Music, it will be claimed, intones the meaning of being human. In the Christian tradition, music is central to liturgy and worship. From its roots in the New Testament, through its approval or prohibition by the Church Fathers, to the Puritan purges, the Classical liturgical commissions, and the revivalist celebrations, sacred music continues to be a means of negotiating the relationship between human selves and the sacred. The theological importance of music has been examined most recently with respect to time, but the theological promise of the spatial dimension of music either has been ignored or rejected. Accompanied by the Augustine of the Confessions, this article asks whether "the space of music" offers a way of seeking to know who one is and who God is. 1 If this is a bold claim, it is somewhat less bold than in the long tradition from the harmonious numerical ratios of "the music of the spheres" of Pythagoras and his epigonoi (Reilly 2001) to Steiner's (2001) assertion of music as "a grammar of creation".

This article endeavours merely to highlight four areas in the increasingly fertile and enriching field of Christian Spirituality which may demand some further scrutiny by scholars: (i) the observation of the 'open' and 'live' quality of classic sacred texts; (ii) the attention owed to the informing worldviews of both authors and readers; (iii) the specific use of language and modes of exegesis employed in the Christian spiritual quest, and (iv) the issue of the highly personal and narrative nature of Christian spirituality and how it may be monitored.

Amongst the contributions to the special edition of the Journal of Literary Studies/ Tydskrif vir literatuurwetenskap on the oeuvre of Marlene van Niekerk (Volume 25(3) September, 2009), the task of translating her works into English was discussed. This article adopts a critical focus on four instances of the presence of T.S. Eliot's poetry in the translation of her novel Agaat (2004) for the South African English-speaking reader by Michiel Heyns (2006). Opsomming Die spesiale uitgawe van die Journal of Literary Studies/Tydskryf vir literatuurwetenskap 25(3), September 2009 oor die oeuvre van Marlene van Niekerk bevat onder andere artikels oor die taak om haar werke in Engels te vertaal. Hierdie artikel werp 'n kritiese fokus op vier gevalle van die voorkoms van T.S Eliot se gedigte in Michiel Heyns (2006) se vertaling van van Niekerk se roman Agaat (2004) vir die Suid-Afrikaanse Engelssprekende leser.

The strenuous ascetic that is established in The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night by John of the Cross, frequently, and not illegitimately, is viewed as the purging of desire, but often to the extent that desire exclusively is perceived as a detrimental and negative quality. With a modest shift in perspective, this article attempts to read John through the lens of desire, rather than against it. It employs the notion of 'desireless desire', in order to describe John's final position of waiting as one that neither dispenses with an authentically human and desiring subject, nor compromises the final aim of union with God. INTRODUCTIONDesire is solicitous. Implicit in desire is lack and need: implicit in solicitation is motion, agitation, and anxiety. The movement towards fulfilling the need -the solicitation of the desire -causes anxiety. In theology, desire, as that endeavour to solicit what is required, has long been rendered suspect. In fact, in most of the tomes of spiritual ascetics, desire is a dirty word. It indicates egoism and self-seeking avarice. Desire transgresses the threshold of the temperate and publically permissible, and travels into the regions of the permissive, the excessive, and the shameful. Desire conjures up images of the illicit and, particularly, the forbidden regions of sensual and sexual pleasure. Such an evocation of desire may appear to be precisely what a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite wishes to expunge. However, ask John of the Cross about what he most desires, about the pursuit of that desire, and, thus, about the necessity of taking a journey to obtain that which is most desirable, and he will answer that Acta Theologica 2013 33(1): 79-95 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/actat.v33i1.4

is anxious to correct certain misapprehensions about psychoanalysis, including some of Dr. Waddington's, and also to show that psychoanalysis is much more scientific than its romantic jargon suggests to the uninitiated. This she does very skilfully, in a philosophical as well as in a scientific way. When she has to say what has to be said she says it. "Is there any reason," she asks (p. 69) "to suppose that evolution as a whole has the production of our "good" mature personalities as its goal?" But she is an adept (and not by chance) at avoiding thin analytical ice and gives her mind to the attempt to discover what she and Waddington can agree in commending. In short, her letters are beautiful examples of philosophical adaptability, and intensely interesting as examples of the technique of agreement despite. radical divergence upon "ultimate" questions. I wish I had Dr. Stephen's skill. Lacking it, and having no desire in the world to agree with about half of these authors, I have reluctantly joined the tickers-off. I should like to repeat, however, that I think the discussion profoundly interesting, and am most grateful to Dr. Waddington in particular both for what he gives and for what he gives away.