Memories from the Childhood of Henry Corbin

 

Henry came into the world on April 14^th1903, at #47 Avenue Bosquet in Paris.  He was the first-born child to Arthur Corbin and Emilie Jeanne Eugénie Fournier.  They named him Eugène, Henry.  Happiness, however, was short lived, for the young mother died ten days later.  Unable to endure the sight of the one responsible for his unhappy loss, Arthur placed the child in the care of a wet nurse.

 

At eight months the infant was still so frail that Arthur’s elder sister, Mrs. Amélie Petit Henry, indignant over the lack of care, resolved to bring the child home with her, despite the father’s disapproval.  A few years earlier, Amélie had married Emile Petithenry, a man of considerable culture working at the Bonne Presse.  They had no children and occupied a comfortable second story apartment at #46 Rue Grenelle with a kitchen window overlooking the private park of a neighboring townhouse belonging to the Duke of Castries.  Many years later, while dining with the Duke himself, Henry recalled having occasionally admired, from his elevated window view, a young boy of his own age wandering about this lovely park in the company of a governess.

 

Occasionally Henry was taken to his maternal grandmother’s home at #26 Rue Leclerc.  Very advanced in years and surrounded by her memories, she evoked in the child, above all else, an impression of tremendous sadness.  In that cozy sitting room, without understanding why, the child felt overwhelmed.  To the point that, on one occasion, at the age of five, he started wailing and then burst into tears.  Not knowing how to calm him, his grandmother happened upon the auspicious and happy solution of presenting him with a photograph and urging him to give the beautiful woman a kiss.  Intrigued and perhaps somewhat beguiled by the mystery of that kiss, the child calmed down.  From then on he returned without trepidation to his grandmother’s home to steal a look at the “beautiful woman” (his mother) whose true identity he was far from suspecting, having always called Mrs. Petithenry “mummy”.  From that day onward, however, the seed of a doubt began to take root in him.

 

Indeed, shortly after this incident, while his young aunt Adrienne was giving him his bath in his paternal grandparents’ garden at Grecy, Henry said to her:

 

“Don’t you find it strange? I have two daddies, but only one mummy.  It’s odd.  Mummy might well be my aunt?

 

And so it fell to Adrienne, splashing the boy with cold water, to reply:

 

“Might well be…”

 

When, around the age of seven, he learned his true identity, he made more frequent visits to his maternal grandmother, in order to question her.  Not being one for conversation however, the latter preferred to show her grandson photographs and to describe the beautiful figure therein.  She passed away, alone, leaving her one descendant a small nest egg of savings.  At the time of her death, a violent clatter in the night awakened Henry, then a student living on the Rue Daguerre.  The mirror above the fireplace had come unhooked and fallen, shattering loudly upon the floor.

 

During the summer months the family found themselves back with the paternal grandparents.  Originally from a Norman village, the Pieux family had had a summerhouse built in Grecy, at Seine en Marne, near Courbet.  Henry was fond of the garden with its large lime tree and herbs.  On the other side of the road and just opposite his room there lay a large rose garden.  In June, just as the sun was setting over this flowery parcel of land, the child would sit in ravished contemplation of the landscape, feeling himself as though upon the very threshold of the infinite.  In the daytime he met up with two cheerful accomplices: for music and games there was his Aunt Adrienne, and to tend the herb garden there was his grandfather, a cunning gourmand who often awarded himself a portion of the pickings before bringing them to the kitchen.

 

Back in Paris, with the Petithenrys, life was more orderly.  There was that painful day when it was decided Henry should be shorn of his lovely golden locks before the beginning of classes at La Rochefoucauld (on the corner of Avenue Bosquet and Rue Pierre Nicot).  There was the production of his first reviews, with premonitory titles such as “Lumière céleste” (Celestial Light) and “Nord” (North).  Carefully selected excerpts from the Larousse and other books were recopied upon sheets of colored paper that, despite being originally intended for jam-pots, were deemed of adequate format by the young journalist.  As this work could only be carried out on the Thursday, which was a school holiday, there was already, in this early period, the author’s dreaded problem of “accumulated delays”.  The “publication” complete, a reading was performed for his aunt who was wholly won over.

 

Henry received a children’s magazine called “Le cri cri” [“Little Voice”].  Upon each cover, within a red frame, was a drawing accompanied by a caption.  One of these covers showed a child walking along a road in the desert.  There followed the story of this same young boy who was on his way to Teheran.  In later reviews, other drawings illustrated “The Horrors of Tamburlaine”.  Teheran, Tamburlaine, a lone child in a desert landscape…  These themes were to be echoed later by a biblical verse bearing witness to moments of melancholy: “Soli! Quia si cadat neminem habebit sublivantem se”  -“Sorrowful, he who is alone, for if he should fall there will be no-one to raise him back up”. 

 

But such melancholy was quickly forgotten and swept away by an impetuous élan vital when Henry would meet up with his cousin Robert Chanteloup, his elder by five years, at Pieux, the Norman village his family came from, or in Saint Vaast la Hougue.  Henry conserved a horrid memory of the beach there, of a forced dunking in an ice cold sea, and the feeling of shame at the flock of spectators drawn by the wailing cries of a small child on the point of suffocation from cold and indignation.  Henry preferred the visits with his cousins, the Menants and the Chanteloups, with whom his Norman peasant’s common sense and love of the soil flourished.  With Robert he shared the memory of frolicking about in the fields and of being cheated out of a meal, the victims of their dear aunt Amélie’s unswerving sense of principle.  That day, the Petithenrys had been invited to the Pieux’s residence and had arrived a good two hours late.  As soon as he arrived, Robert had told Henry about the rabbit that was being prepared, whose delicate aroma had excited him all morning.  Just as they were sitting down to table, however, Aunt Amélie peremptorily declared that one could no longer eat rabbit at three in the afternoon.

