Teresa, My Love

by Julia Kristeva

  2. Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. and ed. Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 422, 424.

  3. “Yearning” or “craving” are attempts to render the Freudian term Sehnsucht: “nostalgia,” “longing,” “ardent desire,” not necessarily addressing the past, but rather the absence of the love object.

  4. Life, 3:5, CW 1:63.

  5. Jean Baruzi, Saint Jean de la Croix (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1924; Éditions Salvator, 1999).

  6. Teresa of Avila, Poems, “Aspirations Toward Eternal Life,” CW 3:375.

  7. Testimonies, 58:4, CW 1:418.

  8. VI D, 9:2, CW 2:411–12.

  9. Letter 177, to don Lorenzo de Cepeda, January 17, 1577, CL 1:476–77.

  5. PRAYER, WRITING, POLITICS

  1. Life, 10:7, CW 1:108.

  2. Soliloquies, 15:3, CW 1:459.

  3. Ibid., 17:2, CW 1:461.

  4. Letter 219, to Gaspar de Salazar, December 7, 1577, CL 1:583.

  5. Theopathy: from “pathon ta theia” (cf. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Divine Names 2 n, 9), or “to suffer God” as the supreme perfection.

  6. Chrétien de Troyes: poet and troubadour, late twelfth century.

  7. Life, 11:5, CW 1:112.

  8. Life, 10:7, CW 1:108.

  9. V D, 2:7, 2:343.

  10. Donald W. Winnicott, “Mind and Its Relation to the Psyche-Soma” (1949), in Collected Papers, Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis, (London: Tavistock, 1958), 243–54.

  11. Life, 20:9 CW 1:176.

  12. Testimonies, 3:1, CW 1:382.

  13. Letter 24, to don Lorenzo de Cepeda, January 17, 1570, CL 1:83.

  14. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. H. L. Mencken (1920; Tucson: Sharp, 1999).

  15. Life, 20:9–10, CW 1:176.

  16. Testimonies, 3:5–6, CW 1:383.

  17. “Mantener la tela”: “It was the custom at the joust for one group of supporters to hold up a banner bearing the colors of the group’s favorite knight.” Notes to the Life, CW, 1:474. Cf. M. Alonso, Enciclopedia del idioma (Madrid: Aguilar, 1968), 3: 3909.

  18. Life, 18:10–13, CW 1:161–2.

  19. Life, 18:14, CW 1:163.

  20. “¡Ay, qué vida tan amarga / Do no se goza el Señor!” These two lines at the start of verse 5 in this poem reminds us of Plotinus’s “Leave everything!” (aphele panta), associated with Aristotle’s contemplation (theoria) and understood as a “denuding” or detachment, as well as a surpassing of all representation (aphairesis), and Gelassenheit (abandonment) in Angelus Silesius’s sense; see Selections from The Cherubinic Wanderer, trans. J. E. Crawford Flitch (Westport, Conn.: Hyperion, 1978), 1, 22.

  21. Poems, “Aspirations Toward Eternal Life,” CW 3:375.

  22. Life, 20–21, CW 1:172–90.

  6. HOW TO WRITE SENSIBLE EXPERIENCE

  1. The Spanish title Libro de la Vida (Book of the Life), was given by the Augustinian friar Luis de León: “The book of the life of Mother Teresa of Jesus and account of some of the graces she received from God, written by her own hand by order of her confessor for whom it was intended.” The autograph manuscript is stored in the library of the Escorial Palace, at the original request of Philip II. It goes by the title: “Book of Mother Teresa of Jesus written in her own hand with the approval of Fr. Domingo Báñez, her confessor, the Prime Chair at Salamanca.”

  2. The first draft of The Way of Perfection was completed in 1564 and reworked in subsequent years. Teresa revised the text in 1569, and it was ready for publication by 1579 under this title, chosen by her. However it was not to appear until 1583, after her death, in a highly “corrected” version. It was republished by Fr. Gratian in 1585. In 1588, at last, Luis de León oversaw the release of the original as revised by Teresa.

  3. Chapters 1–20 of the Foundations were written in 1573; the next, 21–27, date from 1580; and 28–31 were completed in 1583. Ana de Jesús and Jerome Gratian were responsible for the first publication, in 1610, of the “Book of the Foundations of the Discalced Carmelite sisters, written by the Mother Foundress Teresa of Jesus.”

  4. Life, 13:15, CW 1:129–30.

  5. VI D, 5:3, CW 2:387.

  6. Life, 11:9–10, CW 1:114–15.

  7. Life, 11:16, CW 1:118.

  8. Way, 19:4, CW 2:108.

  9. Life, 11:6, CW 1:112–13.

  10. Life, 11:7, CW 1:113.

  11. Dominique de Courcelles, Langage mystique et avènement de la modernité (Paris: Champion, 2003), 189–294.

  12. Estéban García-Albea, Teresa de Jesús, una ilustre epiléptica o una explicación epilogenética de los éxtasis de la Santa (Madrid: Huerga y Fierro, 2002); Pierre Vercelletto, Expérience et état mystique. La maladie de sainte Thérèse d’Avila (Paris: Éditions La Bruyère, 2000).

