Ron Price
07-03-2004, 04:44 AM
A SEISMOGRAPHIC RECORD
Dante had at his disposal a comprehensive and intellectually consistent image of the cosmos and its relationship to God. -Harold L. Weatherby, The Keen Delight: The Christian Poet in the Modern World, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1975, p.5.
In an age profoundly infected with philosophical scepticism the problem of writing sacred poetry, the great song, requires that we recapture a genuine science of invisible things. This can be done through a grasp by the poet of both the external and internal worlds. The poet conveys his creative intuition into a receptive intuition.
-ibid. pp.123-149.
The poet, who is a member of the Baha’i community, has before him every atom in existence and the essence of all created things1. There is no break between nature, art, poetry, science, religion and personal life. It is all one, a dynamic unity amidst multiplicity, amidst an organic body of ideas. On the basis of a vast corpus of sacred Writings this same poet has before him a massive body of religious literature. Its frameworks of systematic theology, philosophy, epistomology, ontology, aesthetics, theophanology, history and psychology are, for the most part, in their early stages of development. But the foundation is there for a rich and fertile global literature to evolve within a fusion of opposites, on some ladder of reflection and, inevitably, amidst a complex cross-fertilisation. -Ron Price, The Emergence of a Baha’i Consciousness in World Literature, Unpublished Manuscript, 1996.
You get enough principles here
to build a cosmos in your brain,
to wander with Dante through his
world of keen delight, to rebuild
his model, a reconstructed universe.
This is far more than mere living, of
simply amusing oneself, than some
restless dilettante spectator on the lounge
room couch; this is appreciation, deep and
full, far beyond a momentary touch of sorrow;
this is some vortex spinning with ideas driving,
hopefully, its readers into their own memory,
back into a reverie, past depths and the vagueness
of past-times into a oneness that is slowly sweeping
the face of the earth, a search that is self-expression.
This universe, this cosmos, this self,
its likes and dislikes, comings and
goings, faults and weaknesses are
one entity, even in its contradictions:
the oneness of a microcosm in its
egotism and limitations, walking
backwards or forewords, in some
new Rome at the crossroads, in some
solitude and aloneness which is
necessary and unavoidable, it seems,
bringing the past and the future into
now, with delicate scents, pulsations,
unnameable tactile sensations, with
an anxiety surrounding my moments
of tranquillity but with light as the
basis of structure and darkness always
at the periphery, on an inner lifeline of
such complexity, such a seismographic
record and sensibility, such a breadth of
compass within the distilled sphere of
these words and their fusion of opposites.
Ron Price
18 August 1996
1Baha’u’llah, Hidden Words.
Dante had at his disposal a comprehensive and intellectually consistent image of the cosmos and its relationship to God. -Harold L. Weatherby, The Keen Delight: The Christian Poet in the Modern World, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1975, p.5.
In an age profoundly infected with philosophical scepticism the problem of writing sacred poetry, the great song, requires that we recapture a genuine science of invisible things. This can be done through a grasp by the poet of both the external and internal worlds. The poet conveys his creative intuition into a receptive intuition.
-ibid. pp.123-149.
The poet, who is a member of the Baha’i community, has before him every atom in existence and the essence of all created things1. There is no break between nature, art, poetry, science, religion and personal life. It is all one, a dynamic unity amidst multiplicity, amidst an organic body of ideas. On the basis of a vast corpus of sacred Writings this same poet has before him a massive body of religious literature. Its frameworks of systematic theology, philosophy, epistomology, ontology, aesthetics, theophanology, history and psychology are, for the most part, in their early stages of development. But the foundation is there for a rich and fertile global literature to evolve within a fusion of opposites, on some ladder of reflection and, inevitably, amidst a complex cross-fertilisation. -Ron Price, The Emergence of a Baha’i Consciousness in World Literature, Unpublished Manuscript, 1996.
You get enough principles here
to build a cosmos in your brain,
to wander with Dante through his
world of keen delight, to rebuild
his model, a reconstructed universe.
This is far more than mere living, of
simply amusing oneself, than some
restless dilettante spectator on the lounge
room couch; this is appreciation, deep and
full, far beyond a momentary touch of sorrow;
this is some vortex spinning with ideas driving,
hopefully, its readers into their own memory,
back into a reverie, past depths and the vagueness
of past-times into a oneness that is slowly sweeping
the face of the earth, a search that is self-expression.
This universe, this cosmos, this self,
its likes and dislikes, comings and
goings, faults and weaknesses are
one entity, even in its contradictions:
the oneness of a microcosm in its
egotism and limitations, walking
backwards or forewords, in some
new Rome at the crossroads, in some
solitude and aloneness which is
necessary and unavoidable, it seems,
bringing the past and the future into
now, with delicate scents, pulsations,
unnameable tactile sensations, with
an anxiety surrounding my moments
of tranquillity but with light as the
basis of structure and darkness always
at the periphery, on an inner lifeline of
such complexity, such a seismographic
record and sensibility, such a breadth of
compass within the distilled sphere of
these words and their fusion of opposites.
Ron Price
18 August 1996
1Baha’u’llah, Hidden Words.