Religion: John of the Cross

Some of the most soaring religious poetry ever written was composed by a tiny 16th Century Spanish monk called Juan de la Cruz—John of the Cross. From his bald head to the soles of his sandals, John was a contemplative, shy, silent mystic.

Though action, and particularly rebellious action, went much against his grain, his friend St. Teresa of Avila enlisted him in her crusading reform of the Carmelite order. Anti-reform monks kidnaped and imprisoned him in a cell in Toledo’s Carmelite priory for eight months, where he was taken out once a day to eat crusts and water on the refectory floor, and kneel while the monks tried to change his mind by walking in a circle around him, lashing his bare back with leather whips.

One evening, a voice singing a love song in the street outside inspired him to a love poem of his own—love for God. The poems he went on to write have become classics of mystical poetry. A new edition, published last week, Poems of St. John of the Cross (Pantheon, $2.75), includes the original Spanish, as well as an exceptionally successful English translation by South African Poet Roy Campbell. Sample:

I live without inhabiting Myself—in such a wise that I Am dying that I do not die. This life I live in vital strength Is loss of life unless I win You: And thus to die I shall continue Until in You I live at length. Listen (my God!) my life is in You. This life I do not want, for I Am dying that I do not die.