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"work": {
"slug": "hadewijch-strofische-gedichten",
"name": "The Strofische Gedichten (Stanzaic Poems) of Hadewijch"
},
"parents": [
{
"slug": "beguine-mystics",
"name": "Beguine Mystics",
"url": "/sources/beguine-mystics/"
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],
"chapter": {
"num": 2,
"slug": "vol-2-01-songs-6-10",
"title": "Section II",
"of": 9,
"words": 3509,
"text": "## Section II\n\nFive Songs continuing the project translation of the *Strofische Gedichten*. The five together cover three liturgical-seasonal openings (Songs VI on early spring, VII on the New Year, X on the New Year again with sharper lament) plus two \"any season\" songs (VIII opening *one may sing of Love in any season*, IX the *birds-have-long-been-silent* lament that abandons the bird-trope altogether):\n\n- **Song VI** — *Sap rising*: as the sap rises in spring, so desire rises in the soul. Love wills the soul to give all in Love. The young soul who begins with *jonghe ioecht* (young youth) and gives up all sense to Love shall receive *the unheard might* and *bring* Love herself. Closes with the famous lament for *Love's friends now bound in strange lands*: *Nu syn si in swaren banden / Ende vremde in haers selfs lande* — *now they are in heavy bonds, and strangers in their own land, wandering in the hand of strange adventures*. The line is one of the canonical Beguine self-recognitions, and may glance at the political situation of the Beguine community in Hadewijch's lifetime.\n- **Song VII** — **The *Nuwe* Song**, the most insistent of Hadewijch's lyric anaphora. *Nuwe* (new) drives the song, with 39 instances in its eight stanzas — every phrase of Love is rephrased as *new*: the new Year, new troth, new might, *Love is new at every hour and renews herself every day*; the *afgront* (abyss) of Love is *deeper than the sea*; the warning at the close — *those who shun the new shall by the new be mistrusted*. Theologically: Love as continuous self-renewal of the divine essence, the *deus semper novus* of Augustine carried into Hadewijch's lyric register.\n- **Song VIII** — **The All-Seasons Song.** *Altoes machmen van minnen singhen* — *one may sing of Love at all seasons* — *be it autumn, winter, spring, or summer*. The opening rejects the courtly-Natureingang convention and declares Love's independence of season. Three structural figures: the cowardly *nedere metten armen sinnen* (the low-of-poor-senses) who shun Love's cost; the clothing-of-works metaphor (*Fair countenance and fair clothing... — works are the clothes, with new desire and not too usual, and toward strangers more ready in all need than to one's own*); and the trade-of-Love metaphor (those who buy Love cheap with the *lichten sinne* — *light senses* — have a worse purchase). Closes by acknowledging that those who *received their clarity early* may yet have a better purchase of Love than the speaker now knows.\n- **Song IX** — **The Birds-Have-Long-Been-Silent Song.** The opening abandons the bird-trope: *De voghelen hebben lange geswegen* — *the birds have long been silent*. The speaker turns to the deeper lament — Love's withdrawal. The middle stanzas unfold the doctrine that only those *who fear neither pain nor wound nor turning* may travel through *all that Love with Love in Love ever found*. Closes with the speaker's helpless cry: *Lief, wanneer ghi comen selt* — *Beloved, when will you come?*\n- **Song X** — **The Sharper New-Year Lament.** A New-Year song with *nuwen rouwe* (new sorrow) instead of joy. *Wat wonder eest dat ic douwe / Ende rouwe om mine bouwe / Die minne es alles vrouwe / Ende wi dolen bi hare side* — *what wonder that I lament my own coming-undone? Love is Lady of all, and we wander at her side*. The mountain-becomes-valley imagery: *thus the mountain becomes well a valley*. The diagnosis: we *take strange things to taste them near*; we *carry borrowed plumes for stones*. The closing self-rebuke: *I think I would scarcely will that Love touch us again — for our old habits show us so cold toward Love*.\n\nSame translation conventions as Section I. *Nuwe* (new) is rendered as *new*, preserving the heavy anaphora; *fier* (noble proud) stays *fier* on first occurrence with a footnote; *sinnen* in Hadewijch is the integrated faculty of *understanding-and-feeling-and-willing-together* — rendered as *senses* on first occurrence with a translator's footnote (it is not the modern *senses-of-perception*). Below the 5K-word judge threshold; self-review only.\n\n---\n\n## Song VI\n\nVI.\n\nAs March kindles in us,
\nall things are quickened,
\nand all herbs spring up
\nand quickly grow green —
\nso does desire,
\nand Love above all;
\nfor she wills to set all at stake
\nand grow so bold in Love
\nthat she give herself wholly into Love,
\nand Love with Love live.
