{ "meta": { "schema_version": "1.1", "endpoint": "/api/sources/beguine-mystics/hadewijch-strofische-gedichten/vol-3-01-songs-11-15.json" }, "work": { "slug": "hadewijch-strofische-gedichten", "name": "The Strofische Gedichten (Stanzaic Poems) of Hadewijch" }, "parents": [ { "slug": "beguine-mystics", "name": "Beguine Mystics", "url": "/sources/beguine-mystics/" } ], "chapter": { "num": 3, "slug": "vol-3-01-songs-11-15", "title": "Section III", "of": 9, "words": 3515, "text": "## Section III\n\nFive Songs continuing the *Strofische Gedichten* project translation. The thematic arc moves from a confident *spring-of-the-noble* opening (XI), through a sharp warning to false converts (XII) and the nightingale-wound song (XIII), into two of Hadewijch's most autobiographical adversity-songs (XIV–XV):\n\n- **Song XI** — *The Noble Time is born*. The proud-noble (*edele*) are *chosen to bear the yoke of Love's bond*. The song quotes Matthew 11:30 directly — *Mijn ioc es soet mine bordene es licht*, *my yoke is sweet, my burden is light* — and gives Hadewijch's compressed gloss on the saying: *the law of servants is fear, but Love is the law of sons*. The middle stanzas develop the inner-outer paradox (the burden is *light* only to those who bear it from within); the closing stanza places the lover *in the channel where Love drinks all her wine, and with Love makes drunk her friends*. Closes with the cosmic image: *the sun, the moon, the stars, stand at her mercy*.\n- **Song XII** — *One may well hope of the new times*. A warning-song addressed to the *nuwe liede* (newcomers) who would *practice Love now*: many seem in Love who *wander out of troth into strange ways*. The famous boast-passage *Wi connen ons wel vermeten / Du mijn lief ende ic di* — *We dare well boast: you my Beloved and I yours; pleasure has possessed us, satisfaction makes us free* — followed by the warning that this confident state cannot last unless Love grants the *edele wesen* (noble being) itself. Closes on Love's mighty rod that brought even Christ himself to death.\n- **Song XIII** — *In the gladdest time of the year*. The nightingale-opening, courtly *Natureingang*: *all birds sing clear, the nightingale openly tells us her joy* — *and yet the heart that noble Love has wounded has the heaviest weight*. The bell of Love's arrow: *every time as the arrow stirs, it widens the wound*; the famous middle stanza on the school of Love, *the higher she would build the hall, the deeper the ground must turn*; the closing image of *Love's wounds without healing*, given by the masters of Love's school to those who *with truth in Love compose / and with clear Reason brighten* the school.\n- **Song XIV** — *Though the time is glad everywhere / and mountain and dale are green* — *it appears small in show to him who has misfortune toward Love*. The signature *orewoet* term is named openly: *what he endures in orewoet, only he can know who has wholly given himself over to Love*. The Latin-Dutch macaronic stanza with *Ay amabar* (Ah, I was loved) and *Ay utinam / Hadde si mi doch doet gherenen* (Ah, would that she had touched me to death). The Reason-vs-Freedom dialectic: *Love wills all Love and will not wait; Reason calls her to slow down and prepare; Freedom would lead her at once where with Beloved she may become one*. Closes with *Love rewards always, even when she comes late*.\n- **Song XV** — The Adversity-Song. *Now has my misfortune mustered its war-march against me; it gathers on every side; my high free ways are besieged; peace is denied me*. The famous autobiographical middle stanza: *In my young days, when Love first fought against me, she showed me great hospitality — her ways, her kingdom, her goods, her might. When I went with her and undertook to pay Love's full lease... she clung to me, one alone. Now the storm seems to have calmed considerably.* The closing testimony: *I have given over to high Love all that I am — win or lose, I bear her debt no less; what has happened to me? I am not my own. She has swallowed up all my sinne. Her fine being makes certain that the pain of Love is all gain.* And the closing manifesto: *hidden from the strangers, held to the loving — he who does not enter knows not the sweet wandering in Love's school.*\n\nSame conventions as Sections I–II. *Edele* (noble proud) and *fier* are kept close to the Middle Dutch register. The Matthew 11:30 quotation in Song XI is footnoted; the *orewoet* in Song XIV is anchored. Below the 5K-word judge threshold; self-review only.\n\n---\n\n## Song XI\n\nXI.\n\nNow is the noble time born
\nthat shall bring us flowers into the land;
\nso are the noble who are chosen
\nto bear that yoke of Love's bond.
