Teresa, My Love

by Julia Kristeva

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ’S VOICE. Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, 1, verses seven to nine: “Because in drawing near to its desire / Our intellect ingulphs itself so far, / That after it the memory cannot go.”99 Is Teresa the Spanish Dante, as Meister Eckhart was the German Dante?

  TERESA’S VOICE, her face in the painting eclipses the polyhedron. Let’s play, Sisters! Play, my girls! To deliver yourselves unto the King and be delivered from Him, endlessly, for there is no stopping this game, this vejamen, these death throes.…Am I lucid? Let me elucidate. “My soul is completely taken up in its quiet, love, desires, and clear knowledge”;100 “y claro conocimiento,” oh, yes. Listen: someone who doesn’t know how to set up the chessboard will be a bad player, and if he doesn’t know to check the opponent’s king, how will he ever checkmate it? You will frown to hear me talk of games again, because no games are allowed in this monastery. Look what kind of a Mother God gave you, skilled at such a vain pursuit!…But this game is allowed sometimes. And very soon it will be allowed more often, if we practice enough to checkmate this divine King! After that He’ll never be able to escape, and indeed He won’t want to. (Perceptibly relaxing, cheerful smile.)

  TERESA’S VOICE, while Bernini’s Transverberation is refracted by the jewel. In chess, the queen has many advantages over the king, and is supported by all the other pieces. Well, there’s no queen like humility for forcing the divine King to surrender. Humility drew Him from heaven into the Virgin’s womb; and with it, by one hair, we will draw Him to our souls. (Beaming smile.) People say, “Here is a very contemplative soul,” and immediately expect him to possess all the virtues of a soul elevated to great contemplation. The person concerned aspires to this and more. But he is misguided from the outset, because he didn’t know how to set up the game. “He thought it was enough to know the pieces in order to checkmate the King. But that was impossible, for this King doesn’t give Himself but to those who give themselves entirely to Him.”101

  (In a serene voice.) “La dama es la que más guerra le puede hacer en este juego, y todas las otras piezas ayudan. No hay dama que así le haga rendir como la humildad. Esta le trajo del cielo en las entrañas de la Virgen, y con ella le traeremos nosotras de un cabello a nuestras almas. Y creed que quien más tuviere, más le tendrá, y quien menos, menos. Porque no puedo yo entender cómo haya ni pueda haber humildad sin amor, ni amor sin humildad, ni es posible estar estas dos virtudes sin gran desasimiento de todo lo criado.”

  As Teresa’s voice inundates the stage, we watch the slow rotation of the watery gemstone of her dwelling places.

  Chapter 33

  ACT 4

  The Analyst’s Farewell

  The distillation and centralization of the ego. Everything is in that.

  Charles Baudelaire, My Heart Laid Bare

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ

  The diamond of the previous act retreats into the background, where it refracts the anonymous portrait of Teresa of Avila commonly attributed to Velázquez. The left side of the stage represents Sylvia Leclercq’s office. There are a couch, an armchair, and a desk. The analyst is writing. Her voice follows the rhythms of her thoughts, and sometimes the movements of her hand. She is bidding La Madre farewell, from the first to the third person.

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ. It’s infectious, this journeying to the far depths of private dwelling places, like a sort of self-analysis.…(Mocking smile.) I’ll never see the end of it.…Just when I thought I’d done with all that…I managed to send Marianne off to Cuenca and to reconcile her with her father.…The way of perfection is full of surprises, once you set off on it. I might have guessed, in light of the trajectory from beloved fatherhood to loving fatherhood.…(Hands on temples, affectionate, moved expression. Neutral voice.).

