Harmonia Abrahamica & the Lost Speech

My last posts have emphasized some of what I take to be Henry Corbin's contribution to our understanding of language and poetics. It may be useful to make available to those who have not read it the last chapter of my book Green Man, Earth Angel which addresses some of these issues in a way that seemed especially important to me at the time of its writing. This chapter, Harmonia Abrahamica: The Lost Speech and the Battle for the Soul of the World, has been excerpted a few times on this blog, but I make it available here in its (brief) entirety as a google document. The discussion includes some consideration of Heidegger and Paul Celan. The issues raised still seem to me of ultimate importance.

Paul Celan und seine Frau Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. Foto: suhrkamp verlag

Poetry and the Exile of the Soul

Not long ago I received an email from Clayton Eshleman. He wrote " 'the exile of the soul' in one of your Avicenna postings caught my eye... Is the soul, in your view, by its nature, in exile? May it be brought out of exile? How? One response to this question might be that a realized poem or painting entails a momentary release from exile for the soul. Or might it be truer to say that the realized poem expresses the extent of the soul's exile?"

It instantly struck me as exactly right, and it still does now on reflection that a "realized poem or painting" can release the soul from exile. Eshleman's questions seem to me to crystallize much that I have tried to articulate throughout my books on Corbin, for whom exile is such a central theme. I have long tried to discover how to make available for a new generation Corbin's insights concerning the Lost Speech and the meaning of the Holy Word. Hamann said: "To speak is to translate – from the tongue of angels into the tongue of men" and Corbin's "poetics" is to a large degree based on this vision (See this earlier post on Corbin's Poetics). It seems to me that Corbin's post-Islamic protestant christianity can be understood in ways that free the Abrahamic religions, not from living tradition, but from the suffocating weight of institutional religiosity and theological orthodoxies. Norman O. Brown has quoted Corbin's mentor Louis Massignon in a passage that opens up a vast landscape for those able to enter:

"The Islamic imagination, Massignon has written, should be seen as the product of a desperate regression, back to the primitive, the eternal pagan substrate of all religion... Islam stays with the dream life of the masses...discarded by the Enlightenment as superstition..."

I think that eternal substrate is poetic in the root meaning of the term, and that such a form of life is democratic and available to everyone and not only those who adopt the doctrines of a particular creed, a particular Church. Such a hope risks the missteps that can come with narcissistic individualism and an over-reliance on personal experience - and yet this is a necessary direction for many who would otherwise find the religions of their ancestors unavailable, even repellent. In a passage that I have quoted elsewhere Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement writes,

"Humility and silence are so many aspects of interior poverty and renunciation. A person uprooted from a settled life, heads for the desert, to become God’s nomad. The real desert is within us. ...Some men of the desert become pillars of prayer, settled or wandering. They reject all domestication, even that of monastic communities, in order to opt for the untrammelled liberty of the wild animals. ‘Men of the hills’ on the heights and in freedom. ...The contemplative, like the illiterate person, does without books. Creatures and things in their delicacy and infinite subtlety continually speak to him of God. ...Interior freedom... makes possible that attentive gaze, stripped of covetousness, which perceives the outward appearance of each object and its secret, and honours it."

I take this "doing without books" to mean doing without Authoritative books - to allow the freedom to write one's own Book, as well as to read the Book of Creation.

The search for the roots of religion requires that we rethink the meaning of the worship and liturgy that stand at the center of the religious experience. The late Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, monk and priest of Saint Meinrad Archabbey, points out in his short and powerful book On Liturgical Theology that they provide the primary experience of God for the faithful. He argues that liturgy provides the “ontological condition of theology” and so is the source of primary, primitive and original theology. Liturgy is the cause of prima theologia and is the original content with which “theologians” in the usual sense, concern themselves. In liturgy the community which is the Church stands in the presence of the living God. This is not an easy place to be: “The liturgical assembly’s stance in faith is vertiginous, on the edge of chaos.” Being brought to the brink of chaos causes deep, long term changes, however slight or great they may be, in the lives of the participants. The slow adjustment to these changes results in alterations in the subsequent liturgical acts. This is, he says, theology being born. To detect these changes is to discover “where theology has passed, rather as physics detects atomic particles in the tracks of their passage through a liquid medium.” This view of theology is at odds with modern assumptions about the bookish and intellectual nature of theology and the tasks of theologians. Kavanagh writes,

"To argue with minds accustomed to thinking of theology in such a manner that theology at its genesis is communitarian, even proletarian; that it is aboriginally liturgical in context, partly conscious and partly unconscious; that it stems from an experience of near chaos; that it is long term and dialectical; and that its agents are more likely to be charwomen and shopkeepers than pontiffs and professors - all this is to argue against the grain. It is to argue that the theology which we most readily recognize and practice is in fact neither primary nor seminal but secondary and derivative: theologia secunda."

This is to say, in the words of Prosper of Aquitaine, that “it is the law of worship which founds or establishes the law of belief.” “Something vastly mysterious” occurs, however unpredictably, when the church stands in the Presence of the Lord, and it is only grace and charity that “permit the assembly, like Moses, to come away whole from such an encounter, and even then it is with wounds which are as deep as they are salutary.” Kavanagh continues,

"Standing before the living God is a risky business. People dare to do so not because they are irrational but because they have found it plausible that they, like others before them (even Moses), might do so without actually being incinerated, and that the advantages of doing so outweigh the disadvantages of not doing so, the deity remaining all the while alarmingly unpredictable. Whom God loves he chastises. It is risky to sit at the Lord’s table, and there is absolutely no certainty that one will not end up on it with one’s own body broken, one’s own blood poured out. But it is plausible in faith that one might risk the whole thing and even be the better for it."

This is powerful stuff. I think that not everyone will find their liturgical service to be this unsettling (and some are themselves unsettled by those that do, so this is an interesting topic). But my intention is to draw attention to poetic and artistic aspects of human experience that are this powerful, this archaic, and this challenging - and to suggest that they are indeed liturgical. I think Eshleman's comment highlights what we can now see as the primordially liturgical and theological nature (in Kavanagh's sense of prima theologia) of all poetic and artistic languages. (On this see George Steiner's two remarkable books Real Presences and Grammars of Creation and Simon Schama's treatment of Mark Rothko). (For more on Kavanagh & Ivan Illich & Corbin as well see my unpublished essay The Break with the World).

Corbin's vision of the Lost Speech suggests to me ways of understanding the essential pluralities of religion in something like the way we understand artistic creation and variety: not Christianity but christianities; islams, not Islam; judaisms, not Judaism - and this simply reflects the actual histories of these complex and powerful religious phenomena. (One useful book that comes to mind as I write this is Robert Inchausti's Subversive Orthodoxy, now sadly out of print but worth seeking out). I like to think that part of Corbin's legacy lies in this direction - in understanding the consequences for the prophetic tradition of the primordial strength of the creative imagination and the heritage of the archaic, of the nomadic, and of the shamanic roots of Central Asian Sufism (as Murat Nemet-Nejat has proposed - see this earlier post). We need to see the whole sweep of the religions of the Book embedded in the archaic (knowing that the "archaic" is an archetype and not a phenomenon of linear time) and extending into a post-Islamic and, one hopes, ecumenical future, where all three of the traditional monotheisms can retain their dignity and their unique traditions, and remain alive to the messages of a Book that never closes.

I give William Blake the last word here:

Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists -
A Poet a Painter a Musician an Architect:
the Man or Woman who is not one of these
is not a Christian

The illustration is of the Exile: Adam & Eve Reproached by the Lord from the Doors of Bishop Bernward (960-1022), Hildesheim Cathedral. Photo from Aloys Butzkamm, Ein Tor zum Paradies: Kunst und Theologie auf der Bronzetur des Hildesheimer Domes. Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2004.

Henry Corbin & Charles Olson At the Harbor

The cover of Ralph Maud's fine biographical account Charles Olson at the Harbor features an excerpt from Olson's poem "Maximus, at the Harbor" (pp. 240-1 of The Maximus Poems - the two pages of which are embedded below in two files). As Maud says, this poem has "at the back of it" Henry Corbin's "Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Ismailism." Olson knew this essay from Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. George Butterick provides the necessary citations from Corbin in his Guide to the Maximus Poems. The sources are from pp. 161-167 in the section "Resurrection as the Horizon of the Time of 'Combat for the Angel' " (largely from the subsection "Archetypal Persons") and from the discussion of the Fravarti (131ff).

Central to Olson's use of Corbin is the significatio passiva, the meaning of which Corbin elsewhere tells us he first discovered thanks to Luther. This is indeed a crucial notion for Corbin, and Olson has riveted himself to one of Corbin's most important ideas. The point is that the act embodies the mode of existence of the actor. Corbin says that from this perspective "every verb is mentally conjugated in the middle voice (e.g. the apophanesthai of the phenomenology which shows itself the phenomenon)... In this light...the person is what his action makes him be. But that implies that this person is an agent only in a superficial and metaphoric sense. More active than the person himself is the thought that is thought through him, the word that is spoken by him (and personified in him). [This of course recalls Heidegger's dictum that "Language speaks us."] And this thought of his thought is what Nasr Tusi calls the Angel of his thought (or of his word or action)."

