2011/04/12

Corbin - Dante - i Fedeli d'Amore

This is so Rossetti*, who, like a priest, uses his art to consecrate the material.
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*Heart’s Hope

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

BY what word’s power, the key of paths untrod,
Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore
Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our love from God.

Yea, in God’s name, and Love’s, and thine, would I
Draw from one loving heart such evidence
As to all hearts all things shall signify;
Tender as dawn’s first hill-fire, and intense
As instantaneous penetrating sense,
In Spring’s birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

___________________

From The Prophetic Meaning of Beauty. Henry Corbin on Ruzbehan Baqli of Shiraz:
There is, out of all human experiences, one unique event that leads to this union: human love for a being of beauty. Such a love is purified of all carnal, possessive instincts, all utilitarian ends, all obsessions and neurotic “needs.” Such a chaste love is an ecstasy before the revelation of divine beauty in a being of beauty, a theophany. This cult of Beauty was professed by Ibn ‘Arabi, and in Iran by Ruzbehan Baqli of Shiraz and all of his school. These Corbin calls the Fidèles d’amour in order to highlight their affinities with the Fedeli d’amore of Dante.
[...]
Beauty understood in this way is experienced as a sacred sign, a sacrament. At the limit of this experience of love, a love that “does not split,” is the esoteric experience of tawhîd: The Divine being is simultaneously the Loved, the Lover and the Love itself. (p. 17)

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