Glimpses to a genealogy of sufi heritage in the poetry of spanish

american culture

By Ignacio Íñiguez

Islamabad 16 de marzo de 2010

In some of the pages of Don Quixote de la Mancha, the memorable

novel that marks the consolidation of the Spanish language, there is a
statement that sustain that “what is too much known it is silent and
after silent forgotten”, meaning that normally human being wants to
believe that only contemporary presumptions are correct, and that any
element that can put in danger such believing is a distortion that tries to
confuse him.

But often happens also that there is this precise fact or detail -lost in the
past and which almost no one remembers - that allows us to glimpse, as
from Plato's cavern, in the distance, the real nature of things in which
we never have had a chance to doubt, so our eyes can be suddenly
disclosed.

Fine words in Spanish language are the heritage from the language of Al
Andaluz Emirate, that was part of the Umayyad Caliphate in Andalusia.
Words like pillow (Almohada), I hope (Ojalá), sill (alféizar), are a living
proof that one day, christians and muslims shared a common cultural
space, and despite the distance claimed by their faiths, they had time to
share what the Chilean poet Jorge Teillier has called "a little bit of air
moved by the lips-Words / to hide perhaps the only truth: / that we
breathe and we stop breathing".

As these words say, we live inside language, and the past is a privileged
witness of that. So, if we retrace the path of languages and cultures, we
can quickly realize that the connections between the Sufi wisdom and
Christian mysticism are far more than some wants to acknowledge. And
since this point until the arcane world of poetry, there is only one
second that takes us to get to the language of the heart, in wich Sufism
and poetry have citizen cards.

Even before the coming of Prophet Muhammad, blessed be his name,

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the spiritual brotherhood of godly men in the world, were already

seeking a synthesis between Pythagoras’ numbers and cosmic dualism
of Plato and Aristotle. Before Spain or Islam even existed, these Greeks
and Gnostics scholars had the feelling that first Christ was the final
synthesis, until they chose the exegesis of Islam to be the seal of the
prophets, as it is written en the Holly Qoran.

According to the Turkish scholar and writer Edmund Kabir Helminski,

"Sufism can be seen as a way of realization in two fundamental ways:
One is a path that comes from, and carries to the human
consummation, the complete human being. On the other hand it is a
path that uses all possible effective means to orchestrate the
transformation of a human being. "

The act of rebirth, or rather, die and reborn for the Divine, is a path that
almost all mystical disciplines share in every culture, and in that sense,
the Sufi path is also an expression of human nature hungrier for spiritual
transcendence.

The traditions of this spiritual knighthood go hand in hand since then,

and -for the first time in history-, Sufism and Christianity became two
religions stating the same path, as the Spanish scholars Germain
Ancochea and MaríaToscano say:

"In Occident, knight errantry’s ideal is well beyond the physical

existence of the knighthood. In fact, Christianity was introduced by
military orders that come in contact with Islamic tradition and they
spread at the same time of the tradition of the Holy Grail. By contrast,
in the Islamic tradition, especially in the Sufism of Iranian tradition
(which itself dates back to the Zoroastrian tradition), knighthood
appears to be very soon linked to the spiritual path and, as the Sufis
say, the birth of their own tradition. Before the appearance of Islam, the
tradition of knighthood in the Middle East was preserved only through
the training of men to be knights. "

Knighthood values include respect for others, the sacrifice of oneself,

devotion, support the weak and the helpless, kindness to all creation
and preserving of the word. All qualities that later emerge as attributes
of the perfect man from the point of view of Sufism. Islam quickly
gained membership of these knights, who worked to found the Sufism
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on common bases to Islam and Knighthood.

In the West, the Templar Order were inheritors of St. Bernard’s rule,
who incorporated some of these ideals. In Chapter XIII of his book
"From Bethany”, St. Bernard's turns knight faith on words like this, so
similar with those from the prophet: "The Lord is my strength, my
refuge and my deliverer”. And also: "Not unto us, Lord, not us, but unto
thy name give the glory."

According to Alexander Seleukis in his Book of Alchemy "it was in Holy

Land where Sufis and Templars found a suitable framework for
connecting the respective traditions. There was also, where the charges
that culminated in the dissolution of the Order in 1307 began. According
to several authors, the Knights Templar held a deliberate brotherhood
with Sufis and Kabbalists, being the most known the connection with the
order of the ismaelitas knights called “assacis” that means “guardian”.

On the other hand, we have the testimony of the murcian master Ibn
Arabi, known as Sheikh of Akbar, (The greatest of Sheikhs), who was
known in Europe as "Doctor Maximus", an important reference to the
tasawwuf, the history of Sufism and, as we will see later, the key
master in the birth of some christian secret orders. Ibn Arabi formulated
the existence of "the sacred pillars", as we can see in his work
"Illuminations":

"Every Pilar (watad) is a corner of a house: The one that depends on

Adam corresponds to the Syrian angle; the one that depends on
Abraham corresponds to the Iraqi angle; the one that depends on Jesus
corresponds to the Yemeni angle, and the one that depends on
Muhammad is the angle of the black stone, this is mine, praise be the
Lord "

In another text of Ibn Arabi called “The Truth”, it is stated about him:

He confused to scholars of Islam,

To all those who studied the Psalms,

To every rabbi,

To all Christian priest.

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So, there was and there is a tradition about spiritual initiations

preserved over the centuries, common to all three religions of the Book
and that can be accessed with humility and purity of heart. The search is
often confusing, as happened to the women who went at dawn to the
tomb of Jesus and didn’t found his body, so the Angels said to them:
Why seek ye the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5).

A few years after Ibn Arabi described that four pillars supporting the
world, a Christian mystic would have an encounter that would radically
change his perception of the world.

