I am overwhelmed by tiredness, I am surrounded by terror, and rest escapes me. I have just reread at leisure these memoires that I wrote in haste, and I have realized that, though it was utterly unintentional, I had in each line shown myself to be as unhappy as I really was, but also much nicer than I really am. Could it be that we believe men to be less sensitive to the depiction of our suffering than to the image of our charms, and do we hope that it is much easier to seduce them than it is to touch their hearts? I do not know them well enough and I have not studied myself enough to know the answer. But if the Marquis, who is credited with being a man of exquisite taste, were to persuade himself that I am appealing not to his charity but to his lust, what would he think of me? This thought worries me. In fact he would be quite wrong to attribute to me personally an impulse that is characteristic of all women. I am a woman, perhaps a little flirtatious for all I know. But it is natural and unaffected.36
Paul lifts his head and looks at me.
“Have you any idea what she means?”
I don’t respond, that’s my role.
“A natural, unaffected woman? What’s that?”
Silence from me again.
“‘A woman dominated by hysteria experiences something infernal or divine.’ What do you make of that, Sylvia? Shall I go on? ‘Saint Teresa has said of devils, How luckless they are! They do not love.’”37 Paul carries on reading out his latest discoveries in the Pléiade edition of Diderot.
Now I’m in a fix. I can’t tell him about the conviction I have lately reached, which is that devils are inseparable from love, and that love, that is, God, goes hand in hand with its best enemy, the demonic, and that it’s impossible to free oneself from demons without freeing oneself from God, and hence from love. This doesn’t mean we must, or even can, eradicate love, whether diabolical or divine; that would be to castrate ourselves of our inner being and turn us away from the exterior world; it would deprive us of discovering, acting, wandering, journeying through the self. No, it means that it is possible to move through love indefinitely, infinitely, to make of love one’s infinity-point. An eclipse, a bedazzlement. Teresa, again. A serenity. Very hard to put into words. I try saying something:
“There’s no better Catholic than the devil.”
My allusion to Baudelaire falls flat, as expected.38 But that’s also a part of my role: to plant a seed for later, or never.
Paul’s not up to it yet. All of a sudden he’s not interested in me anymore. He carefully places the book on my desk and saunters off with an air of insouciance, crooning: “Depoooosuit…” He’s got perfect pitch, that boy! Suffering from psychomotor disharmony (another definition from his compensated autistic file), he needs love to screen his anxieties. He’s got to think of himself as a lady-killer, he has to charm the girls, as many girls as possible, in hopes of finding the very best, though even if he found her he’d keep on looking. He dreams about the idea, he plays on it, a lot; he very seldom tries it out. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day he took off from the MPH in pursuit of love and Love in an Indian ashram, a Jerusalem synagogue, a Roman church, a Venetian back street, a Chinese pagoda, why not? I wouldn’t be the one to stop him.
I wouldn’t stop anybody who felt that kind of need. Which includes each and every one of us when we feel excluded, forsaken, penniless, disabled, forgotten, erased, when we send the past to hell, or make a clean sweep of it, when we are sick of the nothingness of Nothingness…
Even me, I still dream of love, at my age! Not very often, of course, and only for a laugh.
And not today.
Today, writing to you, Mister Philosopher, after saying goodbye to Teresa, my love, I am faithless and lawless. Utterly available. Ready to listen to Paul with his perfect pitch, to Élise with her lavender flowers, and to all the rest. Ready to disappear into their sorrows and joys. A therapy, that’s what love is. Freud stretched it out on the couch, not without reading you first, and I’m continuing the experiment. God is Love, and we listen to Him. A different kind of humanity began to take shape with and after you, Mister Philosopher, as it did with and after my Teresa. Checkmate to God, to Love? For sure, but not right now. Otherwise, hello Apocalypse, Ground Zero, reproductive cloning, synthetic wombs, the works! Please, not that. I too stretch Love out and operate on it, and I do so inside myself as well, of course. Delicately, laughingly, yes, and starting over, playing it out in that eternal and infinite recurrence. I try. “And will we checkmate this divine King?” “¿Daremos mate a ese rey divino?” We’d be wrong to think “it was enough to know the pieces.” But this King (Love, in other words) “doesn’t give Himself but to those who give themselves entirely to Him.” “Pensó bastaba conocer las piezas para dar mate, y es imposible, que no se da este Rey sino a quien se le da del todo.”39
We are not done rereading Teresa, are we, Mister Philosopher? If I have moved you to meditate afresh upon those dwelling places I recently revisited, I will have accomplished what I set out to do.