 

Due to his position at the Bonne Presse, Emile Petithenry made a comfortable living, and all the more so, as having served as “straw man” for the “Assumptionists” during the “Trial of Twelve”, the latter made a constant showing of their gratitude.  At the beginning of the century, the Assumptionists owned a building at #8 Rue Francois Premier, that had been sequestrated ever since the passing of the bill of 1905, but whose chapel and outbuildings remained at the disposition of the good Catholic society of the neighborhood who still gathered there on holidays.  In one of the rooms a stock of beautiful gilt-edged breviaries awakened an envious longing in Henry, who sought to appropriate a copy for himself.  Father Honoré, despite his indulgence for this young companion, thereupon threatened that he would “run into serious trouble with the state”.  By way of consolation the good father provided for his entry into a movie hall partly owned by the church.  Once there however, it was the cashier’s turn to contest the validity of the tokens that Father Honoré had given him.  This didn’t entirely prevent Henry from acquiring a degree of acquaintance with what one might call “cinema”.

 

Unfortunately, Emile Petithenry had kidney trouble and his health deteriorated year after year.  He died in 1912 or 1913.  Despite the support of their friends at the Bonne Presse, his death was the source of significant worries for Amélie.  She had been unable to adopt Henry due to his father’s opposition, and the latter had now withdrawn into a hostile silence.  The Assumptionists suggested to Amélie that she ought to make a trip to England where she could find work in a Catholic college.  Henry was enchanted by the idea of such a trip.  A new entourage of friends, the grandeur of the liturgical songs… these were like so many glimpses of another world.  Alas! The plan fell through.

 

Henry thus returned to the Rue de Grenelle, to his friends from the Rochefoucauld, and to his math teacher, who was happy to reclaim his most promising student.in mental arithmetic.  The war was approaching, bringing hard times with it.

 

 

Memories from the Childhood of Stella Corbin

 

The green wood home rises on the hillside that runs down to the roadway and then, still further, down to the riverbank where the sensitive growth lies thick upon the pebbles.  The river tarries in our green valley before coming to that perilous instant when it must brave the ever-surging channel, thence to lose itself in the Pacific.

 

In front of the house there lies an open space lined with hibiscus and cagnas.  This is where the natives gather, on those holidays when they come to “love” or render homage to our parents.  At the chief’s call, the whole village, hut after hut, forms a long cortège, singing as it advances.  While the men present the gifts; long yams, great bunches of bananas, poultry, occasional relics from some previous era, assegais, axes, ancient coins; the women and children fan out on the left.  Festive costumes in gaudy colors, frizzy hair spiked with flowers.

 

Special day for us children.  Motionless on the steps, and done up in our Sunday best, we sit listening to the speeches waiting for the final song to start up and liberate us as well as our somewhat less restrained young native friends.

 

And then the games would start all over again.  Racing upon the grassy slopes, a fishing party with my brother on his boat and above all the secret game I share with my sister Francine, the game we call “little girls fallen from the sky”.  As prelude to this game it suffices to whisper a little magical phrase for a world of marvels to suddenly appear before us.  Ke wi ma wi? Where are you going?  And just as abruptly, we would find ourselves propelled into our universe, where everything arranges itself for our pleasure.  Our noble realm?  The old orange tree at the paddock’s entrance.  We would climb it, jubilant over the many butterflies fluttering around our tree.  Through the leaves one could see the farm and its hen house.  Which was a familiar and reassuring landscape.  But off on the opposite side lay the forest, disturbing because home to wild boar.  By good providence, between the forest and our orange tree there rises an enormous boulder immobilized in its descent as though by magic.  Is it there, perhaps, to mark a frontier?  So long as it doesn’t serve to conceal the terrible boar, which is the one possible danger.  Towards sundown, frightened, we watch our boulder’s growing shadow and our agitation hides from us another source of concern: the call to supper, that imperious return to the banality of the everyday world and the fading away of our enchanted universe.

 

At night the frogs, and small lizards enter our room.  Hanging from the curtains, they hold their assembly and their murmuring swiftly transports me to the Niaoulian myrtle woods with their tenacious perfume.  In that far off place, there is a family that showers us with gifts.  There is a long drawn out war, news of which is cabled to us by telephone.  This is the grim hour when anxiety becomes clearly legible upon the parents’ faces.  When I am alone, faced with the task of relaying the information in such cables, it requires enormous effort to retain the names of the areas in which the battles are taking place, but my geography is cursory at best, I confuse regions and have difficulty imagining this other world, until the day when a first trip to the town of Noumea, and its school, gives me a taste of what the eventual and definitive departure will be like two years later.

 

Goodbye verdant paradise where once I frolicked, disheveled and barefoot with my young native friends.

 

Familiar objects suddenly heap themselves in great trunks, which invade all the rooms.  Beneath a pile of sheets, a hiding place, I slipped one of my favorite books, alas only one!  I am, however, incapable of likewise dissimulating my large doll, a prized possession.  It had been decided that it should remain at the missionary station for the successors’ children.  Confronted by this forced renunciation I felt my universe crumbling.  To leave, to abandon that which one has cherished, could this then be life?  Could another catastrophic turn of events be such that one day my parents would be obliged to abandon one of us in turn?  The very idea terrified me.  Anxious, I follow along.  It is a mere two days after our departure from the port of Noumea, on the open ocean, that my brother, no doubt annoyed by the crybaby at his side, tells me with the self assurance of the elder brother who has already been to France:  “One doesn’t cry on one’s way to Paris”.  To which I responded: “my life is over”.  And oh how salutary the peal of laughter I thereby provoked with all my grandiloquence.  Indeed, as though by some enchantment, my fear leaves me.  My eyes eventually settle upon the other children playing upon the ship’s bridge.  Seized by a sudden curiosity, I want to join in their games, to discover their world.

 

Little by little, the curtain falls on the paradise of childhood as we drift towards Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, the Point of Good Hope, and as, from the upper deck, we contemplate the Southern Cross, disappearing behind the horizon as the Polar star rises.

 

 

 

INTERVIEW WITH THE SHAH:

8^th of March, 1947 from five thirty to seven thirty pm.