  I never dreamed of my father again, after that teenage nightmare in which I had him run over by a train, inverted Oedipus oblige, it’s all in the pink pages of the Larousse of psychoanalysis.…One kills one’s Laius as best one can these days, preferably by night and at high velocity. Corny as anything. Modern daughters won’t be pushed around, and the fathers, or some of them, play along.…(Silence. Hands folded over the white pages. Adopts dreamy voice.) But for the last week…Holy Week, in fact…some coincidence…Dr. Thomas Leclercq has visited me in dreams, no face, just a presence, and his voice. Singing. All those years of analysis, all those years of clinical practice, and I never gave a thought to Dad’s singing.…With his decent tenor voice and knowledge of opera and musical culture in general, my doctor of a dad was great company. He really livened up our family meals—though not to the point of leaving his daughter with any recollection of his favorite tunes. (Still speaking in a dreamy voice, opens a notebook, gropes for a pen.) For me, his charming amateurism was secondary; his scholarly erudition when in serious “doctor” mode obliterated his fondness for singing in my mind…though I do remember how it provoked Mom’s pitying condescension, of course. She was a sensible woman, Mme Blandine Leclercq, doctor’s wife, schoolteacher, almost a proto-feminist in her way.…(Hesitant voice, screwed-up eyes.) In my defense, I should say that Dad stopped singing early on, at least I think he did…when I graduated from kindergarten, pretty early in my life, anyway. Yes, it was around then.…If I remember right.…

  There was trouble at the hospital, conflicts with some big cheese, possibly a marital crisis into the bargain; I didn’t want to know, I cleared off in a hurry, like the self-reliant adolescent I wanted to be.…Yes, there must have been some kind of a crisis, because that’s when Blandine began hanging out at literary soirees, whatever was hip, launch parties at trendy bookstores for celebrated authors who’d sign your copy. I recall a rapid-fire succession of au pairs who cooked supper for me, because Dad was overwhelmed with work. Doctors are on call day and night, you see, yes, I did see.…So, no more singing in the shower.…(Childish smile.)

  That’s it: he used to sing in the shower! (Delighted silence, big smile, hardly awkward at all.) That’s it, that’s the tune that has been filling my head at night, all week long.…(Writes.)…so bright and bracing…I knew it by heart.…I still do, I know the words, I’m asleep, I’m dreaming, I mouth them along with Dad, an unknown joy comes over me, it doesn’t wake me up though, it awakens me, I’m dreaming awake, I’m singing with him, a cherub’s youthful voice, it’s mine it’s his.…(Long silence.)

  And then in the morning it’s gone, so frustrating, I hardly attend to my patients, I even forget to think about my saint, I rummage through the dream, it gets more and more infuriating, I’m fed up, I turn my memory upside-down: nothing, not a quaver. And it’s the same the next night.…So I decide to get up in the middle of the vocal dream, I’ll write it down while it’s still there in my throat, my lungs, my mouth, my memory, my smile.…But I can’t, the dream squeezes me in its arms, I am held, held prisoner, all I can do is sing along with Dad, glued to my pillow, unable to raise my head.…No worries, this time I’m sure I’ve got it, the confounded tune he used to warble under the shower while I drank my cocoa and left for school, with a peck for Blandine and a “See you tonight, Dad! Maybe? Okay, ’bye, then.…” But when I wake up, nothing. The bird has flown again. A phantom bird, no doubt: Did that song even exist? It’s a dream of course, my long cohabitation with Teresa can lead to anything, an unnameable hallucination, there you go, call yourself an analyst but that hoodlum Oedipus can sure play tricks on you. (Pause. Raises eyes to ceiling, cocks head, listens intently. Picks up pen once more.)

  It must have been in Latin, couldn’t have been anything else, since Thomas was brought up in a religious boarding school, after his mother died giving birth to him.…I’ve spent hours of analysis on that little point, at least. My grandfather couldn’t think of anything better than to entrust him to the Jesuits. And they eventually expelled him for reading smutty books, as well as revolutionary ones, it was the period of colonial wars.…Well, Dad always put on the same complacent smirk when rehashing these daring exploits to Mom and me, over and over again, for the nth time, the only fea
ts to his name.…I haven’t forgotten that, either. But the singing?…Definitely in Latin. Yes. (Radiant face, writing faster.)

