Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies. There in a breeze from the fanning cedars. La noche oscura del alma ( Dark night of the soul) But not being religious, I can't understand the intellectual gymnastics required to construe this as anything but a brilliantly intense love poem written from a female viewpoint. Was John sublimating? Was even he himself falling into the Christian tradition of explaining away overtly erotic texts as allegory (as in the explanation of the Song of Songs as "Christ's declaration of his love for the church")? Go figure - it's pretty well impossible to psychoanalyse a 16th century mystic. But I wonder at the psychology behind it.
As explained in the Wikipedia article, Dark Night of the Soul, the author later wrote a theological treatise explaining its meaning: a narration in allegorical form of the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God (the treatise is here at the Catholic Treasury) and subsequent critique largely takes this at face value. This Spanish friar and mystic, better known as St John of the Cross, was heavily involved in religious politics during the Counter-Reformation, and in 1577 was arrested and imprisoned by his opponents during his incarceration he wrote the poem La noche oscura del alma. On first encounter, I especially like Dark Night of the Soul, Gjeilo's wistfully ecstatic arrangement for choir, string quartet and piano (in a style somewhat akin to Thomas Newman) of the poem Dark Night by Juan de Yepes y Álvarez (1541-1591).
Check out his official site for more background. It's not the kind of weird stuff I usually like, but it's nevertheless quietly powerful. He's a Norwegian-born composer of a rather lyrical repertoire - piano, choral, symphonic, neoclassical, crossover - with considerable inspiration in cinematic music. A musical recommendation: Ola Gjeilo (just found via his piece The Ground on Classic FM).
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