“And it will be as well now to leave him wrapped in his sighs and his verses.”
— CervantesFootnote 1Introduction
How do you know God? How can you know God? What happens in the encounter? How can you grow your love? What happens when you fail God? And is there ever a possibility of a return? These are the key themes underlying the work of the thirteenth- century Dutch Beguine, Hadewijch (fl. 1240), who wrote poetry and letters, recorded her visions and is thought to have been the head of a Beguine house. She is less famous than some of her Beguine sisters, for instance, Hildegaard of Bingen and Marguerite Porete, but her work is no less profound, and her poetry, especially her poems in stanzas, is sublime. Hadewijch's Strofische Gedichten, or Poems in Stanzas, closely follow the model of courtly love poems that began to be written in the eleventh century and that were, by her age, the predominant secular literary art form. She appropriates much from the prolific minnesingers of this period, including the structure and motifs she employs as well as the very idea and representation of the beloved, Dame Amour, or minne.
It is Hadewijch's taking on of a distinctly male persona and voice that first drew me to her work. Every critic worth their salt wants to be able to make at least one original point in their lives. I thought this just might be mine. It did not require too much digging, however, to discover that there were twenty or so Southern French trobairitz, or women troubadours, who preceded Hadewijch in the writing of courtly lyrics. Though we have no means of verifying whether Hadewijch was familiar with the work of the trobairitz or not, we see that in her work, as in theirs, there is an interchange of male and female roles.Footnote 2 But the similarity between the minnesingers, trobairitz, and Hadewijch is a surface one. While their verse tells stories of human love, Hadewijch's poetry, like that of other mystical writers before and after her, mixes stories of human love with divine love. As I kept reading Hadewijch's verse, my admiration for that hardest of things to achieve — its poetical sound — grew. Then I saw that there are other things at play in her work and that these things might form a pattern — one, moreover, that was worth looking at more closely.
When we first turn to Hadewijch's work, we are aware of what appear to be inconsistencies in her thinking. Her position on subjects such as the knowability of the divine varies not only from one poem to another but also within the confines of individual poems.Footnote 3 We face difficulties if we attempt to force these disparate pieces together to form a unified concept (for example, Hadewijch's idea of the knowability of the divine). There is an important reason why we should not do this. These are dramatic poems, the stories of one or more dramatic personae; what appears, therefore, as her aporetic positioning on such issues is dependent upon who is speaking, who is being represented, and their proximity or distance to the beloved. From this, we grasp that, instead of being fixed, the meaning of an idea is dependent upon the variables that attach to it. For example, instead of saying love of God means one thing for all people, Hadewijch shows us what it means for specific persons (the lover and the non-lover) at specific points in the journey of love (in fruition and non-fruition). We will attend, as many of Hadewijch's Dutch scholars do, to a contextual reading of her terminology.Footnote 4 This reading, however, will be balanced by reference to the meaning other writers and theologians give to such terms, for as we know, Hadewijch's religious love lyrics were forged from two extant and seemingly opposing traditions: the courtly love lyrics of the troubadours and the minnesingers, and the theology of the churchmen. To decode the language and imagery as either “troubadour” or “Christian,” or, indeed, to fail to acknowledge either, is to fail to understand the nature of Hadewijch's poetic skill and her theology. We are arguing that in the process of Hadewijch's refashioning of both traditions an amalgamation does not take place; rather, what emerges is what Plato, in the voice of Diotima, calls an “intermediary,” that is, a state that can exist in and of itself, resisting synthesis. As with Sufi verse, which also has a similar secular base, both meanings remain extant. In this case, the secular erotic love narrative underlies the religious love narrative and provides, I would like to argue, a necessary tension, a tension indicative of the possibility of love between lover and beloved.
Enter the Beguines
Bernard McGinn's terminology for the lay religious women who emerged across North Europe — “medieval women vernacular theologians” — is more useful than the term “Beguines” for it tells us that they were medieval women, that they wrote in the vernacular, and that their theological thinking was honed. But as “Beguines” has become the accepted nomenclature, this is what I too will, for the main, use. Some scholars refer to the Beguines as a movement;Footnote 5 others refute this and say theirs was an “amorphous phenomenon.”Footnote 6 Paul Mommaers notes that what links the Beguines is that they “held onto the vita apostolica, the way of living of the first apostles and Christians.”Footnote 7 But distinctions are equally important to look at and the renowned Flemish historian Philppen makes one which is particularly relevant, on two counts, for this paper. He notes that in the Low Countries we see a four-stage movement from isolation to claustration. While Germany was, for example, more renowned for scattered women and small convents Belgium saw the growth of large beguinages, or begijnhofen.Footnote 8 From 1230 to 1280, the period in which Hadewijch was active, these great beguinages, cities within cities, became more prevalent than the earlier convent-style beguinages, which had housed on average 14.7 inhabitants.Footnote 9 Hadewijch would most likely have lived in and probably served as mistress of a large beguinage. And it is here that her work would have been read and sung. The play with gender we find in her work would have been as obvious to her audience as it is to us who pick up a book with her name on it.
We also know that beguines in beguinages received clerical guidance. This should be a sufficient response to those who view Beguine writing, despite its layers of theological knowledge, as largely affective, that is, privileging emotion rather than rational enquiry.Footnote 10 Typical of those commentators who regard the work of the women vernacular theologians as affective rather than speculative is T. M. Guest who argues, perhaps with somewhat loaded logic, that because Hadewijch is a woman, her work is emotional.Footnote 11 A reading of Hadewijch's, Mechthild's, and other Beguine writers’ work shows that the distinction between affective and rational is perhaps not as clear as some scholars would have us believe; for in Beguine work we see a familiarity with theological arguments and forms and a background of learning.
To understand to what degree Hadewijch's work is rooted in her learned reading we will contextualise it within the framework of her literary and theological peers and predecessors. As we read the poems, we will read them, therefore, in light of and with recourse to, the work of writers such as the German minnesingers, Mechthild, Augustine, William of St. Thierry, and Bernard of Clairvaux.
