Ruysbroeck and the Mystics: with selections from Ruysbroeck — Inside the Classic

A Clumsy Author and His Unexpected Power

Maeterlinck does not hide Ruysbroeck's limitations. He calls him 'clumsy,' notes his 'strange puerilities,' and observes that he has 'no order, no logic of the schools.' Yet this very lack of polish, Maeterlinck suggests, allows Ruysbroeck to break through conventional piety into something more direct. The early chapters are dutiful but flat; the later ones abandon structure for a flowing, incantatory style. Maeterlinck's own prose mirrors this shift: he begins with measured criticism, then gradually adopts a more urgent tone as he describes the mystic's ascent. The reader is invited to watch Ruysbroeck's language transform from instruction into something like prayer.

The Paradox of Contemplative Language

Ruysbroeck's descriptions of union with God rely on a series of paradoxes: 'poor in ourselves, but rich in God; hungry and thirsty in ourselves, satiated and full of wine in God; laborious in ourselves, in God enjoying perfect rest.' Maeterlinck highlights how the mystic uses opposition to convey a state beyond reason. The phrase 'swim against the stream' captures the effort of contemplative surrender. Ruysbroeck insists that this possession is known 'by experience only,' not by intellect. Maeterlinck's introduction thus becomes a guide to reading Ruysbroeck's language as a record of spiritual practice, not a logical treatise.

From Pious Commonplaces to Ecstatic Vision

The excerpts show a clear change in pace. The early sections are methodical, almost instructional: 'If we have faith, hope, and love, we have received God.' Later, the sentences lengthen and become more complex, piling clause upon clause: 'when in love we die to all things, when in ignorance and obscurity we die to all the notice of the world, we are wrought and reformed by the eternal Word.' Maeterlinck notes that this shift is not accidental; it reflects Ruysbroeck's movement from preparing the soul to describing its transformation. The reader experiences the text's acceleration as a kind of ascent, from careful steps to a rush of vision.

Maeterlinck's introduction is best read alongside the selected passages from Ruysbroeck, paying attention to how the mystic's prose changes when he moves from doctrine to description of union. The translator's note explains that this essay originally prefaced Maeterlinck's French translation of The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage. Readers interested in the interplay between critical distance and spiritual empathy will find Maeterlinck's voice a compelling counterpoint to Ruysbroeck's own.

There’s a particular ache in watching Maeterlinck trace Ruysbroeck’s stumbling toward the unsayable—that moment when piety gives way to an almost broken stammer of union. I remember feeling that same vertigo while drifting through Modern Skepticism A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society — Text and Context, where doubt itself becomes a kind of trembling prayer. Both books leave me with the quiet strange comfort of language failing honestly.