Anam Cara

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Epub ISBN: 9781446436271

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DIVINE BEAUTY

A BANTAM BOOK : 9780553813098

Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press,

a division of Transworld Publishers

PRINTING HISTORY

Bantam Press edition published 2003

Bantam edition published 2004

5 7 9 10 8 6

Copyright © John O’Donohue 2003

The right of John O’Donohue to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The author and publishers are grateful for permission to quote from the following: lines from Roy Campbell, St John of the Cross (Ad Donker Publishers); excerpt from Before Time Could Change Them by C.P. Cavafy, Copyright © 2001 by Theoharis C. Theoharis, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.; Denis Devlin, Collected Poems, Dedalus Press, 1989; poems of W.S. Graham, by kind permission of Michael and Margaret Snow; Geoffrey Hill, lines from ‘Tenebrae’, in Collected Poems (Penguin Books, 1985, first published in Tenebrae, 1978) Copyright © Geoffrey Hill, 1978, 1985; Li-Young Lee, excerpt from ‘Little Round’, from Book of My Nights, copyright © 2001 by Li-Young Lee, reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd; two poems from Lorca and Jiménez: Selected Poems, translated by Robert Bly, Beacon Press, Boston, 1973, by kind permission of Robert Bly; lines from ‘The Confession of Saint Patrick’ by John Skinner, copyright © 1998 by John Skinner, used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.; lines from ‘Elegy 9’ from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, copyright © 1982 by Stephen Mitchell, used by permission of Random House, Inc.; Wallace Stevens, ‘The Deathbed as Altar’, from Sunday Morning, reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber; and extracts from the poems of W.B. Yeats, used by permission of A.P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Michael B. Yeats. The publishers have made every reasonable effort to contact the copyright owners of the quotations reproduced in this book. In the few cases where they have been unsuccessful they invite copyright holders to contact them direct.

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This book is for my lovely niece

Triona O’Donohue

As she sets out into the world:

May Beauty bless her every breath and footstep

C

ONTENTS

Introduction

1 THE CALL OF BEAUTY

2 WHERE DOES BEAUTY DWELL?

3 THE MUSIC OF BEAUTY

4 THE COLOUR OF BEAUTY

5 THE JOY OF SHAPES THAT DANCE

6 IMAGINATION: BEAUTY’S ENTRANCE

7 ATTRACTION : THE EROS OF BEAUTY

8 THE BEAUTY OF THE FLAW

9 THE WHITE SHADOW: BEAUTY AND DEATH

10 GOD IS BEAUTY

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Bibliography

Certainly many instances of earthly beauty – a song, the twilit sea, the tone of the lyre, the voice of a boy, a verse, a statue, a column, a garden, a single flower – all possess the divine faculty of making man hearken unto the innermost and outermost boundaries of his existence, and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the lofty art of Orpheus was esteemed to have the power of diverting the streams from their beds and changing their courses, or luring the wild beasts of the forest with tender dominance, of arresting the cattle a-browse upon the meadows and moving them to listen, caught in the dream and enchanted, the dream-wish of all art: the world compelled to listen, ready to receive the song and its salvation.

HERMANN BROCH, The Death of Virgil

and in thy voice I catch