Giovanni Bernardone, best known as St. Francisco of Assi, was in full

stage of defining his mission on earth when he joined what is known as
the Fifth Crusade. It was 1219, when he tried to fulfill the biblical
principle to evangelize in Holy Land, so he joined an expedition arrived
to Damietta, Egypt. During his travel he has to share with murderers
and thieves and then have to live for months with christians who
embarrassed him because of their lust, all of them were there just by
mere interest. So he asked permission to cardinal Pelayo, chief of the
expedition, to meet the Sultan of Egypt, Palestine and Syria, known as
al Malik al Kamil, in order to convert him to christianism. Al Kamil had
given several samples of being a peaceful and devout man, even
offering rewards to the Christians in exchange for peace, offers that
even included the control of Jerusalem, receiving negatives in all of the
cases.

The historian Donald Spoto tells about this interview between San
Francisco and Malik Al Kamil:

"The visit of Francisco to the Sultan Malik al Kamil is narrated not only in
medieval French and Italian papers, but also in islamic chronicles. These
texts tell that Francisco and Iluminado (his disciple) left the Christian
camp in early September and went to the headquarters of Al Kamil.
When the Sultan's guards saw their arrival, they were confused because
they didn’t know if they were messengers to negotiate, or "sufiyya",
mystics who were also dressed in rustic tunics. So quickly the guards led
them to the sultan's presence.

"The muslim ruler of Egypt, Palestine and Syria was the same age of
Francis, he ran his empire's forces since 1218 and like Francisco, he
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lived entirely dedicated to his faith. Although he hated war and violence
in case of trouble, Al Kamil was an expert in warfare educated by his
famous uncle, Saladin, Al Kamil called his religious advisors to meet
Francisco who knew a peaceful man who also believed in one God."

After hearing the brief account that Francisco gave him about the Bible
and faith in Christ, the advisors resolved that visitors had to be
beheaded in the act for trying to convert them to Christianity.

But the Sultan could appreciate the real faith where he saw it. He
admired also the character of Francisco, his unconditional surrender to
the faith and his disregard for the luxuries of the world. "This time I will
go against the law," he said. “I will not sentence to death to whom has
come to save my soul, risking his own life".

Finally Francisco and his disciple Iluminado stayed for a week in the
court of Malik al Kamil, as an example of interfaith dialogue, a truly
lesson for our times, Kamil finally dismissed him with a pass to
Jerusalem and as the historian Spoto sais, "although Francisco went to
the Sultan's camp with the intention to convert him or die in the intent,
his writings since then reveal that he left the Sultan’s camp with a
completely different attitude. We could even say that was the
conversion of Francisco himself which was strengthened”. Perhaps
Francisco realized in his return among the crusaders that not muslims
but Christians were the ones who really needed to be converted.

The butterfly effect theory sustain that sometimes the more subtile
changes have unexpected consequences, and we might say something
like that is what happened that day. His experience in Damietta allowed
him to develop his doctrine of absolute detachment, “sine glossa"
(without commentary).

The message was clear, says de the chilean philosopher Humberto

Gianini, “leaving everything, and sine glossa, as true apostols of God”.
This included not only material goods, but the detachment of the images
and memories that link us to the world, in order to still save things;
“detachment of contentious knowledge that keeps us in the vain dispute
and the desire to succeed; detachment of arguments, principles,
reasons that hold us in a speech without meaning. Francisco had
discovered that the poverty of spirit that is promoted by the gospels
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consists in being a jugglar in order to make happy the heart of the men”
The effects of Francisco in christian western philosophical tradition, was
that for the first time a rejection to the Thomistic dialectic that prevailed
until then. A second consequence was the revaluation of the
contemplative life as a link with other human beings. And finally, thanks
to Francisco, the current scholastic motto since Augustine "Fides
quaerus intellectum” (Faith seeking understanding) which had helped to
build the cathedrals of Christian scholasticism even at the expense of
reason, would lead place to the investigation of nature, turning the
believer into someone who can talk to the animals, in other words, a
faith that seeks in external phenomena signs of an universal love know
by intuition, anticipating the scientific curiosity of the Renaissance.

A fourth consequence to Christianity of the figure of Saint Francisco

might be that the Gnosis (God's existential knowledge), again gradually
acquire citizenship card in occidental culture under the name of
mysticism, almost a millennium after the first patriarchs diverge of this
way declaring the Christian Gnostics as heretics. With San Francisco it
was opened again a path for mystics as Juan de la Cruz or Teresa de
Avila, as long as for spanish language in the frame of Catholic Church to
explore mistiscism.

We culd say that this spiritual knighthood shared between Sufis and
christian knights, came to these mystics transfigured by example in
"The Mansions" of Santa Teresa with her proposal of an interior castle
that we have to defend from the attacks of the tempter. This analogy
can also apply to symbols like the mystical marriage of the soul with
God in San Juan de la Cruz.

We read in "The Mansions" of Santa Teresa:

"While praying to our lord now speak for me, because I could not seem
anything to say or how to begin serving this obedience, he offered me
what I shall say to start with some foundation, that is to consider our
soul, like a castle made of clear diamond or crystal, where there are
many mansions. That if we consider, sisters, is nothing but the soul of
the righteous ..."

The reference of St. Teresa of Avila could not be more direct to the
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Gospel of St. John 14.2:

“In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have
told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you”.

San Juan for example expresses this same approach to Divinity in his
Songs of the Soul in intimate communication, a union of love with God.

Oh flame of love alive,

Tenderly hires

Of my soul in the deepest center!

As you are no longer elusive,

Just as, if you want;

Breaks the clothe of this sweet encounter!

Maybe we'll find in the words above reminiscent of the famous Sufi
master Adawiyyah Rabee'ah who have transmitted the sublime and lofty
mystical poems, which was an important benchmark for Christian
devotional poetry by his prodigious spiritual states:

I love you in two ways: selfishly,

and also in a manner worthy of you.

This selfish love dominates my thoughts,

dedicating it to you completely.

