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TEARS
AND
SAINTS
E. M. CIORAN

Translated and with an Introduction by

ILINCA ZARIFOPOL-JOHNSTON

The University of ChicagoPress ◊ Chicagoand London

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 E . M. CI ORAN was born and edu . d.
. p . . cate tn Romani d
Iived m ans since 1937. He is th th f a an has
. e au or o numerous wo k
era! of which have appeared in Engl' h . cl d . r s, sev-
. b. is ' m u mg On thtHti hIs of
D esparr,pu lished by the University f Ch . . ,g
o icago Press m 1992
ILINCA ZARIFOPOL-JOHNSTON . .
· · • • a Romanian na-
.
t1ve, 1s associate professor of compa rac·1ve 11terarure at I d.
University. She has also rranslaced Cior , 0 h . n •ana
ans n I t Hrrghts ofDtspair.
INTRODUCTION

The Un'.vers'.tyof Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Led., London Cioran: The Temptation to Believe
© 1995 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1995
Printed in the United States of America
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 0-226-10672-1 (cloth)

--r:'e "death of the author" is a notion I have never
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 1 ~~come used to. Time and again, when I open the
Cioran, E. M. (Emile M.), I9I I- pages of an engaging book, the "dead" author comes
[Lacrimi §i sfinri. English J back to haunt me: as if reading were a spell that brings
Tears and saints / E. M . Cioran ; translated by Ilinca Zarifopol- him back, his hovering spirit is always before my mind's
Johnston . eye. And while reading, the desire to capture this spirit ,
P· cm. to know him, "to be him" takes possession of me. I can-
Includes bibliographical reference.
I. Ticle. not read without imagining the "dead" author back to
1. Suffering. 2. Christian saints-Miscellanea.
B105.S79C56 1995 life.
235'.2-dc20 95-1J187 E. M. Cioran is an author that wants imagining more
than others. As a writer, he is particularly well versed in
The paper used in chis publication meets the minimum require-
ments of the American National Standard for Information the game of making and unmaking authorial fictions in
Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, his texts, a game complicated by the fact that in real life
ANSI 239.48-1984 . he has had two lives, two identities, two authorial
voices: the Romanian Cioran of the 1930sand the
Tide page illustration: detail from Th, Dtsunlfrom 1h,Crors,Rogier van
der Weyden. Photograph copyright Musco del Prado, Madr id. All rights French Cioran-much better known-of the 1970s and
reserved. Partial or total reproduction prohibited.
V

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r
19sos. I began imagining Cioran when I translated his
first Romanian book, On theHeightsof Despair(Bucharest
1934; University of Chicago Press, 1991). Now, having
' lips sealed.Si oran has already removed himself from
translated another of his Romanian books, Tearsand
Saints,published in Bucharest in 1937 shortly after he had
left Romania for Paris never to return, I find myself
again caught up in the skein of imagination, while the
tantalizing question endures: Who is this man?
: '. Erased from history as a nonperson in Communist
Romania, little known in the West outside elite intellec-
tual circles, Cioran eludes me yet again in his final tragic
illness. This master of style can speak now only with his
eyes. There is a cruel poetic justice in this, for the mysti-
cal experience he meditated on in Tearsand Saintsplaces
great emphasis on the eye, on seeing the invisible, on ac-
quiring intimate knowledge of a different, nonempirical
reality.-Sjnce the very notion of a mystical language is
paradoxical-only silence can encompass the infinite
and the invisible-it may be appropriate that Cioran
should now be silent, or speak with his eyes. Like his
saints, Cioran is now wholly. an outsi der. He-has always
been one in various ways, but his transition to another
"twilight zone" is now total and irrevocable. His intense
green eyes are like pools of otherworldly luminosity. I
looked into them last summer as I told him about my
detective work on his saints, how hard it was to track
some of them down-some, in fact, I never did. I
wanted to know why he had chosen such a recondite
subject to write about. Lately, saints and angels have be-
come quite fashionable, but I couldn't help wondering
whether there was anyone in the 1930s as familiar with
th
ese saintly figures as Cioran was. He listened to me as
vi
if from afar, his eyes lit up with amu cd mischief, hi
this world of confusion, leaving in our hands the multi-
colored coat of his writings to puzzle over. My author is
not dead, he has only made his escape into another
world, and there he lives to tantalize his reader, co tease,
to challenge, to spur her on. Henceforth I shall follow
him, the reader in search of the author. Where will I
find him first?
Romania, mid-193os.A passionate young man, already
known as a flamboyant writer in a new generation of in-
tellectuals, Cioran spends hours in a Transylvanian
library in his hometown, Sibiu, poring over the lives of
saints. A modern-day hagiographer, he has "dreamt"
himself "the chronicler of these [saints'] falls between
heaven and earth, the intimate knower of the ardors in
their hearts, the historian of God's insomniacs." The
question naturally arises: why would a healthy, normal
young man , who confesses his love of life openly, who is
politically active, want to become a "heavenly inter-
loper" spying on the saints' secrets? A partial answer
may be found in a passage from Nietzsche's BeyondGood
andEvil:
The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed re-
verently before the saint, as the enigma of self-
subjugation and utter voluntary privation-why
did they thus bow? They divined in him . . . the
superior force which wished to test itself by such a
subjugation; the strength of will, in which they
recognized their own strength and love of power,
vu
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 and knew how co honour it: they honoured somc -
. · themselves when they honoured the saint
chmgm . ·
In addition co chis, the concemplac1on of the saint
suggested to them a sus~icion: such an ~normity
of self-negation and anti-naturalness w1ll not have
been coveted for nothing .... In a word, the
mighty ones of the wo~l~ learned to have a new
fear before him, they d1vmed a new power, a
strange, still unconquered enemy:-ic was the
"Will to Power" which obliged them to hale before
the saint. They had to question him. (56)
Nietzsche's insight is confirmed by Cioran, who on
the first page of TearsandSaintsspells out the reason for
his interest in saints in the form of a question his book
promises to explore: "How does a man renounce him-
self and take the road to sainthood?" In the saints'
ability co renounce the world, Cioran detects their "will
to power": saintliness, he writes, is "imperialistic," it
"interests me for the delirium of self-aggrandizement
hidden beneath its meekness, its will to power masked
by goodness." Clearly fascinated by this will co power in
a political world torn by extreme claims, from fascism
to communism, Cioran nonetheless regards it with an
awe tinged by ironic skepticism. He looks upon saints
as partial alter egos, devout existentialists who "live in
· men live next to them." His relation-
flames" w hile "w1se
ship to them as it develops in the book is one of both
· fc
. and hatred · "I ove sames or their passionate na-
love l
. h as
· H·1slove for the sames
ivete,"he writes at one pomc.
a.shade of decadent h · · • " we no longer b e-
·m 1t:
. · aest et1c1sm
heve m them Wi O nl drn. . . . ,,
· e Y a ire their illusions. However,
- viii
u h J :mdifird luv 1 .ountc rb.Jl.
and virulrnt h.it red. f I
hacr · rhc saint. 0 1' dw hab,1l) Ii prlr'>~ if rr
rhcy bcqLJt ·athc~l 10 u , 1n e ,u · r111 ·• n'r l, 11 · hir,•
but futile and :sar:ini ," ~ 1vw oul 1 me n ,r !iJtr /\dlO f '>,
angels , and God ? . , , H ra rn irn t It: . 1 r, 1 ( J n t1
disguise drives me I de~pair."
Tears and Saints is a medir, rion on ·, incltnr ~. I ut
saindin ess of the usual rype. har 1 , not th m n ~rs
and heroes of traditional hagiography, wor hip d fi r
their virtues, but rather the mystics famous for rhc1r
high degree of spirituality, their intimate per on I
knowledge of God , who brought about a new "erupci n
of the absolute into history." Th e titl e, Ttars and Samu,
refers to what is known in the tradition of the Roman
Catholic Church as the "gift of tears." Th e D ia1onnam
de laspiritualitedescribes "the gift of tears" as '' a compl ex
phenomenon consisting of certain spiritual feelings and
their concrete manifestation." le cites three categories of
holy tears: penitential tears ( purifying tears of fear and
regret), tears of love ( or grace), and tears of comp assion
wept for the Passion of Christ. Starting with Francis of
Assisi in the early thirteenth century, the latter kind be-
came predominant.
The tears of pity for the suffering Christ , to which
Cioran alludes repeatedly in his text, are a characteristic
feature of Western European mysticism. Mysticism is
"a movement towards an object outside the limits of
empirical experience." It is also a "direct and passive ex-
perience of God's presence" (Dictionnairedt laspiritualitl).
This "movement" is an escape-through prayer, medi-
tation and contemplation-from the here and now. Ir
ix
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I .
auns at reu
mystery Of
ni'on with God, and it is centered on the
the Incarnation and Redemption because th
. . .
humanity of Christ is perceived as ~e~iati~n between
e politi cs (C atherine of Siena, for example, pl y d. polit-
ical role in bringing the pope back to Rome from
man and God . Through sympathetic identification with Avignon). And all of them-m any belonging to rhe
the suffering Christ, one is redeemed from one's "fallen" mendicant orders-w ere dedicated to charity work in
state and _Eeunited with God, thereby partaking of his the world outsid e the monastery walls, assiduou!'> ly ten
divinity.'.Tears were perceived as a sign of grace, the ex- ding the poor and the ill.
ternal m~ ifestation of God 's presence in the human European mysticism is a religious movement with po-
litical overtones. It is marked by a strong spirit of
heart7~any descriptions of this gift insist on its inef-
reform, which developed in the margins of- and often
fable sweetness.Cioran puts a twist on mystical
at odds with-the official institution of the Catholic
discourse from the very beginning , since for him tears
Church, which these saintly persons perceived as de-
are not sweet but bitter: "As I searched for the origin of
graded and corrupt , no longer capable of caring fully
tears, I thought of the saints . Could they be the source for the spiritual needs of the population. Historically, it
of tears' bitter light?" covers several centuries and several Western European
The saints in Goran 's title belong to a new class of countries , from its inception ( with Bernard of Clairvaux
saints, mostly lay and mostly female, called "mystics," in the twelfth century), to its vigorous expansion at the
"spirituels," "contemplatifs," or "alumbrados. " Their end of the thirteenth century in Germany and Holland
approach to the Christian faith is antitheological and and then into Italy, through its apogee in sixteenth-
antiinstitutional, based solely on intuition and senti- century Spain, and its final afterglow in seventeenth-
ment. Many of the names in this book, Meister century France just before the Age of Reason. Although
Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Sc. John of it spans many centuries, European mysticism is, as Mi-
the Cross, have left classic works of Western European chel de Certeau observes in '[heMysticFable ,a
mysticalliterature, but there are many more minor and "borderline" phenomenon , occurring on the threshold
of modernity, at a time when unified Christian Europe
unusual figures as well. In TearsandSaints1 Cioran sub-
is disintegrating , strong secular states are formed, and
sumes ,_
. mystics under the name of saints .·Since for him
the bases of new sciences and arts are set. Thus "the
t1
myS cs are~politic~ passive contemplators of divinity,
·
he prefers to call chem sames. •
Samts .
h e wntes ambition of a Christian radicalism [is] traced on a
are
' ' background of decadence or 'corruption,' within a uni-
politicians-tho ugh "l'railed" ones, because they deny
verse that is falling apart and must be repaired"
appearances· pragmac'ic men an d women of action,
· ( Certeau, 14). Faced with the breakdown of the Chris-
whose acts of ch . .
I d d anty express their love of humankind. tian faith and "the humiliation of the Christian
n ee ' many of the E ·
fi . uropean mystics were active re- tradition," the mystics rise to fight for the restoration of
ormers, serious 1 .10 h
P ayers t e game of European
Xl

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esa of Avila and St . Joh n of
true faith. For example, Ter
of their orders. They thu
s who, in order to rul e, doc
the Cross were reformers
lism," verging on here sy,
formed a '.'Christian radica
y and revolt" (Certeau , 24
) preme, enjoying an autono
"waver[ing] between ecstas i ·
s on the political element
\_fl Cioran explicitlyfocuse
tfie saints' lives,but in his
view their charitable deeds n
Wha
ting aspect of their lives.
represent the leastinteres
rs, their thirst for pain and
fascinates him are their tea
in short, the pathology , as or
their capacity to endure it:
suffer~~g," for "suf-
~ engrosses Cioran's attentio
he puts it, the "v~~ptuol!sn
phy." Behind this suffering
, saints God is meaningful
fering i~ mans only b~~gra
to renounce everything
and their uncanny ability
Cioran detects the saints
' fa-
through ascetic practices,
natical will to power.
because
! Saints' writings are
often titled "Dialogues"
m of a dialogue with Go
d,
J .
they are presented in the for
esa of Avila called it. In his
"conversar con Dias" as Ter
rse, Certeau observes tha
ta
analysis of mystical discou
writings is the initial ass
er-
main feature of the saints' is both
lo," "I wane," wh ich
tion of will, the opening "vo
sig-
n to escape, and ascetic,
e~st~tic,signifying a decisio of
(Certeau, 229). This act
mfymg a decision to lose er,
ame time an act of pow
:illing,_ ":oul~ir," is at th~ s this book sharply into foc
He cites one of the classic
pouvoir, wntes Certeau t the wil l
hart, who said: "W ith
of mysticism, Meister Eck h 7, )3
I
I can do everyrhing, " and "wh at want to ave, I s
hav>--
the saints wa nt to pos ses
(Certeau, 17°). But what do . .
and control'· "Th e1r ·
space to conquer 1s the sky
, their
ran. The saints' "will to
weapon suffering," says Cio .
•
power" has no 0 Ject m particular. They wane to own
b ·
. .
• toric of my stic ism
m6mty ("the sky") and God: 1.e.,they want an absenc.e,
fc B k d " .
or, as audelaire one e remar e , God 1s the only bemg
xii
')
s nor even net•d to cx1 r."
T hu s
which the will reign u -
inner space is the region in
my that does nor d ·pend
on
rhc lw rr
object or circumstance (Ce
rr cau, 235-36 ), and
which the mystical dra ma is
;r the soul is the stage on
Teresa of Avila's Las morada
s.
enacted as, for example, in
ous will co power,
t : Jcis this fanatical but also gratuit
know through love-
to k~ow and co love, or co
e time at nothing, i.e.,
directed at all and at the sam
n in Ttarsa11d
God-that
Sainti\ But whereas for the
as for ~ietzsche, "God is
nothingness, for Cioran, the
devoid of meaning. Thus
dead," and nothingness is
book is a critique of this
will to power which reaps
el suffering. It both reveal
s
nothing but empty and cru
ood , and fin ally
ts of sainth
and rejects the political roo
cho logical or aesthetic sphere
inscribes itself in the psy
"failed politicians," who stu
b-
since saints are, after all,
appearances.
bornly deny the world of
the saints' "will to power"
~onetheless ~ to speak of
ect of their existential reli
-
does uncover a political asp
the question of politics in
gious experience, and brings
us. That is why the histor
ical
and publication of Tta rsand
context of the production
k appeared soon after
Saintsis important. The boo he
is in 1937, the year in which
Cioran's departure for Par
ical and overtly political
also published his most rad
ration Th. e two contem-
book, Romania~Transfigu
interesting pair: one , a
poraneous books form an iti-
mysticism, the other a pol
metacritical discourse on . Tta rs and
cal tract couched in the rhe
xw
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 c . as published at Cioran's. own expense after his
JatntS W .

publisher, halfway into the prmtmg process, became 1930s."Spirituality" was so much the talk of Romanian
awareof the shocking nature of the text and refused to interwar culture that a leading journal, Criltrion,devoted
bring it out. Cioran has told me how he had to leave the a long article to it in its "Dictionary" column, which
tried to define the "principal ideas" of the period and
press with the galley proofs in a bag, carrying them
establish their "circulation value." In particular, the ar-
through Bucharest in search of another publisher.
ticle identified "the problem of a 'new spirituality' with
When it did appear, TearsandSaintscaused a scandal.
that of the 'new generation'" to which Cioran belonged.
Written in short, aphoristic fragments, strongly remi-
As Nietzsche said, those interested in the figure of
niscent of Nietzsche both in form and in content, it is a the saint are never ordinary but always the "mightiest
discontinuous and iconoclastic philosophical discourse men." Cioran's "young generation" of intellectuals was
on mysticism.The aura of decadence that goes with the an elite group of strong-minded people, a generation
book's anti-Christian, blasphemous tone was unheard of driven by a sense of mission, namely, the regeneration of
in Romania. But as Huysmans says of his decadent hero, Romania. They saw themselves as representatives of a
Des Esseintes, in A Rebours,one must be a Catholic first "new revolutionary spirituality" which, according to the
in order to desecrate Catholicism. There is a strong Criterionarticle, both overlaps and at the same time re-
Christian current stirring under the anti-Christian sur- jects other types of spirituality present in contemporary
face of Cioran's prose. One must remember that Cioran Romanian culture: the traditional, orthodox spirituality
wasthe son of an Orthodox priest, and therefore very of the charismatic philosophy professor and mentor of
familiarwith the doctrines of the Christian faith. His the new generation , Nae Ionescu, or the more "cultural"
younger brother in Romania recalls long nights spent and humanistic type of other young intellectuals such as
Petru Comarnescu or Constantin Noica. Mircea Vulca-
around bottles of wine, during which Cioran argued in-
nescu, the author of the Criterionarticle and himself a
tricate theological questions with his father and
member of this generation, estimated that large numbers
~eologians from the seminary in Sibiu. According to
of young writers, "led by Mircea Eliade," embraced the
hts brother, Cioran's chief obsessions at the time were
new "agonic spirituality" whose main characteristics
theology and music, a fact confirmed by Cioran's text-
were "lucidity, negation, and a tragic doubt that wants
as alwaysan exorcism of his obsessions-in which fine
·
· mtertw • . h . . itself invalidated by the revelation of a new type of man,
aphorisms on music me wit h1s musings on
yet to be born."
tears and saints.
fir This generation of intellectuals had political ties
· · al ·
As a discourse On spmtu . .
. fc 1ty,ascet1c1sm, and su rer- with the Legion of the Archangel Michael, later known
. -r
of Ch nst, d . . . . lf
tng or the. love uars an Saintsmscnbes 1tse
. as the Iron Guard, "a populist movement with strong
strong1y tn th h 1st
. . al
d' .e onc , philosophical, and political mystical characteristics," bent on bringing about "moral
iscoursescircular' . h
mg 10 t e Romania of the 1920s and