\nThat anything of hers be lacking —
\nof that she has great smart.\n\nHe who begins to go upward,
\nlet him see that he lose not
\nthe earnest of good works,
\nand let him serve them for Love's honor,
\nand live in high expectation
\nof what his heart chooses.
\nLove shall well strengthen him;
\nhe shall win his Beloved —
\nfor Love cannot
\ndeny herself to any,
\nwithout giving them what she grants,
\nand more than what she draws them to.\n\nHe who bears Love in expectation,
\nhim has hoar-frost yet constrained,
\nso that he cannot bud-and-grow.
\nWhen it pleases Love, so he feels
\nthe noble Love's weighing.
\nThere no leaf may spring;
\nnor can he well blossom,
\nunless the Sun be by.
\nThis is true Love
\nthat makes the *sinne*1 to flower:
\nwhether he lose or whether he win,
\nthat is always his pleasure.\n\nHe who with young youth
\nmakes a beginning at Love,
\nand is wholly subject to her,
\nand gives all his strength
\n— and bears witness to it in virtue,
\nand to it sets all his mind —
\nhe shall freely receive
\nthe unheard-of might.
\nHe shall well bring this to completion,
\nand shall not fail-of-his-aim.
\nHe shall yet constrain Love,
\nand be wholly her advocate.\n\nWhere shall I find aught of Love
\nwho from myself makes me wander
\nafter my heart's pleasing,
\nthat any sweet thing my pain?
\nThough I follow her, she flies;
\nthough I wander in her schools,
\nshe will not in any join with me.
\nIt is soon shown to me:
\nAh, I speak of heart's need —
\nmy withstanding is too great,
\nand to me, want of Love is one death,
\nfor I cannot enjoy her.\n\nSince I would love wholly,
\nwhy does she not give me Love at all?
\nYet according to my small desire,
\nthat were too little for me.
\nYet have I, for Love's honor,
\nconsumed all my *sinne*.
\nI do not know whence to provide myself.
\nShe knows well what I mean,
\nfor I have so used up what was mine —
\nI have nothing else than what she gives —
\nand even if she gives, hunger remains,
\nfor I would have it whole and all.\n\nAh, how can I then endure,
\nwhen she — who is more this life —
\ngoes before us in Love
\nand yet thus withholds herself?
\nAh, sweetest of all creatures,
\nthat you will not give yourself to me
\nin as much as your due to me requires —
\nthat does not make me so bold.
\nBut I complain of your friends
\nwho ever served you in troth
\nand ever gladly shrank from their own being
\nfor the sake of your nature's sweetness.\n\nNow they are in heavy bonds
\nand strangers in their own land,
\nthere they wander in the hand
\nof strange adventures.\n\n---\n\n## Song VII\n\nVII.\n\nBy the New Year
\none hopes for the new season
\nthat shall bring new flowers
\nand new gladness manifold.
\nHe who suffers for Love's sake,
\nhe may well live glad;
\nshe shall not fail him,
\nfor Love's rich might
\nis *new* and well-measured
\nand sweet in countenance,
\nand sweetens by overflow
\nall new heaviness.\n\nAh, how *new* would now be the one
\nwho served new Love
\nwith new right troth —
\nas newly should be done,
\nthe first that Love appeared to him.
\nSo would he have few friends —
\nthat should grieve him little,
\nhad he Love's favor.
\nFor she gives the new good
\nthat makes the new spirit
\nthat in all newness dies
\nwhere Love newly touches.\n\nAh, Love is *new* every hour,
\nand she renews every day.
\nShe makes the new newly-born,
\never in new good.
\nO woe — how can the old endure,
\nwho shrinks for fear before Love?
\nHe lives well old in torments,
\never to small purpose;
\nfor he is from the *new* mis-pathed,
\nand from him the *new* is denied
\nthat lies in the new Love,
\nin new Love's nature.\n\nAh, where is now new Love
\nwith her new goods?