Though William of St. Thierry wrote the commentary for one of the most popular biblical books in the Middle Ages, the Song of Songs, it is unlikely that the Beguines would have known of him by name. His ideas would have come to them via Saint Bernard, whose sometime collaborator he was. Additionally, a number of St. Thierry's texts were credited, though falsely, to Saint Bernard. From both William of St. Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux then, the Beguines developed two ideas that are central to their thinking: that love is a means of knowing and that one knows via the body. In their work, knowing is a sensual knowing and the divine is approached, met, and experienced through the senses, leading towards what I call, borrowing from Luce Irigary, a sensible transcendence.Footnote 12 Of course, this strain always exists beside a more orthodox approach to religion and the two contend with one another, sometimes more, sometimes less. The Beguines, with their body-centered approach, might not have been viewed as so radical if they had not been women, but in a male-paradigmed world, when a woman moves from being a passive object of arousal to an agent of her own arousal, danger signals burn. In Beguine writing, the body that encounters God is often an aroused female body or a mothering body, suckling the baby Jesus — disturbing images, disturbing ideas. The Beguines’ appeal, then, to feminists (and I include myself in that number) is obvious. Like other Beguine researchers, I have looked at the play of the senses in their work. But here, I want to step away from this, not entirely, but a few steps, to see what else their work attempts to do. What I am interested in is a movement I am calling “dynamism” — their use of non-linear narrative structures, the interplay of dynamic opposites, and grammatical perspective and gender perspective shifts. This dynamism is, I suspect, as key to their theology, as is their use of the senses to reach out to and reach God.
While this dynamism runs throughout the work of the major Beguine writers, it is particularly pronounced in Hadewijch's work. In this paper I will look at six of Hadewijch's forty-five Strofische Gedichten.Footnote 13 I have consulted three texts — two Dutch texts: Norbert De Paepe, ed., Een Blomelezing Uit Haar Werken (Amsterdam and Brussels, 1979), and Jozef Van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Strofische Gedichten; Text een Commentaar (Leuven, 1942); and the standard English translation of Mother Columba Hart, trans., The Complete Works (New York, 1981). The Dutch theological scholar, Rob Faesen, who has written on Hadewijch, convincingly argues for using the Van Mierlo text, and this is what I have chosen to do.Footnote 14 Unless otherwise stated, all English translations are mine. Although my decision to opt for a non-literary translation unfortunately diminishes Hadewijch's poetic voice, it has the advantage, I hope, of making the complexity of what she is doing with language clearer. I refer to Hart's translation to discuss her choice of words over others.
While admirable work has been carried out in recent years on the Beguines, broadening their appeal to other disciplines than Medieval Studies, two (in my opinion) unfortunate, trends have subsequently ensued. One is what Bernard McGinn calls a propensity to “privilege the present” so that the work of these mystics is analyzed from the perspective of modern theories.Footnote 15 Such analyses, for instance, that see Beguine writing primarily in terms of political rebellion or feminist critique, however rich in ideas they may be, de-contextualize the work. The impulse is understandable, but I think we — as writers and readers — should nevertheless remain on guard.
The second trend has been to regard the work produced by these women theologians as one body of work (that is, “Beguine literature”), informed by a common set of precepts. Although commonalities exist, the danger inherent in this second approach is that, in such bracketing, individual viewpoints may be overlooked. For example, when scholars cite the women vernacular theologians’ use of certain motifs, that is, bridal metaphors, as indicative of a particularly feminine relation to the divine, this proves untenable to a reading of Hadewijch's work (we refer here only to her stanzaic verse). We are not by any means arguing that she does not share certain ideas with these other women mystics; what we are saying, however, is that if there is a feminine theology that is distinctive to these other writers, it is not a theology that we find consistently in Hadewijch's work. For instance, while she employs bridal metaphors in her visions, in the Strofische Gedichten we will look at, she borrows the model of courtly love lyrics so popular in her period to explore the encounter between lover and divine beloved: knights enter the field of battle, joust to win love, and are marked by the valor of their hearts and their fidelity to love. Mommares suggests, “A caution may also be suggested here about the well-known distinction between ‘bridal’ and ‘essential’ mysticism which has been applied to Hadewijch's experience. … A reading of Hadewijch's own text show[s] she escapes both categories.”Footnote 16
The world of the Strofische Gedichten is a typically male world, in that it is an exterior space, though here too, as we shall see, there are interiors, and the narrative voice, being that of a knight, is perceived to be, though is not consistently, male. We will be asking why it is a dynamic world as we examine her perspective shifts (from, for instance, “I” to “he” to “we”) and shifts in gender perspective (from a representation of minne as the Virgin to a representation of minne as Christ, and also from the identification of the knight as traditionally male-personified and grammatically masculine to an identification of the knight as Hadewijch, and, therefore, feminine), and her use of dynamic opposites — with regard to themes and motifs (such as “the lover” / “the alien,” inner/outer, etc.).
From Dame Amour to Minne
Hadewijch took the term “minne” (beloved) from the minnesingers. In their work, “minne” simply replaces the “Dame Amour” of courtly love lyrics. There are similarities between the Dame Amour/minne of courtly love lyrics and minne as Hadewijch uses it, the chief of which are that both are the object of love, both depict figures that are capricious in their loving, and both describe female figures — minne being a female gendered noun in both the German and Dutch of that period.
Hadewijch's understanding of minne, however, as we see from her letters, her deployment of the term in the poetry, and from Hadewijch commentary, is particularly dense. Mommaers notes that the term has its etymological roots in “the Latin memini (to remember) and mens (the spirit) and to the English word mind. Therefore, originally the word means that another person, notably the be-min-de (beloved), is present in one's consciousness.”Footnote 17 Links have been made between minne and esse/beingFootnote 18 and minne and wessen/essence,Footnote 19 the one referring to the beloved, and the other, to the lover. As Bouyer notes, in Hadewijch's work, the figure of minne either represents Christ or the soul.Footnote 20 According to De Paepe, minne is not only the object of love; it is the experience of love.Footnote 21 I am taking the object of love to be the thing itself and the goal towards which the lover is impelled to move, and in this way, there is some distance between De Paepe's reading of minne and my own.
