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

Like me, and after much weeping, La Madre no longer weeps as the end draws near. Now her tears pour forth of themselves, with abandon, with the certainty of happiness. The fruits of a once terrified imagination (before it tamed the plenitude of love), tears remain, to her valedictory eyes, illusions, deceits, engaños. They are the devil’s work. And if God Himself sometimes has a hand in them, for our gratification, we shouldn’t indulge all the same.

Hear what she says (in a normal voice, underlining): “I mark danger everywhere and in something as good as tears I think there can be deception; you are wondering if I may be the one who is deceived. And it could be that I am. But believe me, I do not speak without having seen that these false tears can be experienced by some persons; although not by me, for I am not at all tender. Rather, I have a heart so hard that sometimes I am distressed; although when the inner fire is intense the heart, however hard, distills like an alembic.…Let the tears come when God sends them and without any effort on our part to induce them. These tears from God will irrigate this dry earth, and they are a great help in producing fruit. The less attention we pay to them, the more there are.…”¹⁸

(Meditative silence.)

“And suddenly it seemed that day to day was added, as if He who has the power had with another sun the heaven adorned.” (Sylvia recites the unknown lines that have swum into her mind. It’s not Hell any more, nor is it Purgatory, so could this be Paradise? If Teresa hasn’t earned a place in Heaven, who has?) “Transumanar.…To represent transhumanize in words impossible were.” Teresa, transhuman? No, not that chess-playing woman. Transfinite, rather…an infinitesimal human.…“She, who saw me as I saw myself.…Here do the higher creatures see the footprints of the Eternal Power.…Here vigor failed the lofty fantasy: but now was turning my desire and will, even as a wheel that equally is moved, the love which moves the sun and the other stars.”¹⁹ (Rubs her eyes, comes back to her roommate.)

The loving heart, Teresa fashion, is hard as diamonds, meaning it cannot be liquefied anymore: it endures the toughest test, it is rock solid. (In a voice of farewell.) But it is no less subtle for that. It distills into scents, penetrates castle walls, traverses the spaces and elements it imbues. And then it takes wing, spinning and fluttering with the Other’s voice, that necessarily loving voice. Pulverizing the rectilinear power of the Lord Himself into cloudy cascades of justice implored, of sublimated desires. (With a final glance at Teresa’s portrait.) A vibrating voice, arpeggios and triplets, mounting and descending, a-flutter, à la volette [Repeated phrase in eponymous traditional French children’s song. — Trans.], again and again, exultant:

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

Just like my father’s voice. (In the background, a snatch of Bach’s “Magnificat.”)

Part 8. Postscript

Chapter 34. LETTER TO DENIS DIDEROT ON THE INFINITESIMAL SUBVERSION OF A NUN

God, through whom we discern that certain things we had deemed essential to ourselves are truly foreign to us, while those we had deemed foreign to us are essential.

Saint Augustine, Soliloquies

Divine understanding…the domain of possible realities.

Leibniz to Antoine Arnauld

Dear Mister Philosopher,