Teresa, My Love

by Julia Kristeva

With a semiological finesse that is equally startling, Teresa distinguishes these images, which are her way of thinking metaphorically, from paintings and other ornamental objects. Her images when enraptured are “truly alive,” the fruit of an interior seeing: there is no pictorial effect but a fleeting dazzle, like a veiled sun, only communicable to those who have been granted the same favor.16

  Finally, a discovery we might call pre-analytical: it is possible to translate the unnameable pangs of impassioned sight into a named image, an identifiable representation, if—and only if—the love object calms the sensory and potentially demonic violence of the praying lover by occupying it, fixing it, engaging it. The “loving words” of the Other (“Do not be afraid, it is I”) steady the soul and ratify the amorous meaning of its visions:

  For if the will is not occupied and love has nothing present with which to be engaged, the soul is left as though without support or exercise, and the solitude and dryness is very troublesome, and the battle with one’s thoughts extraordinary [si falta la ocupación de la voluntad, y el haber en qué se ocupe en cosa presente el amor, queda el alma como sin arrimo ni ejercicio].”17

  Only the love of the Other, that fixed and eternal object, can endow one with the “talent for discursive thought or for a profitable use of the imagination”18 whose absence Teresa bewailed when recalling her first stumbling steps in faith. Imagination, thus understood as existing in and by the love of the Lord, is now free to be the intelligence that transforms the sensory imprint into an “intellectual vision”: it can now be lived as the wonderfully “delicate” presence of the Other at the very core of subject Teresa. I understand that there were for her none of the “contradictions” with which some commentators have seen fit, by the lights of their own logic, to tax her. But the “fancying it so” (in which Teresa admits there can be a whimsical desire, an antojo) and the cancellation of delusion or subjective impulse are in action together. They touch like the front and back of the growing “certitude” of the praying woman, physically and mentally dispossessed of herself in the union with the Beloved.

  Adjoining the “boudoir” of the soul, these visions—which must remain secret—lead to still more “interior” intimations: the spiritual betrothal that occurs in the “Seventh Dwelling Places.” Finally, dispensing with imaginary visions, there is nothing but an intellectual vision uniting the lover with the Beloved—the sheer light and unbridled joy of the pax vobis (John 20:21).

  The soul, or “I mean the spirit,” becomes “one with God” in that “center.” Now, over a few concise lines, the rhetoric of comparison turns from the feeling body to evoke metamorphosis in the form of two candles close together. The image is developed, apophatic thought oblige, into a mingle of waters, and then into streams of light:

  Let us say that the union is like the joining of two wax candles to such an extent that the flame coming from them is but one, or that the wick, the wax, and the flame are all one. But afterward one candle can be easily separated from the other and there are two candles; the same holds for the wick. In the spiritual marriage the union is like what we have when rain falls from the sky into a river or fount; all is water, for the rain that fell from heaven cannot be divided and separated from the water of the river. Or it is like what we have when a little stream enters the sea, there is no means of separating the two. Or, like a bright light entering the room from two different windows: although the streams of light are separate when entering the room, they become one.19

  In the private deeps of her experience, Teresa thinks by employing sensorial images that are largely free of anthropomorphic or erotic connotations. By virtue of this ultimate, climactic surge toward sublimation of the state of love, this repertoire is like “thought in motion.” A highly wrought passage in the “Fourth Dwelling Places”20 recalls how some four years earlier (we are in 1577, so this was in 1573, after undergoing “anguish” and “interior tumult of thoughts”) La Madre came to the realization that “the mind (or imagination, to put it more clearly) is not the intellect.” Against the numbing abstractions of the intellect she makes room for a certain imagination—or imaginative faculty—able to convey the truth of thought without completely severing its links to the body. Neither abstraction nor “imaginative vision”: what Teresa is after is an imaginary that is thought, a thought that is felt, and the sheer pleasure of metamorphoses.

  How often, my philosophical Teresa, will you force me back to the dilemma that haunts scholastic masters past and present: intellect or imagination? Not to put too fine a point on it, is this thinking or delirium? Neither one nor the other, but always swaying between the two: that would be your answer, I reckon. Or rather you wouldn’t answer, you would continue weaving the a-thought of your letter addressed to the extremes of being: oscillation, flux, body and soul, flesh and word, the inception of the imaginative faculty and the ardent desire to share it.

