid dogma of divine vs. earthly, sacred vs. profane, spiritual vs. sexual "love", has violently divided asunder our souls and our cosmos, and turned the pre-Christian "Garden of Love" and its "symbolic rose" into a Wasteland, one which is not only mirrored in the Medieval Romances and the Grail-Quest cycle, but also in our "sacred [broken] heart"---and it doesn't stop there; it is mirrored in the physical destruction of the natural environment---an environment in which
"Everybody Knows that the naked man and woman / are just the shinning artifacts of the past." (L. C.) .
This means that with the coming of Christianity and its condemnation of pagan delight in earthly beauties for their own sake (seeing in this a perversion of the power of Christian love), the rose, the pagan "queen of flowers"--longtime symbol of love in a natural, ensouled cosmos--was sublimated to the exclusive, anti-erotic, spiritual love of a de-sexualized Christ. Thus the pagan rose, along with its Goddess, experienced a complete reversal of values and was sublimated to a de-sexualized heaven and a bodiless spirituality. Yet, in spite of its erotic suppression, "return of the repressed" in this wasteland milieu occurred in the "Twelfth-century Renaissance. Here the Troubadours and Minnesingers, the "strolling minstrels, related the stories that came to be written down in the literary tradition of "Courtly Love. At a time when sexual love was considered by the Church at odds with religious devotion, these singers and poets "secularized" the rose in their creations, putting their Lady on par with the devotion of the Churchs Virgin Mary. (The Church of Amor challenges the Church of Roma.) The "Courtly Love" tradition, implicit in the lyrics of the Troubadours and Minnesingers, spread all over Christianized Europe (becoming in some places the "Fedeli d' Amore") and had its apotheosis in the Grail Romances.
Thus, the full implications of heretical Religion of Love (amor/eros) must be grasped, for they undo the reversal of pagan values carried out by Christianism's assault on life. In making the Earthly Paradise the temporal image of the Heavenly Paradise, it could be said that the singers and poets of this heretical tradition put "spiritual" love in terms of profane or "romantic" love, not the other way around (the Garden), paving a rose-strewn way for romantic love's further elaboration and apotheosis with the "ideal" love---simultaneously sexual and intellectual---of the 19th-century Romantic Movement. This eventual "romanticization" of "spiritual" love means that "earthly" love does not just serve in the Garden of Love as a transcendent stepping stone for a qualitatively different and greater love, to be left behind at the point where the heavenly paradise is attained (as Dante is interpreted), but rather, on the contrary, "earthly" love finds not its negation but its fulfillment in kind with "heavenly" love, a love that belongs once again to the half-human and half-divine daemon, Eros, and not to the eros-denied Christ.
This deification of earthly human love, which simultaneously brings "earthly" love up and "heavenly" love down to meet each other (in the Garden of Love), can be seen as implied when the poet of the Roman attributes to this love the "transcendent emotions of mystic rapture. And within the Garden of Loves parameters, this eroticization of Christian love was initiated by the poets of Medieval Romance, and their heirs, the Romantic poets, completed the reunion of "earthly" and "heavenly" love. But the romanticization of heavenly love didn't stop there. Taking the inspiration from the poets of "Courtly Love" and the "Fedeli d' Amore" (which Im calling the Cult of the Eros-Rose, or Erose), the Romantic poets followed their flesh and blood earthly love down to its divine root, and the profane experience of human love deepened and expanded back into its original (pagan) form. Finally, with the Black (Rose) Romanticist School of Leonard Cohen, this process comes to fruition:
"In the sweaty, passionate, filthy embrace, in all of its delicious and time-dissolving power, in the midst of that embrace there is no difference, no separation between the spiritual and the profane. But it's reached through the profane rather than through the spiritual, at least in my canon. That is the portal, that is the door into the whole affair. In that moment there is no separation, there is no spirit and flesh, there's no conflict, there never was. It's dissolved.