The purest love is when you lift

the veil from my eyes of worship.

For neither I deserve praise,

Are to you the praises of these two loves.

The Mansions of Santa Teresa is equivalent to an interior castle, which is

also internal fighting, and where the enemy is the own weaknesses and
passions, and all kinds of selfishness, vanity and pride. The book
describes the beauty and dignity of our souls and explains that the door
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of this castle is prayer. That is why when Santa Teresa launches this
true mystic war cry, actually she is referring to the peace of the Lord:
All those you to fight

Beneath this flag of truce

No more sleep, no more sleep

Because on earth there is no peace

Not without reluctance and many ecclesiastical supervision, is that

mystics as Teresa and John could achieve their commitments. They,
along with Francisco of Asis, Bernard of Clairvaux, his Cistercians and
Templars, also of St. Benedict and the Benedictine monks is that
scholars in al Europe could recover that personal experience of Divinity.

In this regard we would add that perhaps the culmination of this process
could be established with the publication of The Ingenious Hidalgo Don
Quixote de la Mancha, a book that in 1605 marks the final consolidation
of the Spanish language, in a similar way as sometime is considered to
be the Goethe's Faust for the German or the Dante's Divine Comedy for
the Italian.

And if we look more closely at the Quixote of Cervantes, we see that its
author shows no little heritage of Arab culture to the point that he
creates a supposed chronicler of the colorful adventures of this Christian
knight who is a Muslim scholar named Cide Hamete Benenguelli. The
humorous image of the Knight of the sad figure and his chubby squire,
is enigmatic until our days even for the mystics, for the depth of his
glossa about the human condition.

In this respect let me draw the attention to one of the many episodes in
which Cervantes and Don Quixote seems to pay tribute to Islam. In the
second part of the novel, Don Quixote suddenly goes to the Cave of
Montesinos , where he is informed of a mission that awaits him because
of his great courage and skill, expected for the far future and consisting
in disenchant the knights Durandarte and Montesinos, accompanied of
Doña Belerma, Doña Ruidera and seven daughters and two nieces. All of
them were already for 500 years encharmed, with disenchantment
announced for the end of the time. Montesinos tells him this:
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“This is my friend Durandarte, flower and mirror of true lovers and

valiant knights of his time. He is held enchanted here, as myself and
many others by that French necromancer called Merlin, whom, they say,
was the devil's son; but my belief is that he was not the devil's son, but
he knew, as they say, a point more than the devil. How or why he
enchanted us, no one knows, but time will tell, and I suspect that that
time is not far off”.

This mysterious mission of Don Quixote to disenchant captives knights

of the times and the wizards, it sounds vaguely familiar to the episode
of The sleepers of the Qur'an (Sura The Cave 18.8), in which seven
mystic knights are also inchanted, waiting to wake up sometime to join
the spiritual Futuwah, or spiritual chivalry.

According to the Spanish Hermetist Alexander Seleukis, there is an

islamic tradition that says "when Moses asks what is Futuwah?, he is
replied: ‘You give to God the soul pure and immaculate, as those man
have received it’. Seth, the son of Adam, is the first knight dedicated to
the service of divinity, while his brothers are dedicated to mastering the
world. The angel Gabriel comes to Earth in a green wool tunic with wich
Seth is dressed, and returns to heaven with the news that there is a
man entirely devoted God. These are the men of the Futuwah, spiritual
knights that will be neither secular nor monks, in a new category of men
that goes beyond the time of the cloisters, which will be called ‘The
Friends of God´”.

This is also the ideal that Christian writers like Chretien de Troyes and
Wolfram von Eschenbach propose in their stories of the quest for the
Holy Grail. Somehow, spiritual chivalry of Islam and Christianity meet at
this point. Seleukis adds that "according to Islamic tradition, we find
Abraham as the continuing of Futuwah, becoming in the founder and
father of all the mystic knights of faith. The Futuwah then covers all the
heroes of the Bible along with Christian knights and the Seven Sleepers
which are mentioned in the Qoran. The Sufi ideal of chivalry is a
community of knights that continue with all the Abrahamic tradition”.

Many Sufi authors have identified the Imam expected in Islam, with the
Holy Ghost of John's Gospel, so that Sufi and Christian chivalry match
over religions. The spiritual Knights, "friends of God, eternally young,
they are generation after generation, the lineage of Gnosticism never
interrupted but ignored by the mass of men. This lineage is the tradition
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itself. In order to occupy a place in it is necessary go through a second

birth. ‘You can not enter the kingdom if you are not born for a second
time’, says the Gospel of John".

SUFISM AND ILLUSTRATION

Beside the mystical poetry of authors who - like Santa Teresa and San
Juan - are now Doctors of the Church, the Sufism legacy in Western
culture seems to be submerged since the IX to the XVII centuries, in
some secret societies of ritual vocation through initiatives such as the
Masons or the Rosacrucians, which would subsequently have significant
involvement in history and culture of Europe.

According to the Iranian Ayatullah Morteza Mutahari in his book "The

Science of Gnosis", one of those figures who made the link with western
societies like the Rosacrucians, was Abd al Qadir al Jilani, founder of the
Sufi order Qadiriyyah or Quadiri.

"This is one of the most controversial figures in the Islamic world. Many
prayers and sublime saying from him exist. He was a Sayyid descendant
of Imam Al Hasan. His order was organized by his followers, who used a
very similar terminology to what later would use the Rosacrucians in
Europe. Abd al Qadir specialized in the induction of spiritual states,
called the Science of States. Their acts have been described by his
followers in so exaggerated terms that his personality, by all accounts,
has little resemblance to their own definitions of the nature of a Sufi
master.