Now this is a fairly astonishing poem to begin with - but to those who know Corbin's work at all well it will be quite a shock, and I think rather a fascinating one, to experience the context of masculine sexuality and violence in which Olson places his borrowings from Corbin. Maud further complicates the issues in his epilogue by pointing out that Olson was later on to call this piece a "sucker poem" that relied too heavily on the subjective and the personal, but that he had nonetheless put it in very much on purpose and that it was not to be dismissed. Not a surprise if Olson thought that readers might mispercieve the attempt to transcend the subjective and misunderstand the references to the Angel. The issues raised here are deep, complex and I think, quite important.

There is a tremendous and potentially creative friction here between Corbin and Olson, one which will I think amply repay our considerable attention.

On this, one should also ponder "Mazdaism / has overcome / the world..." p. 518 in The Collected Poems of Charles Olson (which can be found in the text embedded below).

Maximus at the Harbor, 1

Maximus at the Harbor, 2

Corbin Audio Available in French Online

It seems that some of the 15 interviews and lectures available on the Fremaux CD have been posted online at the dailymotion website.

I include a list of the CD contents with links to what seem to be the proper audiofiles. I do not own a copy of the CD myself so I have not been able to confirm these. I hope that readers with access to the CD will contact me to help out with this.

1. Schiisme et Ismaélisme (1957), dans « Heure de Culture Française : l’Iran » sous le titre : Le Schî isme et l’Ismaélisme.

2. La Théologie d’Aristote (1976), dans Les chemins de la connaissance. Sous le titre : Plotin et la transparence. Henry Corbin raconte à Michèle Reboul l’histoire de la diffusion du néoplatonisme en Iran.

3. L’Imagination créatrice dans le Soufisme d’Ibn Arabi (1958), dans Thèmes et Controverse, sous le titre: Le Soufisme d’Ibn Arabî. Extrait d’un entretien avec Henry Corbin par Pierre Sipriot et Mounir Rafez à propos de la sortie de son livre « l’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn Arabî.

4. En Islam iranien (1973) Sous le titre : En Islam iranien. Entretien d’Henry Corbin avec Bernard Latour à propos de son ouvrage "En Islam iranien" dont les 3ème et 4ème Tomes venaient d'être publiés.

5. Le Monde Imaginal (1979) dans Les chemins de la connaissance sous le titre : L'atlas des mondes imaginaires. Entretien d’Henry Corbin avec Gilbert Durand sur la définition du terme d’« Imaginal ». Henry Corbin y retrace l’histoire de cette notion.

6. Splendeurs de l’Ecole d’Ispahan (1957) dans Heure de Culture Française : l’Iran. Sous le titre : La théologie shî ite à l’époque Safavide.

7. La Théosophie ismaélienne (1961) dans Les formes du Sacré sous le titre : Les Apocalypses. Extrait d’un entretien d’Henry Corbin avec Pierre Sipriot sur le chiisme iranien et l'Apocalypse, sur la résurrection et la manière dont le Coran rend compte de l'Apocalypse.

8. La gnose en islam (1973) Sous le titre : Le mythe du messager et du voyageur. Entretien d’Henry Corbin avec Bernard Latour sur la gnose en Islam.

9. Esotérisme/exotérisme (1972) dans l’émission Entretiens avec sous le titre : avec Henry Corbin. Henry Corbin redéploie, avec Bernard Latour, la notion d'ésotérisme et les "pseudos-ésotérismes" à la mode. Il définit la situation du soufisme.

10. L’homme de lumière dans le Soufisme iranien (1972) dans l’émission Entretiens avec, sous le titre : avec Henry Corbin. Entretien d’Henry Corbin avec Bernard Latour à propos de son livre "L'Homme de lumière dans le soufisme iranien" consacré à la mystique islamique.

11. Terre céleste et corps de résurrection (1961) dans l’émission Thèmes et Controverses. Henry Corbin s’entretient, en 1961, avec Pierre Sipriot sur son livre « Terre céleste et corps de résurrection : de l’Iran mazdéen à l’Iran schi’îte »

12. La philosophie de la lumière au 12ème siècle (1957) dans l’émission Heure de Culture française : l’Iran. Sous le titre : La Philosophie de la Lumière au XIIème siècle. Causerie d’Henry Corbin sur « l’Iran et la philosophie de la lumière au 12ème siècle » . Il parle, également dans cette archive du philosophe Sohrawardî

13. L’Archange empourpré (1976) dans l’émission : L'autre scène ou les vivants et les Dieux. Sous le titre : Sohrawardî « L'Archange empourpré ». Entretien de Henry Corbin avec Philippe Nemo, à propos de la sortie du livre « L’Archange empourpré » (textes de Sohrawardî traduits et présentés par Henry Corbin).

14. Les nuits symboliques dans l’Islam (1962) dans l’émission : Les Formes du sacré. Sous le titre : La Nuit. Entretien de’ Henry Corbin avec Serge Jouhet

15. Henry Corbin, philosophe (1976) Diffusé pour la première fois dans les nuits de France-Culture (deux fois 5 heures d’émissions spéciales consacrées à Henry Corbin par Christine Goémé les 2 et 3 novembre 2003). Henry Corbin s’entretient avec Philippe Nemo : il « revisite » ici son parcours intellectuel, et ses débuts comme traducteur des philosophes Martin Heidegger et Sohrawardî.


The sources of the following audio files remain to be identified. I hope readers of this blog who can identify them will contact me.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8x3wk_le-soufisme-dibn-arabi_travel
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8x884_sohrawardi-philosophe-musulman_travel
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8x6zt_esoterisme-exoterisme-en-islam-y-he_news
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8x6io_surat-al-najm-v-1-a-18-y-henry-corb_travel
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8x8y5_qui-etait-henry-corbin-y-y-la-philo_news
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8l08p_levangile-de-barnabe-henry-corbin-f_webcam

Thanks to Kasumi Kobayashi for help identifying some of the audio files.

Notes on Persian Poetry - Update

This from poet Annie Finch:

An Evening with Forugh: Iranian Poetry Night

Finch writes: "I was not surprised when, recently, I read in Meg Bogin’s book The Women Troubadours that were it not for Persian poetry, English poetry would have no rhyme; the gift of rhyme came to us from Iran by way of the troubadour poets, through North Africa and into southern Europe. I will never be surprised again by anything I learn about the importance of poetry in Persian culture."

NEW: From NPR - Poetry From Iran - Tweet by Tweet
and Iran's National Poet Speaks Out





Manuscript page: Khamsa (Quintet) by Nizami (d. 1209) 1433-1434. Shiraz, Probably Iran Freer & Sackler Galleries - S1986.33

Further Notes on Turkish Poetry

In an earlier post (here) I mentioned Murat Nemet-Nejat’s 2004 volume Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Talisman, 2004).

There is an interview with Nemet-Nejat in Jacket 37:

EDA, Turkish Poetry, and the Vicissitudes of Translation

Among other items of considerable interest, we find this:

"My relation to [Jack] Spicer is not that of influence — only rarely did I take something directly from him — but of belonging to the same poetic river, sharing a correspondence, a commonality of purpose. I regard Spicer as the creator of Gnostic poetry and poetics in American literature in the 20th century. I think his calls to Mars or for a language against the grain are attempts to evoke a suppressed, forbidden language. Until the 15th century, Byzantium was the center of Gnostic practice. My EDA of “godless Sufism” is an Eastern version of the same heretical sensibility. The progress of the Turkish poetry in the EDA anthology involves an explosion of suppressed voices, those of gays, of women, of social and ethnic outcasts."

Spicer, a close friend of Robert Duncan & Robin Blaser, has left a body of work recently published as My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer.

Also see Turkish Poetry in Translation.

Calligraphy: Mehmet Sefik Bey. Piece of a poem, arranged in the form of a flower.

Andrei Tarkovsky in New York

I generally resist posting items that are not of rather direct relevance to Henry Corbin and his concerns but I cannot pass up the chance to point out the upcoming Tarkovsky Retrospective in New York City, July 7 - 14. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is sponsoring a showing of all 7 of Tarkovsky's films plus the new documentary by Dmitry Trakovsky - details here. Tarkovsky was one of the greatest "spiritual filmakers" and I think that anyone interested in Corbin and the meaning of the imaginal can hardly help but be astounded by these films. It seems to me that his work is a stunning manifestation of the imaginal.

Ingmar Bergman said of Tarkovsky:

"My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease. I felt encouraged and stimulated: someone was expressing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how. Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream."

Also not to be missed is Nathan Dunne's beautiful volume Tarkovsky.
The essential online source for all things Tarkovsky is Nostalghia.com.

The screen image is from Nostalghia.

Henry Corbin & American Poetry - Part 5

In earlier posts on Charles Olson & Corbin (here & here) I noted that Olson makes significant use of Corbin's Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, which he apparently read in March of 1966. Richard Reeve has kindly supplied me with scans of the marginal notes in Olson's copy of the book which I have embedded below and which I hope will be of interest to Olson readers and scholars.

Olson's personal library is housed at the Charles Olson Research Collection at the University of Connecticut where Reeve obtained these copies some years ago. Though less than perfect, these are for the most part legible. (Better copies can be had by printing the pdf files).

