1. Source

   Descend lower: the dark night

   Burnt Norton III · Line 24 · Descend lower, descend only

   The movement turns from the Underground’s half-light to a true darkness, and the imperative changes the tone from satire to spiritual direction. The language of descent into solitude, privation and emptiness is the language of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross, who taught that the soul approaches God through a ‘dark night’ in which it is stripped of everything it holds on to.

   This is the first appearance of the via negativa — the way of negation — that East Coker III will develop at length.

   Interpretive Ascent & descent Light & dark

   Sources St John of the Cross † (locator to be verified) · Gardner 1949 † (locator to be verified)

   See also Three privations

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