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Unknown Language
Long before the collapse of the Information Age, in the twelfth century since the appearance of the prophet Christ, young Hildegard of Bingen finds grace in the ruins of her medieval world.
After the great cataclysm and the Angelic power struggle that follows, Hildegard flees the City of God and embarks upon a pilgrimage towards the kingdom of the poor.
In this story of survival and miracles, Hildegard encounters love, both queer and divine, and great peril. As the visionary healer travels through the desolate landscape, she discovers the mythic quantum energy of viriditas in the natural world around her. Her journey becomes one of return, to the sacred truth of her own being.
On the planet Avaaz, in a sea cave with cracked amethyst walls, Pinky Agarwalia finds fragments of a beautiful codex thought to be lost during the evacuation of Earth in the third millennium.
Pinky must decipher its strange illegible symbols and illuminations to unlock this mystic toolkit bearing the seeds for humanity’s rebirth. Lingua Ignota, Hildegard's unknown language, arrives for a world in flux, one whose coordinates are being recast.
After the great cataclysm and the Angelic power struggle that follows, Hildegard flees the City of God and embarks upon a pilgrimage towards the kingdom of the poor.
In this story of survival and miracles, Hildegard encounters love, both queer and divine, and great peril. As the visionary healer travels through the desolate landscape, she discovers the mythic quantum energy of viriditas in the natural world around her. Her journey becomes one of return, to the sacred truth of her own being.
On the planet Avaaz, in a sea cave with cracked amethyst walls, Pinky Agarwalia finds fragments of a beautiful codex thought to be lost during the evacuation of Earth in the third millennium.
Pinky must decipher its strange illegible symbols and illuminations to unlock this mystic toolkit bearing the seeds for humanity’s rebirth. Lingua Ignota, Hildegard's unknown language, arrives for a world in flux, one whose coordinates are being recast.
240 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2020
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April 8, 2021
Longlisted for The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses 2021
I bought this novel because I decided to read all the longlist of ROFC prize. I almost decided to skip this one because I was SURE it is not for me and I will hate it. I am not a very spiritual person and until I read some reviews for this book I didn’t even know what eschatology* was. I was extremely surprised when I started to have problems closing to book to do other stuff. I read more than half of it in one sitting. I was enthralled, it was like someone put a spell on me. It is so vividly written that I was inside the pages and could see and feel what the characters experienced. I am not a visual reader; descriptions often pass me by but not this time. I almost gave the novel 5* but the ending was a bit too weird and esoteric for me.
It is a very odd book, I have trouble describing it. It has 4 authors, one of them being a 12th century Abbess, Hildegard of Bingen The first part is a poem in prose (did not know they exist) written by Bhanu Kapil, the middle section is taken by the novel and the end contains a lecture taught by Alice Spawls which offers some details of Hildegard's life and work. I skipped the 1st part because i was lost after 2 pages and started with the last part which was a good idea.
The main character is a woman, administrator of the Department of Health who was in charge of removing the city filth, and I mean the human kind, whores mainly. The book is set in an unnamed city, a combination of old and new, surrounded by four mountains. On each mountain a beast appears and then Angels land on Earth to punish the sinful by purging them to hell. They go a bit overboard and they start an oppressive regime of terror. After being questioned by the many eyed Angels, the woman decides to flee the city and to seek refuge with the Talfurs, some mystical beings. The novel tries to incorporate some of the visions of the Abess Hildegard about the end of the world and some stuff from The Old testament, some crystal mysticism and more. The novel also includes some really well written queer erotic scenes.
To conclude, this book was probably the strangest book that I’ve ever read but I enjoyed it immensely despite my initial reluctance.
* a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. (Wikipedia)
I bought this novel because I decided to read all the longlist of ROFC prize. I almost decided to skip this one because I was SURE it is not for me and I will hate it. I am not a very spiritual person and until I read some reviews for this book I didn’t even know what eschatology* was. I was extremely surprised when I started to have problems closing to book to do other stuff. I read more than half of it in one sitting. I was enthralled, it was like someone put a spell on me. It is so vividly written that I was inside the pages and could see and feel what the characters experienced. I am not a visual reader; descriptions often pass me by but not this time. I almost gave the novel 5* but the ending was a bit too weird and esoteric for me.
It is a very odd book, I have trouble describing it. It has 4 authors, one of them being a 12th century Abbess, Hildegard of Bingen The first part is a poem in prose (did not know they exist) written by Bhanu Kapil, the middle section is taken by the novel and the end contains a lecture taught by Alice Spawls which offers some details of Hildegard's life and work. I skipped the 1st part because i was lost after 2 pages and started with the last part which was a good idea.
The main character is a woman, administrator of the Department of Health who was in charge of removing the city filth, and I mean the human kind, whores mainly. The book is set in an unnamed city, a combination of old and new, surrounded by four mountains. On each mountain a beast appears and then Angels land on Earth to punish the sinful by purging them to hell. They go a bit overboard and they start an oppressive regime of terror. After being questioned by the many eyed Angels, the woman decides to flee the city and to seek refuge with the Talfurs, some mystical beings. The novel tries to incorporate some of the visions of the Abess Hildegard about the end of the world and some stuff from The Old testament, some crystal mysticism and more. The novel also includes some really well written queer erotic scenes.
To conclude, this book was probably the strangest book that I’ve ever read but I enjoyed it immensely despite my initial reluctance.
* a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. (Wikipedia)
February 20, 2021
Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021
Another of the surprises on this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize list, this book is a very odd beast indeed. It claims no fewer than four authors, one of whom died more than 800 years ago.
It takes its inspiration from the 12th century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen's religious/apocalyptic visions, but the central story Unknown Language is very much Lemmey's interpretation, and he could easily have claimed it as his own work. The short first section Pinky Agarwala is a prose poem by Bhanu Kapil set in the future, and I struggled to follow it at all. The final short section O Viriditas Digitei Dei is a lecture by Alice Spawls, which gives some details of the real Hildegard's life and work.
Lemmey's story accounts for over 180 pages of the total, and is written in three parts and 14 chapters, all numbered but not named. The first part of that is also quite difficult to follow, but a clear storyline emerges in the second part, a quasi-mystical apocalyptic adventure set in a world in which the Biblical Day of Judgment is encountering unforeseen problems, and the Angels are the agents of a repressive state. I don't know enough about Hildegard to understand exactly how this represents her visions, but it is quite an enjoyable story on its own terms.
A book which I don't feel at all qualified to review fairly, but I will be interested to see what others make of it.
Another of the surprises on this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize list, this book is a very odd beast indeed. It claims no fewer than four authors, one of whom died more than 800 years ago.
It takes its inspiration from the 12th century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen's religious/apocalyptic visions, but the central story Unknown Language is very much Lemmey's interpretation, and he could easily have claimed it as his own work. The short first section Pinky Agarwala is a prose poem by Bhanu Kapil set in the future, and I struggled to follow it at all. The final short section O Viriditas Digitei Dei is a lecture by Alice Spawls, which gives some details of the real Hildegard's life and work.
Lemmey's story accounts for over 180 pages of the total, and is written in three parts and 14 chapters, all numbered but not named. The first part of that is also quite difficult to follow, but a clear storyline emerges in the second part, a quasi-mystical apocalyptic adventure set in a world in which the Biblical Day of Judgment is encountering unforeseen problems, and the Angels are the agents of a repressive state. I don't know enough about Hildegard to understand exactly how this represents her visions, but it is quite an enjoyable story on its own terms.
