The poems of Saint John of the Cross

Noche oscura = Dark night -- Cántico espiritual = Spiritual Canticle -- ¡Oh llama de amor viva! = O living flame of love! -- Entréme donde no supe = I came into the unknown -- Vivo sin vivir en mí = I live yet do not live in me -- Tras de un amoroso lance = Full of hope I climbed the day -- El pastoricico = The young shepherd -- La fonte = The fountain -- Super flumina Babylonis = By the waters of Babylon -- Sin arrimo y con arrimo = Without a place and with a place -- Por toda la hermosura = For all the beauty there may be -- Del Verbo divino = Of the Divine Word -- Suma de la perfeccion = Peak of perfection -- Cántico espiritual = Spiritual Canticle -- Appendix: Nine ballads -- Principal variant titles and subtitles. Saint John’s poetry of love and joy describes the soul’s passage through dark night to final illumination in mystical union with Absolute Being. The allegory the poet uses is that of earthly love, and the poems are strikingly effective on the immediate level of personal experience, quite apart from their theological meanings. Many critics regard the work of Saint John of the Cross (1542-91), the 16th-century mystic, to be among the finest poetry Spain has produced. This bilingual edition, the first in modern English, was originally published in hard cover in 1968 by the Indiana University Press. Most of these poems were written during a period of nine months, in 1577-78, when Saint John (San Juan de la Cruz) was imprisoned and tortured in the dungeon of a small Carmelite monastery in Toledo, and their recurrent motifs are both metaphysical and deeply personal. A classic of modern French literature, the thrilling real-life story of the military hero, ambassador, ladies man, writer, and loving son "I grew up in the certitude that one day I should help give back the earth to those who ennoble it with their courage and warm it with their love." Promise at Dawn begins as the story of a mother’s sacrifice: alone and poor, she fiercely battles to give her son the very best. Romain Gary chronicles his childhood in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riviera and recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in World War II. But above all he tells the story of the love for his mother that was his life—their secret and private planet, their wonderland “born out of a mother’s murmur into a child’s ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love.” This 1961 "memoir" reads like a coming-of-age novel and probably contains a good deal of fiction. Gary (born Roman Kacew) was a self-mythologizer, and indulged throughout his life in multiple layers of authorial disguise The author recounts the special relationship he had with his mother and explains how he worked to achieve the many goals and accomplishments she expected of him.