For some years now, the Spanish literary scene has been in a state of high excitement, over the recent discovery of 19 beautifully composed sonnets that date back to the early 1600s. What is of particular interest to us is that these wonderful poems were all composed by a young, enclosed Discalced Carmelite sister, known as ‘Sr Ana of the Trinity, OCD’.

Let’s take a look at Sr Ana’s life story. Ana de Arellano y Navarra was born in 1577, in a town called Alcanadre, which is situated in the Central Northern area of Spain (in a region perhaps best known to many for its Rioja wine!). She was the daughter of Don Juan de Arellano and Doña Juana de Ureta.

Initially, aged 20, Ana entered a monastery, known as Santa María de Herce, located some 12 kilometres away from her home. However, Ana knew in her heart that her true destiny was to be a Discalced Carmelite sister, so when she learnt that a Carmelite Monastery was newly founded in the same area, she expressed a wish to transfer there. Unfortunately, her parents had had some commercial issue with the Carmelite Order, so they refused to give their consent for Ana to move there.

Ana decided that her parents’ decision simply was not acceptable to her, and with the help of a priest, she managed to escape from Herce. Unfortunately, the result of this adventure was not a happy one: they were recaptured: the priest was imprisoned at Santo Domingo, and Ana suffered terrible fractures to her ribs, from which she was never to fully recover. And she was sent back to the Convent of Herce!

At some stage, after this massive setback, Ana’s parents managed to resolve their differences with the Carmelite order, and at last Ana had their consent to transfer to her chosen Convent of San José de Calahorra, in 1601, at the age of 24 years. There she stayed, for the rest of her young life, passing away prematurely at the age of 36 years.

It was during this last stage of her life, at Calahorra, that Sr Ana composed the 19 beautiful sonnets that have come down to us. It’s more than likely that in fact she composed many more, as it is only by good fortune that the sonnets we now hold, so full of enchantment, survived the instructions she gave on her deathbed that all of her poems should be burnt – as indeed most of them were. Those that have survived were some 19 sonnets that she had handed over to her Mother Superior, Madre Cecilia, some time prior to 1610, when the latter returned to Valladolid (from whence she had come in 1598).

Madre Cecilia also wrote some poetry of her own, and at first it was thought the 19 sonnets under discussion had been penned by her. But fortunately, a note by Cecilia which has survived to our time, clearly identifies Sr Ana as the author.

It’s no wonder that the Spanish literary scene has greeted these sonnets with such enthusiasm and delight! And personally, I rather like the fact that, unlike St Teresa of Avila, and St John of the Cross, Sr Ana chose to write her poems as sonnets. And they are indeed of great beauty and sensitivity, although in reading through them, one is often very conscious of the fact that Sr Ana was enduring lasting suffering from the fractures that she incurred during her flight from Herce in 1598.

In recent years, Spanish newspaper, ABC, ran a delightful article under the caption that translates as: ‘Poetic justice for the sonnets of Sr Ana of the Trinity – the pinnacle of Spanish mysticism’, in which they go on to say: ‘Lost for four centuries, and edited in 1970 as the works of another nun. Now they have arrived in the public eye at large. This is the recuperation of one of the most amazing poets of our language.’

I have to agree! I have to admit that I am particularly fond of sonnets as a form of poetry, which is what drew me to Sr Ana’s work in the first place. And I would say that she uses the classical structure of the sonnet to great effect.

Dr Jesús Fernando Caseda Teresa, a Doctor in Spanish Philology at the University of La Rioja explains this very eloquently in his article about Sr Ana: ‘La Poesía Mística de Sor Ana de la Trinidad.’ In this article he quotes Ana’s Sonnet No. 2 (see below for my rough translation) to examine the structural pattern Sr Ana uses.

Firstly, he mentions her constant use of the first person in her work: the ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, in what he describes as a confessional tone. Her work is about what she herself is experiencing. And she constantly uses a contrast in her phraseology: for example, she writes in line 12: ‘for whom I live and for whom I die.’

And then he highlights the clear use of duality in her compositions. So, the first quatrain generally expresses the immensity of the firmament, the second quatrain: the limited world of human life, and finally in the third quatrain: an abandonment to her mystical destiny.

