Selections From The Cherubinic Wanderer

Selections From The Cherubinic Wanderer

by Angelus Silesius


To many of those acquainted with the literature of mysticism the name of Angelus Silesius has a familiar sound and yet recalls no familiar image. It appears and re-appears in footnotes or attached to a wandering verse. It is a name without a local habitation. It appears to have been first introduced to the notice of English readers by R. A. Vaughan in his lively, informative, but somewhat exasperating mid-Victorian dialogue, Hours with the Mystics. Vaughan, however, was in doubt as to the identity of its owner and repeated the error of the German critic Schrader in denying that it was the pseudonym of the Silesian convert to Roman Catholicism, Johannes Scheffler. His estimation, moreover, of the work which has made the name of Angelus Silesius memorable was tinged with contempt, for while acknowledging the pithiness of the epigrams and rhyming sentences of the Cherubinic Wanderer, he qualified his appreciation by the stricture that many of them were "as destitute of sense as all are of poetry…”