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 . . al change, ethnic 'regeneration' by returning
and sptntu d ' al . , h
Christian values, an s vat1on t rough
to Ortho d ox . . ) C. ,
. . d sacrifice" (Yolov1c1,62 . 10rans genera-
ascet1c1sm an th .
. f intellectuals was sympa et1c to the
non o young . .
. movement because they believed 1t to be the
Legionary f . . "Ch .
only political means capable o tr1ggen~g a nstian
· " chat would lead to the creation of a Chris-
revo1utton
tian state. Against a background of extreme political
corruption and economic deterioration, moved by a
strong sense of an ending, caught between nostalgia for
ParadiseLost and impatience for a New Jerusalem,
these young, modern-day "saints" were animated by a
desire to reform which, unfortunately, found its politi-
cal counterpart in the fascistic Iron Guard.
It is fairly easy to trace the similarities between the
historical conditions that gave rise to Western Eu-
ropean mysticism and the mystical mania that swept
Romania in the 1930s.Mutatismutandis,both periods were
characterizedby an identity crisis and the responsibility
to reform politically and spiritually. As Certeau puts it,
there is in history a certairt tendency towards coincidence
between a "Machiavellian moment" and "the invasion
of the mystics" (Certeau, 153).Thus "the task of pro-
ducing a Republic or a State bypolitical reason that
~ould take the place of a defunct, illegible, divine order,
'.na w_ay[was] paralleled by the task of founding places
m which to hear the spoken Word that had become irt-
audible within cor rupt mst1tut1ons 'cc
· · . ,, erteau, 154 . I n )
fact,one ~ that European
. . could argue, as C erteau d oes,
myst1c1sm did t di · h
. no e m t e seventeenth century but
simplyreceded-"th· h
· is P antom of a passage, repressed
xvi
during periods secure in th eir knowledge, reappcan 111
the gaps within scienrific certainty, as if ever rerurn in
to its birthpl ace" (Ce rt eau, 77-7 8). ·• ·ecure" and " er
tainty" are th e key words here. Europe in che fir r h If
of the twentieth century was wrenched by momenr01
upheavals. In the tormented European political and in-
tellectual context, Romania, probably more rhan any
other country in Europe , given its polit ical and eco-
nomic coordinates , dramatically lacked certa in ty about
itself and thus became fertile ground for a rebirth of
mysticism in political garb.
It is in this intellectual and political context that Tears
and Saintsmust be read, both as an expression of, and a
reaction to, the spirit of the times. Its mystical frenzy,
tempered by an irony verging on blasphemy, makes it
stand apart, as it certainly did in its reviled and scan-
dalous reception in Romania.
A closer look at Cioran's other 1937book, Romania's
Tranifzguration,helps us to appreciate the distinct note
struck by Tearsand Saintsirt its historical context.
Whereas the latter is a critique of mystical discourse,
Romania'sTranifzguration borrows the rhetoric of mystical
discourse and applies it to the realm of politics . The
book is a political utopia dreaming of a "transfigured"
or redeemed Romania, of a Romania capable ofbreak-
irtg its "subhistoric" destirty, and from a "secondhand
country" becomirtg a "great culture." In Tearsand Saints,
Cioran defines saintlirtess as the "overcomirtg of our
condition as fallen creatures." },!!_mysticism, redemption
and the saints' will to possess God are irt fact one and
the same thirtg.}r hat is why the formula for redemption
xvii
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 need not remain confined to the spiritual do .
rna1nand
can easily be translated into political tertns: the .,
. w1.th G o db ecomes a (small) n t 'rnystics
spiritual urnon , firming Certeau's insight that. mysticism and
. " . a tons ful. Machiavcllianism often coincide:
fillment of a greater destiny: Our entire political and
spiritual mission must concentrate on the deterrnina- All means arc legitimate when a people opcm a
tion to will a transfiguration, on the desperate and road for itself in the world. Terror, crime, bestial-
dramatic experience of transforming our whole wayof ity and perfidy are base and immoral only in
4 7).
life" ( Romania'sTrans.figuration, decadence, when they defend a vacuum of content ;
if, on the other hand, they help in the ascension of
In Romania'sTrans.figuration,
Cioran gives us his solution
a people, they arc virtues. All triumphs are
to Romania's identity crisis: Romania will overcome its
moral . . .. ( Romania'sTransfiguration
, 41)
"fallen" historical condition as a "little culture'' only
when it is driven by a fanaticism equal to that of the Cioran's Machiavelli knows his Nietzsche . The passage
saints. Here the mystical "will " is not object-less, it has quoted echoes BeyondGoodandEvil,where, comparing
decadent to nondecadent historical periods, Nietz sche
a specific political content, and its stage is not the heart
writes:
or the soul but history itself:
Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the
Romaniais a prophetless
country. . .. This sobering
love of enterprise , foolhardiness, revengefulness,
thought should prompt us to be different , to burn astuteness, rapacity, and love of power, which up
with a blind fanaticism, to be illuminated by a new till then had not only to be honoured from the
vision . ... and the thought of another Romania point of view of general utility-under other
should be our only thought . To persist in the same names, of course, than those given-but had to be
historical sequence is the equivalent of slow sui- fostered and cultivated (because they were perpet- .
cide .... We shall have to renounce our lucidity ually required in the common danger against the
which reveals to us so many impossibilities , and, in common enemies), are now felt in their dangerous-
a state of blindness, conquer the light .. .. (Ro- ness to be doubly strong-when the outlets for
mania'sTrans.figuration,
49; emphasis added) chem are lacking-and are gradually branded as
immoral and given over to calumny. ( Beyor.d Good
Couched in the mystical language o f ecstatic· v1s1ons
· · , the
. andEvil, 124)
will to bring about spiritual reform is coupled here with
We are thus faced with an interesting intellectual sit-
the will to achieve cultural greatness. To bring about
uation: two books by the same author published in the
this end, all means are justified in the eyes of the young
same year, both suffused with mysticism, the one ra-
Cioran, who sounds like a new Machiavelli, thus con-

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.,...

. . the other a critical analysis of the

bidlypolitical, f stical discourse. One might be
. . al roots othmywhile TearsandSaints1s . h discours~.Generically, ir resemble!>Nictz• lie' hybnJ
poI1tic a p ilo-
l
d to say ' at philosophical commc11tary. The free and easy ollo 1t11a
cempte . on the mystical phenomenon
h. al dissertation , and lyrical style, studded wirh striking rner:iphor , nd
sop ,c . . l'tical implications, Romania~ Trans-
. • mg ,cspo 1 . . the personal, intimate, alternately tongue-in- h ek a.nd
scrutinlZ. fortunate political counterpart, 1sa vehement tones mask the extent of the tex.r's erudirion,
liouration, ,csun · f · al · ·
J'o.. d racticalapplication o mystic prmciples, its "bookishness,"as wellas the accuracy and st·riow-
rathercru e. P with other po1· . 1· . .
1t1co-re1g1ousnght- ness of its commentaryon the mystical phenomenon.
muchmstep . .
very l r. • discoursesof the penod.-r.But C1oran's The ambiguous, often paradoxicalnature of Ttars and
wingor ert-wmg . . .
. t'tude towardsmyst1c1sm m 1.earsandSaints Saintsoriginates in its fundamental oscillationberwcen
ambiguousat 1 . . . .
anils Trans.figuration 1sm his mmd, at the two opposite drives, the incense longing to believe with
showsthat Rom ..
passion and abandon-an attitude also informing Ro-
t he is writing the latter, a polmcal utopia,
verymomen mania~Trangiguration-andthe passion of disbelief, i.e.,
. "deliriumof self-aggrandizement." Its mystical
,.e.,a tronglycontribute to its utopian, delirious of despair.
overtones .s . , . . . \~ The book's central figureis Cioran's"failedmystic,"
character,whichcontradicts C1orans ex1stent1alphilos-
"th; one who cannot cast off all temporal ties~" Thus
0 h of skepticismand despair. In TearsandSaints
he writes that "the secret of successfulmysticismis the
1

py hi 'th th e mystic
Goran'slove-haterelations p w1
roblematizesthe simpleand fanatical solution to Ro-
~ania'sproblemshe offers in Romania~Trans.figuration.
Thus Tears andSaintsis in some ways Cioran's philosoph-
icalstrugglewith himself,a text full of contradictions
and ambiguities;appearingat the same time as Romania~
Transfiguration, and out of the same preoccupations, it re-
vealsthe shortcomingsof his other, crudely naive
politicaltext,and therebyundermines it.
Manyof the themesin TearsandSaintsare ones to which
Cioranwillreturn againand again in his later, mature
writings:music,spirituality,suffering, death, solitude,
doubt,despair,decadence,God, and nothingness. As a
discourseon mysticism,TearsandSaintsis neither mysti-
caldiscoursenor objective,impersonal philosophical
xx
. .
samts
defeat of time and individuation," but also "I can't help
hearing a death knell ringing in eternity: therein lies my
quarrel with mysticism"-anticipat ing Derrida's Glas
by almost half a century.The .:failed mystic"is a
strikinglygrotesque character:Lthe,'. passionof the abso-
lute ~ the soul of a skeptic is like an angelgrafted on a
leper."\He belongsto the same familyof existentialout-
casts, foreverwanderingin the no-man's-landstretching
betweenhistory and eternity,as Unamuno'smartyr,
Manuel Bueno,Dostoevsky'sIvan Karamazovor ,
Genet's "criminalsaint."
There is no redemption for Cioran'sfailedmystic.
While the successfulmysticspraise as the apogeeof
ecstasythe moment in whichthey feel alone with God,
what St. John of the Cross calls "soledaden Dios,"
Cioran complainsthat he cannot feel "at home in
XXl

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God," that he is a perpetual "exile in Hirn.'' F
"success ful" mystic,. Go d 1s
. the o b'Ject of desireor the
th
get of his will
.
to power, but for Cioran no
. ,
' e tar.
matter h
hard he strives to love and to believe in a rn . 0w
. . yst1ca}w
his fervor 1s always undermined by doubt and d ~y,
He is haunted by Nietzsche's "God is dead" ( espair.
. or as C
ran more humorously puts 1t, God is "a Universal 10-
absentee"). He unmasks the saints' unforgivabl . the divine. The mystic's suffering ha as i~ go, l redernp•
e na1vet'
they "have never asked themselves the questio , h e:
n w at
begins afterGod?' and for that I cannot forgive the 11
The despair of this failed mystic-"My God w· hill.
1t out
you I'm mad, and with you I shall go mad!" -as well
his existential doubts-"my doubts cannot take me f:as
ther than the shadow of His heart"-are mixed 1· _ahr-
n Wtt
a touch of bravado, a romantic, Luciferian pose. Our
role, he says, is to amuse a lonely God, we are "poor
downs of the absolute." But he refused to play his part
in God's entertainment piece, in a daring act of" rejec-
tion of God sprung from agonic frenzy": "I, with my
solitude, stand up to God."
~3Centered on the figure of the failed mystic, Cioran's
discourse on mysticism is a sort of self-consciously
blasphemous parody of mystical discourse. The voice of
the faithless mystic introduces a new perspective, that of
despair, and thus gives a new accent to the mystical ex-
perience, deliberately and perversely distorting its
meanings. For example, "paradise from the view point
of despair" becomes "a graveyard of happiness." In the
mystical experience, meditation and prayer are impor-
tant steps towards God, but for Cioran they are exactly
the opposite: "one must think of God day and night in
order to wear him out, to turn him into a cliche." For
XXl1
th(• my tic, , life in God i 1/ieonly m1 lift'; f. Cior ;u1,
it is ''the dmh of being."
The most frrqucnr rargcr of hi alt · ck,how ver, 1 •
key aspect of mysticism: uffering, rhc im1t.at1ono ,h
Man-God's agonistic passion , s the only means ' '" rca h
tion , i.e., to achieve perfection in divinicy.Cioran,
however,approaches suffering from an aesthetic rather
than ethical point of view since it is the "voluptuous-
ness of suffering," not its virtues, chat fascinates him.
Me sees suffering as essential to the tragic human
l .
condition-"suffering is man's only biography" -and
as aimless, since it does not hold out the promise of re-
demption inherent in Christian notions of suffering,
carried to extremes by mysticism. Suffering, behind
which Cioran detected the will to power, is ineffeccual,
it achieves nothing except more senseless and cruel suf-
fering.':There is no room for redemption in a wodd in
which, "since the creation of consciousness, God has
appeared in his true light as one more nothingness."
The despair of the failed mystic, bereft of his greatest
hope, and overcome by what Unamuno called "el senci-
miento tragico de la vida," takes the form of
N ietzschean attacks on Christianity. In these attacks,
Cioran's voice is by turns virulent and ironic: "I don't
know any bigger sin than chat of Jesus"; "the ultimate
cruelty was that of Jesus: leaving an inheritance of
bloodstains on the cross"; Jesus, "the bloodthirsty and
cruel" Christ, was "lucky to have died young. Had he
lived to be sixty, he would have given us his memoirs in-
stead of the cross.'' In a passage that recalls past
catastrophes caused by excessesin the history of Chris-
XXUl
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(/
f / . . and alroa n
ticipates the excesses that will be
t1a!llt}'• . d out in his own country, Cioran, fascinated
soon carrie . lence and sufifc . . d In the Romania of th e 1930s, Cioran's young soul was
ermg, writes, ecades be,
·th sacred vio haunted by two absolutes, neither of which he could br-
wi Bataille's Larmesd'Erosor Rene Girard's
fore Georges "Chr. . . d e11g · h ts in th lieve in. Given this situation, his next step seems
h
antdt t
"amd. that isttamty e inevitable: if not suicide, then sclf-t'xile. In 1937, a few
Violtnc J• ,

si ht of bloodstains, its martJ:'1"sh~v~ transformed the months before the publication of Ttarsand Saints, he left
g ld . bloodbath. In. this,,religion of blazing t,... ...
wor into a 1, Bucharest and never returned . When we next hear of
. ht evil defeats the sublrme. him, in Paris in 1949, the year of his first French book,
Iig S, 1, 1 C il fc .
If the mystical formula u tunate Y_ra s ~~ C1oran in Pricisde decomposition,he has cast off both his Romanian
the spiritual domain, it follows that its political coun, language and identity, and yielded to a long-cherished
terpart is alsodoomed to fail. Could thi~ man of so obsession: to be a man from nowhere.
man doubts and shadows have been domg anything
Acknowltdgments
.
y raving in a fit of unpoten
elsebut t rage or a "de1·iriurn of
Roman ia'sTrans- I thank E. M. Cioran for allowing me to translate yet
self-aggrandizement" when he wrote
another one of his books, and Mme Simone Boue for
figuration? Could he, like Unamuno 's failed saint, Manuel
many long and lovely Parisian evenings when I imbibed
Bueno,have.been preaching that in which he himself the Cioranian spirit at leisure. For dedicated and in-
tried to offer a
Transfiguration
cannot believe?If Romania's spired editing, I thank my husband, Kenneth R.
solution to Romania's existential and political problems, Johnston.
its contemporary counterpart, TearsandSaints,reveals the This translation was made possible by grants from
other side of the coin, namely, chat there are no solu- the National Endowment for the Arts and from Indi-
tions where there is onlyhonest, despairing doubt. Thus ana University (Office of Research and Graduate
through Tears andSaintswe gain a perspective on Ciorans Development, Russian and Eastern Institute, and West
complexand divided mind exactly at the time he was European Studies).
writinghis most outrageous politicaltract :
I Note on the Text
This translation aims at capturing the spirit of Cioran's
I the soul of those haunted by God is like a de-
original Romanian, not a literal, word-for-word accu-
praved spring, littered with half-withered flowers
racy. Principally, this has meant a trimming of Goran's
and rotten _buds, swept by foul odors. It is the soul
youthful prose, mainly those passages that sound florid
of blackmailingsaints ... and of anti-Christian
or redundant in English. However , this English transla-
Christians such as Nietzsche. I regret that I'm not tion, unlike an earlier French version which was
Judas to betray God and know remorse.

XXV

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drasticallycut by the author, restores Cior ,
originallength.
anstelCtto its

!LineaZari£ l_,oh
::1opo
J' llst0~

J¾rksCited
Baudelaire,Charles. OeuvresComplites.Paris: Gallirnard
Cioran, E. M. Schimbarea laFataa Romaniei(Roman. , 1i'1975.
. las tans,
figuration).Bucharest:Vremea, 1937.
De Certeau, Michel. TheMysticFable,trans. MichaelB S . TEARS ANO SAINTS
. . of ch·1cagopress, 19 .
Chicago:U01vers1ty · rn1th·
92
Nietzsche, Friedrich. BeyondGoodandEvil,trans. Helen
Zimern. New York: Russell and Russell,1964.
Volovici,Leon. NationalistIdeology : TheCaseoj
andAnti-Semitism
RomanianIntellectualsin the1930s. Oxford: PergamonPr
ess,
1991.
Vulcanescu,Mircea, "Spiritualitate." Criterion(Bucharest):1
November 1934.
delaspiritualitiascetique
Dictionnaire Paris:Beauchesne,
et mystique.
1976.

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A I searched for the origin of tears, I thought of
the saints. Could they be the source of tears'
bitter light? Who can tell? To be sure, tears are their
trace..~Tears did not enter this world through the saints;
but ~thout them we would have never known that we
cry because we l<?ngJor c!lost paradise.'\Show me a sin-
gle tear swallowed up by the earth! No, by paths
unknown to us, they all go upwards. Pain comes before
tears. But the saints rehabilitated them.
.,': Saints cannot be known.Only when we awaken the
~-
them, do
te'ars sleeping in our depths ~nd know through
we come to understand how someone could renounce
being a man.
~ Sainthood in itself is not interesting, only the lives of
the saints ar~)-f ow does a man renounce himself and
take the road to sainthood? But then how does one be-