 

Organized by Ernest Perron with an audience accorded, by Shah Muhammad to Emile Benveniste, Henry and Stella Corbin, the cultural consul Jean Camborde and his wife Juliette.  Long conversation, of approximately two hours, during which the discussion covers such problems as the death of a civilization and the sterility of certain once fertile provinces.  In relation to the subject, Shah Muhammad. evokes the tales of Nasir -e Khosraw.

 

Shah Muhammad:“The great damming projects, can they bring anything beyond a material well-being?  I am struck by the indigence of these last centuries.  Not a single thinker, not a single great poet.  Why?  Is it Islam which is responsible for this?”

 

The pressing need to form an elite.  Allusion to the atom and the end of the world having now become a possibility.

 

Henry points out that the notion of the “end of the world” is a Mazdean concept: the disintegration of the world of Shadow and the definitive triumph of Light.  More precisely, that the end of the world as cosmic accident provoked by a physical accident, a matter of laboratory technique, is no different from the problem posed to each one of us by the imminence of our own death.  It is no more than an instance of multiplication.  Zarathustra was the first to announce the transfiguration of the world to humanity.  In such a case our death and our transfiguration are no longer a terminal catastrophe.

 

The problem of reincarnation is then taken up by Shah Muhammad, who, in a dreamy manner, humorously asks himself, what animal could well have reincarnated in his own person?

 

With regards to the Arabic civilization, Shah Muhammad questions Henry who tells of finding, in his rudimentary philosophical study of Arabic and Persian texts, the manner in which to realize his own philosophical vocation.  Shah Muhalmmad with emotion, almost interrupts him wishing to evoke the happiness of he who fulfills his vocation, who accomplishes his destiny, for whom life is not empty…

 

Shah Muhammad continues: “up to the present we have only questioned the men.  These women also have something to say.”

 

Juliette Camborde: “Oh, but we are of little account!”

 

Shah Muhammad. “Not at all.  I think that women should play a more important role… Form an international women’s league… Follow and guide man’s education well beyond childhood and watch over him closely.”

 

First decoration at the palace of Golestan, one morning during Now-Zouz.  Inaudible phrase.  The Shabanou.

 

 

Final Memories of Henry Corbin, November 1988

 

To tear myself away from the disgust induced in me by the attitude of the “staff” of the Ismaili studies, and to deepen my resolve to keep my distance from that beautiful world of money, I have been trying to remember the year 1978, specifically from the date of our return from Teheran, on the 11^th of January, after a very pleasant flight.

 

The preparation of the next conference at the Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem, Constantin Tacou’s relaunching of the project for a Cahier de l’Herne consecrated to Henry, the new edition of Corps Spirituel… with its important “Prelude to an Imaginal Cartography” occupy the first months; but the classes are often cancelled due to a latent fatigue with which we are occasionally troubled.

 

There was the ever so lovely evening, on the 8^th of April, hosted by Karim Agha Khan in his medieval manor on Rue des Ursins Demeure, one of the buildings restored by Pouillon.  A lovely patio.  Upon entering the dining room - a great, elongated space with large windows looking out on the Seine - I was struck by the contrast between the old ochre stones and the ivory white of the flowers whose succulent petals stood out sharply from the rugged stone background.  Beauty of this contrast accentuated by candlelight.

 

And hosted by Andrée and Yves Jaigu, there was our meeting with the team from France-Culture, Nemo, Cazenave; and C. Jambet’s offer to transcribe the Philippe Nemo - Henry Corbin interview, which had come about following Heidegger’s death.

 

From the 26^th of April to the 5^th of May, séjour at Nyons, that place which so enchanted us, conjuring up the occasional impression of having returned to Iran.  Twice in the garden of Saint Eutrope, we lived a floral dream among the flowering Judas trees, the lilacs, the iris.  Every nuance of violet mixing together with the golden flare of the broom shrubs [Scotch Broom flowers]and the white of the hawthorn.  The Montmirail lace , the Ventoux exerts upon us the same attraction.  On a sunny day of the Ascension, we adventurously set out towards the mountains along the route of the Serres.  Drawn by the Rémusat site, we have coffee in the central square?  Speaking with the bowls players.  On their advice we pursue our exploration of the narrow Oule river valley as far as Motte Chalançon.  Steep slopes.  Earth’s ochre striped with verdure.  Imposing mass of the “Pas de l’Echelle” [The Foot of the Ladder] before which Henry recalls Jacob’s ladder and this biblical evocation accentuates the grandeur of the place.  Late that evening we return regretfully, yet filled with the vision of our mountains bathed by the summer’s light.

 

Certain instants have such intensity that, years later, they appear to us as the heralds of a message or a sign.

 

The Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem conference, perhaps one such instant, was a veritable success.  Henry gave a beautiful lecture, opening with the vision beheld by the servant of Elisha: Cavalry and chariots of fire, and ending on these words: “to know that which we are, who we are, to know a higher universe from which we have come, in which we have our origin, this is already to be saved”… and that is gnosis...  Call forth a harpist, said the prophet.  And even as the harpist played, even so, the hand of the Eternal was upon Elisha” (II Kings, 3/15)  (How not to hear therein the echo of the phrase that Henry pronounced during one of his final days: “If you knew how it all sings, it all sings in my head”.)

 

Enthousiasm of Yves Jaigu; first lecture given by C. Jambet following which Henry would say to Gilbert Durand -the latter having reminded me of it most recently-: “could this be a spiritual heir?”

 

It’s just before summer that Henry tells me of two dreams that have left with him an impression of peace, of joy.  In a vast place a celebration is under way…  in his honor…  Why for him?  He asks himself, astonished but delighted as well.  Many old friends, and some more recent, are there… some long since dead, others still in the world.  Reunions, as amazing as unexpected.

 

The other dream: a beautiful liturgy is being celebrated, music, contemplative meditation.  When Henry wishes to leave, he is held back but answers: let me return to tell Stella that the true Church is here.

 

Fatigue mounts; Henry plies himself wearily to thesis defenses: he displays a certain feverishness in his work to finish the complete dossier of the Cahier de l’Herne: selection of letters, of unpublished works, and writing of the Post-Scriptum, before our departure on holiday.

