St. John of the Cross: Mystical Poetry & Baroque Literature
St. John of the Cross: Mystical Poetry
Mystical poetry expresses the exceptional experience of the soul’s union with the divine. The lyric of St. John of the Cross expresses the experience of love through evocative and emotive symbols, inspired by the Bible, the language of love, and nature.
Life of St. John of the Cross
From humble beginnings, St. John was protected by a nobleman, which allowed him to study philosophy and theology at the University of Salamanca as a Carmelite. There, he met Fray Luis de León and had access to Bible translations. He wanted to get closer to early Christianity and dedicated himself, along with Santa Teresa, to the founding of new convents. He wrote poems about his religious experiences. The monks of the community read his poems, but because of the difficulty found in some religious texts, Santa Teresa suggested he write a prose commentary to clarify the meaning of the poetry. He suffered imprisonment, accused by his former colleagues, the shod Carmelites, who were wary of the religious revival carried out by the barefoot Carmelites.
The Poetry of St. John of the Cross
The first poems of St. John of the Cross drew from traditional love poems, which he gave a religious sense with minor modifications. This is what is called divine poetry. Some of these are love poems whose main character is a pastor. The original poetry of St. John of the Cross includes mystical experience. The poet finds a language sufficient to convey the ineffable, expressed through the symbols of love poetry.
Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Canticle, and Living Flame of Love, written in *liras* (a five-line stanza), reflect the path that leads to union with God and the pleasure it provides. In Dark Night of the Soul, the poem conveys, through symbols, the sensations experienced in the process of union with the divine and final ecstasy. Nature becomes very important. The prose is born later than the poetry and is intended to explain the meaning of the poems.
Style of St. John of the Cross
St. John of the Cross creates a new poetic language through symbols that have their origin in the language of human love, in the Bible, and in nature. The language is very emotional, expressive, and intense; exclamations, alliteration, and enumerations abound. To express the inexpressible, the poet uses contrast and antithesis. The style of St. John of the Cross assimilates various influences, such as traditional lyric poetry, that of Garcilaso de la Vega, Fray Luis de León, and the Bible.
Baroque: Lyrical Poetry and Prose
Themes and Forms of Baroque Lyric Poetry
In the seventeenth century, lyric poetry achieved high quality and great variety in themes, tones, and forms. The poets who best demonstrate this variation are Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora. Lope de Vega also stands out, with a more natural style. Like all Baroque art, poetry presents sharp contrasts in themes (serious or trivial), in tones (reflective or burlesque), and in forms or styles (classical and popular). As for the meter, great perfection was reached in the sonnet and romance, and the *décima* (abab:cc:dccd) and *silva* (a free combination of consonant heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic verses) were displayed.
Conceptism and Culteranismo
Two trends have been distinguished in Baroque poetry: Conceptism, based on ingenuity, and Culteranismo, concerned with formal beauty. Francisco de Quevedo and Baltasar Gracián represent Conceptism; Luis de Góngora represents Culteranismo. Although traditionally a distinction has been made between these currents, in fact, there is no categorical opposition between them because both seek a complicated expression through inventive associations aimed at a minority, as they force the reader to make an effort of interpretation.