La Noche Oscura: The Songs Of Desires:
“I’ve lost my troubles there, I’ve tossed them into lilies…”
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x.com/mikenov/status/2029217…Michael Novakhov (@mikenov)Michael Novakhov (Mike Nova): La Noche Oscura, The Dark Night Of My Soul mn-3.blogspot.com/2015/05/la…Saturday, May 30, 2015
La Noche Oscura, The Dark Night Of My Souldark night of the soul poem | dark night of the soul poem text | analysis of noche oscuraLa Noche Oscura Del Alma, The Dark Night Of My Soul
In the Dark Night of my Soul,
With passion burning; oh, lucky me –
I went away in secret and unseen,
My being joyful and at easeIn the darkness and invisible
I climbed the secret ladder up; oh lucky me –
In darkness, in disguise,
My being joyful and at ease.The night of joy,
In secret, unobserved, and shouldn’t be;
Without light or guidance
But the one insideThe midnight sun lead me,
Sun brighter than at noon
To where He, I knew; I knew it well,
Awaited me, and nobody else.The night lead me,
More perfect than the dawn
The night of love:
We merged, we mixed, one in anotherMy yearning breast, my breath
Was only for Him and Him alone
He slept, I touched Him,
And the cedars with breeze us cuddled…His breath – my healing breeze,
His pure golden hair,
Sweet wounding touch, both gentle and exciting –
And, senseless, I was lost,And consciousness dissolved,
His cheek by mine,
And all the world abandoned,
I’ve lost my troubles there, I’ve tossed them into lilies…M.N._________________________________________Dark Night of The Soul – Interpretation
My (sudden) understanding was that this little, very simple and very complex at the same time, poem is the concept, symbol and the celebration of the organic unity of the Love earthly, human, sexual (in this particular case, and this is explicitly and deliberately clear from the text, the physical love of one, relatively young, with his intensity and abandon, man for another) and the Love spiritual, religious, heavenly, eternal, pure and just as intense: the love for and of God, in Christianity, for Christ.
This poem affirms the notion of the deification of the Beloved by the Lover (in old, traditional and somewhat misleading terms) and the attempt at transformation in closeness and merger with the Beloved – the God.
The love of ancient Hebrews for their God was just as intense, overwhelming and almost physical, single minded and exclusive in their devotion to their “one and only” Beloved-God, probably a defense and a substitute for the earthly and real Beloved(s).
The love of deeply religious and spiritual Christians for their Beloved, Christ, has the same intense and mixed physical-heavenly quality.
The physical, earthly, sexual component is the emotional font and engine which feeds and embodies the pure, spiritual, religious love.
This poem discovers that there is no contradiction between them, that it is rather natural and organic continuum than artificial and cruel dichotomy.
What is the better case, notion and the example for the wise acceptance of gay sexuality and lifestyles on the part of the Christian Churches, than this little poem, which breathes with life and truth still, half a millennium after it was created?
Judaism, this practical and living sociology, so to speak, did accept them, quietly and without much hullabaloo.
Furthermore, for anyone, trying to understand the origins of Christianity, it should be undeniable, that historically, spiritually, conceptually, philosophically, aesthetically, it is rooted in a preceding homoerotic (and much more than simply “homoerotic”) cult of Antinous based on the undoubtedly real historical figure. This proto-Christian religion was appropriated, (perverted?), broadened and transformed by fusion with Judaism and aesthetically-spiritually framed by the Hellenistic mythologists (“myth-maker, myth-maker, make me a myth!”). For Alexandrian Jews, the compilers of Septuagint, and by extension, Early Christians, the idea of “gay God” was blasphemous and absolutely unacceptable, just like the idea of living Emperor-God. This idea is still treated in the same terms by many contemporary religious thinkers and figures.
Christianity, in a way, was and remains the Judaeo-Hellenistic religion of “common sense” (inspired by “Common Aphrodite”, as Socrates would have put it) and intense, “gut-reaction” protest against the homoerotic cults and “gay Gods” and by the nature of this relation is rooted in them.
Mithraic cults is another example of the rejected early pre-Christian religious movements.
The Greek mythologists, who had no problems with these issues in their Olympic Pantheon, readily obliged and produced their magnum opus, a new religious paradigm, better suited for their historical time and place, under the restrictive (Early Rabbinical Judaism) and fanatical influence of their Hebrew literary-religious brethren.
The true Beloved is God, and the true God is The Beloved. Now it remains to determine what makes them “true”, how to separate it from “untrue” and how to find this “truth”. I think all of us, of all orientations and religious and non-religious persuasions are engaged in this life-long, mysterious and not always meaningful search.
Keep searching, and do not talk about it with your psychiatrist: it will destroy everything.
Place a smiley here.M.N.— https://x.com/mikenov/status/2029217056013377765
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) Mar 4, 2026
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