Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
The first father of mankind, St. Adam, was a poet—as demonstrated by the only pre-Fall words of his recorded by Moses in the sacred history of Genesis. After searching in vain for a suitable companion among the animals, St. Adam was taken up into a deep sleep or an ecstasy and God formed from his side St. Eve, the first woman, the mother of all the living in the order of nature, St. Adam’s perfect companion. And Adam exclaimed:
zōṯ hap·pa·‘am ‘e·ṣem mê·
‘ă·ṣā·may ū·ḇā·śār mib·bə·śā·rî;
lə·zōṯ yiq·qā·rê ’iš·šāh,
kî mê·’îš lu·qo·ḥāh- zōṯ.
The Douay Rheims translates this as:
“This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.”
But even the transliteration of the Hebrew reveals that the words of Adam are rich in rhymes and assonances which the English translation fails to preserve and which show him to be a great poet.
This revelation of St. Adam as poet holds a deep significance for all human beings, as it shows that God created us to be poets, to see into the natures of things, and to communicate in language that is beautiful and true. The gift of poetry should not be viewed as a rare or singular gift of an elite few, but as part of the patrimony of all mankind, a gift that everyone should be trained and encouraged to exercise.
Every Child Is a Poet
When I was in elementary (grammar) school in New York City and around ten years old, my class was blessed to have a teacher from New Zealand who taught us a class on poetry once a week during our spring semester. Mrs. Lewis had a beautiful New Zealand accent and her class focused on the Haiku form of poetry that had been developed by the Japanese but then transferred into English and into other languages. As defined by Wikipedia, the Haiku is:
a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a kireji, or “cutting word”, 17 on (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern
One of the most famous Haiku-style poems in English flowed from the pen of the American poet Ezra Pound. In his poem entitled “In a Station of the Metro,” he violates the rules of the traditional Haiku slightly by adding two syllables to the last line, but otherwise he followed them faithfully:
The apparition
of these faces in a crowd
Petals on a wet, black bough
During the course of that semester, Mrs. Lewis managed to inspire everyone in the class to write at least one poem as beautiful as Pound’s. I am not sure how she did it—except that it had something to do with the examples she read us of Maori poetry and the way that she encouraged us and expected us to write our own Haikus using the traditional Japanese form. Most of us had the notion that poetry had to rhyme, and the fixed form of the Haiku without the need to rhyme allowed us to use words freely.
The Poetry of Adam’s Words Reflects the Poem of his Interior Life
The Eternal Word made Flesh is the ultimate poem, the perfect expression of the goodness and beauty of God. But in the Holy Gospel He clearly teaches that our words and actions are to form the syllables of a poem, to the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. The “last Adam” tells His disciples, “By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” “You will give an account for every idle word” and “Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” Just as our words reflect our interior state, so St. Adam’s poetic speech reflected the exalted spiritual state he enjoyed until he began to entertain Satan’s insidious temptations. St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church, relates that:
When God created Adam, divine radiance surrounded the clay substance of which he was formed . . . When he awoke afterward he was a prophet of heavenly things, knowledgeable of all powers of the creature and of all arts . . . God gave over to him all creatures, that he might make them his own by his manly power because he knew of them and about them. For man represents all creatures, and the breath of life, which never ceases to live, is in him. God spoke to Adam in the language of angels, whom Adam understood and knew well. Through God-given wisdom and the spirit of prophecy he knew then about all languages that would later be invented by men, and he thoroughly knew the nature of all creatures. For the Lord appeared to him in inconceivable splendor, more beautiful than any creature.
In this exalted state of union with God, St. Adam’s whole life became a poem, in which his every thought, word and action unfolded under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost for the glory of God. With the cosmic catastrophe of the Fall, St. Adam lost this exalted state of holiness, but it did not cease to be the original, normal condition of mankind. Nevertheless, wounded humanity had to wait for four thousand years for the “Last Adam” and the “New Eve” who would live every moment of their earthly lives in that state of perfect communion with the Most Holy Trinity and who would show their children through Holy Baptism how to become “partakers of the Divine Nature,” as St. Adam had been before the Fall.
The Oldest Preserved Poem in English Praises God for Fiat Creation
The oldest preserved poem in the English language is the monastic brother Caedmon’s “Hymn of Creation,” which fittingly testifies to the firm faith of the whole Church in the sacred history of Genesis:
Now we should praise the heaven-kingdom’s guardian,
the Measurer’s might and His mind-conception,
work of the glorious Father, as He each wonder,
eternal Lord, instilled at the origin.
He first created for men’s sons
heaven as a roof, holy Creator;
then, middle-earth, mankind’s guardian,
eternal Lord, afterward made
the earth for men, Father Almighty.