  I’ve got it. Thanks to that patient this morning, in Holy Week mode, going on about the father and the son in this litany that compulsively linked “father and son” as if we were in church, I thought at one point, it’s coming back to me, that’s it…Gloria.…No, it wasn’t a Gloria. I’m burning, it’s on the tip of my tongue.…I only did two years of Latin, and Dad never bothered passing on much of his Jesuit humanities (“Outdated claptrap, all of it. What’s left is an oath for doctors with or without borders, which is: love your neighbor and minister to ailing humanity. There you have it, the one and only universal principle that makes sense. As for the decor, well, that’s what museums are for, aren’t they?”) All the same I knew it wasn’t a Gloria, no, no, it was…Bach’s Magnificat! BWV 243 in D Major! Of course! I can’t get over it! Everybody knows the tune and the lyrics these days, thanks to CDs, MP3, and the rest. Part of the “immaterial human heritage.” (Scratches head. Glance of complicity at Teresa’s diffracted portrait.) How much did I love him, my Dad, to have forgotten those incendiary words, those vibrations that shook his whole being at the beginning of every day, that primed him to set off gaily to work, while Mom seethed: “Listen to that, it’s his ‘Marseillaise’ he’s belting out, his ‘Internationale,’ his ‘Hymn to Joy’…hopeless! Your father will never change his spots, whatever he says.” Depooo—suit, depoooo—suit poteee—ntes de seeee—de et exaltaaaaaa—aaaa—aaaa—vit huumiiles.…

  F# F#.………………ED C#BAG# AF# B#

  De—po.……………………su—it

  C# C#.………………BA G#F#E#D# E#G#B D

  De—po.…………………………su—it

  C# A#C#A G#C#G# F#DF# E#C#

  po—ten.…………………tes

  C# C#BAC# BAG#B AG#F#A G#F#E#D# C#

  de se.…………………………de

  G# A F# D# C#BA BAG#B E DC#B

  Et ex—al-ta.…………………

  C#BAC# F# EDC# DC#BC# DC#DE

  .…………………………

  F#EF#G# A E D C# B A A.…

  …….…. vit hu—mi—les

  The stately notes would spiral through the early-morning air, carrying me with them as they rose toward unimaginable expanses that I could barely discern at that age, but I could tell how they uplifted my father until I felt exultant too, sounds pulsing through my lungs, my blood, like a happy cascade of laughter…(Lays down the pen, closes the book, leans chin on clasped hands. Silence. Then, in neutral voice.) Have I come to the end, at long last, of my analysis of fatherhood, my Oedipus complex to be exact…as demanded by the Psychoanalytic Society of Paris…by rescuing my father from oblivion and making my peace with his voice, over and above his function, his function as a medic of course, as well as the inevitable paternal function…all this thanks to my roommate? (Forced smile.) Well, it’ll do for now, and for a long time to come, I hope. I can say goodbye to Teresa now, withdrawing into my father’s youthful voice.…Of course I don’t intend to say a word to Jérôme Tristan, who’s bound to retort to the effect that I’m not well, or positively in regression. Nor to Bruno, he’d only try to convert me to Buddhism. Nor to Andrew, who would make the most of this opportunity to tease the “poor thing” I become when he wants to impose himself, however sweetly. Maybe I’ll teach Paul the “Deposuit”: his singing is as pitch-perfect as his emotions. Just him. There’s no one as sensitive as Paul to what these kinds of melody, words, voices, are all about…the way they don’t say what they’re saying.…Sounds that must have lulled me constantly, from birth to when I was about six years old. “Depoooo…suit, depoooo…suit poteeee…ntes de seeee…de…et exaltaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaa…vit huuumiiiles.…”

  F# F#……………….…ED C#BAG# AF# B#

  De—po………………….…su – it

  C# C#……………BA G#F#E#D# E#G#B D

  De—po…………………………su—it

  C# A#C#A G#C#G# F#DF# E#C#

  po—ten………………tes

  C# C#BAC# BAG#B AG#F#A G#F#E#D# C#

  de se………………………………de

  G# A F# D# C#BA BAG#B E DC#B

  Et ex—al- ta………………

  C#BAC# F# EDC# DC#BC# DC#DE

  ……………………….….

  F#EF#G# A E D C# B A A.…

  …….…vit hu—mi – les

  (Pause.)