It seems likely that the footnote Olson refers to (mentioned in the earlier post) is the very long one on pp. 357-60 in Section 21 of The Persian Commentary on the Recital of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: The Terrestrial Angels.

Olson explicitly links "topology" and "etymology" in his glosses on page 29. On page 32 where Corbin says that "visionary recitals are situative of their cosmos" Olson stresses "fit" and the "aspect pf place." Pages 32-35 on ta'wil as situative, and a cause of homecoming from the exile of the soul are heavily marked.

On page 119 we find the following, with Olson's underlines marked here in bold and his marginal exclamations in brackets: "Furthermore, the Zoroastrian angelology puts a decisive end to all ambivalence of the numinous, that confusion between the divine and the demonic whereby the manifestations of the divine can elsewhere assume a terrific character. To judge by the oscillations that make consciousness waver elsewhere, and that are perceptible in the confusion perpetrated throughout history [wow! wow], and more than ever in our day, between angelology and demonology, we can appreciate the historical significance of the ancient Iranian faith: yes is not no, the beings of light wage a battle that is not a dialectical game, and it is to be guilty of a contradiction in terms, and a blasphemous contradiction for the Zoroastrian consciousness, to talk of an "angel of Darkness."

I hope to make a visit in the fall to the Olson Research Collection to try to obtain scans of Olson's copy of "Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Ismailism."As always I am interested in hearing from anyone with an interest in Corbin's influence on Olson and his friends.

I also draw your attention to the upcoming Charles Olson Centenary Conference June 4-6, 2010 at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia. A paper on Olson & Corbin is needed.

Olson's Marginalia- Pages 14-15, 28-26 in Henry Corbin's Avicenna

Olson's Marginalia - Pages 118-19, 161-2, 281-3, 357-60 in Corbin's Avicenna

Institut Français de Recherche en Iran

Institut Français de Recherche en Iran




52, rue Adib, Ave. Vahid Nazari, Ave. Felestin
Téhéran, Iran. B.P. 15815-3495
Tél. : + 98.21-66.40.11.92 et + 98.21-66.41.21.53
Fax : + 9821-66.40.55.01

From their webpage: L'IFRI est un établissement culturel rattaché à la Direction Générale de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement, du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères français. Sa mission est la promotion de la recherche en sciences humaines et sociales et en archéologie, sur le «monde iranien» – qui déborde les frontières de l’Iran actuel – depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'à nos jours.

Aux chercheurs de toutes nationalités, l'IFRI offre la participation aux activités scientifiques qu'il organise, l'accès à une riche bibliothèque et des publications thématiques

See this page on Henry Corbin.

Corbin & Guénon

Les Amis de Stella et Henry Corbin have posted (in French) a synopsis of a 2002 essay by Xavier Accart which reviews significant contrasts between Corbin and René Guénon. Access the synopsis here. They preface it as follows:

Ce texte est la synthèse d’une étude dans lequel le lecteur trouvera toutes les références bibliographiques (Xavier Accart, « Identité et théophanies. René Guénon (1886-1951) et Henry Corbin (1903-1978) », dans « René Guénon, lectures et enjeux », Politica Hermetica, Lausanne, n° 16, 2002, p. 181-200). Elle fait suite à une étude consacrée aux rapports de Guénon et Louis Massignon qui fut le maître de Corbin (Xavier Accart, « Feu et diamant – Louis Massignon et René Guénon », Xavier Accart (dir.) (avec la collaboration de Daniel Lançon et Thierry Zarcone), L’Ermite de Duqqi, Milan, Archè, 2001, p. 287-325). Le lecteur trouvera des éléments complémentaires dans : ACCART, Xavier, Guénon ou le renversement des clartés – Influence d’un métaphysicien sur la vie littéraire et intellectuelle française (1920-1970), Paris, Edidit, 2005, 1222 p.

Accart points out that Corbin and Guénon really operate in very different universes of discourse, that their interpretations of Islam are quite distinct, and that their proposed "cures" for the spiritual problems of Western society are essentially different, Corbin for example proposing a renewal within the "occidental" tradition. Corbin hardly shared Guénon's apparent disdain for anything in Western culture after Dante.

See also this Wikipedia article on Traditionalism. In this context I should note that in my own reading of Corbin I minimize his elitist tendencies, which seem to me in conflict with much else in his work including his protestantism (which was anathema to Guénon) and his (I think) fundamentally "democratic" vision. In any case, as Nasr says, Corbin was no Traditionalist.

Octavio Paz on Modernity & Romanticism

Jerome Rothenberg has recently posted an excerpt from the 1989 Tanner Lecture on Human Values, Poetry & Modernity, by Octavio Paz, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature. This lecture may be of considerable interest to students of Corbin. As I have mentioned in these posts I think that our understanding of Corbin's work is deepened by seeing him as part of the Romantic tradition (particularly as re-conceived by Rothenberg and Robinson). This essay by Paz helps clarify Corbin's place within that tradition and I recommend it in its entirety. I have pulled a short excerpt from Rothenberg's blog here - there is a link to the full text from the University of Utah below.

Octavio Paz:

"The relation between romanticism and modernity is both filial and contentious. Romanticism was the child of the age of criticism, and change prompted its conception and birth and was its distinguishing feature. It was the great change not only in the arts and letters, but also in imagination, sensibility, taste, and ideas. It was a morality, an eroticism, a politics, a way of dressing and a way of loving, a way of living and of dying. A rebellious child, romanticism was a criticism of rational criticism; it replaced successive historical time with a time of origin, before history, and the utopian future with the instantaneous present of the passions, love and the flesh. Romanticism was the great negation of modernity as it had been conceived in the eighteenth century by critical, utopian, and revolutionary reason. But it was a negation that remained within modernity. Only an age of criticism could have produced such a total negation.

Romanticism coexisted with modernity, time after time merging with it only in order to transgress it. These transgressions assumed many forms but only two modes: analogy and irony. I take the first to mean “the vision of the universe as a system of correspondences and the vision of language as a double of the universe." It is a very ancient tradition, reelaborated and transmitted by Renaissance Neoplatonism through various hermetic traditions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Having nourished the philosophical and libertine sects of the eighteenth century, it was recognized by the romantics and their followers through to our own era. It is the central, albeit underground, tradition of modern poetry, from the first romantics to William Butler Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the surrealists. Simultaneous to this vision of universal correspondence, its enemy-twin appeared: irony. It was the rip in the fabric of analogies, the exception that ruptured the correspondences. If analogy may be conceived as a fan which, unfolded, displays the resemblances between this and that, microcosm and macrocosm, stars, men, and worms, then irony tears the fan to pieces. Irony is the dissonance that disrupts the concert of the correspondences, turning it into cacophony. Irony has many names: it is the anomaly, the deviation, the bizarre, as Baudelaire called it. In a word, it is that great accident: death.

Analogy steeps itself in myth; its essence is rhythm, the cyclical time of appearances and disappearances, deaths and resurrections. Irony is the coming of criticism to the kingdom of imagination and sensibility; its essence is linear time which leads to death — the death of both man and the gods. Twin transgressions: analogy replaces the linear time of history and the canonization of the utopian future with the cyclical time of myth; irony, in turn, sheds mythic time in order to affirm the lapses in contingency, the plurality of gods and myths, the death of God and his creatures. The twin ambiguities of romantic poetry: it was revolutionary, but it occurred alongside, not as part of, the revolutions of the century; at the same time, its spirituality was a transgression of the Christian denominations. The history of modern poetry, from romanticism to symbolism, is the history of various manifestations of the two principles by which it has been composed since its birth: analogy and irony." (Translated by Eliot Weinberger)


Full text of the 1989 Tanner Lecture is available here (pdf).

Henry Corbin on the Soul of Iran

Henry Corbin writing of the Avicennan ta'wil:

...everything takes place as if the vision of the high mountains of Iran had ceaselessly prepared the "contemplative intellect" of the Iranian soul once more to receive from the Angel Active Intelligence an illumination that again puts the memory of their hierophanies "in the present." It was upon these lofty peaks that, according to tradition, Zarathustra, the Iranian prophet, was repeatedly granted theophanies and angelophanies. What we call "angelology" in the true sense is perhaps the peculiar charism, the gift, of the Iranian soul to the religious history of humanity. The Lord Wisdom (Ahura Mazda) does not reveal himself as solitary, but as always surrounded by the six with whom he forms the archangelic heptad of light. And with them each of the "Adorable Ones" (Yazatas) of the celestial multitude appears not as a vague and unstable entity but as a perfectly individuated and distinct existence, recognizable by his personal name and his emblem (a flower). Furthermore, the Zoroastrian angelology puts a decisive end to all ambivalence of the numinous, that confusion between the divine and the demonic whereby the manifestations of the divine can elsewhere assume a terrific character. To judge by the oscillations that make consciousness waver elsewhere, and that are perceptible in the confusion perpetrated throughout history, and more than ever in our day, between angelology and demonology, we can appreciate the historical significance of the ancient Iranian faith: yes is not no, the beings of light wage a battle that is not a dialectical game, and it is to be guilty of a contradiction in terms, and a blasphemous contradiction for the Zoroastrian consciousness, to talk of an "angel of Darkness." - Henry Corbin, Avicenna & the Visionary Recital, 118-119.