Exaggeration of mystical states in his followers, apparently caused the

degradation of these teachings, transforming those experiences into an
end and not the medium that really is, which should also be adequately
controlled by a master. But in his story, "States and jackals" Abd al
Qadir himself specifically warns against this:

"The Jackal thought has been given a banquet, when in fact it has eaten
remnants left by the lion. I transmit the science of producing "states."
But this can hurt if it is used in isolation. Anyone who uses it well can
still be in control of his power. But these ‘states’ will take men to
worship until a point when he will be incapable of returning to the Sufi
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Way.
The lessons from this and from other Islamic masters like Ibn Arabi are
in the origins of the Rosacrucians, who are defined as an occult
brotherhood of spiritual seekers that emerged in Germany during the
seventeenth century, but whom however there are first news in Europe
on the XIV century. The first public manifestation of the Rosacrucian
Order is a publication in Paris in August 1623, on some walls of the city.
It said:

"We, members of the principal College of the Brothers the Rosacrucian,

take visible and invisible residence in this city by the grace of the
Almighty, to which becomes the heart of the Righteous ..."

In the introduction to "The Alchemical Wedding of Christian

Rosenkreutz" by Jean Valentin Andreae (1616) we learn that the ‘Fama
Fraternitatis, the first publication of the Rosacrucian secret, speaks
about a secret fraternity founded by Christian Rosenkreutz throughout
his travels through the Muslim East, where he received the revelation of
the secrets of the "universal harmonic science”.

Based on these teachings, Christian Rosenkreutz planned to reform the

world in philosophical, religious, artistic, scientific and even political
terms, for whose implementation was surrounded by some disciples.
Christian Rosenkreutz would then come into contact with "The Brothers
of Purity" philosophical society formed in Basora in the first half of the X
Century.

The doctrines of this society were not quite in accordance with Islamic
orthodoxy, but relied heavily on the ancient Greek philosophers and the
Neopythagorics. Although the "Brothers of Purity" they difer on some of
the Sufi on some points, they agreed on many others. For example the
'mystical theology deriving from the Qoran'. The dogma is supplanted
here by faith in the Divine Reality.

But the real Rosacrucians always remained anonymous. If any of them

played an important role in history, he was careful of not presenting like
this. As the Sufis in Islamic esoterism claim, authentic Rosacrucians
never use in public their title. As René Guenon writes "If someone has
declared himself a Rosacrucian or a Sufi, we can say that he really was
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not, but it seems undeniable that there was, on the origins of the
Rosacrucians, a collaboration between the two esoteric movement”.
Ayatullah Morteza says that progress on Sufism had always been
gradual until those days. And adds: "But in the XIII centuries, with the
appearance of Ibn Arabi, 'irfan’, the theoric sufism, gave a sudden leap
and reached its peak of perfection."About this new phase, and the role
of Ibn Arabi, Morteza writes:

"Ibn arabi was an amazing person, and this has led to the existence of
widely divergent views about him. Some saw him as 'the Wali to Kamil'
(the Holy Perfect) and the 'Qutb al Aqtab' (the Pole of Poles). Others
discredit him like if he was an heretic, and called him 'Mumit al Din' (the
murderer of faith) or ‘Mahi al Din’ (the draft of the faith). Sadr al
Muta'allihin (Mulla Sadra), the great Islamic philosopher and genius, he
had great respect for Ibn Arabi, saying he was far above Ibn Sina
(Avicenna) and even the philosopher Al Farabi, who was known as
"Second Master", four centuries before, referring to Aristotle like being
the first master.

Ibn Arabi wrote over two hundred books and although there are many
comments about them, it is a common tell that "there must have not
being more than two or three people in every age that had really
understood him"

For the present time is really unusual to hear that a Sufi master of such
a high rank like Ibn Arabi had promote the integration of the abrahamic
tradition in those four "spiritual pillars" described above. And as their
teachings are also on the basis of secret societies like the Rosacrucians,
in the practice that means that there was a parallel development of
Christian philosophy, theorical Sufism and even jewish kabalism in a
sort of syncretism between ancient hermetic teachings. In the “Fama
Fraternitatis of Rosacrucians for example it is said the Adept is supposed
“look forward to the East, where the souls are collected”.

Of course it is referred to a mystical east, where de adept must find his

"Liber Mundi", a spiritual book that, according to Corbin is “the total
man supported on his own substance, beyond the limits of this life."

Shortly after this founding junction in XVII century, members of the

Rosacrucian were introducing in the european masonic orders to the
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point that in 1787 the Masons recognize as part of the Scottish Rite in
its grade 18, the so called "Sovereign Prince Rose-Croix Mason, Knight
of the Eagle and Pelican”.

If we have to believe those who think that it was under the influence of
these secret societies which came to be realized a social phenomena like
the French Revolution and the American independence, and if we add
the never denied rumor that many of the Masonic societies were actually
spiritual inheritors of the Templars, we may understand this part of the
history in another context. We will be able to understand for example
that story about an anonymous man who shouted out loud in 1793
when King Louis XVI was beheaded at the Bastille, "Jacques de Molay
you are avenged!", refering to the execution of the last Grand Master of
the Templars by King Philip IV of France four centuries before in 1314.

A current publication about the Rosacrucians ranks among their masters

of all time Islamic philosophers like al-Razi, Al Farabi and Ibn Sina,
which appear to share fellowship with people like Roger Bacon,
Raymond Lull or Paracelsus, a mix of alchemy, mysticism and
philosophy that is really surprising. Along with them, Sufi masters like
Ibn Arabi and Abd al Qadir are so to speak as the missing links between
West and East from the perspective of religious mysticism.

DE IBEROAMERICA

In Chile as in whole Latin America, after independence from Spain in

1810 popular Poetry and music had the privileged heritage of that rich
poetic material inherited from the peninsula and turned out into oral
tradition. The popular artists administrated this legacy coming from the
motherland, incorporating the necessary changes to integrate
indigenous roots and new urban and rural experiences of the new
continent, with elements that were virtually forgotten.