A book which I don't feel at all qualified to review fairly, but I will be interested to see what others make of it.
March 1, 2021
Leaving behind the city of disgrace, I was [searching] for an unknown language through which we could consider grace.
I read this due to its longlisting for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses.
It is published by Ignota Press � an “experiment in the techniques of awakening [which] publishes at the intersection of technology, myth-making and magic� and which seeks to “develop a language that makes possible the reimagining and reenchantment of the world around us�.
The presses name is from the Latin “Lingua Ignota� (Unknown Language) as used by the 12th Century German mystic, polymath (writer, composer, theologian, liturgist, dramatist, correspondent of Popes and Emperors, botanist, natural medic) Hildegard of Bingen.
And this book both perfectly fits their brief and is fundamentally inspired by it, as it is effectively a reimagining and reshaping of the eschatological writings and visions of Hildegard aimed at reenchantment and renewal of our world today (year C19) � a world of immediate plague and of impending climate doom.
The main part of the book (which is book-ended by an introductory story and an afterword) and is co-authored by the Barcelona based, British novelist, writer, podcaster and critic (on topics of sex, politics, history, landscapes and love) Huw Lemmey.
I say co-authored as the book itself credits Hildegard as a co-author, reflecting the sense in which Lemmey is acting as an interpreter of Hildegard’s writings and visions, but recast into a novel which is simultaneously set in an early medieval world, a 21st Century dystopia and the Revelation 20 one thousand years. It also mirrors the way in which Hildegard’s own writings were effectively divinely coordinated.
The narrator of the story is a public health official (whose strict initiation into the lifelong and all-encompassing service of the health authority closely mirrors Hildegard’s own training as a Benedictine oblate � together with an early mentor called Jutta) in an atemporal city surrounded by five mountains, mountains which she sees as occupied by five beasts on the end of long ropes tethered to the City � a very deliberate echo of Hildegard’s complex visions in her Scivas (see for example () and how they point to the end of the Sixth Age.
And the City is then swept by a transformative, cataclysmic and apocalyptical storm, swiftly followed by an eschatological Holy Occupation by a host of heavenly angels � lifted, I would say, straight from the first part of Ezekiel, who instigate a terrifyingly repressive regime at the heart of the City, whose exemplary justice regime and ruthless cleansing of the ills of society is a many times multiplied and purified extension of the works of the health authority which employed the narrator.
From there the narrator, aware of her likely imminent arrest and summary trial, flees the City for the unknown hinterlands on a pilgrimage which I think mirrors Hildegard’s own move (one perhaps surprisingly and fortuitously given both contemporary and retrospective ecclesiastical blessing) to escape the narrow and judgmental confines of existing religious authority (mirrored in the book by the narrator’s work for the public health authority) for a journey towards an all-sense understanding of real grace.
In this humbling landscape, something was growing within me: the realisation that there exist for each of us a place of grace. I had no tongue to talk of this blessed state before, only morality and cleanliness
It is a journey which includes:
An intense queer relationship with a young girl, who was a prostitute in the City (and there would have seen the narrator and her employer as officious persecutors � with shades I think of Mary Magdalene);
Meditations on St Jerome and St Ursula (a particular inspiration for Hildegard),
Gemstone (particularly the smaragdus/Emerald) healing and power;
An encounter with a Leviathan (a mechanical one, but one which cannot help but remind the reader of both its biblical mythological origins in Job, Psalms as well as in its Hobbesian allusions to an oppressive state) and with its occupants on an Exodus through the wilderness inspired by Moses;
An intense healing of a wound which draws explicitly both on imagery of Christ’s stigmata and Genesis 2:7 and I think more implicitly on the redemptive role of sacrificial blood in both the Old and New Covenants;
Capture by a diabolically inspired group of Tafurs � inspired I think by the allegedly cannibalistic group of zealots by the same name in the First Crusade;
And which culminates in a series of intense visions in her imprisonment and a full realisation of a divinity which was not just incarnate in the person of Jesus but permeates nature � her idea of Viriditas, and the book culminating in her “lay[ing] down to live again in the lights and greenness of God�.
Even deeper this beautifully produced book (with a beautiful illustrated endpaper glimpsed as if in an incomplete vision through a gap in the cover) has both an introductory story and an afterword which further add to the sense of co-authorship, engagement with Hildegard’s work and its relevance for today’s world.
The afterword is by Alice Sprawls and is a transcript of a lecture delivered in C-19 /2020/Covid year zero � which draws out key themes in Hildegard’s lifestory and work.
The introductory story is more tangentially inspired � a brief, poetical tale of Pinky Agarwalia who, 100 years or so in the future, with Earth now known as planet Avaaz, finds fragments of Hildegard’s story and takes from it a new inspiration for the salvation of the species and planet. It is written by a fellow Churchillian � Bhanu Kapil � who subsequent to this novel’s publication became the first Covid age winner of the UK’s most prestigious literary prize � the TS Eliot Prize for her poetry collection “How to Wash A Heart�.
Overall this is an outstanding, visionary, beautiful and deeply intelligent novel.
This body is supported in every way through the earth
This the earth glorifies the power of God
February 20, 2021
The last of the 10 books on this year's exceptionally strong Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist, and another wonderful discovery, centered around the 11th century mystic Hildegard of Bingen.
The novel was commissioned by smaii independent Ignota Press:
And as Huw Lemmey explains in this extended interview (), they approached him on this project
And the novel’s heart is a fascinating, and moving, eschatological tale of around 200 pages, with Lemmey in such close dialogue with Hildegard’s own words and visions that he credits her as an co-author.
And this story is book-ended by a introductory story in the form of a poetic, futuristic short piece by the recent TS Eliot Prize winning poet Bhanu Kapil, poet-in-residence at Churchill College, Cambridge University (of which I’m an alumni), and an afterword by Alice Spawls in the form of a lecture, in the year C-19 (Covid year zero) on Hildegard by "Dr A Spawls."
My twin, and fellow Churchillian, Graham’s review - /review/show... - does the book more justice than I can - so read that, and then read the novel.
Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.
Two further interviews with Huw Lemmey:
in which Lemmey acknowledges the influence of the wonderful novel by Mercè Rodoreda La mort i la primavera (Death in Spring) - my review - /review/show... and which presents a rather different perspective to Hildegard's concept of Viriditas. From Martha Tennent's translation:
and:
Reading from the novels from 3 of the co-authors (with music from the fourth):
The novel was commissioned by smaii independent Ignota Press:
Founded in the last days of 2017 in the Peruvian mountains by Sarah Shin and Ben Vickers, Ignota publishes at the intersection of technology, myth-making and magic. Deriving their name from Hildegard of Bingen’s mystical Lingua Ignota, they seek to develop a language that makes possible the reimagining and reenchantment of the world around us.
And as Huw Lemmey explains in this extended interview (), they approached him on this project
Ben Vickers and Sarah Shin of Ignota Books approached me with the opportunity, asking me if I wanted to read her works and reimagine them within a novel form � in both senses of the word � to make them more accessible for people today � very dense. There’s a lot of repetition of the same ideas to reiterate and strengthen them, which makes it quite hard going to read. They knew that a lot of my previous work dealt with a sort of eschatological vision of desire and worlds that are moving towards a catastrophe or crisis, and within Hildegard’s own theology there’s a strong eschatological or millenarian idea of an end of the world.
