Description

‘If this is not heaven, I do not know what heaven is, for all the suffering that can ever be put into words, could not enable anyone to earn such a reward and forever possess it.’ A central figure in Christian mystical literature, the Dominican Prior Henry Suso was the writer of the seminal autohagiographical text The Life of the Servant. Transcribed by an enlightened amanuensis without his explicit consent, Suso began burning the manuscript until a heavenly missive from God decreed the text should be spared further desecration. The fragments remaining from that conflagration are vividly resurrected in this volume, elegantly translated by James M. Clark. Suso’s subjective account of the spiritual and invisible world, told in prose of unsurpassed poetic beauty, reflects the ardent spirituality of his devotion. Informed by severe mortifications, visions, ecstasies and revelations, this canonical text endures as a remarkable cultural artefact. Resonating profoundly with contemporary concerns of austerity and materialism this classic text of mysticism is once again accessible to a new generation of readers and to those existing admirers seeking to re-evaluate its many virtues.