 

Nonetheless, at the beginning of July, we make the trip to Edinburgh, as Henry, disappointed by his Parisian experience, wishes to meet “the Scots”.  A lovely reception stirring secret fibers within him: “a grand organ, choir of more than 200 men, overwhelming.  It takes me back to my time in Germany 40 years ago (cf. his agenda of 1978).  Sumptuous dinner, the evening finishing at Lord Eglin-Bruce’s chateau (the man from the Parthenon).  We arrive in this splendid property at the end of our route after crossing through a countryside still illuminated by a summer sun which, like us, never tires of contemplating the earth or the Angel of the earth.

 

During the visit by Dory Nayrieri, who was accompanied by her charming daughters, I was struck by the calm assurance with which Henry declined an invitation to the Embassy in Cairo for the following September: “I know that I will not make it to Egypt!”  Some few days later, returning from a stroll in the woods of Montmorency, while walking along the outer walls of the cemetery, Henry told me of his wish to finally take “time for himself”, to write more freely, to play music and to surround himself with only rare, true friends.

 

A doctor advises total rest and relaxation during our vacation in Jura, prescribes medicine for the circulation, and schedules an appointment for September should there be no visible improvement.

 

Loaded up with all these drugs, Henry longs for the scent of the pines; we thus set out, after much hesitation, on the 10^th of August around 11 o’clock.

 

From then on real concern takes hold of me while Henry shows a tender attentiveness.  Despite his resting in the garden, his condition shows no improvement.  We decide against pursuing our trip towards Ascona, consult a doctor there, and call the one in Paris.

 

On a splendid full moon night, with both of us seated upon a garden bench, I hear a voice,  ever so soft and low, telling me: “I know that my time is up –I know I shouldn’t tell you, but you deserve to know”.

 

The night prowls around us while the luminous sky shelters our love.

 

Doctors, calls to our friends in Ascona, preparations for our return, surrounded by the Mollard’s kindness, we leave on the 29^th and make the trip non-stop from Champagnole to Paris.

 

The doctor asks for a blood sample; but the next day just as we are sitting down to dinner Henry remarks that he can “no longer feel his right leg”.  Once again I call the doctor: femoral thrombosis –Call the ambulance- Surgical emergency.  While the ambulance flies towards Cochin, Henry asks me to inform Richard Stauffer and Pierre Bordessoule.  Painful wait in the Emergency, then transfer to the Pitié-Salpétrière where the operation takes place around 2 in the morning -despite it being noted that the lungs are in a miserable state.  This leads Henry, whom nothing escapes, to ask the surgeon: “And such being the state of things, are you nevertheless attempting the operation?”

 

Solitary wait in the long hospital corridor, and around 4am a stretcher and Henry, whom I feel rather than see.

 

And so begins a waiting period for the patient, cause of a certain nervousness often attenuating the joy of having regained the use of his leg.  Hope returning, he says to me: “Do you know why I asked you to inform Richard Stauffer?  I wanted to ask him to say a few brief and lively words, and to indicate to him the three pieces of music I wish to have, at my funereal service: Haendel’s the Messiah, the first triumphant choir of the first part: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” ES 40 5/6.  then, “I will see God” and “Parsifal, the Good Friday Enchantment” or the choir of the Saint Cène; and finally in parting, a Bach.

 

A third patient, in agony, is placed in the little room and the atmosphere becomes intolerable.  I set about to obtain Henry’s transfer to either the pneumatology department or the University Hospital.  At last, on the 13^th, Henry is moved to the 1^st floor of the pneumatology ward, into a large room with view onto an indoor garden.  The room to himself, well aired, surrounded by all, Henry relaxes.  His state of spirit, his ever watchful curiosity, astound all present and make me blush at my crestfallen state as, while making our way through the underground tunnel connecting the old buildings to the pneumatology ward, Henry, lain out upon his stretcher and bundled away beneath the covers, points out the tracery of saltpeter and the obvious age of the passage.

 

While examining the results of the medical tests, the scanner etc… Henry marvelling at the technological achievements, questions Doctor Gonnot: “Don’t you think we would have better understood the human mystery had we only applied ourselves with greater care to scrutinizing the thinkers of China and Persia?”

 

Doctor Gonnot: “Believe me, a doctor who would combine both scientific directions in his own person would go mad.”

 

And once again, Henry: “Never again will I see that Iranian land in which Ahriman’s power is presently loosing itself… The power of evil surpasses all that we are capable of imagining…”

 

“…but the inner esoteric temple of Israel rejoins the Temple of Buddha”.

 

“…four men from the funereal home came to see me this morning.  They wanted to impose upon me Chopin’s funeral march during my funereal procession.  I replied that, when the moment came I would indicate the music I wished… which, besides, I had already indicated to you.”

 

After the benediction of Richard Stauffer and the reading of Psalm 27… “This psalm is splendid.  Everything’s set.”

 

One morning I find Henry already up and installed in his armchair as though impatiently awaiting my arrival, and immediately in relation to Moody’s book: La vie après la vie,, he says to me: “Last night I lived a similar experience.  Death is nothing more than a transition.  I had the impression one moment this last night that it would suffice for me, how can I tell you, that it would have sufficed for me to make a gesture, as for example touching an electric socket, to trigger my crossing the threshold.  To pass over to the other side

There, I know now- all is ready to receive me.  THEY are waiting for me.

 

S: Did you see your guardian angel?

 

H: That would have meant I had crossed the threshold… Why did I not cross it at that very moment?

 

S: Maybe because you still had a message to give me?

 

A smile, from far off, illuminates Henry’s face. 

 

And then later: “It is perhaps a slow death that I must experience.  Might I have excessively focused upon this problem and should I have to live its every stage?

 

One morning, around five, as I was about to return for a few moments to the apartment, kneeling close to the bed, his hand ever so light upon my hair, as though an ultimate benediction.

 

The 26^th, the doctor authorizes the return to Rue Odéon.  Henry, overjoyed, barely sleeps, plans to finish his works, and then, slightly troubled, asks the Doctor: “But do you think I can finish this book?”

 

Dr. Gonnot: “Oh! I know you.  Even if you had 100 years ahead of you, you would ask me the same question.  You would have yet another urgent book to finish… and many more besides.”

