Poems and Selected Prose

Dark Night

St John of the Cross (1542 –1591) was born in Fonteveros, Spain and joined the Carmelite Order as a young man. After meeting St Teresa of Ávila, he joined her attempts at reforming the order, embracing a more stringently monastic and studious life than Carmelites then practised. Arrested, imprisoned and tortured for his beliefs, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening during his captivity which inspired an outpouring of mystical poetry and writings, including ‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel’, ‘The Dark Night’ and ‘The Spiritual Canticle’. He was canonized as a saint in 1726. 
 
Martha Sprackland is an editor, writer and translator from the north of England. She has translated poetry by Ana Gorría, Verónica Viola Fisher and Gladys Mendía, and short fiction by Sara Mesa. In 2021 she was shortlisted for the Peirene–Stevns Translation Prize. Her debut collection of poems, CITADEL (Pavilion/LUP, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the John Pollard International Poetry Prize, and the Costa Poetry Award.

‘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, deserving and undeserving, oscillating between light and dark, soaring and falling, desperation and salvation. Dark Night gives us a picture of faith at once confronting and inspiriting, and of the power of words as a means of spiritual transcendence. 
 
Translated by Martha Sprackland, with an introduction by Colin Thompson.

St John of the Cross

Songs of Yearning for God

St John of the Cross was a 16th century Spanish mystic who wanted to reform Catholicism and encourage the integration of meditative practices by its followers.  Because of this, he was locked up by other monks and during his imprisonment he wrote one of the world's most famous spiritual poems Dark Night of the Soul.  After his escape, he then wrote a commentary to the poem to explain how to deal with any period when one feels completely cut off from God, and totally uninspired by anything. This is the first time the poem and its commentary have been translated by anyone outside the Catholic Church, and the language is exceptionally contemporary and relevant to our everyday concerns, no matter whether the reader is a Catholic, Buddhist or Muslim - or just having a hard time.

Dark Night Of The Soul

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

St John Of The Cross

Frankenstein

Wings

Flesh

St John of the Cross

Books by St John of the Cross

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter