Of all things speakable and unspeakable: knowledge and paradoxes in Saint John of the Cross

Abstract

This paper studies eight ascetical poems by Saint John of the Cross, from both a literary point of view and also as an inverse description. Therefore, the paradoxical descriptions of ecstasy and the subsequent acquisition of wisdom become an inverse philosophical reflection. The method of analysis is semiotic and textual interpretative, which renders possible a personal explicative hypothesis. The conclusion is that this work relies on paradox and aporia, which generates “inverse semiosis”: signs are not created by what they are, but by what they are not. Although the poems are not always perfect, they reveal a great knowledge of the language