'Spiritual Canticle', by Saint John of the Cross: Jewish truth versus fanaticism

On the night of December 2 to 3, 1577, some Carmelites entered the house of Juan de la Cruz with the support of armed civilian volunteers, led by Hernando Maldonado, prior of Toledo, tied him up and took him to the Avila convent of Carmen.

He managed to escape, but soon fell into the hands of his enemies who took him on the back of a mule to the convent of Nuestra Señora del Carmen in Toledo and locked him in a hole six feet wide and about ten feet long, where he was imprisoned for nine months. .

There he conceived and wrote the first stanzas of the

Spiritual Canticle

, born from the experience of abandonment, darkness, hunger and suffering, from embodied meditation, from external and internal exile, religious heterodoxy and symbolic theology in a rigorous silence, without a doubt one one of the most aesthetically and poetically creative.

There have been numerous editions of the

Canticle

, one of the greatest poems in universal literature and the summit of mystical poetry of all time.

In his edition of the

Poetry

of San Juan de la Cruz

,

Domingo Ynduráin states that the Spanish mysticism of the Golden Age must be studied from a deep knowledge of the Kabbalah.

Accurate observation that follows Lola Josa, professor of philology at the University of Barcelona and one of the most prestigious world specialists in San Juan de la Cruz.

There lies precisely the peculiarity and originality of its new edition: in the rigorous analysis and creative interpretation of the

Canticle

through Hebrew mysticism, freed from both religious and philological dogmas, a field little explored in the studies of Saint John of the Cross.

The author of the

Canticle

, Lola Josa emphasizes, was a “sagacious knowledge of the Bible,” especially of the Hebrew Bible, which he knew almost by heart.

In the classrooms of the University of Salamanca he followed the teachings of the great Hebraists of the 16th century and of Fray Luis de León, translator of the

Song of Songs

, and lived the influence of the then subversive humanism singled out by Hebrew knowledge.

It is precisely that humanism, based on the “Hebraic truth” that exudes the

Canticle

, in the face of the fanaticism and intransigence of the theocracy then in force.

Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), in a drawing by Francisco Pacheco from the 16th century.Documenta / Album / PENGUIN (Album / Documenta)

The inspiration for the

Canticle

is the

Song of Songs

, a book of the Hebrew Bible written in profane terms that transforms erotic love into a divine symbol.

Professor Josa highlights its depatriarchalizing character, since the beloved and the beloved look for each other, maintain an egalitarian relationship and meet in nakedness, as the

Canticle

is also depatriarchalizing .

There are two reasons that he provides to justify this inspiration.

The first, because the

Song

was the book most studied by Hispanic humanists of the 16th century.

The second, because it shows that Jewish mysticism turned the nakedness of the human body into the best physical representation of emptiness.

To find and taste God you have to undress and take off your shoes.

What's more, for John of the Cross, nudity is God himself.

Already in the first stanza he leaves implicit the idea of ​​the “nothingness of God” in full harmony with the medieval mystic Maestro Eckhart: “Where did you hide, / beloved, and left me moaning? / Like the deer you fled / having wounded me, / I went out after you crying, and you were gone.”

We are facing one of the most lucid and coherent manifestations of apophatic theology, which has its beginning in the 4th century with Pseudo Dionysius, and which the Ávila mystic carries to the ultimate consequences by not naming God in any of the great poems. of the.

Lola Josa's comments on each of the 39 stanzas identify the mystical and lyrical will that occurs in the barefoot Carmelite of Fontiveros in a unitary and inseparable way, while, following Eckhart, they discover the luminosity in the poet's dark night and clarity in the darkness.

The final result of this edition is an aesthetic writing, a symbolic approach and a creative hermeneutics that gives new life to such a memorable poem, studied today from different disciplines with always new contributions given its inexhaustible depth.

It can be said what Juan de la Cruz says about the mountain or the hill: “Pure water flows from it.”

True, the pure water from the sources of Hebrew knowledge, which the author of this commentary knows perfectly and prioritizes in the life, work and thought of the Discalced Carmelite.

Without this book being a biography of the barefoot man from Ávila, the profile that Lola Josa draws of him seems to me to be a masterpiece: “How uncomfortable the mystic must have been for the official forces and surveillance, little less than a revolutionary who defended the non- need for absolutely nothing that the established order could offer.

He, poor from birth, who cared for hopelessly sick people, knew that kindness and charity, attributes of the will of emptiness, are more powerful than any government.”

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