Bouyer, McGinn and Mommares argue that Hadewijch upheld the exemplarist doctrine, which argues that the soul is preexistent in God. Zum Bruhn and Epiney-Burgard add that this concept of “belongingness,” which is regarded as one of Eckhart's foremost contributions to mystical thought, can in fact be traced back to Hadewijch. “Belongingness” is the notion that there is an “exclusive reciprocity between the Divine Depths and the depths of the soul — the soul, that fathomless abyss which God alone can fill.”Footnote 22 From this can we deduce that the activation of the soul, of minne, is an activation of memory, wherein the soul has to recall — although “re-find” would be a more appropriate term, given the journey the lover has to take — its place within God? Does the activation of minne not only lead to the soul's love for God but also to the emanation of the Trinity? I will be arguing that the Trinitarian movement is self-instigating: can minne then be seen to succor this movement? I will say more about these two points as we read the poetry.
From the Beloved to the Lover
In Hadewijch's representation of the lover one of two things may occur. Either two lovers are represented, one true, one false; or else, a lover will be represented at different stages of love.
The lover is varyingly referred to as “die mint” — from “minnen,” (to love) and from “Minne,” (Love/Beloved) we have “die mint” (the lover). “Die mint” means “the one who loves” and allows for the possibility of being understood as referring to either a male or female lover. Hart invariably translates the word into English as “the lover.” The lover may also be called “vrome” (the strong or brave one) and referred to also by the more generic term of the Dutch word “men” (equivalent to the German word “mann,” or one). When Hadewijch uses the last of these three terms, Hart more often than not translates the word as “knight.” Given the courtly love structure of Hadewijch's verse, the choice seems valid.
The non-lover, too, goes by a number of names. Perhaps the most important of these names is that of “vremde” (stranger), which Hart translates as “alien.” This name is, I would like to argue, the binary opposite of “die mint” (the lover) and suggests, I think, a different, more implacable state than that of “trage” (slow people) and “nedere” (lowly ones). Hart's usage captures the essence of the lover's state when we consider that to love the beloved is to be familiar with him. I would like to make a case, however, for reading the word in its modern sense in the hope that it will throw light on the Dutch “vremde,” If we were to apply to “alien” its modern meaning we would see that it signifies that which is not of our species and not of our world. With this reading, then, we perhaps have the idea that the lover is he who belongs to the beloved and to his kingdom.
Aside from being “traghe” (slow), “nedere” (lowly), “ledich” (empty), a non-lover may also be “lichtecope” (cheap). We notice here also other important pairs of opposites in Hadewijch's work: “swaar” (heavy) and “lich” (light) and “nedere” (lowly) and “boven” (above). In this way, Hadewijch follows Saint Bernard, who follows Aristotle in ascribing to states a strict hierarchy of value. And from this we perhaps understand that transcendence is not a leap but a movement of steps (and state) that ascend ever upwards.
As we see, while the lover is called by the title of “die mint” (the lover) or “men” (the knight), the non-lover is more frequently described by his attributes. The lover is recognized by certain signs: “zegel” (sign) and “tekene” (sign), “pant” (pledge), “vorme” (badge), “clede” (clothes), and “sieren” (adornments). These signs are common, too, to the lovers in courtly love lyrics. Again, where numerous women vernacular theologians speak of the necessity of the soul being naked before the beloved, Hadewijch remains true to the conceits of courtly love. In Poem 9 she speaks of the villager who, dressed in rags, remains unknown to the beloved. The motif of adornments therefore leads us back to the idea of ascension; each adornment marks a stage in love achieved. Adornment, then, can be understood as acts: of valor shown and love won and rewarded. In the secular realm of love, adornments, or tokens of love, have significance for both lovers and the world as a mark that two individuals are bound in love. In Hadewijch's work adornments are primarily of value to the lover and the beloved, the beloved requiring, as we have seen, a guide to sight, a mechanism or sign by which she can distinguish those who are her own.
Minne also requires that a lover exhibits fidelity, even in the face of the afflictions (tests) she puts before him. When the lover has displayed himself and proved himself, minne will bind him to her. In that binding the lover is, paradoxically, set free.
Perspective Shifts
In lyric poetry, the trope of employing invocations to a secondary object (this may be the sun, trees, or even God)Footnote 23 is called apostrophe.Footnote 24 This object is first identified; it is also seen to be separate from the speaker. In “Romantic Aversions: Apostrophe Reconsidered” Kneale first quotes Quintilian's definition of apostrophe: “‘The figure which the Greeks call apostrophe, by which is meant the diversion of our words to address some person other than the judge’ (4.1.63).” Kneale then goes on to add:
Two aspects of this definition require comment, since they reappear in nearly all discussions of apostrophe down to the nineteenth century. The first is the notion of apostrophe as a “diversion” of speech (sermonem a persona iudicis aversum). The second point, necessarily related to the first, is that the diversion redirects the speech to someone other than the original hearer. … The positing of what later rhetoricians would call the “proper” or intended hearer, and the oratorical diversion from that person to another person constitute the two chief characteristics of the figure.Footnote 25
We are calling a similar movement in Hadewijch's work perspective shifts rather than apostrophe because the identity of the object may be ambiguous; the speaker may sometimes align herself with the object (for example, Hadewijch's use of “us”), the movement is not a diversion — as there is not a primary hearer, but multivalent hearers; and because, whereas in lyrical poems the use of apostrophe may be infrequent, Hadewijch's use of perspective shifts is both frequent and rapid.
While a number of Hadewijch scholars have pointed to her use of “perspective shifts,” the most detailed analysis of grammatical cases in Hadewijch's work has been carried out by Frank Willaert.Footnote 26 We will begin this section with an analysis of the first-person narrative voice, “ic,” and from this question will emerge our other questions with regard to voice: who is the speaker? To whom is he or she speaking? Is it a male or female voice and does the case and gender of the voice remain static? Does the “ic,” then, represent the poet alone? Is it a dramatic personification, or is the “ic” a generic term that can apply to all of us who having sought love and come short and are face to face with the possibilities the world now contains? We see that these possibilities are limited, depleted as they are of that which gives value to everything else. Both Guest and Willaert suggest that the “ic” is a reference by Hadewijch to herself. Historically, this may be correct, and indeed, in such a reading we see that although the narrative voice of the lover is gendered male, if this narrative voice, this “ic,” is perceived to be Hadewijch, then there is a complex dynamic of gender at play and one that is worth analyzing. Is our reading of the poetry enhanced by speculating that at different junctures in a poem the “ic” has different applications and, therefore, can be seen to apply to one of three figures: Hadewijch, a dramatic personification, and us, the readers? In other words, I think it works to see the first person-narrative voice in Hadewijch's verse as sometimes not referring to the poet herself.
