On Form
XXX. On Form
1. O divine form, who art actual
and in Whom there resides no material being!
Forgive us and protect us from evil.
2. With respect to <His> goodness, God is form,
in virtue of <His act of> informing and the <thing> informed
by means of bonifying and the bonified.
3. Love would not be a form,
were it to exist without a lover
possessed of equal worth.[1]
4. God has lent form to the entire world
in terms of <its> length, breadth and depth,
as well as in those of a circle that is round.
5. God has lent form to all that exists
in the nature that He took from man,
for whom He created all things.
6. Had God not wished to become incarnate,
His dignities could no longer find repose
in His creation.
7. Form could err no more
were it, by itself, eternally to fashion its fulfilment
in <the act of> infinitising.
8. Were form to be great in terms of its existence
yet meagre in terms of its operation,
it would no longer be great in terms of its informing.
9. It is better to form a worthy thought
than to earn gold or silver,
or to wear noble garments.
10. No being is possessed of form or fashioning
wherefrom action is absent,
which < action> arises therein by virtue of difference.
[1] The term “worth” or valor (lit. “value”), as used here, evokes the counterpoint established by Ramon Llull to the troubadour notion of pretz (in Occitan). Llull wrote an entire narrativised chapter (Ch. 48) on Valor in his Romanç d’Evast e Blaquerna, a chapter in which the eponymous hero argues, among other things, that what the world considers to be Worth is, in fact, its contrary, namely, Unworth (or Desvalor, a term possibly of Llull’s own coinage).