  13. Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, §70, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931), 201.

  14. Life, 20:2–4, CW 1:173–74.

  15. Life, 16:4, CW 1:149.

  16. Charles Baudelaire, Artificial Paradises, trans. Stacy Diamond (1860; New York: Citadel, 1998): “You endow the tree with your passions and desires; its capriciously swaying limbs become your own, so that soon you yourself are the tree” (51); “cause and effect, subject and object, mesmerizer and somnambulist” (25).

  17. J.-L. Chrétien, L’appel et la réponse (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1992), 125.

  18. Way, 19:3–5, CW 2:107–9.

  19. Way, 19:4, CW 2:108.

  20. Way, 19:6–7, CW 2:110.

  21. Way, 19:8, CW 2:111.

  22. Way, 19:13, CW 2:113.

  23. Way, 19:9–10, CW 2:111.

  24. Way, 19:10–12, CW 2:112.

  25. IV D, 2:2, CW 2:323.

  26. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward Henry Whinfield, 1883; http://therubaiyat.com/whinfield (accessed May 14, 2011).

  27. Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry W. Longfellow, Paradiso, canto 19 (London: Capella, 2006), 337.

  28. Pierre Ronsard, “To His Mistress,” trans. A. S. Kline, 2004; http://poetryintranslation.com (accessed May 14, 2011).

  29. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act 2, scene 1.

  30. Charles Baudelaire, “To Her Who Is Too Gay,” in Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire, trans. Geoffrey Wagner (New York: Grove, 1974).

  31. Rainer Maria Rilke, “Epitaph,” trans. Erik Bendix, http://movingmoment.com/poetry/Rilke'sEpitaph.htm (May 14, 2011).

  32. Philippe Sollers, Fleurs. Le grand roman de l’érotisme floral (Paris: Hermann Littérature, 2006).

  7. THE IMAGINARY OF AN UNFINDABLE SENSE

  1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. and trans. John Warrington (London: Dent, 1956), 346: “Now thought does think itself, because it shares in the intelligibility of its object. It becomes intelligible by contact with the intelligible, so that thought and object of thought are one.”

  2. In Jewish mysticism, the contemplation of God’s Throne-Chariot (Merkabah) is the goal of a long journey through the Hekhalot or celestial palaces/temples (cf. the treatises on the Great Hekhalot, or Hekhalot Rabbati, the Small or Hekhalot Zutarti, etc.). This ascent toward the seven heavenly abodes forms part of the synagogal liturgy and features in a more secret scholarly language, the Shi’ur Qomah.

  3. See Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlaender (New York: Dutton, 1904).

  4. Cf. St. Augustine, De Trinitate [The Trinity] (399–419), trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991).

  5. I D, 1–3, CW 2:283–4.

  6. D, Epilogue: JHS, CW 2:451.

  7. Bernardino de Laredo: 1482–1540.

  8. Luis de la Palma: 1560–1641.

  9. Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, Second Annotation: “For it is not knowing much, but realizing and relishing things interiorly [mas el sentir y gustar de las cosas internamente], that contents and satisfies the soul.”

  10. Jerónimo Nadal: 1507–1581.
See his “Oraison pour ceux de la compagnie Mon. N. 4,” quoted in Victoriano Larrañaga, Sainte Thérèse d’Avila, Saint Ignace de Loyola: Convergences (Paris: Pierre Téqui Éditeur, 1998), 125.

  11. I D, 2:5, CW 2:290.

  12. I D, 2:8, CW 2:291.

  13. IV D, 2:1–2, CW 2:323.

  14. IV D, 2:2–4, CW 2:323–24.

  15. IV D, 2:6, CW 2:324.

  16. IV D, 3:2, CW 2:328.

  17. VII D, 2:11, CW 2:438.

  18. VI D, 2:6, CW 2:369.

  19. Cf. Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, trans. and with an introduction by Mary E. Giles (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1981).

  20. IV D, 3:2, CW 2:327–28.

  21. VI D, 4:4, CW 2:380.

  22. VI D, 6:10, CW 2:395.

  23. VII D, 1:3, CW 2:428.

  24. VI D, 2:6, CW 2:369.

  25. I D, 2:7, CW 2:290.

  26. Testimonies, 26, CW 1:399.

  27. V D, 2:2–5, CW 2:341–3. Compare with the reading of this passage by Michel de Goedt, “La prière de l’école de Thérèse d’Avila aujourd’hui,” in Recherches et expériences spirituelles, Conférences (Paris: Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, 1982).

