Christian Platonism Research Articles

William Blake: Neo-Platonist and Sexual Radical?

Abstract William Blake’s prophetic works seem to present the reader with a puzzling contradiction. On the one hand Blake can be read as a prophet of sexual revolution with his attacks on puritanism and hypocritical chastity. On the other hand, in many passages he seems to express characteristically Platonic/Patristic skepticism concerning bodily experience. What is more he often portrays sexuality and indeed femininity as manipulative and cruel. Is there a coherent attitude to sexuality in Blake? This paper argues that Blake’s soteriology strongly implies that the ‘return’ to unity with the divine pivots on the incarnation which Blake even insists is the product of natural sexuality. To this extent there is a place for the sexualized body in the economy of salvation. This economy links Blake to a larger Platonist and Christian Platonist tradition that understands salvation in terms of an exitus/reditus pattern.

N. A. Berdyaev’te Kötülük Problemi ve Teodise

Max Weber argues that the metaphysical conception of God creates "an ineradicable demand for theodicy." Similarly, Augustine asked, "What is the source of evil?" He writes that the question worried him from an early age, that it was the problem that wore him down and dragged him into the community of heretics. Augustine returns to the Catholic Church only when he has a satisfactory answer to this, in Christian Platonic terms. The suffering of Augustine's experience and Weber's insight intersect in Berdiaev's thought. Berdiaev, like Augustine, is deeply concerned with the emergence of evil and, like Weber, believes that a Christian theist position should address the issue of evil and suffering. Berdyaev calls this task “the defense of God”. In this study, Berdyaev's views on God, the source of evil, and God's Defense are discussed. Keywords: Theodicy, God, Ungrund, Freedom, Jesus Christ, Grand Inquisitor, Dostoevsky, Berdyaev

К вопросу о влиянии платонизма на христианское богословие

This study is devoted to outlining the influence of Platonism on Orthodox theology. Platonism, understood in a broad sense, is traditionally associated with Orthodox theology, but this connection itself remains not described sufficiently, which creates a number of difficulties. The last is represented by a scientific tendency to build historical and philosophical concepts, which do not correspond to facts, but also create such perspectives that lead to further misconceptions. This includes the idea that Platonism is more expressed in Eastern theology, and Aristotelianism in Western (or vice versa), the idea of theological disputes as conflicts of philosophical traditions, etc. The influence of the Platonic tradition was expressed in the works of many famous authors, for example, Origen, Evagrius Ponticus and Pseudo-Dionysius, but this fact still did not receive proper analysis in the scientific community. So, although all these authors adopted some of platonic conceptions - they were condemned by the Orthodox Church, then their concepts were adopted and modernized, and only then they were written in Orthodox theology. Platonism is definitely connected with Orthodox theology, but primarily because of the philosophical language and in lesser degree due to Platonic concepts. In Russian religious thought Platonism is becoming more and more popular thanks to Soloviev’s sophiology and German idealism, however, this philosophical and theological conceptions were condemned by Russian orthodox councils, remaining mostly in writings of individual philosophers and researchers. Thus, we believe that reference to “Christian Platonism” in order to explain the whole system of orthodox theology is unjustified. But, on the other hand, philosophical and theological systems (such as, for example, the philosophy of S. N. Bulgakov or Gaius Marius Victorinus) may well have this name.

The Collision of Social Justice Perfectionism, Rival Faiths, and Ordered Liberty: Review Essay: Mark T. Mitchell, The Unholy Marriage that Spawned America's Social Justice Warriors