Yours in respectful complicity,
Sylvia Leclercq
Notes
1. PRESENT BY DEFAULT
1. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), The Transverberation, in the Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.
2. Mary of Magdala has already foreshadowed the loss, absence, and reinvention of the body of love in the mystical experience: “I know not where they have laid him.” She says to Jesus, mistaking him for a gardener, “If thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus says to her, “Mary”; she answers, “Rabboni,” meaning “master” (John 20:13–16).
3. Life, 29:11–14, CW 1:251–3.
4. VI D, 2:4, CW 2:368.
5. IV D, 2:2, CW 2:323.
6. Jacques Lacan, Encore, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, trans. B. Fink, book 20, On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge 1972–1973 (London: Norton, 1999).
7. Stendhal, A Roman Journal, trans. and ed. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Orion, 1957), 133: “St Teresa is represented in the ecstasy of divine love. It is the most vivid and the most natural expression.…What divine artistry! What delight!”
8. Life, 6:4, CW 1:78–9.
9. Colette, The Vagabond, trans. Enid McLeod (London: Secker & Warburg, 1974), 158: “Femelle j’étais et femelle je me retrouve, pour en souffrir et pour en jouir.”
10. Francisco de Osuna: ca. 1492–ca. 1540.
11. Sigmund Freud, The Schreber Case, trans. Andrew Webber (New York: Penguin, 2003).
12. Life, 16:1–6, CW 1:147–50.
13. Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, trans. Michael B. Smith, vol. 1, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 23.
14. Life, 40:8, CW 1:357.
15. Life, 26:5, CW 1:226.
16. Bernardino de Laredo: 1492–1540.
17. Life, 23:15, CW 1:207.
18. Pedro de Alcántara: 1499–1562.
19. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, book 1, part 3, section 1, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers (Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Burns & Oates, 1983), 21.
20. Council of Trent, 1545–1563.
21. IV D, 1:7–14, CW 2:319–22.
22. IV D, 1:11, CW 2:321.
23. Letter 237, to María de San José, March 28, 1578, CL 2:46.
24. Critique, CW 3:357.
25. Socrates: 460–399 B.C.E.
26. Plato: ca. 428–ca. 347 B.C.E.
27. Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection, trans. and ed. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin, 2004), book 2:12, 590: “I find it unacceptable that the power of God should be limited in this way by the rules of human language.”
28. René Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637).
29. Arthur Rimbaud: 1854–1891.
30. Baruch Spinoza: 1633–1677.
31. G. W. Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics and Related Writings, ed. and trans. R. N. D. Martin and Stuart Brown (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 77.
33. Cf. J. K. Huysmans, En Route (Sawtry, U.K.: Dedalus, 2002), 221: “the virile soul of a monk.”
34. John of the Cross: 1542–1591.
2. MYSTICAL SEDUCTION
1. Julia Kristeva, “Le bonheur des Béguines,” in Le jardin clos de l’âme. L’imaginaire des religieuses dans les Pays-Bas du Sud depuis le XIIIe siècle, ed. Paul Vanderbroeck (Brussels: Société des expositions, Palais des Beaux-Arts, February–May 1994).
2. See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3rd ed. (New York: Schocken, 1995); Zohar: The Book of Splendor (New York: Schocken, 1995).