The perspective shifts in this work are, as we have said, significant because they are rapid and repeated — moving from lover to non-lover, from the singular to the plural, from one gender to another, and from a personal representation (a personal representation that may be read as exclusive, “ic,” and also inclusive, “wi” or “wij”) to a dramatic representation, “die mint” (the one who loves).
Before we move on to Hadewijch's poetry, it is worth perhaps pointing out that other Beguine writers also play with voice. In The Mirror of Simple Souls Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) uses a dramatic dialogical structure with clearly identified characters: Love, Reason, and the Soul. Mechthild of Magdeburg (born between 1207–1210) also employs a similar structure in part, but as her Flowing Light of Godhead uses not just one genre, such as drama, but an interchange of genres, it is often difficult to discern who is speaking and to whom. Bernard McGinn, speaking of the complex dialogical structure in Mechthild's work, gives to this movement the name “shifting voices”Footnote 27 but then decides not to elaborate on his argument bur rather to pursue other avenues of research.
Hadewijch, unlike Porete and to a lesser degree, Mechthild, does not provide us with such bearings. In her work, perspectives and gender perspectives constantly shift.
“Die mint” means, as we have noted, the “one who loves.” Typically, Hadewijch refers to the lover as “hi” (he), although when she includes herself in the number of lovers (as indeed when she includes herself in the number of “traghe” or slow people) the reference then is to a community of lovers and non-lovers. We begin with a reading of Poem 2.
The lover is here first identified as “hi.” In the third stanza of this poem we notice the marked perspective shifts in the lines:
Here, we see that, in the first of the three lines we have quoted, the lover is impersonal (the “u” is the polite form of “you,” equivalent to “vous” or “Sie”) and by the third line Hadewijch has introduced herself as an actor and hence, a lover. By using “ons” she incorporates others (her original audience? us? the readers?) into her circle of lovers.
In Poem 9, Hadewijch begins by identifying “us” (in which she includes herself) as the non-lovers/failed lovers and then goes on to speak of these non-lovers impersonally. I will start from the beginning because the versification in this poem is particularly fine.
And I will leave it here, for the moment, at this dramatic point in the poem. Where other poems open with the changing of the seasons or the singing of the birds, this poem opens with the singing of people. This is a difficult poem to come to grips with, even from the beginning. It starts on a joyous note, with people singing of love and indeed, across the four seasons. Yet their singing is not only one of praise but a plea as well. This raises the question of what the lover fears from the object of his love. Does he fear the superabundance of the beloved's love and his inability to carry such love?
The “traghe” (slow people) had been identified as “wi”/”wij,” by the second stanza this group is referred to as “die” (they).
In the third stanza we have:
The villager is akin to the “traghe” (slow people) of the first stanza and the “nedere” (lowly) of the third stanza. In the penultimate stanza Hadewijch uses the “ic” for the first time to refer to herself; she has used it earlier to refer to the thoughts and words of the non-lovers. We see similar movements in other poems and, in order to elaborate the point, we will refer briefly to a shift of perspective in Poem 10.
Gender perspective shifts are not restricted to the figure of the lover; they are present, though to a lesser degree, in the representation of the beloved. Whereas the medieval women theologians largely perceived the beloved (often Jesus) as male and the soul or lover as female, Hadewijch follows the courtly love lyric model where the beloved is female (Dame Amour). In her work, then, minne is a lady. In a number of poems the perspective of gender changes as minne is transformed into Jesus or a knight. Reading from Poem 32, Saskia Murk Jansen notes:
That minne has here changed sex from the noble lady inspiring great deeds to an opposing knight is a good example of Hadewijch's fluid use of gender related images. It also expresses in the form of an image an important element in Hadewijch's mysticism, namely the experience of the paradoxical and changeable aspect of God.Footnote 34
In the opening of Poem 2 the beloved is represented as “noble maiden and queen.”Footnote 35 She (Love) gives her lover “loftiness of mind,” and he in return, “fulfils her every wish.” The stress on “maiden” and “loftiness of mind” would seem to suggest the non-physical, non-erotic nature of the act of loving.Footnote 36
And yet, the next stanza enumerates the lady's qualities as her “fertility” and her “fidelity.” From being a maiden she has moved on to becoming a mother. While fidelity is a virtue common to courtly love poems, the idea of fertility links to the image of the Virgin Mother and the Eucharist symbolism prevalent in this period.Footnote 37
While fertility is an overarching theme in the biblical Song of Songs, there it points to sexuality;Footnote 38 here, it refers to the birth of Christ and, hence, to salvation. The lover, we are told, conquers the maiden and queen. Within a courtly love-lyric context such lines could not but have a sexual meaning; in the context of mystical poetry, however, they become paradoxical. For how can that which is created conquer that which creates? Two answers present themselves: either the beloved desires to be conquered, or else the beloved is housed within the lover and in conquering her, he conquers his own ego.Footnote 39 The lover shifts from seeing himself as the conqueror to accepting that it is the beloved who conquers. The lover therefore conquers by being himself conquered. This is a binding that both lover and beloved desire, although the nature of the desire cannot and should not be perceived as equivalent.
Is this a taste that has to be acquired or a service of hardship that has to be first endured? The idea that God is experienced as a sensual act, especially as taste, is particularly strong in Hadewijch's work.Footnote 41 We also find such expression in the work of later theologians such as Eckhart. Here, we read the “bitter and sour” as reference to the Passion. The Passion has to be endured before salvation can be born.
Then begins a stanza on the effects of Love on the lover. The lover's distress will be routed out — which is understandable, for his distress was caused by a lack of a union with the beloved. Several lines later we read
By the eating of the bread and drinking of the wine the lover contains and is contained in Christ.Footnote 43 In the earlier lines, love was referred to as “bitter and sour.” Its taste is now called “sweet.” We see in these lines one of the important inner movements in the poem: a transition of state.
In these few lines we see that Hadewijch employs both grammatical perspective shifts and gender perspective shifts to point to the changeability of the divine: the beloved is first represented in the dichotomous figure of the Virgin Mother, or “Joncfouwe ende Coninginne” (Young Maiden and Queen) and then as Jesus. From the second to the third stanza minne is represented as the Virgin; the imagery and language refers to “maiden,” “queen,” “woman,” and “mother” and is matched by the feminine use of the second-person singular: “si” (she). In the fifth stanza the grammatical construction is retained (that is, “si”), but the imagery used can refer only to Christ.
