Greco-Christian stream·Beguine Mystics·The Mengeldichten (Mixed Poems) of Hadewijch·Section IV

Section IV

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:

The 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.

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Poem XVII — The Seven Names of Love

Love has seven names,
as you well know, after her fitness:
that is — bond, light, coal, fire;
these four names are her fier.
The other three are great and severe,
ever-short and eternally-long:
that is — dew, living spring, and hell.
That I tell you these names
is because they stand in the Scripture,
to do enough to her nature —
that they bear witness and have shown
that I have not deceived you,
that Love has all these habits.
He shall all know it who fully lives her,
on whom much wonder lies,
which I before-this have told you.

Bond she is — because she binds
and makes known all in her constraint.
Her bond is at all things well-heard,
as he knows well who has tasted it;
for she, in the midst of comfort, disturbs;
she gives in all sorrows comfort.
Her bond does this — that I within
from pain depart, after my understanding.
Her bond does all to be joined
in one fruition, in one satisfaction.
This is the bond that all-binds
where the one through-knows the other
in pain, in rest, in orewoet,
and eats his flesh and drinks his blood,
and the one heart consumes the other,
the one soul through-travels the other with storm.
As he showed us, who himself is Love,
this goes above human sinne —
he who gave us himself to eat.
By that he made us to know
that this was the most-near in Love
— through-eating, through-tasting, through-seeing from within.
He eats us, and we think to eat him;
yet do we eat him — that we may know.
But because he remains so un-consumed,
and so un-touched, and so un-desired,
therefore each remains un-eaten
and so far apart from the other.
He who is in these bonds embraced
may to fully eating go —
whether he in God, or in man,
will know-through, taste-through, beyond all wishes.
Her bond makes one know what this is:
I in my Beloved, and my Beloved in me.¹

Light her name — makes one understand all
what to the Beloved most has been mis-done,
and what to Love most is becoming,
and what matters Love most dooms.
In this light may one know
how one shall love God-the-man,
and the man-God, and both-in-one.
This is an over-rich fief.

Coal her name — that I mark to you:
What token she is in the Scripture.
She is a wondrous present
which God sends within into the soul,
in all attaining, in all lacking,
in atonement, in threatening, in vengeance,
in comfort, in joys, in labor,
in all the un-habits I have spoken.
The coal is a swift messenger
who serves Love very well.
Her office is without ceasing;
no Love may fail her therein.
The coal kindles him who was cold;
she makes timid him who was bold;
the faring she sets at foot;
the low she makes of high spirit;
the poor she sets in a kingdom
that he yield to no one.
All the falling and the rising,
the taking, the giving, the receiving,
kindles and quenches by orewoet
— the coal her name, now becomes weary.
Behold yourself in this, and mark
what unheard-of wonders he works
before he comes again to the fire,
where he within all-condemns,
burns through, swallows, and consumes
that was denied and that was desired.

Fire her name — that burns all:
luck, success, and misfortune.
Of all beings, to him alone
who ever this fire so near came near,
no matter is too wide nor too narrow.
When this fire thus over-passes,
so it is all-one to him what is consumed —
hated, loved, denied, desired,
won, lost, fitting, unfitting,
gain, scath, honor, shame.
Comfort with God in heaven to be,
or in the hellish pain
— so it is to this fire alone:
he burns up all that ever came near him,
neither for condemning nor for blessing
not to me — and which I may admit.
Now her name has its office
when the fire thus burns with its might.

Dew her name — she comes and makes all moist,
as an unheard-of sweet air,
and brings the kiss of the noble natures
and makes them in un-enduring endure.
The eagerness swallows her giving
so that she must ever practice these habits.
Then all the storms abate
that there were raised up.
There comes a stillness-standing,
where Beloved from Beloved shall receive
such a kiss as well-becomes Love
when she embraces Beloved in every sinne.
She through-sucks her, and through-tastes,
when Love-of-Beloved is thus reached.
She eats her flesh, she drinks her blood —
Love who thus consumes her
sweetly leads them both
into one kiss without parting.
That kiss unites fair
in one being three persons.
Thus the noble dew softens the burning
that was so storm-driven in Love's land.

Living Spring her sixth name —
follows the dew very fittingly.
The flowing and the flowing-back,
the one through the other, and the growing-in —
that is above sense and above understanding
and above knowing and above receiving
of human creatures. Yet we have it in our nature:
the hidden ways that Love bids one go,
and with blows the sweet kissings to receive.
There one receives the sweet living life
that to the living life-life shall give.
The name is living spring because she feeds
and a living soul in the manhood guards,
and with life out of life springs forth,
and the life out of life your life brings.
The living spring flows at all seasons —
in old habits, in new diligence —
just as out flows the river
and again to herself she quickly draws.
So does Love consume her giving;
thus is her name spring and life.

Hell — her seventh name —
of Love at which I languish.
For she all-consumes and all-condemns,
and in her no one comes back
who falls into her and whom she embraces
— that thereto no grace goes.
Just as hell all-destroys,
and in her one wins nothing else
than ungrace and strong pain,
ever to be in un-stillness —
ever storm and new pursuing,
all swallowed and all engulfed
in her bottomless nature.
Sinking in heat, in cold, at every hour,
in Love's deep-high darkness —
this goes above the labor of hell.
He who knows of Love her coming and going,
to him it is known; he may understand
that to Love it is very becoming
that hell is her highest name.²

Now mark how in these names are
all the beings of fine Love.
So wise is no heart that her thought
of the bond of Love might
the thousandth part reveal,
even though she let the other six pass.
From the bond one becomes sure of this:
that from Love there is no parting
by any wonder, by any power.
This is the gift of Wisdom's might.
Human heart cannot reach to it;
yet must she bear bond by bonds.
From light we have Love's handling,
her knowing-will in every manner,
why one must love the manhood
together-with the godhead, and know.
With the coal she sets-fire to them two;
with the fire she burns them one,
just as with the fire in the salamander
the phoenix burns and becomes another.
With the dew the burning is softened
and salved with that one only air.
The well-being and the orewoet
she throws then into the deepest flood
which is bottomless and ever lives,
and with the life makes-them-three one —
God and humans into one Love.
This is three-fold above all sinne.

These bring the seventh name
which is highest and best becoming:
that is hell, after the being-that-is-Love;
for she destroys soul and sinne,
so that she may no more recover,
nor in other matters more suffer
than lost to be in storm of Love,
with body, with soul, with heart, with sinne.
The lovers remain lost in the hell.
He who would, let him guard himself from this.
For before Love there is no other rising-up
than at every hour comfort and blows to receive,
in the marrow of the heart that troth has known.
Sought were the offering of free Love
if we did as we must win it;
though one is far, one shall know it.

Dilata, ira decrescit.
Explicit liber iste.
Deo gratias. Amen.³

Translator's footnotes (project translation)

¹ 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.

² 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.

³ 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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