And the novel’s heart is a fascinating, and moving, eschatological tale of around 200 pages, with Lemmey in such close dialogue with Hildegard’s own words and visions that he credits her as an co-author.
And this story is book-ended by a introductory story in the form of a poetic, futuristic short piece by the recent TS Eliot Prize winning poet Bhanu Kapil, poet-in-residence at Churchill College, Cambridge University (of which I’m an alumni), and an afterword by Alice Spawls in the form of a lecture, in the year C-19 (Covid year zero) on Hildegard by "Dr A Spawls."
My twin, and fellow Churchillian, Graham’s review - /review/show... - does the book more justice than I can - so read that, and then read the novel.
Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.
Two further interviews with Huw Lemmey:
in which Lemmey acknowledges the influence of the wonderful novel by Mercè Rodoreda La mort i la primavera (Death in Spring) - my review - /review/show... and which presents a rather different perspective to Hildegard's concept of Viriditas. From Martha Tennent's translation:
In spring all the world is ill, plants and flowers are earth’s plague, rotten. The Earth would be calmer if it were green-less, without this fury, this blind will that consumes everything but craves more, the affliction of the green, so much greenness and poisonous colour.
and:
Reading from the novels from 3 of the co-authors (with music from the fourth):
March 9, 2021
It’s not every day you read a book that has four authors one of whom has been dead for over 800 years (I assume the date of her death as March 1979 on the last page is a typo and should read 1179).
Two of the authors are easily accounted for. There is a preface by Bhanu Kapil in the form of a piece of prose poetry. And there’s a postface by Alice Spawls in the form of a transcript of a lecture given by Spawls in what is referred to as C-19 or Covid Year 0 (2020).
The other two authors are more difficult to separate. In an interview in Tank Magazine, Huw Lemmey (the living author) says:
”The nature of the book, as a dialogue that emerges between myself and Hildegard, is very much about allowing myself to become a medium for her ideas. My contribution is a technical novelistic framework which provides a tempo and a pace for the ideas and for the narrative. So the narrative is produced, but then the real flesh of the book, the cosmology, the ideas around grace and spirituality, are all Hildegard’s. It was a matter of trying to find within my own work the space and the silence in which her work could speak.�
This means that the central and by far longest section of the book takes the form of a novel, but a novel with a difference. Again in Tank Magazine, Lemmey says:
”Based on her distinct visions, I had to narrativise her cosmology and her teachings. This came quite easily because it feels like we’re living in a world which is on a similar sort of eschatological brainwave, in terms of climate catastrophe and imminent political breakdown.�
What we read is the story of a public health official who lives in a very strange place. This city is perhaps the most memorable creation in the novel. There are lots of things that are very 20th/21st century but also lots of things that are 12th century. In addition to this mixture, it seems that some of Hildegard’s vision are very real in this place. The main narrative begins with a description of the city surrounded by five hills on which live five beasts all attached to a tower in the city by ropes. This pretty much exactly matches one of Hildegard’s visions. And this combination of time and visionary space makes for a very unusual reading experience. The story is driven forward by a sudden and violent Holy Occupation of the city in which a host of angels implement a tough and repressive regime for those who were not taken during the rapture.
As a church going Christian for my entire life, the interpretation of the Old Testament God shown here is interesting to say the least! Our narrator realises her life is in danger and makes her escape. Here, the story changes quite significantly as she travels in search of the Tafurs (), finds friendship, has an intense experience as a healer, discovers the Tafurs aren’t quite what she had imagined, and eventually comes to a place of revelation. And all of this intertwined with inspiration from Hildegard
As a word of warning, you may find the opening prose poem tricky. It is very allusive and it is worth revisiting it when you get to the end of the book because its links to the main story are more tangential than direct. That said, if you struggle, the style in that initial section is very different to the much more standard prose of the main story, so keep going! In fact, the main narrative is written in a very quiet, understated kind of prose.
I enjoyed the innovation here as the book managed to create a unique environment that mixed time periods and realities. The whole idea of the book is fascinating. But somehow, for me, the whole is less than the sum of the parts and I finished the book feeling a bit disappointed. I can’t quite put my finger on why, so I’m rounding down for now and will think about it.
Two of the authors are easily accounted for. There is a preface by Bhanu Kapil in the form of a piece of prose poetry. And there’s a postface by Alice Spawls in the form of a transcript of a lecture given by Spawls in what is referred to as C-19 or Covid Year 0 (2020).
The other two authors are more difficult to separate. In an interview in Tank Magazine, Huw Lemmey (the living author) says:
”The nature of the book, as a dialogue that emerges between myself and Hildegard, is very much about allowing myself to become a medium for her ideas. My contribution is a technical novelistic framework which provides a tempo and a pace for the ideas and for the narrative. So the narrative is produced, but then the real flesh of the book, the cosmology, the ideas around grace and spirituality, are all Hildegard’s. It was a matter of trying to find within my own work the space and the silence in which her work could speak.�
This means that the central and by far longest section of the book takes the form of a novel, but a novel with a difference. Again in Tank Magazine, Lemmey says:
”Based on her distinct visions, I had to narrativise her cosmology and her teachings. This came quite easily because it feels like we’re living in a world which is on a similar sort of eschatological brainwave, in terms of climate catastrophe and imminent political breakdown.�
What we read is the story of a public health official who lives in a very strange place. This city is perhaps the most memorable creation in the novel. There are lots of things that are very 20th/21st century but also lots of things that are 12th century. In addition to this mixture, it seems that some of Hildegard’s vision are very real in this place. The main narrative begins with a description of the city surrounded by five hills on which live five beasts all attached to a tower in the city by ropes. This pretty much exactly matches one of Hildegard’s visions. And this combination of time and visionary space makes for a very unusual reading experience. The story is driven forward by a sudden and violent Holy Occupation of the city in which a host of angels implement a tough and repressive regime for those who were not taken during the rapture.
As a church going Christian for my entire life, the interpretation of the Old Testament God shown here is interesting to say the least! Our narrator realises her life is in danger and makes her escape. Here, the story changes quite significantly as she travels in search of the Tafurs (), finds friendship, has an intense experience as a healer, discovers the Tafurs aren’t quite what she had imagined, and eventually comes to a place of revelation. And all of this intertwined with inspiration from Hildegard
As a word of warning, you may find the opening prose poem tricky. It is very allusive and it is worth revisiting it when you get to the end of the book because its links to the main story are more tangential than direct. That said, if you struggle, the style in that initial section is very different to the much more standard prose of the main story, so keep going! In fact, the main narrative is written in a very quiet, understated kind of prose.
I enjoyed the innovation here as the book managed to create a unique environment that mixed time periods and realities. The whole idea of the book is fascinating. But somehow, for me, the whole is less than the sum of the parts and I finished the book feeling a bit disappointed. I can’t quite put my finger on why, so I’m rounding down for now and will think about it.
January 31, 2023
January 31, 2023 Update There is an excellent article on Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) by music critic in the online issue of The New Yorker (if you still have free views or are a subscriber) and/or in the February 6, 2023 print issue .
Apocalyptic Vision
Review of the Ignota Books paperback edition (2020)
Image of Hildegard of Bingen's Codex: Plate 32 The End of Times sourced from
(Turn on web translator for German language to read an interpretation of the image)
Unknown Language is a commissioned work comprising three texts inspired by (1098-1179). The book's title is the English translation of Hildegard's invented with "Ignota" (Unknown) also being the source of the name of the publisher of esoteric & mystical books.