  Mercedes Allende salazar correctly notes that Teresa’s confessors were not all of one mind with regard to the area of thought she sought to explore.21 Where La Madre wrote “thought is not intellect,” adding “thought or the imaginative faculty” in the margin, Jerome Gratian attempted to clarify the gist of the argument by inserting between the lines: “thought or imagination, for this is how women commonly refer to it.” In contrast, the Jesuit Jerónimo Ribera grasped something of the distinction she felt inside and strove to verbalize as clearly as possible. He struck Gratian’s insert and wrote firmly at the top of the text: “Nothing to be expunged.”

  I’m delighted by this disagreement, for it shows that there is indeed a “third way,” perceived (by Gratian) as feminine but accepted (by Ribera) as universal, which is no more nor less than thought. Distinct from both the alleged truth of abstract understanding and from imaginary fancies, a thought exists that only thinks inasmuch as it is an “imaginative faculty”; an infinite elucidation of fantasies, setting out from their amorous source, in the betrothal of understanding and imagination.

  Thank you, Fr. Ribera, for not erasing a word!

  Chapter 14

  “THE SOUL ISN’T IN POSSESSION OF ITS SENSES, BUT IT REJOICES”

  And even though the vision happens so quickly that we could compare it to a streak of lightning, this most glorious image [of His sacred Humanity] remains so engraved on the imagination that I think it would be impossible to erase it until it is seen by the soul in that place where it will be enjoyed without end.

  Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle

  It is in the fourth degree of prayer, then, that what Teresa calls “this exile” of the soul [este destierro]1 is accomplished. Banishment extirpates the person at prayer from the understanding, will, and memory that set so many traps for her, the very same as our desires set for the neurotic subjects we are—Andrew, Juan, Bruno, myself, to name a few.

  Teresa deals with it differently from us. Or rather she doesn’t deal with it, she throws herself in, she plummets to the bottom, but she is then reborn by writing about it: writing the adventure of abandonment and exile for us. Inverting the fear of divine judgment into a mystical marriage, her “banishment” places her inside an oblatory Other, loving/loved; henceforth she becomes this Other. This bears no resemblance to the relationship between the lover and the Beloved in preceding prayers, for there they would simply and easily decant into each other, to the point of merging like twin fountains into a single stream. Here, in the fourth degree, there is no longer any “work” involved, only “rejoicing.” “In this fourth water the soul isn’t in possession of its senses, but it rejoices without understanding what it is rejoicing in [Acá no hay sentir, sino gozar sin entender lo que se goza].”2

  There is a good that fills her with joy, but she does not know what it consists of. All of the senses are involved but without a precise object, interior or exterior. Intensity and self-perdition: no border, no identity can withstand this transport. And now the metaphor-metamorphosis of fire comes to join that of water to signify the blissful annihilation of the
person at prayer: “the soul sometimes goes forth from itself…comparable to what happens when a fire is burning and flaming,”3 “for at the time one is receiving [these favors] there’s no power to do anything.”4 Deprived of “sensory consciousness,” the faculties “remaining for several hours as though bewildered,” the “bothersome little moth, which is the memory,” getting its wings burnt—the soul is lost to itself.5 Yet this annihilation is the source of “heroic promises, of resolutions and of ardent desires; it is the beginning of contempt for the world because of a clear perception of the world’s vanity.”6

  The writer does not address the origin of this reversal conducting the soul from desiccation to water and fire. Modern neurologists are inclined to think that the trigger is an electric or hormonal dysfunction of the brain. Psychologists talk of hypomaniacal feedback from the fantasy of marriage to the ideal Father, turning depression into feelings of paranoid omnipotence. But one cannot reduce to scientific buzzwords the rhetorical power of the biblical and evangelical tradition from which Teresa drew the necessary authority to legitimize and reinforce her “states.” And were such medical concepts genuinely to designate the neuronal and psychological conditions of her experience—and as a psychologist myself, I wouldn’t argue with that—they still fail to explain the verbal re-creation achieved by the saint: What have they to say about the exactness and intensity of these metaphor-metamorphoses in perpetual reversal?

