-
Prologue
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Prologue Man is will, love, and knowledge, but always in a unique, albeit constantly changing self. Though will, love, and knowledge in the self are defined by the things of the outside world, it is in the self that they have their initial source and ultimate end. That they are so split between our inner and our outer worlds begs the question: What is the source of will, love, and knowledge? Though the question has infinite answers, none ends our quest for answers. The end of the quest would mean the end of man. Moreover, all these answers lie between two extremes. The first extreme is to take all true knowledge as inherent in the self, our task being to bring it to realization. The purpose of all things on earth and in the heavens—and all that lies between them—is to remind us of that knowledge in the center of our being. The second extreme posits the external world as opposed to man, so that it and we constitute two distinct realities. Knowledge is our relationship as knowers with the world as known, and the world is known by subjugation. Our knowledge is entirely derived from sensory perception of the outside world. As a result, two sources of will, love, and knowledge seem more obscure in modern times than once they were: prophecy and poetry. 4 / The Text beyond the Text Without those sources of will, love, and knowledge, we cannot understand the sanctity of art or science. Whenever and wherever these sources manifest themselves, there, too, are false prophecy and false poetry. But is there any sure way to tell them apart? The opposition of false prophecy and false poetry recalls how we are torn between the lowest depths and the most sublime heights. No form this split takes signifies our final condition. Whatever point we reach between the depths and the heights, we remain open to both descent and ascent. This book is a discussion of perennial questions of our potential, viewed through the lens of the relationship between prophecy and poetry. Both prophecy and poetry unfold between speaker and listener, text and reader. But beyond speech is silence. And silence is not the same as nothing. Just as all speech comes into existence out of and returns to silence, it is with silence that expression begins and ends. Our relationship with the outside world can be knowledge. It becomes speech only on an inner impulse to express that knowledge. The world, with all its horizons, is, like the self, a sort of text whose transcendent principle is speech. Silence and mystery transcend speech. Even in complete silence, a text remains vital and open to us. This is because in essence we belong to total silence and the mystery whose revelation in speech is infinite. No text is limited to just one speech-act. There is silence both above and beneath the text, as each self emerges from this silence in ways no other can repeat. Through speech and the text, we can return to silence and Spirit. But Spirit never ceases to speak through the things in the world and in us, however unconditioned by them or us, from first to last. The unconditioned nature of Spirit means that when we relate to the absolutely Unconditioned it is through freedom. When speech leads or lifts us toward the Self, the universal One, it is, so sacred tradition tells us, the Holy Spirit speaking through a prophet or poet. If we agree that prophecy has come to an end, but that the door to human perfection remains open, then poetry, as the link between the [52.90.131.200] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:22 GMT) Prologue / 5 self and the Self, heightens both the promise of and the threats to our self-realization in perfection. This heightening hastens us and our world toward a tipping point at which the twilight will be cleft into the clarity of darkness and light, avidity and generosity, ignorance and knowledge, falsehood and truth. Dizdar’s poetic revelation came at a time when the ruling image of being was informed by ideas of quantity and power. This image took analytical reason as the only guide on the path to the ‘‘end of history .’’1 The poet reorients this image of being in the Sleeper’s discourse , away from false rational sobriety towards sleep and death as sources of knowledge. The Sleeper turns away from the...