We note firstly that these shifts do not — as perhaps we might expect they should — jar. That this is so is undoubtedly a testimony to Hadewijch's skill as a poet. I would also like to suggest that these shifts are less disturbing to the ear than they are to the eye. By saying this we point to recent research that argues that Hadewijch's verse was originally written to be sung.Footnote 44
The Cycle of Three: Knowledge, Movement and the Body
Knowledge
Hadewijch's verse raises several important questions regarding knowledge: What is it we seek to know? By what means do we know and can our knowledge of the beloved be complete or is it constantly in a state of flux? What does knowledge of the beloved teach us about ourselves, our state, and our ability to discern that which is both interior and exterior to ourselves?
In Dutch, there are two verbs for “to know”: “kennen” and “wetten.” “Wetten” refers to an empirical form of knowledge, whereas “kennen” refers to a more personalized knowledge. The German and French equivalents are “wissen”/“savoir” and “kennen”/“connaitre.” Other words which are used to signify knowledge are “sinnen” (sense perception) and “ghevolen” (feeling).
We begin with a reading of Poem 2, which speaks of the knowledge (“wise secrets”) the lover seeks, gains, and loses. It is a poem that, in keeping with the conventions of courtly love lyrics, opens with a depiction of nature where events in the manifest world allude to the interior world of lover and beloved.Footnote 45 In the early lines of this poem the future tense is used, not as one of many possibilities, but as an “infallible” event that will occur; for the cycle of nature is immutable. The birds, who are the first animate creatures to be introduced, are not yet at the stage of joy but are “growing joyful.” This last line builds a sense of dramatic expectation (is their joy bound in their nature or does it emanate from a particular cause?).Footnote 46 For what has not come into being may not be born. Indeed, in the next lines we are presented with an indication of the poem's central ambiguity:
The future tense is retained, but the lover's triumph is linked to the conditional, “as long as he nothing avoids.” Nature, despite its act of blossoming, is, from the outset, passive. The lover is active because he has, or seems to have, choice.Footnote 48 Choices, however, are understood in a particular context, against a framework of binding constraints or necessary conditions. For Hadewijch that framework is one of faith. Within such a structure, what does choice mean?
In both the traditions of courtly love and Christus miles the lover is symbolized as a knight. Columba Hart (in the authoritative English translation) here uses the word “warrior” to denote this figure and by so doing, gives us a sense of his rigid purpose. Hadewijch's language is less specific, with the result that the line is softer.
In order to prove the quality of his love, a lover has to complete a series of tests. On trial are his courage and the persistence of his endeavor, that is, the nobility of his character. In courtly love lyrics, battles are waged in the outside world, with the exterior action matching the interior state of the lover. Hadewijch's poems follow this model and are set in a public space (as are later “secular” poems such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the work of Chaucer and of Dante). However, we are here made more acutely aware that the battle the lover engages in is one with his higher self and his lower self. In an ideal journey to the beloved, the lower self is destroyed or conquered/controlled and the higher self emerges. Although, it has to be said, not all of the journeys in Hadewijch's verse end with a self-realization of this sort. Is it then the subject matter of Hadewijch's verse (the human-divine relationship) that endows this accepted “outer-inner” trope with a greater significance? We are arguing that while the lover in courtly love lyrics seeks release from his longing, the lover in Hadewijch's verse seeks an amelioration of his longing, so that the idea set up in the lines above — that “he shall conquer soon” — is both delusionary and self-delusionary. Might we say that at this stage of love that the lover does not rightly know what it is he desires? Hadewijch ends this first stanza with a catch: as such, it is dramatic.
The “niet” (nothing) has a certain harshness to it, a sense of uncompromising finality. She then goes on to say:
Hart translates “sinne” as “forethought,” which gives the sense of an idea that has been mulled over. From both the Dutch original and Hart's translation we see that kennen “kinne” is here used to mean a knowledge that has been absorbed, a knowledge that has been interiorized. The poem also speaks of minne’s “rich teaching,” of being led “to her school,” and of her “wise secrets” — terminology that appears consistently throughout Hadewijch's work. Predominant in her work is the idea that the lover is set to school, where he, like the lovers in courtly love lyrics, is tutored in love. And thus he begins his journey to Minne.
Movement
Are the courtly love conceits where the lover has to strive for love as well as strive towards love two different acts or does one movement lead to the other? We will argue that the two are distinct, for as Guest points out, there is a movement towards minne’s land (“der minnen lant”) and a movement within that land.Footnote 52 In the courtly love lyrics this first movement (of striving for love) culminates in a display of sorts. The strength and nobility of the lover's love seeks either a testament or an act, and in some cases, both. As the lover is marked by his dress and his adherence to the code of proper and fitting behavior, so too does the proof of his love require a symbol. The lover in Hadewijch's verse is also distinguished by his appearance — and we will shortly address in more detail what constitutes the apparent signs of the lover. He too must prove the quality of his love — only when it and he have been tested does it qualify as “noble love.”
In both courtly love lyrics and in the Strofische Gedichten the lover is depicted as being in a state of flux. In Hadewijch's work, the lover's proximity to the beloved, his experience of the beloved, constantly changes. He has to remain steadfast in his fidelity, and in his vision, in the midst of this flux and turbulence. Our argument is that this acceptance, this submission to a type of existence within a dynamic objective reality is not a passive act.Footnote 53 Two lovers inhabit the world of Poem 2. One lover is what we might call the idealized lover, who, having followed love's command, is now fettered by her and is led to fruition. The other lover is the failed lover, the one who, having been sent to love's school, strove too little. Two-thirds of the poem is, then, a lament by this lover as he recounts what is lost to him and how, if the beloved were to give him “new days,” he would bear all in fortitude. He is, however, not without hope.