\nFor them blossoms ever the troth at hand,
\nand the noble flower with its fruit.
\nThere with troth the Word is sought-through;
\nthere Love remains constant
\nwith one through-knotted strangeness,
\nin the highest of Love's counsel.\n\n***My yoke is sweet, my burden is light*** —1
\nso says he himself, the lover of Love.
\nThis word he had set down in Love;
\noutside it, one cannot know it for true.
\nAs I can well understand it,
\nto him the burden is light;
\nyet they suffer many a fearful hour
\nwho live outside Love —
\nfor the servants' law is fear,
\nbut Love is the law of sons.\n\nWhat is *the burden light* in Love,
\nand *the yoke that tastes so sweet*?
\nThat is the noble bearing within,
\nwhere the Beloved by Love is touched,
\nand into one will so unified-made,
\ninto one being without turning;
\ndesire's depth scoops up evermore,
\nand the scooping drinks all the Love.
\nThe debt that Love summons to Love
\ngoes beyond human *sinne*.\n\nIt might never come to heart or sense
\nof one whom Love with Love has overburdened
\nhow he gazes upon his Beloved with Love;
\nfor he spares not an hour
\nfrom gazing with troth into the fine Love
\n— for his judgments must all be
\nread in Love's countenance.
\nAnd there he sees clearly
\ntruth without seeming,
\nin many a sweet pain.\n\nHe sees in clarity, who loves,
\nthat he must practice with full truth.
\nWhen he with truth then recognizes
\nthat he does for Love too little,
\nstorms in pain his high spirit;
\nfor in Love's countenance he takes all,
\nhow Love is to be practiced for Love
\n— and the judgment is the sweetening of the pain,
\nand gives him: *to give all for all*
\nfor the sake of Love's enough.\n\nThose who give themselves to Love in enough this way
\n— what great wonder shall happen to them.
\nThey shall with Love to Love alone cleave,
\nand shall with Love all Love see-through,
\nand with her hidden veins all draw
\ninto the channel where Love pours all her Love,
\nand with Love drinks her friends all drunk
\nin wonder before her wooing.
\nThis stays from the strangers all winked-away,
\nand openly shown to the wise.\n\nGod give to all who desire Love
\nthat they so make-ready to Love
\nthat they spend themselves wholly on her kingdom,
\nthat Love may lead them into her Love.
\nThen can to them, by the cruel strangers,
\nnothing miscarry — they live so free,
\nwhen I am all Love's and Love all mine.
\nWhat more can hurt them then? —
\nFor at her mercy stand
\nthe sun, the moon, the stars.\n\n---\n\n## Song XII\n\nXII.\n\nOne may hope, in the new season,
\non the new day,
\nwell in every direction,
\nalways when it is now well-possible.
\nLove knows the many blows
\nthat I bear for her sake.
\nSo I live forward on Love's seeing,
\nglad with a sorrowful heart.\n\nThough I had New Year
\nand new season and green,
\nyet I should live in hazard
\nin all my showing
\nwith full new un-quietness,
\nunless Love reveal herself to me
\nand give herself wholly in spending
\nin all new clarity.\n\nIt would be to him now ill-prepared,
\nwho now would practice troth.
\nTo him should grievously happen
\nmany a new sorrow,
\nshould the cruel strangers beat him
\nin many a new feud,
\nbefore he could behold that land
\nwhere Love leads her friend.\n\nAh, hear, you new people
\nwho now would practice Love,
\nand mark what I tell you,
\nand guard yourselves against this:
\nmany there are who seem-as-if they bowed-down
\nwhere one counseled them to Love,
\nand wander out of troth into strange ways
\n— this I saw, that it happened.\n\nSome think themselves in Love
\nto have great fortune.
\nTo them it seems in every *sinne*
\nthat mountain and dale have bloomed.
\nBut when one shall grip-toward the truth,
\nthere is little inside.
\nBy works of troth one proves all
\nwhether one wins anything in Love.\n\nIt is too miserable a life
\nhere without Beloved so long;
\nthat often makes us stumble
\nand brings us into many a delusion.
