Dark Night

[Guest guest]

Jan Barendrecht wrote:

>

> The prologue to "Dark Night of the Soul (Noche Oscura)" by San

> Juan de la Cruz leaves no doubt as to what it is about:

> ----------------------

<snip>

 

Or the opening stanzas of Dante's Inferno :

 

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself

In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell

About those woods is hard-so tangled and rough

 

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel

The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.

And yet, to treat the good I found there as well

 

I'll tell what I saw, though how I came to enter

I cannot well say, being so full of sleep

Whatever moment it was I began to blunder

 

Off the true path. But when I came to a stop

Below a hill that marked one end of the valley

That had pierced my heart with terror, I looked up

 

Toward the crest and saw its shoulders already

Mantled in rays of that bright planet that shows

The road to everyone, whatever our journey.

 

Then I could feel the terror begin to ease

That churned in my heart's lake all through the night

As one still panting, ashore from dangerous seas,

 

Looks back at the deep he has escaped, my thought

Returned, still fleeing, to regard that grim defile

That never left any alive who stayed in it.

 

(trans Robert Pinsky)

 

Of course that's just the beginning, Dante is forced back into the valley and

must

journey through the underworld to its core and out the other side.

 

....and that's the dark night.

 

andrew