Event · Attention · c. 1370s
A Cloud of Forgetting
An anonymous English book tells a student to put a cloud of forgetting between the self and every created thing, and to beat on a cloud of unknowing with a little naked intent.
- The Midlands, on the page
- Fourteenth-century England
Plate · Generated interpretation
A clouded window. What would you have to forget to keep looking?
Listen · Eve
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An anonymous Middle English book, probably from the east Midlands, late fourteenth century, speaks to a student who has asked how to contemplate. Do not think your way to God, it says. Put a cloud of forgetting between yourself and every created thing, even your own best thoughts of God. Above you there will still be a cloud of unknowing. Beat on that cloud with a little naked intent of love. Julian of Norwich is writing, not far away in years. They do not write the same book. The author of the Cloud is not known, and even the gender is an inference from the language.
The instruction is technical, not a mood. Unknowing here is a practice: a refusal of the mind’s furniture, except a sharp dart of longing. The book has read, through Latin intermediaries, the Mystical Theology of the writer we call Pseudo-Dionysius: Moses climbing into a darkness of unknowing. Richard of Saint-Victor and Thomas Gallus had already turned that darkness into a nubes and a caligo. The English cloud is that inheritance in a vernacular, for a person who might not have Latin in the blood.
The Cloud of Unknowing. Middle English, late 14th century, anonymous. Modern English doors include Walsh, Spearing, and the older Evelyn Underhill text on Gutenberg. CCEL holds a public English. The Book of Privy Counseling is a related work, often bound with it, not this plate.
Beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and do not give up, whatever happens.
Maimonides, in another century and language, also unsays of God. The Cloud unsays of the self’s objects, including holy objects, so that intent can remain. Apophatic is a scholar’s family name. It is not a proof they agree. One is a rabbinic philosopher in Egypt writing for a perplexed student of Aristotle and Torah. One is an English director of a contemplative attempt. They can sit on the table.
Unknowing is a technique in this book, not a celebration of ignorance. The little intent is not a thought about God. The author is suspicious of thoughts about God. Whether a mind can intend toward what it cannot think is the book’s wager. Later readers will call this mysticism as a temperament. The pages are closer to a manual.
Whether a mind can intend toward what it cannot think is the book’s wager.
Distant echoes
Echo
Twelfth-century Egypt · Fustat (Cairo)
For those who are perplexed
Two unsayings. One is a rabbinic guide. One is an English cloud. They can sit on the table.
Echo
Occupied France · Marseille
Waiting, not seeking
Weil’s attention is a waiting that does not grab. The Cloud’s dart is a wanting that does not think. Two disciplines of not seizing.
One question remains
Attention · What enters awareness?
If every thought is to be forgotten, what is the little intent made of?