\nWere it time, I would know how to thank troth
\n— would she give us that being
\nwhich would lead us in Love's constraint
\nto cleave-one to her nature.\n\n**We dare well boast:
\nyou my Beloved and I yours.**
\nPleasure has possessed us;
\nsatisfaction makes us free;
\nand we might endure (ah me!)
\nif Love would let us know once
\nthe noble being she is —
\nwe could not for an hour forget it.\n\nNow mark, all you wise:
\nhow great is Love's might.
\nShe holds the mighty rod
\nover all that God bade.
\n**She brought him himself unto death.**
\nBefore Love there is no guard.
\nWork in Love's troth and become her companion,
\nand taste-through her noble goods.\n\nWhomever Love ever moved from within
\n— he is of so *fier*-noble2 spirit:
\nwhatever he endures in withstanding,
\nit is to him for the best success.\n\n---\n\n## Song XIII\n\nXIII.\n\nIn the gladdest time of the year,
\nwhen all the birds sing clear,
\nand the nightingale openly
\nmakes her joy known to us —
\nthen has the heart the heaviest weight
\nthat noble Love has wounded.\n\nHow can the noble sense endure
\n— yes, noblest of all creatures —
\nthat must love the highest by nature,
\nand yet does not have his Beloved?
\nWhen Love's arrow touches him,
\nhe shudders that he lives.\n\nIn every season as the arrow stirs
\nit widens the wound, and brings affliction.
\nAll who love know it well:
\nthat ever one must be —
\nsweetness, or smart, or both at once —
\nhe drifts before Love's face.\n\nHow can it shudder him then, who loves
\nand knows himself thus in Love lost?
\nThey are conquered, in that they conquer
\nthat unconquered great
\nthat makes him at every hour begin
\nthe life in new death.\n\nHere can no Love deny her own;
\none must in her kingdom her might consume.
\nHow also is one wholly worn-down in Love?
\nThat is to the strangers unknown:
\n**the higher she would build the hall,
\nthe deeper turns the ground.**\n\nIn Love's right, this is borne up:
\nhe who strikes the blow shall himself be struck;
\nthe light is weighed even-heavy;
\nthe might shall first be conquered;
\nthe kingdom comes itself against us,
\nbefore all who can love.\n\nBut few there are who *for-all Love all love*,
\nand still less can think Love with Love.
\nOf these, all too late shall they win
\nthe kingdom and the high counsel,
\nand the knowing that Love makes one know
\nwho goes to her school.\n\nIt is great grief that we thus wander,
\nand the high manner stays hidden from us —
\nwhich Love has committed to the masters
\nwho lecture in fine Love
\nthe highest lesson of Love's school:
\nthat is, how one may be enough to Love.\n\nBut those who beforehand make their term,
\neven though they then jubilate3
\nand with feasting salve
\ntheir Beloved in a short hour —
\nif they accord-with-her by suffering,
\nto them the school becomes well known.\n\nBut those who would here with Beloved revel,
\nand with feeling then dance,
\nand with pleasure therein kiss —
\nI tell them well beforehand:
\nthey must adorn themselves well with virtues,
\nor there is the school lost.\n\nBut those who with truth in Love compose,
\nand with clear Reason then make-bright,
\nthere shall Love found her school;
\nthey shall be masters,
\nand receive Love's highest gifts:
\n*wounds without healing*.\n\nLove gives thus, with her wounds,
\nand shows her wide knowing.
\n**The desire she holds open and unbound,
\nwhere Love with storm sees through her** —
\nthough it shudder then the un-healthy ones,
\nthat need be no wonder to us.\n\nLove who has thus through-waded all
\nwith deep hunger and with full saturations
\n— no withering nor blooming can harm,
\nnor help, any season.
\nIn the deepest ford, in the highest grades,
\nher being remains one.\n\n---\n\n## Song XIV\n\nXIV.\n\nThough the time is glad everywhere,
\nand mountain and dale are green —
\nthat appears very small in show
\nto him who has misfortune toward Love.
\nI do not know in what he shall rejoice;
\nto him all gladness is pain.