  Teresa didn’t wait for Andrew and me to come along before indicating, with her usual clear-sightedness, the incommensurable hiatus separating the state of prayer (“very edgy, very borderline,” quips Jérôme Tristan) from the writing of it. Another state must arise to mediate between the two: “inspiration.” Not the same thing as prayer, then. You are not very prolix on this point, my secretive Teresa; you are content to say that you have God’s pattern before you and are following it, like an embroiderer does with needle and yarn.

  I know you’re always delving into the books that are your faithful companions in solitude—the Bible, the Gospels, the writings of saints and churchmen. You never forget that your identification with Jesus relies on your remaining immersed in the intertextuality of canonical sources. Since these have become your vital environment, your prime reality, you are able to recast their rhetoric as though I were He. Your “inspiration” is thus an inhaling of the Other, a loving rewrite of His body—through the rewriting of His word in your imaginary, receiving it as something that sprang from an exterior seed. It is written in you, by you, foreign and penetrating without, private and bereft within. It was also essential to possess the genius of your language in order to pin it down, for failing this, prayer would remain a foreign language, like Arabic, say:

  I write without the time and calm for it, and bit by bit. I should like to have time, because when the Lord gives the spirit [da el espíritu], things are put down with ease and in a much better way. Putting them down then is like copying a model [sewing: sacando aquella labor, a pattern, sampler: dechado] you have before your eyes. But if the spirit is lacking, it is more difficult to speak about these things than to speak Arabic, as the saying goes, even though many years have been spent in prayer. As a result, it seems to me most advantageous to have this experience while I am writing, because I see clearly that it is not I who say what I write; for neither do I plan it with the intellect nor do I know afterward how I managed to say it. This often happens to me.7

  You leave it at that, Teresa, my love, but it’s precious enough, and I bet our modern Illuminati, who think themselves so smart, don’t know half as much as you do about writing. Do they, Andrew?

  “Whatever. It’s her grand mal that interests me.” Andrew is very keen on the work of Dr. Vercelletto, that’s as far as he’ll go.

  But still, from all the psychosomatic conditions propitious to prayer, Teresa did take a “magic recipe” unrelated to the temporal lobe, which looks simple, once the writer has formulated its application: He is an all-powerful lover, and their union introduces His omnipotent presence into her. We’re a long way from encephalograms, aren’t we, and much closer to the Song of Songs as rewritten by Teresa, right? “Serve Me and don’t bother about such things,” He tells her soothingly.8 Andrew’s not listening, he’s had enough of the Incarnation, of me, and of everything; he goes out for a smoke. I carry on with my monologue in silence, much better.

  Was Teresa’s ecstasy a narcissistic triumph over depression, probably over postcomatose exhaustion as well? Was it achieved by means of manic exaltation, itself induced in her by the intromission of her ideal Father endowed with the strength of absolute love?

  Certainly it was, but not only that. The Carmelite herself retraces this movement of the psyche with a psychological precision rich in sexual allusions. The rare libertines who venture into Teresa country are soon clamoring for more; the pilgrims, if ever they read her, discern only allegories. But Teresa holds out for both at once, honesty oblige!

  You mustn’t think (this is for Andrew, outside in his smoky fug) that I’ve been dazzled by the sheer sensual perspicacity of a sick woman with a genius for self-analysis. My grand Teresa offers something more: the artistry with which she stages the fantasy penetration of her inwardness by the Other, and conveys it in a narrative as capacious as it is concise—in a word, convincing. Proof of this, do you agree, is her notorious jouissance at being run through by an angel disguised as a debauched aristo or Little Lord Fauntleroy, at least in Santa Maria della Vittoria. Those fabulous passages, the only texts of hers familiar to the educated public at large, make her into much more than a precursor of baroque art. My contention is that she invented it—before Bernini, before virginal Assumptions, before the whimsical undulations of Tiepolo!9

  At the heart of the sixteenth century, from behind the iron grilles of the Convent of the Incarnation, this woman knew that the repression of desire can gnaw your flesh and snap your nerves, to the point of falling into coma. She came up with a stunning, because postmodern, analysis of the lethal nature of desire, and of jouissance as a firewall against lust. The frigidity of repressed women, the compulsive discharges paraded by their uninhibited sisters—together they spin the wheel of female hysteria into madness. Did Teresa know that from experience? Or did her restless vigilance spy the danger from afar? Did she find the solution?

