Absent and Present

The second chapter initiates the comparative readings by examining the dynamics of absence and presence through the lenses of poetry and theological meaning. Read together, the Cántico and Rāsa Līlā bring into focus the capacity of poetry to evoke the presence of God. But in the two poems most of such evocations take place not through descriptive narratives but through intimations of God’s presence when he is not obviously there. The two sections that comprise this second chapter—“Singing the Absent God” and “Looking for God in Nature”—examine the means by which the Cántico’s female lover (the Amada) and Kṛṣṇa’s lovers (the gopīs) search for their hidden lovers and invoke his presence. In their commentaries, John and the Gauḍīya theologians explain God’s absence and presence as the two sides of the coin of God’s love.

Introduction

The Introduction chapter starts by evoking the first encounter of the author with the compared texts. Keeping in mind that most readers might not be equally familiar with both texts and their traditions, the chapter continues by presenting the Cántico espiritual and Rāsa Līlā within their larger religious and cultural-historical contexts. Then, the Introduction outlines the main resonances between the texts and their traditions that will be explored in the subsequent chapters. Next, it delineates the book’s comparative methodology, and establishes its dialogue with the work of other comparative scholars. To close, the Introduction offers an overview of the main topics and subtopics of each of the four chapters that comprise Savoring God.

Secretly Together

The last comparative chapter attends to the poetic imagery of merging used to describe the meeting of the divine lover and the beloveds. The first section, “Together,” examines how the Amada and her lover drink together and how the gopīs dance with Kṛṣṇa by the Yamunā River. The main question of the theological commentaries is how much the divine and his lovers actually turn into each other, and how this manages to occur even as a gap is retained for the sake of the enjoyment and for allowing the love to flow between them. The second section, “Secretly,” dwells on the secret of how God loves and is loved, as disguised in the intricate metaphors of the poetry. The commentaries on both sides resort to the theopoetic strategy of constructing metaphorical layers that simultaneously reveal and occlude the meaning of God’s love.

Savoring Theopoetics

While the notion of theopoetic is modern, the concept existed long before the term was coined by twentieth-century theologians. Chapter 1 introduces in detail John of the Cross’s notion of gustar a Dios (to savor God) and the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava concept of madhura bhakti rasa—“the sweet savor of divine love”—as analogous models of theopoetic. Each of these sixteenth-century theologians deploys the term “savoring” within his own context, and does so toward two ends: to describe the all-encompassing relationship between the person and the divine illustrated in the poetry; and to prescribe a mode of interpreting the verses that leads readers into a similar experience. In both cases, the poems’ commentaries not only explain the theological meaning of the poems but also recreate their metaphorical language. This use of poetry to communicate theological meaning is identified as the practice of theopoetic. The first chapter closes with an elucidation of the book’s methodology.

Conclusions

The last chapter explores some insights taken from the comparisons as they address questions crucial to modern readers and humanity scholars. John of the Cross and the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava theologians had in mind an “ideal reader” who would invest all her emotions and intellect into the act of reading. For John, this is a reader who knows how to “savor” the text and the “divine truths” contained within it. The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava theologians envision a reader who reads “with the heart,” a sahṛdaya. Although these expectations may differ from those of modern readers who approach these texts through a comparative theopoetic lens, we can still ask what the qualities of a modern “ideal reader” are. What could today’s scholars and teachers learn from these Early Modern ways of reading and teaching how to read? And how might their practices of theopoetic impact the way we read and compare texts?

Sensorial Theopoetics

While the site of inquiry for a theopoetic comparison of “savoring” is language, in mystical texts one cannot extricate language from embodiment. Chapter 3 brings into focus the sensorial imagery of the poetry asking how these images, often erotic, are interpreted by the commentators. This chapter is composed of two sections, “Sight” and “Sound,” dealing with the two most prominent senses in the poems, which function synesthetically—incorporating the activity of the other senses. Being more subtle in the Cántico, and more obvious in Rāsa Līlā, the sensorial exchange in both cases is never completely direct. The commentators are tasked with explaining images of reflection and refraction, sounds and harmony, that represent the simultaneous absence and presence of God. Readers are invited to understand the sensorial, embodied, and spiritual dimensions not as separate, but as participating on their own terms in the experience of savoring God.