'The low terrene observed with keenest eye...'. Vondelpark, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In Amsterdam for a day or so filled with Golden Sunshine, I was drawn out to pretty central Vondelpark, founded in 1865. It was named for the perhaps greatest Dutch poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679). Just before John Milton wrote his famous Paradise Lost, Vondel had completed his own Lucifer in 1653. In it he portrays the fall of the Archangel.
The play begins with the debriefing of Apollion who has been sent by Lucifer 'that he might gain for him / A better sense of Adam's bliss'. He's observed the 'low terrene' with keenest eye', and he regards that earthly Garden jealously in comparison to his own heaven:
"Though high our Heaven may seem, 'tis far too low,/
For what I saw with mine own eyes deceives /
Me not. The world's delights, yea, Eden's fields /
Alone, our Paradise excel."
These lines - albeit in Dutch - popped up in my mind as I was strolling in these Glades. The English translation of Vondel's Lucifer was made in 1898 by Charles Leonard van Noppen (1868-1935). Van Noppen was a Dutch emigrant to the US and he became there the authority on Dutch literature. His translation of Lucifer was highly acclaimed; it was even set to music by Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937) and performed in Carnegie Hall, New York. Amsterdam has its own Concertgebouw, of course, but whether Vondel was ever musically performed there I don't know.
My view of this pristine scene was enhanced by a Modern Eve and her grooming Adam. And that gave rise to my question: was it necessary to comb one's hair in that Prelapsarian State?
'The low terrene observed with keenest eye...'. Vondelpark, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In Amsterdam for a day or so filled with Golden Sunshine, I was drawn out to pretty central Vondelpark, founded in 1865. It was named for the perhaps greatest Dutch poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679). Just before John Milton wrote his famous Paradise Lost, Vondel had completed his own Lucifer in 1653. In it he portrays the fall of the Archangel.
The play begins with the debriefing of Apollion who has been sent by Lucifer 'that he might gain for him / A better sense of Adam's bliss'. He's observed the 'low terrene' with keenest eye', and he regards that earthly Garden jealously in comparison to his own heaven:
"Though high our Heaven may seem, 'tis far too low,/
For what I saw with mine own eyes deceives /
Me not. The world's delights, yea, Eden's fields /
Alone, our Paradise excel."
These lines - albeit in Dutch - popped up in my mind as I was strolling in these Glades. The English translation of Vondel's Lucifer was made in 1898 by Charles Leonard van Noppen (1868-1935). Van Noppen was a Dutch emigrant to the US and he became there the authority on Dutch literature. His translation of Lucifer was highly acclaimed; it was even set to music by Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937) and performed in Carnegie Hall, New York. Amsterdam has its own Concertgebouw, of course, but whether Vondel was ever musically performed there I don't know.
My view of this pristine scene was enhanced by a Modern Eve and her grooming Adam. And that gave rise to my question: was it necessary to comb one's hair in that Prelapsarian State?