Dark Night of the Soul

About the book

The profound, hugely influential exploration of spiritual growth and transformation, from one of the great Spanish mystics and poets

'Oh living flame of love,
how tenderly you scorch me'

The poetry of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, St John of the Cross, has inspired and consoled for hundreds of years, influencing writers from James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill to T. S. Eliot. This new edition of his essential works, in a sensitive and luminous translation by Martha Sprackland, gathers John of the Cross's complete poems and a selection of his prose, including from his extended commentary on the poem 'Dark Night'. In his immediate, sensual writing, we see a soul searching for meaning and union with the divine: both meek and bold,...