Bhanu Khapil's space-age prose poem Pinky Agarwalia acts as an Introduction and Alice Spawl's essay O Viriditas Digita Dei on Hildegard's life acts as an Afterward. Those works bookend the main text by Huw Lemmey which he co-credits to Hildegard herself, as he based it around the visions which she documented in 3 of her main works, the best known of which is Scivias the title derived from the Latin 'Sci vias' (Know the Ways).
Lemmey's story tells of a woman working as a Doctor for a Health Administration in a futuristic totalitarian society. This world is visited by the actual End of Times apocalypse with angelic visitors dealing out salvation or damnation as appropriate. The Doctor escapes from the city and travels through a mostly deserted countryside and eventually allies herself with a punkish traveller as they make their way towards a hopeful existence. The story often aligns with aspects of Hildegard's life e.g. there is a reference to a woman named Jutta (Hildegard's own first spiritual mentor etc.) in the protagonist's childhood and the plotline is often drawn from Hildegard's visions. Occasionally some italicized text shows where Hildegard's own words are quoted.
I can't really be unbiased about this book as I've been somewhat of a Hildegard fan since the mid-1980's after hearing her music recorded on the Gothic Voices album (1982). Lemmey, Khapil and Spawls have done a terrific job in taking Hildegard's work into a futuristic space-time and Ignota Books have published a lovely tribute to their inspiration.
I read Unknown Language as my February 2021 selection from the Republic of Consciousness (BotM) club. The February BotM pick was a reader's choice from among the 2021 Longlist of nominees for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual for small independent publishers.
Trivia and Links
Read a synopsis of the text and see the related illustrated plates in Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias at .
Read about Five Influences on Unknown Language by Huw Lemmey at the Ignota Books Blog .
Watch the online book launch with all the authors for Unknown Language by Ignota Books at their YouTube channel .
Apocalyptic Vision
Review of the Ignota Books paperback edition (2020)
Image of Hildegard of Bingen's Codex: Plate 32 The End of Times sourced from
(Turn on web translator for German language to read an interpretation of the image)
Unknown Language is a commissioned work comprising three texts inspired by (1098-1179). The book's title is the English translation of Hildegard's invented with "Ignota" (Unknown) also being the source of the name of the publisher of esoteric & mystical books.
Bhanu Khapil's space-age prose poem Pinky Agarwalia acts as an Introduction and Alice Spawl's essay O Viriditas Digita Dei on Hildegard's life acts as an Afterward. Those works bookend the main text by Huw Lemmey which he co-credits to Hildegard herself, as he based it around the visions which she documented in 3 of her main works, the best known of which is Scivias the title derived from the Latin 'Sci vias' (Know the Ways).
Lemmey's story tells of a woman working as a Doctor for a Health Administration in a futuristic totalitarian society. This world is visited by the actual End of Times apocalypse with angelic visitors dealing out salvation or damnation as appropriate. The Doctor escapes from the city and travels through a mostly deserted countryside and eventually allies herself with a punkish traveller as they make their way towards a hopeful existence. The story often aligns with aspects of Hildegard's life e.g. there is a reference to a woman named Jutta (Hildegard's own first spiritual mentor etc.) in the protagonist's childhood and the plotline is often drawn from Hildegard's visions. Occasionally some italicized text shows where Hildegard's own words are quoted.
I can't really be unbiased about this book as I've been somewhat of a Hildegard fan since the mid-1980's after hearing her music recorded on the Gothic Voices album (1982). Lemmey, Khapil and Spawls have done a terrific job in taking Hildegard's work into a futuristic space-time and Ignota Books have published a lovely tribute to their inspiration.
I read Unknown Language as my February 2021 selection from the Republic of Consciousness (BotM) club. The February BotM pick was a reader's choice from among the 2021 Longlist of nominees for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual for small independent publishers.
Trivia and Links
Read a synopsis of the text and see the related illustrated plates in Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias at .
Read about Five Influences on Unknown Language by Huw Lemmey at the Ignota Books Blog .
Watch the online book launch with all the authors for Unknown Language by Ignota Books at their YouTube channel .
February 10, 2021
I read this book as part of the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Long List. I had planned to do a video review but not sure I could keep a straight face while talking about some of the weirdness it contains!
To start, there are 2 co-authors who lived over 700 years apart. The living author, Huy Lemmy, explains in this video, made at the the time of the book release, how he felt like he was channeling the thoughts of Hildegard of Bingen, a well known mystical religious figure living in the 12th century.
Video of book launch with author’s talk
At this point I am not putting this on my projected short list, but actually would welcome the chance to reread it and gain a better understanding of Hildegard, her mystical experiences and musical inventions.....and YES, she did compose a personal alphabet and language.
March 10, 2021
[4.5 stars rounded up]
1. A truly stunning portrayal of the rapture
2. A must read even for people of other faiths like myself
3. It could maybe do with better curation.
I came into possession of this book on a whim having read an excellent passage posted on the instagram story of Guy Gunaratne, who was on the panel of an award for independent presses. I was surprised to see that it had only 13 reviews at the time I purchased it- this is possibly the least well-circulated book I have ever read, but definitely one of my favourites.
I will start with the negatives but I did absolutely love the book.
Disclaimer: this is just my opinion and I could well be proved wrong in the future, in fact I hope I am!
Indie press novels (or at least the bad ones) tend to hide their defficiences with pretension. They will sell themselves with promises of poly-hyphenated ontologies, ground-breaking experimentation etc. etc. and then fall flat to the point of rendering all other books with such taglines completely meaningless. This book seems to buck that trend. It was truly excellent and instead lessens itself through its pretensions.
In many ways from an outside perspective this seems to come from an anxiety of sorts; that one must cover one's back when writing for a small press for fear of appearing self-indulgent. By detailing in excrutiating detail why a book is at the forefront of experimentation and how the thought behind it is far more rigorous, tortured and obscure than you could possibly otherwise buy, it seeks to needlessly justify its own right to exist.
It doesn't need to. Its tagline on the back describing it as 'A mutant fiction of speculative mysticism' is to be quite frank meaningless jargon and more than a bit inaccurate- its bulk is fairly normal albeit very surreal and that is ok. It is in more meaningful terms a modern retelling of the book of Revelation set in a bizarre and almost atemporal city based around Barcelona, drawing inspiration from the work of Hildegard of Bingen. This book is good enough to stand up on its own without the need for fancy and slightly meaningless descriptions of itself.
I like reading the odd experimentally formatted book but its format must have a purpose. By fiddling with the format this book gains little. The first thirty pages consist of very good poetry, almost a standalone but fairly irrelevant and the auto-biographic intro which came after that was somewhat self-indulgent. It could have been fifteen pages of more to-the-point writing and it would be an instant five-stars. It was this pretentious first forty-fifty pages that made me worried for what would come next. At least I hadn't by this stage read the passage which had lured me to the book in the first place and so I knew better was to come.
What transpired next however more than made up for its early missteps. The prose that followed was lyrical, meditative and judicious in its application. The rapture is absurd, violent and bureaucratic in the extreme, its inefficiency hiding under a vicious front. It is described in incredible detail and is gripping in spite of its verbose passages (I read it in 2 days very easily).
