Dark Night of the Soul

Since the Middle Ages, Christian mystics have dealt with matters of the soul. They believe in a supra-reality with dimensions that can often seem vague, abstract, and fuzzy to those not as comfortable with metaphysics, the arcane branch of science that deals with questions of being and knowing, and with the very nature of time and space.

Before being appropriated by New Age spiritualism, mysticism represented one of the most complicated and disciplined expressions of intellect for millennia. Generations of philosophers, poets, scientists, and theologians representing virtually every institutional religion grappled with questions about how the soul functions, how the soul evolves, and what the soul actually does. Foremost among the medieval mystics still studied today is Juan de Yepes y Álvarez (1524-1591), a Carmelite monk later canonized by the Catholic Church as St. John of the Cross. His meditation-in-verse, “The Dark Night of Soul,” is now considered one of the most important investigations into the power of the soul.

The meditation was written, according to Church legend, in the 1570s, when John himself was imprisoned by the Church for his uncompromising crusade to reform a Church he viewed as corrupted by secularism. The inspirational poem, in turn, depicts the triumph of the soul at the terrifying moment of darkest doubt, what John terms “the night.” John’s titular phrase “the dark night of the soul” has come to signify moments of the soul’s deepest and most painful tribulation just before its liberation into the wonder and glory of union with God.

Poem Biography

Born in 1542 in the small town of Fontiveros in southern Spain and fathered by a respected merchant in the flourishing silk trade, Juan de Yepes y Álvarez grew up in the happy chaos of a large family. After his father died when John was 10, the family struggled financially. John relished school and found great comfort and inspiration in his devotion to the Catholic Church. By high school, John had read through the towering works of Catholic philosophy, most notably the dense neo-Platonic treatises of Thomas Aquinas. Unable to find gainful work as an apprentice in any trade shop, John matriculated at the nearby Jesuit college in Medina del Campo to study theology.

But John was not content with the prospect of being a parish priest within a Church he regarded as mercenary, interested only in power and money. Instead, in 1563, he joined the Order of the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, the Carmelites, a strict monastic sect that had for two centuries devoted itself to study and prayer, often in strict silence and in periods of fasting, far from the distractions of civilization.

In the late 1560s, John first met Teresa of Ávila, a Carmelite nun already known throughout Spain for her vivid visions, her ascetic life, and her passionate mysticism. It was Teresa who convinced John to assist her in her controversial crusade to bring the Carmelite Order back to its original asceticism. In 1565, taking the name Juan de la Cruz, or John of the Cross, to emphasize his devotion to the passion of Christ, John began nearly a decade of missionary work visiting monasteries throughout Spain and bringing his message of uncompromising reform. By 1577, the movement, although popular among the younger generation, led to John’s detainment by his own Order. He was put under house arrest. For nearly a year, John was chained in a tiny windowless room, humiliated and tortured daily, and deprived of food and water. It was during this time he composed “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

In late 1578, John escaped and returned to his missionary work, bringing his message of reformation and establishing more than 20 new monasteries to proclaim the rigorous message of spiritual simplicity, humility, mystical love, and self-denial. In addition, he completed a towering two-volume commentary on “Dark Night” itself, laying out his complex theory of how the soul finds God.

A conspiracy of his own followers, jealous of John’s status and uneasy over his mystical visions, usurped his leadership position in the Carmelite Order in the late 1580s. John’s last years were spent in seclusion, even as his reputation as a holy man of God made him into a legendary figure. At John’s death in 1591 in Ávila, multiple parishes requested Rome to be the site of John’s burial. Ultimately, John’s body was dismembered so that these parishes could each venerate at least a part of the blessed man. The body was eventually reassembled and buried in a special shrine in Segovia, Spain, just before World War II.

John was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1726 and later named a Doctor of the Church, recognizing the importance of his mysticism, specifically his philosophical treatises on the soul’s journey to fuse with God.