Amid the nation’s swelling social discord, Mark T. Mitchell’s new book, Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That Spawned America’s Social Justice Warriors, avoids sterility, sclerosis, and nostalgia, while offering a creative understanding of the origins of the nation’s divisions that have seen the rise of social justice warriors (SJWs). Endeavoring to unravel the undemocratic forces advancing in our republic, his analysis forecasts the rise of totalitarianism and the possible return of “separate but equal.” He argues that social justice activists, after embracing Nietzsche’s rejection of Christian Platonism, the notion of truth, and traditional morality, have now, paradoxically, embraced many aspects of Puritanism. Additional issues arise because, despite their adoption of Nietzsche’s intuition, SJWs frequently emphasize goals, which are orthogonal to his vision. Mitchell’s book provides answers to a number of salient issues including the provenance, consequences, and morality of social justice approaches. In an epoch featuring (1) the rude collapse of metanarratives; (2) an uprising of mimetic rivalries within the political, religious, and economic realm; (3) spreading social irruptions signaling democracy’s end and totalitarianism’s beginning; and (4) the self-immolation of the liberal project accompanied by the rise of illiberal liberalism; Mitchell poses a crucial question: whether social justice policies grounded in postmodernism, are reconcilable with contrary views grounded in rival faiths and the notion of ordered liberty within a constitutional republic? Without resolving this conflict, Professor Mitchell implies that common ground cannot be found between individuals and subgroups who are driven by claims of social justice and those who are not.

Robert Garnier et le thème de l’immortalité de l’âme: l’invention poétique du chant choral aux vers 1323–1377 de La Troade

This article examines French-language sources used by Garnier in his rewriting of Seneca’s celebrated choral ode (Troades 371–402) situated at the mid-point of his own 1579 Troade. In the tragic universe of the escapees from Troy, in which the dramatic poet multiplies episodes of terror and of murderous crime, the choir’s message introduces a quiet promise of redemption amidst darkness and ceaseless violence. This sombre context reflects the atmosphere, not only of the final days of Priam’s city, but also of the Civil War in France during the reign of the last Valois king. In a dramatic context in which violent horrors mount unabated, the poet’s very language in the central choral ode gives valuable and subtle indications of the action’s ultimate meaning as it deploys itself before the eyes of the astonished spectators in the guise of a spectacle of ever-increasing, inhuman cruelty. Our analysis shows that the “Christian Platonism” often cited by critics of Garnier, following Lebegue, when they explain these verses, is constructed (and limited) by poetic allusion, in the author’s choice of vocabulary. In reality, the clarity of this purportedly philosophical ode is nuanced by a poetic vocabulary that reflects, above all, the author’s continued allegiance to, and dependence upon, the poetic language source forged by the Pleiade generation.

ВЛИЯНИЕ ВИЗАНТИЙСКОГО НЕОПЛАТОНИЗМА И ПАЛАМИЗМА НА СТАНОВЛЕНИЕ РУССКОЙ РЕЛИГИОЗНО-ФИЛОСОФСКОЙ АНТРОПОЛОГИИ

The article looks at how translations from the Byzantine Neoplatonists influenced the early Russian theology. In particular, enormous impact of the Corpus Areopagiticum has been discovered. Scholars disagree as to how much Neoplatonism was instrumental in forming the early Russian theological thought. The article distinguishes two varieties of Neoplatonism in Russian Theology School philosophy. The works by F. Golybinsky, Archbishop Innokenty (Borisov), Archbishop Nikanor (Brovkovich) and Father P. Florensky considered the formation of Orthodox theism as a transition from the ontology of Christian Platonism to Christian Neoplatonism. We can also assert that the orientation towards Plato was laid precisely through the Eastern Fathers, and not through the Latin influence.

Plato in Bad Company? Plato’s Republic (588b–589b) in the Nag Hammadi Collection: A Re-Examination of Its Background

Abstract The Coptic translation of a passage from Plato’s Republic (588b–589b) found in the sixth Codex of the Nag Hammadi collection has received very limited academic attention in comparison with other tractates from the same Codex. This paper argues that placing this passage within Clement of Alexandria’s polemic with Christian Platonists Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes, may provide a fresh and insightful comment on the use of Republic, with its anthropology and ethics among various second-century Christian teachers. This passage allegorizes various passions within the human soul and warns against injustice. According to Clement of Alexandria the subject of justice, or righteousness, was one of the subjects which attracted the attention of Epiphanes. I propose that the origin of the Coptic passage goes back to the second-century effort to assimilate Platonic ideas about the human soul into Christian ethics. Although various apologists accused Carpocrates and Epiphanes of sexual immorality, I focus on the possibility that Christians with Platonic tendencies were exploring the nature and power of human passions and considering how they could be controlled. The place of the excerpt in the Nag Hammadi collection is not coincidental but goes along other mythological and didactic treatises within.

