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N o t e s Preface . Scholem, On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism, p. . I was reminded of this passage through its citation in Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, pp. –. A more detailed account of the poetic dimension of Scholem’s literary imagination is now offered by Wasserstrom in the introduction and notes to Scholem, Fullness of Time, pp. –, , –. Regarding Scholem’s understanding of the relationship between mystical experience attested in works of kabbalah and poetic sensibility, see further, chap. , n. . . On the etymological connection between thinking and thanking, see Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, pp. –. . See, in particular, the comment of Muh .yı̄ddı̄n Ibn Arabı̄ on the imagination’s capacity for embodiment (tajassud) cited in Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. : ‘‘The Prophet said, ‘I saw my Lord in the form of a youth.’ This is like the meanings that a sleeper sees in his dreams within sensory forms. The reason for this is that the reality of imagination is to embody that which is not properly a body [jasad]; it does this because its presence [h .ad .ra] gives this to it.’’ Ibn Arabı̄ conveys the capacity of the imagination to image the imageless also in terms of its ability to bring together opposites (al-jam bayn al-ad .d .ād); see citation in Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. ; and brief remarks in Sviri, Taste of Hidden Things, p. . Needless to say, the research of Chittick continues the pioneering work of Corbin on the role of the spiritual imagination in giving form to the formless through the theophanic envisioning or visionary knowledge (la connaissance visionnaire ) of the imaginal world, mundus imaginalis, ālam al-mithāl, the world that is intermediate between the corporeal and spiritual. See, for instance, Corbin, Creative Imagination, pp. –; idem, Face de Dieu, pp. –; idem, L’Iran et la Philosophie, pp. –. On the role of poetic imagination in medieval Islamic thought, with special reference to Avicenna, see Kemal, The Poetics of Alfarabi and Avicenna, pp. –, –; and idem, The Philosophical Poetics, pp. –. . Hobbes, Leviathan, I:, p. ; on the inherent lack of veridicality associated with imagination, a theme well attested in medieval scholasticism, see IV:, pp. –. On the role of poetic imagination in medieval Islamic thought, with special reference to Avicenna, see Kemal, The Poetics of Alfarabi and Avicenna, pp. –, –; and idem, The Philosophical Poetics, pp. –. . Corbin, Creative Imagination, p. . Corbin links this encounter specifically to prayer, a claim that may be compared profitably to the contemplative visualization of medieval kabbalists, more or less, contemporary with Ibn Arabı̄. See E. Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. –, –. On the virtual identification of prayer and imagination, see Corbin, Creative Imagination, p. : ‘‘For one and the same agent underlies the secret of Prayer and the secret of the Imagination.’’ Following the lead of Corbin, I have studied the rabbinic conception of prayer from the vantage point of the theophanic imagination. See E. Wolfson, ‘‘Iconic Visualization,’’ and (this time adding Torah study) idem, ‘‘Judaism and Incarnation: The Imaginal Body of God.’’ For a similar approach, see Ehrlich, ‘‘Place of the Shekhina’’; idem, Non-Verbal Language. On the centrality of the image of enthronement and worship in ancient Israelite mythology and its impact on later Jewish and Christian liturgical practices, see Bauckham, ‘‘Throne of God,’’ pp. –. PAGE 391 ................. 11059$ NOTE 12-21-04 14:27:55 PS N O T E S T O P A G E S x i i – x v i . See the survey offered by Philip S. Alexander in the introduction to his translation of Enoch in Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. , pp. –. . Ibid., p. . . Ibid., p. . . E. Wolfson, ‘‘Yeridah la-Merkavah,’’ pp. –. . For a rich discussion based on this hypothesis, see Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth. Seemingly unbeknownst to the author, his analysis of Ezekiel fits in perfectly well with the thesis of my Speculum regarding the merging of ostensibly conflicting cultural tendencies in the history of Jewish mysticism, the need to configure God’s form in the imagination, and the aniconic rejection of its physical representation. . Here I am influenced by the comments by Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, p. . Suhrawardı̄, Book of Radiance, sec. , p. , describes the faculty of imagination being ‘‘imprinted’’ from the forms that inhere in the sensus communis ‘‘as between two facing mirrors.’’ On the relation of the sensus communis, the faculty (traceable to Aristotle’s οιν+ν α#σθητ4ιον) that integrates all sense data, and the retentive imagination , see op. cit., sec. , pp. –, and the learned philological discussion in H...
