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

1. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sentensiis, Prologue, 1.5: “Oportet…quod modus istius scientiae sit narrativus signorum, quae ad confirmationem fidei faciunt.”

2. Way, 26:9, CW 2:136.

3. Life, 9:6, CW 1:102.

4. Ibid.

5. VII D, 1:7, CW 2:430.

6. VI D, 3:1, CW 2:370–71.

7. II D, 11, CW 2:303.

8. VI D, 3:8, CW 2:374.

9. Angelus Silesius, Selections from The Cherubinic Wanderer, trans. J. E. Crawford Flitch (Westport, Conn.: Hyperion, 1978), 178.

10. Life, 25:22, CW 1:223. The “fig for all the devils” is an allusion to the female sex.

11. Ibid.

12. II D, 4, CW 2:299–300.

13. Sigmund Freud, Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses, trans. A. A. Brill (New York: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing, 1912), 178: “Per via di levare” (as in sculpture and psychoanalysis) is opposed to “per via di porre” (as in painting).

14. G. W. Leibniz, New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding, trans. and ed. P. Remnant and J. Bennett, book 1, “Of Innate Notions,” chapter 3, § 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xc [102].

15. On the “double alliance,” see Antoine Guggenheim, Jésus-Christ, grand prêtre de l’ancienne et la nouvelle alliance: Étude du commentaire de saint Thomas d’Aquin sur l’“Épître aux Hébreux” (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2004).

16. Sigmund Freud, Complete Psychological Works, vol. 19, The Ego and the Id and Other Works, trans. James Strachey (London; Vintage 2001), 31: “His identification with the father in his own personal prehistory.” See also Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, translated by Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); and This Incredible Need to Believe, trans. B. Bie Brahic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

17. The “baroque poet,” Annibal de Lortigue (1570–1640): “Toute chose est muable au monde. Il faut aimer à la volée…”

18. VI D, 6:8–9, CW 2:394–95.

19. Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry W. Longfellow, Paradiso, canto 1 (London: Capella, 2006), 61–63, 70–71, 85, 106–7; and canto 32, 142–45, 289, 383.

34. LETTER TO DENIS DIDEROT

1. Stéphane Mallarmé, “The Same,” in Divagations, trans. with an introduction by Barbara Johnson (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2007), 251.

2. Denis Diderot, “On Women,” trans. Edgar Feuchtwanger, www.keele.ac.uk. Accessed August 2012.

3. Denis Diderot, The Nun, trans. Russell Goulbourne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 6, 14. The text was originally circulated in handwritten copies of La correspondance littéraire, exclusively read by a handful of enlightened North European royals. The novel appeared posthumously in 1796. The philosopher’s previous convictions deterred him from publishing it during his lifetime.

4. Ibid., 81.

5. Ibid., 92–93.

6. Ibid., 74–75.

7. Augustine, Soliloquies.

8. For M. d’Alainville’s visit, see Diderot, Œuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 1385 (my translation — LSF).

9. Diderot, The Nun, 65.

10. For the last words attributed to Diderot (“The first step towards philosophy is incredulity”), see Jim Herrick, Against the Faith (New York: Prometheus, 1985), 84.

11. Diderot to Sophie Volland, August 8, 1762 (my translation — LSF). This is not among the letters featured in Diderot’s Letters to Sophie Volland: A Selection, trans. and selected by Peter France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). Letter to Mme d’Epinay, 1767 (my translation — LSF). See Correspondance de Diderot, ed. G. Roth and J. Varloot (Paris: Minuit, 1955–1970), vol. 7, 156.

12. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. H. L. Mencken, (1920; Tucson: Sharp, 1999), 113.

13. Marcel Proust, “Time Regained,” in In Search of Lost Time, trans. and with an introduction and notes by Peter Collier, ed. Christopher Prendergast (London: Penguin, 2002), 6:157: “sterile celibates of art.”

14. Philippe Sollers, “Ma France,” Revue des deux mondes, April 2006. Cf. “Pascal et Sade.”

15. Mariana Alcoforado, The Letters of a Portuguese Nun, trans. Edgar Prestage (London: David Nutt, 1893), letter 5, p. 93.

16. Meister Eckhart: 1260–1327. See “German Sermon 6,” in The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist,1981), 187.

17. Tauler: 1300–1361.