Astell, friendship, and relational autonomy

AbstractMary Astell's theory of friendship is rich and interesting: it presents the reader with an interpretive puzzle that addresses the nature and roles of virtue and love in friendship, among other things. Recently, Jacqueline Broad and Nancy Kendrick have tackled this puzzle. Broad offers a loosely Aristotelian interpretation, and Kendrick offers an anti‐Aristotelian Christian Platonist interpretation. However, neither fully discharges the apparent tensions within Astell's account, nor do they address what I take to be the most significant result of Astell's theory. I offer a third interpretation that both makes sense of Astell's account and incorporates aspects of both Broad and Kendrick's views. With this account in hand, I turn to the upshot of Astell's theory of friendship, a nascent view of relational autonomy that emerges from friendship. Astell's theory of friendship is fascinating because relational autonomy was not formally theorized until hundreds of years later.

Is Roger Scruton a Christian Platonist?

ABSTRACTThis article situates Roger Scruton in the tradition of Christian Platonism. It begins by revisiting Scruton’s reluctance to pursue theological speculation as it has been traditionally practised in the Platonising tradition of Christian metaphysics, and identifies potential misunderstandings of this tradition as Scruton represents it, as well as points of common ground. Drawing on the scholarship of Lloyd Gerson, this article goes on to argue that Scruton satisfies the basic philosophical criteria that allow a philosopher to be classified as a Platonist, and then shows how his thought can be located within a Platonising hermeneutical tradition. Scruton re-imagines a number of Christian Platonic themes in the post-Kantian, phenomenological, and existential territory he inhabits. These themes include: imaginative contemplation, transcendence, the sacred, the real presence, meditation on death (meditatio mortis), love, and becoming like God (Gottwerdung). The article concludes with some reflections about why it matters that Scruton’s thought should be included in the tradition of Christian Platonism i.e. why it should matter to his readers, to the potential logical unfolding of his own philosophical position, and to his standing as one of the most powerful spiritual writers of our time.

Lovable and Love and Love of Himself

Current trends in scholarship—epitomized in the works of, inter alia, Lewis Ayres, Adrian Pabst, and Rowan Williams—argue for a metaphysics of relationality at the heart of Christian thought that is at its root Platonic. This metaphysic is in turn typified by its commitment to divine simplicity and its corresponding apophatic grammar, which serve as useful points of contact with Plotinus’s own thought. Examination of key texts in Plotinus’s Enneads demonstrates a shared trinitarian grammar when speaking about the first principle. These connections prompt a need to articulate trinitarian dogma as an important step in the history of philosophy, and not just theology, especially for resolving the perennial problem of the one and the many. This “Christian Platonism” has been in a necessary process of recovery and re-articulation, of which the above is put forward as a contribution.

Spór o dziedzictwo muzyczne XX wieku

This is a voice in a discussion on the subject of the field of values within which twentieth-century music developed. The author under-takes a polemic with Alicja Jarzębska, who in her book Spór o piękno muzyki [Argument over the Beauty of Music] put forward the thesis that the musical culture of the previous century was caught up in a struggle between two antinomic visions of reality: it was faced with a choice between Christian Platonism and post-Christian existentia-lism, i.e., a conglomerate of pantheism, prometheism, influences from beyond Europe, nihilism, dehumanisation, ideological seductions and cynicism. In response to this thesis the article proposes a reflection on the causes of the axiological instability and the drama that left its mark on the music of the last century. This drama – and this is the main thesis of the essay – results from the conflict between tradition and the modern natural and historical sciences. This conflict brings about a profound change in the response to the world and the arti-stic imagination: the centre is no longer the perfection of the Idea or Creation, but the mystery of the suffering integral to the nature of existence. Such a perspective means that the picture of twentieth-century music forms a configuration significantly different from that proposed by Jarzębska.