Like a lot of biblical/magical realist style work, it marvels in its own allegorical inconsistencies and takes on a fable-like form. The writing here is quite idiosyncratic in its style and almost transcends prose to a mix of epic poetry and something else indescribably bureaucratic! I thought its portrayal of Queer Politics in religion was excellent. Within its form also lurk what appear to be subtle nods to philosophers/other authors: Deleuze, Foucault and Kant, Bruno Schulz, Brian Catling, Calvino, Marquez and a whole host of others. Its main glory comes in its originality: it renders an apocalypse that feels believable, righteous but at the same time wrong. It confuses, appals and amazes. It is truly psychedelic, I closed the book feeling glad that I had clicked on that random instagram story that day.
I am also sad, this is far better than a lot of work from far, far more succesful authors. Huw Lemmey certainly deserves his plaudits and although this piece does have a timeless element to it, I hope he is able to enjoy its success in his lifetime. He quite clearly has an exceptional command of his imagination and language and I can see him going on to have incredible success.
1. A truly stunning portrayal of the rapture
2. A must read even for people of other faiths like myself
3. It could maybe do with better curation.
I came into possession of this book on a whim having read an excellent passage posted on the instagram story of Guy Gunaratne, who was on the panel of an award for independent presses. I was surprised to see that it had only 13 reviews at the time I purchased it- this is possibly the least well-circulated book I have ever read, but definitely one of my favourites.
I will start with the negatives but I did absolutely love the book.
Disclaimer: this is just my opinion and I could well be proved wrong in the future, in fact I hope I am!
Indie press novels (or at least the bad ones) tend to hide their defficiences with pretension. They will sell themselves with promises of poly-hyphenated ontologies, ground-breaking experimentation etc. etc. and then fall flat to the point of rendering all other books with such taglines completely meaningless. This book seems to buck that trend. It was truly excellent and instead lessens itself through its pretensions.
In many ways from an outside perspective this seems to come from an anxiety of sorts; that one must cover one's back when writing for a small press for fear of appearing self-indulgent. By detailing in excrutiating detail why a book is at the forefront of experimentation and how the thought behind it is far more rigorous, tortured and obscure than you could possibly otherwise buy, it seeks to needlessly justify its own right to exist.
It doesn't need to. Its tagline on the back describing it as 'A mutant fiction of speculative mysticism' is to be quite frank meaningless jargon and more than a bit inaccurate- its bulk is fairly normal albeit very surreal and that is ok. It is in more meaningful terms a modern retelling of the book of Revelation set in a bizarre and almost atemporal city based around Barcelona, drawing inspiration from the work of Hildegard of Bingen. This book is good enough to stand up on its own without the need for fancy and slightly meaningless descriptions of itself.
I like reading the odd experimentally formatted book but its format must have a purpose. By fiddling with the format this book gains little. The first thirty pages consist of very good poetry, almost a standalone but fairly irrelevant and the auto-biographic intro which came after that was somewhat self-indulgent. It could have been fifteen pages of more to-the-point writing and it would be an instant five-stars. It was this pretentious first forty-fifty pages that made me worried for what would come next. At least I hadn't by this stage read the passage which had lured me to the book in the first place and so I knew better was to come.
What transpired next however more than made up for its early missteps. The prose that followed was lyrical, meditative and judicious in its application. The rapture is absurd, violent and bureaucratic in the extreme, its inefficiency hiding under a vicious front. It is described in incredible detail and is gripping in spite of its verbose passages (I read it in 2 days very easily).
Like a lot of biblical/magical realist style work, it marvels in its own allegorical inconsistencies and takes on a fable-like form. The writing here is quite idiosyncratic in its style and almost transcends prose to a mix of epic poetry and something else indescribably bureaucratic! I thought its portrayal of Queer Politics in religion was excellent. Within its form also lurk what appear to be subtle nods to philosophers/other authors: Deleuze, Foucault and Kant, Bruno Schulz, Brian Catling, Calvino, Marquez and a whole host of others. Its main glory comes in its originality: it renders an apocalypse that feels believable, righteous but at the same time wrong. It confuses, appals and amazes. It is truly psychedelic, I closed the book feeling glad that I had clicked on that random instagram story that day.
I am also sad, this is far better than a lot of work from far, far more succesful authors. Huw Lemmey certainly deserves his plaudits and although this piece does have a timeless element to it, I hope he is able to enjoy its success in his lifetime. He quite clearly has an exceptional command of his imagination and language and I can see him going on to have incredible success.
March 29, 2021
[3.5] A wondrous fiction of religious experience, mysticism, and sexuality in a perplexing mixture of temporalities. Playing with issues of authorship in interesting ways first in the paratext by attributing the work partly to (the dead) Hildegard of Bingen and second by bookending the novel with creative texts by two other (living) authors. There is much to like theoretically, yet the novel fails to resonate personally for uncertain reasons, perhaps partly because the story’s impressionistic and relentless “I� feels detaching for this particular reader and partly because the prose lacks spectacular moments of brilliance or formal innovation, both of which I detect in the otherwise similar .
January 16, 2022
The absence of innovation is a vital element for telling stories to ourselves. The urge to innovate � to make things up, anew � is within us all, as doctors, writers or travellers. But this urge is far from pure, and a million pilgrims can walk the same tracks through the countryside and all arrive in different places. [203]
🔈 Dietburg Spohr & Ensemble Belcanto / Hildegard von Bingen: Ordo Virtutum
February 24, 2021
3.5 rounded up to 4
So how to rate this book? It is quite creative and a natural for its nomination for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness award.
Did I enjoy it? Sometimes I did; sometimes I did not. Did I think it was well written? Yes. What was the reading experience like? Sloooow. The book was not difficult to read but it still took me twice the time to as a 225 page book would normally take.
Why was that? Well, it was a strange book. What do you mean by strange? This woman, administrator of the Department of Health, was in charge of cleaning up (or cleaning out) the city's whores. The DH was hated by the street people. Then the apocalypse came, with hordes of angels descending to express God's wrath (the Old Testament God given the extreme measures used). The woman, after her first "questioning" by a squad of angles, decides to leave the city and seek sanctuary with the Talfurs, if they exist and if she can find them. They do and she does, but the experience was not what she had hoped it would be. But this was no straight forward apocolyptic, dystopian tale - no sirree.
What made it different? In part it was the addition of the quotes from the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval saint.
Was the story based on Hildegard's life? Maybe yes, maybe no. It was more like Hildegard was reborn or reliving in a much more modern era, say the 2000's. There was a lot of contemplation and ecstasy going on concerning the devil , faith, and God. The woman had visions and dreams. And sometimes she acted weirdly.
What do you mean by weirdly? Well, she cleaned the wound of her companion, a younger woman who had existed by selling herself and was covered by tattoos, by drinking the blood that gushed into the wound. The woman had a wild vision while cleansing the would and, in addition to drinking the blood, saw a great "light" that she seemed to believe was God.
Anything else about the book that made it different? The piece preceding the story called "Pinky Agarwalia: Biography of a Child Saint in Ten Parts" by Bhanu Kapil; and the essay at the end called "'O VIRIDITAS DIGITI DEI' or The Green Voice of Hildegard of Bingen" by Alice Spawls. The Pinky story was a great lead in and the Spawls essay was summary of Hildegard's life that provided some connections to the story.
So how to rate this book? It is quite creative and a natural for its nomination for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness award.