This heretical insight points to Eros, the god of love that reigned in the pagan souls before the coming of Christ, who symbolized the life-denying love of the patriarchal order's apotheosis. It is this "youth of a thousand summers, Eros, who whispers to our naturally pagan souls: "I am the god who comes down from heaven to the earth and makes a heaven of the earth .... I am Love. Once more, the Romantic poets reconciled, at the same time, traditional with personal meanings, giving transcendent significance to personal experience and, conversely, personal significance to transcendent experience. And the symbolic rose allowed these poets to unite personal and collective meanings and values in a single, multi-leveled symbol, one which later poets, like Yeats, called the "alchemical rose", which he envisioned as a symbol of the negation and overcoming of the Christian cross.
So in conclusion, given that (as has been observed about Dante) "the white rose of heaven is tinged with political theory," I will spell out the socio-political implications of the meaning of the heretical "Religion of Amor" for out time. Let me make clear what is at stake here in this re-visioning of religion and its "heavenly" love, on one hand, vs. "earthly" love on the other: its all about what is considered "spiritual" and what is not; about what is "holy ground" and what is not. What the Gypsy Scholar has been calling the "Heretical Religion of Love (Eros)" and its "Romantic Reversal" is nothing less than an erotic revolution---turning the Christianized cosmos upside down; inverting its values. Thus one could say (after Dantes orthodox interpreters sublimated the symbol of his love out of reach for human lovers), that the Romantic poets the transplanted "celestial rose" in the soil of this earth, this life ("rose of high romance"); for everybody knows the motto of the great Romantic Reversal: "There is more mystery in the dirt and the dung than in all the heavens."
Thus, in the face of Christianisms assault on pagan life ("the naked man and woman / are just the shinning artifacts of the past), let me then conclude this essay with the sweet burden of my radical mythopoetic argument in song--not the song of the Ascended Masters, but of the Descended Lovers, whose song of songs can be heard to say:
". . . Amid flesh so full of God will not be faulted. And hearts below will sing with hearts above. And life so precious will not be assaulted: Relentless lovers singing endless love."
So when today's Romantic Questers for Erose finally reach the plane of Dante's heavenly rose, they will not hear black-robed priests nor new-age masters droning boring canticles, but "relentless lovers singing endless love"--not the endless torture of dogmatic priestly old- or new-age religion and its relentless moralisms, but the descended, "relentless lovers" singing the rosy praises of "endless love".
[From Essay-with-Soundtrack: The Troubadours & The Beloved]
Thus, on Re-Vison Radio, broadcast from the Tower of Song in the "Daring Night," the transcendent fidelity to the the Mystic Sophia turns out to be the high fidelity of her song. This is the "Religion of Love"--this is our Musekal PhiloSophy! And because, for Socrates and Plato, the beginning of real Philosophy is the sense of wonder, Re-Vision Radio, broadcast from the Tower of Song, declares to its listeners about this Dark Lady-Muse--"the Great Goddess of the Eternal Wisdom" (V.M.) and Lonely-Tower Libraries: "You can call my love Sophia / I call my love Philosophy."
I walked in my greatcoat Down through the days of the leaves. No before after, yes after before We were shining our light into the days of blooming wonder In the eternal presence, in the presence of the flame.
Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder Didn't I come to lift your fiery vision bright Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder in the flame.
On and on and on and on we kept singing our song....
Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder Didn't I come to lift your fiery vision bright Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder in the flame.
It's easy to describe the leaves in the Autumn And it's oh so easy in the Spring But down through January and February it's a very different thing. On and on and on, through the winter of our discontent. When the wind blows up the collar and the ears are frostbitten too I said I could describe the leaves for Samuel and what it means to you and me You may call my love Sophia, but I call my love Philosophy.
Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder Didn't I come to lift your fiery vision Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder in the flame....
(Van Morrison, 'Sense of Wonder')
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious; it is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." (Albert Einstein)
Some images of The Garden of Love in illuminated manuscript and paintings
"Romance of the Rose"-opening page
"Lover Pledging to God of Love" (Eros)
"Garden of Love" (Asola)
"Garden of Love" (Rubens)
"Allegory of Love IV-Happy Union" (Veronese)
"Allegory of Love III-Respect" (Veronese)
"Venus, Mercury, Cupid-School of Love" (Correggio)