Of course, these sonnets are untranslatable – much as I would love to. Nevertheless, as a little taster to their content, I’ve noted below a broad rough guide to the meaning of a couple of her sonnets that I particularly love. The first I’ve selected is her sonnet: ‘Oh peregrino bien del alma mía’ (Sonnet No. 4 – ‘Oh Beloved Visitor to My Soul’):

‘Oh beloved visitor to my soul,
Who alone can quench my thirst
And rid me of my pains
Converting my weeping into joy!

As you are my light, my guardian and the guide
For me, whether it be on earth or in heaven;
I don’t need any means or comforts,
Other than you, and all else I avoid.

In solitude, estranged from everything,
Unadorned my being and my life,
Ready to be renovated like a phoenix,

Into your loving burning flame
I throw myself, there to be burnt,
So I shall be reborn like a salamander.’ 

Sonnet No. 2 – ‘Of What Use to Me is the Dawn?’

Of what use to me, who am sad, is the dawn,
That vanquishes the obscure darkness of the passing night,
And what use is the sun that races towards the west,
Until all things lose their colour,

If the pain of ordinary things dwells in my soul,
And in my eyes there is always water
Because I cannot see the ardent Sun,
Who rules in heaven, bringing light and love.

He comes here heavily disguised
When offered to me as the blessed sacrament,
Although my faith assures me, He is unchanged,

And is the very same, for whom I live and for whom I die.
Though when I’m fearful that He might not love me, or be bored by me,
Then my pain increases, just as my hopes increase.

My favourite of her sonnets is the following one, which is numbered sonnet 15. Dedicated to the eyes of Our Lord Jesus, this poem begins with the evocative words ‘Linces de lo profundo y escondido’. I only wish my translation could truly capture its beauty and do it justice!

Sharp eyes, with hidden depths
Of love, glorious centres,
Joyful applause, victorious triumphs,
And ringing bells of purest gold,

With dense forests, where I lose myself,
And delightful floral paradises,
Depths of science, full of mysteries,
And sweet suspension of my senses;

Sentences of death and of life,
Crystals in which the world is seen more clearly,
Sunshine that takes away my anger,

With refuge for the afflicted soul,
Blanks in which sure fondness I find,
All this in the peaceful eyes of Jesus.

But dear reader – realistically, none these beautiful poems can be translated adequately to reflect their splendour fully. At the end of the day, my advice is to buy a good Spanish dictionary and settle down to read Sr Ana of the Trinity in her original Spanish – one by one – to soak them up, word for word, at leisure, and then to ponder on them to grasp their meaning fully. They are not easy – but they are certainly worth the trouble. Your efforts will be richly rewarded.

An editorial afterword

It is perhaps a strange irony that Sr Ana’s poems should only have come to light relatively recently at a time when there is a revival of interest in understanding spiritual language. The nineteen surviving sonnets that we have were only finally published as the work of Ana in 1992, having previously been assumed to be part of the collection of poems written by her prioress Cecilia del Nacimiento.

While her artistic and literary quality is undoubted, what is of particular interest for us is that Ana joins into a long tradition of mystical writers in the Christian Mystical Tradition. In the Carmelite tradition we immediately think here of St John of the Cross.

For many years John was generally recognised as one of the greatest lyrical poets in the Spanish language but from a Carmelite perspective our interest is focused on his contribution to the writings of the Christian Mystical Tradition. We have here a tradition established at the very origins of Christianity before being traced through desert tradition and numerous writing in the medieval period. The inevitable challenge for those writing in this field is finding a language to describe the quality of a relationship with the divine. By definition this has to accept the inadequacy of language when we try to capture a state that is by definition beyond words.

Which brings us back to Sr Ana of the Trinity. I think we can say that her work, regardless of its high poetic quality, must take its place within this underlying mystical language tradition. Insofar as Ana wished her work to be burned at her death she was clearly not seeking to find a place in the history of Spanish literature. As Michael Burns explains above, Ana faced considerable difficulties in committing herself to a Carmelite life from a young age. The language of her surviving poetry seeks to articulate the quality of her own transformative journey, a journey unfolding at the close of what had been the Golden Age of Spanish mysticism.

We must be grateful to Michael Burns for drawing our attention to Sr Ana of the Trinity, as her work is clearly in need of deeper study within the Carmelite Order.