Did I enjoy it? Sometimes I did; sometimes I did not. Did I think it was well written? Yes. What was the reading experience like? Sloooow. The book was not difficult to read but it still took me twice the time to as a 225 page book would normally take.
Why was that? Well, it was a strange book. What do you mean by strange? This woman, administrator of the Department of Health, was in charge of cleaning up (or cleaning out) the city's whores. The DH was hated by the street people. Then the apocalypse came, with hordes of angels descending to express God's wrath (the Old Testament God given the extreme measures used). The woman, after her first "questioning" by a squad of angles, decides to leave the city and seek sanctuary with the Talfurs, if they exist and if she can find them. They do and she does, but the experience was not what she had hoped it would be. But this was no straight forward apocolyptic, dystopian tale - no sirree.
What made it different? In part it was the addition of the quotes from the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval saint.
Was the story based on Hildegard's life? Maybe yes, maybe no. It was more like Hildegard was reborn or reliving in a much more modern era, say the 2000's. There was a lot of contemplation and ecstasy going on concerning the devil , faith, and God. The woman had visions and dreams. And sometimes she acted weirdly.
What do you mean by weirdly? Well, she cleaned the wound of her companion, a younger woman who had existed by selling herself and was covered by tattoos, by drinking the blood that gushed into the wound. The woman had a wild vision while cleansing the would and, in addition to drinking the blood, saw a great "light" that she seemed to believe was God.
Anything else about the book that made it different? The piece preceding the story called "Pinky Agarwalia: Biography of a Child Saint in Ten Parts" by Bhanu Kapil; and the essay at the end called "'O VIRIDITAS DIGITI DEI' or The Green Voice of Hildegard of Bingen" by Alice Spawls. The Pinky story was a great lead in and the Spawls essay was summary of Hildegard's life that provided some connections to the story.
April 24, 2023
4,5 stars
"In this humbling landscape, something was growing within me: the realisation that there exists for each of us a place of grace. I had had no tongue to talk of this blessed state before, only morality and cleanliness."
an original, weird, gracious fable-story, with ambiguous authorships, temporalities, mysticisms. divided in three parts and bookended by a (hard to follow, but cool) lyrical poem by Bhanu Kapil and a lecture by Alice Spawls contextualizing Hildegard's work, the storyline that emerges towards the end of the first part is capitvating, moving and mystifying. before this it reads a little dull and pretentious - i think the first 40 pages could've benefitted from some additional editing. the ending could've been a little more fleshed out compared to the second part, but maybe that's just me being too attached to the story and a little disappointed it was over.
it's a cool interpretation of hildegard that stays away from being medievalist or protofeminist (as i unfortunately feel the spawls lecture did do) about her, which it did by focusing closely on hildegard's visions, and taking them out of the context of "hildegard", the icon. i feel modern thinking (especially pagan!) around hildegard too often others and essentializes her as either an extraordinary woman of her time, who through her protofeminist willpower managed to become an important thinker, or by situating her in a medieval, monolithic time, that was more alligned with nature, anyway. either way, this poses "hildegard" as an alternative to our modern horrors, while explaining these visions as essential to her or her time, that can then only be embodied by one as ethereal, poweful, and distant as her or her time. i feel lemmey explored similar ideas, but never imposed them on a figure of the past - instead, the visions were received by a rather plain, ambiguous, morally captivatied and struggling person, who didn't really have a hand in them - certainly without any extraodinary heroic qualities, whether bestowed on her by the blessings of an imagined archaic time or a protofeminism. the author elegantly managed to do so by the ambiguous timeframing and his struggling, rather agencyless (not powerless) protagonist, rendering the story at once modern and timeless.
reading it feels at times like a punch in the stomach, at times like the sun coming out from under the clouds to grace your back with its warmth, and it feels transcendent. + queer themes, + thoughts on divinity, cleanliness, purity, language, + biblical magical realism themes, + hildegard's INTENSE visions, + gruesome and tender about it.
"In this silence, I found that for which I had left the city: He speaks to us silently in His unknown language of grace."
"The light that lives within you was not lit for you to dim it with your fears of a darkened world."
"In this humbling landscape, something was growing within me: the realisation that there exists for each of us a place of grace. I had had no tongue to talk of this blessed state before, only morality and cleanliness."
an original, weird, gracious fable-story, with ambiguous authorships, temporalities, mysticisms. divided in three parts and bookended by a (hard to follow, but cool) lyrical poem by Bhanu Kapil and a lecture by Alice Spawls contextualizing Hildegard's work, the storyline that emerges towards the end of the first part is capitvating, moving and mystifying. before this it reads a little dull and pretentious - i think the first 40 pages could've benefitted from some additional editing. the ending could've been a little more fleshed out compared to the second part, but maybe that's just me being too attached to the story and a little disappointed it was over.
it's a cool interpretation of hildegard that stays away from being medievalist or protofeminist (as i unfortunately feel the spawls lecture did do) about her, which it did by focusing closely on hildegard's visions, and taking them out of the context of "hildegard", the icon. i feel modern thinking (especially pagan!) around hildegard too often others and essentializes her as either an extraordinary woman of her time, who through her protofeminist willpower managed to become an important thinker, or by situating her in a medieval, monolithic time, that was more alligned with nature, anyway. either way, this poses "hildegard" as an alternative to our modern horrors, while explaining these visions as essential to her or her time, that can then only be embodied by one as ethereal, poweful, and distant as her or her time. i feel lemmey explored similar ideas, but never imposed them on a figure of the past - instead, the visions were received by a rather plain, ambiguous, morally captivatied and struggling person, who didn't really have a hand in them - certainly without any extraodinary heroic qualities, whether bestowed on her by the blessings of an imagined archaic time or a protofeminism. the author elegantly managed to do so by the ambiguous timeframing and his struggling, rather agencyless (not powerless) protagonist, rendering the story at once modern and timeless.
reading it feels at times like a punch in the stomach, at times like the sun coming out from under the clouds to grace your back with its warmth, and it feels transcendent. + queer themes, + thoughts on divinity, cleanliness, purity, language, + biblical magical realism themes, + hildegard's INTENSE visions, + gruesome and tender about it.
"In this silence, I found that for which I had left the city: He speaks to us silently in His unknown language of grace."
"The light that lives within you was not lit for you to dim it with your fears of a darkened world."
May 10, 2021
you know i think this would have meant more to me if i'd read it two or three years ago... but it only partly existed then. i did really enjoy it though!!!
June 9, 2022
Vivid, bold, and weird without apology
August 21, 2023
Interesting and well written, not something I’d usually pick up bc I’m defo not the biggest fan of religion, but I liked the cover
December 27, 2021
A modern-day Revelation, and just as alarming as you might imagine. Set in the plague year of 2020 (or Corona Year Zero) but informed by visions of the 12th century mystic Hildegaard of Bingen, our narrator navigates her chaotic city and the ruling (and terrifyingly true to their Biblical origin) Angels, and sets out on a journey. I worried a little for the author’s mental state but the Afterword helps align this story to Hildegaard’s. I enjoyed but didn’t fully understand this story, and may read it again straightaway.
December 14, 2022
there was an opportunity for this to be extremely weird and it is instead only middling weird, which is a shame, since hildegard von bingen could really pull off weird with the best of them. i did like the idea of the last judgment run kind of like a series of robespierrian purges with informants and show trials and controlled opposition and so on, though
February 16, 2021
Quite stunning in its scope and although a ‘big story� it’s also quite quiet. I read this as part of the Republic of Consciousness long list and expect it to short list - it’s in my top four of the six I’ve read so far.
