Poems of St. John of the Cross

The first complete English translation in 40 years. Jones has produced a version aimed at those who wish to pray through the poems, the source of all of St. John's work. Spanish and English on facing pages.

This version of the poems of St John of the Cross is aimed at all who wish to pray through the poems, the source of all St John's work, but one that also features the popular "romance" (ballad) metre beloved of St John himself. Spanish and English text is on facing pages.

The first complete English translation in 40 years.

St John of the Cross is the supreme poet of the mystical tradition in Christianity. His poems are, quite simply, the most concise and beautiful expression of the experience of the love of God in Western literature. They are also the inspiration for his great prose works, which are extended commentaries on the poems.

Many of these stem from his imprisonment in Toledo in 1577-8, from which he had a dramatic escape, taking refuge in a ‘Discalced’ (barefoot) Carmelite convent, where he apparently dictated poems from a notebook he had managed to bring out of prison.

John was a man of his time and loved the literature, courtly and popular, of his age. Many of his poems reflect this in their imagery and metre. Others draw their inspiration from the Song of Songs in the Bible. So images of human love and nature make his poems readily accessible on an obvious level.

But the ‘divine’ intention is always there, and this is the quality Kathleen Jones has sought to bring out in her translation: ‘Considerations of rhyme and metre have been treated as secondary to the importance of precise theological expression, and of conveying something of the lyricism and spiritual power of the original.’

Her main purpose is devotional, but her translation is a pleasure to read. The established Spanish text appears on left-hand pages with the English translation facing.