The Mountains of Dam, Iran - Ali Madjfar.

Literalizing the Imaginal

In talking with people interested in Henry Corbin I am sometimes reminded of one of the obstacles to understanding the meaning of the "esoteric" as I believe he intended it. Some who are attracted by Corbin's work are understandably bedazzled by visions of angelic hierarchies and the reality of the imaginal worlds. Corbin's own enthusiasm is palpable in his work. But it is important not to lose sight of the intensely apophatic context in which these visions occur. The modern urban societies in which most of us live are thoroughly exteriorized and extraverted and so dominated by the will-to-power that drives modern technology that it is easy to overlook the profound interiority that characterizes Corbin's writings. Doing so can distort the meaning of his liberating message.

The problem is easy enough to state, but the solution is exceedingly hard to live. Corbin warns that the realm of the imaginal is "not to be entered by housebreaking." It is necessary to overcome the will to power and the desire for mastery. He puts it quite starkly: "The very idea of associating such concepts as 'power' and the 'spiritual' implies an initial secularization." (Creative Imagination, 16.) This is one place where contemporary critical theory can help open up a spiritual perspective, by making conscious the varieties and structures of power. (A nice guide can be found here courtesy of Stephen Macek).

Entry into the imaginal requires a delicate, subtle and difficult personal transformation. It requires what Ivan Illich calls an "embraced powerlessness," which for Christians is symbolized by the Cross. It is all too easy to approach the inner world of the "hidden trust" as if it were a literal, public and exoteric reality. To make this mistake is the essence of idolatry and of fundamentalisms of all kinds. To live a life in tune with imaginal realities requires abandoning the desire for what postmodernists call master narratives. The counter-history that Corbin would write lacks most of what is taken for the central thrust of Western culture - certainly there are no Scholastics, no Hegelians and no scientists seeking a Theory of Everything. They are currently popular, but I am deeply suspicious of grand theories that attempt to unify spirituality and science. However well-intended they may be they risk enacting new versions of the totalitarian fantasies that Corbin fought so hard to combat. [I presented a short version of this argument several years ago that can be read here. (pdf)]

The goal of exploration in imaginal realms is not conquest and mapping. The terrain is real, but it is neither objective nor public. Any map is provisional and of limited use, for the landscape is constantly shifting and always unique, individual and personal. (Think of the confounding profusion of "maps" provided by the alchemists.) There can be a Guide, but the paths are made by the unique person walking them. The ground shifts and the traveler is perpetually lost, constantly seeking. That is why fundamentalism is impossible there - there is nowhere stable to stand and we are forever undone. The form of spiritual life Corbin opened for us requires the "ability of not knowing" that Keats spoke of. This is more than challenging. The near impossibility of living in "metaphysical poverty" and humility sets up a dynamic in the soul that is acknowledged by all the great traditions - the life that the world of the imaginal provokes and requires is nomadic and wandering, unsettled and unsafe. It is our lot to fail continually in our attempts to love and forgive. We waver in and out of idolatries and literalisms of all kinds. And we constantly judge others and fail to see our own faults. Human be-ing is a project, not a fixed state, and the ego gets continually in the way since the "essential person" that is the goal "in its posthumous becoming and in its immortality perhaps immeasurably transcends the 'personality' of so-and-so son [or daughter] of so-and-so." (Avicenna & the Visionary Recital, 116).

On Corbin's account of Ibn 'Arabi's doctrine the faculty of the Imagination as we experience it is inherently ambiguous. It has both a passive/sensitive aspect that we share with animals and an active aspect that, in its pure mystical form, has the power to create real beings outside the inner state of the soul and perceptible to other mystics (Creative Imagination, 222ff). The imagination spans a vast range of modes of being so that it may be most useful to speak of imaginations in the plural. We live in ambiguity in an intermediate realm of plurality and complexity. This requires a stance towards reality that is cautious, empathetic, sensitive and creative - one that is attentive to the uses of power. Power in itself is not evil, and we cannot live without a degree of mastery and control. But unconscious and uncritical power is dangerous, and its uses, mis-uses and hidden effects need to be uncovered. As Corbin and Hillman have emphasized, literalism is one of the chief strategies of the fundamentalist and totalitarian mind. Literalism encourages the uncritical use of power and coercion because it presumes that reality can be known with certainty. Humility, caution and critical self-awareness are essential for a life in tune with imaginal realities.

Corbin was worried about a facile adoption of the term imaginal, and though I am no doubt more liberal in my attitudes on this than he was in his later years (for instance I am deeply indebted to Hillman's work) I think it is crucial to guard against the dangers of violating the sacred interiority of the imaginal by professionalizing, literalizing or otherwise co-opting its meaning.

Briefly Noted

This is especially worthy of note & is a measure of how far Corbin's influence has penetrated popular culture:
Dream Sequence - Like his indie debut, Slacker, Richard Linklater's new movie explores the correspondence between film viewing and dreaming. "In the few decades since Corbin coined the word "imaginal," it has, with an alacrity that would have amused Borges and Calvino, infiltrated a host of disciplines including art, psychology, and, most intriguingly of all, quantum physics."

Imaginal Studies (England) "We find our Sources in the visionary work of Henry Corbin, James Hillman, and the adepts who inspired them - supported by recent imaginative approaches to participative and transformative research that realise the vision in embodied practice."

Philosophy in Iran: Between Critical Rationalism and Eastern Wisdom "Corbin is one of the few western names still found on a Teheran street sign since the Islamic Revolution. It leads straight to the entrance to the Iranian Institute of Philosophy (IRIP), where the great French philosopher Henry Corbin (1903–1978) taught."

The James Hillman Collection at Opus Archives - At Pacifica Graduate Institute.

The New Eye: Visionary Art and Tradition - " The mundus imaginalis is a place of encounter and transformation. “Is it possible to see without being in the place where one sees?” asks Corbin, throwing down the gambit of visionary experience. “Theophanic visions, mental visions, ecstatic visions in a state or dream or of waking are in themselves penetrations into the world they see.” "

Corbiniana: Henry Corbin

The Ideology of Carnival "All of these again relate to Henry Corbin’s analysis of Avicenna’s visionary recitals."

'Irfan - What is It? "The renowned academic Henry Corbin has had a great deal to say about `irfan and what it means. Henry Corbin was an expert on Iranian mysticism and wrote a lot of books about it. A central theme of his writings and, indeed, of mysticism is the process of going from understanding God intellectually to experiencing God in one's soul."

The Imagination (pdf) - Jeff Munnis - The Swedenborgian Church - "I have been doing a lot of reading of Henry Corbin the last few years."

Development of the Resurrection Body: A multi-part electronic class by Ravani Rah Weiner. "Part of the miracle here is that the answer for me came from a very esoteric realm of Islam. It is part of the body of wisdom which Suhrawardi and others brought from the Zoroastrian tradition to rejuvenate Islam in the thirteenth century. The source of this was the book Spiritual Body and the Celestial Earth by Henry Corbin, which was a book in my husband's library that almost flew off the shelf as an answer to my prayers. I have since found Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam and Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, both by Corbin, to be equally helpful."

The Philosophical Significance of the Imam in Isma'ilism - "With this Intellect started what Professor Henry Corbin calls 'le drame dans le ciel'. "

Schiehallion - Mount Zion in the far north, by Barry Dunford "...the French oriental scholar, Henry Corbin, in a profound and illuminating address delivered to the Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland, in 1974, entitled The Imago Templi in Confrontation [sic] after commenting on the "Sons of the Valley" which he identifies as "an exalted company of initiate Brothers, who constitute ab origine the secret Church of Christ", goes on to state: "Robert of Heredom is thus initiated by the Sons of the Valley and created Grand Master of the new Temple, which will be born again from the ashes of the old….Robert’s name in chivalry refers us to the mystical mountain of Heredom in the north of Scotland…." "

Review: The Wandering Sufi: Into the Mystic with Peter Lamborn Wilson by Erik Davis "In 1974, a number of great Sufi scholars like Toshihiko Izutsu, Henry Corbin, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, backed with money from the Shah's wife, founded the Iranian Academy of Philosophy, an institute devoted to Sufi research."

Is Reverie to be Trusted: The Imaginal and the Work of Maria Gimbutas, Norvene West. Feminist Theology 13/2 (2005)

Review of Swedenborg & Esoteric Islam, in The Journal of Qur'anic Studies, 2005.

Islam, Sufism and the Heart of Compassion

THE NY OPEN CENTER & THE IBN ‘ARABI SOCIETY

Present

ISLAM, SUFISM & THE
HEART OF COMPASSION

LIVING THE TEACHINGS OF
MUHIYIDDIN IBN ‘ARABI

A Conference

Co-sponsored by Riverside Church
and
SIPA- Middle East Institute at Columbia

SALMAN BASHIER, WILLIAM C. CHITTICK, STEPHEN HIRTENSTEIN, SACHIKO MURATA AND MOHAMED HAJ YOUSEF

Ibn ‘Arabi, one of the world’s great spiritual figures, represents, along with Rumi, the pinnacle of Sufism. His writings, which focus on the true potential of the human being and our capacity for self-realisation, are deeply relevant today and speak directly to the heart. His extraordinary insights into universal human values, such as compassion and dignity, provide the unifying perspective for understanding the global religious and social dynamics of our time.

