Silence as metaphor of mystic life in St. John of the Cross

Abstract

Saint John of the Cross, who practiced the monastic asceticism of fasting on words during all his lifetime, knows well that not speaking is not enough. The matter is by far more complex, because having experienced the living God in the form of the most absolute silence –the theopatic union surpasses words– he understands that he cannot say it but with silence itself. Only in this way will it be possible to communicate things "for whose expression language was not made", as Henry Bergson proposed. Hence, he manages to literarily communicate to us something of that infinite silence that God was for him. The moment Saint John silences his language, he manages to dis-silence it. This is no longer a simple denial of meaning, but rather an overwhelming suggestion: the ecstatic trance was literally, Unspeakable. In this essay we address how the poet manages to say his experience without saying it.