With these beautiful words, an un-schooled soon-to-be lay brother expressed the same insight that St. John Chrysostom and other Church Fathers had expressed in their homilies on the Hexameron (the six days of Creation)—that the work of creation was entirely supernatural and did not involve any kind of natural process. For example, commenting on the creation of heaven and earth in the beginning, St. John Chrysostom had written:
Notice how the divine nature shines out of the very nature of creation, how He executes His creation in a way contrary to human procedures, first stretching out the heavens and then laying out the earth beneath, first the roof and then the foundation. No matter what human beings produce, this could never have happened – whereas when God decides, everything yields to His Will and becomes possible (St. John Chrysostom, Homily 2 on the Hexameron)
One of the greatest saints and scholars in the history of the Church, Venerable Bede, knew people who knew Caedmon personally, and shared his faith in the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis, including the geostatic-geocentric constitution of the world signified by the phrase “middle-earth.”
The True Doctrine of Creation and Great Poetry Go Hand in Hand
I am happy to attest to the fact that, even in our own time, the true doctrine of creation and great poetry go hand in hand. My friend and fellow-convert to the Catholic Faith, Philip Rosenbaum, has just published a wonderful epic poem entitled The Wedding Party: 144 Songs of Biblical Saints. It is, in the words of Professor Robert Sider:
a poem that courageously recreates, in our increasingly secular world, the literary tradition of Christian epic . . . The scene for the action of this epic is set in the banquet hall of Heaven, where the great marriage banquet, the “supper of the Lamb” (Rev 19:7-9) is prepared. The “Lamb” is the Groom; His bride is the Church adorned with works of righteousness. Many “guests” have already assembled; they are figures of the Old and New Testaments, men and women who long ago passed away and now members of the Church, the heavenly Bride. There are others coming to join the feast, people still living on earth, subject to temptations and struggles that they face no doubt with courage, but nevertheless with the limited vision of earthlings. In the manner of Samson at the wedding feast, the Groom puts forth a riddle to which the guests are to provide answers: “Why do I choose this woman as my bride?” In responding to the Groom’s riddle, each speaker will look into his earthly past to offer insights and advice intended to be helpful to those in the mortal state who are still making their way to the glorious halls of Heaven and the marriage banquet.
With Philip’s permission, I would like to share the Song of Adam with you, to encourage you to purchase his volume as a beautiful source of fruitful meditation for the Advent and Christmas seasons. As you will see, St. Adam comes alive in Philip’s Spenserian verse precisely because the poet shares the faith of Caedmon and Dante Alighieri in the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis.
THE SONG OF ADAM
Why do You choose this Woman? In a way
The answer is a simple one. For He
Who braved the inspiration of the clay
Made Eve of tissue taken out of me.
There was no other; no other could there be.
Your Bride consumes Your body as Her bread,
Your precious blood for wine: Thus only She
Takes substance from Her Husband and Her Head—
And would You want a woman for whom You had not bled?
But of the facets in the gem of Love,
The one that most astonishes my soul,
That sparkles most with gleamings from above,
The aspect of Your love I most extol
Shines in the strange and solitary role
That only You and I alone have played.
For me it was THE MOMENT; for You the whole
Long period of courtship with Your Maid,
That the contrast in the Adams might clearly be displayed.
To have a fallen bride, and to be yet
Oneself unfallen, takes one wiser than
Adam in Eden. Who could forget
THE MOMENT when she fell, when we began
The long relentless history of man
In his lamentable and fallen state?
(And as our gracious Maker had a plan
To save His children from their evil fate,
We learned the hardest part of wisdom is to wait.)
Who could describe THE MOMENT? . . . There was Eve,
Tempted, and, as I watched, the Serpent lied,
(She, in her innocence, so easy to deceive)—
And while of course it cannot be denied
That I knew better, yet I never tried
To contradict the lie or intervene—
(No man has wept more, none has ever cried
With better reason or with grief more keen,
Than the father of a race, both fallen and unclean.)
But THE MOMENT is my topic . . . My love,
My dear companion, both from and for me,
My lovely, undefiled, my darling dove,
Ruined, enslaved—while I was whole and free!
Ah, how much more than worlds apart were we!
My fallen sons have wondered what I thought:
There’s bondage in their curiosity;
It’s awe that’s needed when we are distraught,
The liberating awe to worship as we ought.
For it’s THE MOMENT that has taught me awe,
The awesome moment I did not endure;
THE MOMENT that revealed First Adam’s flaw
Reveals the Second Adam as mature.
When He was tempted, He was ever pure;
And though He loves His Bride much more than I
Ever loved Eve, He is ever sure,
In meeting Her desires, to deny
His own, till She assumes Her place with Him on high.
A man who loves a woman someday learns
The pain of separation—less in time
And space than in the closeness that he yearns
To share with her—for unity is prime
Among his heart’s desires. So in the climb
Toward some great peak that he has made his goal,
In order to attain what is sublime,
That he may fully satisfy his soul,
The mountaineer endures, no matter what the toll.
To see the peak, but not to make ascent—
No overhang is harder than delay.
