Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila

SYLVIA LECLERCQ, occupying La Madre’s shadowy place stage right, speaking in a drained voice. Here’s a surprise Fénelon will appreciate, not to mention Madame de Guyon.…⁷⁰ I might have known the Eagle of Meaux would be here; he was never very keen on intimate, Quietist, or amalgamated-type scenes, but he made an exception for Teresa. Sylvia Leclercq “in the footsteps of Bossuet,” who’d have thought it? Ah, he’s no longer the bos suetus aratro, the “ox accustomed to the plough” of the Jesuit school.…The old theologian has aged as well, he’s got excema and gallstones and who knows what else.…But he will still go down fighting, weapons in hand, Saint-Simon tells us, and might have added: “like Teresa.”

BOSSUET, in a metallic, slightly breathless voice. “Our society is in heaven above,” nostra autem conversatio in coelis est.…And the hope of which the world speaks is but an agreeable illusion, somnium vigilantium.…If I don’t dare to affirm it, who will? I am a Cartesian, but not to the last ditch. Primo: Hope equals the “sleep of vigilance,” of course, except.…Except when hope comes from the Lord. In that circumstance its words are assured, and consequently the hope in Him is likewise assured, ergo it is certain.…Secondo: Contra spem in spem.…This is the anchor of our souls, something the true Christian does not possess, but is looking for. (Puts down the two tomes he was carrying and takes the Panegyrics proffered by Leclercq, riffles through while holding forth in a firm, steady voice.) And this “infinite munificence” was lavished on Teresa in life, while she yet inhabited her mortal coil.…Tertio: Such is indeed the grand spectacle to which the Church invites us.…

SYLVIA LECLERCQ. Nicely put, “munificence” and “grand spectacle” are appropriate. (Hand over mouth, she has finally been awed by the infallible rhetorician).

BOSSUET. “St. Teresa lives among angels, convinced that she is with her Spouse,” and thus fulfillment succeeds to yearning.…“A divine sickness,” undoubtedly, one whose power increases day by day? But there remains the “link, gentlemen, which is charity.…It elevates Teresa above the throng.…She speeds toward it, driven by ardent, impetuous desires…which prove unequal to severing the bonds of mortal flesh, against which she now declares a holy war.…For all true Christians should feel like travelers on a journey.” They must feel, yes, feel.…

SYLVIA LECLERCQ, hand over mouth again, disconcerted by her sudden admiration for the bishop. That’s right, go on.…

BOSSUET, imperturbably. Qui non gemit peregrinus, non gaudebit civis.…Saint Augustine had some splendid turns of phrase, madam. “He who does not lament the journey will not rejoice on reaching the city.” And Saint Teresa becomes “ever freer, more disengaged from perpetual agitation.” “The harder she finds it to cast off her body, the more detached from that body she becomes.”

SYLVIA LECLERCQ, admiringly. Is that in relation to John of the Cross? How unexpected, from you! Might you be an unjustly neglected author?

BOSSUET, ignoring the compliment, enthused by his panegyric. One can scarcely credit the way she built her monasteries, that girl.…

SYLVIA LECLERCQ, thoughtfully, almost inaudibly, hugging the Orations and the Instructions. Bossuet the Academician turns out to be a pragmatist with his own brand of mysticism, quite unlike his image. But he couldn’t have been any less, if he was to prevent a schism with Rome. Courted by the dauphin, the king, society ladies like Maintenon, Montespan, Sévigné; patron of men like La Bruyère, associating with the likes of Pascal, Molière, La Rochefoucauld, Leibniz.…Yet he still remembers his conversation with our Teresa. “That girl,” he calls her. Their conversation is in Heaven above, apparently, albeit that Heaven exists down here on earth, according to La Madre? Intermittently, but still. A weird space it is, Monseigneur. Go take a look.…(She tries to detain the Eagle of Meaux but he returns the Panegyrics to her and vanishes, holding a Cross, into the darkness stealing across the stage.)

ACT 3, SCENE 3

The voices of TERESA and SYLVIA and the virtual characters of LEIBNIZ⁷¹ and SPINOZA.⁷²