Soon it will be twilight.
But the clouds are still clear, the pines are not yet dark. For the lake illumines them with its
transparence.
And all is green, a richer
green than any organ blast at a recital.
Listen to it sitting close to the earth, arms tightly clasped, eyes
closed too, as if asleep.
For you must not walk as if you are a conqueror. You must not wish to give a name to things,
to everything. Things will tell you who
they are, if you listen, surrendered to them, like a lover. They will do so because, in the frictionless
peace of this Northern Forest, the Earth came to you, for you, in the visible
form of an Angel, who could be a woman, perhaps. And in this apparition, this greenest and
peopled solitude, yes, the Angel too is clothed in green, that is, in twilight,
silence and truth. Then all the
sweetness present in self abandonment to an overwhelming embrace is in you.
Earth, Angel, Woman, all this is in a single thing, that I
adore, and that is in this forest.
Twilight on the lake, my Annunciation. The mountain, a line. Listen! Something
will happen, yes. The waiting is
immense, the air quivers beneath a barely visible drizzle, the houses with
their red, rustic wood stretched across the ground, and their thatched roofs,
are there, on the other side of the lake.
Something will start this evening, something promised,
something I believe in. Ah! This evening? When, this evening? If it were really in a few hours, then it
would never be, for it would end, and then begin again, and would end always,
without ever beginning. Do you know what
it is to wait, and do you know what it is to believe?
The Mystery of the Last Supper, into which
you will be brought, where all beings will be present, yes, you can only speak
of it in the future. For at each moment
that you really read, as you read now what is before you, that you listen to
the Angel, and to the Earth, and to Woman, you receive Everything. Everything, in your absolute poverty. But as soon as you have read, and have
received, as soon as you look, as you want to understand, as you want to
possess, give a name and retain, explain and recover, ah! There remains but a cipher and your judgment
is meted out.”
-Henry Corbin, 1932, Lake Siljan Sweden
