Table Of ContentEsoteric Islam in
Modern French Th ought
i
New Directions in Religion and Literature
Th is series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and
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in the fi eld. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as
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speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new
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Series editors: Emma Mason and Mark Knight
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES:
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Do the Gods Wear Capes? , Ben Saunders
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Dante and the Sense of Transgression , William Franke
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John Cage and Buddhist Ecopoetics, Peter Jaeger
Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse , Samantha Zacher
Forgiveness in Victorian Literature , Richard Hughes Gibson
Th e Gospel According to the Novelist, Magdalena M a˛ czy n´ ska
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Th e Gospel According to David Foster Wallace, Adam S. Miller
Pentecostal Modernism , Stephen Shapiro and Philip Barnard
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ii
Faith in Poetry , Michael D. Hurley
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iii
Esoteric Islam in
Modern French Th ought
Massignon, Corbin, Jambet
Ziad Elmarsafy
v
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Ziad Elmarsafy, 2021
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vi
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations, Transliterations and Translations xii
Introducing the Guest 1
1 Louis Massignon: In the Beginning Was Desire 15
2 Henry Corbin: A Certain Vision 59
3 Christian Jambet’s Resurrections 93
Epilogue: On Being True to Oneself: Esoteric Authenticities 151
Bibliography 157
Index 169
vii
Acknowledgements
Th is book started out as something very diff erent. It metamorphosed
into its current form over several years, institutions, jobs, cities,
discussions, emails, meals, drinks, concerts, operas, and occasional
quarrels with colleagues and friends in France, the Netherlands, the
UK, and the USA. Th is section bears witness to my immense gratitude
to those named in the following lines, as well as those who, for a
variety of reasons, are not.
Th e project would never have come this far, nor indeed would it
have begun, without the initial persuasive approach of the editors of
Bloomsbury’s New Directions in Religion and Literature series;
namely, Emma Mason and Mark Knight. Th eir patience and support,
along with those of David Avital, Lucy Brown, Ben Doyle, Sara Bryant,
and the rest of the editorial and production teams at Bloomsbury,
kept the project alive even when I wanted to give up. Th e fact that they
accepted a book so unlike the one that I proposed years ago is a
testament to their broad vision and sense of possibility. Joanna de
Groot’s insight and intelligence were instrumental in transforming
the project from an amorphous mass of ideas and themes into
something more structured and readable. Arthur Bradley was an
inspiring friend and careful reader from start to fi nish. Christian
Jambet gave generously and sincerely of his time and counsel, both by
correspondence and in person, even on the day when France won the
World Cup. Th e impact of Derek Attridge’s lessons about creativity,
reading, and responsibility, and Adam Phillips’s injunctions about
grandiosity and against self- betrayal, will be legible everywhere in this
work. I am deeply indebted to them all.
My new colleagues, friends, and neighbours at King’s College
London and in London itself have been a wonderful source of
viii
Acknowledgements ix
companionship, information, and humour. In particular, I would like
to thank Russell Goulbourne, Michael Luck, Paul Readman, Johanna
Malt, Patrick Ffrench, Raphael Woolf, Max Saunders, Rebecca Dean
and Rayne Small for their sage and practical advice and a general
lift ing of spirits, as well as some timely interventions that kept things
going when they would otherwise have stopped. Th e technological
assistance of the King’s IT team over the past four years is hereby
gratefully acknowledged.
Engaging feedback from audiences at King’s College London, the
University of Chicago, the University of Leiden, the University of
Manchester, and the University of York helped to mark the stark contrast
between those parts of the project that worked and those that did not.
Librarians at York, the Maughan Library at King’s, Senate House, the
British Library, and the Biblioth è que nationale de France, all helped to
ensure that the parts that worked continued to do so. I am profoundly
grateful to my hosts and interlocutors at these locations, especially
Anne Vila, Daniel Desormeaux, Matthew Campbell, James Williams,
and Santanu Das, all of whom kept me talking; Kenneth Clarke, who
sorted out my misunderstandings of the f edeli d’amore ; David Ricks,
who embodies the term, ‘Master of Illumination’; Elaine Morley, whose
initiation into hermeneutics was critical in setting the direction of the
project; Th omas Pavel, whose use of the word ‘wisdom’ is always
instructive; Kazuyo Murata and Carool Kersten, who both taught me a
great deal about the reach and limits of intellectual beauty; and Martin
Stokes, whose presence remains a constant reminder of the powers of
music, language, and spirituality. Phiroze Vasunia’s and Andrew Laird’s
kind comments about an early reading of al-Suhraward ī were essential
to keeping him and his readers in the present volume. Matthew Bell set
me straight about hidden aspects of Goethe, while Michael Silk shed
light on the Orphics. I have learned much about Catholicism from
Sanja Perovic, Robert Priest and, indirectly, from David Todd. Th e long-
delayed debate with Wen-Chin Ouyang about the relative merits of