One of Islam's most profound, original and universally relevant thinkers, Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240CE) became known simply as the Shaykh Al-Akbar (The Greatest Spiritual Master), linking Eastern and Western Sufism, and profoundly influencing the subsequent development of spiritual thought and practice in the Muslim world.

The conference will examine the heart of Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings, and explore the many implications of his thought for people today, whatever their background or belief. A series of talks on Friday evening and Saturday morning will be followed by workshops, ending with a panel discussion and concert. The conference will include readings from his poetry in Arabic and English, musical performances composed specifically for Ibn Arabi themes from the UK, a New York Sufi group called Tarab, and the film Bab’Aziz and its, director, Nacer Khemir.The presentations will cover such themes as: Ibn ‘Arabi and the Quest for Human Perfection; How Ibn al-Arabi's Mystical Love Can Overcome Fundamentalism; The Wisdom of the Heart; Ibn ‘Arabi in Dialogue with the Confucian Tradition; and more. The presenters include some of the leading Ibn ‘Arabi scholars in the world from the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. This groundbreaking event will be held at the beautiful Gothic cathedral of the historic interdenominational Riverside Church.

A CONFERENCE
Friday, November 6, 6 pm
Saturday, November 7, 9 am – 6 pm
09SSS13S
$145 (after October 8)

1st Early Bird Price $100 by September 10
2nd Early Bird Price $125 by October 8

Groups of 5-9 15% off and 10 or more 20% off. Students prices with valid
ID, please call 212-219-2527 ext. 2.

For information, call 212-219-2527 ext 140, or visit www.opencenter.org/ibn-arabi or www.ibnarabisociety.org.

New York Open Center - 83 Spring Street NY NY 10012
212-219-2527 x 0
www.opencenter.org

Henry Corbin & American Poetry - Part 4

In my first post on Charles Olson's and Henry Corbin (here) I had not yet got my hands on Olson's Collected Prose which has two mentions of Corbin, from Avicenna and the Visionary Recital and "Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Ismailism." These short references are quite important for understanding Olson's use of Corbin.

In ' "CLEAR, SHINING WATER," de Vries says ' (1968), Olson begins:

"Wishing, in that sense, to start at the bottom - or, in fact, to get there (that is, by the etymological part of ta'wil /_/ the other part, if I take Corbin right, in a footnote in Avicenna, or, His Visionary Recitals, is topological - and this present instance seems very much perhaps the (vertical) topological matter, of all matters which can find a basis for a physics of psyche at this revolutionary point in re-taking the cosmology of creation as fact, both in instant and in consequence, thus prevailing, hidden or no, in whatever is up anywhere for whomever the more so now_//" (364)

In this short essay Olson ponders the etymology of certain words in Northern and Greek mythologies - the title refers to the water sprinkled on Yggdrasill, the World Tree and the Tree of Life of Northern mythology. As the editors point out it is not clear which footnote Olson is referring to but his use of ta'wil is the important point. On page 29 Corbin writes,

"Ta'wil is, etymologically and inversely, to cause to return, to lead back, to restore to one's origin and to the place where one comes home, consequently to return to the true and original meaning of a text. It is "to bring something to its origin. . . . Thus he who practices the ta'wil is the one who turns his speech from the external (exoteric) form [zahir] towards the inner reality [haqiqat]. This must never be forgotten when, in current usage, ta'wil is said, and rightly, to be a spiritual exegesis that is inner, symbolic, esoteric, etc. Beneath the idea of exegesis appears that of a Guide (the exegete), and beneath the idea of exegesis we glimpse that of an exodus, of a "departure from Egypt," which is an exodus from metaphor and the slavery of the letter, from exile and the Occident of exoteric appearance to the Orient of the original and hidden Idea."

Olson's editors also point to this relevant passage from Corbin, page 160:

"...we can understand that the Spring of Life, the Aqua permanens, is divine gnosis, the philosophia prima. He who purifies himself therein and drinks of it will never taste the bitterness of death. As for the spring of running Water hard by the permanent spring, we may see in it a typification of Logic as being not a part but one of the derivatives (furu ) of the divine science. But this on an express condition that safeguards instead of degrading symbolic perception: it is Logic that must be raised to the horizon of this symbolic perception. In other words: it is not Logic that is the ta'wil of the spring of running Water; it is, conversely, the spring of running Water that is the ta'wil of Logic, that, as such, "leads it back" to its "spring," to its meaning and its truth (haqiqat)."

Corbin's appropriation of ta'wil (which is itself controversial among scholars of Islam) is also of central importance in the work of James Hillman, who regards the "reversion to the source" as a crucial move in any attempt to understand the archetypal and poetic basis of human experience.

It is worth noting too that Olson's notion of a "physics of psyche" is also derives from Corbin, though whether Olson got the phrase from him is not the issue - the structures of their thinking are clearly similar. In Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth Corbin writes:

"...ultimately what we call physis and the physical is but the reflection of the world of the Soul; there is no pure physics, but always the physics of some definite psychic activity." (81).

Olson's second reference is to "Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Ismailism" which appears now in Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, and in this piece the relation of the mythic to scientific cosmology is explictly at issue. In a short note appended to "The Animate versus the Mechanical, and Thought" in 1969 Olson continues his discourse on the mythologies of gravity and modern cosmology. He says,

"To make absolutely sure that this discussion is on the table intended by it, I ought as well to add this note [as a further "Addition" - and as of "other" studies]: that I am here seeking to speak within, or across the 'range' of a principle of likeness which includes, and seeks to 'cover' what Henry Corbin reminds me is a constantly affirmed homology among the initiatic cosmos, the world of nature, and the celestial world." (372)

It is important for anyone reading Olson to see the full context from which these ideas have been lifted. The terms Olson uses are indeed from a short footnote to a discussion of the alchemy of Resurrection in Nasr Tusi. Corbin writes as follows:

"In a stirring vision Nasir Tusi describes the contiguity of all the series of beings, each communicating by its highest degree with the lowest degree of the series immediately above it. Thus the worlds of minerals, plants, and animals, the world of man, and the world of the Angel are graduated. And always the higher degree resembles Paradise for the degree below it. The same is true of the phases of a single being. The condition in which an infant cannot yet open his eyes in the sunlight is like his Hell in relation to the condition in which he can face the light, and the latter condition is then like his Paradise. But it is his Hell in relation to the condition in which he can walk and talk. Hell, again, is the condition in which the adult cannot yet attain to knowledge of the spiritual world through that of his own spirit and in which he is unable to experience the meaning of the adage: "He who knows himself (nafsahu, his anima), knows his Lord." When he attains to it, this state becomes his Paradise. In this vision of an incessant rising from Hells, we see an alchemy of Resurrection operating from cycle to cycle. It offers a series of unfoldings, of divestments and revestments, to which one must consent on pain of falling backward, beneath oneself. Here we may also speak of a "continual exaltation" a cosmology "in Gothic style," or of a pursuit of "retarded eternity." Just as their Fravartis sustain the gods themselves (including Ohrmazd and his Archangels) in this state of ascension, and just as the Fravartis incarnated on earth must there propagate this effort toward superexistence, so likewise, in the Ismaili schematization of the world, [Footnote 94: One should also remember the constantly affirmed homology among the mesocosmos ('alam-e Din, the initiatic cosmos), the world of nature, and the celestial world.] the sum of the degrees of the esoteric hierarchy appears to the adept as a cycle of resurrections, each one of which must be transcended, as a succession of Paradises which must be surmounted on pain of falling back into a Hell. Each rank or spiritual degree is a resurrection (qiyamat) whereby the adept becomes conjoined with new immaterial forms which appear on his horizon." (Corbin, 54).

[I note here that the idea that "always the higher degree resembles Paradise for the degree below it" is "homologous" with Samuel Alexander's notion of "Deity" in his Space, Time and Deity (1920) though for Alexander this was an evolutionary progression. not an entirely "vertical" one. In any case what Olson is up to is in part an attempt to stitch the scientific and the mythological together.]

The Importance of Henry Corbin

Henry Corbin's life work was to serve as a champion of the supreme importance of the individual and of the central place of the imagination in human experience. He was, in my opinion, one of the most important philosophers and religious thinkers of the 20th century. But the place that his work occupies with respect to the various academic disciplines is so unique that his opus is impossible to adequately classify. This is one reason that his work is so little appreciated outside of the world of Islamic scholars. His interests are eclectic and wide-ranging and deny all the traditional boundaries of academic scholarship, and some would argue, good sense. There is no doubt that his writings seem at least at first reading to "belong" to Islamic Studies, and readers with little or no knowledge of things Islamic will find them challenging for that reason alone. But his stance is less that of a scholar than that of a partisan of certain forms of mysticism which on his reading escape the bounds of Islam and are to be found as well in Judaism, Christianity and indeed Zoroastrianism. More than this, Corbin saw Iran, or more accurately, ancient Persia, as a kind of mediating realm between the religions of the East and those of the West. Thus it is significant that one of his passions was for the mystical visions of Immanuel Swedenborg, who D. T. Suzuki, the great scholar of zen Buddhism, called the "Buddha of the North."