Poem Text

I.

In a dark night,

With anxious love inflamed,

O, happy lot!

Forth unobserved I went,

My house being now at rest.

II.

In darkness and in safety,

By the secret ladder, disguised,

O, happy lot!

In darkness and concealment,

My house being now at rest.

III.

In that happy night,

In secret, seen of none,

Seeing nought myself,

Without other light or guide

Save that which in my heart was burning.

IV.

That light guided me

More surely than the noonday sun

To the place where He was waiting for me,

Whom I knew well,

And where none appeared.

V.

O, guiding night;

O, night more lovely than the dawn;

O, night that hast united

The lover with His beloved,

And changed her into her love.

VI.

On my flowery bosom,

Kept whole for Him alone,

There He reposed and slept;

And I cherished Him, and the waving

Of the cedars fanned Him.

VII.

As His hair floated in the breeze

That from the turret blew,

He struck me on the neck

With His gentle hand,

And all sensation left me.

VIII.

I continued in oblivion lost,

My head was resting on my love;

Lost to all things and myself,

And, amid the lilies forgotten,

Threw all my cares away.

St. John of the Cross. “The Dark Night of the Soul.” 1577. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

There are two challenges to summarizing John’s poem. First, the original poem appeared in Spanish more than four centuries ago, and translations have impacted the English-language version we read today. Words have been altered over time, their meanings subtly changed, not only by well-intentioned translators but through fiats of the Catholic Church itself. Second, this is a religious poem; more to the point, it is a mystical reflection. Every noun is a symbol infused with Catholic mysticism and is intended to teach. The poem is designed to illuminate the commonly held doctrines of the Church itself. Thus, the poem is more an allegory—a story with hidden moral or political messages—in which the speaker, most likely St. John of the Cross himself in his moment of crisis, reveals essential beliefs held by the Roman Catholic Church at the time John composed the poem.

The poem begins on a dark and terrifying night. The speaker, his heart wildly beating, is alone in a home where otherwise everyone is asleep. The speaker steals out of the house and into the night itself, into the “darkness and concealment” (Line 9). The speaker fears nothing in the darkness because he has the illumination his own burning heart, which guides him unerringly through the oppressive gloom.

In Stanza IV, the speaker, recounting his flight into this dark night and how his own heart’s energy, more radiant than the “noonday sun” (Line 17), leads him. He eventually arrives at a place where a mysterious lover, identified only by the capitalized pronoun “He” (Line 18), waits but does not appear—not a threat, not a stranger, for the speaker confesses that he knows this figure “well” (Line 19).

In Stanza V, now united with this figure, the speaker forgives the night for its intimidating darkness because it has now made possible this reunion; it has joined “the lover”—the waiting figure—“with His beloved” (Line 24)—the speaker.

Using the vocabulary of physical love, the speaker now depicts how he and this powerful figure have bonded, how this being now sleeps and reclines on the speaker’s bosom, strewn with flower blossoms, in a tableau that suggests not so much religious ecstasy as the contentment and quiet of two lovers.

In Stanza VII, the speaker describes how this loving figure, His hair flowing carelessly in a breeze that comes from a nearby castle turret, touches the speaker on the neck with “His gentle hand” (Line 34). At that moment, the speaker is rendered catatonic as “all sensation” (Line 35) leaves him. It is a moment of tectonic union. The speaker is powerless under the gentle touch of this being.

In the closing stanza, the speaker admits that the sensation of “oblivion” (Line 36) hangs on but that he does not fear this feeling of vulnerability. Rather, the speaker reclines his head happily on the being, whom the speaker now calls his “love” (Line 37). The speaker describes this consuming feeling of helplessness as pleasant, “lost to all things and [him]self” (Line 38). All of his “cares” (Line 40) have been disposed of. Now, the night vanquished, the speaker reclines happily lost (or “forgotten” [Line 39]) with this lover in a splendid and peaceful field of lilies.