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~
I
I
, By following in their traces, by
iograph er. .
comea hag f e's feet in their tears! To win the guilty kiss of a aint, I'd wel ornc th ,
. he soles o on
wecungc ◊ plague as a blessing.
. Rumi· "The voice of the violin is the
. lal-eddlll-
DJC · d' ,,
•ng gate of para 1se. Shall I ever b:_lo _purr that only :<ainb' tears could be
d of the openl h . h f
soun ch one compare t e s1g o an angel? my mirror?
To what en can ◊ ◊

tell the blind woman in Rilke's poern
Whats hall we . .
h t "I can no longer ltve w1th the sky
who larnented t a . ther my imagination nor my enthusiasm help me much.
,, nr uld it comfort her 1f we told her we can
upon me ? vvo c.
. ·chthe earth underneath our reet?
no longer Iivew1
◊
Many saints-but especi3:1lysaintly women-
_c. d desll'· e to rest thetr head on the heart of
coruesse a
Jesus.They all had their wish fulfilled. Now I under-
stand why Our Redeemer's heart has not ceased to beat
for cwothousand years. My Lord! You fed your heart
on the blood of the saints, and you bathed it in the
sweatof their brows!
How can we not love Saint Teresa who, on the day
Jesusrevealedhimself to her as her betrothed, ran out
into the courtyard of the nunnery and began to dance in
a frenzy,beating a drum, inviting the sisters to join in
her ecstatic joy?
When she was six years old, she read the lives of the
saints and her heart responded with shouts of "Eternity,
eternity!"It was then that she decided to convert the
Arabs,at the risk of her life. She did not fulfill her wish;
her passion, however,grew. The fire in her soul has not
died eventoday, since we still live in its heat.
◊
Strange, that there can be several saint living at rhe
same time. I try to imagine a meeting of sainrs, bur nei-
The fifty-two-year-old Saine Teresa, famous and much
admired, meeting a twenty-five-year-old Saint John of
the Cross, anonymous yet full of passion, in Medina del
Campo! Spanish mysticism: a divine moment in the his-
tory of humanity .
Saints' dialogues? A Shakespeare with the heart of a
virgin could write chem, or a Dostoevsky exiled in a
heavenly Siberia. I shall prowt after saints all my life.
Perhaps no one built more roads to God out of mu-
sic and dance than Djelal-eddin-Rumi, a saint long
si~ce canonized by his admirers. His meeting with
Chems-eddin, anonymous pilgrim and uneducated wise
man, is full of strange charm. After they met, they
locked themselves up for three months in Djelal-eddin's
house in Kania, and did not leave it for one moment all
that time. A sort of instinctive certainty makes me think
that everything was said there.
1
., ' In those times, people cultivated their secrets. You
~~uld speak to God at anyt u:iie,and he would bury your
sighs in his nothingness. Now we are inconsolable be-
cause we have no one to speak to:"" We have been reduced
to confessing our loneliness to mortals. This world must
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 . din (iod.History divides itself in two• -\
. .a ,
one~~h a~ Iive_ -- -- .
-=----r-
- form& . when people felt pulled towards the. vibra nt
tune mysticism, especially on rhc ethical ide. A ainc is a
' th/ ness of divinity and now, when the nothingness
.. mystic, a mystic may not be a saint. h:iricy i~ not a nec-
no mg h d' .
of the world is empty oft e ivme spmt. essary attribute of mysticism; but we cann ot con eivc of
◊
saintliness without it. Ethics plus mysticism give~ birrl1
Music makes me too bold in front of God. This is to the intriguing phenomenon of sainthood. Th e my -
what distances me from the Oriental mystics. tics cultivate a heavenly sensuality, a volupruou snc
◊ born of their intercourse with the sky; only saints cake
Only tears will be weighed at the Last Judgment. on their shoulders the load of others, the suffering of
◊ unknown people; only they act. Compared to the pure
mystic, the saint is a politician. Next to the mystic, the
The heart of Jesus was the Christians' pillow. I un- ·
saint is the most active of men. Yet their troubled lives
derstand those mystics who longed to lay their heads on
are not biographiesbecause they are one-dimensional. vari-
it! But my doubts take me no farther than the shadow of
ations on a single theme, absolute passion. ~
his heart. "The mystic is a man who tells you about your mys-
No one truly understands sainthood if he does not
~ 1••
tery while you remain silent." (I don't remember the
. , ( feel that the heart is its world. Theheartas universe-chis great Oriental who offered chis definition.)
is the deepest meaning of sainthood. Everythinghappens in ◊

theheart:that's mysticism and saintliness. But chis doesn't Eyes don't see. Catherine of Emmerich was right to
mean people's hearts, only saints' hearts. say chat she saw only throughtheheart.Such is the sight of
◊ saints. How could they not see more than us, who see
\ l, ,1
~ Sainthood is transfigurecbphysiology, maybe even di- only through our senses? The eye has a limited field; it
\ i ine physiology.Every bodilyJunction l>ecomes a always sees from the outside. But with the world in your
• 'movement towards the sky. Blood is one of its constant heart, introspection is the only mode of knowing. The
obsessions.Saintliness is a triumph over blood . heart's visual space = God + the world + nothingness.
The purified blood of Jesus is the saints' bath and That is, everything.
The eye can magnify; in the heart everything is magnifi-
their drink.Thus Catherine of Siena's last words: "Oh
blood!" She was referring to the merits of Our Savior's Q
cent understand Mechthild of Magdeburg when she ·
blood. laments that neither the beauty of the world nor the
◊
saints can comfort her, nothing but Jesus and his hearg
The differencebetween mystics .
· and samts . th Neither mystics nor saints need eyes; they don't look at
c 1s that e
rormer stop at an · .. . the world. J"heir heart is their eye.
· . mner VlSlon,while the latter put it ◊
into practice.Saintline cc h
ss suners t e consequences of

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 --
,, . . with saints, as with music or books i is u
b . th ' ~-
,Living
1 , , • tincts egm to serve ano er world• .,._
lo
...,.., Ones ms
th t we resistsaintliness,Weprove the, na} -L Were it not for all that love in the saints' live", they
~• e t 111
the extent a alone would deserve our love. Their absolur c love make
.
of our instincts. them incomplete. Saints, who never erred out of pain
◊
and only knew love, are so colorless that not even a
'•,'.{.,f . a1·
The empire of the sk! ~ccup~es terri~ory ~mptied of
H avenly impenahsm aims at b1olog1cal neu -
heavenly ray can brighten them.

I . I vtt ity. e
Love is the saints' commonplace. Were it not for
their tears and sighs, we would find little interest in
I trality.
How does music suck our blood? Man cannot 1-ive their excess of love.
◊
•th t sunP-or t in \ifj.ce
_
But -musi~
-- -
~nihila~es ~pace
Wt OU r;.,--
Those who are in love with saintly women cannot
completely.The only art capable of bringing comfort,
help being jealous of Jesus. Why should one love some-
- e~it opens up more wounds than all the others!
one else's lover? Would there be a kiss left for us after all
y Music is the sound track of askesis. Could one make
those ecstasies and embraces? Their smile is unpromis-
loveafter Bach?Not even after Handel, whose un- ing, for Jesus comes first in their hearts.
earthliness does not have a heavenly perfume. Music is a
◊ '
tomb of delights, beatitude which buries us. zL Without the voluptuousness ofst1fering,saintliness would
Saintliness also draws blood. We lose it in direct pro- not interest us any more than a medieval political in-
portion to our longing for heaven. The roads to heaven trigue in some little provincial town. Suffering is man's
havebeen worn smooth by all the e;ring instincts. In- only biography; its voluptuousness , saint's.
the
deed, heaven was born of these errors. ' -: _•✓ To be a saint, never miss a single opportunity among
◊ the infinite varieties of agony.
Djelal-eddin-Rumi speaks of the five senses of the Rose of Lima, born in South America apparently to
redeem Pizarro's crimes, is a model for all those with a
heart. In them lies the gnosis of mysticism. Ecstasy, as a
vocation for suffering. Young and beautiful, she could
supreme expression of mystical knowledge, is all senses
not chink of an excuse to resist her mother's wish to
melted into one flame.
bring her out in society. But she finally found a compro-
◊
mise. Under the crown of flowers on her head she
MyLord, without you I'm mad, and with you I shall pinned a needle that pricked her forehead incessantly.
go mad!
Thus she satisfied her desire to be alone in society. One
◊ conquers the temptation of the world through pain.
.
Lovefor mankind rend ers sames h .
. uninteresting. T e1r Pascal's belt belongs to this tradition of suffering.
virtue has no bi h . al .
ograp 1c interest. When we talk of For whom did Rose of Lima put a needle in her
Iove,only G d
o can make us ward off banality.

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 l made a new victim. Jesus was
, rf'he heavenly~>Ver th ey gave us thorn s. I don't kn ow any bigger in th , n
crown-i:
the Don Juan of agony._ • n of life through heavenly that of Jesus.
. . the negatio
l Saintlmessis gate life? Through uninter-
' . H does one ne , 1
Prolonged interest in saintliness is an illncs which
hystena. -~~ Hence the saints' almost total
1

rupted l~ci ityf,l Rose of Lima never slept more requires a few years' convalescence. Th en, you are rizcd
supp
ress1ono s eep- h 1
• ht and when she felt t at s eep was
by a desire co pick up your sadn ess and roam under an-
than cwohours a mg , . other sky, to grow strong elsewhere. The need for spate is
. h he would hang herself on a cross m
overpowenng er, s . . a counter -reaction co the infinity of saintlin ess. You feel
her room, or fc herself to stand by tymg her hatr to a
orce like lying in the grass and looking up at the sky, free
nail. from the prejudice of its heights.
_!'Saintlinessis a special kind of madness. Whil e t h e --1 Paganism is th e_deepening of appearances , while
madnessof mortals exhausts itself in useless and fantas- saintliness is the sickness of depths .
tic actions,holy madness is a conscious effort towards ◊
winningeverything. "I cannot differentiate between tears and music "
Competing with Jesus, the saints' excesses repeat (Nietzsche ). Whoever is not immed iately struck by the
Golgotha, adding to it the refinements of torture profundity of this statem.:nt has not lived for a minute
gleanedfrom subsequent Christian centuries . Christ 's in the intima cy of mus ic.~ know no other music than
crownof thorns, imitated by the saints, caused more that of tears . Born out of the loss of paradise, music
sufferingin the world than I don't know how many in- gives birch to the symbolsof this loss: tears~
curablediseases.Jesus was, after all, the saints ' incurable ◊
disease.Rose of Lima also used to wear under her veil a .' Catherine of Siena lived only on communion bread.
crownof nails that wounded her at every movement. Easy to do when you have heaven to back you up! Ec-
They say that once her father touched her head acciden- stasy destroys the fruit of the earth . She drank the sky
tallyand streamsof blood flowed from her wounds. in the Eucharist . For the faithful, commun ion , that tiny
Ofte~ sh~ wasseen bearing a huge cross, miming with particle of heaven, is infinitely more nutritious than
~mg _mtensity the Golgotha of her heavenly lover. earthly food . Why do the heights require the suppres -
, Jesus1sresponsibl fc
. e or so muc h suffering. His con- sion of appetite? Why do poets, musicians, mystics, and
sciencemust weigh h. saints use '!!_~
sis in various ways? Voluntary hung er is a
l . on tm very heavily, since he no
ongergivesanysi O f .fc road to heaven; hunger from poverty, a crime of the
not stand ~s 1I e. To tell the truth, he does
comparison ·th h · fc earth.
heavenlyP . h wi is ollowers. In them, his
ass1on as bee .
ome a virus. Instead of roses ,

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 I
'.;~
. Id be a most extraordinary phenon-.
~ S . dmess wou . . . . ..e-
~ ~
ain
non even more
' h
value.T- e passio
than divinity, if it had any practical
f . ak
· nate desire o samts tot e over the
.
musicians leavestheir heart , goes around the wo If
returns li.kean echo The sadnrss o f sames . r ' ' an
d ,:;._
': , ~
\

. d ,:r ·ngs of mortals is .well known. Many out- . . ,_ ab.o leave'

sins an surren _ the heart hbut 1t stops in God , rhus fiu Hilt· .
~ f • 6 i·tepity could be cited to confirm this · BUt . 1 mg every sa111t' s
bursts o tn n secret w1s , ~o become his prisoner.
-. . fall that do the bitterness and sufferings of
m spite o , r.- . .
\ ◊
others diminish at all. Except for their capacity to com- '
1

.r Until about the eighteenth century, t here was a

• '
....
I '
1
fort, the saints' effort is useless,\and the practical '., / j wealth of treatises on human perfecti'on • Almost every-
achievements of their love are nothing but a monumen- on the road to sam .
. ti mess
:- •) one who stopped halfway
tal illusion. One cannot suffer for another. How much .I ch a book as a consolation, so that for centuries
~ rq_te__.sg
can your increased suffering relieve the suffering of your / perfection was the obsession of all failed saints. Those
neighbor? WeJi.ethe saints to understand this simple / who succeeded no longer cared about it, since they pos-
\ matter, they would probably become politicians; that is, \ sessedit.

\ they would no longer be ashamed of appearances. Only
appearances can be changed. But saints are politicians
afraid of appearances. Thus they deprive themselves of
matter and space for their exercise in reform. One can-
not love both suffering and appearances at once. In chis
respect, saintliness is not equivocal. A vocation for ap-
1 pearances ties most of us to life. It frees us from saindi-
1 If we think we love them, it's only our weakness which
\ ness,J
I
:· "None of my sufferings has been equal to that of not
having suffered enough" (Margaret-Mary Alacoque ). A
classic expression of the avidity for pain.
◊ .
· - No mental state is less creative than mild sadness, the
very negation of inspiration. Everything .depends on the
levelof. sadness' on the firequency of its vibrations. At a
. al
certain levelit is poetic fi all
.. , at another musical, and n Y
re1igious. Thus h . f
t ere are different kinds of sadness: 0
f
poets, o musicians 0 f .
' samts. The sadness of poets or
,. . Later centuries shifted their attitude to one of total
disengagement, looking on perfection with great suspi-
cion and unmistakable spite. For modern man, there's
no greater shame than perfection. Having overcomehis
longing for paradise, he managed to rid himself of per-
fection at the same time. During Christian times, people
were proud of their saints. We only "appreciate" them.
brings them closer for a moment.
◊
What secret voice whispers to me that ifI could have
all the saints on one side, their hearts dancing like
flames between heaven and earth, and Nero on the
other, frozen in a state half-imbecilic, half-melancholic,
I would open my heart to the latter? Nero's !,_oredom
was greater than the Christians' thirst for heaven. Even
the great fire of Rome seemed to him banal. Boredom
gives birth to madness-or is it vice versa?Nero was a
melancholy man . Otherwise why would he have loved
music? The destiny of this man, bored by the whole

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,, . We have forgotten his one redeeming
world, is moving.
to mirroring ourselves in our own blood. However, we
fi ture his lyre. . should not regret it too much, for suffering does not
' ea ' are born with a strong Pr!g: n.tun~nt of
v When you ;~ I necessarily lead to heaven.
""'I • .c d ces toward birth_i n reverse. t recovers
death,11ue a van _,-~ ~ -·
--- f~th
allO e stagesoflife in a sort of upside-down evolu- _
I
.~
, Despair, more than any other feeling, establishes a
. d' then you live, suffer, and finally ar) born.
non: you 1e, . . , _ __ , correspondence between our being and the environ-
• · ther lifethat 1s born on the rums of eath?
0 r 1s1tano .~ ment. In fact, despair requires a corresponding
One feelsthe need to love, suffer, an9 be born _again
environment to such an extent that, if need be, it creates
on! after having known death in oneself. The only life is it. It invokes beauty only to pour the void into it. The
y I h fi .
the one after death. Thats w y trans ~r _a_nons . are so emptiness of the soul is so vast, its cruel advance so in-
rare. exorable, chat any resistance to it is impossible. What
◊ would be left of paradise if it were seen from the view-
Saints live in flames; wise mei:i, next to them. point of despair? A_g_r;iveyardof happiness.
' -- -~ ◊

Beethovenovercomes too often the temptation of Landscapes chat do not trigger musical themes can-
sadness. Such self-restraint alienates him from me . By not become memories. Whoever has not roamed
comparison, Chopin and Schumann are connoisseurs of through parks in a state of elation and melancholy can
voluptuous sadness. Beethoven seems proud of the tri- never understand Mozart's grace. Solemn evenings with-
umphs of will over sadness. He was more a connoisseur out Brahms, or monumental nature without Beethoven?
of despair, that wounded pride of the will battling with Music has a cosmic character. The passion for music
the world. has no basis without love of nature .
◊
◊
"A rain of roses will fall at my death" (Therese of
r :- We would have been better off without saints . Then
Lisieux) .
each of us would have minded our own business and we
"Rose, you exude the perfume of a naked saint's
would have rejoiced in our imperfection. Their presence
body" (R. M. Rilke).
among us ~ r~abQut ~seless inferiori~ complexes, / ◊
envy,spite. The world of the saints is a heavenly poison Funereal echoes in Mozart's grace: whoever has not
tbat grows ever more virulent as our loneliness increases. discovered chem does not know that grace is a triumph
, They have corru t d b . . th
·...-h P e us y prov1dmg a model at over sadness, and that there is only melancholy grace. A
ammg its goal. We are used to su r·c
s. ows. suffering att · · · · r Mozart andante does not always invite us to happiness.
re ·
tngaimlessly lo t · th d
' s In e uselessness of pain; we are use

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 ~A' • for piano and orchestra, for
• A iv•aJor
Hisconcerto in have had an A Major soul, buc her testimony, it is obvious that for Bach preo up. r1on
1 Mozart may . k
exampe. . ns of the minor ey. with death and nosta lgia for hc:ivcn are snur cs of rhe
he temptat10
with allt all ths to be borne on Mozart's har- r sublime . Mozart has neither one nor rht· other . T h r'
uld like tru
I wo d ivalent to the perfume of roses. But why his music can be divine, but by no mean:; ublirn r . I
. s a soun equ
morue ' h ither tonality nor resonance, an don't know of any musician less cosmic than M ozart.
ince cruths avene ◊
s u1 also receive them as they are, cold.
empty so can ◊ There is a whole range of melancholy: it begin with
a smile and a landscape and ends with th e clang of a
, 'Death makes no sense except to people who have pas-
broken bell in the soul.
. ly loved life·;How can one die .without
. having
.
stonate _ ◊
~omethingto part from? Detachment 1s a negation of
While he was composing the Messiah,Handel felt as if
both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of
he were in heaven. He himself confessed that only after
death has also triumphed ove! !ife. For life is nothing finishing it did he realize that he was living on earth.
but another word for chis fear., Yet, in spite of this, Handel, compared to Bach, is of this
-death; poor people expect
Only rich people experience world.That which in Bach is divint is heroic in Handel.
it; no beggar ever died. Only 1ow"n;rs die . grandeuris Handel's signature. The heavens are
Terrestrial
Compared to the agony ofilie rich, that of poor reflected everywhere in his work: _transfiguration from
people is like a bed of flowers. Death has gathered into outside.
itself allthe terrors and sufferings of palaces. To die in Bach unites Grunewald's dramatic power with Hol-
luxury is to die a million times. bein's interiority; Handel, the linear massivicy of Durer
Beggarsdon't pass away in their beds and that's why with the daring vision of Baldung-Grien. Mozart is a
they don't die. One dies only horizontally, through melancholy Botticelli: "Primavera" covered with the dew
lengthypreparation by means of which death slowly in- of tears .
~lcrateslife.What regrets could one have, who is not ◊

tied to a specificspace and its inherent memories in the The more you advance in life, the more you realize
last ho~r?Maybe beggars have chosen their fate, for by chat you don't learn anything, you just go back in mem-
not havmgany regrets th ey d on ,t experience the agony ory. It is as if we reinvent a world in which we once
that comesfrorn th \1; .c lived. We don't gain anything, we just regain ourselves.
th . em. agrants on the surface of 1IIe,
ey still wanderon the surface of death. Self-identity is reverse evolution . Thus was born the hy-
pothesis of another life, previous to the accident of
◊
Anna
MagdalenaB h ll ·d individuation . Our being imitates an original forgotten
s
that J. B
h ac te s us in her
. ac often d'
family chront e
vision. What then could be the metaphysical meaning
rne itated on death. Even without

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 . , Are they haunted by dateless
. , eXtstence. . . .
of a saints 'ch ke the immediate proximity of God
·eswh1 evo . .
memort. , Could they be hidmg m the depths of their
in paradise. . . . ,
" th figureof D1vm1ty.
memory e h b · Organ music cannot be contain ed within rhe bound-
. . . God under t e su conscious pressure
SaintsUJ1Jtate
of their first memory. . .
F or everyman, God is his first memory.
. While
, going
back in memory is beyond an ordmary mans capacity, it
becomesthe saints' main achievement, although they do
not alwaysfully understand the direction of their ef-
forts.
'-:Saintly meditation is an imprisonment in original
memory.Divinity is at the absolute limit of memory .
That original content is inherited by all, from the beasts
of paradise down to us{S)ne reaches the original mem-
ory only by jumping over the real content of memory,
q Why do almost all madmen
overtime's contributions.
speak of God or believe themselves to be one? Having
lost the actual contents of their memory, their mind has
kept intact the original depths of memory 1 The same
with drunkenness.Mangets drunk in order to remem-
ber God; maybe he goes mad for similar reasons. But
ther~is no doubt whatsoever that this is his only mo-
tivationfor wanting to become a saint .
◊
There's no th ing precise or definite about saints . They
repres~ntan absolute which we should neither embrace
nor reject Anyc · ,H
l · omnutment would compromise us. vve
ose our life if we fi h
stand· . are or t em; we would be in bad
mhagwichth e absolute if we were against them. Had
wenot d th
doubts em, we would have been freer. How many
we Wouldhave been spared! How did they come
- 18
to cross the paths of our lives? In vain do we try to
forget agony.
◊
aries of the heart, for it is the expression of a sacred
.. •.j
frisson. The organ is an instrument which makes palpable
God's distance from us. Its sound is our apotheosis, and
through it we approach him in himself.
◊
No matter what we say, the end of all sadness is a
swog_n1into divinity.
◊
Job, the organ's cosmic lamentations , and weeping
willows. Open wounds of nature and the soul. The hu-
,man heart, God's open wound.
◊
\ f
· ·, Ecstasy replaces sexuality. The mediocrity of the hu-
man race is the only plausible explanation for sexuality.
As the only mode of coming out of ourselves, sexuality
is a temporary salvation from animality. For every being,
intercourse surpasses its biological function. It is a tri-
1
umph over animalitri Sexuality is the only gate to
heaven. The saints are not a-sexual but trans-sexual.
They no ·longer need the revelatio; s of sex':!ality. To be a
saint means to be always_outside yourself What else
~~uld sexuality addto this? Sexual orga.sm.pal.es beside
the saints' ecstatic trance.
◊
The time when the pharaohs built their pyramids is,
of all historical epochs, the only one in which I could be
at peace with myself-working as a slave. What a for-
midable thing, to lift slabs of stone under the lash of
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 ame time to foresee the pyramids'
. butatt hcs h d
Men, even saints, don't have names. Only God b •ar
the wh1P• . and even to feel t e voi being bor
n
1