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ, against a faintly heard fragment of Bach’s “Magnificat,” performed by a clear tenor voice. “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.…” To think how often I must have heard it since, that soaring “Deposuit,” looping through clouds and lights! That “heritage hit,” as my mother used to call it, among what is called “our sort”.…(Sigh.) But it’s never given me the thrill I got from agnostic Thomas when he sang it a cappella. The thrill that led me all unsuspecting to Teresa, who led me back to him. With this dream, the circle is closed. Well then: farewell!

  She does not put down the pen, or close the notebook: her hand falls still over the lines.

  “Depoooo…suit, depoooo…suit poteeee…ntes de seeee…de…et exaltaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaa…vit huumiiiles.…”

  Here the front of the stage grows dark, so that we can barely make out the form of Sylvia Leclercq, once more writing at her desk. Spotlights pick out the portrait of Teresa in her diamond. Slides are projected over it from time to time, showing rapid glimpses of Luis de Morales’s Virgin and Child; Bernini’s Transfixion; Zurbarán’s Saint Francis, housed in Lyon; El Greco’s Christ in the Garden of Olives, in Lille; the royal monastery San Lorenzo del Escorial, by the architects Juan Batista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera; Rubens’ Rape of the Daughters of Leucippe, in Munich; and the vault of the Church of Saint Ignatius in Rome, painted by Andrea Pozzo. Over these images, only Sylvia’s monologue is heard.

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ, in a clear voice. Is Teresa more analytical than Freud, or differently than Freud? Hope nobody’s listening, just kidding, shhh! Enough dreaming, it’s time to draw up the balance, since I was with her during her last hours. (Long silence. Glances at Teresa’s portrait.) She constructed her dialogues from beyond the grave as she built her interior castle: temptations and struggles, associates who were sometimes helpful, sometimes loved, too, and the busy affairs of the world in parallel to the deepening of the intimate sphere, diaphanous, shifting, sensitive, and lucid…and this intimacy reveals itself only through metaphors and little stories. (Reads.)

  Teresa moved in spaces that were undistinguishably interior and exterior; they were manifest in a profusion of expressions that resorted to arresting figurations, appealed to meaning, and imposed rules. The “region of the dissimilar,” the abode of sin, the deformity of dissemblance, entailed a genuine loss of being for the creatures God made in His own image; this is because the creatures concerned, failing to comprehend the honor, let themselves sink from resemblance into dissemblance. This is where my Carmelite’s pen comes along to transform the regio dissimilitudinis into a polymorphous world, a shifting, soothing polytopy.

  (Fast.) It starts with the discovery that body and soul suffer if—and only if—they do not want to know that they are in love with a good, in other words loving, Being. So much for the Christic background: clear, but inadequate. From that point on what’s required is to amplify the scenario of the Song of Songs. To generate an infinite number of dwelling places that are not recondite crannies, but multiple crossing points in continual expansion: a blooming of words, representations, and sensations. This could have been represented by a flower, yet like her rocky land of Castile, the more-than-feminine Madre is aquatic and mineral, she must necessarily have architecture. (Subtle smile.)

  The subject in love and her loving Beloved spread through it, phase by phase, so that the access to the love union (itself not in doubt) is built station by infinitesimal station, the portals to intrap
sychic and interactive serenity. The most harrowing ordeals become experiences to be savored, as the lover increasingly appropriates them by the grace of a simultaneously imagistic and controlled verbal representation. And the time wasted in erotic and infantile trauma becomes reversed into infinitely malleable psychic spaces, because they enclose the infinity of love given and received. The interior castle is the product of all this. However, La Madre doesn’t shut herself inside; she opens it to the world, because this castle is none other than the volume of her personal experience certified to be shareable—with her sisters, with you and me, in another infinite multiplication. (Quick glance at Teresa’s diamond.) Could this spatial burgeoning of dwelling places also be a challenge to Hell, the placeless place that terrified her so? The final liquidation of the unbreathable, unrepresentable trauma in which desires and defenses, thoughts, images, and sensations are annulled, leaving only comatose victims, sickening bestiality, cadaverous misery? (Exhales.) Her writing is a potion of youth, too, chasing aggressive anxieties away. No more depressions or somatic illnesses; adieu sadomasochistic hatefatuations! (With a mischievous smile, hands mime the clearing of the air.)