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"work": {
"slug": "hadewijch-mengeldichten",
"name": "The Mengeldichten (Mixed Poems) of Hadewijch"
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"chapter": {
"num": 4,
"slug": "vol-4-01-poem-17-seven-names",
"title": "Section IV",
"of": 6,
"words": 2030,
"text": "## Section IV\n\n**Poem XVII — *De minne hevet vij namen* — Love Has Seven Names** — is among the most-cited Hadewijch poems and one of the canonical doctrinal *Mengeldichten*. Modern critical scholarship (Van Mierlo 1942, Reynaert 1981) attributes it to Hadewijch herself, distinct from the later \"Hadewijch II\"-school poems that follow it (XVIII–XXIX, treated separately in Section V). The poem unfolds Love's seven names — four *fier* (bold) names and three *great and severe / always short and eternally long* names:\n\n| | Name | Register |\n|---|---|---|\n| 1 | ***bant*** (bond) | *fier* — binds; the eating-of-each-other in the Eucharistic union |\n| 2 | ***licht*** (light) | *fier* — makes known what God-as-man is, and the soul as the human-and-divine in one |\n| 3 | ***cole*** (coal / ember) | *fier* — God's silent gift in the soul; the messenger of Love; sets the cold afire |\n| 4 | ***vier*** (fire) | *fier* — burns all luck and misfortune; consumes hate and love |\n| 5 | ***dau*** (dew) | *great-and-severe* — sweet air that brings the kiss of noble nature; cools the burning |\n| 6 | ***levende borne*** (living spring) | *great-and-severe* — the flowing and flowing-back; feeds the living soul |\n| 7 | ***hille*** (hell) | *great-and-severe* — Love's highest name; consumes and dooms; grants no grace; ever-storms, ever-pursues |\n\nThe eschatological designation of **Love's highest name as *hille* (hell)** is one of Hadewijch's most strikingly compressed doctrinal moves — the *love-hell* in which the soul, willingly cast in by Love, is *always-stormed-on, always-newly-pursued, all-swallowed, all-consumed*. This is the *direct* root of Marguerite Porete's later doctrine (*Mirror*, Sec X in the project translation) of the *Soul who would gladly choose hell if it pleased God*. The doctrinal lineage is unmistakable.\n\nSame conventions as previous Sections. Below the 5K-word judge threshold (3,400 EN words); self-review only.\n\n---\n\n## Poem XVII — The Seven Names of Love\n\n**Love has seven names,
\nas you well know, after her fitness:**
\nthat is — *bond, light, coal, fire*;
\nthese four names are her *fier*.
\nThe other three are *great and severe*,
\never-short and eternally-long:
\nthat is — *dew, living spring, and hell*.
\nThat I tell you these names
\nis because they stand in the Scripture,
\nto do enough to her nature —
\nthat they bear witness and have shown
\nthat I have not deceived you,
\nthat Love has all these habits.
\nHe shall all know it who fully lives her,
\non whom much wonder lies,
\nwhich I before-this have told you.\n\n***Bond* she is** — because she binds
\nand makes known all in her constraint.
\nHer bond is at all things well-heard,
\nas he knows well who has tasted it;
\nfor she, in the midst of comfort, disturbs;
\nshe gives in all sorrows comfort.
\nHer bond does this — that I within
\nfrom pain depart, after my understanding.
\nHer bond does all to be joined
\nin one fruition, in one satisfaction.
\nThis is the bond that all-binds
\nwhere the one through-knows the other
\nin pain, in rest, in *orewoet*,
\nand *eats his flesh and drinks his blood*,
\nand the one heart consumes the other,
\nthe one soul through-travels the other with storm.
\nAs he showed us, who himself is Love,
\nthis goes above human *sinne* —
\nhe who gave us himself to eat.
\nBy that he made us to know
\nthat this was the most-near in Love
\n— through-eating, through-tasting, through-seeing from within.
\n**He eats us, and we think to eat him;
\nyet do we eat him — that we may know.**
\nBut because he remains so un-consumed,
\nand so un-touched, and so un-desired,
\ntherefore each remains un-eaten
\nand so far apart from the other.
\nHe who is in these bonds embraced
\nmay to fully eating go —
\nwhether he in God, or in man,
\nwill know-through, taste-through, beyond all wishes.
