Mystery is not a property of the object alone; it belongs to the relation between subject and object. It arises from the subject’s willingness to linger with the object, together with the recognition that no object can be grasped in a single instant of time. Every genuine object demands duration, revealing itself only through the course of its unfolding. What first appears opaque gradually becomes intelligible, and each disclosure opens the way to further depths, without any final completion, for in every becoming there lies a renewed possibility of knowledge. Rather than seeking to banish mystery through hasty impatience, we ought to dwell with the object long enough for it to draw near of its own accord, until it speaks freely and reveals itself according to the rhythm of its own unfolding. Knowledge, therefore, does not dissolve mystery; it inhabits it. Mystery is the temporal horizon within which every act of understanding unfolds, the inexhaustible condition that makes genuine knowledge possible.

An unending and arcane nostalgia awakens within me for pre-modern architecture, precisely because it bears within itself the traces of nature, in its style, its materials, and its forms. Contemporary architecture, by contrast, has become so thoroughly technologized that it has largely severed this bond, sacrificing the organic presence that once allowed buildings to appear as continuations of the natural world rather than as abstractions imposed upon it, preserving that primordial harmony of the eye that sees between nature and what surrounds it.

Properly constructed edifices are like spiders’ webs: tight, concentric, transparent, well-spun and firm. They draw into themselves all the creatures of the air and land. interior creatures flitting hastily through them become their nourishing prey. Subject matter comes winging towards them. The soundness of a building can be judged by whether it causes one building to summon another, or what is most immediate to it from nature, in an uninterrupted harmonious continuum. Where the building has opened up one cell of reality, it should, without violence by the subject, penetrate the next. It proves its relation to other objects as soon as other objects crystallize around it. In the light it casts on its chosen substance, others begin to glow.

Wisdom at the End — It is indeed disheartening that wisdom so often arrives only at sunset, whether at the close of a single life or at the end of an historical epoch, yet this is merely the wisdom of reflection: a wisdom that does not anticipate the event but waits in stillness until it has already unfolded, deriving its insight only from what has become. It is a retrospective wisdom, forever condemned to understand too late, reflecting only upon what has already entered the domain of thought.

In contrast, there is another wisdom that stands alongside it: the wisdom of anticipation. Rather than lingering over what has become, it ventures beyond the given, discerning within the present the latent form of what is yet to come. It generalizes from the light of past experience but not remaining solely constricted to it, extending tendencies beyond their immediate manifestations and venturing upon possibilities before they have acquired the certainty of fact. Such a wisdom is necessarily fallible; it must accept the risk of error, for anticipation cannot enjoy the luxury of hindsight, nevertheless, without this speculative courage, there could be no genuine foresight, or creation, or historical initiative, even in one's life for that matter. If reflective wisdom belongs to sunset, anticipatory wisdom belongs to dawn: it sees less distinctly, yet it alone possesses the privilege of beholding the horizon before the day has fully broken.

Drowned in the Sea, c.1830 by German painter.

إنّ فعلَ الابتلاع، الذي يتردّد حضوره كثيرًا في خطاب الحبّ، يكشف عن سيرورة بطيئة من امتزاج الذوات وتداخل الهويّات؛ عن مسارٍ تتشابك فيه الكينونات المتمايزة تشابكًا عميقًا، حتى تغدو مقيمةً في أفقٍ واحد من أفق الكَون "being". فمن خلال سيرورةٍ طويلة من التماهي، تنحلّ الحدود الفاصلة بين الأنا والآخر شيئًا فشيئًا؛ فتتقارب رؤاهما، وتتداخل معانيهما، وتتوحّد طرائق حضورهما في العالم، حتى ينتقلا من مجرّد علاقةٍ بين ذاتين إلى اختبارٍ مشترك للواقع ضمن نمطٍ واحد من الكينونة.

وهذا الميل نحو الاندماج ينبع من فيضٍ من الوفرة، من قوّةٍ فائضة تتجاوز حدود الذات فتجذب ما يحيط بها إلى مجالها الخاص. إنّه اندفاع الامتلاء حين يتحول إلى جاذبية ما يواجهه، وليس اندفاع ناجم عن فقر ونقص داخلي كما نظر له دائمًا، وحين تصبح الذات الغنية بحضورها قادرةً على استقبال الآخر وإدخاله في اتساعها الداخلي. فالابتلاع هنا حركةُ انجذابٍ واحتضان؛ قوّةٌ جامعة تستوعب الاختلاف داخل وحدةٍ أرحب، فتجعل الآخر حاضرًا في فضائها دون أن تفقده فرادته.

إنّه مغناطيسيةُ كينونةٍ ممتلئةٍ بذاتها، لا تنغلق على حدودها، وإنما تمتدّ إلى ما وراءها؛ كينونةٌ تستقبل الآخر، وتعيد تشكيله، وتدمجه في حركتها الباطنية، فتتسع به كما يتسع هو بها. وهكذا يغدو الابتلاع صورةً رمزيةً لأعمق أحلام الحبّ: أن تتجاوز الذات عزلتها عبر اتحادٍ يجعل الآخر جزءًا من اتساعها، ويجعلها بدورها جزءًا من عالمه الداخلي؛ حيث لا تزول المسافة بين الاثنين، وإنما تتحول إلى مجالٍ للتماسّ والتآلف والخلق المشترك.

He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond the vision and the experience of his acquaintances, provokes envy and hatred masked as pity, prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease, seduction. Long faces. Flattery. ah, our acquaintances are the last to spare us their envy!

Language does little but obstruct and arrest the immediate flow of the primordial language of gesture, facial expression, instinct, and the body. This is especially true of the inferior, repetitive speech that governs everyday social life, a mode of discourse that is impersonal, task-driven, un-creative, and conventional even from the very initiation of conversation. In the vast majority of cases, speech conceals more than it reveals: a single sentence or expression often stands in place of dozens of unspoken intentions, emotions, and meanings. This should not surprise us, for language evolved primarily to communicate needs, coordinate relations, and facilitate action, not to disclose the truth of the self. As such, it is not, in its ordinary form, an instrument of truth. Literary expression belongs to an altogether different order, for there language ceases to function merely as a practical medium and instead becomes an attempt to recover, however imperfectly, what ordinary speech obscures.

In this age, when you wish to express affection, feeling, and thought, render it as technically and artificially as you can, so that it may belong to a totality of signs, coherently artificial, and thereby be made more meaningful. Have you not yet heard of the extinction and eclipse of man? Be more humane by way of extreme intoxication with the technical, let even your gestures, dreams, smiles, and speech pass through being technical, for there is, inherently and essentially, no defining characteristic of man. And do not be fooled by the police who would sell you a contradiction between man and his technics, his highest expression, his fullest self-actualization, such that he ends up, circularly, imitating himself through the backward imitation of his own technics.

إنّ القيادة ذُروةٌ شامخةٌ كقمّة جبل؛ فالهواءُ الذي يُتنفَّس هناك غيرُ الهواء الذي يُتنفَّس في الوادي، والآفاقُ التي تُرى من تلك القمّة غيرُ الآفاق التي تُرى من وادي الطاعة. وهناك، في تلك الأعالي، تنطلق إلى مداها الكامل نزعةُ الإنسان الفطرية إلى النظام والانضباط، وعبقريتُه في التشييد والبناء. فالإنسان الذي نما وعَظُم شأنُه، يرى من علاءِ برجه ما يستطيع، أن يصنع ما يشاء من تلك الجماهير المتدافعة المحتشدة في الأسفل.

A scientist must attempt to hold many facts in his hands simultaneously so that he can chain them together and hang himself.