But here we notice another characteristic of Corbin's work that some scholars may find hard to accept. Corbin followed the Imagination wherever it led him - and so the marginal figures who people the histories of the great religions were often his particular favorites: Swedenborg and Boehme, alchemists and kabbalists, Sufis and Ismailis, poets and visionaries of all stripes who take their stand against the dominant and powerful orthodoxies of their times were particularly dear to his heart. It is hardly true however that Corbin stood outside of the "traditional" scholarly world. Solidly grounded in the philosophy and theology of the West, he knew thoroughly and deeply the works of the most important modern philosophers and religious thinkers - Kierkegaard and Barth, Nietzsche and Heidegger and a host of others whose names are familiar to even casual students of modern Western thought.

One of the things that to my mind reveals his particular genius is his ability and willingness to effortlessly cross boundaries that to others mark the limits of well-defined and independent realms of knowledge. His talents as a linguist were of course crucial to this cross-cultural and polyvalent vision, but his remarkable ability to move simultaneously among the traces of disparate cultures and intellectual traditions is the mark of something more than linguistic virtuosity. I think it is his boundary-crossing ability that reveals Corbin as a truly "postmodern" thinker. He refused steadfastly to be bound by the strictures of the prevailing historicist orthodoxy, preferring to adopt what to some critics seems a dangerous and ill-conceived a-historical eclecticism. But he was early and independently embarked upon what was to become a hallmark of a kind postmodern approach to reality - the ungrounding of literal and totalitarian modes of knowing in favor of something more difficult and subtle, which was for Corbin an extension of what medieval philosophers called an apophatic stance towards to reality. This fundamental attitude towards human knowledge and human being is what is required to understand Corbin's vision of the imaginal world. And it is a radically poetic view of knowledge rather than a discursively rational one. In the modern Western tradition we can find the roots of this kind of "romantic" vision not only among the poets but also in the works of those essential figures in Corbin's pantheon: Hamann, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

Corbin tells us that the world of the Imagination has been left to the poets in the modern Western tradition. He wanted to reclaim it for philosophy and theology and to place the Imagination at the very heart of human life because he believed, along with Ibn 'Arabi, that it lies at the very center of reality. This is so very post-modern. A turn to the Imagination, or less threateningly perhaps, towards the "literary," characterizes much of Western philosophical and theological thought from at least Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on. Most tellingly for Corbin, Heidegger placed hermeneutics and not abstract logic at the very heart of human being and knowing. But unlike Heidegger who wanted to free it from theology, Corbin turned his hermeneutic gaze back upon a theological vision that is not only Christian, but embraces the entire Prophetic Tradition from Abraham onwards. He thus perhaps anticipated by several decades the "theological turn" in contemporary philosophy and had already turned in an entirely and essentially ecumenical direction. Among modern theologians and philosophers it is perhaps only Henry Corbin, with a deep knowledge of Greek, Latin, German, Persian, Turkish and Arabic who was able to see the religions of the Book with a sufficiently passionate detachment to grasp their essential unities and to show us how we might re-imagine the heart of these traditions to bring them alive and whole into a new cosmopolitan world free from the fundamentalisms and conflicts that have nearly nearly obliterated the prophetic message throughout its long history.

In the end, despite the difficulty of his work, the transcendent beauty of which makes the effort of reading more than worthwhile, Henry Corbin belongs not to Islamic Studies, or even to philosophy and theology, but equally to the poets, the artists and the visionaries. His work belongs to all of us and, we must hope, to the ages yet to come.

The Assembly of the Birds: Page from a manuscript of the Mantiq al-tair (The Language of the Birds) of Farid al-Din cAttar, ca. 1600; Safavid

Henry Corbin & (North) American Poetry - Part 3

Robin Blaser (1925-2009) was a close friend of Robert Duncan (see this earlier post) and Jack Spicer. Two volumes of his important work have recently been published by the University of California Press:

The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser

The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser



Photograph by Kenneth Taranta




An untitled poem from Oh! (2004) begins with an epigraph from Henry Corbin. This marvelous poem seems to me to inhabit a space near the heart of Corbin's message:

'abstract monotheism and monism, which is its secularization as social philosophy,
reveal a common totalitarian trend' - Corbin

simplified mind
generalized human nature
freedom as aggregate
public without the private
source of witnessing
this perpetual interchange
of heavenish and hellish
exhalations
oh, I ask you in my grandmother's
phrase, 'be sensible'
where is the power of the heart -
in your breast - damn you -
not up there floating
like a careless alphabet
think of a real lemon
which is very intelligent
test everything everywhere
by your own physical event
then hang on to the heart of it
we're all lemons

(in The Holy Forest, 500)

In his long essay "The Practice of Outside - For Jack Spicer," (Reprinted in The Fire, 113-63) Blaser cites Corbin twice. On page 123 he references Corbin's discussion of the cosmic crypt and the Stranger and the Guide in Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (16 ff). On p156 he writes:

"For Jack's work, as for all others in which love is a commotion of the real, love includes an anticipation of 'something that is still absent' (Corbin 155)."

The reference is to Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi. Corbin is speaking of the Dialectic of Love and the figure of the Divine Sophia in Ibn 'Arabi. He writes:

"...whether the Lover tends to contemplate the beloved being, to unite with that being, or to perpetuate its presence, his love strives always to bring into existence something which does not yet exist in the Beloved... As the Koran verse "He will love them and they will love Him" suggests to [Ibn 'Arabi] the word love never ceases to anticipate something that is still absent, something deprived of being. Just as we speak of of a Futurum resurrectionis, we must speak of a Futurm amoris. Thus the experience of mystic love, which is a conjunction of the spiritual and the physical, implies that imaginative Energy, or creative Imagination, the theory of which plays so large a part in the visionary experience of Ibn 'Arabi. As organ of the transmutation of the sensible, it has the power to manifest the 'angelic function of beings.' " (155).

Robin Blaser and the Angel. From the Toronto Globe&Mail here. See the full Obituary.

Goethe & Islam (revisited)

Jerome Rothenberg has posted some translations from and short commentary on Goethe's West-Oestlicher Diwan by Pierre Joris here. Also see my post of Jan.18 on Corbin & Goethe here. Joris writes of this late work of Goethe,

"at the core of this late creative surge lies Goethe’s avowed Ahlverwandschaft [kinship] with the Persian poet Hafiz, the addressee, instigator, dedicatee of much of the Diwan. Whatever Saidian critique of “orientalism” may apply to this work in hindsight, it is also clear that this is probably Goethe’s most powerful long sequence of poems. The gusto for life, the exuberance, the magnificent lyricism evoked by this consummate and graceful composition make it indeed into one of the great works of Romantic poetry."

Photo of the Goethe-Hafez Memorial in Weimar.

Homage to Henry Corbin

This blog devoted to Henry Corbin will be one year old on June 17. Today the site received its 10,000th visit (and 18,996th page view). This visitor from Sweden was referred to the page from Bosnak's All in the Mind interview on the Australian Broadcasting network, which underscores the wide range of Corbin's reach. The blog now averages between 50 & 60 visits a day. Although a large percentage of the visits are from a small number of regular visitors, and many more are from people who are searching images, it is still gratifying to think that the effort to make Corbin's work more widely known has been to some degree successful and continues to be worthwhile. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the site. I hope that more contributions and suggestions from all with an interest in Corbin's work will follow. - tc (tcheetham@gmail.com)

Henry Corbin & American Poetry - Part 2

In my last post on this topic (November 18, 2008 - here) I discussed Corbin and Charles Olson. In Dale Smith's excellent and useful essay Divining Word he also highlights Robert Duncan's (1919-1988) interest in the idea of the Active Intelligence as delineated by Corbin in Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (pdf). (A good short biography of Duncan can be read here.) Interested readers should search out a copy of Duncan's remarkable lectures to the Analytical Psychology Society of Western New York transcribed for Spring Journal (1996): Spring 59: Opening the Dreamway: In the Psyche of Robert Duncan (this issue is, I am sorry to say, out-of-print but worth searching for). Duncan was, according to Kathleen Raine, "the major visionary poet writing in America." As Smith points out there are several citations from Corbin's book on Avicenna in Duncan's important unpublished volume The H.D. Book (pdf). I present the chief of these below.


Referring to a scathing and dismissive review of H.D.s "Tribute to the Angels" Duncan writes,

"But the suspicion that disturbs [Dudley] Fitts is not mistaken; Pre-Raphaelism broughtdown- to-date “and the like’’ does enter in. Back of H.D., as back of Pound or of Yeats, was the cult of romance that Rossetti and then Morris had derived from Dante and his circle, the Fedeli d’amore, and revived in the Victorian era. The Christ of H.D.’s trilogy is not the Christ of church prescription but of the imagination, related to the Christ of the mysteries, the Christos-Angelos of Gnostic myth and the Angel Amor of the Vita Nuova; and here again, the elder Rossetti and then Dante Gabriel in their revival of Dante had played their part. Beatrice in the Christian mystery cult of Amor may have been herself a presentation of the Christos-Angelos. Gabriel Rossetti tells us in his Early Italian Poets that Dante had identified the Lady with Love Himself."