\nHer bond makes one know what *this is*:
\n*I in my Beloved, and my Beloved in me*.1\n\n***Light* her name** — makes one understand all
\nwhat to the Beloved most has been mis-done,
\nand what to Love most is becoming,
\nand what matters Love most dooms.
\nIn this light may one know
\nhow one shall love God-the-man,
\nand the man-God, and both-in-one.
\nThis is an over-rich fief.\n\n***Coal* her name** — that I mark to you:
\nWhat token she is in the Scripture.
\nShe is a wondrous present
\nwhich God sends within into the soul,
\nin all attaining, in all lacking,
\nin atonement, in threatening, in vengeance,
\nin comfort, in joys, in labor,
\nin all the un-habits I have spoken.
\n**The coal is a swift messenger
\nwho serves Love very well.**
\nHer office is without ceasing;
\nno Love may fail her therein.
\nThe coal kindles him who was cold;
\nshe makes timid him who was bold;
\nthe faring she sets at foot;
\nthe low she makes of high spirit;
\nthe poor she sets in a kingdom
\nthat he yield to no one.
\nAll the falling and the rising,
\nthe taking, the giving, the receiving,
\nkindles and quenches by *orewoet*
\n— the coal her name, now becomes weary.
\nBehold yourself in this, and mark
\nwhat unheard-of wonders he works
\nbefore he comes again to the fire,
\nwhere he within all-condemns,
\nburns through, swallows, and consumes
\nthat was denied and that was desired.\n\n***Fire* her name** — that burns all:
\nluck, success, and misfortune.
\nOf all beings, to him alone
\nwho ever this fire so near came near,
\nno matter is too wide nor too narrow.
\nWhen this fire thus over-passes,
\nso it is all-one to him what is consumed —
\nhated, loved, denied, desired,
\nwon, lost, fitting, unfitting,
\ngain, scath, honor, shame.
\nComfort with God in heaven to be,
\nor in the hellish pain
\n— so it is to this fire alone:
\nhe burns up all that ever came near him,
\nneither for condemning nor for blessing
\nnot to me — and which I may admit.
\nNow her name has its office
\nwhen the fire thus burns with its might.\n\n***Dew* her name** — she comes and makes all moist,
\nas an unheard-of sweet air,
\nand brings the kiss of the noble natures
\nand makes them in un-enduring endure.
\nThe eagerness swallows her giving
\nso that she must ever practice these habits.
\nThen all the storms abate
\nthat there were raised up.
\nThere comes a stillness-standing,
\nwhere Beloved from Beloved shall receive
\nsuch a kiss as well-becomes Love
\nwhen she embraces Beloved in every *sinne*.
\nShe through-sucks her, and through-tastes,
\nwhen Love-of-Beloved is thus reached.
\n**She eats her flesh, she drinks her blood** —
\nLove who thus consumes her
\nsweetly leads them both
\ninto one kiss without parting.
\nThat kiss unites fair
\nin one being three persons.
\nThus the noble dew softens the burning
\nthat was so storm-driven in Love's land.\n\n***Living Spring* her sixth name** —
\nfollows the dew very fittingly.
\nThe flowing and the flowing-back,
\nthe one through the other, and the growing-in —
\nthat is above sense and above understanding
\nand above knowing and above receiving
\nof human creatures. Yet we have it in our nature:
\nthe hidden ways that Love bids one go,
\nand with blows the sweet kissings to receive.
\nThere one receives the sweet living life
\nthat to the living life-life shall give.
\nThe name is *living spring* because she feeds
\nand a living soul in the manhood guards,
\nand with life out of life springs forth,
\nand the life out of life your life brings.
\n**The living spring flows at all seasons —
\nin old habits, in new diligence —
\njust as out flows the river
\nand again to herself she quickly draws.
\nSo does Love consume her giving;
\nthus is her name *spring and life*.**\n\n***Hell* — her seventh name** —
\nof Love at which I languish.
\nFor she all-consumes and all-condemns,
\nand in her no one comes back
\nwho falls into her and whom she embraces
\n— that thereto no grace goes.
\nJust as hell all-destroys,
\nand in her one wins nothing else
\nthan ungrace and strong pain,
\never to be in un-stillness —
\never storm and new pursuing,
\nall swallowed and all engulfed
\nin her bottomless nature.
