WORD MYSTICISM
What I am wondering is whether we could even identify a 'language
fundamentalism', 'linguistic fundamentalism', or even a 'word magic'
that is characteristic of Romanticism. Already in St. Augustine,
there was apparently a touch of what could be called 'word magic'(1).
And the 'word mysticism' of Jacob Boehme, that mysterious forerunner
of Romanticism (and Deconstruction?), was so profound that even the
dissociated syllables and sounds of words were considered fraught
with significant meaning (2). Then, the later Heidegger has discovered
when he speaks, that it is not so much he that is speaking, as that
that German language is speaking through him. The phenomenon was
already present in Hegel (3). H.-G. Gadamer observed, "It can hardly
be avoided that upon hearing this interpretation someone will say that
the author is "Heideggering" or, to use the expression of the early
twenties, is "Heideggerizing". But with equal justification one who
is really at home in the German language can turn to Meister Eckhard,
Jakob Bohme, Leibnitz, or Franz von Ba[a]der for corroboration of the
point I am making"(4). Roberts Avens writes, "To Heidegger, words
are not signs of things nor are concepts signs of words. Things are
not prior to words, and words are not labels added to already existing
things. "Words and language are not hulls into which we pack things
for purposes of speech or correspondence. It is in the word and in
language that things become and are things.""(5). Could this be a
'language fundamentalism' in which words are elevated (deified) to
the position of "In the beginning was the Word"?
Alan M. Olson has nicely summed up this mystical importance of
words in the tradition which has played a very central role in the
rise of the Romantic Movement: "*Sein* and *Wortmystik* are rather
involuntarily etched into the life-blood of Germanic philosophy and
theology. As such, they represent the scarlet thread of reflection
in its intellectual tradition from Albertus Magnus in the 12th century
to the present day. Indeed, literary German is inconceivable apart
from its origin in mystic-religious visionaries like Meister Eckhart
and Martin Luther who, not surprisingly, invest its simplest words
with resonances of Transcendence..."We do not so much speak language,"
Gadamer is fond of saying, "as language speaks us"...It is no accident,
therefore, that *Word* theology should have its most profound expression
among German-speaking peoples...*sola scriptura*...In German Protestantism
*die Predigt* has quite literally the force of a "Proclamation"...or an
"event" or "happening"...in which truth appears out of the primordiality
of its concealment in mere words..."(6).
Well, this is about as far as I can take this topic for now, but I
hope it is at least a good starting point for further investigations.
---
1. Richard Fenn, _Magic in Language and Ritual: Notes on Augustine's
*Confessions*_, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25(1):
77-91(March 1986).
2. Steven A. Konopacki, _The Descent into Words Jakob Bohme's Transcendental
Linguistics_, Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, Inc., 1979. P.162: "As shown
by Bharati (1976), the linguistic signals contained in "mystical" writing
must be carefully related to a more subtle source of inspiration: that
of the prolific and published mystic as linguist." The reference is
to Agehananda Bharati, _The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext
of Modern Mysticism_, Santa Barbara: Ross-Erikson, 1976. Compare
Jean-Jacques Lecercle, _Philosophy through the Looking-Glass Language,
nonsense, desire_, La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1985, on Ferdinand
de Saussure's anagramatic investigations of linguistics at the level of
*delire*, i.e., at the "discursive locus where philosophy consorts
with the March Hare"(p.3)!
3. Tom Darby, _The Feast Meditations on Politics and Time_, Toronto /
Buffalo / London: University of Toronto Press, 1982, paperback 1990.
4. Hans-Georg Gadamer, _Hegel's Dialectic Five Hermeneutical Studies_,
New Haven and London: Yale University press, 1976 [trans. P. Christopher
Smith], pp.113-114. See also Walter L. Brenneman, Jr., Stanley O.
Yarian, and Alan Olson, _The Seeing Eye Hermeneutical Phenomenology
in the Study of Religion_, University Park and London: The Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1982, pp.45-46.
5. Roberts Avens, _The *New* Gnosis *Heidegger, Hillman, and Angels*_,
Dallas, Texas: Spring Publications, Inc., p. 48. Heidegger quoted
from Martin Heidegger, _Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik_, Tubingen:
Niemeyer Verlag, 1953, p.11. [Cited and trans. Vincent Vycinas,
_Earth and Gods: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Martin
Heidegger_, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969, p.85.]
6. Alan M. Olson, _Transcendence and Hermeneutics An Interpretation of
the Philosophy of Karl Jaspers_, The Hague / Boston / London: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1979, pp.92-93.
June, 1996
mmm
Index