< medieval Latin Antinomi the name of the sect ( < Greek ἀντί against + νόμος law) + -an suffix.
A. adj. Opposed to the obligatoriness of the moral law; of or pertaining to the antinomians.
B. n. One who maintains that the moral law is not binding upon Christians, under the ‘law of grace.’ spec. One of a sect which appeared in Germany in 1535, alleged to hold this opinion. (OED)
"'Gitanjali', full of addresses to a nameless god who is lover, consoler, and friend, gives Tagore's mysticism a melancholy, quietist feel. But the Indian novelist Amit Chaudhuri, who provides a critical preface to 'The Essential Tagore', places Tagore 'in the lineage of Nietzsche, Whitman, Lawrence, and others who made a similar rebuttal of negation', and the comparison is a useful reminder of the radical, even antinomian side of Tagore's spirituality. This is the Tagore we see in a poem like 'The Restless One', which pictures the divine as pure motion:
You race on, race on, furiously you race
Wild, running apace,
Never turning your face,
Whatever you have, you scatter with both hands as you go."
- Adam Kirsch, "Modern Magus: What did the West see in Rabindranath Tagore?", 30 May 2011 The New Yorker
No, I'm not quite sure how that poem is either radical or antinomian.
No comments:
Post a Comment