. h in eternity, h l . one. But do we know anything about him ocher th. n

mump . 's desertion! T e east unportant
d them bytune that he is the source of all despair1 God's despair begins
aroun tian slaves was closer to eternity than
among the Egyp th k . where others' end.
hilosopher! For us, e very s y 1s now

our tom stone.

f
any Eurobpean The modern world was touched, as if
. .
◊

Only paradise or the sea could make me give up

by the seduction of fimce thmgs!
bya curse,
◊ ◊
naivete,~hi.ch lends
I love saints for their passionate
their features an expression of childish candor and gra-
tuitous pain. Eyes always half-dosed, so that their lids
can protect the inner mystery from the indiscretion of
external light; a thoughtful smile matching the ambi-
guity of their gaze; red lips illuminated by the blue of
the sky; pale hands stretched for an ocherwordly em-
brace, and that seraphic blue with which Raphael
clothes his madonnas, as if it were the essence of their
hearts.
Why should they open their eyes on the world when
they allhave said repeatedly that they only have eyes for
Jesus?Ecstasy doses eyes; in it one is what one sees.
That's why it can do away with sight. Bernini grasped
this when he sculpted St. Teresa in ecstasy with her eyes
barelyopen. Similarly, Zurbaran, unsurpassed painter of
heavenlypassions, gave Francis of Assisi a face which his
music.
Dreams of happiness cause me the keenest regrets:
Botticelli, Claude Lorrain, Mozart, Watteau, and
Corot . Could it be that I am not well-equipped for hap-
piness? Have I only known the melancholy which
precedes it and the sadness which follows?
◊
Happiness is a charming pause which I divined in the
pastoral elegies of eighteenth-century music. I can only
speak about happiness from ~e3-rsay.'
◊
There are sadnesses which cast in one's soul the
shadow of monasteries. Through chem, we can begin co
understand the saints. Though saints may want co keep
us company co the limits of bitterness, they cannot ;
they abandon us halfway, in our desolation and repen-
tance. Their heart, its axis fixed in God, has a different
.tiltthan ours.
◊

supernatural poise did not deserve. After all the saints' outpourings oflove to God, what
( ◊ can we add chat will not make us mere epigones? Non-
. Mozart makes me regret Adam's sin. sense? They even used that to express their excessive
love. For example, here's the Dominican of Toss, Mezzi
. ◊
Willthere ever be a tune G Od' Sidwibrin: "My Lord, had you been Mezzi Sidwibrin
when I will quote only •

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 uld have wanted you God and myself
and I God, I w~ ,, There are people who stylize their own death. For
Mezz1·Sidwibnn, love him co a bsur d'1ty m1g · h .
c Just as them, dying is merely a question of form. Bur dearh i
Whoevercannot
. rh love him at all.If you spe ak of God matter and terror. That' s why, without avoiding death,
wellnot bo er to . h . h. one cannot die elegantly.
·n your nothingness, e 1s not mg
1 1
co feelless one Y l .c l 1· Why do tall or fat people, once they are grasped by
· ntion and a pretext 1or one mess. The
more rhan an inve . the fear of death, offer such a sinister and discouraging
. kn h w to be sadfior God ; for us he 1s, at most,
saints ew o . spectacle? In so much matter, death finds a more certain
an outlet for sadness. They were m awe; we cannot be and more congenial nest, and terror grows in direct pro-
more rhaninterested. portion to the dimensions of matter.
· · One reads the following declaration by Catherine of ◊
Siena:"Oh you, abyss of charity, you seem to be mad Every time I chink about Tolstoy's fear of death, I be-
with love for your creatures, as if you couldn't live with- gin to understand the elephant's fear.
out them, though you are Our God. Oh, Eternal Father, ◊
oh, fire, abyss of charity, eternal beauty, eternal wisdom, The limit of every pain is an even greater pain .
eternal pity, eternal and infinite good, oh, mad with ◊
love!"One is stunned by the inexplicable , but also re- Acceptance of death was invented by those who tried
lievedthat such excessespreempt the need of a reply. to flee their fear of death. But without this fear, death is
One cannot add anything, except regret for nor being pointless. Death exists only in it and through it. Wis-
,. a~leto hate God with a passion equal to this love. dom born out of a reconciliation with death is the most
·; Had there not been any illnesses in the world, there superficial attitude in front of finality. Even Montaigne
would not have been any saints, for until now there has was infected with this fear, for otherwise his proud ac-
\ not been a single healthy one : Saincliness is the cosmic ceptance of the inevitable is inexplicable.
, apogeeof illness,the transcendental fluorescence of ro-{) ,; Whoever con~ers his fear of death believes himself
to be immortal {whoever does not have chis fear, Ts ..
Illnesseshavebrought the heavens close to earth. With-
Maybe beings in-paradise also died, but not knowing ( .'
out them , heavenand eart h would not have known each
_.,,,
0 th
e(I heneed £ fear they never had the opportunity co die. To fear is '· '
or consolation went further than any
illness and, at the . . to die every minute. Those who do nor know fear are
and h . point of intersection between heaven like the birds of the sky: they read their destiny in the
eart ' it gavebirth to sainthooc:C- \,
azure .
I'm trying to irna· ◊ ◊
find isthe h gme a spaceless world-and allI Coming after Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, we can
eart of a saint.
no longer be wise. Through chem, people have recovered

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 . f of origins,
.nan d, reneging on their memory
their pai to take pride in the loss o paradise.
havebegun ◊
·ectivepoint of view, all mortals aree .
From an obJ b. qui.
d th We are all su Ject to death at an
' distant from ea . . f . y
,1 , , moment.From a subjective pomt o v1e~-the only
~• : th rters-some are so close to 1t that theyal-
' , one atma .
· (~ 'd 'fy with it while others have never met it
t ""' most 1 entl • . . ·
! ~ Objectivedeath makes no sense m Rilke or Novalis.In
)</)_ r. there I·s no poet who dies only once.
y· race,
., ◊
_men differ from saints _intheir attitudeto-
Ordinll.J_'
wardth 'body; not in their orientation toward heaven
No man owns heaven, but every saint has a body. Is the
body a problem for ordin~ men? Only _cothe extent
that it can be sick. Otherwise they carry 1t unawares.For
the aincs,though, it becomes a constant o~s~ssion.
~ ap bey<:_nd
,1 icstasy is an infinit1:,_ the body. Manyare
the testimoniesbringing uncontested proof of the de-
feat of the body.Saines' confessions are nothing butthe
recordof the struggle of their conscience with their
body.But since it is intentional, this conflict lacks
dramaand revealsnothing, while the rtdiscovery ofthrbo~
does.Mysticaltrances sometimes last a long time, go
for dayson end. The soul is in permanent tension, and
the entire being,following in its steps, forgets its adher-
enceto a body.Inner flames refine physical resistanceto
suchan extent chatthere is nothing left of the bodyex-
cept the immaterialityof ecstasy. Once the high
intensityof ecstatictrance slows down, the return to the
ordinarybegins,and with it the surprise of rediscover ·
ing a body which has forgotten itself.All saints
complain about the recoveryof their body,that is,
about the falJfrom ecstasy.
◊
When she was twenty-four, Cristina Ebner had a
dream which cannot leaveus unmoved.In it, she was
pregnant, and her baby was none ocher thanJesus
Christ. Her joy was so great chat she wouldnot move
for fear of harming the divine baby.After givingbirch
painlessly,she took him in her arms and showedhim co
the nuns, saying: "Rejoice with me, for I can't hide my
joy any longer, I conceivedJesus and bore him."
.
Unfortunately for her, she wokeup. Had she died
then, she would have died of a happinessunknownco
any woman.
Her dream was not a nun's dream but a saint's. It is
hidden in everysaint's heart, all of them: beingspreg-
nant with God.
rF2 Cristina Ebner lived from 1277 to 1355. The Middle
Ages were pregnant with God.
One Sunday, he said to Cristina: "I come to you like
one who is dying of love.I come to you with the desire
, of a bridegroom at the bed of his bride." In such cir-
cumstances it is good to be God, and evenmore
pleasant to be his bride.
◊
' :"The sensation of being everythingand the certitude
o being nothing" (Paul Valery).A poet's conclusion-
obligatory for those who havekept companywith the
saints.
25
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 . . t the product of poverty. In a perfect
- t-. Begglllgis no
uld be as .many b eggars as m . a .
historical
state there wo . saint, Our Savior would have remained a ~• 1•01 pl1' mrm- ber
The rofessional beggar is a permanen Jeature of
state. P as there wi.ll b e crossroa d
life. As long s, gates, an d pity,
out of nowhere. Beggars are the perfume f
hew ill come . .
the cordiality of gates, the salvation of all
crossroa s,d . . . had m their heart, and courted no dang•r
charitable people. Without chem, pity would_dilate like
.d • onsciousness and, unable to place itself sorne
a voi l11 C . . . given birth to an inner desert had it not been for the
•t would give way to a sweepmg dissatisfaction It•
wh ere, 1 . omnipresent divine eros, which perfumed their desires
ve well be chat pity created beggmg, or at least·
may ry S .al . . . b .
they were born together. oci m1ust1c e nngs to the
surface only casual beggars, with no vocation for beg-
ging.Jal/en poor folk. The i~stinctive beggar is a being
nobody understands. Charitable pe_ople understand him
least of all, and besides, they fear him. IfI were a beggar,
I would not take from anybody. But herein lies the beg-
ar's sublimity: he takes from all.For him, the giver,
tdividually, means nothing. He's only interested in the
gesture of bending, the compliment every giver pays him
by bowing in front of him. His pride follows the curve
of our disdain. The more we bend disdainfully to throw
hima farthing, the brighter are his eyes. A beggar would
be even happier if we slapped him, for it is his only con·
tact with man.Why don't I have a beggar's calling?Truly,-
one must be born a beggar .
◊
Whoever reads the saints' confessions cannot help
chinking that Jesus was sent into the world not so much
to save people as to comfort the hearts of women
starved for love. Mundane interpretations are not ap·
propriate for saints, but it looks almost certain chathad
1.6
a mortal lover competed with Jesus for rhc hr:,rr of a
of the Trinity.
. Jesus ':as the o~ficial lover o( sainrly worn n. T hry
o did ~or ns_k anything by confessing co him all that rhry
• ,·n che1r
· exec
of indiscretion. The saints' longing for love would havr
and their weaknesses.
Hearts devoid of earthly love are the support of
Jesus, his resting place. He's been resting there for two
thousand years, caressed by graces he never dreamt of in
his manger. From a manger into a saint's heart! Not a
mortal evolution.
❖
?+'I'm the Antaeus of despair. Any contact with earth
increases my despair. If only I could sleep in God in or-
der to die unto myself!
_ The only genuine forgetfulness is the sleep in Divin-
ity. When will God close his eyelid over me?
Mechthild of Magdeburg speaking to God: "I bring
you my song, more sub!inle than the mountains, more
unfathomable than the seas, higher than the clouds, vas-
ter than the sky."
, "What is the name of your song?"
( "My heart's desire. I tore it away from the world. I
shrank away from myself. I robbed the entire creation.
But now I can no longer bear it. Where shall I lay it
down?"
"Y,ou must put your heart's desire
in my heart."
27
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.·. : · I've known for a long time that tears are the onl Y
,_
, c~nunentary on saints.
\ died young. Had he lived to be sixty, he would have given
My Lord, I shall dredge tears from the gates of hell
and make my ho!Ue in them. I shall fold your shadows
,~ . twilight ·· Can it be that God is only a delusio no f
. ~ mmy _ .
_: "( the heart as the world is one of the mind? -.
.... . ◊
God's advent coincides with the first q~ive~ of loneli-
ness. He finds his place in the emptiness of a tremor.
Divine infinity thus equals all the moments of loneliness
endured by all beings.
~-\Nobody believes in God-except to avoid the tor-
ment of solitary monologue. Is there anyone else to
speak to? He seems to welcome any dialogue, and does
not resent being the theatrical pretext of our solitary
sorrows.
, ' Loneliness without God is sheer madness. At least
our ravingsend in him, and thus we cure our mind and
soul. God is a sort oflightning rod. For God is a good
conductoofr sorrows and disillusions.
◊
Dostoevsky was the last man who tried to save para-
dise. But he only succeeded in creating a stronger
~dilei:tionfor..the Fal!., He thus dealt paradise, and
our aspirations for it, a final blow.
Dostoevsky was also the last to know Adam before
his f~. J:!ow~v~!!,b~nly succeeded in teaching us the
olu tUQl,lS!}e~sof sin.
Wet · · -
ry m vam to canonize Dostoevsky. We shall al-
waysfail. Yet I don't know of any saint who would not
be proud to unfaste~ the ~J of his sandal.
~
'·\ l.-.,..
❖
;.
The greatest piece of good luck Jesus had w rhar he
~
...
us his memoirs instead of the cross. Even today, we
would still be blowing the dust off God's unlucky son.
◊
Joseph, the father of Jesus, is the most compromised
person in history. The Christians shoved him aside and
made him the laughingstock of all men. Had he told the
truth at least once, his son would have remained an ob-
scure Jew. The triumph of Christianity originates in a
virility that lacked self-esteem. The Virgin Birth origi-
nates in the world's piety and one man's cowardice.
◊
When I '::alized that there was no absolute except in .
1~
renunciation, I dedicated myself to appearances.
◊
-----
Only the brothel or an angel's tear can free us tempo-
rarily from the terror of death.
◊
The Middle Ages were well acquainted with the tech-
nique of producing tears, those proofs of ardent
passion. To obtain the "gift of tears," prayers were said,
and promises of mortification given. Even Thomas
Aquinas had this gift, considered the true way ofloving
God. Formulas for the adoration of God abounded.
The Middle Ages were saturated with tears. Their rivers
of tears haven't quite dried up even today, and whoever
has an ear for pain can still hear their lamentations.
Saint Dominic, who had this gift in a big way, would
render such woeful sighs at night that the other monks
would wake up and join his lamentations.
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 ......---
The Middle Ages ~xpiated Adam's sin, thus rnaking
th e Renaissance possible. . F
One day before his conversion, rancis of Assisi was
walking along the highway weeping . Thinking he was
ill, a man asked him: "What's the matter with you,
brother?" "Ah," he answered, "For the love of Christ, I
should not be ashamed of going around the world like
this grieving for my Savior's agony ."
\ , I; The Middle Ages, _having exhauste~ the co~tents of
( eternity, gave us the nght -to love transitory chmgs.
\\ I
tJ" he whole of Christiani: is mankind's fit of cryini'))f
of which only salty and bitter traces are now left to us.
., , man who would try to play hooky from death~ or an
◊
µ__· ancient philosopher or a medieval monk, "there is no ·
Anonymous books entitled TheArt of Dying appeared
j ' way out" would make a constant theme for meditatio~
towardsthe end of the Middle Ages. They were incredi-
bly popular. Would such a book move anyone today?
What separates us from antiquity and the Middle
Ages is the fact that we no longer know how to prepare
ourselves for death. No one cultivates death in himself
any longer, it happens overand abovehim .
~--J The ancients knew how co die. Contempt for death
was born with them. But their contempt came from
kno~ledge.'J heir ideal was to rise spiritually above
/ death For us, death is a painful and frightening surprise .
· t' Hence our terror and its drama. No ancient was ever
surprised by death, and thus they could afford co smile
I
at its approach, a fact which astonishes us. They wereso
I persuaded of death's inevitabilitythat they invented an
I elaborate art of dying. Though we may know this art, it
\_ cannot help us.
I
r
The Middle Ages lived in even greatrr intimacy with
death than antiquity. Boch, however, are united in 3
common belief in a complex system of prcpa.rarions
that would allow a more successful, more organic death.
That belief separates them from us. The Middl e Age
experienced death with unique intensity. Through med-
itation and the "art of dying," death became an intimate
part of bein~ Thus people died "legally"; death had its
own form, its own statutes . For us, it only signifies in-
cessant harassment'; from which we would like to escape.
We cak; ~omfort in fear. I don't chink that one could
find, either in antiquity or the Middle Ages, a s,le
//
· We would rather die without having any such thing as
death.
◊
i IOne can only think horizontally. le is almost impos- 'I
sible to ,conceive of ~~ rn_ity_from ~ vertic.il position.
Animals may -; ell have evolved to the rank of men when
they started to walk upright, but consciousness was born in
moments of freedom and laziness. As you lie stretched
- ·-1 -
JJ.Ud>n the ground , your eyes staring at the sky above,
the separation between you and the world opens up like
am -=-without which consciousn e._ ss is not possible.
Not a single thought is born · tandiE_g;horizontal im-
mobility is an essential condition for medication. True,
no happy thoughts are born thus. Bue meditation is an
expression of nO.:ne,articipation,and therefore has no
tolerance fol' being"! r:!i~ory is the product ~f the verti-
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cal line, whereas n._othingnes~comes from the horizontal
l~~-· \ der big mounds of stardust. From rho e hright , I
The church has always regarded the saints' privattreve-
lations,in which they mix God with intimate
circumstances of their own lives, with great caution and
reserve. But these revelations are precisely the most sin-
cere as well as the closest to our hear _ts. Uncensored
celestial visions have a .~.avory E~ivete. Thus for example,
Jesus calls Angela da Foligno by her nickname, Lella,
and as he shows her his wounds, he whispers: "All of
these are for you." Again, speaking to Margaret of Cor-
tona, he says "I love no one on earth more than you."
..._
···. It's true that these are not official revelations; but
they constitute the delicious madness of sainthood.
Didn't Jesus whisper one day to Angela, "of all the
saints in paradise, you are my only love"? le is a truly
private revelation; we cannot interfere with it without
\ \ provoking divine jealousy.
, ◊
( ,
'--::iThe saints' existence is a continuous suspension of
, ,_../ time. That's why we can understand chem only through
/ our predilection for eternity.
◊
According to Jakobus de Voragine, the angels' caskis
to stamp the memory of Christ's agony onto the souls
of men. And I had thought them agents of heavenly
forgetfulness!
Mechthild ofMagdeburg inscribed her revelations on
the wings of angels. Her enthusiasm inspires me with
such a longing for self-destruction that I wish to be pul-
verized like stardust! ·
1.
Saintly women have swlen my soul and hrdden II.un-
would like to cry into their hearts.
◊
J
God has exploited all our inferiority complexes,
starting with our disbelief in gods.
◊
"And you would have kissed my soul." Thus speaks
God to Mechthild's soul in her Dialoguts . Finally, some
reserve and decency in divine eroticism!
◊
One takes the measure of consciousness from its cos-
mic expansion. If. once your spirit has bent over it, you
I • I
still remain anchored in the world, it means that you
have missed your way,!D ~gled in cosmic paths. Who-
ever has not exhausted the world in his inner strif/ will
never reach God.__.-God exists at the limit of co~~cious-
ness. When we have devoured the world and remain
al~ ne, God appears from behind the screen of Nothing-
ness like a_last temptatioii; ~
◊
Christianity is too profound to lase any longer. Its
centuries are numbered. How could man have survived
for so long so many final questions served up co him in
an of6cial way? Man's rare deliriums have become state
religion. That the abyss of Christianity has not com-
pletely corrupted man is to me the onlyproof of his
vocation for metaphysics.
;i,But man can no longer endure the terror of final
questions. ;t hristi~i__ty has _kgaliz~d anxiety, and has
kept man unde; -pressure to such an e"xtentchat a few
thousand years of relaxation will be needed co revive
33
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 l ,. (),, -
a being devastated by the invasion of so many
heavens.l
thristianity-a real avalanche of metaphysical
mdiscretions-has introduced death, suffering, Jesus,
and God into men's everyday life, into their politics,
Hence many crises
their business, their gains and losses ....1
after another into an
of consciousness are piling up one
architectonics of despair. The Christian demon has
-woven its nest in money, in sexuality, in love.'it has
' caused humanity so much trouble, that fro~ ~ ow on su-
perficiality sh~uld undoubtedly be looked upon as a
virtuclrf his demon has pierced ~ur hearts with a cross
froirrwhich weshould be hanging, if we wane to expiate
Christianity through Christian sacrifice . Yet all attempts
to free ourselves are vain, for we can never forget its dicor,
namely, the saints. After we had hated Christianity for
some time, it would send its saints after us, they would
start pursuing us, and, precisely at the moment when we
were more certain that we had forgotten all about the
agoniscic passion, whose poison has spread over centu-
ries, we would again stumble over the saints, and our
corpses would fall into their outstretched arms.
1
•, We would have been quite happy had we remained
simple human beings. But we ended up Christians .
Could we still retrace our steps?
Christianity was not the way to surpass our human-
ity. Ir has made so much ropagand~lfor just oneGod
that we are left with no hope w -atsoever .
◊
.
has known resignation
1
1 • Si_re the Renaissance, nobody
L<!ckof resignation is modern man's tragic aura. The
34
I
z
ancients submitted to their fate. No modern man is
humble enough to be resigned. Nor are we familiar with
ntemp i for life. We are not wise enough notto love it
co . l
w ith infinite agony. .
The ancients did not make so much of their suffer-
ing. This, _however, is not the case with us, for we rebel
e ! -IWD· ◊ ( I ,'
Angels seeeverything but knownothing. They are illir-
e~;tes of perfection. They didn't even have enough
curiosity co listen to the serpent's temptations. Nor did
they ask Adam about the cause of his dismissal. Yet how
good they would have looked next to man! Those among
the angels who fell, did so individually,as traitors. The le-
gions of their followers, however , remained ignorant of
temptation. They still watch over us, without under-
standing us. Neither did we understand anything at the
time when we were together in God. Now at least we
understand the angels through memory and the hope of
return . Their understanding of us was limited to th ir
presentiment of a fall. Do they ever have fore~ocljng~.I
wonder? I can't forgive the angel with the sword who did
not imitate Adam, and would not save his nation throu h
desertion. ~ arn's fall is paradise's only historical fact/I
.• - :
◊ .
I often wonder why saints instituted the cult of an-
gels, who are after all their competitors for heavenly
glory. Certainly, it was a political mistake, betraying a
surprising lack of foresight! Aren't the gates of heaven
open to chem even without the angels' intercession?
Saints may very well be fallen angels who have regained
grace. In chat case, paradise is for chem a more recent
35
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memo ry, Which they remember
_ more intensely • mak·ing
flame of their desire more fervent . Could this be h
t he . . r.- . t e
reason for their heavenly aspirations? 2_amts look like
angels who have known agony, and therefore knowledge.:
◊ ----
-- 0 Qr- .
The saints' obsession : fighting illness with illness
◊
V When music sweeps over us like a_wave of mournful
"-.
.,- happiness, we long for a sweet-smelling death /f he
r,j~,: saints hold so much music in themselves that they alone
\,/ ~ can resist the dissolution of the bodr,/ fheir corpses do
not stink. Could! twer hold so much music as never to
die? There are minuets after which one could not rot.
◊ ◊
Only musical ecstasy makes me feel immortal . Oh,
those clear days when your heart borrows color from
the sky, and deep sonorities revive memories from be-
yond the horizon! It will be in vain then to try and shed
tears for time.
◊ ◊
A heart without music is like beauty without melan-
choly.
◊ Yet the fear that God may no longer be topical some-
Wine has brought men closer to God than theology.
But it's been a long time since sad drunkards ( are there
any other types?) have shamed the hermits.
◊ you with strange terror . Could God be just aJasbionof
Jesus came to Catherine of Siena during one of her
ecstasies and, opening the left side of her body, took her
heart out. For days afterwards, she kept telling everyone
that she was living without a heart. She assured those
who doubted her that it was possible, for God could do
\
anything. But then.' as she was praying al~ne in a chapel,
she saw his figure m a beam of heavenly light with a
heart in his hand. Trembling, she fellto the ground.
Jesus cam~ closer and, opening he_rleft side again'.
placed in 1t the heart he was holdmg. Then he said:
"You see, dearest girl, as I once took your heart, now I
•ve you mine to live with." .
g1 \ .
sames have a movmg charm. They prove
SwoE,!!_!!!g
tha;;.,e cannot have revelations in a vertical position,
that we cannot standon our feet to face the ultimate
truth . Swooning provokes such wild voluptuousness
that a man cognizant of negative joys has a hard time
deciding whether to fall or not.
Weininger used to say that epilepsy was the criminal's
last solitude . Having no more ties with the world, all he
has left is the fall.
The saints' swooning is no less a breaking of their
ties with the world. But they fall into heaven.
✓t.IT"here comes a moment in life when one places every-· \
thing in relation to God . ~yth _ing less seems too little.
times grabs you, and relating everything to him seems
useless. The transience of the ultimate principle-a
logically absurd idea, yet present in consciousness-fills
the soul, a fleeting passion of history?
◊
~ 'Some people still wonder iflife has meaning. In fact,
. Then
it all comes down to knowing whether it is bearable
"problems" cease and decisions begin.
37
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 I ,
◊
J
God's greatest advantage is that one can say or think . must have been onu. That's why life seems to
hmg
Everyt
anything about him. The less you connect your . hostly undulation. History does not repeat
rnelikea g·c seems as if our lives
. h · h LL
th oUghts • abandoning them to If
contradictions the
' mote are caug t mt e rentc-
you risk corning n_~ the truth'\._~od benefits from the icsel(;; yet I d l d h I
_ fa ast world, whose e aye ec oes we pro .ong.
uons o P nl . . b al
peripheries of logic.\ · an argument not o y agamsc time uc so
◊
Memory is
. chis world. le half uncovers the probable worlds
Shakespeare and Dostoevsky leave you with an in f against .h . . f d.
su - crowning them wit a v1s1ono para 1se.
of th e pas't . A
ferable regret: for having been neither a saint nor a ring from the fiadu- of memory. //
Regrets sP / _ , .
criminal, the two best forms of self-destruction. Regression in memory_ makes one a metaphys1c1an;
◊
delight in its origins} a same.
The saints were uneducated. Why, then, do they/ ~ f !f- ·~ - ◊
. nl . . . Th h - fil
write so well? Is 1t o y msp1rat1on? ey ave~tyli, 4'f he answer saintly women gave whenever their par-
whenever they describe God. It's easy to write ~oh}di- 1 · ts begged them co marry was invariably the same: they

