Jacint Verdaguer’s St John of the Cross, between imitation and rewriting

Mysticism is an important aspect of Jacint Verdaguer’s idea of poetry. Among the various mystical models mentioned in Verdaguer’s texts, especially in the preface to the second edition (1882) of Idil lis i cants m stics [Idylls and Mystic Songs], and in Los jardins de Salomó [Solomon’s Gardens], three are particularly fruitful. The first one is the biblical Song of Songs, which Verdaguer himself translated into Catalan, and which can be traced in all his religious poems. The second one is Ramon Llull and his Llibre d’Amic e Amat (The Book of the Lover and the Beloved), the greatest Catalan mystic model, which can be tracked in many epigraphs borrowed by Verdaguer, and which provided the starting point for his Perles de l’Amic i de l’Amat (1896) [Pearls of the Lover and the Beloved]. The third model is St John of the Cross, the mystic author whom Verdaguer felt closer to because of his sensibility. Verdaguer not only read St John of the Cross’s poems and imitated his style in various poems, but also took his C ntico spiritual (Spiritual Canticle) as an inspiration for the Catalan translation of Song of Songs and for his Llullian Perles de l’Amic i de l’Amat. In these two adaptations Verdaguer executed the same literary operation that the Spanish poet had achieved in his Cántico espiritual.