Song | Diabolus Absconditus |
Artist | Deathspell Omega |
Album | Diabolus Absconditus |
(“Death is the most terrible thing; And to maintain its works is what requires the greatest strength” – Hegel) | |
Would it all be absurd? | |
Or might it make some kind of sense? | |
I've made myself sick wondering about it, | |
I awake in the morning – | |
Just the way millions do, | |
Millions of boys, girls, infants and old men, | |
Their slumber dissipated forever... | |
These millions, those slumbers have no meaning. | |
A hidden meaning? | |
Hidden, yes, “obviously”! | |
But if nothing has any meaning, there's no point in my doing anything. | |
I'll beg off. | |
I'll use any deceitful means to get out of it, | |
In the end I'll have to let go and sell myself to meaninglessness, nonsense: | |
That is man's killer; | |
The one who tortures and kills, not a glimmer of hope left. | |
But if there is meaning? | |
Today I don't know what it is. | |
Tomorrow? | |
Tomorrow, who can tell me? | |
Am I going to find out what it is? | |
No, I can't conceive of any “meaning” other than “my” anguish, and as for that, | |
I know all about it. | |
And for the time being: nonsense. | |
Monsieur Nonsense is writing and understands that he is mad. | |
It's atrocious. | |
But his madness, this meaninglessness – how “serious” it has become all of a sudden! – | |
Might that indeed be “meaningful”? | |
My life has only a meaning insofar as I lack one: oh, but let me be mad! | |
Make something of all this he who is able to, | |
Understand it he who is dying, | |
And there the living self is, knowing not why, | |
It's teeth chattering in the lashing wind: | |
The immensity, the night engulfs it and, | |
All on purpose, that living self is there just in order... “not to know”. | |
But as for God? | |
God, if he knew, would be a swine. | |
He would entirely grasp the idea... but what would there be of the human about him? | |
Beyond, beyond everything... And yet farther, and even farther still... | |
HIMSELF, in an ecstasy, above an emptiness... | |
Cognitive activity: God comes to be known in ways that originate in God solely | |
God is nothing if He is not, in every sense, the surpassing God; | |
In the sense of common everyday being, in the sense of dread, | |
Horror and impurity, and, finally, in the sense of nothing... | |
He is mystery, indeed he is the absolute mystery | |
Divine disclosure is in direct proportion | |
To the degree of divine concealment | |
Intensification of revelation equals | |
To increase of god's hiddenness | |
Descent of the Deus Absconditus | |
The unreservedly open spirit – open to death, to torment, to joy -, | |
The open spirit, open and dying, | |
Suffering and dying and happy, stands in a certain veiled light: | |
That light is divine. | |
And the cry that breaks from a twisted mouth may perhaps twist him who utters it, | |
But what he speaks is an immense alleluia, flung into endless silence, and lost there. | |
Shall my only victory be available in conscience? | |
Why is absence the proof, when I demand palpable presence? | |
There is enough light to enlighten the elect and enough darkness to humble them | |
There is enough darkness to blind the reprobate and enough clarity to condemn them, | |
And make them without excuse | |
Our perception is subject to the fissure of concupiscence | |
Woestruck am I realizing that the light cast on this | |
Chiaroscuro world is partial and selective | |
Division, election and predestination | |
Enabled by grace or left to one's own device... | |
Anguish only is sovereign absolute. | |
The sovereign is a king no more: it dwells low-biding in big cities. | |
It knits itself up in silence, obscuring it's sorrow. | |
Crouching thick-wrapped, there it waits, | |
Lies waiting for the advent of Him who shall strike a general terror; | |
But meanwhile and even so sorrow scornfully mocks at all that comes to pass, at all there is. | |
From very high above a kind of stillness swept down upon me and froze me | |
It was as though I were borne aloft in a flight of headless and unbodied angels | |
Shaped from the broad swooping of wings, but it was simpler than that | |
I became unhappy and felt painfully forsaken, as one is when in the presence of God | |
She was seated, she held one leg stuck up in the air, to open her crack | |
Yet wider she used her fingers to draw the folds of skin apart | |
