"My Beloved, the Mountains... the Strange Insulas." The Adventure of Love of the Poet Saint John of the Cross in a Theological Aesthetic Key

Abstract

In the background of isolation lived during pandemics during the past two years, Literature has remained to many of us as a spiritual reservoir of voices and sceneries which have helped us to understand each other offering water to quench humanity. The aim of this article is to dwell on the symbolism of the "odd islands" which St. John of the Cross presents in two verses of his "Spiritual Chant": stanza 13 referring to the absent Beloved and in stanza 32, referring to the searched Beloved. For this purpose, I will firstly pose the poetic originality of this metaphor in the Renaissance context in which it was written, and then I will stand out the theological-aesthetical validity of the nuptial metaphorization of the human and divine unión. In the context of experienced isolation, I will introduce such islands as the new and unknown configuration paths of an open hope for humanity capable of receiving the divine gift of a full life.