Final paper comments

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Language in John of the Cross

During yesterday's class meeting I was intrigued by our discussion of the poetry in John of the Cross. First, I'm wondering if anyone can explain why the stanzas on p. 55-57 are numbered the way they are. Why does the selection on 55 start with stanza five if we get stanza one on the  next page? Also, are these numbers editorial additions or part of John of the Cross's original manuscript? Maybe it's a bit ridiculous to focus so much on those details, but I'm thinking that the oddity in numbering, if intentional, may point toward some sort of breakdown in the poem, undercutting its polished appearance since it ends with what appears to be its beginning.

While reading the selection for Thursday, I came across the odd prayer on p. 274-275. The incessant repetition here reminded me of that passage we were puzzling over today on p. 78-79, which appears to explode (or at least question) Reinhard's neat diagram of relationship to language. This passage reminded me of Gertrude Stein (dare I mention her name!) and other non-referential poets who use accretions of language and free association to point to that which is beyond language but, perhaps, more concrete than language. An ineffable that can never be said in language but which language nevertheless attempts to convey, albeit in ways that are totally frustrating to the reader or hearer (or writer or speaker).

So now, of course, what does all this have to do with R/S/Z and neighbor-love? Maybe we could take John's language to build up the point that Patty made at the end of class yesterday, that there are relationships beyond the symbolic order, ones that cannot be neatly categorized by neighbor-love theorists? Is this repetitive, confusing language neatly in the feminine position, the not-all? Or does the attempt to know the unknowable in this way with/through/against/beyond language rework the masculine and feminine positions?

Window to the Soul

While I was working through Ascent of Mount Carmel, I was struck by John of the Cross' metaphor of light streaming through a window.

"In observing a ray of sunlight stream through the window, we notice that the more it is pervaded with particles of dust, the clearer and more palpable and sensible it appears to the senses. Yet obviously the sun ray in itslef is less pure, clear, simple, and perfect in that it is full of so many specks of dust" (115). (John used the image of a dirty window earlier in the text in Book 2 Chapter 5.) When the light is pure, however, it is more difficult to see. "The spiritual light," John explains, "has a similar relationship to the intellect, the eye of the soul. This supernatural, general knowledge and light shines so purely and simply in the intellect and is so divested and freed from all intelligible forms (the objects of the intellect) that it is imperceptible to the soul" (115). Thus it seems that the light causes a certain darkness, a spiritual befuddlement. "Faith...is an obscure habit because it brings us to believe divinely revealed truths that transcend every natural light and infinitely exceed all human understanding...It overwhelms, blinds, and deprives them of vision since its light is excessive and unproportioned to the visual faculty" (82).

In light of our discussion about St. Teresa and the shattering of self, is John arguing for a retention of the self (or at least imperfections of the self)? I almost get the sense that this example suggests that divine light or divine wisdom can be more clearly perceived through our imperfections. How are the particles of dust function as a means to see the light? Can we fully get rid of imperfections and still perceive the light? 

Weapons and the Chivalric Romance

This is a very minor point. I was curious about the weapons the demons were carrying in one of her visions (Chapter 39:17). The English translation says: "Some held spears; others, swords; others, daggers; and others, very long rapiers." "Sword" and "rapier" are two very slippery words in the Early Modern period. Rapiers, more specifically the Spanish espada ropera, were used in a more civilian context because it was becoming useless on the battlefield. (Most historians point to the Battle of Pavia in 1525 as the first effective use of gunpowder on the battlefield. Since firearms were being developed in Spain much earlier than the rest of Europe, the sword also made an earlier the transition to civilian life than the rest of Europe. The espada ropera was being developed in Spain as early as the 1490s.) The espada ropera, literally "sword of the robe", would be worn as a status symbol; in order to be more easily worn with civilian dress, it was made lighter, slimmer, and longer than the average sword. This made it more conducive for thrusting movements rather than chopping through armor. Spears, on the other hand, seem to denote a lower class. (Anyone anywhere could make and wield a spear.) Taking both of these into account, Teresa would be placing this spiritual battle within the context of civilian society; the spiritual battle could not just take place on a clearly marked battlefield but could be located in the most unexpected of places.

