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WORDING THE SILENCE: INITIATORY READING OF MYSTICAL TEXTS
Te enen tide hoerdic een sermoen, Daer men seide van sinte Augustine. Op die vre dat ic dat
hoerde, werdic soe sere ontfunct van binnen, Dat mi te moede was, Ochte alle dat in ertrike
was, verberrent soude hebben vander vlammen die ic in mi gheuoelde. De Minne es al.
This passage makes it clear that through hearing, other sense perceptions are
also made possible — in this instance the sensation of warmth (‘inflamed from
within ... burned by the flame’). It is as though this sensation brought her, in
the last sentence, to the conclusion that ‘Love is all’ (39). Something external
(a sermon by Saint Augustine) gives rise to a sensation within (in mi), i.e.
which has been internalised.
READING AS EXPERIENCING WORD AND SILENCE
The excerpt from Letter 24 cited above goes even further: it is indeed ‘words’
(woerde) that point the way towards the mystical experience of minne, but
‘one cannot teach love to anyone’ (menne mach nieman Minne leren, 109).
The possibilities open to Hadewijch as a spiritual leader were thus limited.
This is also clear from Letter 19: Hadewijch marvels at the equanimity with
which the addressee accepts the fact that she does not enjoy fruition of God
(ende ghi niet sijns en ghebruket), whereas this deficiency disturbs Hadewijch
so greatly that at that moment she can find no words for it, “about that I must
keep silent”, she says, and she adds: “Read, if you want, what you already have;
I shall be silent.”
Again, the addressee is asked to reread texts. But we also find a topos here
that appears in various forms in Hadewijch’s Letters: she implies that she
will keep silence. This silence may often be understood as the powerlessness
of Hadewijch to teach her ‘dear child’ to love (minne te leren), as she says in
Letter 24, but it also opens up a space for silence and the stillness of meditative
reading that, in her powerlessness, she recommends to the addressee.
At the end of Letter 19, there is yet another moment of silence, a different
one, one of not daring to speak. But for now it is enough to understand that
reading in Hadewijch’s time and in her circles was meditative in nature, and
as such involved both soul and body. Reading that implies hearing conveys
knowledge but is first and foremost interspersed with silence. No matter how
the reader strives to memorise and internalise, she experiences the silences
or stillnesses that result, and experiences their ineffable content in her entire
being. In both Letter 19 and Letter 24, Hadewijch indicates that she can
4 Hoe mi dat becomt, dies moetic swighen; wat dat ghi hebbet dat leset, alse ghi wilt. Ic sal
swighen. (Letter 19, 41-42)
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