Dark Night of the Soul

Because relying on any single explanation of the journey toward the soul’s enlightenment risks simplifying the entire mystical experience, given the reach and range of mystical literatures in virtually every organized religion, St. John of the Cross’s poem uses four stages to suggest the movement of the soul toward union with God: dilemma (Stanzas I-III); journey (IV-V); revelation (VI-VII); and resolution (VIII).

In the opening three stanzas, John sets the stage for the journey to enlightenment. In aggressively symbolic language—using the allegorical figures of the darkness and night—the poet lays out the dilemma of a Christian soul during its time on earth, the time of sorrowful pilgrimage through the pain, sufferings, and disappointments inevitable in the world without God’s illuminating and sustaining presence. Because the poet does not want to make the poem about himself alone, the poem draws on the suggestive allegorical power of a “dark night” (Line 1), representing any condition of suffering.

Against the house in which others sleep quietly, that is, a world content to be in the darkness, John, as speaker, feels too keenly the agonies of this night. Yet he exclaims, “O, happy lot!” (Lines 3, 8), a cry of joy or good fortune at feeling his soul stir. In that house, the speaker understands he cannot stay. By “secret ladder” (Line 7), he steals out of the house, determined to follow the urgency of the soul. Into that “happy night” (Line 11), the speaker moves, uncertain of where to go but determined to rely on the bold illumination of his burning soul as a guide.

In Stanzas IV and V, the speaker describes his night journey, led only by the passion of his soul: “That light guided me” (Line 16). The movement lacks direction he can discern, but the soul leads unerringly on. It leads to a place where the speaker is sure God “is waiting for [him]” (Line 18) and yet “where none appeared” (Line 20), resulting in intense disappointment. All of a sudden, caught up in the heady movement toward God, the night itself turns “more lovely” (Line 22) than the dawn, and the journey ends with the speaker’s conviction that the night has truly led to his God.

In this reunion, John invokes the rhetoric of sexual union between a man and a woman—the speaker casts God as a “lover” (Line 24) and himself as God’s “beloved” (Line 24), and he even uses the female pronoun “her” (Line 25) to position himself in the role of the woman in this metaphorical pairing. To create a lovers’ pair consisting of God and a man in John’s time would have been considered heretical and sacrilegious. It would also position God and John as equals, two male figures, leaving a male and female pairing John’s only option. In Christian thought, women were considered to be born of men, with Eve being formed from Adam’s rib, and were largely thought of as flawed or inferior versions of men. In comparison to God, and in the metaphor of being God’s beloved, John’s role as the female half of a pair of lovers suggests his own imperfect nature beginning its sublimation into the whole perfection of God’s love—“changed her into her love” (Line 25). Note that in many English translations of the poem, references to the lovers’ sexes that may feature in the original Spanish, a language in which most words are clearly categorized as either masculine or feminine, are removed.

In Stanzas VI and VII, in vocabulary rich with images of union that suggest the intimacy and power of sexual love itself, the speaker completes his soul’s union with God. Stanza VI uses the image of two reclining lovers to suggest the powerful moment of revelation, when the soul, troubled and plagued by suffering, finally fuses with the sheer radiant energy of God: “On my flowery bosom / Kept for Him alone / There He reposed and slept” (Lines 26-28). The capitalized pronouns represent the convention of using capital letters to designate God Himself. The moment of consummation, the moment of union, is celebrated by the sweet, incensed breeze of cedars, within Old Testament literature Holy Land trees that represent wisdom, strength, and beauty.

At that moment of union, the revelation of God’s presence is suggested by the moment God’s loving and gentle hand strikes the speaker in the neck and renders him immediately unable to feel and unable to move. That moment of spiritual paralysis symbolizes the complete surrender to the power and passion of God. That element of surrender indicates the supplicant nature of the speaker as he happily, joyously, feels all sensation depart. His soul is ravished by the experience of union.

The mystical experience cannot be sustained. The transfiguring moment in Stanza VII cannot continue indefinitely. In the closing stanza, the speaker deals with the post-ecstasy moment, the resolution. Now lost in oblivion, his soul’s union with God has obliterated his awareness of the troubling real-time world, and he is content to feel the deep and near love of God. “Lost to all things and myself” (Line 38), the speaker understands the ramifications of this mystical moment. He has gained what he did not have at the poem’s outset when he was stranded in the dark night, before he undertook the journey toward God. He is now content. The perfect moment of self-abnegation represents the reward of the mystical union. The speaker is freed at last of the burden, the agony, the weight of his corruptible, imperfect, and vulnerable body. All his cares, he says confidently and happily, are tossed away, gone as he himself settles into the elevated spiritual state of being surrounded by lilies, the Easter flower that suggests in Christianity rebirth and transcendence. The speaker ends the poem contented now to be lost in the sweet love of God.