 

H: “That may well be! The thing is, you see, with my books, I am struggling against the same thing as you.  Each in our own way, you as doctor, and I as historian of religions, are engaged in the same struggle, we are leading a campaign against Death.

 

Ephemeral well-being at home, visits, flowers in profusion.  To my proposing some music: “Unnecessary, he responds, if you only knew how it sings, how it sings in my head.”

 

The night of Friday the 6^th: terrible suffering, doctor, morphine, return to the hospital.  As the ambulance attendants go to put Henry in the ambulance, he notices Cioran on the sidewalk, recognizes him, smiles…  We are all dumbstruck with astonishment and pain.  In the ambulance Henry says to me: “I have the feeling that a cycle of our life is coming to an end.”

 

Later at the hospital: “If you only knew with what joy I will take leave of the servitudes of this world!”

 

Swedenborg writes that at the moment of the exitus, two accompanying angels stand at the head of the bed, one on each side.  Visible to eyes of fire, invisible to eyes of flesh.

 

When you hear the call for the changing of the guard –oh you who keep watch, rejoice in he who opens their true home to those he calls his own.  For then, death is close.

 

6:53 in the morning

 

“… Send for a harpist…”  (II Kings 3/15)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EXTRACTS FROM ONE OF STELLA CORBIN’S LETTERS: Teheran the 22 September 1945

 

I hoped to find a letter upon arrival here on the 15^th but nothing…  I wanted to write before leaving Istanbul.  The last few days have been a whirlwind of pressing concerns, errands, visits.  Ten days before our departure, already tired from all the moving, Henry comes down with an abscess in his teeth.  Anxious about this recurrence he makes his mind up to consult another dentist who decides to make up a set of dentures.

 

Finally at dawn on the 6^th of September we make a last crossing of the Bosphorus, enchanting in the early morning sunlight, the railroad hugs the Sea of Marmora as far as Izmit.  One might imagine oneself traveling along a lakeshore.  Little by little we climb to the Anatolian plateau, its more arid, there are several large villages.  Night falls, and around 11 we can see the lights of Ankara.  There, a young blond woman boards the train.  She is accompanied by a number of Chinese who wish her a friendly farewell.  We are a little intrigued.

 

The next day a little before crossing through Tarsus, we pass through Hidge: first truly oriental town with the beds installed upon the terraced rooftops, the eucalyptus…  A very lovely ascent across the Taurus, and suddenly between two enormous boulders we see, in a flash, the entire Cilician plain.  Again, the plain, with its olive trees and its vines.  We go to bed, furious at the thought of the customs and border crossing we will have to endure at 1 in the morning.  Fortunately Henry had come armed with his “traveling papers” which help facilitate the border-crossings.  At least, so we imagine!

 

“Wake-up” in Aleppo around 7 o-clock.  From the train the city’s appearance is rather deceiving, we can just make out the silhouette of the citadel where Suhravardî died.  The train reverses direction and we find ourselves once again in Turkey: new customs and passport formalities.

 

45 degrees in the shade all day as the train travels along the Syrian border.  Syria, with its hamlets of proud nomadic Kurds, on the one side, and on the other side, block housing and Turkish soldiers.  Nonetheless, the train stops in the middle of the countryside for a poor woman lain out on a litter.  For one fleeting moment, a glimpse of human grandeur.

 

Night falls on this desert landscape and catches us chatting with a charming British

Captain -ever melancholic poet, composing quatrains as well in Arabic as in English-, and a young Syrian customs agent refusing all but Syrian traditional dress and passionately seeking his Arabic past.  And yet, he is Christian, wants to belong to an independent state, considers the West without bitterness while at the same time pointing out its shortcomings -contrary to the British Captain’s father, administrator of progress, denying any and all Islamic contribution to “civilization”.

 

Around 2 in the morning, the train once again crosses into Syrian territory: new passport and customs check from which we are spared, I believe, thanks to an awakened sympathy between the British military administration and those of the “young states”.

 

In the morning, Mosoul.  Hoarse cries of the Arabs.  The camels and sheep disappear from this desert landscape –suffocating heat.  We are a lonely few in the restaurant wagon, abandoned by its chef who, suffering from a terrible migraine, is being tended to by the British Captain.  It’s a little unbridled and everyone retires half-nude beneath the fan in their room.  Only the rich Kurds, swords at their sides, seemed not to suffer from the heat.  The young blond woman, who had boarded the train at Ankara found their provocative demeanor somewhat alarming, and preferred to take refuge in my company.  Information sought after from the Captain, these gentlemen were reputed smugglers.

 

With the first stands of palms we are at our windows, but the air that we imagined fresher, at the sight of verdure, remains stifling.  We make out the large Shiite mosque with its minarets and golden cupolas sparkling in the sunlight.

 

The train stops, not at any station, but in the middle of the desert sands.  We are in Baghdad, we are told, and the wave of thickset porters rising out of the sands convinces us of the fact.  Happily, a certain agent Cook saves us, and under the protection of the secretary of the Iranian League we arrive at the Semiramus Hotel.  In English Colonial style with the indispensable fan, a lovely lawn runs right down to the Tigris.  Beyond, lie the palms.  A small crescent moon above the stand of palms is reflected in the calm waters of the Tigris dotted here and there with small boats.  On the horizon, through the palm trunks, the red-flaring sun throws its lively hue.  It is at this moment, that the British Captain takes his departure, leaving us an envelope upon which are written three verses, reminiscent of biblical passages:

 

By the twin river

I be thought me of the weeping

And the willows and the harp.

 

That séjour in Baghdad, which we had so worried over, has left us nothing but enchanting memories.  Was it the visit to Ktiesiphon whose splendid Sassanide vault in one single motion, rises up higher than the palms, was it the encounter at Ktesiphon with that cultivated young Arab?  In the village, he takes us to the mosque of Salman the Pure: “let me live and die as you have, faithful friend, you who have not betrayed”, and after having chased away a pack of little scamps he invites us to his home for tea.

