Arco (TN)

Arco (TN)

Friday, August 15, 2014

Writing with Gibran - Paradise - August 15, 2014


Today for Carpe Diem Haiku Kai  I'm going to look at paradise through the eyes of Khalil Gibran's "Sea and Foam":

 [...] "Paradise is there, behind that door, in the next room; but I have lost the key. Perhaps I have only mislaid it". [...]

[...] "He who would share your pleasure but not your pain shall lose the key to one of the seven gates of Paradise". [...]

Thinking about Paradise whilst reading these two lines brings to mind Dante's great Divine Comedy.  From the bowels of Hell through Purgatory reaching finally the circles of Paradise until he contemplates at a distance The Empyrean where the essence of God dwelled, Dante takes a journey into the after-life.  This epic poem was written in between 1308 until Dante's death in 1321 in Terza Rima his opera omnia consists of 100 "cantos":
 "But then my mind was struck by light that flashed and, with this light, received what it had asked.  Here force failed my high fantasy; but my desire and will were moved already-like a wheel revolving uniformly-by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars." [Dante's conclusion of The Divine Comedy .  Canto XXXIII, Paradiso]
The influence of Muslim culture that Chèvrefeuille mentions in his piece on Khalil Gibran is not missing in the Divine Comedy either... though his contempt for Islam was also evident as well as inevitable  - and neither could this be any other way  in that time of early rivalry between the two faiths ... the greatest translations of classical Greek philosophers were being percolated into Christendom through the Venetian merchants all translations by Islamic philosophers and thinkers.  In point of fact, we are much more influenced by Islamic culture then is commonly known.


Doré, Glowing Souls
Rings of Glowing Souls
Creator: Doré, Gustave - 1868



Another literary memory that comes to my mind is a movie entitled "What Dreams may Come" based on the book with the same title written in 1978 by Richard Matheson:

“Not only did I rediscover every experience of my life, I had to live each unfulfilled desire as well—as though they’d been fulfilled. I saw that what transpires in the mind is just as real as any flesh and blood occurrence. What had only been imagination in life, now became tangible, each fantasy a full reality. I lived them all—while, at the same time, standing to the side, a witness to their, often, intimate squalor. A witness cursed with total objectivity.”
 “Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been.”
 ― Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come






§§§§§§§§§§§§§

there inside our soul
the doors to heaven and hell
vie for attention
consequences of actions
projections of our thoughts

one short step
and as in life also in death
there is paradise

what is paradise
this stream, lake and dawning sky
harmony and peace

inside our soul
the doors to heaven and hell
as close as your breath
as distant as a quasar
each one a moment's choice

©  G.s.k. '14

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harmonious words ... like crystal clear water ... pure ectasy

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