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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Rare Find, April 26 2002
By A Customer
In daily life, it is interesting to see how the human soul likes to return to an idea or a feeling that is simple but somehow determinative. It is often the inward image of someone we love or a goal we are striving for. Media advertising techniques exploit this aspect of our nature at its crudest level. In the art of poetry, it is turned to account in a kind of apotheosis that verges on the magical. It is no accident that for millennia-when illiteracy was the norm for most people-the wisdom of civilizations was encapsulated, perpetuated and enjoyed through poetry. This collection of "Songs" is a rare find. There is no poem more than one page in length, and yet it is as though Schuon the metaphysician has crystallized the entire content of his philosophical books into verse. Even so, this is much more than simply a clever recapitulation. The ideas, the images-and the realities they manifest-spring forth with the life and clarity of a fresh inspiration. And this is the point at which those of us who are not fluent in German cannot help feeling slightly left out. One is grateful to have the original German next to the English translations, but one also longs to "hear the music." Lacking a voice rendering of the German in the form of a compact disk, one can hope that at least a few of these gems might become accessible through an internet site. As with Schuon's prose works, one is struck by the range of subjects, and in addition with the poetry, by the astonishing variety of styles and meters. The topics include such diverse interests as metaphysics, cosmology, sacred art, celestial femininity, hagiography, comparative religion, folk wisdom, fairy tales and certainly all aspects of German romanticism. The sense of nature as theophany is a major theme here, accompanied by a lyricism of heart-melting beauty. This is the kind of book one likes to dip into, savor and come back to. Since the foreword mentions a corpus of some 3,500 poems, the only question to ask is when the publication date is for the next volume.
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