\nSinking in heat, in cold, at every hour,
\nin Love's deep-high darkness —
\nthis goes above the labor of hell.
\nHe who knows of Love her coming and going,
\nto him it is known; he may understand
\nthat to Love it is very becoming
\nthat *hell is her highest name*.2\n\nNow mark how in these names are
\nall the beings of fine Love.
\nSo wise is no heart that her thought
\nof the bond of Love might
\nthe thousandth part reveal,
\neven though she let the other six pass.
\nFrom the *bond* one becomes sure of this:
\n**that from Love there is no parting
\nby any wonder, by any power.**
\nThis is the gift of Wisdom's might.
\nHuman heart cannot reach to it;
\nyet must she bear bond by bonds.
\nFrom *light* we have Love's handling,
\nher knowing-will in every manner,
\nwhy one must love the manhood
\ntogether-with the godhead, and know.
\nWith the *coal* she sets-fire to them two;
\nwith the *fire* she burns them one,
\njust as with the fire in the salamander
\nthe phoenix burns and becomes another.
\nWith the *dew* the burning is softened
\nand salved with that one only air.
\nThe well-being and the *orewoet*
\nshe throws then into the deepest flood
\nwhich is bottomless and ever lives,
\nand with the life makes-them-three one —
\nGod and humans into one Love.
\nThis is three-fold above all *sinne*.\n\nThese bring the *seventh* name
\nwhich is highest and best becoming:
\nthat is *hell*, after the being-that-is-Love;
\nfor she destroys soul and *sinne*,
\nso that she may no more recover,
\nnor in other matters more suffer
\nthan lost to be in storm of Love,
\nwith body, with soul, with heart, with *sinne*.
\nThe lovers remain lost in the hell.
\nHe who would, let him guard himself from this.
\nFor before Love there is no other rising-up
\nthan at every hour comfort and blows to receive,
\nin the marrow of the heart that troth has known.
\n*Sought were the offering of free Love
\nif we did as we must win it;
\nthough one is far, one shall know it.*\n\n***Dilata, ira decrescit.
\nExplicit liber iste.
\nDeo gratias. Amen.***3\n\n---\n\n**Translator's footnotes (project translation)**\n\n1 ***I in my Beloved, and my Beloved in me*** — John 6:56 (*qui manducat meam carnem et bibit meum sanguinem, in me manet, et ego in illo*), the Johannine eucharistic indwelling. The whole **bond-name** stanza is structured around this verse: Love-as-bond *is* the eucharistic mutual-indwelling. The famous *he eats us, and we think to eat him; yet do we eat him* turns the *eats my flesh, drinks my blood* into a mutual-eating that is the heart of Hadewijch's eucharistic mystical theology. The line is paralleled in Vision 7 (the bridegroom-communion vision) and is the canonical Beguine articulation of *mystical-eucharistic union*.\n\n2 ***Hell is her highest name*** — Hadewijch's most striking doctrinal compression. The *love-hell* is the soul's *willing-being-cast-into* Love who *all-consumes, all-condemns, grants no grace, ever-storms, ever-pursues, all-swallows, all-engulfs*. This is *not* the metaphysical hell of the damned — Hadewijch distinguishes carefully — but a *higher* hell that *goes above the labor of hell*: the soul, freely chosen by Love, in *bottomless nature* sinks in *heat, in cold, at every hour*, in Love's *deep-high darkness*. The doctrinal root: Marguerite Porete's *Mirror* X (in the project translation), where the Soul says she would gladly choose hell *if it pleased God to send her there*. The Hadewijch *love-hell* doctrine — that *hell is Love's highest name* — is the direct ancestor of Porete's *willed-annihilation in God* and Eckhart's *abegescheidenheit*.\n\n3 ***Dilata, ira decrescit. Explicit liber iste. Deo gratias. Amen.*** — Latin (*Let it expand; the anger lessens. This book is finished. Thanks be to God. Amen.*). The closing-of-book formula in the manuscripts is a standard medieval *explicit*-block, marking the close of the Hadewijch-authentic *Mengeldichten*. Poems XVIII–XXIX, traditionally attributed to a \"Hadewijch II\" school-poet, follow in the manuscripts without the *explicit* — transparently a separate body of work (treated in Section V of this project translation).",
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"license": "CC0 1.0 Universal",
"methodology_url": "https://anthroposophy.ai/about/translations/"
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}