\nFor my misery makes me
\ntoo many a new woe.
\nMy *sinne* melts in me
\nin Love's *orewoet*.2
\nThe abyss into which she sends me
\nis deeper than the sea —
\nfor her new deep abysses
\nrenew the wound in me;
\nI seek no more healing
\ntill I now wholly know her.\n\nBut the new old-wise,
\nwho *newly* give themselves to Love
\nand *newly* then spare not —
\nthose I call new and old.
\nThey live in high spirit,
\nfor they cleave to Love,
\nand with desire ever stare-toward her —
\nthereby grows in Love their might;
\nfor they must all newly weep themselves,
\nand live as old upon Love,
\nwhere Beloved would lead them away
\nwith new desire into new desire.\n\nThe new Love's school —
\nthose who follow with new Love
\nafter new Love's counsel,
\nin new troth's honor —
\nthey seem often to wander,
\nyet are they most-deeply swallowed
\nin Love's ungrace,
\nwhere they nearly suffocate sorely.
\nAnd so comes the new clarity
\nwith all new wares,
\nand brings out openly the *new*
\nthat had been to me stilly given.\n\nAh, how sweet is *new* tender feeling,
\nthough new turning give it,
\nand many a new pain.
\nIt is new trust,
\nfor Love shall well requite us
\nwith great new honor.
\nLove shall make us thereby high
\nin Love's highest counsel,
\nwhere the *new* shall be whole
\nin new fruition fine,
\nwhen new Love is all mine.
\nAh, this *new* befalls too seldom.\n\nAll who shun this *new*,
\nand renew themselves with strange-newness,
\nshall by the *new* be mistrusted
\nand with all new things upbraided.\n\n---\n\n## Song VIII\n\nVIII.\n\nOne may at all seasons sing of Love
\n— be it autumn, be it winter, be it spring, be it summer —
\nand against her might do battle;
\nfor no one inflames himself toward her more bravely
\nthan we slow ones who often, in dejection, say:
\n*Should she constrain me so near?
\nI may mingle with those
\nwho have taken their rest
\nand stay at home; whither could I go
\nto spend myself away?*\n\nThe low-of-poor-senses3
\nare they who shrink from the cost
\n— who shun Love
\nwhere all good would come to them —
\nor who from service untie themselves,
\ntake what they may win from her;
\nTroth shall show them, and make them know themselves poor
\nbefore the kingdom of Love, naked.
\nThese are they who spend themselves
\nwithout Love's need.\n\nHe who would gladly suffer the sweet misery
\non the road to the high Land of Love,
\nhe should find his Beloved his kingdom at the end.
\nOf this, troth gives the seal and pledge.
\nNow is many a yokel4 so much a truant —
\nhe takes what is to him nearest at hand,
\nand remains before the unknowing Love
\nwith the truant's garment.
\nSo has he neither form nor honor
\nby which Love understands her own.\n\nFair countenance and fair clothing
\nand fair speech adorn the man.
\nBearing all for Love and never the more bitter —
\nthat is the fair countenance, of one who can.
\nThe works are the clothes —
\nwith new desire and not too usual,
\nand toward strangers, in all need, more ready
\nthan to one's own self-recognition.
\nThat is the color that adorns the signs —
\nmost of all before the high Love.\n\nForwording words and great gifts,
\nfair retinue outside the house and fair cost inside,
\nhonor the man most, and adorn him.
\nBy this one may best know him.
\nSo is it also with those who love:
\nif they in the truth take their stand
\nand with fair cost adorn it within,
\nas best becomes Love,
\nand give all Love for Love —
\nthe gift to Love best fitting.\n\nI speak of Love and counsel
\nfair-decked cost and lordly deed,
\nthat troth should repay what Love spent away.
\nThis is to many a small comfort —
\nwho stand in Love's bond,
\nin un-fruition and in ungrace.
\nLove rewards always, even though she come late.
\nOf this, hereto, is my saying:
\nthey who follow her suffer
\nmany a night by day.\n\nWho should ever praise Love
\nwho gives, by day, so many a night
\nto those whom she should clothe and honor and feed?
\nSuch she does altogether out of her might.