The poem goes on:
“Bleven”/“bliven” (to remain) may be understood, as it is in the above lines, in positive terms, or it may be negatively read, as it is in Poem 9, where the non-lovers are those who remain:
As Poem 9 progresses, the idea evolves that to love requires courage. We know, however, as with the term's use in the courtly love tradition, that “courage” is more than boldness of action and physical bravery: it implies a degree of knowledge and a judicious ability to discern what it is worth expending one's courage upon. Ideas of discernment and distinction are important in Hadewijch's work,Footnote 57 as indeed they are in the work of Aquinas and Eckhart. An important distinction both later writers make is that between persons. As Michael Sells explains,
Thomas Aquinas draws a similar line [to Eckhart] between the distinction of persons, indicated by the masculine pronouns for other (alius) and one (unus), and the sameness of nature or essence, indicated by the neuter pronouns for other (aliud) and one (unum). “Because distinction in the divine is according to persons rather than essence, we say that the father is other [alius] than the son, not other [aliud]; and conversely, we say that they are one [unum], not one [unus].” This is exactly the distinction Eckhart plays upon when he uses the neuter pronouns id ipsum (the same thing) to say that the father and the son are one. What separates Eckhart from Thomas here is not a difference in doctrine but a difference in discourse.
This idea of alius/alien/other is one that is also significant in Hadewijch's work. While Eckhart and Aquinas employ this idea within Trinitarian framework, in Poem 10, Hadewijch uses it more often to distinguish between a craving for the divine and a craving for other or alien things.
Hadewijch then posits that it is the lazy (including herself) who stay clear of love.Footnote 58 In the battle of love for love, courage and constancy to love are conjoined. In this poem, resting signifies non-movement, whereas in Poem 2 we see that rest is a state achieved after movement. We return to two lines we have looked at before:
Here we have evoked the idea of the sacrament, and with it, the idea of the interiority of the beloved to the lover. In numerous texts — both literary and theological — the self is configured in a space exterior to that of the self. In the words of Levinas, “the other's entire being is constituted by its exteriority, or rather its alterity, for exteriority is a property of space and leads the subject back to itself through light.”Footnote 60
We accept then the necessity of the other's alterity, for it is only by his otherness that we learn to distinguish what is our self. And yet, with the ritual of the Eucharist and the taking of Christ into ourselves the other is understood as interior to ourselves. The process of interiorization that takes place in the act of the sacrament is, however, a radical one. In the first instance, God chooses to reside in man; in the second, man chooses to house God — not only by a precept of belief, important enough though that is, but by an act he repeats again and again. The other is thereby absorbed and, though now interior to us, remains remarkably other. The second lover in this poem, not bound by the beloved, acknowledges, “Dat ic mi minnen ellendich weet”Footnote 61 (That I know myself forsaken by Love).Footnote 62 Hart translates the “ellende” here as “forsaken”; it means both “exile” and “misery” and is a word that recurs in Hadewijch's verse. This lover then seeks the stillness that can only be found in being bound in the beloved's enclosure.
The penultimate stanza in this poem reads:
One can either assume that the state described in the above stanza refers to the state prior to that in which the lover finds himself at rest or that it is a continuous state, which would be to say that, although the lover is held in the beloved's kingdom, he must yet face storms and disaster. Free then, is he, who though held, chooses movement within the boundaries in which he is set. Can we see movement as something that is not only necessary to our understanding of what constitutes stillness, but perhaps also as the very engine that causes stillness? The only state in which there is complete stillness is death, and in such a state the lover is no longer a lover, for he no longer has either desire or will.
We see that there are two kinds of movement, as there are two kinds of stillness. In Poem 9 Hadewijch distinguishes between the two kinds of movement: the first movement is desired and necessary, the other is superfluous and is to be spurned. As elsewhere, she here points to two paths, only one of which must be chosen.
All movement that does not lead to the beloved is, in this sense, useless movement. Hadewijch then goes on to say in stanza 9 that as we are not constant, we are deprived of minne’s clear truth. What, though, is the constancy Hadewijch is here referring to? Is the constancy the lover has to learn one, which like Job's, surpasses a desire for joy and a desire for an alleviation of suffering? Is the free soul bound to suffer a “constant restlessness/wakefulness”? Although such movement must be freely chosen,Footnote 68 once chosen, the lover arrives at a point where there is no longer choice.Footnote 69
In Poem 9, as we have already acknowledged, rest is equated with non-motion. In Poem 2, however, rest is a consequence of motion — the right kind of motion — and it engenders yet further motion. In ordinary circumstances, we choose between two opposing things, and one of the two choices is thereby lost to us.Footnote 70 Could it be that the beloved not only allows the simultaneous existence of both choices (rest and movement) but also demands both? This is a position that Zum Brunn and Burghard lean towards. Reading Letter 17, they argue that Hadewijch, “seems to dissociate repose and activity … she shows that these two phases must be simultaneous; to act, but with detachment; to repose in God without ceasing to be active.”Footnote 71
Movement to Where, to Whom: the Beloved as Place
The idea that love is an object, a state, but also, perhaps — as it is touched upon in Poem 2 — a place, is further developed in Poem 34.Footnote 72 The predominant theme in this poem is the manner in which the lover should love to win love. Whereas, in other poems, a particular style of soul was required to win love (often following closely on the courtly love lyric model), here, in contrast, what the lover is required to do, remains somewhat vague. Do we will love into our lives by a movement that takes us closer to the beloved? Or are we held in stillness, awaiting the beloved's breath into us? The poet begins with an idea that she presents as categorical fact. In encountering high love,
In this poem the lover says:
Are love's ways initially “bitter, dark and desolate” because the path, lonely as it is, is seen to be impassable, or is it because knowledge of the beloved is a burden? Is it then fear, not of what we know to be true, but of whether we can reach such truth that impedes us? We must keep in mind that the doubts and uncertainties here described are emblematic of the first of the lover's states. The lover has yet to make himself perfect in love's service.
“Dolen” (wander) appears often in Hadewijch's verse. The word, as Hadewijch here uses it, does not have, as it might in English, the sense of wandering aimlessly, nor indeed does its link word, “verdolen” (to become lost). In Poem 35, however, “dolen” is used in this very sense of aimless wandering. We ask why this is and see that the wandering takes place outside of “free consolation,” outside therefore, it appears, of the beloved's dominion:
In the last line of the first stanza of Poem 34 we read, “Si doelden in hare ellende” (They would wander in her exile).