According to what the scholar Inés Dolz says, in Chile, "the so-called
Chant to the Divine will have its natural expression in the so-called
Tenth glossed, sung to the tune of a guitar, bass guitar or a rebec. As
comment, we can say that these Divine Songs are performed by the
'puetas' (popular poets) in the usual environment of a daily and family
atmosphere, which develops the dialogue between human and celestial
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beings. Both live in the same sphere of existence, sharing the same
happy and pain and expressing with the same words. About Jesus, for
example, we can say:

‘De pequeño ya sufrió / el Mesías prometido / padeció algunos resfríos/

y después se mejoró / y al Diablo el Señor le dice / te vai a acordar de
mí / yo no voy a permitir / esta falta de respeto / y a lo más alto del
cielo / suba el que quiera subir’”.

'As a child he had suffered / that promised Messiah / he had had some
little colds / but afterwards he was recovered / To the Devil, the Lord
says / you´re gonna remember me / I'm not going to allow / this lack of
respect / cause to the top of the Sky / whoever wants to raise gets ".

Through religion, all religious calendar with songs and folkloric customs
passed from Spain to the colonies. However, during the eighteenth
century the extra religious brotherhoods grew so much and their extra-
demonstrations became in conflict with the official church, so that in
1763 it was establish through a formal synod that "only devotional
music will be permitted only in temples so it doesn’t cause distraction”.

So the oral tradition inherited from Spain went out of the churches and
would soon give birth to what is the Call Human Chant, a sort of a
philosophical poetry in order to put away the disturbance of life without
religious supervision. For example in 1893, Rosa Araneda had this real
declaration of principles about human wisdom in verses that somehow
resonate like the Sufi perspective about Knowledge. The poem is
entitled "Verses from the ignorance of the singers":

Aquel que pisa encumbrado / Viviendo sobre la Ciencia, / Conoce su

incompetencia /Cuando se ve derribado. / El que profana en el canto, /
Sin seguir un fundamento, / Recorre en su pensamiento / La esfera con
ataranto, / Causando temor i espanto /Al hablar en alto grado, / I ya al
mirarse enredado, / Por más que lea en la historia, / Ve turbada su
memoria, / Aquel que pisa encumbrado. / Si poetiza sin recelo / I quiere
ser más que Homero, / Hay que fijarse primero / Para no venir al
suelo. / Si se remonta de un vuelo / Por encontrar la elocuencia, / En la
más alta eminencia, / Con el diccionario en mano, / Se contará soberano
/ Viviendo sobre la Ciencia. / Si encuentra algún consonante / Que sea
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poco dudoso, / Ahí queda el estudioso / Sin pasar más adelante; / Como
peregrino errante / Vagará con tal demencia, / Pidiendo por Dios
audiencia / Para su mayor pesar, / I no pudiendo avanzar / Conoce su
incompetencia./ En más de treinta cantores / He observado este
caso, /Que hasta llegar al Parnaso / Cometen miles de errores;/ Uno de
los más mejores / Bastante moralizado / Científico y educado / I de
harta capacidad, / Llora su fatalidad / Cuando se ve derribado. / Al fin
para ser poeta / Se quiere estudio bastante; / Pero hoy cualquier
ignorante / Quiere llegar a la meta; / En hablar no se sujeta / Porque
tiene lengua y boca; / Si se dan contra una roca / Queda el sentido
cambiado, / I al ponerles un fundado / No saben lo que les toca.

One who steps in the highs / Living over the Science, / knows of his
incompetence / When he is forced to get down. / Anyone who discredit
in songs, / Without following some rule / Gives the path of his
thoughts / the earth turns up down with his moves.

The crossing between this “Canto a lo Pueta” and the rogue Spanish
poetry is also an important feature of this period of the Chilean and
American poetry. For example in the tenths “El Diablo”, an anonymous
author called JM jokes this way about the devil:

El diablo murió atorado / Con un hueso en el hocico: / Quedaron los

diablos chicos / Hechos unos condenados / Decía un diablo cojuelo / Que
cuidaba la despensa: / “por goloso y sin vergüenza / Se murió mi taita
agüelo.” / Los demás diablos chicuelos / Decían: “Mi viejo es rico.” / Se
hallaron en el bolsico / La cédula de un masón. / Ya se murió este
bribón / Con un hueso en el hocico.

The devil just died stucked / With a bone beneath his mouth: / There
were the little devils / Convicted without a rest / then a lame devil Said
/ taking care of the pantry: / "By greedy and shameless happens / My
grandfather dady died. " / Other youngsters told at him / They said:
"My father’s rich." / ‘cause we found here in his pocket / a huge
mason’s wealth / He is already dead this rascal / With a bone beneath
his mouth.”

Somehow we might affirm that the tradition of the human and the divine
chants belongs to what is called “popular lyra” reaches its masterfully
expersion in the immortal figure of Violeta Parra, in her real anthem to
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the human condition that is “Gracias a la Vida” (Thanks to Life). Violeta

has certainly many mystical take-offs that are conjugate essentially in
the poetry of this song:

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. / Me dio dos luceros que,

cuando los abro, / perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco, / y en el alto
cielo su fondo estrellado / y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo. /
Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. / Me ha dado el oído que, en
todo su ancho, / graba noche y día grillos y canarios; / martillos,
turbinas, ladridos, chubascos, / y la voz tan tierna de mi bien amado. /
Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. / Me ha dado el sonido y el
abecedario, / con él las palabras que pienso y declaro: / madre, amigo,
hermano, y luz alumbrando / la ruta de al alma de quien estoy
amando. / Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. / Me ha dado la
marcha de mis pies cansados; / con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos, /
playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos, / y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu
patio. / Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. / Me dio el corazón que
agita su marco / cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano; / cuando
miro el bueno tan lejos del malo, / cuando miro el fondo de tus ojos
claros. / Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. / Me ha dado la risa y
me ha dado el llanto. / Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto, / los dos
materiales que forman mi canto, / y el canto de ustedes que es el
mismo canto / y el canto de todos, que es mi propio canto./ Gracias a la
vida que me ha dado tanto

