This is a poem by Hadewych. She was born in Brabant (now a province in the Netherlands) somewhere in the 1200s. She was a poet and mystic, and the spiritual leader of a sisterhood of God-loving women called "Begijnen" near Brussels (now in Belgium). Hadewych was influenced a lot by the provincial major poetry and William of Saint Thierry, a friend of Bernard de Clairvaux, another mystic. Besides Diets (the language of the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, of which the word "Dutch" is derived) she was also fluent in French and Latin. The poem is originally in Diets, which appears much like a mixture of old German and Dutch and only has a faint resemblance to modern Dutch. Most of the literary works of Hadewych are kept in the Red Monastery in the Zoniën forest, Belgium.
I decided to translate it because so far no English version of this beautiful poem existed.
Love
Sweetest of love is her storm;
Her deepest abyss, her purest form;
In losing her she reappears;
A feast of succulent starvation;
Her mistrust, certainty;
Her most painful wound, health;
Live longer pining away for her;
Hide from her for discovery and anticipation;
Wasting away for her yields vibrance;
Concealing her reveals everything;
Her gifts are what she holds back;
Her most beautiful poems are unspoken;
Her prison has open doors;
Her hardest blows are her sweet service;
Her pillage returns booty and dreams;
Her departure means always getting closer;
Her deepest silence is her greatest song;
Her greatest chastity, her dearest gratitude;
Her most terrible threat, complete faith;
Her desolation, the resolve of all mourning;
Her wealth, all her shortcomings.
One can speak so much more of love:
Her highest faith degenerates;
Her highest being drowns one cruelly;
Her wealth forfeits have and hold;
Her favor is shown only in adversity;
Her consolation is like salt in wounds;
Her association causes one to die many a death;
Her food is hunger; to know her, to wonder;
Seduction, the wisdom of her teachings;
Her caress, a savage storm;
Her manners are without standards;
When she appears, she hopes to conceal;
When she gives, she longs to steal;
Her promises never fulfilled;
Her crown is complete vulnerability;
Her truth, merely deceit;
Her word of honor many consider a mere lie;
At any moment I can bear witness of this, as many can:
Often love has led us, and in doing so misled us,
In the illusion that we possessed her;
Since the first time she fooled me
And I caught on at last,
I no longer allow her just anything;
Her eternal threats and promises,
Will never deceive me again;
It doesn't matter whether she's good or bad;
I want to be for her all that she is herself.
-
Hadewych
