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Monthly Archives: December 2010
Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi, I: Introduction
A highly esteemed conversation partner drew my attention to the essay ‘“Þis louely blinde werk”: Contemplation in The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises’ by René Tixier, in Pollard and Boening’s Mysticism and Spirituality in … Continue reading
Posted in "Cloud" commentary, Philology
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Digression: What Might It Take to Read a Powerful Book?
Without turning this site into a talking shop for Islamic issues, I want to offer a piece that shows how and why approaching texts with reverant caution has been the norm in Islamic societies. Readers … Continue reading
Posted in Philology, Praxis
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Þe moste goodly knowyng of God is þat, þe whiche is knowyn bi vnknowyng
In the Mumonkan, or The Gateless Gate, a collection of koans published in 1228 (a good century and a half before the Cloud) by the Chinese Zen master Wumen, we see the following as Case … Continue reading
Posted in "Cloud" commentary, Praxis
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On Translation
[The following is an adapted and shortened version of a rather lengthy analytical piece published elsewhere on this site as "The Poverty of Translation".] Previously I wrote: I would also contend that translation, of the Cloud or any similar … Continue reading
Posted in Philology
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In my boistous beholdyng
In Hodgson’s ME edition of the Cloud, the text proper is introduced (see p. 13) as presenting a boistous beholdyng and in this it is counterposed to a besi beholding. My preferred rendering in Modern … Continue reading
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On feyle and felyng
I have been blessed with an interlocutor who has led me to some very fertile thinking about the terms feyle and felyng (and related terms) in the Cloud. In particular, it seems worthwhile to ask … Continue reading
Posted in "Cloud" commentary, Epistemology, I-referent, Philology
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Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy
Words with the be- prefix like beholding deserve special consideration because the prefix is highly generative and its various senses deeply intuitive to us even a thousand years removed from Beowulf. For one thing, we … Continue reading
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Athomus Redux
[An earlier post on the word athomus in Book IV is found here. It was incomplete, in that it demonstrates too much susceptibility to “angels on the head of a pin” thinking. The following is … Continue reading
Posted in "Cloud" commentary, Philology, Scientism
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Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi, II: Digression
At the risk of an unpardonably remote digression from the texts of the Cloud-author, it is difficult not to indulge a digression on tasting. In the first part of this post we encountered the … Continue reading →