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WORDING THE SILENCE: INITIATORY READING OF MYSTICAL TEXTS And in that blessed stillness she hears a great murmur from the wonder which is God Himself in everlastingness. (211) Ende in die verweende stilheit / hoertse een groet gheruchte van dien wondere, / dat god selve es in ewecheiden. That murmur (gheruchte) is the sound that comes forth from God himself, and we also know that blessedness is not situated in a soundless space: cf. ‘T have heard the voice of blessedness’ (155). Now we see that the soul is raised up and is taken up in wonder, as it were, there to enjoy ‘lofty blessedness’ (hoghe verweentheid) (224). The holiness that was one of the elements in the beginning that created a space in which words could be heard, at the end of Letter 28 leads the soul to keep silence. This enables her to sum up what she has hitherto said about hearing, speaking and keeping silence, and to add that it is God alone who moves her on occasion to break through that language barrier. From this moment on she uses the past tense, which implies that the states she has described up to now had happened to herself and now she looks back at them. She has experienced ‘wholeness’ (gheheelecheit) at various levels: in her consciousness, her activity and her experience of the world. We see the same wordplay here as at the beginning of the letter: from silence comes hearing, from hearing comes holding back, and so on, culminating in silence. Here I quote the last paragraph of the letter: Since God’s holiness made me keep silence, since then I have heard much. And since I have heard much, why did I keep it for myself? I did not without reason keep for myself what I kept for myself. I kept everything for myself, before and after. Therefore I am silent and rest with God till the moment when God commands me to speak. I have healed all my distinction-making, and I have appropriated all my wholeness, and I have kept all that is proper to me enclosed in God till the moment when someone comes with that sort of distinction-making, who asks me what it is, that I mean and feel with God in God. Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 135 6 2020. 06.15. 11:04:17