“Whate’er These Words Cannot Express”: In Memory of Michael O’Neill

“Whate’er These Words Cannot Express”: In Memory of Michael O’Neill

Stwarzanie wieczne i poza czasem. Filozoficzne źródła koncepcji "generatio aeterna" Orygenesa

Dialog Platona Timajos, uznawany przez uczonych za „Biblię Platoników”, był interpretowany alegorycznie już w Starej Akademii (IV w. przed Chr.). W epoce hellenistycznej (I–III w. po Chr.) natomiast, w kręgach filozofów zwanych medioplatonikami, toczyła się poważna dyskusja na temat tez, które w nim się pojawiają. Zasadnicza kwestia dotyczyła tego, czy świat powstał w czasie, czy też istnieje ab aeterno. Większość filozofów medioplatońskich uważała, że świat musi być odwieczny. W dyskusji tej, począwszy od I w. po Chr., uczestniczyli również platonicy żydowscy i chrześcijańscy, tacy jak Filon Aleksandryjski, Klemens Aleksandryjski i Orygenes. W ich opinii Bóg, ponieważ jest niezmienny a zarazem dobry, nie zaczął działać dopiero w momencie stworzenia świata. Pismo Święte stwierdza jednak, że świat zaczął istnieć w czasie. W związku z tym, postulowani oni odwieczne rodzenie świata idei (kosmos noetos), który jako świat myśli Boga, istnieje ab aeterno w Boskim Logosie. Koncepcja generatio aeterna (czyli odwiecznego rodzenia Syna przez Ojca), którą znajdujemy w dziełach Orygenesa, jest związana z prowadzoną w tym czasie dyskusją na temat wieczności świata. Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu przedstawienie tej dyskusji i uwypuklenie zależności, jakie zachodzą między argumentami stawianymi przez medioplatoników, a tymi, które znajdujemy w różnych hipotezach Orygenesa.

“Christ Has Come to Gather Together All the Creatures”

ABSTRACT This study analyzes a debate in the mid-sixteenth century between the Tridentine theologian, Domingo de Soto, and the Strasbourg Reformer, Martin Bucer. The subject of their controversy was the meaning of Rom 8:19–22 and its “groaning creation.” De Soto, working within a medieval tradition of interpretation that included Thomas Aquinas, argued that the verses could not have reference to creatures beyond human beings and the astral bodies. Bucer by contrast endorsed a fully cosmic reading of the text. Their debate not only highlights the diverging paths of scholastic and humanistic exegesis in the early modern period, but also holds lessons for theological interpretation today. In particular, this study dialogues with recent attempts to retrieve “Christian Platonism” by Matthew Levering, Hans Boersma, and others. It is argued that de Soto and Bucer’s debate presents serious challenges for historical narratives that bind “sound” biblical exegesis to a particular school of metaphysics.

Educating Desire: Conversion and Ascent in Dante’s Purgatorio

In Cantos 17 and 18 of the Purgatorio, Dante’s Virgil lays out a theory of sin, freedom, and moral motivation based on a philosophical anthropology of loving-desire. As the commentary tradition has long recognized, because Dante placed Virgil’s discourse on love at the heart of the Commedia, the poet invites his readers to use love as a hermeneutic key to the text as a whole. When we contextualize Virgil’s discourse within the broader intention of the poem—to move its readers from disordered love to an ordered love of ultimate things—then we find in these central cantos not just a key to the structure and movement of the poem, but also a key to understanding Dante’s pedagogical aim. With his Commedia, Dante invites us to perform the interior transformation which the poem dramatizes in verse and symbol. He does so by awakening in his readers not only a desire for the beauty of his poetic creation, but also a desire for the beauty of the love described therein. In this way, the poem presents a pedagogy of love, in which the reader participates in the very experience of desire and delight enacted in the text. In this article, I offer an analysis of Virgil’s discourse on love in the Purgatorio, arguing for an explicit and necessary connection between loving-desire and true education. I demonstrate that what informs Dante’s pedagogy of love is the notion of love as ascent, a notion we find articulated especially in the Christian Platonism of Augustine. Finally, I conclude by offering a number of figures, passages, and themes from across the Commedia that provide fruitful material for teachers engaged in the task of educating desire.

