After visiting Belgium and seeing the beguine housing complex in Bruge, I became interested in the Beguines. They were women from the Middle Ages who lived as a community to pray and serve their communities. Unlike nuns, they did not make perpetual vows. There is information about them in this link https://www.greynun.org/2020/02/the-beguines-of-medieval-europe-mystics-and-visionaries/ .
Hadewijch of Brabant was a 13th century beguine, poet, and mystic who came from the Duchy of Brabant, now Antwerp.
I was delighted to learn that Professor Ralph Semino Galan, a friend and fellow-writer, translated one of Hadewijch's poems from English to Filipino and Cebuano. With his permission, I am sharing these with you.
To have a better appreciation of the translations, I am sharing Professor Galan's bio here:
Ralph Semino Galán, poet, literary and cultural critic,
translator and editor, is the Assistant Director of the UST Center for Creative
Writing and Literary Studies. He is an Associate Professor of Literature, the
Humanities and Creative Writing in the UST Faculty of Arts and Letters and the
UST Graduate School.
He is the author of the following books: The Southern
Cross and Other Poems (UBOD New Authors Series, NCCA, 2005), Discernments:
Literary Essays, Cultural Critiques and Book Reviews (USTP, 2013), From the
Major Arcana [poems] (USTPH, 2014), and Sa mga Pagitan ng Buhay at Iba pang
Pagtutulay [translations] (USTPH, 2018).
He is currently working on a research
project sponsored by the UST Research Center for Culture, Arts and Humanities
titled Labaw sa Bulawan: Translating 300 Mindanao Poems from Cebuano into
English (1930-2020), as well as a book of poetry in Cebuano titled Mga Kalag
Nga Nahisalaag, Mga Dili Ingon Nato: Mga Balak ug Garay.
The Filipino translation of Hadewijch's poem is included in Sa Mga Pagitan ng Buhay…
LOVE HAS SEVEN NAMES
by Hadewijch
English version by Willis Barnstone and Elene Kolb
Original Language Dutch
Love has seven names.
Do you know what they are?
Rope, Light, Fire, Coal
make up its domain.
The others, also good,
more modest but alive:
Dew, Hell, the Living Water.
I name them here (for they
are in the Scriptures),
explaining every sign
for virtue and form.
I tell the truth in signs.
Love appears every day
for one who offers love.
That wisdom is enough.
Love is a ROPE, for it ties
and holds us in its yoke.
It can do all, nothing snaps it.
You who love must know.
The meaning of LIGHT
is known to those who
offer gifts of love,
approved or condemned.
The Scripture tell us
the symbol of COAL:
the one sublime gift
God gives the intimate soul.
Under the name of FIRE, luck,
bad luck, joy or no joy,
consumes. We are seized
by the same heat from both.
When everything is burnt
in its own violence, the DEW,
coming like a breeze, pauses
and brings the good.
LIVING WATER (its sixth name)
flows and ebbs
as my love grows
and disappears from sight.
HELL (I feel its torture)
damns, covering the world.
Nothing escapes. No one has grace
to see a way out.
Take care, you who wish
to deal with names
for love. Behind their sweetness
and wrath, nothing endures.
Nothing but wounds and kisses.
Though love appears far off,
you will move into its depth.
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