Sainte Thérèse et le désir triangulaire

...

Albeit it may be too easy to say that because the Inquisition requested Saint Teresa to justify her faith, the representatives power had necessarily a mediation effect in the Saint’s narration, we have to consider this aspect though the whole interpretation of the question of the mediation is more subtle. Dealing with a matter of life –or death – The Dwellings have to be in compliance with the Church dogma in terms of the accuracy of the Saint’s faith, especially because, even if her discourse is not meant to be entering a public sphere, she is living with other nuns. According to the Saint, The Dwellings has been written because “les religieuses de ces monastères de Notre-Dame du Carmel ont besoin qu'on leur explique quelques points indécis d'oraison” (Demeures, Préface). However one can think that her regular crisis had drawn the attention of the ecclesiastic power and she had then to account for them.

When talking about the mediator in the narrative, René Girard has in mind the model whose desires the subject of the narrative imitates. In his theory, the subject of the desire is “the victim of triangular desire” (3). Indeed, Saint Teresa is the victim because now that there is no doubt that her faith experience is out of the Church accepted limits, she has to stick to the Inquisition requirements which could be considered as desires. Of course, the latter do not compare with the type of desires Sancho Pancha has in Cervantes’ novel but they are even more powerful because claimed by a group, an institution. “The mediator is there, above that line, radiating toward both the subject and the object” affirms Girard (2): indeed the Inquisition is above both Saint Teresa and God. Thus the writing is the outcome of someone else’s desire, desire circumscribed into precise limits bonded by the Inquisitors. Saint Teresa relies on them to prevent her from overriding the “reasonable”.

The Saint herself as we saw earlier, asserts in the narrative that the Inquisition is the mediator; the mediator is also perceived as built in opposition with the enunciator. There is a slight difference in terms of “voices”. Even though the Saint desires what the Inquisition desires, that is that she proves her faith, there is an obvious discordance in the way the desired object is perceived from the Saint’s perspective and from the Inquisition’s one. And it is revealed in the enunciation and the place of the “I”.

The “I” indeed is the one who organizes the “room” of the narration, choosing which position is attributed to whom. We will develop this idea later in the paper but now we can say already that the mediator is built “outside” the “I” as well as “within” the “I”.

Following Michel de Certeau, the ability of the “I” to speak “dépend, comme chez l’enfant, d’une parole qui le prévient et d’une attente qu’il postule. La stratégie textuelle qui distribue et hiérarchise les lieux du dire (les apôtres, l’auteur, les destinataires, etc.) débouche finalement sur ce point de fuite, le je, où ça parle qu’au nom de l’autre” (Certeau, 256). If the “lieux du dire” can be the recipients, then the narration is necessarily built according to the Inquisition’s expectations. That is to say that the motor of the narration, the narrator’s desire, is coordinated, verily subordinated to the mediator’s one. If, according to René Girard, we “borrow” so to speak our desires, then Saint Teresa borrows hers as well. However, the desire itself did not wait to encounter the Inquisition requests to spring up in the Saint’s mind. She desired God as the spiritual Lover before she was asked to write the Dwellings. But her faith blossomed inside the Catholic Church. Sent at a really young age to a convent, she met the faith as it was worshipped at the time, according to Catholic principles. Therefore, writing in accordance with the catholic doxa is not of a difficult task for her. This is the reason why the Inquisition as a mediator is partially an obstacle but also an incentive. That is why we can gradually go from a mediator built “outside” the “I” to a mediator built “within” the “I”. The Saint’s strategy could be in fact to let the Catholic hierarchy think that the Inquisition is the mediator whereas it is not.

When talking about the question of internal and external mediation in the romantic works, René Girard asserts:

“We shall speak of external mediation when the distance is sufficient to eliminate any contact between the two spheres of possibilities of which the mediator and the subject occupy the respective centers. We shall speak of internal mediation when this same distance is sufficiently reduced to allow these two spheres to penetrate each other more or less profoundly” (9).

Here the comment applies as well. And it is interesting to see that the mediator is both external and internal. Internal because the “spiritual distance” is reduced, the subject here trying to reach the mediator’s sphere to “please” his expectations. The Inquisition penetrates Teresa’s sphere enough to influence the writings in the meanings of her relation to God. God is “modified” in the narrative – and by the narration - to satisfy the way the Inquisition sees Him trough Teresa’s eyes. The mediation is also external and this for two reasons. First, seen from the mediator’s perspective, and here is the issue: for the Inquisition there is a problem because Teresa is not “in contact” enough with the Church. Thus the Inquisition is trying, by asking her to write what became The Dwellings, to reestablish the contact. But the mediator will not go into Teresa’s sphere. Instead, it is the Saint who will have to come into the Inquisitors’ sphere. Again we are talking about the latter’s perspective.

Knowingly or not – and here we come to the second aspect of the external mediation – Saint Teresa de facto, creates two spheres. Even if she justifies her faith all through the writing, it seems that she remains in her sphere. She certainly tries and pretends to create one sphere with two but it is the subterfuge of the narration. Indeed, after reading The Dwellings, it appears to the modern reader that Teresa “foxed” the Inquisition as if she had said: “I acknowledge the mediator as well as his wills, I will create one fictive sphere where he can recognize himself but I will stay hidden behind my written words and “I” as the subject of what they want to read”.

II Saint Theresa d’Avila : writer, narrator and subject

As we saw in the first chapter, Saint Theresa had been requested by the Inquisition to justify her faith