Philo’s Dialectics of Apophatic Theology, His Strategy of Differentiation and His Impact on Patristic Exegesis and Theology

This paper deals with several aspects of the impact of Philo’s ideas on Patristic thought. First, the author shows how Philo’s “dialectics of apophatic theology” influenced later theological systems, in the first place in respect to what we call “a strategy of differentiation” between unknowable divine substance and knowable divine activities. These activities for Philo were connected to the notion of Logos/Wisdom (which Philo used most probably in a non-hypostatic sense), understood in a middle-Platonic sense as “intelligible cosmos”. However, Philo’s apophatic theology is always supported by his allegorical interpretation of Scripture. After considering both the Platonic and the Jewish background of the Philonic Logos, the author traces the transformation of this concept in Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa. These authors, in line with Philo's apophaticism, also stress the unknowability of God’s essence. Philo’s gnoseological theocentrism determines what has been labeled as his “religious psychology”: since human reason is itself a gift from God, one’s life needs to be dedicated to worshipping God in a continuous effort to know Him. This creates a sort of tension between the knowledge of God as the ultimate goal of human life and the fact that the nature of God is, after all, incomprehensible for humans. That is why Philo, according to his “strategy of differentiation,” describes the process of cognition in “mystical” terms. Although the Christian Platonists follow him in this respect, in their writings mysticism acquires a clear eschatological dimension which, in the case of Philo, is either lacking or very elusive.

Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology by Vincent W. Lloyd

Religion & Literature 214 to elucidate Matthew Arnold’s view of “culture.” The upshot, that Dante “holds open the possibility that the imaginative contemplation of beauty may lead us however gently beyond itself to an encounter with what is real,” is well taken (150), but it would have been far more compelling had Wilson interpreted the poem, or even just a few of its arrestingly beautiful moments. Part III is concerned with truth and the ways in which “narrativity” and “rationality” relate to one another in its communication. Wilson thinks that the “conservative intellectual tradition” is distinct in not only “offering a narrative of its own,” but also in “defending story itself as the essential, unmatched means to knowledge about truth and goodness” (237). Here, Wilson defends the narrative form of the arts, against (post-)modern attempts to “liberate” art from the conditions of time and narrative, working through examples of the failure of those attempts to do more than make narrative “exogenous” to the works in question (256-57). In Wilson’s end is his beginning: the conservative intellectual tradition is the best hope for the recovery of the Christian Platonist worldview in which the vision of the soul is fundamentally ordered by, to, and from beauty to the recognition of a goodness and truth worth conserving and cultivating. Vision of the Soul merits the studied consideration of a wide audience, particularly those searching for a compelling case for conservatism, as well as those at the beginning of their intellectual journey. Students of literature, art, philosophy, and theology will find in Wilson’s Vision an insightful reflection on perennial questions besetting the human condition and a thoughtful engagement with some of the central texts that have informed the Christian Platonist tradition of inquiry into those questions. J. Columcille Dever University of Notre Dame Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology Vincent W. Lloyd Fordham University Press, 2018. 1 + 285 pp. $105 hardcover, $30 paperback. Vincent W. Lloyd’s Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology is a long overdue riposte to secularism’s encroachment upon the power of black theology. Lloyd joins a growing chorus of post-secular BOOK REVIEWS 215 scholars—notably Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood—whose investigations have unearthed the genealogy of secularism’s exclusionary management not only of religion but also of race. However, the book takes secular-minded critics, and black theologians, to task for allowing secularism to domesticate black theology. Malcolm X’s idea of the good “religion” of the field negro— the black masses in revolutionary struggle against white supremacy—thus becomes Lloyd’s starting point in resurrecting a black theology that takes seriously the oppression of African-Americans and all “blacks” (the weak, the marginal, the afflicted), under the “white” powers that be (the comfortable , the wealthy, the privileged). Lloyd contends that secularism today acts Much like the black liberal Protestantism of the Civil Rights era that succumbed to the bad “religion” of the house negro—the status quo of white supremacy—in bad faith as it co-opts black theology to make it speak on behalf of prevailing forms of multiculturalism and religious pluralism, but not to its most radical proposition: “God is black” (6). For Lloyd, “God is black” because God exists amongst all blacks, the poor and powerless. God’s blackness is antithetical to whiteness. Black theology, ergo, should renounce whiteness to truly worship God. Ultimately, Lloyd argues black theology must privilege the social criticism of white supremacy, as well as hold up the wisdom of blacks to reclaim a theological vision released from the disciplinary , secular logics of whiteness and oriented toward the liberation of all blacks by a black God. To do so, Lloyd defines black theology—and for him, “theology, properly understood, is black theology”—as “speaking more rightly and rigorously about God” (5, 6). To speak more “rigorously” identifies what God is not— whiteness. To speak more “rightly” articulates where God is—amongst blacks. Hence, Lloyd’s opening section focuses on various intellectuals— white and black, theological and non-theological—whose efforts to speak more “rigorously” and “rightly” come into tension with secular thought. Lloyd’s illuminating...