  28. Letter 237, to María de San José, March 28, 1578, CL 2:46.

  29. VI D, 5:1, CW 2:386.

  30. VII D, 2:1–3, CW 2:432–33.

  31. The practice of “fiction” in Teresa can be approached in the light of Jean Ladrière’s interpretations of “the language of the spirituals,” or mystics, marked by the linguistic theories of D. D. Evans and J. L. Austin (Jean Ladrière, “Le langage des spirituels” [1975], in L’Articulation du sens [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1984]). Descriptive at the same time as engaging the affective and sensory experience of both speaker and hearer, the language of such spirituals is posited as a “self-implicating act,” consisting in “rendering what is uttered actually the case in it; in this sense, one can say that the act of faith is the effectuation of its content” (79). Further, “there is a genuine continuity between the language of the spirituals and their experience; experience is prolonged in and by the word [parole], while the latter enriches experience by endowing it with structure and intelligibility” (80). Therefore if any truth is contained in this powerfully analogical, allegorical, and symbolic language, its credibility “can only be established by means of a detour, regardless of the language in which it is proposed.” This “detour” being defined as “a genuine affinity with the person speaking,” the “spiritual language consequently becomes a “language of affinity” (82–83) (my translation—LSF).

  32. VI D, 5:2–3, CW 2:386–87.

  33. VII D, 2: 3–6, CW 2:434–35.

  34. Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos. Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); The Mystic and the Wanderer: Conversos in the Culture of Golden Age Spain, forthcoming (in Hebrew).

  8. EVERYTHING SO CONSTRAINED ME

  1. Teresa is reported to have said to Juan de la Miseria: “Dios te perdone, fray Juan, que ya que me pintaste, me has pintado fea y legañosa.” Esteban García-Albea, “La epilepsia extática de Teresa de Jesús,” Revista de neurología 37, no. 9 (2003): 880.

  2. Found., 17:6, CW 3:180–81.

  3. Marcelle Auclair, La vie de sainte Thérèse d’Avila (Paris: Seuil, 1950); Rosa Rossi, Esperienza interiore e storia nell’autobiografia di Teresa d’Avila (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1977); Dominique de Courcelles, Thérèse d’Avila, femme d’écriture et de pouvoir dans l’Espagne du Siècle d’Or (Grenoble: J. Million, 1993); Mercedes Allende salazar, Thérèse d’Avila, l’image au feminine (Paris: Seuil, 2002); Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Feminism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Entering Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle (New York: Paulist, 2005); Mary Frohlich, The Intersubjectivity of the Mystic: A Study of Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994); Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, op. cit.; Denis Vasse, L’Autre du désir et le Dieu de la foi (Paris: Seuil, 1991); Jean-Noël Vuarnet, Le Dieu des femmes (Paris: Editions de l’Herne, 1989); Américo Castro, Teresa la santa y otros ensayos (Madrid: Alianza, 1982); and De la edad conflictiva. Crisis de la cultura española en el siglo XVII (1961; repr. Madrid: Taurus, 1972); Antonio Márquez, Los alumbrados (Madrid: Taurus, 1972); Marcel Bataillon, Erasme et l’Espagne (Geneva: Droz, 1998).

  4. Joseph Pérez, Thérèse d’Avila (Paris: Fayard, 2007), esp. 155, on the incorruption of the corpse.

  5. Life, 3:2, CW 1:61.

  6. Life, 2:6, CW 1:59.

  7. Life, Prologue, CW 1:53.

  8. Life, 1:1–3, CW 1:54–55.

  9. Found., 31:46, CW 3:306.

  10. See Bartolomé Bennassar, Le Siècle d’Or de l’Espagne (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1982).

  11. Jorge Manrique: 1440–1479. See “Coplas on the Death of His Father,” trans. Thomas Walsh, in Hispanic Anthology (New York: Putnam’s, 1920).

  12. Life, 3:4, CW 1:62.

  13. St. Jerome, Letter 22, “To Eustochium,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, trans. W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W. G. Martley, Second Series, vol. 6, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature, 1893); http://newadvent.org (accessed November 15, 2012).

  14. Francisco Goya: 1746–1828. Found in Album C.88.

  15. Way, 36:6–7, CW 2:179–80.

  16. Way, 36:4, CW 2:179.

  17. Way, 36:6, CW 2:180.

  18. Life, 2:3, CW 1:58.

  19. Life, 2:3–5, CW 1:58–59.

  20. Life, 3:7, CW 1:63.

  21. Life, 31:20, CW 1:273.

  22. Way, 12:7, CW 2:84.

  23. Life, 4:1, CW 1:64.

  24. Life, 31:23, 25, CW 1:274–75.

  9. HER LOVESICKNESS

  1. Life, 4:2, CW 1:65.

  2. Life, 4:9, CW 1:69.

  3. Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, trans. and with an introduction by Mary E. Giles (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1981), 165, 562, 356, 359.

