Blooming Poetry

The eminent literary critic Harold Bloom, who died in 2017, wrote in his book How to Read and Why this intriguing passage:

Though Shakespeare perhaps ought not to have become a secular scripture for us, he does seem to me the only possible rival to the Bible, in literary power.  Nothing, when you stand back from it, seems odder or more wonderful that our most successful entertainer should provide an alternative vision (however unintentionally) to the accounts of human nature and destiny in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Koran.  Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, speak with authority, and in another sense so do Hamlet, Iago, Lear, and Cleopatra.  Persuasiveness is larger in Shakespeare because he is richer; his rhetorical and imaginative resources transcend those of Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah, which sounds rather more blasphemous than I think it is.  Hamlet’s consciousness, and his language for extending that consciousness is wider and more agile than divinity has manifested, as yet.  (pg. 201)

            I rue that I cannot write to him now about those last two words. 

            It is not the primary job of Scripture to be poetic, but lovers and followers of Scripture repeat passages therefrom for the loveliness of the words themselves as well as for their spiritual content.  The Beatitudes, as well as other passages from the sayings of Jesus and the Buddha are memorable for the lyrical beauty of the precepts being expressed. 

            In Bahá’u’lláh, however, we have Scripture deliberately expressed in poetic terms.  He quotes classical Persian poets such as Rumi and Hafiz, among others, and pays homage to them for their penetrating visions.  He also wrote poetry as poetry, outside of the Revelation to which He was entrusted.  But it is in this Revelation that Bahá’ís are enraptured by passages such as this:

Whither can a lover go but to the land of his beloved? and what seeker findeth rest away from his heart’s desire? To the true lover reunion is life, and separation is death. His breast is void of patience and his heart hath no peace. A myriad lives he would forsake to hasten to the abode of his beloved.

or

In the Rose Garden of changeless splendour a Flower hath begun to bloom, compared to which every other flower is but a thorn, and before the brightness of Whose glory the very essence of beauty must pale and wither.

and hundreds of others.  (Of course we must pay no small tribute to able translators who have striven to capture these Persian and Arabic words laden with meaning into sublime English.)

            Ah, Bloom, if you only knew.  Can you hear me?

Though Shakespeare perhaps ought not to have become a secular scripture for us, he does seem to me the only possible rival to the Bible, in literary power.  Nothing, when you stand back from it, seems odder or more wonderful that our most successful entertainer should provide an alternative vision (however unintentionally) to the accounts of human nature and destiny in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Koran.  Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, speak with authority, and in another sense so do Hamlet, Iago, Lear, and Cleopatra.  Persuasiveness is larger in Shakespeare because he is richer; his rhetorical and imaginative resources transcend those of Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah, which sounds rather more blasphemous than I think it is.  Hamlet’s consciousness, and his language for extending that consciousness is wider and more agile than divinity has manifested, as yet.  (pg. 201)

            I rue that I cannot write to him now about those last two words. 

            It is not the primary job of Scripture to be poetic, but lovers and followers of Scripture repeat passages therefrom for the loveliness of the words themselves as well as for their spiritual content.  The Beatitudes, as well as other passages from the sayings of Jesus and the Buddha are memorable for the lyrical beauty of the precepts being expressed. 

            In Bahá’u’lláh, however, we have Scripture deliberately expressed in poetic terms.  He quotes classical Persian poets such as Rumi and Hafiz, among others, and pays homage to them for their penetrating visions.  He also wrote poetry as poetry, outside of the Revelation to which He was entrusted.  But it is in this Revelation that Bahá’ís are enraptured by passages such as this:

Whither can a lover go but to the land of his beloved? and what seeker findeth rest away from his heart’s desire? To the true lover reunion is life, and separation is death. His breast is void of patience and his heart hath no peace. A myriad lives he would forsake to hasten to the abode of his beloved.

or

In the Rose Garden of changeless splendour a Flower hath begun to bloom, compared to which every other flower is but a thorn, and before the brightness of Whose glory the very essence of beauty must pale and wither.

and hundreds of others.  (Of course we must pay no small tribute to able translators who have striven to capture these Persian and Arabic words laden with meaning into sublime English.)

            Ah, Bloom, if you only knew.  Can you hear me?