Poetry and Mysticism
His early poetry included a book of epicedia, or funeral poems (1668), an epithalamium (wedding poem, 1668), and a eulogy that praised a literary society called Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft ("Fruit-bringing society", 1670). As Gerhart Hoffmeister writes, "the acclaim he received made him feel like a 'second Opitz' – perhaps an early sign that he was becoming overly self-confident or even delusional before a grave illness (typhoid fever?) struck him in 1669."
In 1669, Kuhlmann experienced a prophetic vision. He was enrolled at the University of Jena (1670-1) with the purpose of studying law, but he spent his time reading and writing mystical texts, and compiled an anthology of sonnets in Himmlische Liebes-Küsse (Heavenly Love-Kisses, 1671), which depict the union of a human soul with Jesus Christ. (a modern verse poem form has been derived from XL1 of this anthology). Kuhlmann seems to have suffered from depression, and he was reported to have covered his walls with reflecting "turkish papers" to brighten his room in order to be transformed into a mystic mood.
He received the imperial laurels (poeta laureates) in 1672 after receiving attention for his paraphrases of the Song of Songs and other mystical sources.
At his native Breslau, he further neglected his studies and read some nine hundred books, inspiring him to write his own comprehensive history of the world, called Lehrreicher Geschicht-Herold (Instructive History-Messenger, 1672).
At Leiden, where he was about to defend his law dissertation, he was converted to the mysticism of Jakob Böhme in 1673. Kuhlmann proclaimed himself a millenniarist, "son of the Son of God," and missionary to men of all faiths.
He unsuccessfully attempted, both in Western and Eastern Europe — including visits to London and the East to attempt an audience with Mehmed IV, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire — to find adherents to his ideals, which included religious union and utopianism, upon which he expounded in his De Monarchia Jesuelitica (1682). His poetry was written with the messianic goal of having Protestant powers and Ottomans join forces to destroy Catholic Europe, the House of Habsburg, and the Pope and establish the "Kingdom of Jesus."
Read more about this topic: Quirinus Kuhlmann
Famous quotes containing the words poetry and/or mysticism:
“Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface, not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil’s poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.”
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