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The Greatest Poet of the Spanish Language

We do not know if John had read much poetry apart from his classes in the humanities at Medina, although religious communities used poetry at times in their services, and individuals held competitions in writing poems on a religious theme. 27 One form of poetry that influenced John is the villancico, which begins with a theme stated in two to three lines, the last of which is then repeated at the end of each stanza. John's poem, "For I know well the spring," is in precisely this popular form, each stanza echoing the last line of the initial theme-verse, "Although it is night." Religious in John's day often took popular love songs and reworked them, modifying them slightly so that they expressed love between themselves and Christ. This transposition of a secular song to a religious level is seen in those poems that are introduced with the words a lo divino [with a spiritual meaning]. One of John's most beautiful poems, "A lone young shepherd," is of this kind. John's ten romances follow the usual ballad meter and verse form of the time. These poetical narratives maintain the same rhyme throughout by ending alternate lines with the same sound generally a verb in the Spanish imperfect or conditional tense.

John's three major poems, the "Spiritual Canticle," the "Dark Night", and the "Living Flame," show the influence of three Spanish poets. Garcilasco de la Vega, who died six years before John's birth, introduced the Italian Renaissance style of poetry to Spain. One of his innovations was to extend the Spanish meter by three syllables. John used this hendecasyllabic meter in his great poems. Garcilasco was influenced by his friend Juan Boscán, and their poetry was published in one volume by Boscan's widow in 1543, a year after her husband's death. John may well have read their work when studying in Medina del Campo. In 1575, while John was in Avila, an Andalusian, Sebastián de Córdoba published a collection of religious adaptations of Garcilasco's poetry, and since John quotes from it, we know he read it. Garcilasco further influenced John by emphasizing pastoral themes in his work, as John does in the "Spiritual Canticle." 28

Mystics frequently use the imagery and symbolism of the biblical Song of Songs (or Canticle of Canticles), portraying various scenes in a growing relationship of two lovers, leading up to their union in marriage. John's "Canticle" takes its title from this book of Hebrew Scripture, and both the "Canticle" and the poem of the "Dark Night" follow the model of the lovers' yearnings in the Song of Songs.

Leaving the major works for later consideration, let us briefly examine the themes of the minor poetical works. The "Romances" are an important part of John's theological vision. While the four major prose works portray the disciple's journey to God, the "Romances" synthesize John's understanding of salvation history. Focusing on God's plan for the world, they complement the seeker's return journey to God. The nine interlinked "Romances" "on the Gospel text In principio erat Verbum' " present poetical reflections on the Trinity and the Incarnation. Important for their doctrinal synthesis, their simple and beautifully expressed doctrines are rich in their biblical, trinitarian, christological, and ecclesiological understanding and vision. The first portrays the inner life of the Most Holy Trinity in its eternal, atemporal, mutual loving. This vision of God is also foundational for the disciple's return journey to God.

As the lover in the beloved

each lived in the other,

and the Love that unites them

is one with them,

. . . . . . . . .

Thus it is a boundless

Love that unites them,

for the three have one love

which is their essence;

and the more love is one

the more it is love.

The second "Romance" deals with the internal communication among the Persons of the Trinity. It is a communication in love already heralded as the basis for the Father's love of the Son's future disciples.

In that immense love

proceeding from the two

the Father spoke words

of great affection to the Son,

. . . . . . . . . .

"...and whoever is like you in nothing

will find nothing in me.

I am pleased with you alone

O life of my life!"

The third to sixth "Romances" speak about creation. The third is a dialogue between Father and Son, the former wanting a bride for the Son, the latter wanting a bride who glorifies the Father. Thus creation becomes a project of love between the Father and the Son, the palace in which the spouse will dwell. The body of the spouse is constituted of all the just. Although endowed with a lower nature, humankind will be specially blessed when the Son becomes human too. The promise of the fourth "Romance" becomes the hope of the fifth, a hope portrayed in terms of Israel's longings. This hope culminates in Simeon's recognition of the light that descended from the heights (sixth "Romance"). The seventh "Romance" proclaims the Incarnation in which the lover will become:

"Like the one he loves;

for the greater their likeness

the greater their delight."

. . . . . . . . .

"I will go seek my bride

and take upon myself

her weariness and labors

in which she suffers so;

and that she may have life

I will die for her,

and, lifting her out of that deep,

I will restore her to you."

The eighth and ninth "Romances" bring the hope, the plan, and the promise into history through the revelation of the conception and birth through the Mother, Mary. Thus, the Son comes to his bride, the church:

embracing his bride,

holding her in his arms,

whom the gracious Mother

laid in a manger....

A tenth "Romance" based on psalm 137, "By the Waters of Babylon," portrays the psalmist's pain, hope, and longing for deliverance, for salvation brought in Jesus. It culminates in verse 14:

...and he will gather his little ones

And me, who wept because of you,

at the rock who is Christ

for whom I abandoned you.

John also wrote five poetic "glosses," that is, series of stanzas that comment on a basic theme, repeating it in the last line of each stanza. "I entered into unknowing," described as "stanzas concerning an ecstasy experienced in high contemplation," actually reads more like a commentary on the Ascent and "Dark Night". Imagery decreases, and the gloss ends by explaining the concept of unknowing. Every stanza ends by affirming that it is an unknowing "transcending all knowledge."

"I live, but not in myself" comments on the intense suffering of one who longs to see God.29 The seeker can say:

I do not desire this life

I am dying because I do not die.

. . . . . . . . .

I will cry out for death

. . . . . . . . .

O my God, when will it be

That I can truly say:

Now I live because I do not die?

Thus the seeker in death finds the life, always longed for.

"I went out seeking love" is a gloss that substitutes the image of hunting for prey instead of longing for love. It is a secular poem to which John gives a religious interpretation of hope.

"Without support yet with support" is a short poem to which John gives a religious interpretation; the disciple, dissatisfied with every created thing, longs for the love of God. The three stanzas successively focus on faith, hope, and charity.

"Not for all of beauty" is a secular poem that takes on extraordinary meaning for John, who (as we will later see) identifies beauty as the essence of God. Once a disciple has tasted the beauty of God, nothing else will ever bring satisfaction.

In addition to the "Romances", the glosses, and the poems on which his major prose works are based, John wrote two further poems of exceptional beauty. "For I know well the spring" describes how a disciple "rejoices in knowing God through faith." The result of John's extraordinary mystical experiences in the Toledo prison, this poem was probably written on the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi. Deprived for six months of either celebrating the Eucharist or receiving communion, surrounded by the darkness of his prison cell, John professes his own knowledge of God through faith. John gives the poem an exceptional doctrinal development from the eternal uncreated divinity, to belief in the Trinity, Incarnation, and the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist that we receive in communion. The poem has a simple rhythm that remind us of a flowing river an image that John uses for the life of grace. John's prison on the banks of the Tagus would have suggested both the night and the river that are the principle sym bols in this poem. "A lone young shepherd" (the Pastorcico) is a beautiful love poem that John uses to express the love between Christ and the disciple. By changing only the last verse, John gives a new meaning to the whole poem which now culminates in the loving surrender of Christ on the cross.