And so her “old rag and ruin” loured at me, hairy and pink, | |
Just as full of life as some loathsome squid | |
“Why”, I stammered in a subdued tone, “Why are you doing that?” | |
“You can see for yourself”, she said, “I'm God” | |
No use laying it all up to irony when I say of her that she is GOD. | |
But GOD figured as a public whore and gone crazy – | |
That, viewed through the optic of “philosophy”, makes no sense at all. | |
I don't mind having my sorrow derided if derided it has to be, | |
He only will grasp me aright whose heart holds a wound that is an incurable wound, | |
Who never, for anything, in any way, would be cured of it... | |
And what man, if so wounded, would ever be willing to “die” of any other hurt? | |
If there is nothing that surpasses our powers and our understanding, | |
If we do not acknowledge something greater than ourselves, | |
Greater than we are despite ourselves, | |
Something which at all costs must not be, | |
Then we do not reach the insensate moment towards which we strive | |
With all that is in our power and which at the same time | |
We exert with all our power to stave off | |
I can utter no word, O my God, unless I be permitted by Thee | |
And can move in no direction until I obtain Thy sanction | |
It is Thou, O my God, Who hast called me into being through the power | |
Of Thy might, and has endued me with Thy grace to manifest Thy Cause | |
The act whereby being – existence – is bestowed upon us | |
Is an unbearable surpassing of being, | |
An act no less unbearable than that of dying. | |
And since, in death, being is taken away from us at the same time it is given us, | |
We must seek for it in the feeling of dying, | |
In those unbearable moments when it seems to us that we are dying | |
Because the existence in us, | |
During these interludes, | |
Exists through nothing but a sustaining and ruinous excess, | |
When the fullness of horror and that of joy coincide. | |
As I waited for annihilation, all that subsisted in me | |
Seemed to me to be the dross over which man's life tarries... | |
“Diabolus Absconditus”: the conjunction of intellect | |
And psychotropic-altered senses supported by insistent and archaic sounds |
" Death is the most terrible thing And to maintain its works is what requires the greatest strength" Hegel | |
Would it all be absurd? | |
Or might it make some kind of sense? | |
I' ve made myself sick wondering about it, | |
I awake in the morning | |
Just the way millions do, | |
Millions of boys, girls, infants and old men, | |
Their slumber dissipated forever... | |
These millions, those slumbers have no meaning. | |
A hidden meaning? | |
Hidden, yes, " obviously"! | |
But if nothing has any meaning, there' s no point in my doing anything. | |
I' ll beg off. | |
I' ll use any deceitful means to get out of it, | |
In the end I' ll have to let go and sell myself to meaninglessness, nonsense: | |
That is man' s killer | |
The one who tortures and kills, not a glimmer of hope left. | |
But if there is meaning? | |
Today I don' t know what it is. | |
Tomorrow? | |
Tomorrow, who can tell me? | |
Am I going to find out what it is? | |
No, I can' t conceive of any " meaning" other than " my" anguish, and as for that, | |
I know all about it. | |
And for the time being: nonsense. | |
Monsieur Nonsense is writing and understands that he is mad. | |
It' s atrocious. | |
But his madness, this meaninglessness how " serious" it has become all of a sudden! | |
Might that indeed be " meaningful"? | |
My life has only a meaning insofar as I lack one: oh, but let me be mad! | |
Make something of all this he who is able to, | |
Understand it he who is dying, | |
And there the living self is, knowing not why, | |
It' s teeth chattering in the lashing wind: | |
The immensity, the night engulfs it and, | |
All on purpose, that living self is there just in order... " not to know". | |
But as for God? | |
God, if he knew, would be a swine. | |
He would entirely grasp the idea... but what would there be of the human about him? | |
Beyond, beyond everything... And yet farther, and even farther still... | |
HIMSELF, in an ecstasy, above an emptiness... | |
Cognitive activity: God comes to be known in ways that originate in God solely | |
God is nothing if He is not, in every sense, the surpassing God | |
