Product Description

Introduction by P. J. Kavanagh.

A finely produced, bilingual edition of these celebrated poems.

Rejoice, my love, with me And in your beauty see us both reflected: By mountain-slope and lea Where purest rills run free, We'll pass into the forest undetected. -from "Songs Between the Soul and the Bridegroom"

St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite monk, has long been regarded as one of the greatest of Christian mystics. His intensely fervent and profound poems are a reflection of his own unique mystical experiences, which required nothing less than total surrender to the love of God.

They are presented here in a beautifully produced, fine-paper edition, both in the original Spanish versions and on facing pages in Roy Campbell's celebrated English translation. Campbell was an intense admirer of all things Spanish and, as Laurie Lee put it, "one of our last pre-technocratic, big-action poets."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1910927 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 119 pages

Amazon.com Review
The Poems of St. John of the Cross, translated by Ken Krabbenhoft, burn with the ecstatic fury of the Psalms and sail in the radiant peace of the poet Rumi.

St. John of the Cross was born in Spain in 1542 and was imprisoned in 1577 for his devotion to the teachings of St. Teresa of Avila. During his imprisonment, he wrote most of the poems that have earned him the reputation as the greatest poet of the Christian mystical tradition. The poems, presented here in a beautifully printed, lightly illustrated Spanish/English edition, often blur the line between romantic and religious love, in the tradition of Song of Songs. "On a Dark Night," for example, begins with a lover whose gender is not identified, stealing out of a house, down a secret ladder, following "my only light and guide / the light that burned in my heart," to find "the one I knew would come, / where surely no one would find us." The poem ends with a breathtaking image of spiritual and sensual contentment: "On the ramparts / while I sat ruffling his hair / the air struck my neck / with its gentle hand, / leaving my senses suspended. / I stayed; I surrendered, / resting my face on my Beloved. / Nothing mattered. / I left my cares / forgotten among the lilies." These are poems to read aloud to a lover, poems to read silently before God, poems that quiver before the world's beauty and thankfully seek to describe something beyond it--a God whose undeniable intimacy with humanity always edges toward the ineffable. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Library Journal
St. John of the Cross, a 16th-century mystic, wrote a small body of poems, many of them while he was imprisoned for his involvement in St. Teresa of Avila's monastic reform movement. A friendly jailer gave him pen and paper, and with these he composed some of the most ecstatically spiritual poems of the Christian tradition. St. John's central theme is union, though he wrote from utter solitude. His expressions of spiritual union with God are surprisingly sexual; it's often difficult not to interpret them as secular love poems. There are many excellent translations available that endeavor to capture the intensity and passion of the original. Krabbenhoft's translations are flat and literal in comparison with those of Willis Barnstone (1968) and John Frederick Nims (1979). Nims, for example, translates the last line of "Canciones Dei" as "how delicately I'm caught afire with love!" while Krabbenhoft renders it "how soothingly do you woo me!" Spanish texts are included, and Ferris Cook's tender illustrations are based on 16th-century Spanish paintings.AJudy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Mr. Campbell has re-created the extraordinary subtlety of the music of the original in an English verse worthy of it and that climbs from aspiration to ecstasy as if it were itself a poem." -- The Guardian

Customer Reviews

The Divine Consummation
Nims' translation is nothing short of miraculous. I've read the poems in at least three different translations and Nim's were the only ones which made me cry like when I read the Spanish for the first time. There is something plaintive and erotic about John of the Cross that other tranlators edit out for propriety's sake, but Nims left it in as one should. John was a lover of the Song of Songs and his pursuit of God was the pursuit of one painfully in love and desirous of consummation. Nims brings that aspect to the fore. Gorgeous. But remember, the poems are not enough. One must still read John's commentaries.

Love Poems
John of the Cross is often associated only with the spiritual condition he called the dark night of the soul, experienced as a cold, dry, confusing place. But when you read his poem "On a Dark Night", you realize what wonderful intimacies are hidden for lovers under cover of darkness. For me, this poem, both in its original Spanish and its rich English translation, is itself worth the price of this attractive hardback book.

This is a book that celebrates the soul's love for her Divine Lover in images and language that transcend the limitations of physical gender. When the mystics subliminated, they truly made the energy of loving sublime!

Wonderful poems
The poems of st John of the Cross are very moving and here they are both in the original Spanish and a fluent new translation - highly recommended!