Henry Suso (c. 1295–1366), a German-speaking Dominican from the Lake Constance region, describes in his Life an inward experience remembered as something seen. The narrative speaks of the Servant of Eternal Wisdom in the third person. A reader can therefore follow him in the act of looking. The curious question is how a person can see something that the ordinary human body hides even from its own possessor.
He looked immediately, and saw that his body over his heart was clear as crystal, and that in the centre of his heart was sitting tranquilly, in lovely form, the Eternal Wisdom; beside whom there sat, full of heavenly longing, the Servitor’s soul, which, leaning lovingly towards God’s side, and encircled by God’s arms, and pressed close to His divine heart, lay thus entranced and drowned in love in the arms of the beloved God.
– Henry Suso, Life of the Servitor, 1865, p. 27.[1]
In the experience described here, the flesh over the heart acquires a property of crystal. The body retains its position and form. What gives way is the obstacle it usually presents to the eye. This explains the precision of the comparison. An opening in the breast would suggest an injury. A crystalline surface can remain perfectly continuous while allowing a viewer to see what lies behind it. The gaze reaches the interior without breaking up the figure of the person we have been asked to imagine.
The heart is where the Servant understands his devotion to God to reside. Suso gives that relationship a physical nearness that a reader might almost measure with a hand. The hardness and clarity of a mineral help to convey an experience of the vulnerable human body. Much of the force of the scene lies in this change of sensory expectation. Someone looking at a surface discovers that the matter of real interest lies just beyond it. Crystal keeps both parts of that discovery within the same image.
Search
The whole magistery takes place in one vessel, and with one fire, viz., the dry and moist elementary fire of the matter […]
Edward Kelley (1555 – c. 1597)
The Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy · XII · 1893 · p. 142
Attributed to Kelley · translation by A. E. Waite · excerpt
So hills and valleys into singing break; And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue, While active winds and streams both run and speak, Yet stones are deep in admiration.
Henry Vaughan (1621/22–1695)
Silex Scintillans · The Bird · 1896 · p. 207
English text of the 1896 edition
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, […]
Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
Leaves of Grass · Song of Myself, § 31 · 1891–92 · p. 54
English text · opening line of the stanza
What infinite melancholy there is in these ancient stones, full of rust and gold!
Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
Impresiones y paisajes · Baeza, II · 1918 · p. 135
Our translation from Spanish
I always wore his eyes in my ring, angry, veiled stones; my gestures grew hard.
Else Lasker-Schüler (1869–1945)
Briefe und Bilder · Die Aktion, 3. Jg., Nr. 42 · 1913 · col. 993
Our translation from German
The longer he looked, the more it seemed to him that the image was slowly opening its soulful eyes, that its lips would move in greeting, that life was blossoming up through its beautiful limbs, warming them like a lovely song.
Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavour and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish.
Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677)
Letter on freedom and necessity · Letter LXII · 1898 · p. 390
Translation by R. H. M. Elwes · excerpt
With these thoughts I draw near to you, oldest and worthiest monuments of time.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Goethes Werke, II. Abteilung, Band 9 · p. 173
Our translation
The jewels came to life, the fossils began to move; the wondrous Pyrosmalite and the Almandine flashed in the light of the miner's candles; the Rock-Crystals glittered, and darted their rays.
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822)
The Serapion Brethren, volume I · p. 188
Translated by Alexander Ewing
In an amber-drop the bee lies hid and lightens, so that it seems to be shut in its native sweets.
Martial (c. 40–c. 104)
Martial, Epigrams, volume I · p. 252–253
Translated by Walter C. A. Ker · Excerpt
Painters vie to copy the sweep of the snow-white waves. In the work of heaven no trace of the thunder axe is seen.
Make me a watcher of your open spaces, make me one who listens at the stone,
Phone: +43 677 628 66 628 | 
Cart