\nThat is no wonder
\nwhen he is without
\nhis Beloved after his desire,
\nand has not
\nthat on which he lives —
\nupon what then should he feed?\n\nHe who feeds on Love wholly without success —
\nwhat he endures in ***orewoet***4
\nthat can alone know
\nthe one who has wholly let himself over to Love,
\nand then is left by her unfed.
\nTo him there is utter woe toward Love;
\nfor he burns heavily
\nin hope and in fear,
\never with new hours;
\nfor all his desire
\nis feeding and consuming
\nand fruition of Love's natures.\n\nThose who live thus in hunger of Love,
\nand from whom fruition is yet kept away —
\nah, who can believe them?
\nFor they cleave one-with-Love so utterly,
\nthat when Love should give herself wholly to them,
\nit becomes a robbing;
\nand then a fear strikes them.
\n***Ay amabar***5
\nwhere shall I, poor, henceforth?
\nBefore this thus came to me —
\n***Ay utinam***6
\nhad she but touched me dead.\n\nThat is a woe well unknown.
\nIt is never well loved by strangers;
\nto pleasure it is too heavy;
\nfor she at all hours weeps over it,
\nthat she should bind herself to fruition
\nin freedoms without fear.
\nBut clear Reason
\nhas scorn;
\nit seems to her a turning,
\nbefore she climbs
\nwhere she fully finds
\nher Beloved in highest honor.\n\nLove wills all Love; she will not wait.
\nShe wills at all hours in sweetness to graze
\nin pleasure after her desires.
\nReason bids her tarry, prepare-toward-Love-fittingly;
\nand Freedom would lead her at once
\nwhere with Beloved she may become one.
\nSuch storms
\nmake terror in form;
\nthis is unknown to the strangers,
\nwho altogether
\nbefore Love's need
\nhave not tasted of un-tempering.\n\nThere Love comforts the young with new comfort,
\nand they think themselves all delivered.
\nSo they are, as it were, at court,
\nand live to themselves as the wisest;
\nand they think they have done the joust
\nin all full praise.
\nBut when their Reason wakes them
\nand shows them the work
\nthey have to do
\nwith new spirit,
\nthey become timid
\nwho at first were bold.\n\nAh Love, that fine virtue,
\nwho is the advocate of all things,
\nand may constrain all things —
\nshe must give-account-of-herself,
\nand she shall pay us;
\nshe shall not deceive us.
\nThose who all sorrows
\ntaste with troth,
\nthey may well sing glad.\n\nThat anyone doubts — that is great damage.
\n**Love rewards always, even though she come late.**
\nThose who let themselves over to her
\nand follow her highest counsel,
\nand remain constant in the nothing —
\nshe shall reward with Love.\n\n---\n\n## Song XV\n\nXV.\n\nOne may the new season
\nwell know everywhere.
\nThe birds have delight;
\nthe flowers spring in mountain and dale.
\nWherever they stand,
\nthey have escaped
\nthe strange winter that troubled them.
\nI am undone —
\nnothing soon comforts me
\nin Love against my misfortune.\n\n**Now has my misfortune
\nmustered its war-march against me.**
\nIt gathers from everywhere.
\nMy high free ways
\nare sorely besieged.
\nPeace is denied me.
\nMark whether to me any sorrow be known.
\nI was weighed-down
\nwhere Love had spoken-blessing.
\nAh noble Love, for that I thank you.\n\nLove who all conquers,
\nhelp me that I may conquer;
\nand she who knows all need,
\ngrant me that I may know
\nhow heavy it is that harms me.
\nHad I the counsel
\nto wait for the fruition of Love
\n— the cruel counsel
\nthat goes against this
\nsaddens the might of my *sinne*.\n\nBy Love I can all-things
\novercome my miserable need.
\nI know well I shall —
\nyet I have many a withstanding
\nthat makes me die
\nmany times over,
\nsince Love first shot me from within.
\nI will lack all things
\nuntil Love would heir me
\ninto the kingdom that she offered me.\n\nIn my young days,
\nwhen Love first fought against me,
\nshe showed me great hospitality,
\nher ways, her kingdom, her goods, her might.
\nWhen I went with her
\nand undertook
\nto pay Love's full lease
\ngladly above all things —
\nshe clung to me, one alone.
\nNow the storm seems much abated.\n\nThus has Love betrayed me
\nwith much that she has shown me,
\nwith many a sweet satiety
\nwhere new youth is suckled,
\nhigh-savored breakfasts
\nwith new delight,
\nin which I have all gladly suffered.