February 16, 2024
“Inside the wound, the world.�
It’s not often you read a book penned by four separate authors, two of whom are fictionalized, one of whom is a historical medieval mystic and healer, and one who is a contemporary British novelist. Fusing historical fiction with dystopian science fiction, Huw Lemmey draws on the apocalyptic visions of Hildegard of Bingen to describe a world in which “the city”—a vague place representing the spiritual zeitgeist of the western world—is occupied by God’s militant angels, whose eyes shiver in their black-crow wings and who surveil and damn citizens in a great division between holy and sinner, clean and unclean, enacting a fiery judgement day over all the Earth.
In this besiegement of heaven over The City, Lemmy describes the carnage of cruel and violent angels over a suffering landscape of docile human agents. The book alternates between a supernatural horror and a queer love story as the protagonist, a health administrator fleeing the spiritual sanitization of the angels, seeks refuge with a camp of wild nomads outside The City, eventually falling in love with a woman.
Lemmey’s prose is ecstatic as he draws the reader deep into his nightmarish, blazing hellhole of a world. I read this 230 page book in 2 days, finding it difficult to put down. His use of the bodily senses as the domain for the spirit, following Hildegard’s physical ailments and seizures that brought on her own eschatological visions, is a fascinating theology in its own right. And yet this book ultimately drops as the narrative seems to fall into oblivion with its characters. Where Lemmey had an amazing opportunity to elucidate Hildegard’s insight for modern readers, most might be puzzled by the obscurity of the book’s ending. By this I don’t mean to suggest that obscurity is always bad, but in this case I felt that what began as an allegory of the body-soul and creation-creator relationship, as a recapitulation of medieval apocalypse in a post-COVID environs, and as a narrative about purity rites and the morally grey enmeshment of the body, found its way tangled in plots that seemed irrelevant to what Lemmey seemed to be attempting to do. I could be wrong in this regard, but it felt to me that “Unknown Language� was a way for Lemmey to toss all of his research interests into one story, a story which struggled to uphold the consistency of that kind of weight. What I did feel, by the end of book, was that this unknown language that began literally frozen in esoteric mysticism finally found its place in the grace imbued by God in the natural world, and that one must only leave The City and run for the trees to find this beautiful revelation.
For all its faults, this is not a book I will be forgetting anytime soon.
It’s not often you read a book penned by four separate authors, two of whom are fictionalized, one of whom is a historical medieval mystic and healer, and one who is a contemporary British novelist. Fusing historical fiction with dystopian science fiction, Huw Lemmey draws on the apocalyptic visions of Hildegard of Bingen to describe a world in which “the city”—a vague place representing the spiritual zeitgeist of the western world—is occupied by God’s militant angels, whose eyes shiver in their black-crow wings and who surveil and damn citizens in a great division between holy and sinner, clean and unclean, enacting a fiery judgement day over all the Earth.
In this besiegement of heaven over The City, Lemmy describes the carnage of cruel and violent angels over a suffering landscape of docile human agents. The book alternates between a supernatural horror and a queer love story as the protagonist, a health administrator fleeing the spiritual sanitization of the angels, seeks refuge with a camp of wild nomads outside The City, eventually falling in love with a woman.
Lemmey’s prose is ecstatic as he draws the reader deep into his nightmarish, blazing hellhole of a world. I read this 230 page book in 2 days, finding it difficult to put down. His use of the bodily senses as the domain for the spirit, following Hildegard’s physical ailments and seizures that brought on her own eschatological visions, is a fascinating theology in its own right. And yet this book ultimately drops as the narrative seems to fall into oblivion with its characters. Where Lemmey had an amazing opportunity to elucidate Hildegard’s insight for modern readers, most might be puzzled by the obscurity of the book’s ending. By this I don’t mean to suggest that obscurity is always bad, but in this case I felt that what began as an allegory of the body-soul and creation-creator relationship, as a recapitulation of medieval apocalypse in a post-COVID environs, and as a narrative about purity rites and the morally grey enmeshment of the body, found its way tangled in plots that seemed irrelevant to what Lemmey seemed to be attempting to do. I could be wrong in this regard, but it felt to me that “Unknown Language� was a way for Lemmey to toss all of his research interests into one story, a story which struggled to uphold the consistency of that kind of weight. What I did feel, by the end of book, was that this unknown language that began literally frozen in esoteric mysticism finally found its place in the grace imbued by God in the natural world, and that one must only leave The City and run for the trees to find this beautiful revelation.
For all its faults, this is not a book I will be forgetting anytime soon.
December 22, 2023
What a unique little book! Inspired by Hildegard of Bingen's visions, the Day of Judgement has come and the army of Angels have become agents of a repressive regime. Our narrator flees the oppressive city and journeys into the wilderness, experiencing queer love and divine transcendence. Would you believe me if I said this doesn't even do it justice?
I found it really interesting to note the moments where characters either find they are deeply able or unable to communicate, verbal/nonverbal etc. The combination of the high, Biblical language and some of the quite dystopian aspects of the world was really cool too. I'd love to read Hildegard's visions properly and then give this a reread to get even more out of it.
I, too, would like to lay down in the verdant moss and experience ecstatic connection with the universe.
I found it really interesting to note the moments where characters either find they are deeply able or unable to communicate, verbal/nonverbal etc. The combination of the high, Biblical language and some of the quite dystopian aspects of the world was really cool too. I'd love to read Hildegard's visions properly and then give this a reread to get even more out of it.
I, too, would like to lay down in the verdant moss and experience ecstatic connection with the universe.
January 5, 2022
This book was fantastic. It reads like a dream that's surely going to give you mystic visions.
December 31, 2023
Interesting..
December 6, 2020
Wow, what an astounding book. I was thinking the other day of what holy, religious, or ecstatic art could feel like nowadays and this answered it. A book about faith and grace, about having your prayers answered in an unwanted or unexpected way, about how the End Times never really leads to an end. A book about nature and our place in it and the place of God in it. Very queer, holding on to that queer and femme theology which still breaks thru to us even as it's repressed by those in power.
Obviously I'm Jewish so it hit differently for me but big up
Obviously I'm Jewish so it hit differently for me but big up
July 17, 2022
I wanted to love this book... there are so many great lines in here. I think it would have soared by being a poetic myth. My main issue is two-fold: too many authors/voices, etc. and the design of the story. In the end, I was too confused to continue reading, and being that I valued my time with other books more, I decided to put this one down for goon. It's unfortunate, because the writing is great!
October 28, 2023
A medieval visionary nun and polymath, Hildegard of Bingen, is a co-author of this book with Huw Lemmey with contributions from Bhanu Kapil and Alice Spawls (published in 2020). However this collaboration seems on par for a book descriped as speculative mysticism.
It's about a crisis that signals the end of the world (literal, with the occupation of the city by the heavenly forces) and a public worker who decides to flee after an interrogation by angels and is looking for something beyond this certain destruction of her world.
"Leaving behind the city of disgrace, I was [searching] for an unknown language through which we could consider grace."
Hildegard and Huw Lemmey are responsible for the main novel, Bhanu Kapil provides a short story in fragments of a world that used to be Earth and where fragments of Hildegard's unknown language are providing a revitilising force. The lecture notes at the end from Alice Spawls give context to the reimagination of Hildegard's story in the main section, with some history of the woman and her works.
