Description
Product Description
Readers of Frederick Franck's The Zen of Seeing will share his delight in discovering the Western mysticism of the 17th century p
...
oet, Angelus Silesius, who described his four days and nights of illumination in epigrams published as The Cherubinic Wanderer. Franck has translated more than half of these deceptively simple verses, which are the most accessible and articulate expression of pure mystical illumination that any Westerner has bequeathed to us. Franck shows how the Silesian poet's verses form a bridge between Eastern and Western mysticism by providing a running commentary of observations by the ancient Zen masters of China and Japan.
Review
Few titles stand out for literary quality, charismatic insights...the verses of Angelus Silesuis are marked by beauty, simple vision... --
Malcolm Boyd
It makes a telling case for our considering him a bridge between East and West --
Professor James Luther Adams, Harvard Divinity School
About the Author
Frederick Franck is an extraordinarily versatile polymath. During his life, which has spanned most of the twentieth century, he has been fortunate to have met, and even worked with, some of its spiritual giants.
Born in Maastricht, the Netherlands, in 1909, he studied medicine in his native country, graduated in dentistry in Belgium and acquired a degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. He practiced privately in London, but spent his weekends with a group of Quakers working for the unemployed miners in Wales. In London, in the late 1930s, he began studying art seriously.
He came to America in 1939 and received his American degree from the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught Oral Surgery and Anesthesiology until 1944, when he went to Australia where he served as consultant with the then Netherlands Indies Government until the end of World War II. He returned to the United States, where he became a citizen in 1945. He practiced dentistry in New York Citybut for only two days a week. The rest of the time he wrote and painted in his studio on Bleecker Street, which according to legend, had once housed Edgar Allen Poe. He became successful as a painter and had regular one-man exhibitions in New York, Paris, and Amsterdam.
From 1958 to 1961 he served as oral surgeon on the medical staff of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon, where he founded a dental and oral surgery clinic on behalf of MEDICO-CARE. His book, Days with Albert Schweitzer, was praised by The New York Times as the best book on Schweitzer to date and was translated into ten languages.
In 1963 he was awarded an Honary Doctorate in Fine Arts by the University of Pittsburgh.
On reading Pope John XXIIIs opening speech to the Second Vatican Council, Franck felt it would be the spiritual watershed of the century. He flew to Rome and was the only artist to draw all four sessions from 1962 to 1965. About 80 of these drawings now belong to the St. Louis Priory, another 100 are in the collections of the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Pope John XXIII awarded him a medal of appreciation for these drawings. It arrived as the radio was broadcasting the news of the popes death. Franck flew to Rome to draw this genius of the heart one last time, on his bier.
In the late 1960s, Franck moved to the countryside to concentrate on his drawing, painting, sculpture, and writing. Today, he and his wife, Claske, live in Warwick, New York, where they have converted the ruins of an eighteenth century watermill into an oasis of peace and sanity called Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth). This transreligious sanctuary, with its gardens and numerous sculptures by Franck, is dedicated to Pope John XXIII, Albert Schweitzer, and the Japanese Buddhist sage Daisetz T. Suzuki. This quiet, non-sectarian, sacred space has been made available for Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Shinto services. Its exceptional acoustics make it idea
Read more