Duncan continues, quoting Corbin,

“This Figure imposes itself in the imperious manner of a central symbol,” Henry Corbin writes in Avicenna and the Visionary Recital: “appearing to man’s mental vision under the complementary feminine aspect that makes his being a total being.” [Corbin, 267] The crisis in angelology came in the Western World in the thirteenth century when William of Auvergne lead the attack against the Avicennan notion of natures operating in virtue of an inner necessity and according to the law of their essences and especially against the concept of the soul’s finding its inner necessity and the law of its essence in awakening through love to the presence of its Angel, the Active Intelligence. In the Moslem world as well as in the Christian world this concept of being united with the divine reality by a love union with the Angel who is present in the person of the Beloved becomes a prime heresy. Fitts’s “angels and archangels . . . mystical etymologies, and the like” would dismiss any such vision with something like the contempt of medieval theologians—for there were critics in the middle ages who raged in Provence against the lutes and cytharists, troubadours and catharists, against musks and embroideries and the pseudo-medieval. But, as Henry Corbin proposes of Avicenna: “our whole effort was bent to another end than explaining Avicenna as a ‘man of his time.’ Avicenna’s time, his own time, has not here been put in the past tense; it has presented itself to us as an immediacy. It originates not in the chronology of a history of philosophy, but in the threefold ecstasy by which the archangelic Intelligences each give origin to a world and to consciousness of a world, which is the consciousness of a desire, and this desire is hypostatized in the Soul that is the motive energy of that world.” [Corbin, 266] Corbin would read Avicenna’s recitals not as plays with counters but as visionary experiences. “The union that joins the possible intellect of the human soul with the Active Intelligence as Dator formarum, Angel of Knowledge or Wisdom-Sophia, is visualized and experienced as a love union. It is a striking illustration of the relation of personal devotion that we have attempted to bring out here and that shows itself to proceed from an experience so fundamental that it can defy the combined efforts of science and theology against angelology.” [Corbin, 267-8] What the dogma of science with its imagination of the world in terms of use and manipulation for profit and the dogma of theology with its view of reality in the individual experience that would imagine the universe in terms of love, desire, devotion and ecstasy, emotions which men who seek practical ends find most disruptive. “In symbolic terms, let us say,” Henry Corbin comments: “that the Avicennan champion will always find himself faced by the descendants of William of Auvergne, even, and not a whit the less, when those descendants are perfectly ‘laicized.’”[Corbin, 267]

Duncan continues,

The hostile reader will find that all visions start “vaguely from somewhere Biblical” or like Dante’s from somewhere Virgilian and end up “barely more convincingly, in Bethlehem” or like Dante’s in the high fantasy of the luminous eye of God. Dante and his circle, Corbin makes clear, were deep in this matter of angels “and the like”. The whole method, William of Auvergne almost a century before Dante had shown clearly and with telling scorn, was false. But the poets followed the tradition of Provence, not the convincing arguments of the University of Paris. What Dante drew from translated Sufi texts as well as from the songs of Toulouse and Albi where such Images of the First Beloved appeared was the Spirit of Romance. Corbin admits too to an Avicennan romanticism. “Nothing could be clearer then the identity of this ‘amorosa Madonna Intelligenza’ who has her residence in the soul, and with whose celestial beauty the poet has fallen in love. Here is perhaps one of the most beautiful chapters in the very long ‘history’ of the Active Intelligence, which still remains to be written, and which is certainly not a ‘history’ in the accepted sense of the word, because it takes place entirely in the souls of poets and philosophers.” [Corbin, 267] (Duncan, 358-9).

Texts by Henry Corbin Available Online

Books:
Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi (Searchable text through Google Books)
Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (pdf)
Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (pdf)
En Islam Iranien Vol 2: Suhrawardi and the Platonists of Persia. I am greatly indebted to Charles Cameron for pointing out the first English translation of this volume by Hugo M. Van Woerkom available from Scribd. You must register (for free) to download a pdf version of the text.
The History of Islamic Philosophy - Part I (pdf)
The History of Islamic Philosophy - Part II (pdf)
The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism (Searchable text through Google Books)
NEW Temple and Contemplation Part 1 & Part 2 (pdf)
The Voyage and the Messenger (Searchable text through Google Books)

Essays and Interviews:
Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism
The Paradox of Monotheism
The Force of Traditional Philosophy in Iran Today
From Heidegger to Suhrawardi: An Interview with Philip Nemo
Mundus Imaginalis or, The Imaginary and the Imaginal (Fox's translation from Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam)
Corbin on "The Imams and the Imamate" (Ch. 12) and "Shi'i Hermeneutics" (Ch. 13) in Shi'ism: Doctrines, Thought and Spirituality edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Hamid Dabashi (from Google Books)
"The Time of Eranos" (1956) and "Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Ismailism" (1951) from Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks from Scridb. (This is the volume the American poet Charles Olson would have seen.)
"Réalisme et symbolisme des couleurs en cosmologie shî'ite" with Deutsche Zusammenfassung and English summary, in Eranos Jahrbuch 1972: The Realms of Colour / Die Welt der Farben / Le monde des couleurs, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974. (Searchable text through Google Books.) This is availale in English in Temple and Contemplation.
NEW "Dramatic Element Common to the Gnostic Cosmogonies of The Religions of The Book" from Studies in Comparative Religion.(pdf)

(I would appreciate knowing of any additions to this list that I may have missed - T Cheetham: tcheetham@gmail.com).

Album page: A Group of Dervishes; Early 17th century; Safavid period; Isfahan, Iran. Freer & Sackler Gallery.

A Sketch of a Life

A Very Brief Chronology of the Life of Henry Corbin
(Being selections from the more extensive Biographical Sketch in Henry Corbin, edited by Christian Jambet, Paris: L'Herne, 1981.)

1903 - Born in Paris, April 14, 47 avenue Bosquet, son of Henri Arthur Corbin and Eugenie Fournier. His mother died 10 days later and he was raised by his aunt and uncle.

1915 - Attended Abbey College of St-Maur

1922 - Studied music theory and organ. Attended the Seminary School at lssy. Received the License in scholastic philosophy from the Catholic Institute of Paris

1925 - Studied under Etienne Gilson at 1'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes. His thesis was "Latin Avicennism in the Middle Ages." Began his study of Arabic and Sanskit at l'Ecole des langues orientales.

1926 - Met Joseph Hackin, Director of the Guimet Museum (the National Museum of Asiatic Art). After his meeting with Hackin, Corbin said he was filled with a joyous certainty and "saw the link between my studies of medieval philosophy and Hindu metaphysics." Beginning of his friendship with the philosopher and music critic Joseph Baruzi. In a note Corbin wrote "The rhythm of music is the rhythm of my soul."

1928 - Student Diploma at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes for his work on "Stoicism and Augustinism in the Work of Luis de Leon." Awarded the le Prix Luis de Leon by the University of Salamanca.

1929 - In April he began work at the Bibliotheque Nationale. Received his diploma in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Traveled to Spain and spent two months at L'Escorial. Met the Swedish orientalist H. S. Nyberg. Established friendships with Hellmut Ritter, Georges Vajda, Emile Benveniste, Jean Gaulmier, Robert de Chateaubriant, Pierre Bordessoule, Igor Plemmanikov. At gatherings of "The Friends of the Orient" he met several Iranian students who he would see again in Iran some years later. On October 12 he met Louis Massignon at the Bibliotheque Nationale. On the 13th he visited Massignon and it was no doubt then that Massignon gave him the lithographed copy of Suhrawardi's Hikmat al-Ishraq.

1930 - Took courses with Louis Massignon, Etienne Gilson, E. Benveniste, Alexandre Koyre, Henri-Charles Puech and Charles Andler (on Hegel - see this bibliography on Hegel's reception in France).. In July, the first trip to Germany: Frankfurt-am-Main, Marburg. There he met Rudolf Otto, Rabindranath Tagore, Karl Loewith, Albert-Marie Schmidt and Henri Jourdan. In a note dated 6 August, Corbin wrote "Read Heidegger." On his return from Germany Georges Bataille asked him for a study on Rudolf Otto for the review « Documents ». (also here for further references and analysis). Corbin is President of the French Federation of Associations of Christian Students. From 1931 to 1934 Corbin was secretary and contributor to « Revue critique ».

1931 - In January met with Alexandre Kojeve again. At a seminar organized by Jean Baruzi, Corbin met Bernard Groethuysen who became a close friend. At the seminar Corbin gave one paper on Marcion and a second on Manichean prayer. During this period he met Lev Shestov and Andre Malraux. In April - a second trip to Germany: Stuttgart, Tubingen, and Friburg where Corbin met Heidegger. In August another trip to Germany: Bonn, Cologne, Hamburg, Lubeck. With Denis de Rougemont, Roland de Pury, A. M. Schmidt and Roger Jezequiel, Corbin founded the review «Hic et Nunc». Only six numbers were published.

