Dear Peter,

What a curious variety of definitions of mysticism! They range from  
spiritualism to divine Love. I'm puzzled.

Diana

Sent from my iPod

On Mar 24, 2010, at 7:35 PM, Peter Montgomery <[log in to unmask]>  
wrote:

> "It would be easy, but not particularly profitable, to classify  
> Williams as
> a "mystic." He knew, and could put into words, states of  
> consciousness of a
> mystical kind. and the sort of elusive experience which many people  
> have
> once or twice in a life-time. (I am thinking of certain passages in  
> The
> Place of the Lion, but there is no novel without them.) And if  
> "mysticism"
> means a belief in the supernatural, and in its operation in the  
> natural
> world, then Williams was a mystic: but that is only belief in what  
> adherents
> of every religion in the world profess to believe. His is a  
> mysticism, not
> of curiosity, or of the lust for power, but of Love; and Love, in the
> meaning which it had for Williams-as readers of his study of Dante,  
> called
> The Figure of Beatrice, will know-is a deity of whom most human beings
> seldom see more than the shadow. But in his novels he is as much  
> concerned
> with quite ordinary human beings, with their struggle among the  
> shadows,
> their weaknesses and self-deceptions, their occasional moments of
> understanding, as with the Vision of Love towards which creation  
> strives. "
>
> Intro to ALL HALLOWS EVE, 1948.
>