  The Carmelite naturally didn’t reveal the sexual sources of her distress, but nor did she content herself with a rational, reasonable censorship of such ill-being. At once true and untrue to monotheism, Teresa devised a “third way.” By the blending of the mind and senses into nothing but touch, the touch of the Other, she sought to “divert” desire, nothing more! She would put it down to that ideal of the self constituted by the ideal Father, the loving, loved magnetism* [*The author makes a play on the proximity in French of “lover,” amant, and “magnet,” aimant: “A(i)mant.”—Trans.] that penetrates her. The resulting jouissance is termed “elevation.”

  Andrew advises me to save it for my publisher, Zonabend, who doubtless adores this kind of waffle. He’s off for a breath of air on the ramparts. If he knew how little I care for Bruno these days! Men spend more time thinking about other men than do the women allegedly concerned. I don’t say a word. Everything in my life conspires to leave me alone with my roommate, in our very own mystical marriage. That’s fine by me for now.

  “And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away, and be at rest” (Ps. 55:6). Teresa goes back to her Bible, taming it into a wondrous tale: “The flight is given to the spirit so that it may be elevated above every creature—and above itself first of all. The flight is an easy flight [vuelo suave], a delightful one [vuelo deleitoso], a flight without noise [vuelo sin ruido].”10

  Unlike the psalmist, who implores the Other to give him wings, I note that Teresa already possesses them: secure in her status as the Bride, she is already aloft. The writer juxtaposes the New Testament to the Old in the image of the dove of the Holy Spirit, and she herself embodie
s the resulting amalgam. The experience Teresa describes is lived as a “spirit,” for the nun-dove seems to overlook the flying “body”: Is this the prudish evasion of a woman conscious of her religious vows? Or is it rather the sign of the intellectual probity with which she wants to be clear that this elevation is only a mental act, a “spirit’s-eye view,” a sublimation? Then again, perhaps spirit and body are all one to her? This last hypothesis is the strongest. Teresa’s experience differs as much from metaphysical dualism, which segregates spirit from flesh, as it does from the Spaltung of psychosis, which impedes the contact of the symbolic act with the instinctual energies and leads to delirium. Constantly revolving around dualism and desymbolization, steeped in metaphysics and a connoisseur of “borderline states,” Teresa (like other mystics) invents a different, incarnate psyche and a different body entirely devoted to the love object.

  In the work of art that is the speaking subject thus recast, the “exiled soul” cannot suffer from isolation, hindrance, abandonment, division, or delirium, for is it not governed by the conviction of possessing the Other’s love? Were any of these misfortunes to befall her, she would only attribute them to her Guest, and thus set in motion the dialectical spiral of repentance and salvation: eternal promise of an eternal recurrence of the same elevation, the same inextinguishable jouissance.

  An amphibious creation, an almighty alloy, ecstatic rapture is a sense of soaring above every creature, and “above itself first of all.” Ecstasy is like a doublet spiraling up: one (spirit-and-body) becomes detached from a part of oneself (also spirit-and-body), which remains earthbound, in order to “rise upward” (para levantarse). La Madre has a clear understanding (entiéndese claro) of the motion of this liftoff, in which the body-spirit helix coils around itself, manifests itself to the faculty of reason, is understood and is thought: “Entiéndese claro es vuelo que da el espíritu para levantarse de todo lo criado.” The soul, Teresa goes on to say, from up there both “beholds everything without being ensnared,” and at the same time is given “dominion,” being “brought here by the Lord.” Endowed with memory, the spirit-flesh doublet also surveys its own past, and as it contemplates from above its erstwhile distress, it/she marvels at its “blindness” at the time “when it was ensnared.”11