From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordEden is the garden of the first human life in Genesis.
- In TraherneEden can stand beside the reader’s own life because the sun, earth, and human powers have not ceased to be gifts.
- In this editionEden is not only a decorative synonym for a pleasant landscape.
- A place to beginThe same world can be Eden to one person and a prison to another.
Meaning
Eden is the garden of the first human life in Genesis. Traherne uses it as a remembered scriptural place, a measure of original happiness, and a way of describing a present relation to the world.
Use in the book
Eden can stand beside the reader’s own life because the sun, earth, and human powers have not ceased to be gifts. A person stripped of what society can confer is still not necessarily poorer than naked Adam. The contrast between Eden and prison therefore sometimes concerns two ways of inhabiting the same creation. Yet redemption prevents this from becoming a simple restoration of an untouched past. The fallen creature knows the added treasure of Christ and the love disclosed in recovery, so that the original goodness is now encountered under further obligations.
Places to read
In this edition
Eden is not only a decorative synonym for a pleasant landscape. Ask whether the passage invokes original human conditions, present perception, or the comparison between innocence and redemption.