The Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross STANZA 35

The Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross

Carmelite Conversations

Philip Harvey

Wednesday the 7^th of December 2022

 STANZA 35

 En soledad vivia,

y en soledad ha puesto ya su nido,

y en soledad la guía

a solas su querido,

también en soledad de amor herido.

 

She lived in solitude

and now in solitude has built her nest;

and in solitude her dear one alone guides her,

who also bears in solitude

the wound of love.

(Venard xxiii)

 

This is the Beloved’s affirmation of the soul’s prolonged devotion to the Beloved, the source of Love. It is a statement of complete reciprocity, each side in wonder at and praise of the other. The soul is spoken of as a turtledove, using the language of Scripture. The turtledove is by legend a bird that is innocent, pure and the example of enduring love. Indeed, the bird’s existence and purpose are entirely reliant on being with its partner. This lifetime of increased love and devotion was an established literary model, notably during the Renaissance as when for example we hear of the turtledove in Shakespeare. The poet’s commentary discloses that the use of the word ‘solitude’ has a different meaning in each line. In line 1, ‘She lived in solitude’ takes us back to the start of this story, where “the soul that longs after God derives no consolation from any other companionship, - yea, until it finds Him everything does but increase its solitude.” Whereas line 2 moves on from the life of “voluntary privation of all the comforts of this world, for the sake of the [Beloved or] Bridegroom,” to a place where now the soul “in solitude has built her nest.” The poet explains the nest as “that perfect solitude wherein [the soul] attains to union with the Word, and in consequence to complete refreshment and repose.” God Himself is the guide to the soul who has become “detached from all things, having now ascended above all things, as we read in the next line: “in solitude her dear one alone guides her”. Until God or the Beloved “also bears in solitude the wound of love.” As the poet explains, the soul “having reached the summit of perfection and liberty of spirit in God, all the resistance and contradictions of the flesh being subdued, has no other occupation or employment than indulgence in the joys of its intimate love of the [Beloved].” So it is that we follow in microcosm in this stanza the stages of change that the soul goes through in this relationship. It can be observed that even though this happens in solitude, the lover is never alone as such, but always autonomous in and of itself, only being transformed through love into an increased understanding of God, and therefore of all being.

 When we remember that St John of the Cross composed this poem in solitude, an enforced solitude, a solitude of incarceration and abuse, the repetition of the words ‘en soledad’ in this stanza, like the counting out of days, comes to us as no surprise. ‘In solitude’ is where his soul was found and, after many struggles and endurances and privations, ‘in solitude’ is where his soul finds itself now, able to live at peace through communion with God. One way of reading the whole poem is as a prison journal, a journal in which perfect freedom will be reached through endurance, prayerful attention, and faith. Just as St Teresa of Avila in her ‘Interior Castle’ tracks the progress, temptations, distractions, growth and union with God, so St John describes this progress in his own language and via his own poetic means. And at the end of the Spiritual Canticle we meet what Rowan Williams calls the “controlling theme of all his writing … God is not the same as anything else. Nothing can ‘substitute’ for God; once he is tasted by the soul, all earthly or creaturely beauties become tantalizingly inadequate hints and reflections.” (Williams 162) This is not to say that the world is left behind and is of no value. Rather it means the world, or the creaturely to use a medieval term, is seen in perspective, and valued rightly. The claims of the world are let go of in order to be seen and understood through relationship with God. This image of the turtledove in her nest represents what Williams explains thus: “Growth in spiritual maturity is growth in detachment from the creaturely … John takes it for granted … that a person in some sense becomes what he or she loves.” (Williams 163) When I read this stanza, I am reminded of my own uniqueness, and so extension the uniqueness of each one of us in our relationships. The poet has experienced that singularity at an intense and painful level, one reason why he has written down his experience in terms of solitude.