Julia Kristeva

Abstract

This chapter discusses Sylvia Leclercq’s fascination with mysticism in Julia Kristeva’s novel Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila . Sylvia, a psychoanalyst and academic, like Kristeva herself, ponders the question of female mysticism throughout the historical novel. She knows that Freud was dismissive of mysticism, which he called the “oceanic” feeling. Kristeva offers us a love story about the Counter-Reformation’s greatest and most enigmatic woman. Like Teresa, Sylvia believes in the “you in me” and the “me in you, a mystical unity that overcomes the split between self and other. The soul can thus incorporate the absent beloved, enabling one to be alone with God. In Sufi thought, Sylvia explains early in the story, immanence and transcendence are not mutually exclusive, an insight that Teresa grasped in the sixteenth century and that Sylvia believes continues to be true in the twenty-first century. Teresa becomes a role model for Sylvia in pursuing a fulfilling life. “Your work seems deathless to me in the here and now,” Sylvia exclaims, reflecting Kristeva’s belief that Teresa’s mystical faith continues to be inspirational to those who study her life. Sylvia never experiences Teresa’s mystical states nor shares her religious faith, but she has learned much from understanding her life.