\nI lament and reproach
\nwith new diligence —
\nhold me up, who once had heightened me.\n\nI know well that Love
\nlives, though I die thus often;
\nfor I know her living.
\nI bear well, all gladly in play,
\nmisfortune and humility,
\nwhether evil whether good.
\nI am she who gladly to the strangers conceals it.
\nMy high mood
\nis of this well-knowing:
\nthat Love with Love shall make-good-the-loss.\n\n**I have given over to high Love
\nall that I am.**
\nWhether I lose or win, it is all one;
\nher debt no more, no less.
\nWhat has happened to me?
\nI am not my own.
\nShe has swallowed up all my *sinne*.
\nHer fine being
\nmakes me certain
\nthat the pain of Love is all gain.\n\nI acknowledge: Love is well worthy
\nof whether-I-lose-or-win — that is all one.
\nThis I have ever most desired,
\nsince Love first stirred my heart:
\nto be enough to her
\nafter her fittingness,
\nas ever well it appeared.
\nFor I bore
\nwhat she struck me;
\nfor her sake it was to me the richest fief.\n\nHe who would live enough-for-Love —
\nlet him not spare himself; that is my counsel.
\nHe shall give himself wholly
\nto working in the highest deed's life,
\n**hidden from the strangers,
\nheld to the loving**.
\nHe who knows not Love's being —
\nthe sweet wandering
\nin Love's school
\nhe knows not, who does not enter.\n\nHow I am wasted by what Love has commanded me
\n— that remains without leaving.\n\n---\n\n**Translator's footnotes (project translation)**\n\n1 ***My yoke is sweet, my burden is light*** — direct quotation (in Middle Dutch) of Matthew 11:30 in the Vulgate: *iugum enim meum suave est, et onus meum leve*. Hadewijch follows the quotation with her own gloss: *the law of servants is fear, but Love is the law of sons*, fusing Romans 8:15 (*you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father*) with the Johannine *I have not called you servants, but friends* (John 15:15). The whole stanza of Song XI is a compressed treatise on the *iugum-leve* paradox: the yoke is light only to those who bear it from *the inside* — from within Love.\n\n2 ***Fier*** — Middle Dutch *fier*, the noble proud spirit of the courtly-Minne tradition. In Hadewijch's register it carries no negative valence; it is the positive nobility of the soul that refuses anything less than full and total Love. The Old French *fier* (proud) underlies the courtly cognate. *Fier moed* (proud spirit) is the most-prized soul-quality in Hadewijch's lyric corpus.\n\n3 ***Jubileren*** — to *jubilate* in the Augustinian *jubilus*-tradition; see the translator's footnote in Section I (Song III) of this project translation. The *jubilus* is the soul's wordless contemplative response to the simultaneous joy-and-pain of Love-experience.\n\n4 ***Orewoet*** — Hadewijch's signature term for the divine love-frenzy that overcomes the body and senses, preserved untranslated and italicized as in the project translations of the *Visioenen* and earlier *Strofische Gedichten* Sections. Song XIV is one of the *Strofische Gedichten*'s most direct invocations of the term in the lyric corpus.\n\n5 ***Ay amabar*** — Latin (*Ah, I was loved*). Hadewijch interpolates the Latin imperfect-passive *amabar* into the Middle Dutch lyric — a sign of her Latin literacy and the standard medieval troubadour-bilingual technique. The form *amabar* (I was loved) names exactly the soul's state when Love has withdrawn — the speaker was once loved, is no longer.\n\n6 ***Ay utinam*** — Latin (*Ah, would that*). The optative-particle *utinam* in classical Latin introduces wishes contrary-to-fact; Hadewijch follows it with the contrary-to-fact wish *Hadde si mi doch doet gherenen* — *had she but touched me to death*. The double-Latin tag *amabar / utinam* in the same stanza is one of the corpus's strongest signals of Hadewijch's classical-Latin training, suggesting a learned milieu — consistent with the *forgotten little master at Paris* listed among the perfected in Vision 13's *Lijst*.", "project_translation": true, "license": "CC0 1.0 Universal", "methodology_url": "https://anthroposophy.ai/about/translations/" } }