Annaeus Cornutus et la tradition allégorique stoïcienne : signification, sources et impact

The Roman Stoic Cornutus, who lived in the age of Nero, is the heir of an ancient and rich Stoic allegorical tradition applied to all aspects of traditional religion: literary myths, cultic epithets and attributes, and even iconographical representations of deities. Allegoresis (allegorical exegesis) was applied in antiquity to culturally and religiously authoritative texts. It was mainly practiced by “pagan” philosophers like Stoics and Middle and Neoplatonists and by philosophically minded Hellenistic Jewish and Christian exegetes, who read Scripture allegorically.Cornutus offers an excellent example of mythological allegoresis in his handbook of Greek theology. For each divinity, from Ouranos to Hades, Cornutus provides an allegorico-etymological interpretation of its names and epithets, its attributes, aspects of its myths and rituals, etc. Physical allegory (Zeus represents the ether, Hera the air, etc.) is prevalent, although there are also examples of ethical and historical exegeses. Special attention is demanded by Cornutus’ programmatic assertion—analysed below—that “The ancients were not people of no account, but they were also able to understand the nature of the cosmos and had the ability to philosophise on it by means of symbols and enigmata” (35). The ancient were nothing less than philosophers, since they were endowed with the understanding of the cosmos, of what exists. What they expressed allegorically are philosophical truths. Philosophical allegoresis interprets their expressions and finds philosophical tenets therein. Cornutus was strongly influenced by Chrysippus, Apollodorus of Athens, and Crates of Mallus, while Seneca, who was a Stoic but no allegorist, probably polemicised with Cornutus.Stoic allegoresis, as practiced by the Stoics Cornutus and Chaeremon roughly at the same time, later influenced not only the so-called Middle Platonists, but also the Christian Platonist Origen. Origen seems to have applied allegoresis not only to the Bible, like Philo and Clement before him, but also to Plato’s dialogues and myths. All these allegorisers aimed at finding deeper meanings and philosophical truths in traditional accounts, thereby rescuing them from accusations of superficiality or impiety. The goal was to find in ancient poets and other expressions of traditional religion, as well as in Scripture, meanings “worthy of the divine.” Remarkable structural similarities between the Stoic allegorical tradition inherited by Cornutus and Origen’s allegoresis will be pointed out.

Peter Dronke, Sacred and Profane Thought in the Early Middle Ages. Millennio Medievale: Strumenti e Studi, 109. Florence: SISMEL/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2016, pp. XXXIV, 298, 4 ill.