It is a mesmerising collection of different things and the story is absorbing in it's weirdness and jarringness (we get SIM cards and medieval angels). Stories of grace are rare. I know Huw Lemmey's writings through his essays in his newletter so I am already a fan of his style and ways of exploring things and experiences. They are all trying to write about that which is difficult to put into words and I appreciated the effort and the output.
It's about a crisis that signals the end of the world (literal, with the occupation of the city by the heavenly forces) and a public worker who decides to flee after an interrogation by angels and is looking for something beyond this certain destruction of her world.
"Leaving behind the city of disgrace, I was [searching] for an unknown language through which we could consider grace."
Hildegard and Huw Lemmey are responsible for the main novel, Bhanu Kapil provides a short story in fragments of a world that used to be Earth and where fragments of Hildegard's unknown language are providing a revitilising force. The lecture notes at the end from Alice Spawls give context to the reimagination of Hildegard's story in the main section, with some history of the woman and her works.
It is a mesmerising collection of different things and the story is absorbing in it's weirdness and jarringness (we get SIM cards and medieval angels). Stories of grace are rare. I know Huw Lemmey's writings through his essays in his newletter so I am already a fan of his style and ways of exploring things and experiences. They are all trying to write about that which is difficult to put into words and I appreciated the effort and the output.
July 11, 2024
I find channeling to be an interesting literary device, moreso than it is a serious New Age practice. Tom Kenyon and Judy Sion’s Magdalen Manuscript was more interesting to me as a work of fiction than whatever channeled authenticity they were claiming about it. Which is what drew me to what Huw Lemmey has done with Saint Hildegard’s texts here in Unknown Language. The book is attributed “by Hildegard of Bingen and Huw Lemmey,� but really, it’s a contemporary work of (science) fiction heavily inspired by the visions of Hildy. Is the attribution false advertising? Maybe, but Lemmey’s intent is pretty obviously not to deceive.
Unknown Language is something between the eschatological writings of Anna Kavan in Ice, the abstract prose of a later Jeff VanderMeer, and some of the surreal dream-like imagery of a darker Miyazaki film. It’s disjointed, but the story tells of a woman fleeing a post-rapture city occupied by tyrannical angels and her sapphic fling with a prostitute and fellow refugee. I would argue that, while the worldbuilding is rich, not much actually happens in this book, and I found the prose pretty hard to follow. It’s a compelling piece of abstract science fiction, but some of the Hildegardian inspirations seem somewhat forced and an attempt to get a recognizable (and a bit trendy) name on the cover. For example, towards the beginning, the unnamed protagonist prepares a remedy for chest infection straight out of Hildegard’s Physica, which is total pandering, but in a way that I love.
Unknown Language is something between the eschatological writings of Anna Kavan in Ice, the abstract prose of a later Jeff VanderMeer, and some of the surreal dream-like imagery of a darker Miyazaki film. It’s disjointed, but the story tells of a woman fleeing a post-rapture city occupied by tyrannical angels and her sapphic fling with a prostitute and fellow refugee. I would argue that, while the worldbuilding is rich, not much actually happens in this book, and I found the prose pretty hard to follow. It’s a compelling piece of abstract science fiction, but some of the Hildegardian inspirations seem somewhat forced and an attempt to get a recognizable (and a bit trendy) name on the cover. For example, towards the beginning, the unnamed protagonist prepares a remedy for chest infection straight out of Hildegard’s Physica, which is total pandering, but in a way that I love.
December 30, 2022
this one was wild-- four authors, 3 distinct sections (a prose poem, a novel, and a lecture), all with the goal of illustrating 12th century mystic hildegaard von bingen's visions and theology. i was expecting something different, although i'm not quite sure what, and definitely got a bit lost in the surreal mysticism of the prose poem and novel in particular. after reading the final (lecture) section, which serves as a biography of hildegaard, i got a better appreciation of how huw lemmey blends hildegaard's own transcriptions/descriptions of her visions in the novel, as well as the importance of the way this books acts as a meditation on language itself. language falls away and returns throughout this novel, and in some cases characters speak to one another in totally unknown languages (important because hildegaard created her own constructed language to transmit her theology during her lifetime). definitely esoteric, definitely a little bit impenetrable, but overall very cool!
March 5, 2023
3.5 stars for this book with four authors. The main, middle part of this book is co-authored by Huw Lemmey and Hildegard von Bingen, the latter a German mystic and polymath from the 12th century. (How does a work exist in the middle ages, a dystopian 21st century, and simultaneously in a post-Information Age future? How does the life of a Medieval saint dovetail with a Health Administration officer in a future totalitarian regime obsessed with purity and cleanliness?)
This is bookended on one side by Bhanu Kapil's speculative and lyrical tale of Pinky Agarwalia, a saint one hundred years in our future who discovers the writings of Hildegard. On the other side, we find the transcript of a lecture by Alice Sprawls about the life and mystical lineage of Hildegard. I would suggest reading this book in reverse order: starting with Dr. Sprawls' lecture, moving on to the main part of the book, and finishing it off with Bhanu Kapil's prose poem.
This is bookended on one side by Bhanu Kapil's speculative and lyrical tale of Pinky Agarwalia, a saint one hundred years in our future who discovers the writings of Hildegard. On the other side, we find the transcript of a lecture by Alice Sprawls about the life and mystical lineage of Hildegard. I would suggest reading this book in reverse order: starting with Dr. Sprawls' lecture, moving on to the main part of the book, and finishing it off with Bhanu Kapil's prose poem.
January 24, 2023
This was one of the most unique books I have ever read. It is so vivid and feels so original in its writings. I picked up this book at a bookstore in Berlin.
So strange , yet beautiful ? yet very christ centric/theological at times (especially for a jewish atheist reader lol), idk , as a quite spiritual person it took me on a journey for sure.
It is set in a world that is familiar, a mix of medieval life and the modern, covid infected world.
I do believe if I had a better understanding within christianity I could read into much of the book a lot better, but I still got carried through this spiritual-1984 esq-refugee plight-queer journey of a novel.
I do not know how to describe this book but at the beginning of the blurb on the back of my book it is written, ‘A mutant fiction of speculative mysticism�.
So strange , yet beautiful ? yet very christ centric/theological at times (especially for a jewish atheist reader lol), idk , as a quite spiritual person it took me on a journey for sure.
It is set in a world that is familiar, a mix of medieval life and the modern, covid infected world.
I do believe if I had a better understanding within christianity I could read into much of the book a lot better, but I still got carried through this spiritual-1984 esq-refugee plight-queer journey of a novel.
I do not know how to describe this book but at the beginning of the blurb on the back of my book it is written, ‘A mutant fiction of speculative mysticism�.
November 6, 2021
I can honestly say that you won't read many books like this. I found it hard to follow at first, but then it picked up and was a wild ride for a bit, before moving back more into a spiritual area that would maybe have spoken to me 20+ years ago, but no longer does. Those who are looking to connect God to the contemporary world, who long for the days of visions and prophecy, who still ponder fire and brimstone and final judgment, will likely enjoy this, or at least find it interesting. It's ambitious in its attempt to link mysticism to modernity, and God to the earth (and thus saving the earth and humanity from climate change and other environmental hurts) but ultimately, for me, it's a bridge too far.
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