  4. Ibid., 356–59.

  5. Life, 8:3, CW 1:95.

  6. Life, 7:1, CW 1:82.

  7. Life, 4:9, CW 1:69.

  8. Life, 5:7, CW 1:74.

  9. Life, 5:8, CW 1:74.

  10. Jean-Martin Charcot, “The Faith-Cure,” New Review, 7 (January 1893): 73–108: “It is striking to find that several of these thaumaturges suffered from the very malady whose manifestations they would henceforth cure: St. Francis of Assisi and St. Teresa, whose shrines are among those where miracles most frequently occur, were undeniable hysterics themselves” (unfindable: LSF trans.).

  11. Life, 5:9, CW 1:75.

  12. Josef Breuer (Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria, trans. and ed. James Strachey [New York: Basic Books, 2000], 232): “Among hysterics may be found people of the clearest intellect, strongest will, greatest character and highest critical power. No amount of genuine, solid mental endowment is excluded by hysteria, although actual achievements are often made impossible by the illness. After all, the patron saint of hysterics, St. Theresa, was a woman of genius with great practical capacity.” On the subject of female sexuality, sainthood, and hysteria, see also Cristina Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism and Gender in European Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

  13. García-Albea, Teresa de Jesús.

  14. Pierre Vercelletto, Expérience et état mystique. La maladie de sainte Thérèse d’Avila (Paris: Editions La Bruyère, 2000).

  15. Life, 6:1–2, CW 1:76–77.

  16. Life, 5:10–11, CW 1:75–76.

  17. Life, 7:10, CW 1:87.

  18. Life, 7:1, CW 1:82.

  19. Life, 7:5, CW 1:85.

  20. Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas: 1580–1645.

  21. Life, 7:2, CW 1:83.

  22. Life, 7:13, CW 1:88–89.

  23. Life, 1:3, CW 1:55.

  24. Life, 7:14, CW 1:89.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Life, 5:3, CW 1:71.

  27.
Life, 5:6, CW 1:73.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Life, 31:20–22, CW 1:274.

  30. Way, 12:7, CW 2:84.

  31. Meditations, 2:23–24, CW 2:232–33.

  32. Life, 2:2, CW 1:57.

  33. Life, 2:3–4, CW 1:58.

  34. Life, 7:6–7, CW 1:85–86.

  35. Life, 7:6, CW 1:85–86.

  36. Life, 7:8, CW 1:86.

  37. Life, 6:6–8, CW 1:80–81.

  10. THE IDEAL FATHER AND THE HOST

  1. Life, 7:12, CW 1:89.

  2. Life, 15:10, CW 1:144.

  3. Life, 25:21, CW 1:222–23.

  4. VI D, 2:6–7, CW 2:369.

  5. VI D, 3:1, CW 2:370–71.

  6. See Caroline W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

  7. Life, 29:4, CW 1:247.

  8. VII D, 2:6, CW 2:435.

  9. Medit., 5:4, CW 2:249.

  10. Medit., 5:5, CW 2:249.

  11. Medit., 1:9–10, CW 2:220–21.

  12. Way, 7:8, CW 2:70.

  13. Testimonies, 31, CW 1:402.

  14. Ibid.

  11. BOMBS AND RAMPARTS

  1. Élisabeth Reynaud, Thérèse d’Avila ou le divin plaisir (Paris: Fayard, 1997).

  2. Miguel de Unamuno: 1864–1936.

  3. Piero della Francesca: 1415/1420–1492.

  4. “Low Food” is a translation of Madeleine Ferrières’s title: Nourritures canailles (Paris: Seuil, 2007).

  5. Francisco de Borja: 1510–1572.

  6. Life, 8:12, CW 1:100.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Life, 8:3, CW 1:95.

  12. “CRISTO COMO HOMBRE”

  1. Life, 9:1, CW 1:100–1.

  2. Life, 9:4, CW 1:101.

  3. Life, 9:6, CW 1:102.

  4. Matthias Grünewald: 1475–1528.

  5. Life, 10:1, CW 1:105.

  6. Life, 9:9, CW 1:104.

  7. St. Augustine, Confessions 11.27.

  8. Life, 9:8, CW 1:103.

  9. Life, 9:6, CW 1:102.

  10. Way, 26:9, CW 2:136: “Lo que podéis hacer para ayuda de esto, procurad traer una imagen o retrato de este Señor que sea a vuestro gusto; no para traerle en el seno y nunca le mirar, sino para hablar muchas veces con Él, que Él os dará qué le decir. Como habláis con otras personas, ¿por qué os han más de faltar palabras para hablar con Dios?”