3. See Émile Boutroux, “Le mysticisme,” Bulletin de l’institut général psychologique, 31 (1902); André Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, ed. Félix Alcan (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1926), 496.
4. Jacques Lacan, Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 2006).
5. Denys the Areopagite (or Pseudo-Dionysius), Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1987).
6. Plotinus: 204/5–270.
7. Aristotle: 384–322 B.C.E.
8. Exod. 3:1–6.
9. Ezek. 10:1–22.
10. Sefer Yetzirah, short treatise of some 1,600 words, third to twelfth century.
11. Judah Halevi: 1075–1141.
12. Moses Maimonides: 1135–1204.
13. Saadia ben Joseph of Fayum: 882–942. Author of Commentary on Sefer Yetzira, ca. 931.
14. Solomon Ibn Gabirol: 1020–1058.
15. Plato: 428–348 B.C.E.
16. Philo of Alexandria: ca. 10–45 B.C.E.
17. Bahya Ibn Paquda: tenth or eleventh century.
18. Abraham Abulafia: 1240–1291.
19. Moisés de León: second half of the thirteenth century.
20. Cf. André Néher, “La philosophie juive médiévale,” in Histoire de la philosophie, ed. Y. Belaval (Paris: Gallimard, Pléiade Collection, 1969).
21. Le Zohar, trans. Jean de Pauly (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1908); The Zohar, ed. H. Sperling and M. Simon, 5 vols. (London: Soncino, 1949).
22. Cf. Julia Kristeva, Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, trans. Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 148–9, 325.
23. Louis Massignon, Al Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr, trans. Herbert Mason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Anne-Marie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).
24. Ibn al-Arabi: d. 1240 in Damascus.
25. Ibn al-Farid: d. 1235.
26. Jalal al-Din Rumi: d. 1273.
27. Al-Ghazali: 1058–1111.
28. Al-Hallaj: 857–922.
29. Cf. Noël J. Coulson, A History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964).
30. Al-Kindi: 800–873.
31. Albert the Great: 1200–1280.
32. Origen: 185–253.
33. Gregory of Nyssa: 335–394.
34. De Certeau, The Mystic Fable: “Since the thirteenth century (courtly love, etc.), a gradual religious demythification seems to be accompanied by a progressive mythification of love. The One has changed its site. It is no longer God but the other, and in a masculine literature, woman” (4); “for reasons that need clarifying, the woman’s experience held up better against the cluttered ruins of symbolic systems, which were theological and masculine, and which thought of presence as the coming of a Logos” (6).
35. Thomas Aquinas: 1225–1274.
36. Jan van Ruysbroek: 1293–1381.
37. Hadewijch of Antwerp: ca. 1200–1260.
38. Ps. 42:7: “Deep calleth unto deep.”
39. Homo quidam nobilis: “A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return” (Luke 19:12), commented on by Meister Eckhart, Von dem edeln Menschen. See The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. and ed. Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 544; for the short quotations, 422–4, 543–4.
40. Angelus Silesius: 1624–1677.
41. Henry Suso: ca. 1296–1365.
42. Johannes Tauler: ca. 1300–1361.
43. Nicholas Krebs of Cusa: 1401–1464.
44. Jakob Böhme: 1575–1624.
45. G. W. F. Hegel: 1770–1831.
46. Angelus Silesius, Selections from The Cherubinic Wanderer, trans. J. E. Crawford Flitch (Westport, Conn.: Hyperion, 1978), 148: “The Mystical Abandonment. Abandonment ensnareth God: / But the Abandonment supreme, / Which few there can comprehend, / Is to abandon even Him.”
47. Hildegarde of Bingen: 1098–1179.
48. Angela of Foligno: 1248–1309.
49. Catherine of Siena: 1347–1380.
50. Francis of Assisi: 1182–1226.
51. Martin Luther: 1483–1546.
52. Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans. Gemma Simmonds et al. (London: SCM, 2006), 256: “Of the three terms: historical body, sacramental body and ecclesial body that it was a case of putting into order amongst each other, the caesura was originally placed between the first and second, whereas it subsequently came to be placed between the second and the third.”