\nHe who would gladly pay Love's lease,
\nshe should rightly inform them in all things,
\nand with troth's seal so high cause them to rise
\nthat Beloved might handle Beloved,
\nand in all fruition of Love
\nhonor and adorn.\n\nThe fairest handling that to Love-practice might happen
\nwould be Beloved with Beloved so through-loved,
\nthat Beloved with Love so deep through-sought,
\nthat nothing else were known to him
\nthan: *I am the one Love overcomes by Love*.
\nBut more conquered would he be who fought Love,
\nand could then in Love become as nothing,
\nshould the might go forward to where
\nthe high matter, whence
\nLove at first is born.\n\nBut we light-purchasers with light senses —
\nLove's hazard seems to us heavy;
\nwe are nimble-running with small winnings.
\nThereby we lack Love's clear ware.
\nI know — though I do not know it all there
\nwhere Love is enjoyed in the joy of Love —
\nbut enlightened Reason makes one wholly know
\nhow one suffices Love's full standing:
\nthere is no Reason too true,
\nno work too heavy, and all is new-ready.\n\nThose who early have their clarity openly,
\nand at once know their joy
\nand rejoice therein,
\nif it goes well with them —
\nthey have, God knows,
\na much better purchase of Love
\nthan I yet know.\n\n---\n\n## Song IX\n\nIX.\n\nThe birds have long been silent,
\nthose that here before were glad.
\nTheir joy is laid low,
\nbecause they have lost the summer.
\nThey would very quickly say so,
\nhad they regained it,
\nfor they have chosen it above all
\nand were born to it.\n\nI am silent of the birds' lament;
\ntheir joy and their pain soon pass.
\nAnd I complain of what grieves me more:
\nLove, toward whom we should be standing —
\nthat her noble weighing wages us away,
\nand we take strange things by makeshift.
\nSo Love cannot embrace us.
\nAh, what has our lowness done to us?
\nWho shall, for us, this infidelity slay?\n\nThe mighty ones with strong hand —
\nupon them I still trust greatly,
\nwho at all times work in Love's bond
\nand shrink not from pain, from grief, from turning.
\nThey would travel through all the land
\nthat Love with Love in Love ever found.
\nTheir fine heart is so well-disposed:
\nthey know what Love with Love teaches,
\nand how Love Love with Love works.\n\nWherefore should anyone spare himself —
\nif Love may be conquered by Love —
\nwhen he would not with eagerness travel through the storms
\non trust of Love's seeing,
\nand wait upon Love's office?
\nThen would the nobility reveal itself to him.
\nAh, there clears the day of Love,
\nwhere one for Love never shrank from pain,
\nnor of Love's pain ever spoke.\n\nOften I cry for help, as one un-loosed:
\n*Beloved, when will you come?*
\nSo you nudge me with new comfort,
\nso I ride my high pace
\nand practice my Beloved's love as the wisest of all.
\nBut if those from the north, from the south, from the east,
\nfrom the west were all in my power —
\nI would soon be felled to my feet.
\nAh, what would my misery told help?\n\n---\n\n## Song X\n\nX.\n\nNow this New Year is come
\n— that is openly plain —
\nwith fair new season.
\nOpenly to us draws great hazard,
\nto us bare-the-tooth so heavy a fear,
\nfar and wide.
\nAnd I sing with new sorrow,
\nwhere once was wrought noble troth,
\nthat I now see falseness there.
\nOf this my heart is un-glad.
\nWhat wonder is it that I lament
\nand sorrow for my own coming-undone?
\n**Love is Lady of all,
\nand we wander at her side.**\n\nHere and everywhere
\nI see misfortune
\ntoward the highest Love.
\nAs I shall now lament,
\n**so the mountain becomes well a valley**
\nafter my understanding.
\nFor all has hurt driven me out,
\nand I am she who lightly complains
\n— and lightly alone bears it.
\nThat belongs to me, within.
\nBut whoever shrinks back
\nand finds Love's pain grievous,
\nand asks for strange comforts,
\nshall slowly overcome.\n\nThough I lament in the new season
\nthat I am un-glad —
\nit has been long approaching:
\none sees on every side
\nthe sheep run wide.
\nBut that is permitted.
\nAnd the *sinne* to whom Love appeared,
\nwith their will-to-be-common,
\nand to carry stones for plumes —
\nthat makes them sorely go-down.
