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Savoring God is at comparative study featuring the Christian
Cántico espiritual (
Spiritual Canticle), by the sixteenth-century Spanish poet and theologian Saint John of the Cross, and the Hindu Sanskrit
R¿sa L¿l¿ (
Dance of Love), which originated in the oral tradition. The poems are examined alongside theological commentaries. The comparisons examine the interactions between poetical language and theological discourse.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Translation and Citation
- Introduction: Reading between Granada and Vrndavana
- Chapter 1 Savoring Theopoetics
- Chapter 2 Absent and Present
- Chapter 3 Sensorial Theopoetics
- Chapter 4 Secretly Together
- Conclusions Reading, Comparing, and Savoring
- List of Works Cited
- Spanish Glossary
- Sanskrit Glossary
- General Bibliography
About the author
Gloria Maité Hernández is an Associate Professor of Spanish at West Chester University.
Summary
Savoring God is a comparative study that examines the creative interaction of poetry and theology in two mystical poems central to the Christian and the Hindu traditions, the sixteenth-century Spanish Cántico espiritual (Spiritual Canticle), by Saint John of the Cross, and the Sanskrit Rāsa Līlā (Dance of Love), which originated in the oral tradition. Alongside the poems, Gloria Maité Hernández examines theological commentaries on the texts: the Comentarios, written by Saint John of the Cross on his own poem, and the foundational commentary on the Rāsa Līlā by Śrīdhara Svāmi as well as commentaries by the sixteenth-century theologian Jīva Gosvāmi, from the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava school, and other Gauḍīya theologians.
The phrase "savoring God" conveys the Spanish gustar a Dios (to savor God) and the Sanskrit madhura bhakti rasa (the sweet savor of divine love). In the Christian and Hindu commentaries these two concepts describe a way of approaching the poems that is simultaneously vulnerable to the emotions evoked by the poetical imagery and responsive to its theological demands. While "savoring" does not mean the precisely the same thing to the Christian and the Hindu theologians, Hernández demonstrates that both traditions interpret the term to suggest poetry's power in mediating an encounter with the divine.
Additional text
Young women seek their hidden lovers in a forest. From this thematic coincidence in St. John of the Cross's Cántico espiritual and the Hindu Rāsa Līlā, Gloria Maité Hernández weaves an appreciation of poetry's capacity through sensorial devices to suggest the 'savoring' of divine encounter. Her reading and comparison of texts in Spanish and Sanskrit elucidates the poetry and the dense commentary that accompanies it. I learned from this book, about a poet I thought I knew well, and about a religious and poetic tradition about which I knew very little.