vine whispers, with one's ear glued to his mouth . Their
works have a superhuman simplicity. But they cannot be
called writers, since they do not describe reality.ff he
world won't accept them because it does not see itself in
theirwork1
-:JOne can know a man only by the level to which mu-
sic has risen in his soul. But I'm interested only in those
submerged in music, so I have to do without knowledge
of other people.
There are musical souls that have no musical educa-
tion. We are born with a number of vibrations which
our sadness brings into relief We carry within us allthe
music we have never heard in our life, which lies at the
bottom of the abyss of memory. All chat is musical in us
e--
is memory . ~hen we did not have a name,we must have
heard everything.Music exists only as remembrance of
paradise and of the Fall.
::uld not marry because they had promised Jesus their
maidenhood. The wrenching truth i~_thac Jesus does not
deserve so many mad renunciations. Whenever I chink
about the infinity of suffering to whidi the saints' per-
verse cranscende_IJ.cehas led, the agony of Jesus strikes
me as merely sadj The cross broke apart and fell into
the saints' souls, and its nails bore into their hearts all
their life, not for just a few hours on a hill. The ultimate
cruelty was-.._
that of Jesus: leaving an inheritance of
b~o _dstains on the cross.
Saints may very well talk about the delights of the
cross, but why can't they be sincere and speak also of its
poison?I am trying to imagine noble, superb, charming
Magdalena of Pazzi, who under the curse of divine in-
spiration imprisoned herself in a monastery, and who
would, in moments of spiritual crisis and satanic temp-
tation, tie herself to a cross like a condemned woman.
So many young lives were crucified because they were

39

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 born of eternity's hysteria, and followed the heavenly ex-
ample of a demi-God! Jesus must have a very heavy
conscience if he has even an inkling of his responsibility
. the face of so much suffering. Heavy red and black
m · 'inh uman su ffiering on
crosses will rise from th e samts
the Day of the Last Judgment to punish the Son, Dealer
in Pain.
_j Had all moments that are not ecstasy been indif-
ferent and insignificant, sainthood would have been a
riceless gift. Yet they are not merely dull, they also have
~
cold, uninterrupted bitterness which dries up the soul
and renders it incapable of love. "Dryness of the soul" is
the term commonly used by saints to describe this ob-
scure aspect of their condition. They request grace as a
liberation from such a state . Whenever their soul is dry,
they invoke love. Could their souls be dry only from an
absence oflove? uhe saints are mistaken when they at-
tribute their inn~ void to lack of love. They know
physiology only as a supplement of the sky. If they
knew they were paying with the dryness of their soul for
the vibrations of ecstasy, a cowardly fear would grab
them in front of God, and they would not seek new en-
counters! Ev~rywhere around ecstasy, I see only ruins.
As long as.we are in ecstasy we are not in ourselves, and
our being is nothing but the ruin of immemorial time:j
◊
Saint Aldegunda, a descendant of the Frankish kings,
gaveearly signs of a heavenly vocation. Once, as she was
lost in meditation, a voice whispered to her : "Do not
look for a groom other than the Son of God ." Fatal
words, since from that moment she fell prey to Jesus.At
. the king of England's son asked to marry her.
thirteen, .
• cted him, saymg that her whole heart belonged
She reJe
r who surpassed all the sons of the earth both
roam1 e ' . .
. beauty and riches. Her parents pleading was m vai.n;
~~e preferred to die rather than lose the virginity she
romised to the heavenly Don Juan. After her par-
had P .
ents' death, she became even more determined not to
marry- As the English prince would not give up on her,
Aldegunda ran away from her parents' castle to a mon-
astery. Coming to a river she could not cross, she saw
the prince in hot pursuit catching up with her. Then an
angel appeared and helped her ~cross. Thus this royal
victim of Jesus ended her days ma monastery.
This seventh-century drama is neither unique nor ex-
traordinary . It tells us, however, that every saintly
woman is an Ophelia, only more passionate, for Jesus is
not so blase a lover as Hamlet .
Shall we also remember here Saint Kunigunda who
on her wedding day made her husband swear chastity
unto death? In palaces, Jesus has wreaked more ~
than in huts. -___
-- -
The closer I am to the saints, the farther I am from
him, and when I feel human pity for saintly women, I
definitely hate him .
◊
Pascal is a saint without a temperament .
◊
Nietzsche's greatest merit is that he knew how to de- /
fend himself from saintliness. What would have become ,.
of him had he let loose his natural impulses? He would
have been a Pascal with all the saints' madnesses.
◊
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 .... )r

• s hrough sickness we understand the

·{ As long as one believes in philoso~hy, one is health . dl passion •
~icknessbegins when one starts to think. y, erW0 rl Y th h them, the heavens. Sickness is not
.1 and roug
◊ ,saints, l dge for everybody. For ordinary mor-
/ .' J ·mate know e
1
'All great conversions are born
from the sudden reve. wtl . nl mediated knowledge.
·t 1so Ya
1 .
·on of life's meaninglessness. Nothing could be ( t als, . alee us sadder than gray skies because
lati . . rnore . Blue skies m h th
es which we do not ave e courage to
moving or more impressive than this sudden apprehen. offir~ h oP . .
sion of the void of existence. ey . Whereas a gray sky is a tomb without alter-
◊ entertalfll. . soothing color for melancholy; it is
native.B ue is a ,
...... Rance reformed the order of the Trappists after the ds divinity. When Gods call breaks
neutraltowar h
unexpected death of his lover. Margaret of Cortona's e,c. azu re we would rather have eavy black
chrough e th ,
cessivepenitence was due to a similar experience. For ds The allow us the freedom of feeling abandoned
dou . hope
'ch Y Couldn't we 1·1vew1.th out as k y.'
years, she had been living far from her family with a wi out ·
◊
noble lover. Once, when he had been away for awhile,
she went out to meet him on the day of his return. Aca Our lack of pride belittles death. Christianity taught
certain turning of the road, her dog jumped at her, core us to lower our eyes-to look down-so that death
at her clothes, and ran towards a pile of wood behind would find us peaceful and meek Two thousand years
which his master lay dead, already putrefied. He had of training accustomed us to a quiet, modest, and sure
been killed and hidden away on the day of his depar- death. We die down.We do not have the courage to look
ture. "Where could his soul be now?" she asked herself, at the sun at the last moment.
and her suffering at thiJ awful sight changed the course If we cannot combine the elegance of an Athenian
of her life on the spot. !3-emorsedrove her to the limits ephebe with the passions of a conquistador, this same
of penitence. This unhappy saint tortured herself daily gravitational death is in store for us too. We shall then
so .cruelly that she swooned every momen £..; expirequietly in the shadow cast by our lowered eyes.
:i Other saints experienced the revelation of va11itas Oh, but to die with muscles strained like a runner wait-
1 mu11di in less dramatic but more ·continuous ways.They ing for the starting signal, head thrown back, braving
) ·;; re especially gifted for emptiness because they had space and conquering death, full of pride and the illu-
\ I the soul of a singer of psalms with all its heavenly sweet- sion of force! I often dream of an indiscreet death, infall
\
\ ness. s~htof infinity!
\.
◊

'\, All saints are sick, but luckily not all sick people are __J,.,
l Of all human beings, the saints are the least lonely
\ saints. Thus fo~Jhe saints the end of suffering is ch~ when they die. They are always attended at death either
, loss of grace.t ~ess brings grac , for it n~uri_shes och- byJesus or by angels. They who have sought loneliness