1932 - In February Corbin convened a conference at the Faculty of Protestant Theology on "The Expression and the Function of the Personality in Islamic Mysticism - in particular in Hallaj and Ghazali." In April and in August more visits to Germany where he met Karl Barth and established ties with Paul L. Landsberg and Hugo Friedrich, then to Sweden to visit and Georges Dumezil and Professor Nyberg.

1933 - Collaborated on the revue « Le Semeur » (The Sower). Established ties with Daniel Bovet, Denis de Rougemont, Charles Westphal. Corbin published his first translation of Suhrawardi in « Recherches Philosophiques ». Marriage to Stella Leenhardt, daughter of Maurice Leenhardt and Jeanne Andre-Michel.

1934-36 - Member of the Asiatic Society. Visited Heidegger in April, 1934. Corbin organized an exhibition marking the millennial celebration of Ferdowsi at the Bibliotheque Nationale. Invited to Pontigny by Paul Desjardins for a conference, «Is the Will to Justice Necessary for Revolutionary Action?» with Charles du Bos, Vladimir Jankelevitch, Denis de Rougemont, and Maurice de Gandillac. From October 1935 until June 30, 1936 Corbin was sent by the Bibliotheque nationale to the 1'Institut francais in Berlin. In July he went to Friburg-en-Bresgau to submit to Heidegger translations to appear as « Qu'est-ce que la Metaphysique? » Contributed to « Hermes » and « Mesures ».

1937-39 - Substituted for Alexandre Koyre a 1'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes. Presented « Transcendental et Existential» at the 9th International Congress of Philosophy. Conference at the Society of Iranian Studies on Sohravardi. Organised the exposition: «Arts of Iran, Ancient Persia and Baghdad» at the Bibliotheque Nationale. Attended courses in Aramaic and Syriac at the IVe section de 1'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes (Andre Dupont-Sommer). Publication of « Qu'est-ce que la Metaphysique? ». Visit to Nicolas Berdiaev in April. Sent by the Bibliotheque nationale for a six-month stay at the French Institute for Archaeology in Istanbul the Corbins remain there until the end of the war.

1940-45 - As the sole member of the French Institute of Archaeology in Istanbul, Corbin collected manuscripts for a critical edition of Suhrawardi and worked as well on manuscripts of Mulla Sadra and others. Upon the arrival of his replacement in 1945, the Corbin's left for Teheran on the Taurus Express (and here) through Bagdad, arriving in Teheran on September 14. At a conference at the Museum of Archaeology plans were made to create a department of Iranology in the new Institute francais. Corbin met Mohammad Mo'in with whom he would later collaborate on many volumes in the « Bibliotheque iranienne ».

1946 - In July the Corbins returned to Paris after an absence of 6 years.

1949 - Attended his first Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland. He returned nearly every year until his death in 1978. His colleagues and friends here included C. G. Jung, G. Scholem, Giuseppe Tucci, Emil Cioran, Mircea et Christinel Eliade, Christian et Marie-Louise Dehollain, Adolf Portmann, C. A. Meier, Ernst Benz.

1954 - Delivered a paper at l'Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on «The Situation of Iranian Studies in Iran». After a month in Cairo editing the papers of Paul Kraus, Corbin returned to Teheran as director of the department of Iranology at the Institut franco-iranien. Established the series « Bibliotheque iranienne ».

1954 - Avicenna's Millennial Celebration in Teheran. Corbin delivers «Avicennisme et Imamisme». Publication of Avicenne et le Recit visionnaire. Named Director of Studies in Islam and the Religions of Arabia at 1'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes.

1955-1973 - Corbin was in charge of publications at the department of lranology at the Institut franco-iranien in Teheran. He also taught history of theology and philosophy at the University of Teheran. From Janurary to June he taught in Paris.

1958 - Delivered a paper at the Guimet Museum on « Une grande figure du soufisme iranien : Ruzbehan Baqli Shirazi». Publication of L'imagination creatrice dans le soufisme d'lbn 'Arabi.

1960 - Publication in Iran of conversations between the master of Islamic philosophy Allama Tabataba'i and Henry Corbin.

1961 - Publication of Terre celeste et corps de resurrection.

1962 - Invited by G. E. von Grunebaum (The Near Eastern Center, Los Angeles) and Roger Caillois to a colloquium on « Le reve et les societes humaines». Delivered «Le songe visionnaire en spiritualite islamique ». Attended a conference in Teheran on «La place de Molla Sadra Shirazi dans la philosophic iranienne ». Member of Consulting Council at Eranos.

1964 - Conference at the Colloque du Symbolisme (Paris): «Mundus imaginalis ou l'imaginaire et l'imaginal». Established friendships with Gilbert Durand, Rudolf and Catherine Ritsema, James Hillman.

1968 - Publication of Histoire de la philosophic islamique.

1970 - Invited to Newnham College at Cambridge (conference : Sohravardi, de l'epopee heroique a l'epopee mystique). Trip to Mashhad to meet Professor S. J. Ashtiyani and organize publication of volumes of I'Anthologie des philosophes iraniens depuis leXVII siecle jusqu'a nos jours.

1971 - Publication of first volumes of En Islam iranien: aspects spirituels et philosophiques.

1972 - At the request of his friend General Georges Buis, Director of the Centre des Hautes-Etudes militaires, he attended a Conference and debate on Iran.

1973 - Attended a colloquium at Chambery sponsored by Gilbert Durand at the Centre de Recherche sur l'imaginaire : « Le motif du voyage et du messager en gnose irano-islamique ». Retired in 1974, Corbin continued to give lectures at 1'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes and he returned to the University of Teheran each autumn, invited by S. H. Nasr. With Robert de Chateaubriant, Gilbert Durand, Antoine Faivre and Richard
Stauffer, Corbin founded 1'Universite Saint-Jean-de-Jerusalem, Centre international de recherche spirituelle comparee. Shortly after, they were joined by Pierre Bordessoule, Jean Brun and J. L. Vieillard-Baron. The theme of the first session was «Sciences traditionnelles et sciences profanes ». Corbin was elected President of the Association Nicolas Berdiaev.

1975 - Invited by the University of Geneva to give two lectures, « La prophetologie shi'ite duodecimaine » and « La prophetologie ismaelienne », and attended a colloquium at the University of Tours: « Macrocosme et microcosme » where he presented « Le microcosme comme cite personnelle en theosophie islamique ». Second session of USJJ on « Jerusalem, la cite spirituelle ».

1976 - Third session of USJJ on « La foi prophetique et le sacre ».

1977 - Publication of Melanges offerts a Henry Corbin. Colloquium organized at the University of Tours on the theme «L'homme et 1'ange», presented « Necessite de 1'angelologie ». Fourth session of USJJ on « Les pelerins de 1'Orient et les vagabonds de 1'Occident». Invited to Teheran for an international colloquium « L'impact planetaire de la pensee occidentale rend-il possible un dialogue reel entre les civilisations? » he delivered his last major paper, « De la theologie apophatique comme antidote du nihilisme ».

1978 - In June the fifth session of USJJ on:« Les yeux de chair et les yeux de feu ou la science et la gnose ». In July a trip to Scotland.

From Stella Corbin's Memoir: On the 26th of September the doctor authorizes the return to Rue Odéon. Henry, overjoyed, barely sleeps, plans to finish his works, and then, slightly troubled, asks the Doctor: “But do you think I can finish this book?” Dr. Gonnot: “Oh! I know you. Even if you had 100 years ahead of you, you would ask me the same question. You would have yet another urgent book to finish… and many more besides.” Corbin replies, “That may well be! The thing is, you see, with my books, I am struggling against the same thing as you. Each in our own way, you as doctor, and I as historian of religions, are engaged in the same struggle, we are leading a campaign against Death."

Henry Corbin died on October 7, 1978

[An account of Corbin's childhood and of his final illness (and much else besides) can be found here courtesy of the Friends of Henry and Stella Corbin.]

Eye of the Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom

I call your attention to this excellent journal:

The Philosophy & Religious Studies program, La Trobe University, Bendigo, is pleased to announce the release of Issue 3 of Eye of the Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom.

In particular I recommend the fine essay by Angela Voss "A Methodology of the Imagination" which makes extensive use of Corbin's work.





Anatomical Man, from Les Tres Riches Heures de Jean Duc du Berry, the Limbourg Brothers, 1413-16.

Eda: An Anthology of Turkish Poetry

Jerome Rothenberg has excerpted passages (here) from the fascinating introduction to Murat Nemet-Nejat’s 2004 volume of Turkish poetry. He writes that this "remarkable gathering, Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Talisman, 2004), ... establishes “eda” as a marker of poetic process much as Lorca’s duende or the Japanese concept of yugen had ignited similar interests in the century now behind us. The rootedness of mysticism in language is central to the poetics in question, a point he hammers home with great intelligence & passion. " There is a review with selected passages from some of the poems here.

From the Introduction: "Eda is the alien other. What is this alien ghost, the way of moving and perceiving which must enter and possess English? It is Sufism, the Asiatic mode of perception which contains an intense subjectivity at its center. The pre-Islamic origin of Sufism is in Central Asian Shamanism. Turkish was the language of that area; its grammar is the quintessential Sufi language."

Page of Calligraphy 16th century Ottoman period
Probably Turkey
S1986.335 Freer & Sackler Galleries