“Ellende,” with its dual meaning of exile and misery, has negative connotations, but we must examine whether Hadewijch, too, uses it in this sense or whether she coins for it another meaning entirely. First, why does she speak of “hare ellende” (her exile) rather than, as she has before, her “rike gehere” (rich or mighty dominion)? Is the beloved's domain both a kingdom and an exile? Is it an exile because the beloved may or may not be found there, or is it an exile because the lover is removed from other people? The latter case seems improbable, given that it is the beloved, whom the lover values above all else, and towards whom he strives. And yet, the more we ponder, the more it seems likely that both possibilities are true: could it be that “ellende” then does not have negative connotations when it is paired with love? Perhaps “hare ellende” is to be understood as the private dominion of the beloved to which the lover is called. We can argue that in reaching this point of rest, the lover feels joy (at union), fear (of losing that which he loves) and loneliness (in that his condition, as a lover, separates him from the larger community of humanity; also because singularity is the condition of the divine and, in knowing the divine, the lover cannot but know, and perhaps draw onto himself, this aspect of singularity).
In a later stanza we read:
“Dolen” and “verdolen” are therefore to be understood as positive actions when they take place within the beloved's kingdom; outside of this space, the implication of these terms is an aimless wandering.
This stanza and the next appear as idyllic representations of the relationship between lover and beloved and recall to our minds an idea that we find in both courtly love lyrics and in the Song of Songs, that is, of a world from which non-lovers are excluded. In the following stanza (7) the lover admits that he himself has not reached this “height” (boven). We have to ask, then, whether this point and place has been and can be achieved, or whether it is only ever imagined. Hadewijch appears to contend that this place (and necessarily, the beloved) can be reached, but that it (she) must inevitably be lost: losing generates finding, and vice versa. We see that the lover moves as much toward the place where the beloved resides, and where union is envisaged as taking place, as towards the beloved.
To be bound, to be free
Hadewijch, like all poets, fashions language; that is, she often uses words in a way that is unique to her. We have already seen this with regard to her use of “ellende.” Conjoined to the theme of movement and stillness are the paired motifs of being bound and being free. The words Hadewijch employs are “bint” (bind), “beveet” (fetters), “bant” (bond), and “vri” (free).
To our modern sensibilities, the idea of being bound means to be constrained. Karl Barth says, “We regard our finitude as a constriction.”Footnote 83 In Hadewijch's construction, however, to be bound is not negative, and indeed, the binding by love in love is the embrace the lover seeks. Poem 34 reads,
The poem then goes onto say that the lover has to learn to be content in her service,
This, then, is the object of love: to be fettered by her, held by her. Again, we return to this central idea of fluidity in stillness. If the lover is fettered in the beloved, why does he need constantly to strive toward her? Is it perhaps that if he ceases his actions, the beloved will let him go? Or is it that his will to love the beloved is locked to the action of movement toward the beloved, and, hence, once the will has been instigated, he cannot present a counter command of action? An answer is perhaps to be found in what we know of the failed lovers. Either the lover is shown to have fallen short in the lessons the beloved would teach him or else the beloved is shown as being capricious (like the figure of Dame Amour) and as having turned away from the lover. It is worth pointing out that no causal link is made between these two factors. In Mystical Language of Sensation, Gordon Rudy argues that it is our instability that causes the instability of love in us.Footnote 86 I think Mommaers's argument, which is based on an analysis of one of the most important pairings of opposites in Hadewijch's work, “gheburken” (fruition) and “ghebreken” (falling short), leads us to a better understanding of how opposing ideas or states, such as fluidity and stillness, not only engage with one another but also serve one another. He says, “The demand which originates from fruition causes a ‘failure,’ a ‘falling short’ (ghebreken).” I will later attempt to show that this process of fruition and falling short does not end with the latter.
Unlike Rudy, Mommaers does not think that such failing is due to the lover's instability. He argues that the falling short is not indicative of the lover's inability to do enough; the cause, rather, is to be found in the abundance of fruition. He adds:
As she “possesses” God, Hadewijch lacks nothing — as if the Other would somehow hold himself back — but the divine self-giving reveals itself as so inexhaustible that even her utmost reaction cannot possibly match it. In fruition the mystic experiences in the first instance that God is excessive wealth.Footnote 87
Can we take from this the idea that the lover must continuously strive (also understood as movement) because as the beloved's gifting of love increases, so too must his striving? Whereas he once desired to conquer, he now desires to be conquered. The binding, then, is one the lover chooses.
Poem 10, in which the cycle of time is not depicted in the movement of the seasons (as in other poems) but more implicitly, in the cycle of birdsong, soon moves to this central image of being bound by Minne. It reads, “They ever serve in chains of Love.”Footnote 88 This, despite being a familiar motif in both Christian devotional writing and courtly love poetry, is still a powerful image. If “chains” focuses our attention on the human condition, then the word “serve” reminds us of a relationship with “the other.” However, it is only when we return to look at this line more closely that we realize that in the visualization of the image we have lost sight of a small, seemingly unimportant word — “ever.” This changes the meaning of the line irreducibly. Instead of a chain that confines, we see that this chain is one that, remarkably, sets free. As Andre La Coque says of the Shulamite, the female lover of the Song of Songs, and its narrator, “Freedom consists in remaining unswervingly true to the one she loves.”Footnote 89 It is by such a chain that the lover is bound by the beloved and, significantly, locks the beloved to him, for the object to which the lover is chained is the beloved. To be chained is therefore, to be valued. To be “ever chained” is to be bound to the beloved eternally. The word “ever” heightens this feeling of value. Hadewijch then says:
Here, the poet speaks of a universal development in which all have become lovers (and, hence, all possess right-seeing). Such a development, then, is both a progression and a culmination. We are here made aware that there is an important difference between the birds’ sorrow (with which the poem opened) and that of the lover's despair. The birds’ “joy is ended/Simply because they have lost summer.” They are joyful as long as it is summer. The lover, on the other hand, cannot know such unalloyed joy, even when he has won that which has the power to give him the greatest joy, for he has to accept that, at any stage, love may be lost and won. The acceptance of the simultaneity of both states is, as we are beginning to realize, the sign of the true lover.
If to be bound, then, is seen as a good the lover aspires to, what meaning adheres to the term “vri” (free)? We have already noted that Hadewijch, in her use of these terms, vacillates from one meaning to another and thereby avoids simplifications such as the “free” soul being the one that continues in movement and the “bound” soul being one that is held still by the beloved. In some sense then the questions of what constitutes these appropriate desires and whether they can be met are inextricably linked with the wider issue of the free and bound soul. If the lover is free to err, is it also the case that he is bound never to have his passion met? The true lover, then, is one who moves towards the beloved by making an adjustment of perception: he accepts that the state he seeks is one in which he is both bound and free.