In the sense of common everyday being, in the sense of dread, | |
Horror and impurity, and, finally, in the sense of nothing... | |
He is mystery, indeed he is the absolute mystery | |
Divine disclosure is in direct proportion | |
To the degree of divine concealment | |
Intensification of revelation equals | |
To increase of god' s hiddenness | |
Descent of the Deus Absconditus | |
The unreservedly open spirit open to death, to torment, to joy , | |
The open spirit, open and dying, | |
Suffering and dying and happy, stands in a certain veiled light: | |
That light is divine. | |
And the cry that breaks from a twisted mouth may perhaps twist him who utters it, | |
But what he speaks is an immense alleluia, flung into endless silence, and lost there. | |
Shall my only victory be available in conscience? | |
Why is absence the proof, when I demand palpable presence? | |
There is enough light to enlighten the elect and enough darkness to humble them | |
There is enough darkness to blind the reprobate and enough clarity to condemn them, | |
And make them without excuse | |
Our perception is subject to the fissure of concupiscence | |
Woestruck am I realizing that the light cast on this | |
Chiaroscuro world is partial and selective | |
Division, election and predestination | |
Enabled by grace or left to one' s own device... | |
Anguish only is sovereign absolute. | |
The sovereign is a king no more: it dwells lowbiding in big cities. | |
It knits itself up in silence, obscuring it' s sorrow. | |
Crouching thickwrapped, there it waits, | |
Lies waiting for the advent of Him who shall strike a general terror | |
But meanwhile and even so sorrow scornfully mocks at all that comes to pass, at all there is. | |
From very high above a kind of stillness swept down upon me and froze me | |
It was as though I were borne aloft in a flight of headless and unbodied angels | |
Shaped from the broad swooping of wings, but it was simpler than that | |
I became unhappy and felt painfully forsaken, as one is when in the presence of God | |
She was seated, she held one leg stuck up in the air, to open her crack | |
Yet wider she used her fingers to draw the folds of skin apart | |
And so her " old rag and ruin" loured at me, hairy and pink, | |
Just as full of life as some loathsome squid | |
" Why", I stammered in a subdued tone, " Why are you doing that?" | |
" You can see for yourself", she said, " I' m God" | |
No use laying it all up to irony when I say of her that she is GOD. | |
But GOD figured as a public whore and gone crazy | |
That, viewed through the optic of " philosophy", makes no sense at all. | |
I don' t mind having my sorrow derided if derided it has to be, | |
He only will grasp me aright whose heart holds a wound that is an incurable wound, | |
Who never, for anything, in any way, would be cured of it... | |
And what man, if so wounded, would ever be willing to " die" of any other hurt? | |
If there is nothing that surpasses our powers and our understanding, | |
If we do not acknowledge something greater than ourselves, | |
Greater than we are despite ourselves, | |
Something which at all costs must not be, | |
Then we do not reach the insensate moment towards which we strive | |
With all that is in our power and which at the same time | |
We exert with all our power to stave off | |
I can utter no word, O my God, unless I be permitted by Thee | |
And can move in no direction until I obtain Thy sanction | |
It is Thou, O my God, Who hast called me into being through the power | |
Of Thy might, and has endued me with Thy grace to manifest Thy Cause | |
The act whereby being existence is bestowed upon us | |
Is an unbearable surpassing of being, | |
An act no less unbearable than that of dying. | |
And since, in death, being is taken away from us at the same time it is given us, | |
We must seek for it in the feeling of dying, | |
In those unbearable moments when it seems to us that we are dying | |
Because the existence in us, | |
During these interludes, | |
Exists through nothing but a sustaining and ruinous excess, | |
When the fullness of horror and that of joy coincide. | |
As I waited for annihilation, all that subsisted in me | |
Seemed to me to be the dross over which man' s life tarries... | |
" Diabolus Absconditus": the conjunction of intellect | |
And psychotropicaltered senses supported by insistent and archaic sounds |