But while the earthly climber may lament
The weather that may keep him from his way,
Or working on the bills he has to pay,
Or his dear loved ones’ overwrought concern,
The Second Adam has the will to weigh
The benefit of what His Spouse will learn
From all those earthly trials He gladly would adjourn.
It seems You want an educated Wife,
(Oh, how I wished mine never went to school!
She suffered from the lessons all her life . . .)
But though the other children may be cruel,
I gather You have wisely made a rule
That of no useful learning will you cheat
Your Spouse, till She attains the rarest jewel
Of wisdom. If She needs to, She’ll repeat
Her lessons till the Day Her learning is complete.
So while She’s adding virtue to Her faith,
And to Her virtue knowledge, while she learns
Godliness with contentment, and what saith
The Scripture—investments whose returns
Pay through Eternity—Her Lover burns
To have His lovely Lady at His side.
“If they burn, let them marry . . . .” So He yearns
To see the graduation of His Bride—
But with his Father’s grace, He takes it all in stride.
To want Her so much, and so long to wait,
(Don’t think He suffered only on the Cross!)
He in a perfect, She in a fallen state!
But, Oh, how quickly She would purge Her dross,
And learn to make a gain of every loss,
If only She knew how He longs for Her!
A rolling stone, they say, gathers no moss:
Then let Her forward progress be a blur!
Long as She rolls toward Him, She cannot greatly err.
“Adam was not deceived.” Adam was a fool
For Eve. Lust for knowledge was not the cause
I disobeyed our solitary rule.
God made me in His image. Let us pause
And ponder that a moment. . . . Were the flaws
In the good shepherd after God’s own heart
The lust for knowledge or for man’s applause?
Uriah’s wife was why he felt the smart;
And to be one with Eve, I stumbled at the start.
“O, let me now His strange love still admire!”
I, who was not willing to be rent
From Eve; I, who gave in to my desire,
“Behold the Man!” I say, the Man content
To do His Father’s will, although it meant
This long time waiting for His wounded Dove.
He intercedes for Her, “over the bent
World brooding,” till at last She’s free above—
Behold the waiting Groom, whose waiting is His Love!
Scriptures Sources and Notes:
The Song of Adam: Genesis, Chapters 1-4.
Adam, stanza 2, contrast in the Adams: Romans 5:14, 19; I Corinthians 15:45-47.
Adam, stanzas 2-6, The Moment: Genesis 3:6.
Adam, stanza 10, “If they burn, let them marry . . .”: I Corinthians 7:9.
Adam, stanza 12, “Adam was not deceived”: I Timothy 2:14.
Uriah’s wife: II Samuel, Chapters 11 and 12.
Adam, the man made in God’s image, and David, the man after God’s own heart (I Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22), both sinned through their attraction to a woman, rather than through their “lust for knowledge or for man’s applause.”
Adam, stanza 13, “O, let me now His strange love still admire!”:
John Donne, Holy Sonnet #11, line 9.
“Over the bent / World brooding”:
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur.”
Our readers know that we try to avoid patronizing Amazon, but sometimes, as in this case, we have no alternative. The ebook of The Wedding Party may be purchased at this link which provides a generous free sample of the text of the poem, but it gives no access to the notes, which most readers find helpful. (You may have to increase the resolution on your computer display to get the sample to function properly.)
Copies of the limited hardback edition can be ordered from the author. (The book’s dimensions are 7.5” x 10.5″ x 2”; it has 600 pages and weighs three pounds.) USA residents: For one copy, please send a check for $36.00; for two copies, please send a check for $70.00. (Virginia residents should add $2 per volume for sales tax.) Please do not order more than two copies. Checks should be made out to Philip Rosenbaum. Residents of other countries should email the author at [email protected], so he can determine the shipping rate to their country (which is likely to be prohibitive).
Send orders to:
Philip Rosenbaum
6113 Beton Ct.
Gainesville VA 20155
May the glorious Last Adam and the immaculate New Eve grant you every blessing this Christmas and in the New Year!
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
P.S. I would like to encourage our readers to subscribe to Stock and Stone, a new Catholic magazine that aims, in the words of the editor-in-chief, Peter Messing:
To rebuild the culture and transform it into a paradise that reflects the majesty of God in every work of art and cultural exchange.
You may be asking, what in tarnation do stocks and stones have to do with culture?! The explanation comes from their meanings. A stock is a tree, a symbol of life and for us the new tree of life is the Cross of Christ, where He died, shed His Most Holy Blood to purify the world and those in it. A stone, well if you do not know what a stone is, I cannot help you, but in our context the stone is the apostle Peter, who as Christ states,
“And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” [Matthew 16:18]
You can order the inaugural, Christmas edition of Stock and Stone at this link.
P.P.S. We are still short of the goal of our Give, Send, Go fundraiser. If you have not donated, please do so now and encourage your like-minded friends and family to do the same.