Thanks to life that has given me so much. / She gave me two stars
that, that when are open, / perfectly I can distinguish the black from
white, / and in the high heaven its starry background / Thanks to life
that has given me so much. / It has given me ear that, in all its breadth,
/ night and day recorded crickets and canaries; / hammers, turbines,
barking, rain, / and so tender voice of my beloved. / Thanks to life that
has given me so much. / It has given me sound and the alphabet, /
with him the words I think and declare: / mother, friend, brother, and
light illuminating / the path of that soul that I'm loving. / Thanks to life
that has given me so much. / It has given the course of my tired feet; /
with them I walked cities and puddles, / beaches and deserts,
mountains and plains / and the house of yours, your street and your
yard. / Thanks to life that has given me so much. / It gave me the
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heart that shakes its frame / when I see the fruit of the human brain; /
when I look the good so far from the mean, / when I look at the bottom
of your eyes. / Thanks to life that has given me so much. / It has given
me laughter and also the tears. / So I distinguish this from brokenness,
/ the two materials that are my song, / and the sing of you that’s is the
same of me / and the song of every one, that’s my own singing. /
Thanks to life which has given me so much /

It was in this way that the Chilean poetry inherits directly from the
Spanish poetic tradition that mystical dimension which in turn had
enjoyed of the spiritual contact between Christians and Sufis in the
south of Spain and northern Africa. During the twentieth century this
tradition in Chile becomes a more personal voice, whose exponents are
now relevant mystic writers as Eduardo Anguita, for example who left
us his work "the only reason for the NSJC passion." (“Unica razón de la
pasión de N.S.JC.”)

Nuestro Señor Jesucristo padeció únicamente por Jenaro Medina /

Nuestro Señor Jesucristo subió al Calvario por la señora Hortensia /
Nuestro Señor Jesucristo murió exclusivamente por el chipo Cruz /
Nuestro Señor Jesucristo –Eli Eli lama sabajtani- por Alemparte por /
Gaete por los hijos de Weir Scott / Por mí y por todos los chilenos todos
los uruguayos, los suramericanos los /Norteamericanos los ingleses los
franceses los alemanes los españoles los / Italianos los rusos los ciegos
los gordos los sabios los egipcios los atletas / Los caldeos los militares
los iranios los liberales los lisboetas los utopistas / Los explotados los
condenados de la tierra los explotadores los esclavos / Sin pan los
mormones los vendedores los productores los consumidores/ Los suizos
los músicos los gobernantes los sordos, ay / Sus llagas se hicieron por
todos ellos por todos nosotros / Y todos cabemos en ellas y todos somos
redimidos / Pero Jenaro Medina solo / O yo solo / O la simple señora
Hortensia / Es la causa de toda la Pasión y Muerte de Nuestro Señor
Jesucristo.

Our Lord Jesus Christ went to Calvary by Hortensia / Our Lord Jesus
Christ died only for the chip Cruz / Our Lord Jesus Christ "Eli Eli lama
sabajtani-by Alemparte by/ Gaete by the children of Scott Weir / For me
and for all Chileans all Uruguayans, the South Americans / French
American British the Germans the Spanish / Italians Russians the blind
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Egyptian scholars fat athletes / The Chaldeans the Iranian military's

liberal utopians Lisbonese / The exploited the wretched of the earth
slaves operators / Without bread vendors Mormons consumer
producers / The Swiss musicians rulers deaf, ay / His wounds were
made by all of them for all of us / And all fit in them and we are all
redeemed / But Genaro Medina only / Or I just / Or simply Hortensia /
she is the cause of all the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Another who also cultivated in Chile mystical streak was the founder of
Mandragora Group, Braulio Arenas, attached to the surrealism
movement in the 50s of the last century. His poem "Saint John of the
Cross" goes like this:

Pájaro sin color determinado/ De tanto unirte al cielo a cada hora / Baja
hasta el mundo tu fascinadora / Canción, y canta en todo fascinado /
Opera con la gracia y el pecado, / Con la sombra del mundo en esta
hora, / Opera con el alma encantadora / Y con el cuerpo de mortal
anclado / Es la hora ésta pues, que ya levante / El alma la canción como
su vuelo, / Rumbo al oriente de su paraíso. / Ayúdala por fin, que no la
espante / Dejar esta miseria de su suelo, / ¡oh San Juan de la Cruz uno
y diviso!

Bird colorless / From time to join the sky every hour / Lower until your
fascinating world / Song, and sings in all fascinated / Opera with the
grace and sin, / With the shadow of the world at this hour, / Opera with
the lovely soul / And with the mortal body anchored / It's time for this,
which raise / The soul of the song as their flight, / Heading east of
paradise. / Help her by order and is not afraid / Stop the misery of its
soil, / O San Juan de la Cruz one and divisible!

The Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas has said about his poetic: "In my role
very close to the religiosity of Sufi thought. Constantly returns to these
themes of sacredness. For example, I speak in my poetry of
“Alumbrado” (Enlighted). The enlighting is a way of ilumination. It is the
kind you see further than ordinary mortals. The lighting Arab ancestry
are mystical, Sufi. In this regard I believe that San Juan de la Cruz is
quite linked to the Sufis, that's why I love you so much to San Juan.

Indeed, in his book, "illumination" (Alumbrado) Rojas admits precisely

that:
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Al mundo lo nombramos en un ejercicio de diamante, / Uva a uva de su

racimo, lo besamos / Soplando el número del origen / No hay azar, /
Sino navegación y número, carácter / Y número, red en el abismo de las
cosas / Y número.

