Poetry & Mystical Aesthetics

God confounds the mind of man and yet mankind gropes for the truth ineffable. His transcendence, His superabundance of goodness and beauty and holiness, His dwelling in darkness and enveloping Light- these are hidden. St Symeon the New Theologian writes, "[my mind] sees, and desires to speak, and does not find the words. For it looks upon invisible things that are utterly without form: whole, simple, uncompounded, infinite in magnitude." The concrete edges of analytical language fail in expressing the mysteries of God, and so man is compelled to grasp with the fingers of poetry what the literal is too narrow to touch.

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Poetry and figurative prose embrace the creation as an expanse of symbols made in the likeness of God. The saints are often spurred to figurative language, making comparisons of what is seen to describe the unseen God. St Symeon, a man prolific in poetry writes, "How are You at once the source of fire, how also the fountain of dew?" There is tension in these words, that of dichotomy and mystery and wonder, and yet it draws us nearer to truth; the Word of God made known by words. The created objects- the many logoi contained in the material cosmos- each show something of Christ and reflect that truth in their aesthetic presentation, that is, their perception by the senses. Consider how often God is symbolized as fire in Scriptures: the sun, burning bush, pillar of fire, flaming coal, etc. This symbol is potent not because God is like the flame of fire, but rather that the flame of fire has a likeness to God- He is the image, the flame is the mirror. The poetic language of the saints then stretches past mere analogy and into the ontological reality of the object as an explanation of its aesthetic form made real in God. In this sense, there is a mystical nature to the aesthetics of the material world and it is the work of the saints to discover and reveal Him Whose image the mirror reflects.

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Poetic language touches every facet of Orthodox liturgical life but is most apparent in the multitude of hymns within the Orthodox tradition- that which combines the word and breath of man, becoming a symbol in itself.

(Part 7 of 14 of Mimetic Reality series)