Martin Buber. Ecstatic Confessions: The Heart of Mysticism. Ed. Paul
Mendes-Flohr. Trans. Esther Cameron. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1996. The Martin Buber Library.) ISBN 0-8156-0422-X. xxxv + 160 pp.
Bibliography.

Reviewed by Julia Bolton Holloway, juliana@tin.it, Professor Emerita,
University of Colorado, Boulder

I am asked to review this book for 'Mystic-L: Academic Discussion of
Mysticism', and I realize that in that context both this book and I
transgress boundaries. In Academicism the first person is expunged as being
too emotionally involved to see issues objectively and clearly, and such
writing, such study, is condemned as the 'personal heresy'. But in my
scholarly work on medieval pilgrimage poets I have discussed how the
presence within the poem of the poet as pilgrim, as with Brunetto Latino,
Il Tesoretto, Dante Alighieri, La Commedia, Juan Ruiz, Il Libro de Buen
Amor, William Langland, Piers Plowman, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury
Tales, Christine de Pizan, Le Chemin de Longs Etudes, creates a mystic
paradigm in which what is said in the first person of the (often sinful)
poet is mirror-reflected within the soul of the reader of the poem,
engendering redemption shared by writer and reader, being a paradigm of the
Incarnation, of the Word made flesh, become flesh made word.
Similarly, for this ecumenical collection of mystical experiences collected
and introduced by Martin Buber, the reader finds him/herself gazing into
first the kindly eyes of the editor himself,  pictured on the paperback
cover, then into the souls of the writers whom he bares in this text. This
book is a living confession with God and neighbour, of 'I and Thou', across
time, space, religion, gender, death itself.

Paul Mendes-Flohr's brilliant introduction tells us that Martin Buber's
Ekstatische Konfessionen was first published in an exquisite art volume
in 1909. Martin Buber's doctoral dissertation had been on individuation in
Nicholas of Cusa and Jakob Boehme, then, following a study of Jewish
mysticism, he had worked also in Chinese, Finnish and Welsh literatures,
including the Kalevala, the Mabinogion. Martin Buber in general translated
the selections presented here himself, Esther Cameron translating them
likewise from his German into our English. Martin Buber's own introduction
interrupts itself with the story of St Bernard's sermon interrupting itself
while it was being preached, to confess in first-person ecstasy, "When I
gazed out, I found it beyond all that was outside me; when I looked in, it
was further in than my most inward being. And I recognized that what I had
read was true: that we live and move and are in it; but he is blest in whom
it lives, who is moved by it".

Martin Buber's Selections from Ecstatic Confessions, which repeat in a
myriad ways Bernard's ecstatic confession, begin with Indian mystics, then
Sufi, for whom the only example is the woman Rabi'a, Greek, then European
monastic mystics, such as Hildegard von Bingen, the Franciscans, Mechtild
von Magdebourg, Mechtild von Hackeborn, Gertrud von Helfta, Heinrich Seuse
(Suso), Cristina and Margareta Ebner, Adelheid Langmann, a 'Song of
Bareness' attributed to John Tauler, entries from the German Sister Books,
many of these from the convent of Toess written by Elsbeth Stagel, Suso's
friend and supporter, Birgitta of Sweden, Julian of Norwich, Gerlach Peters,
Angela of Foligno, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Maria Maddalena
de' Pazzi, Teresa de Jesus, Anna Garcias, Armelle Nicolas, Antoinette
Bourignon, Jeanne Marie Bouvieres de la Mothe Guyon, Elie Marion, Jakob
Boehme, Hans Engelbrecht, Hemme Hayen, Anna Katharina Emmerich, with a
Supplement of selections taken from the Mahabharatam and from Chinese and
Jewish mystics, from the Church Fathers as mystics, and from the 'Sister
Katrei' attributed to Meister Eckhart. That the entries may be so heavily
overweighted on the distaff side is likely due to women's exclusion from
university training, and thus, as with monastic men, being drawn more purely
from lectio divina, from contemplative practices. Strangely the volume
lacks excerpts from the major exemplar, Augustine's Confessions. But then
so does Dante's Commedia.

Though first published almost a hundred years ago this book is both
mint-new and transcends beyond the bounds of time. Unerringly Martin Buber
has chosen the best passages both for himself and for us, in a marvellous
generosity. Let me select from his selections from Julian of Norwich's
Showings.

Our good Lord spoke to me, most blessedly: "Oh, how I love you!" as if he
had said, "My dearest, wait and behold your God, who is your maker and
your endless joy. Behold your own brother, your Savior . . . ."

Because of the great, infinite love which God has for all humankind, he
makes no distinction in love between the blessed soul of Christ and the
lowliest of the souls that are to be saved . . . . We should highly rejoice
that God dwells in our soul and still more highly should we rejoice that
our soul dwells in God. Our soul was made to be God's dwelling place, and
the dwelling place of our soul is God who was never made.

Our Lord opened my spiritual eye and showed me my soul in the middle of my
heart, and I saw the soul as wide as if it were an infinite world, and as
if it were a blessed kingdom.

This book is highly recommended for all interested in mysticism, academic
or practising (in the sense of Ritamary Bradley's perception of Julian as a
'Practical Mystic').

Link to Syracuse University Press