The Orphic incantation in San Juan de la Cruz

Abstract

In his Cántico espiritual, San Juan de la Cruz not only wrote the most accomplished mystical poem of all time, but also brought together in his verses the most relevant themes, symbols, and concerns of Humanism. A learned poet and extraordinary biblical exegete, although he based the conception and writing of his Cántico on the Song of Songs, as well as on his implicit and explicit Hebrew knowledge of the biblical love poem, he centered the myth of Orpheus on the experience of the divine-human union that he sings of in his lyres, using it as an emblem of the redeeming word.