53. Cf. de Certeau, The Mystic Fable: “After the middle of the twelfth century, the expression [corpus mysticum] no longer designated the Eucharist, as it had previously, but the Church. Conversely, ‘corpus verum’ no longer designated the Church but the Eucharist.…The Church, the social ‘body’ of Christ, is henceforth the (hidden) signified of a sacramental ‘body’ held to be a visible signifier…the showing of a presence beneath the ‘species’ (or appearances) of the consecrated bread and wine.…The sacrament (‘sumere Christum’) and the Church (‘sumi a Christo’) were joined…in the mode of the Church-Eucharist pair…of a visible community…and a secret action (ergon) or ‘mystery’…” (82–3). “The mystical term is therefore a mediating one between the historical ‘body’ that becomes ‘similar to a Code that is the law’ and the ‘mystery,’ the sacramental body…recast in the philosophical formality…as one ‘thing’ which is visible, designating another, which is invisible. The visibility of that object replaces the communal celebration, which is a community operation.…The mystical third is no more than the object of an intention. It is something that needs to be made manifest…constructed, on the basis of two clear, authoritative ‘documents’: the scriptural corpus and the Eucharistic ostension.” “A mystical Church body would have to be ‘invented,’ in the same sense in which there was to be an invention of the New World. That endeavor was the Reformation. It was gradually divided into two tendencies: one (Protestant) giving a privileged status to the scriptural corpus, the other (Catholic) to the sacrament” (84). “Furthermore, despite the ups and downs of the papal states, from the Lateran Council until the reformism following the Council of Trent (1545–1563), that pastoral (centered on the only body that could symbolize and sustain the restoration/institution of a visible Church) would have great stability.…One trait is of special interest in the question of the apparition of mystical science: the progressive concentration of these debates around seeing” (87–9).
54. Lateran Council III: 1179.
55. Lateran Council IV: 1215.
56. Council of Trent: 1545–1563.
57. Antonio Vivaldi: 1678–1741.
58. Jacopo Robusti, Il Tintoretto: 1519–1594.
59. Martin Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” Basic Writings, rev. and expanded ed., ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 1993), 108.
3. DREAMING, MUSIC, OCEAN
1. Koran, Sura LVII.
2. Alfred Rosenberg:1893–1946. See The Myth of the Twentieth Century, trans. V. Biro (1931; Torrance, Calif.: Noontide, 1983).
3. Marcel Duchamp: 1887–1968.
4. David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (New York: Dover, 2005).
5. Letter to R. Rolland, July 20, 1929, in Ernst L. Freud, ed., Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873–1939 (London: Hogarth, 1970), 389.
6. Wilhelm Fliess: 1858–1928.
7. Letter to W. Fliess, in Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, trans. and ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1985), 398.
8. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. David McLintock (London: Penguin, 2002), 10.
9. Letter from Romain Rolland to Freud, December 5, 1927, in Francis Doré and Marie-Laurie Prévost, eds., Selected Letters of Romain Rolland (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Oxford University Press, 1990), 87.
10. “Black mud”: Quoted in Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Waukegan: Fontana, 1992, p. 150.
11. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. J. Strachey (London: Pelican, 1977), 60.
12. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. J. A. Underwood and Shaun Whiteside (London: Penguin, 2005), 71–2.
13. William McGuire, ed. The Freud/Jung Letters, trans. Ralph Manheim (London: Picador, 1979), 146.
14. Letter to Anon., in Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873–1939, 435.
15. Cf. Paul-Laurent Assoun, “Résurgences et dérives de la mystique,” in Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, no. 22 (Fall 1980).
16. Freud, New Introductory Lectures, 112.
4. HOMO VIATOR
1. See Marcelle Auclair, Thérèse d’Avila, Œuvres complètes, 2 vols. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1964); Thérèse d’Avila, Œuvres complètes, (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1995).
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