Yet, the Spanish text suggests a different reading: "unas, lanzas; otras, espadas; otras, dagas y otras, estoques muy largos." The Spanish carries with it a very different feel, one which highlights the influence of chivalric romances. "Lanzas" (lances) are a very knightly weapon and could only be used effectively on horseback. "Estoques" or estocs carry a different connotation from very long rapiers. Like the rapier, the estoc was more of a thrusting weapon rather than a cutting weapon. It was carried by infantrymen and was specifically designed to pierce armor. They had a triangular or square cross section which would have provided greater strength for stabbing as opposed to the espada ropera's flat, two-sided blade. The estoc also never developed a basket hilt (an intricate set of loops to protect the hand above and below the cross guard); therefore, controlling the point was more difficult. All this to say, these weapons clearly situate the battle on the battlefield. The range of weapons (from the lanzas and espadas of the knights to the daggers and estocs of the infantry) suggest a full battle array.

Also, "unas" is in the feminine. To those of you more familiar with Spanish than I, was this common to refer to a large group in the feminine? Is it related "gente"? Or are we to take this as a group of armed women? (It would be absolutely fascinating that her tormentors are female in full battle array!)

Teresa and the Feminine Position

I, too, was having some trouble trying to figure out Teresa's relationship with the Church, especially when placed beside her experiences with God that she figures as outside the realm of symbolic understanding. So, as far as I understand it, there are moments when she seems entirely committed to the Church and the tenets it proposes, and, especially, its representatives as they are manifested through her many confessors. Evelyn's post provides one example of this loyalty or here's another from p. 213, speaking of holy water, specifically, "I consider everything ordained by the Church to be important, and I rejoice to see the power of those words recited over the water so that its difference from unblessed water becomes so great." Or elsewhere, she fears appearing to defy the Church’s authority in any way: “If anyone were to see that I went against the slightest ceremony of the Church in a matter of faith, I myself knew well that I would die a thousand deaths for the faith or for any truth of Sacred Scripture” (234-35). Examples like these, along with her devotion to her confessors and the judgments that they give to her tends to make it seem as though Teresa truly is committed to the (male authority of the) Church and to the symbolic order it seems to perpetuate – by making her translate her experiences into textual form as a defense of her actions.

And yet, alongside such admissions of devotion to Church and confessors’ commands, Teresa describes her experiences that directly connect her with God, outside of language or even direct sensory perception. She is reflecting upon her unworthiness of favor from God and on her lack of understanding, and writes,

While I was reflecting on this, a great impulse came upon me without my understanding the reason. It seemed my soul wanted to leave my body because it didn’t fit there nor could it wait for so great a good. The impulse was so extreme I couldn’t help myself, and it was, in my opinion, different from previous impulses; nor did my soul know what had happened, nor what it wanted, so stirred up was it. Although I was seated, I tried to lean against the wall because my natural power was completely gone. (281)

After this experience that she has such a difficult time translating into words, she describes how she was “stunned” into a state of sensory deprivation: “I neither heard nor saw, so to speak, but experienced wonderful interior joy” (282).

So, on one hand, she has this obedience to the Church and (as I would read it) the symbolic order that places the confessors and Church officials over her. On the other, she has these experiences that firmly place her outside of the symbolic, as perceiving not through senses or intellect but through the soul. In this second kind of experience, I’m thinking that she occupies the position of the “not-all” as Reinhard uses it. He discusses how “The not-all [. . .] operates at the level of the real, rather than the symbolic, as the impossibility of saying something or, better, the impossibility of writing (that is, formalizing) the sexual relationship” (59). I understand this to relate to our discussion where we worked through how the feminine position can, at times, step outside of the symbolic order or, at least, can refuse to comply with it entirely. In her experiences with rapture and direct communication with God, it seems that Teresa steps outside of the symbolic order and is able to receive communication without reliance on words or symbols as she is when she talks with her confessors or other religious people. This version of God does, then, really seem to fit with the idea of sovereign prime that Patty and Evelyn discuss below.