43

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breathe cheir last in public: The _destiny of a simple
.
·s infinitely more bitter smce he dies with out e,
moreal l
ther heavenly or earthly help, witho~t the cowardly -
rt of dialogue! Whenever their end drew near, the
supp O
saints curned themselves in_and died peacefully, sure of
their ultimate destination. ~ ut what about all the others
the eternal lepers of this earth, their eyes downcast, '
looking at the dust under their feet, their soul blown
away like dust? How can they die without the refreshin
comfort of some little hope? When I_think of all the g
agonies on this _e~th, _I kno.w ~~ -are souls which
·could not be lifted by cohorts of angels, so heavy they
will ~ot be able to rise at the Last Judgment, frozen in
the barrenness of their o_ ~.pcurses . Only light souls can
be saved: those whose ~ eight will not break the wingsof
\. -
angels] --
◊ sufferings. The saints have redirected imperialism ver-
People usually do not distinguish between those who
are born saints and those who become saints. But it is
one thing to see the light of day when you are already
loaded with grace, and another to pay dearly for it, and
win it step by step. Born saintliness is easy and without
responsibility; the saint is only a tool of grace, an un-
conscious organ of perfection . I dread to chink of the
saints withouttalent,those who have worked hard for
heavenlygrace, and paid for it with the swea~·of their
body and soul. They are more numerou -s. They oweev-
erything to suffering. The others, the privileged, true
owners of the azure, do not go beyond a certain inclina-
tion towards suffering, and do not use it more than asa
pretext. The talent for saintliness helps you sneak
44
. ly through the cours e of suff ering. Bur mo~t saints
adro1t
·n themselve s across the path of sufffring s' and
have Ial
·ngle one has failed to hit them.
not as l
◊
Could saints have a will to power? Is their world im-
·a11·stic'The answer is yes, but one must take into
pen ·
account che change of direction. While we waste our
energy in the struggle for temporary gains, their great
pride makes chem aspire to_absolute possession. For
chem, the space to conquer is the sky, and their weapon,
suffering. If God were not the limit of their ambition,
they would compete in ultimates, and each would speak
in the name of yet another infinity. Man is forever a
proprietor. Not even the saints could escape this medi-
ocrity. Their madness has divided up heaven in unequal
portions, e:1_ ch according to the pride they take in their
tically, and '; aised the earth to its supreme appearance,
the heavens.
◊
Only by forgetting everything can we truly remember.
A weak memory reveals to us the world before time. By
gradually emptying our memory, we detach ourselves
from time. That is why during sleepless nights we relive
ancestral fears, worlds chat we do not remember, but
which surprise us like memory. Such nights do not do
away with the actual content of our memory ( our his-
tory), but they take us on a path winding backwards
through time .IT~somnia is regression to origins and the
~inning of individuation -:-It chins out time to the
- - ·--~ .. =
point of mere optical illusi; n; it expels us from tempo-
45
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 ralicy and forces on us the last of memories •
. . . , 1.e., the
first ones In the melodious dissolution of in . Very
. . sornn1
exhaust our pas~d then 1t seems as if we have / We
along with all of time. led
◊ Philosophy has no answers. Compared to philosophy,
The more time has disappeared from one's rn
. satn .... is an exattscitnu. It gives us precise answers to
.. ernor,,
the d o.ser one 1s to myst1c1sm. -,,
Paradise is not possible without a defective
. . memory
The healthier memory 1s,the more it adheres to the ·
world. The archeology of memory unearths do
curnents
from other worlds at the expense of this one.
◊
When I think of the loneliness of nights, and the ag-
ony of this loneliness, I long to wander on roads
unknown to saints. Where to, where to? There are
abysses even outside the soul.
4
I must have lived other lives. If not, whence so much
:; 1'
~ Previous lives are the only explanation for dread.
Only the Orientals understood the soul . The y werebe-
fore us and they will be aft er us. Why did we moderns
suppress the memory of our wanderings, admitting only
onetime? Every moment we muse atone for infinite be-
coming . Have we reached the limit of dread? We shall
end our lives only at the end of dread.
◊ tained by the Greek skeptics could provoke the jealousy
'":"'Becoming is nothing more than a cosmic sigh. We are
the wounds of nature , and God is doubting Thomas.
◊ science is nothing more than the sum of vulgardoubts
Compared to philosophers, saints know nothing. Yee
they know everything. Compared to Ariscocle, any saint
. illiterate. What makes us then believe that we
1san
. ht learn more from the latter? Because all of the phi-
rnsg
Josophers put together are not worth a single saint.
. cl;..,ess
questions that phil~sophers _do not ~ven dare consider.
Its method is suffering and its goal asGod. Since it is
neither practical nor easy, men place it in the domain of
the fantastic and worship it from afar. They keep phi-
losophy closer the better to despise it, and they treat
hilosophers with respectful indifference. In this, ordi-
~arypeople prove to be intelligent .f or whatever is valid
in philosophy comes from its borrowings from religion
and mystical revelations. In itself. philosophy, like the
rest of culture, is nothing. (
Philosophers are cold .:.blooded . There is no heat ex-
cept near God. That's why the Siberia of our souls
clamors for saints.
◊
Nothing easier than shedding philosophical inheri-
tance, for the roots of philosophy do not go farther
than our insecurities, whereas those of saintliness surpass
even sufferings. Therefore, could I ever forget them?
Skepticism is philosophy's last courage. Beyond it, there
is only chaos. It is true chat the freedom of the spirit at-
of the mystics, but this unique development was com-
promised by modern scientific relativism. After all,
I
for an educated stupidity. There is ~o science except at
the antipodes of the spirit.
47
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 / A philosopher is saved from mediocrity ~tt· h
~ erfume to the beauty of the name. Saints'
tfirough skepticism or mysticism, the two t;
. . . . orms of d -
spair m front of knowledge. Myst1c1sm is an escape e
from knowledge, an d skepticism is knowledge w• h
.h . h ·
hope. In e1t er mstance, t e world is not a solUtton
tt out
◊ .
The only people I envy are the confessors and h
-- t e
biographers of saintly women, not to mention the1r • erous · Any woman who
sec
retaries. If only we knew all that Peter Olafsson did n -
1 loneliness is a saint. The Church has never understood
say about Saint Birgitta, or Heinrich von Halle abou/
Mechthild of Magdeburg, Raymond of Capua about
Catherine of Siena, Brother Arnold about Angela da
Foligno, John Marienwerder about the Blessed
Dorothea ofMontau, and Brentano about Catherine
Emmerich, we would be privy to all their secrets, all
those forbidden details whi_ch would enhance the
strange aura of saintliness. ,If only we could be near
them in their moments of doubt, and delight in their
agony with a perfection of sadisrnI Rejoice becauseyou
cannot soften their fate, and turn their tears into a
source of voluptuous pleasure!
What would it be like to be the chronicler of a mon-
astery, to keep a diary of crises and illuminations,
staining its pages with the bloody torments of budding
saints? I have often dreamt myself the chronicler of
these failings from heaven to earth, the intimate knower
of the ardors in their hearts, the historian of God's in-
somniacs.
◊
Through their names, Diodata degli Ademari and
Diana d' Andolo ascended to heaven. Piety adds a tran-
5cen
d ent p 1· f h Id ,
h rhe sensual fee mg o ot er. wor s. So many
na.rnes ave .
. cl men justify their otherwordlmess by the
salil Y wo
5oun
d of rheir name.
The Church was wrong to can~nize so few women
. Jes misogyny and stinginess make me want to be
sames. -
sheds rears for love in
more gen
char saintly women are made of God's tears.
◊
Plato deplores the fact that no poet has ever sung the
space extending beyond the sky, nor ever will. Could it
be chat Plato was a total stranger to music? How could
he then know that madness is one of man's greatest
blessings?Or was his assertion merely accidental? It may
very well have been, since he confessed that the gods
often whispered in his ear.
◊
'[f.Our suffering cannot be anything but futile and sa-
'tanic. Any poem by Baudelaire says more to modern
man than the saints' sublime excesses. Abandoning our-
selvesto despair as if to drinking or dancing, we have
lost interest in a scale of perfection achieved through
suffering. Modern man is not opposed to saints
through his superficiality but rather through what is un-
controllable in his condition, his wallowing in a tragic
orgy, his sliding into forever-renewed delusions. Lack of
training in the selection of sadness has led to modern
man's inability to resist himself If God shows himself
through sensations, so much the better! We shall no
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 ,:c h •
Ionger suner t e inhuman discipline of revel .
~ h bsenccof
.,us surprised by t eha Ancients .
Saints are completelyout-of-date and at1on, •,isrtl is gen. f ality,Only t e d
' only 0 5kcpt1 id o re hO b longe to
spises Becomingcan still be interest d . ne Who.J alldchevo . al nly chose w e Th .
e m the111 Ile. robief11S be skeptic ' o b d with scyle. e1r
◊ . P howco . d They dou te
• . . 1,rieW • perio · l umnal, expres-
Th e only mteresting philosophers are the ,. AJe,caJldrian
ch ,... ch worId ....,ere grave Ybaut ·
st · n that ore
b
havestopped thinking and havebegu oneswh e ·onson e . ss a warm a entlO ..
. . n to sear h c 0 flectl d happine ' O f he spirit,
happiness.In this way,twilight philos h' c LOr r~ disabuse . . delicate shadow t . h
op 1esar b stJlga , Sk t1c1srn, h I c phi 1osop -
They are more comforting than religi b e orn. rudge- ep a·ht of cultures, as en .
ons ecau h 110g • chetW tg · d 1·1ctant1sm.
free us from authority. With Epicurus O , hse t ey blOoJJlingin . race and charming e . d h.
. , nest O h poeticg hO h d behtn tm
swayin the cool breeze of a palm tree and h ug ts . alconcepts Gr k skeptic, w a b .
. . ' t e sk I ic uld che ee d who was emg
like an open fan fluttenng to preservethe fi hnY 0 oks f-JoW co [Ancient thought, an d'
. res essOf . bodyo ill d 'd among 1-
doubts. Th e cwil1ghtphilosophers-so fiull of shad theentire . al religions,st ect e
0
d b Orient . •fi bl , Thus was
that they no longer believein anything- b ws assaile Y_ h. all equallyJUStl a e.
. . em race hilosop ies, 1·d and
like a sea cradlingyour drowned body Th • . you vecgent P O f wanderingamong eas .
· errsmiles ch leasure dr' chs In JUSt
gestsa welcometherapy:all is all.owed. Those balm ug. born e Pch acteristicof Alexan tan epo. · . f
. d b th ak Y, Idsso ar · ven millennia o
dizzy mg ou ts at m e us want to die of h . wor • xhaust centuries or e
. app1nes lifi youcan e . chi · e and so
m the shadowof a smile,what a reliefafter ch . ,s one e and Epicure coexist at s ttm •
e sames . ry Homer . 1· · . edec-
excessesand restrictions' h15co · . • and the Persian re 1gton.an
. . . d0 Judaic111ess1an1stn . . . n of the
Socrates,m spiceof his demons, and Aristotle. _. hichcooka joyful pride tn the expansto .
. . . 'm c1smw · d ·th th delusions
spite of his encyclopedia,are less interestingthan h d painfullydisappomte Wt
. t e 5
a
oul an was . J· ,rb· e
last skepticat the end of the Greco-Romanera, who cul
of cure. Alexandrianism 1sa para ise°.J ,tterness.
from its twilightspread the shadowsof doubt overthe ◊
entirew~rldof Antiquity. It waseasyco be Socrates, j( Philosophyis a correctiv~against sa~ess.Yet _there
Democntus,or evenHeraclitus. All one neededwasge- stillarepeoplewho believem the profundityof phi-
ni~s'.be~auseGre~kchink.in~requireda certainform of Josophy!
ongmaltcy,followinga speci1i.c logicof problem-
solving.Problemssought you out, and if you werea ge- Thephilosophers'sole merit is that they sometimes felt
nius,you solvedthem: there wasno other way.Then ashamed of beingmen. Plato and Nieczsche are excep-
someoneelsewould come along, born with different tions:theywerealwaysashamed.The former wanted to
problems,whichwerenot yours. takeusout of chisworld,the latter out of ourselves.
But oncetheseproblemsare exhausted,whatuseis Eventhesaintscould learn something from them. Thus
genius? thehonorof philosophywassaved!

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 ......-- J
◊
sand years of fear would have
The saints' goodness is repulsive. It is lik . . ns' Two t h ou f h
. . ea s1ckl epresentatto ." .d S • t Hildegard's description o t e
r su1c1 e. am 11 d
discoloration combmed with an emasculation of ~ driven us co ak hate all heavens and he s, an
ent m es one . .
Their supreme indifference is ~ff:pl!ttiIJg. be111g. Last Jud gm ly subJ.ective v1s1ons.Psychology
. th t they are on .
◊ . d our superficiality. Accordmg
rejoice a
our salvauon an h h
-t ·The only explanation for the creation of th
'1-
~ e~~- 15 is both . l d the world was born w en t e
uod's fear of solitude. In other words our role 1s • Christtan egen , . f th'
' to to a d F s moderns, the accident o 1s
amuseOur Maker. Poor downs of the absolute fc i1yawne . or u al
, we org Dev . th. ore than a psychologic error .
f et world is no mg m ◊
that we act out a tragedy to enliven the boredo
mo one
spectator whose applause has never reached a mortal hat music is not human than the
What better proo f t . . '
ear. Solitude weighs on God so much that he m·vented . h ver awakened in me v1s1onsof hell.
fact that tt as ne . . [·
the saints as partners in dialogue. marches could do 1t. Hel~ ts an actu41ty;
Not even fun eral ~--
I can stand up to God only by confronting him with c e can only remember paradise. Had we
there1ore,w . , · h
another solitude. Without my solitude I would be noth. known hell in our immemonal past, wouldnt we s1g
ing more than another down . .
now after a HellLost?
◊
~ M~sic is the .archeology of memory. Its excavations
There are hearts into which even God cannot look {a;;not discovered anywhere a hell that precedes
without losing his innocence.
Sadness begins on chis side of creation , where God
has never been. For, confronted with the human heart,
how could he have maintained h is poise?
memory.

Why is it that every t~e we try to break through the

physical matter that f~~t-~ our spiritual effervescence,
[
◊ all our efforts are in vain? Only music defeats matter on
They say the saints' corpses do not stin k. One more this earth. A few airy tunes, a melodious breeze blowing
proof that saints do not belong to this world. The from the soul, have the power of a blowtorch, melting
corpses of saintly women even give off a scented odor. all our material shackles in its intense flames.
T~ere are perfumes in the air evoking the agony of ◊

s~mts which, if inhaled, send you into a trance. Manya '¾Je ne begins to know solitude when one hear~ th~ si-
tlme have I dosed the eyes of dying holy maidens! lence of things. Then one knows the secret buned m the
◊ stone and reawakened in th e plant, Nature's hidden as
We moderns have discovered hell inside ourselvesand well as open ways. The odd thing about solitude is that
th it knows no inanimate objects. All objects have a lan-
at is our good fortune. For what would have become
of us if we had only had hell's external and histori cal guage which we can decipher only in total silence. There

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is a burning solitude in which all is life.The spirit .
15 . ranee A h ar monious being cannot believe in
asleep in nature, and I would like to interpret the lea.strests. ts cnmina
·. . l s, and paupers have launched him,
dreams of plants .
God. Sa1~ , il ble to all unhappy people.
\ Shadows too have their life of mystery There h
. g hun ava a
· aven't
rnak1n ◊
-• . .
been enough poets m chis world, for so many thin s
have remained undisclosed, estranged &om their
meaning!
0
:n At
. es wh en I am seething
. ttm
__ - 'with cosmic hatred
t allo'therwor dly agents , I would submit
them to
againsakabl tortures in order to save appearances. A se-
◊
unspe . weh'ispers to me incessantly that if I were to
voice
,:~Music is everything . God himself is nothing more . ts I would need to carry a dagger. A St .
cret
than an acoustic hallucination. I'ive among sam uld cl Ii h
' assacre among angels wo e g. t me
◊
Bartholomew s m
immenselY· I wou ld have these preachers of desertion
.i With time suspended, consciousness exhausts itself
from th e wo rl d hung by their tongues, and thrown on a
in the perception of space, and we acquire an eleacic dis-
. Why do we lack the prudence to suppress
bed of lil ies. -
position . Universal stillness does away with our
allotherwordly vocations early on , and to close all wm-
memories in a moment of eternity. Space takes hold of
d0 ws to heaven forever?
us to such extent that the world seems useless, endless

[
How can one not hate the angels, the saints, and
expectation. That is when the longing for stillness pos-
God, that entire band from paradise which fuels such a
sesses us, for space is a tantalizing quiver of immobility.
assionate longing for other shelters and other tempta-
◊
~ions? Heaven irritates me . 1nits Christian guise, it
I am bent over under the weight of a curse called eter-
drives me to despair.
nity, a poison of youth , a balm only for corrupt hearts.
~ man's ~ood health can be measured in direct propor - In the world of feeling, tears are the criterion for
tt~n c?_hisha~ed f~r and resistance to eternit y. Th e
truth . Tears, but not crying . There is a disposition to-
sames illness ts their penchant for it.
ward tears which manifests itself through an inttrnal
Whe~ the void of time gives birch to eternity , one
avalanche. Whoever has cried only outwardl y remains
burns with religious courage. The emptying of time,
ignorant of their origin and meaning. There are con-
whether out of boredom or dread , throws one into a vi-
brant nothingness full of . N . noisseurs of tears who have never actually cried, and yet
, vague pronuses. o same
could find t · · th they try hard not to provoke a cosmic flood!
. e ernity m e world. Crossing th e inner des-
ere constitutes the first step toward . tl . Solitude is like the ravaged bottom of a tumultuous
1
sam mess. sea where rap idly unfurling waves thr eaten ro destroy
s
God ne cles in spiritual voids. He covets inner des-
erts, for God like an ill . b the barriers of our being.
' ness, mcu ates at the point of

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 ...
I

Only poetry lovers are irresponsible and lax . h and accompanied by the saints, she was
. aIlowedeach time on W1t th e bedecked '
spmt . One C1eeIs th at a/IIS
. •
rhu 5
J who embraced her, kissed her, held her.
. e reads a co esus
poem. Not havmg to account for anything to caJcen . s Her mind must have been engulfed m a
. anyone in his arm· . .
( except to hunself), a poet leads you nowhere ,- fast f . ht and vanity to proJeCt such splendid
• 10 Un
frenZY O 1ig
derstand poets is a curse, for one learns then th th ·
. . H ~ shadows!
ts nothing to lose.
: I There isn't anything more soothing than the P i chwere not boring, science would have done
':! . . . . Oetry
•
of the sames. But they fatally limit their poetic gen1us b,
. If tru•chGod long ago. But G o d as we11as t h e sames
. .
1s
addressing an intedocu~or, who is, in most F5 es, God.)
awayw1 scape the d u1lb an a11ry
· o f trut h .
means to e - - .-
◊
Though sacred, poetry 1s a godless frisso ~ ad the a
saints only known that ffi.~~- ~ al to God weakened Saint Teresa is a synonym for heart .
their lyricism, they would have renounced saintliness ◊

and become poets]W e would have had then less philan- Jesus spoke thus co Margaret-Mary: "My daughter ,
thropy in the world, but more freedom and our soul shall be my haven of peace on earth, and your
irresponsibility! Saintliness knows only freedomin Cod. As heart, a bed of delights for my divine love!" Her com-
for mortals, they know only poetic license. ment: "Ever since, my soul has been quiet. I fear that I

◊ might trouble the peace of my Savior!"
.,- The visions of saintly women have an added plus of
femininity, complete with all its charming vanities.
Thus Catherine of Ricci's Z! he Bedecking of the Soul']
is a transposition into spiritual terms of all the earthly
splendors treasured by a vain and beautiful woman. On
the third of May, 1542,during a divine tran ce, Catherine
saw herself surrounded by Thomas Aquinas, Saint Mar-
tha, Saint Cath erine of Siena, Mary Magdal ene, and
Saint Agnes. They were adorning her with pearls and
other precious stones, and sprinkling rich, exotic per-
fumes on her. Her necklaces, her red cape, her
multicolored sash, the precious stones , all symbolized
superior and inferior virtues. Paradise flowers, symbol
of pure desires, enveloped her neck, and her crown of
pearls symbolized th e most rare and saintly virtues.
[
.
While praying before the wounds of Jesus, especially
his open, bleeding heart, Saint Mechthild heard him
say:"Come into my heart and travel across it. Take its
measure, in it you shall find the measure of my love for
you and of my desire to save you for eternity . Come , to
yoy_belongs all the good you shall find in my heard"
:Ye.aincliness interests me for the delirium of self- .
aggrandizement hidden beneath its meekness, its will to
power masked by goodnes f Saints have used their defi-
ciencies to their best advantage. Yet 0 eir megalomania
is undefinable, strange, and moving. ,Those who can
only live in the heart of Jesus and tallc only to God are
never 11anquisbe} ,Whence then our compassion for them?
We no longer believe in them. *
onlyadmire tb~ir illusioll!.
Hence our compassion. --- - - -

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 ,¢,
. l easyto imagine. Much harder to seize is the
·: _,...Who can identify with precision the moment in
. Y
r
elac1ve c · · al
dream that rises rrom spmt u vagueness.No
whi~ paradise resurfacesin_ourco~ciousness? A Weak chao tic
. . so hy can exp1atn . such mom
ents. Philosophers in-
ness m our bones, a subtle sickness invadingour flesh
philo P__t.;ngdistinctions, and leaveus behind witho
· con fllll'"'. ut
and we collapse in a voluptuous inner swoon. Matter'
touche~ by ~cstasy,~perses in a s~~ering light,
~d
sts
a due,
so desperatelyhopeless that
;ngman to
d cling to saints
th e Sh'IJ?-WreOf h' b
everythingvibrates with such allurmg mtensity that likeadro ....
Wn
;- - IS oat.
we
fall on our knees, our arms raised imploringly,like
~ Isn't there enough suffering in the world?It seem
loversor hermits. The stars or the azure hurt our ador- s
ing gaze.So much immaterialityis offensive!The not,co l·udge from the saints who excelin self-torture.
Saintlinesscannot exist without the voluptuousnessof
ecstasyof dissolution and inactualityin life are the cond
i- ainand a perverserefinementof suffering. Saintlines
tions for the actualization
of paradise. s
p ·a1~
isa celestt . '
,¢,
You are aliveonly when you liveby the skin of your
I can'tforgivethe saints for havingundertakentheir
teeth.
reatfeatswithout first tasting the pknitudtoftheepbttntral
,¢,
ind I will not forgivethem for not havingsheda singl
_}; After great pain, a voluptuous feelingcomes, as of e
in- tearof gratitu4e for things that pass.
~e ,!iappiness.I agreewith the saints on this p~ nt:
he Everytime I feel a passionatelongingfor the earth,
who has sipped the cup of suffering to its last dregs
can for allthat is born and dies, everytime I hear the callof
no longer be a pessimist.
the ephemeral,I must protect God from my hatred.I
,¢,
sparehim out of immemorialcowardice. YetI thinkof
While men are haunted by the memory of paradise,
the revengeof transitory things and I fear for hissafet
angelsare tormented by longing for this world. y.
,¢,
,¢,
Without our intimation of the approach_ing night
!,.,
'-:-<
The saints complain of a moment in which they
\ whichwe call God, life would be a che:~fi4 twilight
ceaseto think. There has been some learned talk abou
the total dissolution of conceptual thinking during mo-
ments of ecstasy,but hardly any about that state of
t
I ,¢,
Wereheavenand earth to disappear,the saints'tears
wouldstill endure. Out of light and tears,a newworld
vaguenesswhich, though not yet on the plane of ecsta wouldbe born, in which we could healour memories
sy, .
eradicatesthought. The saints interest me preciselyfor
\ -¢-
this state of spiritual--;agueness.That the flameof ec- Music induces heavenlyvisionsin all mysticsouls.
stasy annihilatesany kind of intellectualactivityis Mariannaof Quito, for example,whenaskedto play