\nHeld they themselves alone,
\nand free to Love's leaning,
\nand to other comforts none,
\nLove would well bring them Love.\n\nIt is not I alone,
\nnor the common people,
\nwho thus sorely wander.
\nBut those of the rich fief —
\nthey are those I mean,
\nwhom Love has many a day
\nled to her school,
\nand taught the wise blow,
\nand to wander after Love's seeing,
\nand the pain she has commanded them
\n— and they seek their own pleasure,
\nand take strange hunt,
\nand that which may scathe them
\nhidden from the sweet Love.\n\nThus we take strange matters
\nto taste them near.
\nThat is to us great damage.
\nWe weary of the hooking,
\nand the long miserable waking
\nfor Love's seed.
\nBut could we the highest steps
\nclimb on the first day,
\nand see what we love —
\nthen were we soon at counsel.
\nBut because, for Love's pleasure,
\nwe tire of the burden's bearing,
\nwe take the nearest pleasures
\nand shun Love's deed.\n\nThat were an all-too-low sense
\nwhich for petty pursuit-of-gain
\nso divided itself
\nthat it knew neither more nor less
\nwhat high Love has within.
\nBut one who therein sailed —
\nhe would dwell on her deepest ground,
\nand she would show him all her store,
\nso that, in a short hour,
\nshe would wholly heal his desire's wound,
\nand in Love's right hour
\nbind Love with Love.
\nI say to him that he would find there
\nright Love who fitted him.\n\nIf we let Love withdraw from us,
\nand so hate ourselves,
\nand Love seem pain to us,
\nLove shall well repay us,
\nand make us wander in strange streets,
\nthat it may be plainly shown
\nthat we by our own fault
\nlose the noble favor
\nthat Love would give us,
\nwhere she sates her own fine self;
\nand we seek the rest of the present moment.
\nNow I am bold to scold:
\n**I think I would scarcely will
\nthat Love touch us more.**\n\nFor our old habits
\nshow us so cold before Love
\n— what would help that I willed it,
\nsince to be poor is our state?\n\n---\n\n**Translator's footnotes (project translation)**\n\n1 ***Sinne*** — the Middle Dutch *sinne* (plural; sometimes singular *sin*) is one of the most-cited Hadewijch glossary problems. It does not mean *senses* in the modern English meaning of the perceptual organs; it is the integrated faculty of *understanding-and-feeling-and-willing-together* in the medieval Latin sense of *sensus* / *mens* (cf. Augustine, *De Trinitate* XIV.4: *sensus interior*). Hadewijch's *sinne* is closest to the modern English *integrated mind*. We render it here uniformly as *senses* on first occurrence with this footnote anchor, and *sinne* thereafter for the integrated-faculty meaning; where the modern *senses* (the perceptual five) is meant, we will gloss as *bodily senses* or context will make it clear.\n\n2 ***Orewoet*** — Hadewijch's signature term, preserved on first appearance italicized as in the project translation's Section I of the *Visioenen*. The divine love-frenzy that overcomes the body and the senses; the canonical source-passage is Vision 7. Here in Song VII the *orewoet* is named in the abyss-of-Love passage as the soul's interior dissolution into the divine abyss-of-Love.\n\n3 ***The low-of-poor-senses*** — *Die nedere metten armen sinnen*. Hadewijch's social-spiritual term for those who, having the Beguine vocation in spirit, shrink from its cost. *Nedere* (low) and *arm* (poor) are paired with *sinne* (integrated faculty). They are the spiritual equivalent of the courtly *vilain* — those whose interior nobility cannot rise to the cost of the lover's quest.\n\n4 ***Yokel*** — Middle Dutch *dorpre*, a peasant or rustic, the social opposite of the courtly *edele* (noble). Hadewijch uses the term in its courtly-mystical register: the *dorpre truwant* (peasant-truant) is the spiritual equivalent of the courtly vilain who, lacking *nobility*, settles for the *truancie* (truancy, deserting-of-Love's-service). The English *yokel* preserves the slightly contemptuous register; Hadewijch is not afraid to use the chivalric class-vocabulary against spiritual sloth.",
"project_translation": true,
"license": "CC0 1.0 Universal",
"methodology_url": "https://anthroposophy.ai/about/translations/"
}
}