Ascent of Mount Carmel (Triumph Classics) [Paperback]

Saint John of the Cross (Author), E. Allison Peers (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Triumph Classics | Publication Date: April 1991

Noteworthy for its meditations on a brief mystical poe. Noteworthy for its detailed psychological analy-sis, its contribution to ascetical theology, its step-by-step survey of a soul's progress in the life of the spirit and literary distinction rare in mystical writing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The soul must pass through the dark night of the senses because all the passions it feels for created things are pure darkness in God's eyes," wrote the Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross in the late 16th century. In Ascent of Mount Carmel: John of the Cross, John discusses the soul's need to pass through spiritual darkness before union with the divine can be possible. In a beautiful text that has been "edited and mildly modernized" by Henry Carrigan Jr., John offers an early treatise on his spiritual poetry, outlining themes that he fleshed out more fully in his more famous later work, Dark Night of the Soul.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

An essential introduction to one of Christianity's greatest luminaries. For spiritual seekers of all faiths, "Ascent of Mount Carmel" provides a classic roadmap for the mystical journey. CMN Trade Journal November 2002

. . .a beautiful text . . . Publishers Weekly August 2002 <hr>

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Triumph Books (April 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892434910
• ISBN-13: 978-0892434916
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,433,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a complete version, September 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Ascent of Mount Carmel (Christian Classics, 20) (Paperback)

On the positive side, the Carrigan translation is based on the E. Allison Peer's which is currently out of print. The negative is that some of the chapters are omitted by the translator (he says since they are repetative or about John's religious community, that are insignificant). I would have to discagree. Without the full transalation, some pertanent insights can be lost.

I have the downloaded the Peer's translation in both PDF and RTF format and am still looking (or hoping for a reprint) of a hardcopy from Ligouri

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unyielding spiritual precision, December 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ascent of Mount Carmel (Triumph Classics) (Paperback)

I read The Ascent of Mount Carmel over a decade after my own conversion to Christianity. What astonished me the most was that St. John of the Cross described with absolute precision exactly how God had intereacted with me. He describes many ways in which God chooses to reveal himself to man, most of which I did not understand. But it would be my guess that if anyone has encountered God, that encounter is described somewhere in this book.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Excessive abridgment, May 19, 2008

By 

J. Thomas Graham (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ascent of Mount Carmel (Christian Classics, 20) (Paperback)

I'm afraid that Carrigan, who of course read the Peers translation before making his abridgment, does not understand how difficult it is for a reader who has not already read the full version to make sense of the abridgment. The problem is that the parts he removes are the concrete, often Scriptural, analogies that St. John of the Cross uses to make his abstract descriptions of the dynamics of spiritual life understandable. In the original, St. John often comes at a problem from several different angles, so that if one way of explaining it is hard to understand, you get a second or third chance. For someone like Carrigan who has already mastered the teachings, this may seem like repetition, but for the first-time reader, it's extremely helpful.

Also, if this is to be your only encounter with St. John, you will not understand the importance of Scripture, especially the Old Testament, to his thought, as Carrigan has removed most of the OT references. Also missing from this book is the Spanish text of the poem, which would have only taken two pages to print. I urge interested readers to buy instead the Kieran Kavanaugh Collected Works of St. John of the Cross form the Institute of Carmelite Studies, which gives you ALL of STOTC, the Spanish texts of the poems, a reproduction of St. John's striking crucifix drawings, and the diagrams of Mt. Carmel that he prepared for his students to make his overall scheme easier to grasp. Given the extremely high value of reading and understanding Ascent, and the difficulty, it is worth it to spend a few dollars more to get a first rate book.