The Body
The symbol and metaphor of the body may appear more frequently in the work of some women vernacular writers than it does in the work of many male theologians, but it is nevertheless a symbol of transcendence in key Christian texts such as the Song of Songs, the work of Origen, and importantly, that of St. Thierry and Saint Bernard. We see that sensible transcendence is not, therefore, necessarily to be envisaged as a feminine conceit. Irigary asks whether we can see in Christ the integration of the spiritual and the bodily in his way of touching.Footnote 92 With this statement we perceive that the possibility of a sensible transcendence is embedded in the figure of Christ himself.
In Poem 2 Minne is clearly Christ and is called that “living bread” that is “above all sweet in taste.” If Christ is absorbed by us during the sacrament and his taste is sweet, then this is a taste that lingers. The construction of this line is worth noting, in that the poet does not use a simple superlative such as “Minne is the sweetest”; Instead, she describes minne as “Ende boven all genoechete in smake,” which translates literally as “and above all sweet in taste.” The word “boven” (above) provides us with a sense of height, of a place reached. We understand, therefore, that in order to taste this particular sweetness we have to ascend from that which is sour, to that which is sweet, to that which is sweetest. This action cannot be arbitrary, for we must begin with an understanding of the greater value of that which we would reach. It is only when the lover is truly ready (“gereet”) that the sweetness of the living bread will be his. Of the afflictions the lover has to bear, perhaps one of the most difficult is the endless hunger for Love the beloved generates. This is the theme of the next poem we will be looking at.
T. M. Guest argues that the chronology of the poems is largely correct. If he is right, then Poem 33, for its numerically symbolic value, as well as for what it says, is an important poem.Footnote 93
Either we have tasted this love or we have not. If we have, then we know and seek again the wonder that is love's taste. If we have not tasted of love, then the desire for that which we deem perfect becomes ever the stronger the more it is denied to us. Hadewijch therefore takes the Eucharistic imagery of feeding, of tasting, and employs it to represent different aspects of ontological reality — one of which is, as we have just seen, the test the lover has to take: he knows only by tasting.
Conclusion
We have already noted that in her Strofische Gedichten Hadewijch does not employ images of the body in quite the same way that many other medieval women theologians do. As we said at the start of this paper, the fictional world Hadewijch creates is one of courtly love, a world in which traditionally it is the man (knight) who seeks to serve the female beloved (Dame Amour). Hadewijch keeps very much within the confines of that world. However, when she speaks of herself as a knight who is tested in the battle of love we are aware that it is a woman who is speaking. The juxtaposition of a male and female voice is, without doubt, paradoxical.
The perspective shifts Hadewijch employs in this work have, we argue, three functions. First, the perspective shifts as they relate to the lover (“hi”/“die”/“si”) and the aspirant lover/failed lover (“ic”/“wij”) indicate that Hadewijch envisages lovers and non-lovers as distinct communities — so that she often begins by speaking of a particular love and then moves on to representing a group of lovers.Footnote 96 Second, perspective shifts apply also to the figure of the beloved — these are notably rarer than the perspective shifts that apply to the lover. However, an important dimension of these latter shifts is that they are typically perspective shifts of gender.
There is yet a further point on perspective shifts that we need to take into account and this is linked to the structure of the poems themselves. As we have noted, grammatical perspectives may shift from the singular to the plural; these shifts do not follow a linear pattern. In one stanza Hadewijch may refer to the lover in the third person singular (“hi”) and then in another stanza, or even several lines later, refer to the lover by the neuter “die” and then speak of herself as the lover, thus making the lover feminine. These shifts apply too to the non-lover. In that the shifts are rapid and continuous, and because there is non-linearity as such, we see that the state of both the lover and the non-lover is not fixed but, rather, fluid. I would like to suggest that these grammatical perspective shifts and gender perspective shifts make important theological points. With regard to the latter, Murk Jansen says:
By the deliberate use of images of gender reversal and the paradox inherent in such images, Hadewijch underlines the profound otherness of the relationship between the creature and its Creator, a relationship quite unlike any human relationship. In this respect Hadewijch's use of gender reversal is similar to that of Bernard of Clairvaux.Footnote 97
We have seen that the movement of love is one from the exterior (where the lover resides) to the interior (where the beloved resides). I would like to also suggest here that it is a movement from the interior (Trinity) to the exterior (the world, the soul of man).
We have steadily been moving to the idea that minne’s dynamism has its corollary in Trinitarian dynamism. As Rudy suggests, “Humans are born from the Trinity, from minne.”Footnote 98 In Hadewijch's understanding of the inter-dependency of lover, beloved, and Love upon one another, we are led back to Augustine's idea of the consistent relatedness of the divine Persons.Footnote 99 We have also attempted to show the connections between Hadewijch's idea of minne as dynamic and Mechthild's idea of divine love as that which flows in the human person, or as Gilson puts it, the fact that “God circulates in us.” Minne, therefore, participates in the ebb and flow of this dynamic movement, as Mechthild says:
This idea of the ebb and flow of the divine reality will be taken up to wondrous effect by a later theologian, Ruusbroec.
Minne requires that a lover exhibits fidelity, even in the face of the afflictions (tests) that she puts before him. When the lover has displayed himself and proved himself, minne will bind him to her. In that binding the lover is, paradoxically, set free.
When we turn back to Augustine and look forward to Eckhart we find the same idea: that the Trinity is not static, but dynamic. And as Gordon Rudy argues,
Hadewijch's theology … combines the theme of image and likeness with the idea that human beings have emanated, flowed or been born from the Trinity. Those “born from minne” participate in divinity ontologically and so profoundly that it is possible for them to exist within the inner dynamism of God and achieve a unity without difference.
For Hadewijch, De Paepe says, minne is the dynamic of the Trinity.Footnote 101 Is minne perhaps then the motor that calls the mystery of the Trinity into the world? And is the dynamic structure of her work, with its constant shifts of grammatical perspective, gender perspectives and use of dynamic opposites, not merely a set of literary devices but a signifier too of the core of her theology?