So, and here’s where I really am trying to understand the situation, it seems that she is alternating in her position between the feminine in thrall to the phallus and the feminine in discord with it. And what I’m wondering is if this alternation is necessarily contradictory. Does she undercut her devotion to Church with her experiences and greater knowledge from God? Or is it necessary that the feminine position be in a difficult space of moving back and forth, toward and away from the symbolic order? Could we even understand this oscillation as the connection between the separate pulls of sovereign and neighbor? It would seem impossible for her to get entirely outside of this connection with the Church, even as she recognizes that her confessors give her bad advice and tell her to act against God’s will, as he has revealed it to her.

This has turned out much longer than I intended, but I’m hoping that others might have thoughts on what this moving back and forth may reveal in terms of neighbor love.

two questions

First of all, as I was working on reading the rest of The Book of Her Life this afternoon, I came across a section that seemed to have relevance for our discussion today, pg. 166-167. Here Teresa seems to be defending herself against the charge that she's being deceived by the devil, and it's fascinating to me how she counters that charge by first saying that "All the revelations it [the soul] could imagine... wouldn't move it one bit from what the Church holds" (166). On the next page she emphasizes the importance of the confessor: "... there is nothing more certain in this matter than to have greater fear and always to seek counsel, to have a master who is a learned man, and to hide nothing from him" (167). Apparently she's staying well within Catholic orthodoxy by saying that the right revelations will always be in line with Catholic teaching and that a person (particularly a woman, it seems to me) needs a confessor to vet their revelations.

Yet she immediately undercuts these statements by saying that her confessor and others "told me that they all came to the decision that my experience was from the devil" (167), which causes her incredible suffering until God grants her peace, perhaps in defiance of these church authorities (168). I wonder if this is an example of the "sovereign prime" who works outside the regular order of authority and whether we could read this as a failure of neighbor-love on the part of the church authorities toward Teresa (they're not encountering her traumatic kernel seriously enough?).

My other question has to do with clothing in the texts we've read, particularly in Kempe's Book. What is the role of clothing in these texts? Kempe "hystericizes" everyone with the white (or black!) outfits she wears, which are sanctioned by God but (again) not the church authorities. Though it's not as pertinent to Teresa, I'm still curious what people think about it. Could we take clothes as a way to visualize or externalize the traumatic kernel? To make difference in a way that's obvious and also annoying to other people?

Gossip as Speech Act in Teresa of Avila

Carole Slade writes that Teresa of Avila “might well have considered herself on trial.” Until I read this article, I didn’t even consider this a point of contention, but I don’t think Slade and I have the same judgment in mind. Slade’s claims rely on the Freudian concepts of repression and fantasy, that Teresa conceals much from her friends and from herself in order to protect herself from the truth. It seems to me, though, that Teresa is concealing much in order to protect herself from God.

What, then is concealed? Names and deeds. Teresa, as ordered, is attempting to make some kind of account of herself. She is obedient to her superiors in this but remains obedient to God by refusing to repeat one specific deed, gossip, that she so harshly repudiates in her younger self. The tact she takes is to give an abstract, spiritual history of herself as opposed to the type of autobiography we are more acquainted with, which sometimes foreground their gory details. (And if these details are not gory enough, it seems that some autobiographers of late have even been compelled to invent them.) Thus, Teresa disavows gossip without repeating the mistake. This provides at least some measure of internal consistency. We cannot really corroborate Teresa’s writing with her early life, as the most exhaustive record is her own, but we can at least see that she is acting consistently in concealing certain things, if we consider gossip, or more importantly here abstinence from gossip, a speech act.

This is certainly not the sturdiest basis on which to take her at her word when she says, for instance, that she was her father’s favorite. But the argument that she must have been neglected by her father because she claims that she was favored seems even less compelling, in light of this one shred of evidence we have about her behavior. Teresa’s circumspection, which for Slade was a concealing circumspection, seems genuine enough to me. I do agree with Slade that Teresa leaves much out; only I think she does so with a relatively high degree of conscious intent.