We name the world what an exercise of diamond / Grape to grape of his

bunch, we kiss it / Blowing the number of origin / No chance / But
sailing and number, character / And number, network into the abyss of
things / And number.

A century before him in Chile, Eduardo de la Barra poet (1839-1900)

had confessed in his poem "The Jordan" his aversion to by two famous
inquisitors who refused to Christ with their trials:

¡Oh Jesús!, oh, Rabí!, de tu divina / Palabra a orillas del Jordán

sembrada, / Jamás pudo salir la cruel doctrina / Que conduce a Loyola y
Torquemada! / Tu palabra fecunda / De dulce claridad el alma inunda, /
La infunde noble anhelo, / Sus alas abre y la remonta al cielo /

Oh Jesus, oh, Rabbi!, Your divine / Word spoken at the Jordan

seeded /He could never leave the cruel doctrine / That leads to Loyola
and Torquemada! / Your word fruitful / Light sweet soul flooded, / The
infused noble desire, / Their wings open and back to heaven

Another who paid tribute to the Spanish mystical poetry is Pedro Antonio
Gonzalez (1863-1903) in the poem "A Santa Teresa de Jesús"

¡Oh casta Belleza! / Oh mística Virgen, ¡Oh Santa Teresa! / Hossanna al

celeste, divino perfume / Que esparce la hoguera que tu alma consume

Oh caste Beauty! /Oh mystical Virgin, Oh Santa Teresa! / Hossanna the

celestial, divine perfume / That spreads the fire that consumes your
soul.

While Pedro Prado (1886-1952) contrived impressed about the mystery

of the Resurrection:

“Quién me llama?” Y Lázaro saliendo / De la tumba, / Miró a Jesús y lo

comprendió todo. / “¿eres tú ¡oh sol! El que alumbras? / ¿Eres tú, o todo
es un sueño? María, / Mi hermana! Marta, hermana mía…”

"Who calls me?" And Lazarus went out / From the grave, / He looked at
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Jesus and understood everything. / "Art thou O sun! The shining? / Is

that you, or everything is a dream? Mary, / My sister! Martha, my
sister ... "

Poverty of spirit that has been blessed by Jesus in the New Testament
and that San Francisco developed impressed to the Chilean poet and
Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, who in her poem "La Caridad" she sings
to the saint:

“Y por eso, Francisco, te gastaste como las lunas en su cuarto

menguante (…) / Tú descubriste una verdad escondida: que no tenemos
derecho a dar, sino / A nosotros mismos. Las demás cosas son de la
tierra.”

"And so, Francisco, you spent as the moons in its last quarter (...) / You
discovered a hidden truth: we have no right to give, but / Ourselves.
Other things are of the earth. "

Gabriela Mistral dedicated several poems to the figure of Saint Francis

whose conversion was strengthened by his contact with Islam when was
in Damietta with Sultan Malik al Kamil. This poem is called "Naming
things":

Tú, Francisco, tenías don de selección y don de elogio. Tú amaste/

aquellas cosas que son las mejores; caminando por la tierra todo lo/
conociste, pero elegías las criaturas más bellas. Y además del don del/
largo amor, que es el más rico de cuantos podemos recibir, te fue dada
la / gracia de saber nombrarlas donosamente. / Amaste el agua como
Teresa, tu muy sutil hermana, el sol y el fuego, y el / pardo surco de la
tierra. Tres bellezas diferentes que sólo son hermanas / por ser cada
una perfecta.

You, Francisco, you had the gift of choice and a gift of praise. You loved/
things that are best; walking on the earth all / met, but I chose the
most beautiful creatures. And the gift of / long love, which is the richest
of all those we receive, we were given the / grace to be able to name
them gracefully. / Loved the water as Teresa, your sister subtle, sun
and fire, and the / groove brown earth. Three different beauties are
sisters only / because each one perfect.
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Another grater of the list of Chilean writers was Pablo de Rokha who has
–for many critics- the same size of a Neruda but without his Nobel Prize
and his shine, son of the twentieth century, and of the popular
revolutions, he was always worried by the social destiny of its people
still had also a time for the inner journey. In his "Jesus Christ" as he
wrote with the tough of a stone:

“Crecía en espíritu Jesús y fortalecíase, sumando carne de desastres,

/Para la suma heroica”

"Jesus grew in spirit and strengthened, adding meat of disaster / For the
addition to be heroic"

Martyr like Jesus, but of the struggles against poltical repression of the
twentieth century was in Chile the poet Jose Domingo Gomez Rojas
(1896-1920), died at age 24 just days after an obscure right-wing
attack to the Students Federation of the University Chile. He wrote in his
premonitory poem, Miserere:

La juventud, amor, lo que se quiere, / Ha de irse con nosotros.

¡Miserere! / La belleza del mundo y lo que fuere / Morirá en el futuro.
¡Miserere! / La tierra misma lentamente muere / Con los astros lejanos.
¡Miserere! / Y hasta quizás la muerte que nos hiere / También tendrá su
muerte. ¡Miserere!

Youth, love, whatever some wants, / It must go with us. Miserere! / The
beauty of the world and whatever / Will die in the future. Miserere! /
The land itself slowly dies / With the distant stars. Miserere! / And
maybe even death who hurts us / She will also be death. Miserere!

