Cherubinischer Wandersmann

By Angelus Silesius

Book Overview

"It is the dream of every publisher to hit upon a project that will win praise for contributing to the intellectual and cultural life." John B. Breslin, Theology Today In one series, the original writings of the universally acknowledged teachers of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Islamic and Native American traditions have been critically selected, translated and introduced by internationally recognized scholars and spiritual leaders. ANGELUS SILESIUS-THE CHERUBINIC WANDERER Translation and foreword by Maria Shrady Introduction and notes by Josef Schmidt Preface by E.J. Furcha "The Rose which here on earth is now perceived by me, has blossomed thus in god from all eternity." Angelus Silesius (1624-1677) Johann Scheffler was born in 1624 to Protestant parents in the Silesian capital of Breslau, seven years after the Thirty Years' War had begun unsettling Europe. At the age of 29, after graduating from the University of Padua, he converted to Catholicism and took the name Angelus. Although he pursued a career as an energetic and sometimes vitriolic apologist, it was his poetry that won him a place of importance in the mystical literature of the West. By the mid-seventeenth century the epigram had become the most widely used form for German baroque poetry. Utilizing that genre, Silesius, in Josef Schmidt's words, "molded the epigram into perfectly expressing what has been the intrinsic problem of any mystical writer: saying the ineffable." The Cherubinic Wanderer over the decades has become an integral part of German religious folk literature. Admirers such as Friedrich Schlegel in the past century and Hans Urs von Balthasar and Umberto Eco in our own day have prized the work for its power, its immediacy, and its beauty of expression. +

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809127687
• ISBN13: 9780809127689
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Paulist Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

"All This Is a Game That God Is Playing for You"

When the early Zen Master Ma-tsu was very old and unwell, the monastery steward visited him and asked, "How has Your Reverence's health been?" Ma-tsu replied: "Sun-face Buddha, Moon-face Buddha". (The "Buddha-Name Sutra" informs us that Sun-face Buddhas live for 18,000 years, while Moon-face Buddhas live for a single day and night.) Can anyone in the Western tradition explain this cryptic exchange? Johannes Scheffler, born a Lutheran but converted to Catholicism, published in 1657 a book of mystical epigrams called "The Cherubinic Wanderer", using the pen-name Angelus Silesius. One of his couplets says: "A child who lives on this earth for one brief hour has already lived all the long years of Methuselah". (In the Bible. He lived to be 969, remember?) Does this help? Time is the creation of our own minds. If you think a moment is shorter than a century, that a century is longer than a moment, you haven't understood yet. Angelus Silesius didn't teach anything new, he summarised the great Northern European mystics (Meister Eckhart, Jan Ruysbroek, the Lutheran Jakob Boehme). But as he compressed their teachings into tight, two-line poems, he sharpened them into arrows of paradox which, like Zen sayings, either mystify completely or open the door to a vast new world. (Please don't ask me how an arrow can open a door.) "Even before I was me, I was God in God; and I can be once again, as soon as I am dead to myself." "Time is eternity and eternity is time, just as long as you yourself don't make them different." "I know God couldn't live a moment without me; if I should disappear, He would die, destitute." "God, whose delight it is to be with you, O man, prefers to come and see you when you're not at home." The best English translations I know of are in Willard Trask's selection, long out of print. Those in this book are not on the same level, a little too prone to inversions and quaint poetical language. Some favourite poems are missing, while others are included that I could do without. But this is an essential book and I shouldn't quibble. The ideal English Silesius would have the original German on the facing page, because epigrams by definition defy translation. It wouldn't have to be complete. Poems on the Blessed Virgin and the Saints no longer mean much even to Catholics since Vatican II. Others make use of the forgotten language of alchemy. But hundreds of these couplets are among the most profound and surprising utterances to be found in the Christian tradition. Until the probably remote day when a better version appears, this book will do as an introduction to this out-of-the-blue spiritual poet.

Profound Minimalist Poetry from the West

"So high above all things that be Is God uplifted, man can dare No utterance: he prayeth best When Silence is his sum of prayer." (Angelus Silesius, I. 240) Here, the poetic form of epigram is mastered and undertaken in the service of expressing the deepest, most beautiful, must puzzling and profound mysteries of Christian mysticism. Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler) is a Protestant-turned-Catholic who lived in the height of the turmoil in the aftermath of the Reformation. Eight years after converting, he left the world for the monastery, where he spent his formidable creative energies in anti-Reformation polemics, and profound spiritual verse. His prose polemics are nothing original. His poetry, however, serves as the the content of this highly-important addition to the Classics of Western Spirituality. One thinks of the minimalist and apophatic artistic expression of Basho and the haiku tradition in the East. One might expect from Western German Roman Catholic imitation of Dante's epic poetry, or even something like the fourteen-line line poetry of Shakespear and Petrarch. Angelus prefers the two-line epigram, the four-line maxim, the concise apothegm, and puts this small package in service of the near infinite interplay of paradox and simple truth in Christian theology and experience. Each short verse is a succinct summary of, a beautiful re-statement of, or a wise insight into the truths of the Holy Scripture and the Church. Moving, enlightening, convicting, at times (intentionally) perplexing, these verses draw the soul into a search for that which is beyond words. The spiritual seeker, the devout Catholic, the curious Protestant, the sympathetic non-believer will all find a verse on which to be nourished. "God loves me more than Him; than me I love God more. So He gives me as much as I to Him restore."

The Epigrammatic Wanderer

This volume is an important contribution to the illustrious and much needed Classics of Western Sprituality Series from Paulist Press, a project which was initiated in the early 1980's and continues. A bonafide mystic, if not in the most progressive sense (as is made abundantly clear in the superb introductory essay and foward, a succinct, yet comprehensive, survey of the life and work of this relatively little known but important poet and hymnist), an early Lutheran Pietist who coverted to orthodox Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation, Angelus Selesius is first and foremost an artist of high rank. My one plaint here, however, is that, what is in my opinion, Silesius' best poem, his masterpiece, is for some strange reason omitted from this collection or somehow I have missed it. Thus, I cite it here, and if you like, you can copy it, as I have, into the wisely included blank pages at the end of this handsomely constructed book. "Though Christ a thousand times in Bethleham be born And not within thyself, Thy soul will be forlorn . . . The Cross on Golgotha Thou lookest to in vain, Unless within thine heart It be set up again."

A transportation to the heights of Christian peace!

I love those epigrams of Silesius! They are like little poems in their own way. Many christians today should have this book. The enlightenment the epigrams give meaning and depth to the moments in our daily life and how the littlest things we do can mean the best to God. They convice the reader of God's continual prescence in all things even when we do not know it. Buy this book. It carries spiritual manna in itself.

Silesius: German mystic and poet, authro of protestant hymns

This man was a doctor and good friend of Abraham Von Franckenberg and was of ambivalent loyalties to catholic church during the counter reformation.An orphan himself, he was later the benefactor of orphans and lived a cloistered life while writing his specialty,rhymed alexandrine couplets.. he is said to have been the first author of most of the protestant hymns