 

Pilgrimage to the mausoleum built for Faysal, friend to Lawrence of Arabia and to Massignon

 

Arrived on the Sunday, late afternoon, we leave on the Thursday at dawn.  1000 km to travel in a rental car on rough jolting roads.  It’s the ancient route linking Bagdad, Kermanshah and Hamadan (once Ecbatan) all the way to the Iranian border: arid landscape, some rare villages almost visible across the nascent dawn.  Long lines of donkeys or of camels, water sources signaled by the willows or the poplars.

 

After Sarpul e Schab begins the rough ascent towards the pass and then towards Kermanshah.  We are struck with vertigo on this road once called “the Porte of Zagres” with the grandiose grotto of Khosraw II at Takht Bostan.  Shortly after Kermanshah in a mountainous, arid landscape rises the towering peak of Bisutun, single boulder rising up 1000 metres, once without doubt a “place of the gods” chosen by the great Darius for the engraving of his famous trilingual inscription proclaiming his triumph.  We are assailed by the history, the grandeur of the site… and by fatigue.

 

We pass the night at Hamadan, the Ecbatana of seven walls, capital of the Median and then of the Achaemenidian empire, but as in the case of Kermanshah we see only the hotel, as having arrived at night, rather foundering, we leave the next day at dawn so as to finish the final leg of our journey and beat the full heat of the afternoon.  Teheran, heralded by the splendid Demavend, awaits us.  Giant mountain of some 6000 meters, ancient volcano, for Henry the symbol of so many dreams.  This same Demavend appears already in Henry’s childhood, in a drawing upon the cover of one of his school exercise books.

 

We ask the chauffeur to let us off in front of the French embassy, for we have forwarded advance notice of our arrival to the consul, an old friend from the days at the Oriental Language School in Paris.  Alas!  We never thought we would arrive on a Friday off reserved for our consul’s weekly hunt.

 

 Fortunately for us, the ambassador (a charming man) fairly bohemian, seeing from afar a pair of dust-covered voyagers approaching, came out to meet us and invited us in for a meal in his garden.  He had as his guest a priest from the Russian church, who had at one time been an officer of the Tsar’s marine, an astonishing character who, while we all sipped our coffee, proposed to us the temporary rental of a little apartment in the house of one of his parishioners.  It is from there that I am writing you.

 

 

 

 

 

MEETINGS WITH ANDRE MALRAUX

 

1928-29

 

The first encounter took place around 1928-29 when Joseph Baruzi, a regular at the receptions held by Arthur Fontaine, brought Henry along to listen to Malraux speak of his voyage in Persia.

 

1935

 

At the publication release of Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique ([French] translation of

Heidegger), Henry meets Malraux at the Gallimard Publishing House. (cf. the Gallimard

dossier of 3 of Malraux’s letters)

 

 

1936

 

Upon our return from Germany, one beautiful July evening while out for a stroll, just as we are passing before the terraces on Bd. St. Germain, Henry stops and says; “well well, there’s Malraux”.  I see a man in a pale trench coat, his face full of resolve, who rises to greet us.  He announces to Henry his imminent departure for Spain, and informs him of his resolution.  Clearly Malraux was waiting there for the person with whom he was to leave.

 

1953

 

We receive in April “Les Voix du Silence” [The Voices of Silence] with a dedication.  The arrival of this book is followed shortly after by the Malraux’s arrival in Teheran, where, on the 19^th of May, Coulet offers a dinner at the Embassy to celebrate their arrival –but as the plane didn’t arrive until midnight we were all a bit tired, with the exception of Malraux and Henry whose cultural complicity in a certain manner pulverized the diplomatic conviviality.

 

After the visit to the “Institut français”, just as he was leaving the Iranian studies Department Library, André Malraux shakes the hands of Henry’s collaborators and declares: “France is proud of you”.  Then to Henry, who accompanies him to the door, Malraux, with a malicious smile and a humorous edge to his voice, murmurs in Henry’s ear: “You see Corbin… all I have to do”. 

 

Malraux’s humour lies in the art with which he maintains a certain distance.  We never know if the satisfaction of the accomplished act is not abruptly attenuated by the skeptical judgment already emerging from his rational intellect.

 

This feature strikes us anew when, upon his request, Malraux with Madeleine, comes to pay us a visit one afternoon to speak with Henry about Alamut, and the Ismailis about whom he wants to write a book, as he had dreamed many years ago that the action of one of his novels should take place in Ispahan: “One of the three most beautiful cities in the world” (reported by Clara Malraux on the occasion of a dinner hosted by Iran Teymourtache).  I had offered Henry a numbered edition of the Struggle for the Angel in Istanbul in 1944, partly due to the title.  I show Malraux his book printed in Switzerland, during the war, asking him if he would be willing to pen in a dedication.  Without hesitation, with kindness and as though happy to feel the weight of this rare copy in his hands, he pens in several lines with for Henry “his Ismaili complicity” and then flickering quickly over his face a shadow of malice, of skepticism, as he notes ironically the value that his initials have added to the book.

 

From 24 to the 27 November 1958.

 

Short official trip made by the Malraux to explain the new train of events in France.  He does so in a brilliant lecture at the University.  A dinner at the embassy allows us to visit with them. 

 

1964.

 

The weekend of the 12^th of September 1964, at Philippe and Pauline de Rothschild’s is our longest stay in the Malraux’s company.

 

Back from Ascona and preparing our next departure for Teheran when Pauline de Rothschild phones to invite us to spend the weekend along with the Malraux at Pouillac.  Surprise, agitation and there we are Saturday at 6pm., cruising over the Anjou all bathed in light.  The fatigue induced by the preparations abates and the unexpectedness of this encounter excites our imagination.

