St. John of the Cross
The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross. Translated from the critical edition of P. Silverio do S. Teresa, C.D., and edited by Professor E. Allison Peers. Vol. I. (Burns Oates and Washbourne. 15s.) IT has been a special work of modern scholarship to give to the world an accurate text of the great writings of the Christian mystics ; which carelessness, bigotry, or misunderstanding had most often handed down to us in a mangled form. Again and again the boldness and startling realism of their utter- ances, the depth and the delicate beauty of their teaching have been concealed under a thick coat of devotional varnish. Vivid and unconventional metaphors have been softened, passionate language toned down, and slight verbal changes have quietly brought the doctrine of the saints one degree nearer to the safe commonplaces of the devotee. Now—as these falsifications are gradually eliminated, and suppressed passages restored—the disconcerting splendour of their writings at last begins to appear.
St. John of the Cross is among the greatest of those writers on the mystical life whose true quality has thus been con- cealed from us ; and also one who has suffered with exceptional severity from the corruption of his text. It is only three years since a just appreciation of his real greatness was made possible by the appearance in Spain of P. Silverio's critical edition of his works. Based on a large number of MSS., collated according to the most exacting methods of modern scholarship, the publication of this critical edition at once made all earlier English translations out of date. As regards those hitherto current, it was often indeed impossible, as Professor Peers says, to tell whether in any particular passage we were " face to face with the Saint's own words, with a translator's free paraphrase of them, or with a gloss made by some later copyist or early editor in the supposed interests of orthodoxy " : and their long immunity from competition or criticism is largely responsible for the general misunderstand- ing of St. John's work, even among students of Christian mysticism. The popular notion that he is a forbidding ascetic chiefly interested in " the dark night of the soul " could hardly survive first-hand acquaintance with his teaching.
Professor Peers, whose devoted studies of the Spanish mystics are well known, had therefore a task of the first importance ready to his hand, and has not hesitated to undertake it. The first volume of his translation, containing the great " Ascent of Mount Cannel " with its conclusion, " The Dark Night of the Soul " is now published. In it, English readers get for the first time a scrupulously accurate and exceptionally readable version of a great spiritual classic. Professor Peers is particularly successful in reproducing the plain, stark charac- ter of St. John's doctrine, his clean outlines and dislike of pious decorations. He makes intelligible much that in other translations is vague and obscure. If his achievement is less remarkable in dealing with the poetic side of the Saint's genius, this is almost inevitable ; for here the task is one of exceptional difficulty. His rhythmic version of "En una Noche oscura " is accurate indeed ; but the mysterious beauty of the original is missed. Here, however, we have the exqui- site version of Mr. Arthur Symons—a translation which is itself a great poem—to help us.
For the difficulty and the fascination of the writings of St. John of the Cross abide in the fact that in them a poet of genius, an advanced contemplative, and a spiritual director of
great psychological insight collaborate. The influence of all three may be found in each of his works ; though not to the same degree. In " Mount Cannel " 'it-is chiefly, the director who speaks ; in the " Living Flame " the contemplative ; in
the " Spiritual Canticle," the God-intoxicated poet. Only those who have at least attempted to read this last work in Spanish—as all may now do with the help of Dom Chevallier's French-Spanish text—can have any adequate idea of the spiritual realism, the intolerable beauty, the strange power of suggesting that which lies beyond speech, which give to this Carmelite friar his unique place in the literature of the world. Professor Peers hardly goes too far when he says: "The verse and prose works combined of St. John of the Cross, form at once the most grandiose and most melodious spiritual canticle to which any one man has given utterance."
EVELYN UNDERHILL.
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