Rhythmus de incarnatione Christi
Alan of Lille (1120–1202)
A poem about how the seven liberal arts are related to the incarnation of Christ.
Rhythmus I: De incarnatione Christi Rhytmus perelegans
How this divine work sang, with great ingenuity, that it had scorned all the rules of the liberal arts.
Grammar.
The Word the Father ever speaks
takes on a verb no grammar owns,
while mocking reason as it seeks,
while cheating nature to the bones:
the noun must bear a foreign case,
oblique, though nominative by right,
and action, yielding up its place,
conceives a passion in this rite.
In this coupling of the Word
every rule stands stunned and stirred.
Rhetoric.
Estranged from nature is the name
now newly given and newly known,
when into God’s own right and claim
the state of man is drawn and shown.
New the trope that figure wears,
new the metaphor here unfurled,
new the color language bears,
new construction shakes the word.
In this coupling of the Word
every rule stands stunned and stirred.
Arithmetic.
While never parted from the one,
oneness itself is yet made new;
while it yields to one alone,
otherness is gathered too:
into the many sameness turns,
into the same, plurality,
yet still the simple never spurns
the bound that holds its unity.
In this coupling of the Word
every rule stands stunned and stirred.
Music.
While Maker and the thing he made
in wondrous union now unite,
what law binds them, what cord, what braid,
what order governs, what is right,
what clasp, what joining, what is laid,
what pin holds fast, what makes them one,
music’s own proportion, dismayed,
stands stunned to see its rule undone.
In this coupling of the Word
every rule stands stunned and stirred.
Geometry.
The geometer, by his own art betrayed,
finds his measuring is unmade,
while the measureless is weighed
and ‘neath earth’s measure low is laid.
Into the straight line curves are bent,
the circle’s arc turns and gives way,
the curve still holds the sphere’s extent,
and by that sphere is held, they say.
In this coupling of the Word
every rule stands stunned and stirred.
Dialectic.1
No topic now can hold its place
among the topics it once knew;
its own ground, lost without a trace,
falls silent, to itself untrue:
it goes tongueless, stands amazed,
in its own proper terms betrayed,
and by its own deceit abased,
logic reddens and grows afraid.
In this coupling of the Word
every rule stands stunned and stirred.
Astronomy.
The sun’s own light, by cloud concealed,
beneath the cloud’s own veil kept dim,
takes on our flesh as in a shield,
yet in that light shines not through him:
our sun bends down to its eclipse,
though risen from a Virgin still,
in failing light, an effect equips
brightness hidden, dark, and chill.
In this coupling of the Word
every rule stands stunned and stirred.