 

At the caravel’s landing our cars are waiting for us at the foot of the stairs.  A secretary takes our tickets and without waiting for the luggage directs the Malraux towards one car and us towards another.  We cross through the vines, and the pine-woods.  An enormous sunset fires the sky and plays at hide and seek with the tall somber pines.  Then it’s a majestic alley bordered by a highly fragrant, flowering greensward.  The cars pull up at a gate.  Dogs approach, and Malraux, somewhat astonished, remarks: “welcomed by the dogs…”.  But no sooner said than valets and maids appear around us and we see a little well lit pavilion in the style of Napolean III, on the landing of which the Rothschilds together with Guy Dumer are waiting to welcome us.  The salon, with its decorative dahlias is entirely in the style of Napoleon III as is everything else in this pavilion.  It’s very hot, the champagne flows; Malraux is already analyzing an engraving and then turning towards Henry, while speaking of the book by Jung “Answer to Job” which he has just read, says: “The re-discovery of symbols, that is the great conquest of the first half of this century.”

 

Around 8:30 pm., at Pauline’s suggestion we leave the Napoleon III pavilion to settle in to our apartments.  In the twilight we cross a lawn and discern through a hedgerow of greenery a long building.  It’s the old barn that has been enlarged.  An ample staircase leads up to the first floor.  On the left a vast library, beautiful room with visible vaulting where our dinner will be served to us.  Immediately opposite the stairs is the long salon in which numerous windows look out on the vineyards.  Extraordinary vision.  The vineyard like a downy sea extends to the level horizon above which there’s just a village clock tower, several trees and then… some hills… off to the right we follow a corridor opening into the Rothschild’s apartments before crossing over a set of steps.  It’s another wing of the building reserved for guests.  Everything is vast and airy, and of a luxury catering to one’s every whim.  Our windows give on to that part of the garden that we had just crossed.  Lovely hot night, beneath shimmering stars.  At dinner it is above all to Malraux whom we listen tirelessly: Eléanore d’Aquitaine, one of the loves he shares with Henry, symbols, Chagall whose opera roof will be open for public viewing on Wednesday.

 

The Sunday morning around 11:30 we gathered for the visit to the wine stores.  Madeleine and André Malraux, Philippe and the “two alchemical fathers,” who have been responsible now for some several generations for the vineyards and the wines.  At the entrance to a huge chamber where the barrels are all lined up in uniform columns on either side of a central alley, we have almost the impression of entering into a church for at the back of the room is a high table over which is set the coat of arms.  On the threshold Malraux pronounces one of his sybilline phrases that leaves us all rather aghast: “The barrel seems to me, among the other solids, as the mushroom among the vegetables.”

 

Silence.

 

“Just what do you mean, exactly?” Philippe daringly asks.

 

After the visit to the cellars, where the spiders’ webs seem as venerable as the 1870 vintage bottles, we reemerge into the dazzling light.

 

Lunch is served at one extremity of the large salon, but first Malraux and Henry engage in an aside to envisage the future of the Department of Iranian Studies in Téhéran as well as the projects of the king of Morocco who would like to create a faculty of liberal theology and have Henry as one of the participants.  The conversation continues during lunch and Madeleine recalls a Morrocan writer telling her: “for me, the two greatest French authors are Malraux and Corbin”.

 

Immediately after lunch Philippe, utterly merciless, takes us on a visit of his museum.  Guy Dumer and Pauline who were able to rest during the morning, join our party.  In principle the visit to the museum should have lasted an hour.  Thanks to Malraux it continues a full five and a half.  He improvises a lecture on each tableau.  The museum caretaker takes hurried notes.  Fatigued, Henry and Philippe withdraw to sit down every now and then.  A dejected Madeleine takes off her sandals, an example immediately followed by Philippe and myself.  Pauline enraptured, doesn’t leave Malraux’s sides, provokes him, stimulates the curator’s enthusiasm.  But our tea, which was to be served in Pauline’s apartment, is cancelled for lack of time and we all gather again for champagne in the salon, before the Rothschilds and Malraux go to the library to receive the men of the village and the estate.  And altogether in character, Malraux’s query to us afterwards:  “When I questioned him about his problems why did that man answer: “oh! For my part when I have concerns I confide them to God”?  Was he dubious of my goodwill or of power in general?”

 

Late in the evening dinner is served us once again in the Napoleon III pavilion.  With the help of an excellent 1870 Bordeaux, conversation is of a general nature, one moment burlesque - Malraux and Henry vie to find a phrase that would serve to suggest to a troublesome guest, while preserving all the appearance of great politeness, that his departure would be most appreciated - the next moment more personal.

 

Malraux: “One day Corbin will be tired of writing about others.  He will write about himself.  It will be the book of the century.”

 

Pauline: “Oh! How I wish that book were written here.”

 

Corbin: “Do we not always write of ourselves?”

 

And when Pauline asks Malraux if he ever takes a moment’s rest, he answers, turning to Madeleine, “Only when I can hear her at her piano”.

 

The evening finishes very late in an atmosphere of intimate and euphoric camaraderie, leading Malraux to exclaim, as we are all making our way back to our apartments: “You’ll see, Corbin, the next time we meet each other it will be on the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

 

  

 

EDITORIAL

 

During the last decade of the twentieth century the francophone cultural landscape endured an avalanche of publications consecrated to angels.  This was, in large part, the effect of an editorial trend imported from across the Atlantic - part of the “New Age” current, a neo-spiritualist and syncretic movement which was supposed to answer the aspirations of a humanity on the march towards the famous “age of Aquarius”, promised land of a new golden-age.  Amongst stories of celestial apparitions on the threshold of death, rituals of invocation of the Hebrew names of the Angels, neo-Cabbalistic manuals purporting to lead one to a better understanding of oneself and the future, and confessions of the sort “my guardian angel exists, I met him”, the reader no longer knew whether he was coming or going.  It got to the point that cycles of conferences were proposed with titles such as: “how to rise to the level of one’s angel…” or seminars in which the one might learn to enter into dialogue with one’s angel and to follow judicious advice in order to “to optimize one’s form” for the greatest benefit of the business enterprise of course.  As always with the apparition of a neo-spirituality everything is dressed in angelic colours: the quest for magical and occult powers, astrology via planetary angels, the symbolism of colors, natural medicines, etc.  The success of this trend was such that for several years angels served as material for literature, cinema and publicity, for high culture as well as for the perfume industry, invading public billboards and magazine pages.  What is left of all that?  Not much, thank God, sthe truth of the matter being that that which is syncretic and composite cannot last, all intellectual bricolage containing in itself its own end-term.