With these seventeen retrospective essays (all dating from 1988–2015) peerless medieval Latinist Peter Dronke unearths certain links between sacred and profane notions and images, as well as Christian-Platonic motifs, particularly from the early Middle Ages. The first two parts of the book dwell on aspects (in the widest sense) of Christian Platonism, focusing on themes like sensuality, allegory, and the theme of silence, whether in the Latin tradition or in the vernacular (Old French or Middle High German, for example). The second (middle) segment touches on some of the greatest thinkers in the Latin world, from Boethius in the sixth century to John Scotus Eriugena, Hildegard of Bingen, William of Conches, and Thierry of Chartres in the twelfth. The emphasis throughout is on transformations and syncretisms far more than on disjunctions. The final group of essays is concerned with poetic texts, Latin and vernacular, in which non-sacred elements make their way into the sacred, the biblical and the saintly realms. A brief Epilogue glances at early medieval profane poetry outside (Japanese) as well as within Europe.

From Light So Late

from Light So Late Bill Coyle (bio) What struck me most was not my father’s fall while he was going for an evening walk, or his not being able to recall falling—that I could put down to shock— but that he went in to the hospital with only a dull aching in his side, and no one nagging; not his style at all. Good thing he went, though: he might well have died. They took him quick, got him x-rayed and scanned. A chest tube helped the lung to re-expand. Two days in the ICU, and he’s permitted to go home but has been banned from spending every good day as he planned this summer, in the garden on his knees. As for us, speaking selfishly, this means we board our flight with relatively clear consciences, flip through inflight magazines, marvel it’s already been a year. Soon we see on the hundred little screens positioned at eye-level on the back of each seat’s headrest the unlikely greens of Iceland, and its basic, basalt black, making it look as though all the minds on board, numbered and separate, are of one accord. You and I, Love, have been on different pages— in different books—too long, can ill afford to waste more time now we are winging toward the desolation of our middle ages. [End Page 3] Like a bad joke this 100% post-consumer waste “Decomposition Book” I bought at the start of the summer in a health food store in North Conway now, in Stockholm, in early August, is falling apart. No sooner have I finished copying over pages of unused lines and ideas from the previous one, than I have to do it all over. (Not that I have to, really—I mean, no one’s standing over me with a gun.) Some lines are just punchlines waiting for the right setup: I can’t recall the last time I was blackout drunk, others just lists of potential rhymes and a topic, here charm alarm fear appear filed under chipmunk. There are the found poems that, however much I like them myself, seem not really poems, or not really me, I guess: iTunes noting vis-à-vis an Alice Coltrane album that it’s “importing Universal Consciousness”; there is a healthy dose of Christian Platonism, as always: Nature is her own iconoclast; there is, as always, one after another helpless defense of living (at least part time) in the past. I’m conducting this salvage operation out on our borrowed balcony while you are in the shower. Neighbors are watering or just sitting down to dinner, swallows hunting, the sun ripening, despite the hour. From over the corrugated roofs on the amber light come shouts and bright young laughter bound for the bars. Several species of gull drift in the lower heaven, sounding like clowns or spoiled children or bottleneck guitars. Decomposition. Turning the pages I encounter failure and unfulfilled promise everywhere I look. The water is a hop, skip, and a jump away. If it weren’t so un-green, I’d be tempted to drown my book. [End Page 4] Maybe it’s not a total loss: Folded up in the back’s this sheet of lines that never felt complete, but that I couldn’t bear to toss. Maybe they just need the right setting, or they or I needed to age. Maybe I’m desperate. Hard to gauge. So many things slip through the netting of space-time and are lost to sight, it’s not as though I can afford ever to heave overboard the record of a day so bright. Fragment or not, I bring it back and set it in a transparent case with its approximate date and place of origin on a small plaque: Slite, Gotland. August 2007 The past three days the wind has blown offshore, leaving the water here warmer than the air and clear to a floor ridged like the desert seen from a great height and grazed by shadows of transparent little fish in tight formation hanging fire in a current too miniature and mild to quite feel but...