58
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the guitar by her friend, Petronilla, fell into a trance • n of the landscape. I sec glances broken by
deso 1auo d ..
after strumming just a few notes. An hour later, she the ced hearts, sadness evoid of music. De-
lls uncernp . ~
came back to her senses and, with tears running wa ' it of implacable deserts and skies hasled to
air born oL Th " "d' f
down her cheeks, she sighed: "My dear Petronilla I·f sp c·on of saintliness. e an icyo conscious-
I aggrava 1 . l . . .
you only knew how many wonderful things there are an ,, bout which the sames comp am, 1sthe psychic
ness,. lent
a · · · 1reveIacion of
d esert. Th e m1t1a
in heaven!" 0 f external
cqu1va
◊ an monastery: everyt mg 1s not mg. Th us b~gm
h. . h' .
all
, \,You are lost if saints don't disgust you. Saintliness · y . · s le is less than one step from nothing to
A ~ rnysuc1sm • .. . .
systematic insomnia, the heart perpetually awake. Su _ c r God is the positiveexpression of nothingness.
Go d , 10
pressing sleep is a confessed ambition: thus Peter of P ◊

Alcantara, whom Teresa of Avila knew personally, and
who was acclaimed as a saint while still alive, for forty
years did not sleep for more than one and a half hour
each night. Fasting and sleeplessness are required condi-
tions for sainthood.
·.),':Saintliness is a negative sort of perfection. I love life
i:6~ much to attain it. Because of my reserves of health, I
remain a heavenly interloper. There are illnesses chat can
only be treated with a good dose of divinity, but I prefer
the alleviation of pain provided by earthly tranquilizers.
I don't have the gift of infinite joy and pain which used
to throw Saint Teresa of Avila and Angela da Foligno
into ecstasy. I am healthy, that is I can stand and talk
about God, not fall down at the very thought of him.
What a heavy price one must pay for one's health!
◊ ourselves from him only by appealing co him inces-
:yWhenever I chinkof austere solitude, I see gray
shadows cast in deserts by monasteries, and I try to un-
derstand those sad intervals of piety, their mournful
boredom. The passion for solitude, which engenders
"the monastic absolute" -that all-consuming longing
to bury oneself in God-grows in direct proportion to
One can never comprehend the temptation of soli-
cude and of despair without first having knowledge of
che temporal and spatial vacuum in a monastic cell. I
chink of Spanish monasteries in particular, where so
many kings sheltered their melancholies and so many
saints cultivated their madness. Spain symbolizes the
pitiless desert of the soul. Its merit is not only to have
saved the absurd for the world but also to have demon-
strated that man's normal temperature is madness. Thus
saints come naturally to this people which has done
I
away with the distance between heaven and earth. Were
God a cyclops, Spain would be his eye.
◊
One must think of God day and night in order to
wear him out, to turn him into a cliche. We can free
santly, in order co tire ourselves out and make him
superfluous. The persistence with which God settles
himself in our inner space will end by nullifying him.
The time will come when he will fall, like an overripe
fruit grown in the gardens of our solitude.
◊

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 There are tears which pierce through the earth and
◊
rise as stars in other skies . I wonder who has wept our . . s is the overcoming of our condit ion as
stars? Saint 1,nes .
" The desire to be in God does not go with
◊ " reatures.
c ndtrhim, the lo t of fallen creatures.
What is the novelty of Christianity? It is like a thistl 1 life ,rearor u
d ifl cannotlive, let me at least d"te m
. G d0
o . r
in the heart, pri~ing it at every ~ilation. _Christianity e An ·u let me be bune. d a/·IVt In. h'1m.'
better st1 ,
delights in the stght of bloodstams, and tts martyrs have ◊
transformed the world into a bloodbath. In this religion
Whene ver we exhaust all ~e ~o~sib~ ities of a _musical
of blazing twilights, evil defeats the sublime.
the void it leaves behmd 1s mfimte . Nothing can
" ~, Other religions have invented the happiness of slow theme,
aldivinity better th an th e mner
. l . 1· .
mu up 1catl0n,
dissolution ; Christianity has made death a seed, and life reve memory of a Bach fugue. Aft er recoUectmg
· its
·
its roots. Could there by any remedy against this ger- th rough ' .
c · h ascending melody, we throw ourselves mto
reverts
minating death, this liftof death? ,
God's arms . Music is the last emanation of the universe,
◊
just as God is music's final eHluence.
Francis of Assisi founded his order after hearing a
◊
voice saying to him during his prayer: "Go and rebuild
I am like the sea whi ch parts its waters to make room
my ruined house!" The Church owes a lot to such hallu-
for God . Div in e imperialism is man's reflux.
cinations! All the zealots of reformation were prompted
)\[Oppressed by the solitude of matter , God has shed E
~
by divine commands . It would be difficult to explain
oceans of tears. Hence the sea's mysterious appeal, and
their courage or their madness otherwise . Not one
our longing to drown "init, like a shor t cut to him
would have done it alone! But no obstacle is unsur-
through his tears .
mountable when angelic voices cheer you along. It is our
He who has not shed tears on every seashore has not
unhappy lot not to burn with insp iring fever. One does
known the troubling vicin ity of God , that solitude
not hear voices in the cool breeze of calm thoughts, and
which forces upon us an even greater one.
angels speak only to musical ears.
◊
◊
,....•Francis of Assisi's absolute perfection is unforgivable.
·1 I can only see my shadow in God. The closer I come
to him, the longer it grows, and I run away chased by
_ _j He has no weaknes~_!! s that would render him more fa-
miliar, less remote. However, I think that I have found
my own shadow .
◊
one humanizing excuse. When at the end of his lifehe ,;-1_Without God , all is night, and with him light is use-
was about to go ~!ind, the doctors found the cause to be
less.
an excess of tears. I

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 .,...
I despise Christians because they love men at I -c c~.-eswell in the shadow of whores and saintly
. '¾ ·th ltre r...
quartm. Only m the Sahara could I rediscover lo WI
Ve.
woJllen.
◊ \
) The fewer the solutions the liyel.ier the thought! ,, petite for God" of which St. John of the
◊
~i The ap
TT
. f . d
aks is first a negatton o existence an only in
Since there really are no solutions, one is bound Cross spe .
final instance its affirmation. For the man who with
tum round in a vicious circle . Thoughts fed on s dto th
. . ~ hceA\ope has resigned himself to accepting the
a ness
and suffering take the form of aponas, symptoms of blig
---do~s of chis wor Id , sue h " appetite
. ror
c Go d" can
spiritual decline. The insoluble casts a shimmerin
shadow on the world, and lends it the incurable seg·
:;Y be a symptom of nihilism. Its intensity proves to
nous- hat extent one no longer belongs to this earth . One
ness of twilight. There are no solutions, only cowardiu :ecrays a deficiency of vital instincts whenever on~ . .
masquerading as such . All twilights are _Oi:!_my side. thinks instinctively about God. The fulcrum of d1vm1ty
◊---
is at zero vitality.
1· Mysticism revolves around the passion for ecstasy
and a horror of the void. One cannot know one without 1 (Mysticism is an eruptio~ of the absolu_teint~ history .
the ocher. The road to ecstasy and the experience of the Like music, it is the crownmg of culture, its ultimate
void presuppose a will co make the soul a tab11la
rasaa justification.
striving cowards psychological blankne ~ Once it h~
totally rejected the world, the soul is rip-; for a long-
term and fecund emptintss.Consciousness dilates beyond
the limits of the cosmos. Stripping it of images is the
0
1
All nihilists have wrestled with God. One more proof
fhis kinship with nothingness. After you have tram-
pled everything under foot, his is the~astion of
I
essential condition for ecstatic spasms. One sees noth- nothin ness left.
ing except nothingnesAnd
s. the latter has become everything .
~Y is plenitude in a void, aJuli void.It is an over- Men speak of God not only to "place" their madness
whelming frisson which convulses nothingness, an somewhere, but also to dissimulate ic. As long as you are
invasion of beingin absolute emptiness. The void is the busy with him you have an excuse for sadness and soli-
condition for ecstasy just as ecstasy is the condition for tude. God? An official madness .
the void . ◊

◊ Each time weariness with the world cakes on a reli-

Love of the absolute engenders a predilection for gious form, God appears like a sea of forgetfulness.
self-destruction. Hence the passion for monasteries and Drowning in God is a refuge from our own individu-
brothels. Cells and women, in both cases. Weariness ality.

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 .1 There are other times when we encounter him like a ·n do we try to cast off the saints. They leave
In va1
luminous zone at the end of a long regression inside Godbehind chem the way the bee leaves its sting.
ourselves. But the comfort we derive is smaller, for by ◊

finding him i11us, we own him a little .·Jre feel then that Wh do we recall the Greek cynics so rarely?They
we have rights over him, for our a~owledgment does kneW!verything, and suffered the consequences of their
not surmount the limits of illusion.j me indiscretion. It took mankind another thou-
The God-sea and the God-light alternate in our supre b ck · · ' C
sand years to gain a its naivete. ompare to e
d th
experience of divinity. In either case, forgetfulness is ·cs Descartes, like Homer, seems a child. One is
~nl , .
the end. equally predestined to knowledge or to '.gnorance.
◊ Knowledge is like a melancholy sunset ; ignorance, a
Listening to Bach, one sees God come into being. His dawn full of apprehensions.
music generates divinity. It is better to forget the cynics. Their lack of timidity
After a Bach oratorio, cantata, or passion, one feels in front of knowledge betrays a dangerous lust for in-
that God mustbe. Otherwise, Bach's music would be curable diseases.
only heartrending illusion. ◊
Theologians and philosophers wasted so many days •~ J§ood health is the best weapon against religion.
and nights searching for proofs of his existence, ignor- Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been
ing the only valid one: Bach. shaken by religious fears} Christianity has exploited for
◊ its own benefit all the illnesses that plague mankind.
Sadness makes you God's prisoner. Had Christ .promised us /rygi~c-instead of the heavenly
◊ kingdom, we would not have been seeking solace in
Reason's only useful task: to comfort you for noc be- saints ever since his death!

_\ ing God. The more you think of God, the less you arc.
Thus God is nothing more than a projection of our
longing for annihilation.
◊
◊

,\[ ,H.owcould Plotinus or Eckhart be so contemptuous

of time, and never feel any regret for it?Ji he failed mys-
tic is the one who cannot cast off all temporal ties.
The idea of God is the most practical as well as the Caught between mysticism and history, he wanders for
most dangerous of all ideas ever conceived. Through ic, ever in the no-man 's-land connecting this world to the
mankind is both saved and doomed . other. As with music and eroticism, the secret of suc-
The absolute is a presence soluble in blood . cessful mysticism is the defeat of time and
◊ individuation.

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◊ J d,sgus
I can't help hearing a death knell ringing in eterni .
ty.
therein lies my quarrel with mysticism.
is not alone
j~ Life in God is the death of being. One
withhim but in him. It is what St . John of the Cross
mysteriously called "soledad en Dios." For him, the
union of man's solitude with God's infinite desert is Ut-
ter delight, a sign of their complete identity. What
happens to che mystic during his divine adventure, what
doeshedowith God?We do not know, for not even he can
tell us.
If we had direct access to mystical joy without the
trials which precede ecstasy, divine happiness would be
available to everyone. But since there is no such avail-
ability, we are forced to climb a ladder without ever
re_aching its last step .
. ·. Next to the mystics' "soledad en Dios, " there is an-
other solitude, or rather an exik in him : the sensation of
not feeling at homeinside him.
◊ umph proves nothing . We who pass through
To forget the saints , we must be bored with God.
Once we are rid of God, who would dare bar our way?
The angels and the saints, crushed under the ruins of
his temple, cry out in pain.
It is easier for me to imagine the Alps turning into a
weeping willow than to imagine a man who loves God.
How such love comes about, God only knows. But not
even God knows wby . God is the burial ground of tran-
scendental vagrants .
◊ Aren't love, death , God, or saintliness interchangeable
It is harder to forget saintly women, for they seduce
us with their divine and melancholy beauty. God can
. t us once we've had enough of him . But Wt'.
.
e;LS Y h holy maidens whose tears we have avidly
. co c e
d,ng d whose sadness has been the source of un-
drunk,an
ble pleasures.
speaka ◊
The lase step cowards nihilism is the disapp earance
into divinity.
Th e Greeks only lookedat nature. Had they truly loved
. the would not have placed its mystery in transcen-
1c, y d. . f
dence. All religions are a 1sposses1on o nature .
◊
Nothing but thorns bloom in God .
\ l~'fhe mystics do not know anything about lomlinm
in' God. They are blissfully ignorant of the tragedy
which begin s in God 's proximity , the consciousness of
insanity which torments chose prostrate at his feet.
Saints and mystics alike end in tr iumph when they
penetrate divinity with erotic abandon. But their tri-
Divinity
leave them behind, ignorant of th e road which leads
away from God. The y have never asked themselves
the question, "W hat begins after God ," and for that I
cannot forgive the~ l
◊
' l' Thejail out of timeis always preceded by a fainting fit,
proof that phys iology and etern ity are closely related.
◊
Life is a series of obsessions one must do away with.
and circumstantial obsessions?
◊

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 y \ " I
)

Askesis is one more proof that God is bo e interested in saints to the extent that they
vo1d o f v1t
" · al"1ty.Th e more we die in the fl hrn °ut Of a
r , ar
,,, "oetsthought-provo k"mg or comrortmg
c .
. es and. .
time, th~ closer we are to him. God is a blig_h~ lil areeither ◊
earthly Joys. 00
- -- - all eir madness, saints would merely be
◊
Wichout th
The creation of man was a cosmic catacl Christians.
, ysm, and
a ft ersho cks have become Gods nightmare M . its an of genius, the absolute coincides with his
s. an 1sa
paradox of nature, equally removed from it d fr
an om
I/for a m
'A: d ons: for t he samts,. 1t . 1s
. not on ly outs1"de, b
ut
God. The order of things in heaven and on ri\'ate em cl .
hh P J Though they act extravagan y, samts
. .
changed ever smce the creation of conscious
. .
Qff

1t, God appeared m his true light as one more

~
w·
ness. ith
h"
not tng-
ness.
◊ ,:Saudelairerivals St. John of the Cr~ss. ~ilke was a
My definition of a musician: a man who hears
through all his senses. Anna Magadalena, Bach's second
wife, records in her diary the striking impression made
by her husband's eyes: they were listeningeyes.
:' .-She also recalls: "Once I went into his room while he
was composing i\h, Golgotha!' from St . Matthew's Pas-
sion. I was amazed to see his face, usually calm and fresh
pink, turned gray and covered with tears. He didn't even
notice me, so I crept back outside, sat down on the step
by his door and started to cry." ~?,ch's music is the me-
dium of heavenly transfiguration. In it there are no
feelings, only God and the world, linked by a ladder of
tears. ,
◊ giblememory.
The saints weep. I comment on their tears. All we
have left is commentary, since all the tears have already
been wept.
~:al··c ·
are more
than the poets. Madness ~~e name oflove and
is not very interesting. The poets have no
sufrenng - -
de excuses for their madness.
ready-ma .
~ --
b
A nm·g\ saint Poetic genius and samtlmess share a
.
secret Penchant for self-destruction.
◊
,\•Memory becomes .~ctive once_it ceases to ofer~te in a
te'mporal framework .'The expenence ~f eternity 1sactu-
ali1ii)itoccurs anywhere and anyho~ without reference
to our past. It is but a leap out of nme, so we do ~ot
need to remember anything. Whenever our essential
past is concerned, i.e., the eternitywhi~ precedes time,_
I
only pretemporal memories can reveal Ltto us. There 1s
a kind of memory, deep and dormant, which werarely
awaken.It goes all the way back to the beginning of
time, to God and the limits of remembrance. It is intelli-
All memories are symptoms of illness. Life ~ its p~re
· th
state is absolute actuality. Memory 1s e negatton of in-
stinct, its hypertrophy, an incurable disease.
◊

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 r
I
Eternity is not just another attribute of becornin .
God's last remains before reveling without hin-
is its negation. Human nature is equally divided be~• it
to devour
. he freedom t h at 10
c ll
ows upon anm'h'lI at1on.
.
tween eternity and becoming. This division drancein t ◊
encompasses our tragedy.
ambiguity of religion is born from a mixture of
◊ The . and
finality. Re1· . 1s
1g1on . a sm1·1e mask'mg
cos-
Mankind has lived without God ever since it strip ed bsurd icy
a ·c nonsen se one last wafito f penume
1 drntmg
·c. ·
over
him of his personal characteristics. By trying to wide~ ,
[1U . ss Thus, when it runs out of arguments, reli-
the Almighty's sphere of influence, we have unwitting! nothingne . (r .
. finds recourse in tears Only tears can stillensure
put him beyond the pale. Whom shall we address if n~t
gio_n al quilibrium and keep God alive. Our longing
a person who can listen and answer? Having gained so un1vers e
. will fade away with our last tear. 1
for him
much space, he is everywhere and nowhere. Today he is
◊
at most the universal Absentee.
•There are moments when one would like to lay down
We have alienated God by magnifying him . Why
have we denied him his heavenly modesty, what immea-
\k'.,
ones ar ms and dig one's grave dose to God's; or maybe
. .
fall into the stony despair of an ascetic who discovers
surable pride has prompted us to falsify him? He has
too late in life the futility of renunciation.
never been less than he is today, when he is everything!
◊
Thus we are punished for having been too generous
How tiresome is the idea of God! It is a fatal formof
with him . He who has lost God the person will never
neurasthenia, its presence in consciousness causesfa-
find him again, no matter how hard he searches for him
tigue, and a low, exhausting fever. ~ow ~id so many
in other guises.
saints manage to live to old age w1th their constant ob-
By trying to help God, we exposed him to human
session with God? They even cut down on their sleep to
jealousy. Thus, having tried to mend a cosmic error, we
have more time to thmk about him and worship him!
have destroyed the only priceless error .
◊
◊
\ Artists can't be religious. To have faith one must re-
Man's historical destiny is to experiment with the
main passive vis-a-vis the world. The believermust not
idea of God. Having exhausted all the possibilities of di-
do anything.\T he artist can't believe becausehe hasno
vine experience, he inevitably winds up loathing the ab-
tirne:7_,
solute. Only then can he breathe freely. Yet the struggle
◊
against a God who has taken shelter in the innermost
•~t (i •
In fact, there 1s only Go d an d me. H's1 silenceinvali-
corners of our soul is fraught with ineffable misery,
dates us both .
originating in the fear oflosing him. It is as if one needs