It remains that this “angelophile trend” of the end of the XXth century is a singular socio-cultural phenomenon, appealing to the nostalgia and expectations of contemporary humanity, lost between a universe it is leaving and another which has not yet come into being: nostalgia for a spiritual universe populated by creatures of light, pure and beneficent, nostalgia for an “enchanted” world, seeded by the Absolute; expectant awaiting of mediating figures capable of raising the soul, of coming to its aid, of delivering it from this world of shadows, of guiding it upon the path of knowledge and, failing this, of interceding in its favor.  The angels have often taken the place of a God considered dead or removed; a God of whom the image has become so blurred we no longer know very well what it is or what it does.

In fact, this return of the angel harkened to no God, to no revealed tradition; it most often presented itself as disconnected from the Biblical and Koranic foundation if only by means of borrowings from the Jewish Cabbala and the Occult Sciences.  In connection with the primacy accorded to the experience of the encounter with the angel, this approach found itself confirmed by the emergence of an iconography privileging the Greco-roman image of the nude Adonis or of the winged child.  The doctrinal void and the syncretic bricolage characteristic of the “New Age” made the angel appear as “pure form”, an envelope susceptible of being filled by the aspirations towards “another life” and spiritual understanding.  It would no longer be the Revelation that would give the latter its meaning, but the individual who would tailor it to his or her own measure.  There results a formidable ambiguity: as many phantasms and as much will to power can project themselves upon the angelic form as authentic aspirations.  Angels have sometimes even been assimilated to extraterrestrials or “superior strangers”.

The easily understandable need for a world populated by beings of light, attentive to humanity, is as it were the inverted positive image of the blackness of souls, of the pervading moroseness of the contemporary world of which we confusedly fear the disastrous end.  But the aspiration to celestial life, to spiritual protection, to true knowledge, is obviously not [in itself] enough to restore a traditional perspective, and even less an angelology.

The moment has thus come to renew the examination of the figure of the angel, placing it once again in the religious structure upon which it depends, revealing both its spiritual resources and the intellectual stakes involved.  Is it not urgent that we change visions of the world, and render to Reality all of its depth, its complexity and its mystery by renewing the abandoned relationship between the human and the divine?  Philosopher, Orientalist, specialist of theosophies in Islamic Iran, Henry Corbin (1903-1978), to whom this volume is dedicated upon the occasion of the centennial of his birth, has shown the way in exemplary fashion.  Corbin never ceased forcefully proclaiming: there can be no real monotheism without angelology, without proclamation of the divine transcendence by celestial messengers, without the manifestation of God in multiple angelic theophanies.  Inversely, on the anthropological level, there can be no true spiritual knowledge without the soul’s ascension and encounter with its angel.

There is also an essential point that must be underlined: angelology concerns the three great monotheistic religions, it is the privileged terrain of an intellectual labour in the service of a true oecumenical spirituality.  Effectively, for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the angels constitute the first creation, the “intelligible” foundation of the world of the psyche and the senses; this angelic world provides the image of an ordered hierarchical universe composed of multiple degrees of reality, to which correspond states of consciousness that are themselves degrees of knowledge.  For each angel is a mirror of the Divinity, defined by that which it receives of the divine light, and that which it transmits.  This “world” full of [spiritual] “Intelligences” is intimately linked to the cosmos and consequently to humanity which is in its keeping.

An eminent form of the manifestation of God in Judaism and Islam, the angel is subordinated to the incarnated Verb in Christianity.  Herald of the mysteries of the Revelation, the angel relays the word of Christ and places himself in its service.  Prototype of spiritual life, channel for praise and glorification, the celestial being that takes nourishment in God is the model which human beings devoted to the contemplative life must imitate.  Initiator, guide, interpreter of spiritual visions, the angel is the guardian and servant of the soul, - supporting and sustaining it in its daily battle against the Adversary – who, the mission once accomplished, knows to withdraw in self effacement before the divine Presence.

This said, the monotheistic traditions do not have a monopoly on mediating beings.  From a historical point of view, the angel is a Semitic figure in origin and development, it is not implausible that it has been influenced by Indo-European traditions, notably Persian and Hellenistic.  On the metaphysical level, we may go even further: if the Absolute manifests itself in multiple mediating figures, these are necessarily present everywhere, under diverse names and forms, regardless of the spiritual galaxy in which one is situated and which defines their nature, their personality, and their functions.  It is therefore legitimate to broach the oriental traditions and to integrate within this volume the study of Buddhist divinities, in an altogether stimulating comparative perspective.

Against the narrowly defined fundamentalisms and the ambient neo-spiritualism, it is important to engage in useful work drawing from the sources that are the great Traditions and to clear the way for a true oecumenical spirituality, showing the importance of mediating beings and their symbolic fecundity, restoring the indissoluble link between traditions and revelation, between degrees of knowledge, levels of reality and theophanies.

 

The Direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Faith of Henry Corbin “Earth-Angel-Woman”

 

Jean Moncellon

 

Henry Corbin’s Faith is the faith of a Gnostic, for whom gnosis is “a kind of knowledge that is salutary in itself”.

This Faith is “Earth-Angel-Woman”, as he would write, the 24^th of April 1932, on a lake shore in Dalécarlie:  “All of that, is one single thing which I adore and which is in this forest.  The twilight on the lake, my Annunciation.  The mountain: a line.  Listen! Something is going to happen, yes.  The anticipation is immense.”

The Earth in question, the Land of Henry Corbin’s Faith is that Celestial World, “the intermediary world between Heaven and Earth.

It is the world of the Angel.

The Angel.

The day of Henry Corbin’s death, Mircea Eliade noted in his journal, dated the 7^th of October 1978: “Henry didn’t suffer.  He died with serenity so certain was he that his guardian angel was waiting for him.”

Of course, we do well to appreciate the particular nature of this “guardian angel”, who is, for Henry Corbin, the “angel of the incarnated soul”, and, in the circumstance of his death, ve