Probably Pablo Neruda would not be happy for being called a mystic,
with such an unequal world going round, the signs of his time led him to
a special commitment to complete, however, his hights and valleys,
which are only comparable with his telluric depths, the seas and the
mountains were his with the world's heart, this heart burning and
boiling, Neruda achieves an ecstatic seed trimmed in such works as
"Residence on Earth" in whose poem "Poetic Art" says about himself:

“Entre sombra y espacio, entre guarniciones y doncellas, / dotado de

corazón singular y sueños funestos, / precipitadamente pálido, marchito
en la frente / y con luto de viudo furioso por cada día de vida, / ay, para
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cada agua invisible que bebo soñolientamente / y de todo sonido que

acojo temblando, / tengo la misma sed ausente y la misma fiebre fría”
"Between shadow and space, between garrisons and maidens, /
endowed with an unique heart and these disturbing dreams / abruptly
pale, withered in the face / mourning widower and furious for every day
of life, / ay, for each invisible water that I drink sleepily / and of all
sound which I receive trembling, / I have the same annoying thirst and
the same cold fever "

Neruda does not want to be a believer, the Faith to him is in the

proletarian men and their causes, not in things that come from the
mystery and so declares in this poem, where declares however, its
mission of a sensitive almost prophet the words:

“pero, la verdad, de pronto, el viento que azota mi pecho, / las noches

de substancia infinita caídas en mi dormitorio, / el ruido de un día que
arde con sacrificio / me piden lo profético que hay en mí, con melancolía
/ y un golpe de objetos que llaman sin ser respondidos / hay, y un
movimiento sin tregua, y un nombre confuso.”

"But the truth, suddenly, the wind that whips my chest, / nights of
infinite substance fall in my bedroom / the noise of a day tha burns in
sacrifice / I’m asked for the prophetic in me, sadly / and a stroke of
objects that call but can not be answered / there is a relentless
movement, and a confusing name. "

Neruda connects better with the planet, its mountains and rivers, whom
he understood in each of its secrets, and especially our American
continent, which describes in the poem "Love America":

Tierra mía sin nombre, sin América, / Estambre equinoccial, lanza de

púrpura, / Tu aroma me trepó por las raíces / Hasta la copa que bebía,
hasta la más delgada / Palabra aún no nacida de mi boca

Land of mine without a name, without America, / equinoccial Stamen

purple spear, / Your scent climbed up through my roots / Until the cup
that I was drinking, the thinnest / Unborn word from this my mouth

His American love is perhaps the connection with the intangibles for the
biggest poet who called himself atheist. But it can not be completely
stranger to God who understands at this point to Mother Nature, as this
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passage from "The stones from heaven" that describes the sacred stone
that exists only in Chile and Pakistan, called lapislázuli:
“Ronca es la americana cordillera, / nevada, hirsuta y dura, /planetaria:/
allí yace el azul de los azules, / el azul soledad, azul secreto, / el nido
del azul, el lapislázuli, / el azul esqueleto de mi patria. / Sagrado es este
azul como de catedrales, / Oh catedral de azules enterrados, /
sacudimiento de cristal azul, / ojo del mar cubierto por la nieve / otra
vez a la luz vuelves del agua, / al día, a la piel clara / del espacio, / al
cielo azul vuelve el terrestre azul.

"Snoring is the Mountain of America, / Snow, hairy, hard, /

planetarian / there lies the bluest of the blue, / blue of loneliness, blue
of secret / the nest of the blue, lapislazuli, / blue skeleton of my
country. / Sacred is this blue like the cathedrals / Oh cathedral of
buried blue / blue glass jar, / eye of the sea covered by snow / again
back to the light water a day to clear skin / space, / the blue sky turns
to blue ground.

Cathedrals stone is something that in South America inherited from

Catholic Spain. But the blue is older, because in the cosmology of the
native peoples of Chile and the Mapuche, this used to be color of
thehouse of the ancestors, or as they call the "land above", where they
will dwell those who, having gone through this earth below, have
honored his people and his race to get the prize of eternal life, a song of
the Blue believers, that is praying listened at least by Mapuche Elikura
Chihuailaf:

“Cabalgo en círculo, llevado por el aliento, / De los animales / que te

ofrecí en sacrificio / Galopo galopo, soñando voy / por los caminos del
cielo/ De todos lados vienen a saludarme / las estrellas /Oo!,
Anciana, Anciano / Doncella y joven de la Tierra / de Arriba / en
vuestro Azul se regocija mi sangre

"I ride in a circle, led by the breath, / of the animals / I offered in

sacrifice / / Gallop gallop, dreaming I go / by the ways of heaven /
From all sides they come to hail / the stars / Oo!, Elder, Elder / Maid
and Young Earth / of above / In your blue enjoys my blood”

But even as a confessed atheist, Neruda has the genius to put in words
that detachment that Francisco and the sufis propose, when he writes
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his poem “Si dios está en mi verso” ( If god is in my chant).

Perro mío. / Si Dios está en mi verso, / Dios soy yo. /si Dios esta en tus
ojos doloridos / tu eres Dios. / ¡Y en este mundo inmenso nadie existe /
que se arrodille ante nosotros dos.

Dog of mine. / If God is in my chant, I am God. / If God is in your

painful eyes / You are God. / And in this whole big world there is nobody
/ who kneel down in front of both

Sufism can be for me now like a vineyard, that grew and spread since
the medieval Spain to our America, transfigured into poetry, tradition
and even politics and institutions. Following the dog path of Neruda, I
will conclude by quoting de sufi master Al Shibli, who left us the
following story:

I asked a wise man, who guided you in the way?

The wise man answered. It was a dog. One day I found him almost died
of thirst near the banks of a river. Whenever he saw his reflection in the
water, became frightened and walked away thinking it was another dog.
Finally, such was his need, overcoming his fear plunged into the water,
and then the other dog was gone.

The dog had discovered that the obstacle was himself and that the
barrier that separated him from his path was gone.

In the same way my own obstacle disappeared when I realized that my

ego was that obstacle. It was the behavior of a dog which first showed
me my path.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, B.

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Donald Spoto, Francisco de Asis, el santo que quiso ser hombre, Vergara
Editores, 2004
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U, Pablo de Rokha, Colección entre Mares, Lom ediciones 2001

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Gonzalo Rojas, Oscuro y otros cuentos, Pehuén 1999

Elicura Chihuailaf, De sueños azules y contrasueños, Editorial

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