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 I can die in peace for I no longer expect anythin mystical delirium is complete ecstasy.
whereas
from him. Our encounter has divided us even mor g staSY• cakeadvantageof moments of delirium to
e. d seems to
Each human life is one more proof of his nothingness. Go of us his presence .
ind some
relll ◊
◊

How many people experience the fall from a height in harmony with the universe is to fall inco
Tobe means that you
know everyth' mg, are m
.
to a pr~cipice? The parting from God has yet to be set · dom, I t .
to music. wis with everything, but not with much else! All
reernent
◊ ag t together are not worth a single one of
chesages pu , . Th .
Without God, everything is nothingness . But God is , s or Ivan Kararnazovs ravings. ere 1s
Lears curse
the supreme nothingness! . blander or more comfortable than stoicism as
00 th mg · ification
· o f w1s-
·
❖ a ractical and a th eoretlc· al JUSt
both p . . al . th . .
The final chapter of any metaphysics deals exclusive( I there a greater spmtu vice an renunc1at1on?
with God. Philosophical thought is always circling y dom. s f . . al ·ta1· I culmi
\-./Disagreement is a si~ o spmcu v1 ity. t -
around God but rarely does it radiate from insidthim. nates m · disagreement with God . Were we to make peace
Philosophical thought is redeemed through human im- with God, we wouldn't live anymore, he would live for
manence in divinity. Once man has arrived insidtGod, he us.~s long as we ass~ilat~ ourselve~ to himwe do not
builds ovtr and abovthim. Thus man surpasses himself; he · t whereas if we res!St him, there IS no reason for us
ex1s,
would otherwise die under his own weight. to exist!
◊ Jfl :ere tired of living, God would be my last resort.
I am sorry sometimes that God no longer fills us As long as I am still racked by despair, I can't leaveoff
with dread. If only we could feel again the primordial harrowing him.
quiver of dread in front of the unknown! I imagine man's isolation thus: a winery landscape in
¢,
which the snow is like materialized ingenuity; a light
·· _The more we abandon ourselves to feelings, the more mist blurring the contours of the land; white silence,
estranged from life we becom ~ Paroxysms of feeling and in it, Man, ghost-like, an exile among the snow
draw us out of ourselves into a realm bordering on the flakes.
divine. Intense.love, pain, or loathing reach their final God's destiny, like that of ordinary morrals in face,is
limit in God. Without a transcendental theme, delirium to be misunderstood. Yet there must be a few who un-
is mere pathology. With divinity at its center, it be- derstand him. If not, whence the painful certainty
comes revelation, a crowning of the spirit . God and which grips us sometimes that we can no longer progrw
delirium shoulder each other. Ecstasy systematizes the in him? And wherefore the long wakeful nights when we
experience of divinity. Delirium is an anticipation of ec- exhaust him through thought and remorse? How scrange

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 that we discover him so late, and that his absence I
•.
such a spmtu al emptme .
ss! eaves
Only by thinking about him constantly and
mer-
cilessly, only by setting siege to his solitude can we .
rich spoils in our battle with him. If we lose hea win
. . rt and
go halfway only, he will be Just one more failure.
◊ Were it not for our moments of inquisitive sadness,
The more one is obsessed with God the less • God would not exist.
' O ne 1s
innocent . Nobody bothered about him in paradise. Th
fall brought about this divine torture. It's not possible e
to be conscious of divinity without guilt. Thus God is
rarely to be found in an innocent soul.
Contact with divinity cancels innocence because ev-
ery time one thinks of God one meddles with his
affairs. "He who sees God will die!" The infernal ex-
panses of divinity are as disturbing as vice. Those who
have endowed God with virtues have only a superficial
conception of him.
◊ finitely greater impact: it brings loneliness and the dread
Theology is the negation of divinity. Looking for
proofs of God's existence is a crazy idea. All the theo-
logical treatises put together are not worth a single
1 sentence from Saint Teresa! We have not gained one cer-
titude since the beginning of theology until today, for
_J theology is the atheist's mode of believing. The most
obscure mystical mumbo-jumbo is closer to God than
the Summathtologiat, and a child's simple prayer offers a
greater ontological guarantee than all ecumenical
synods. All that is institution and theory ceases to be
lift.The church and theology have made possible God's
endless agony. Only mysticism has given him life once in
Theology would be valuable were we to have a
a
a wh .e. · to G d h. h.
l relation · than a physiolo
o , w IC 1seasier
11,toret1Ca oi-
. "
ihe poor maidservant who used to say that she
,a/one,
onlYbelieved in God when she h ad a toothache puts all
theologians to shame.
We could replace theology with what a poet once
called the "science of tears." It has directarguments and
an immediate
method.
Nothing more exquisite or more disturbing than to
have the thought of God occur while one lies in the
arms of a whore! It is easy to think of him after a page
from the Bible or after an oratorio, but God's presence
manifested in the midst of vulgar debauchery has an in-
of nothingness back to mind with full force.
◊
I wish my heart were an organ pipe, and I the transla-
tor of God's silences.
◊
I have always wondered about people who are "crazy
about God," who have sacrificed everything for him,
first of all their minds. Sometimes I surmise how one
could die for him in a moment of morbid inspiration.
Hence the immaterial attraction that death has for me.
There is something rotten in the idea of God !
◊
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 urning. Pity for God is a human being's
Few are the poets who know the genealogy of te dGodo f mo
For if they knew it, they would no longer say "I." b::· sa 1i de
tastSO tu . ◊
"God." We cry in God.
well be that man's sole purpose is none
❖
~ Jtrnayvery ld . h 1
co thinkof God. If we cou e1t er ove h.im or
The obsession with God dislodges earthly love. One
other chh~ e would be saved. It is only by thinking of
cannot love both God and a woman at the same rime . ore un, w
G d makes one feel unconuorta e. Start pry-
1gn
~c bl
without being torn between them : they are incompatible him chat o Yi . . '
with each other. One woman is enough to rid us of . him and you are lost. et prying IS mans very
inginto No d d .h.
wonder chat Go was one wit m no time .
God, and God can rid us of all women.
purpoHse. 'thstands many things, but thinking makes
◊ at all. e w1 .
Every revolt is directed against Cre!ltion. Any rebel- hintlose substance. Yet c~er~ hav_ebeen ph1l~soph~rs
lious gesture, however small, undermines the universal ccributed to hun mfimte thought. God 1s
who have a J .
order accepted by the slaves of God. One cannot be but an old fru~y coat which you must put on
no thin g -- Wh b.
both for God and against his law. Yet out of love for if you have nothing better co wear. at a 1ectpoverty!
him one could dismiss and despise Creation . ◊

In his name one cannot rebel even against sin. For the Human history is in fact a divine drama. God is not
supreme Reactionary, anarchy is the only sin. only mixed up with it, he too suffe~s, but with infin'.tely
Every revolt is atheistic. The plan of creation did not more intensity, the process of creation and destruction
anticipate anarchy. We know very well that only animals which defines life. We have this unhappiness in com-
lounged about in paradise. Then one of chem got tired mon, but given his dimensions, it may consume him
of it, gave up bliss, and became Man . Our whole history first. Our solidarity with him under the curse of exis-
has been built on this first rebellion. tence is the reason why all irony directed towards him
◊ cums back against us. To doubt God is to be self-

___, Someday this old shack we call the world will fall ironical. Who has suffered more than us mortals be-

-- apart. How , we don't know, and we don 't really care ei-
ther. Since nothing has real substance, and life is a twirl_
in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.
◊ tening a bit more carefully to one's inner voice is
Wheneve r I try to get closer to God, I'm hie by a
wave of pity that surges towards his desolate heights.
One would like to show sympathy toward this lonely,
cause he is not what he should have been?
◊
Sometimes God is so easy to make out that just lis-
enough. This is the explanation for the familiarity of
those rare moments when revelation of the divine is ex-
perienced outside of ecstasy.

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 , ndition: he enjoys the voluptousness of
heros co f.
the .chout awareness o 1t.
All forms of divinity are autobiographical. Not on}
death :' 05 renunciation. What would be the point
do they come out of us, we are also mirrored in thern. r{ S iflt 111ea
P nd renunciation through heroism? Heroes
.
vinity is introspection's double vision revealing the lifet-
of a se~oat the dawn of civilizations, during pre-
of the soul as both I and God.We see ourselves in hint
aboun . and Gothic epochs, when people, not having
and he sees himself in us. f-Jomenc . . al . fy their. thirst
. for
· need spmtu torture, sat1s
. Could God carry the weight of all my deficiencies? et expene . . .
Wouldn't he succumb under the tremendous load of all
Y iation through a denvat1ve: heroism.
renunc th d. . d th
my misforrunes? There is no link be~een e 1v~e an e heroic.
I understand myself only through the image I have of no heroic attnbutes. Jesus 1sa hero only to the
God h as
him. Self-knowledge is only possible through him. He that he is human.
eX[e nt .
who does not think about God will forever remain a U to Beethoven, music was redolent of heaven.Bee-
stranger to himself. God is self-knowledge, and univer- thov~n'sheroic tumult stripped divinity down to a
sal history is a description of his various forms. human drama. I don't know of any music more political
◊ thanhis. It marks a triumph over the world but does not
Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has an
philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way y
Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical
theme? Even after having read the most profound
venture beyond it.
Titans are no longer attractive once we think of God.
Intimations of God's supreme indifference render man's
revolt utterly pointless. To be a hero only in the eyes of
I
thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only men is a paltry thing. There is no consolation in dying
music gives definitive answers. like a hero, i.e., misunderstood by the gods.
◊ ◊

\ Thinking is not exhaustive; there are infinite varia- What would I do without Dutch landscape painting,

- ~io~s~n the theme of God. Thinking and poetry have

mttn11datedhim, but they have never solved the mystery
gathered around his persona. Thus we have buried him
with all his secrets. A mind-boggling adventure: first his,
then ours as well.
◊ size; herds grazing not grass but infinity; men who don't
Of all human beings, the hero is the one who thinks
least ab~ut death. Yet is there anyone who has a greater
unconscious longing for death? Thus paradox defines
without Salomon and Jacob Ruysdael or Aert van der
Neer? Their landscapes awaken in me dreams animated
by sea breezes, drifting clouds, and twilight colors. All
of them are a commentary on melancholy. Trees and
desolate patches of water under a sky too vast for their
seem to go anywhere, frozen in expectation under the
shadows spreading over the land-it is a universewhose
mystery is intensified by the very light itself Vermeer

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: D:.=
, tt• of mtimocy~d ,~enci:r
showed us in his portraits and his interiors how tonces
der silences palpable without abusing the technique
ren.,
of
\
t
.
deficien~Y
1aces
El Greco's oval faces represent the shape of
• stretched towards God. To us, Spain is a
human G d it is a conflagration. The deserts of the
e• tO O ,
chiaroscuro. By contrast, Jacob Ruysdael, more of a 63111' d the sky are united through fire. Russia and
.
than a painter, wor ks wi'th m
. fi . . poet earth_ an burning together with Spain and God.
mte spaces m which si-
lences become palpable through a chiaroscuro of S1·beria are t skeptical Russia. n or Spam. .
The rnos ard 1smore pas-
monumental proportions. In his paintings, you can · love with God than any German
al- · nateym 1 .
most bearthe silence of twilight. Such is the wistful si0 h ·c,·an. The chiaro . .
etap ysi scuro of Dutch pamtmg can-
charm of Dutch landscape painting , to which is added 111 .
ch in intensity the burning shadows of El Greco
the intimation of fraility without which melancholy not rnat . f.
aran's paintings. In spite o its deep mystery,
would not be poetry. or Zur b
chiaroscuro remains alienated and far removed
◊
o~ ch . .
from God. Melancholy is resis~t to the absolute.
.
Russia and Spain-two countries pregnant with Between Spain and Holland lies the measurelessd1S-
God. Other countries know him, but do not carry him ce from despair to melancholy. Even Rembrandt
in their womb. :ices us to rest in his shadows, and his chiaroscuro
A nation's mission in this world is to reveal at least is
like a cradle in which we die peacefully, having lived
oneof God's attributes, to show us one of his hidden
as- without suffering. All of Rembrandt is nothing but
pects. By realizing in itself some of divinity's secret the
expectation of old age. le would be hard to find a more
qualities, a nation diminishes the power of the Al-
thoughtful and more resigned artist .
mighty, reduces his mystery.
Among the Dutch, he alone understood God. (Coul
Thousand of years of history have seriously jeopar- d
\ it be that for this reason he painted so few landscapes?)
dized his authority. Nations have competed in
But his God does not de-form and dis-figure as in El
worshiping him, ignorant of the evil they caused. Had
\ Greco, he comes forth from mysterious shadows,
all countries resembled Russia and Spain, he would
be steeped in profound but restrained piety. What a stroke
totally finished today. Russian and Spanish atheism
is ·1 of good luck that Rembrandt was a painter and not
inspired by the Almighty: through atheism he defend a
s philosopher! Wisdom has been Holland's curse, and
himself against all-consuming faith. Our divine Father it
\ has taken it right out of history!
welcomes his sons, the atheists, with open arms!
1 Is there another criterion for art besides closenessto
Nobody has represented heavenly passion in painting
\. heaven? Intensity and passion can be measured only
better than El Greco. Has God ever been besieged by in
relation to the absolute. But this criterion givesus no
human figures with a greater and more intense aggres
- solace. Both Russia and Spain teach us that we are never
sion? Far from being the product of an optical
as close to God as to earn the right of being atheiSts
!

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 ◊
l
. . fi itely subtle nostalgic vibrations. But the abso-
All great ideas should be followed by an excla t1,e1in
r n
rnati 1 h h th
mark-a warning signal similar to the skull
and c on I0 ceresonates direct y t .roug.
e organ. lt is the least
h .
toss- . strument and 1t gives t e 1mpr .
bones drawn on high-voltage transformers. ess1onrhac ic
hurnan. inlf By contr
ast, t e ce11
h
◊ lays itse . o and the flute exhibit
~ che human flaws, transfigured by a supernatur
Could everything be so totally devoid of mean al re-
ing?
Each time I look up at the sky, I am unpleasant gret.
ly re- You happen to wa1k.mto a ch urch one day, you
minded that there is no history . cast
anindifferent glance at your surro~ndings, when
~ (f _i_meis a consolation But consciousn sud-
ess defeats denlythe organ's powerful harmonics burst forth
time. There is no easy therapy against consc and
iousness . lm you· or, one melancholy afternoon, as you
Negating time is an illness. Purity and health 0 verw he '
in life are ·-less
the apotheosis of futility. Eternity is rot, and stro11amu ly through the streets, the meditations of a
rion which the human worm feeds on.
God a car- cello or the sighs of a flute arrest your progress:
our solitude then be less than divine?
could n:;;
◊
There are many thinkers and dreamers who
never feel
Y
,,--.-
,,..,,,
◊

Forms and colors burn vertically in El Greco

1M
the need for God. Sadness without the need . In van
for conso- ·Go h's paintings too , objects are flames and
lation does not guarantee a religious experience g colors
. Those burn, but horizontally, sprea d.mg out m . ~
limited to sadness per se are strangers to God. space. an
The ab- Gogh is El Greco without God, without heav
solute is a specific tonality of sadness. _en..
An artist's center of gravity does not explam
◊
his for-
mal structure and style so much as his inner
Pascal established the difference between God
\ the ideaof God when he distinguished betwe
of Abraham and Job on the one hand and the
and
en the God
philoso-
atmosphere. For El Greco, the world throws i~el~
wards God, while in van Gogh it collapses on
to-
its mner
chaos.
phers' God on the other. One must add to his
◊
distinction the one between Bach and the rest
of music, Full of loathing for the world , we feel that we
Teresa of Avila and the rest of the saints, Rilke muSt
and the rid ourselves of feelings. They are the cause of
rest of poetry. allour
pointless commitments, prompting \Js to say
a cowardly
◊ "yes!,, to real' M d . h fu
The organ is a cosmogony of tears. It has a
1ty. a wit ry, we £··
II into fits of secu-
au
meta- lar saintliness, and compose our own ept·taph Thus we
physical resonance not to be found either in . · "
the cello or 11ve . .
the flute, except, possibly, in their lyrical expre
our life as if it were a var1a t1onon the theme Here
ssion and lies.... "

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 ◊
. with worms. Baudelaire taught me that lift:
l7Prayer is the martyrdom of the spirit proin teeming · h
., Pted b skY ~cy of worms m t e sun, and happine s the
fear of solitude. Y . the ecst .....
,s f worms.
da.nceo ◊
Life is legalized, consecrated absurdity.
u looked at yourself in the mirror when
◊ .\ ,1-1aveyo
j . stood between you and death? Have you ques-
' The task of a solitary man is to be even mo .
..,, re soht:i.... o'othingd ur eyes? An d b Y loo k'mg mto · them, have you
◊ -y . ·0 ne yo .
tt derstood that you cannot die? Your pupils di-
The dull sadness of monasteries wore an em . then un
. ptiness b conquered terror are more impenetrable than
into the soul of the monks, known m the MidcU A lated y
. 11" fr e "&es
S hinX,From th e1r . l .
g assy tmmo bil.
tty a certitude,
. Like _naus_e~ we mg UP.~m the desert of
as acedia the theP l tonic in • b ' f . us crorm, 1s ' bom: you
its ne mysteno
heart acedia 1sreligious spleen. It 1s a loathing n strange Y h il
' . . . . . It comes from t es ence of our gaze meeting
God but in him. Aced1a gathers mto itself the m of
Ot cannotdie.
. .1tself., the Eitian
eaning calmness of a dream facing the ter-
of all those Sunda! afre~noons sp~nt in the weightysi-
d eath. Each time the fear of death grabs you, look
lence of monasteries. It 1s Baudelaire s soul in the
1 ror o f .
. the mirror. You will then understand why you can
Middle Ages. 10

Ecstasy creates its own divine landscape; acediadis-
figures the landscape, bleeds sap from nature, poisons
life with an ennui_~hich only we, accursed mortals, can
still comprehend. ~odern acedia is no longer monastic
solitude-though our souls are our cloisters-but a
void, and the dread of an inefficient, derelict God.
For the medieval monks God waseven when h~
seemed dull, cruel, or absent. Our acedia has turned
God into an ornament crowning all our doubts . For
skeptics, the absolute has always been purely decorativ.e
◊ gan to have unlimited free time, they did not kno~ how
Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who
you are. In other words, how do you fill out an empty
life? With women, books, or wordly ambitions? No
matter what you do, the starting point is boredom , and
the end self-destruction . The emblem of our fate: the
never d,·e· Your eyes know everything. For in them there
are sPecks of nothingn ~-
ess, which assure you that noth-
ing more can happe ?-J
The decadence of a nation coincides with its maxi-
mum of collective lucidity. History makes instincts
grow weaker, and on their ruin boredom blossoms. The
English are a nation of pirates who got bored once they
had robbed the world. The Romans were not wiped out
by the invasions of the barbarians, nor by the Christian
virus, but by a more subtle evil, boredom. Once they be-
to employ it. Free time is a bearable curse for a ~er,
but for a people it is pure torture. What does free time
mean, if not duration without content?
Dawn is full of ideals, twilight only of ideas. Passion
is replaced by the need for diversion. Epicureanism and

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 d caves. Life is our solu tion to boredo
r roun . rn.
Stoicism were the cures that ancient Greece, in the dc g,hoy,I sadness , despair , terror, and ecstasy grow
111
L
throes of its final agony, tried to apply to its ma[ du ., trunk. Ther e are flowers f I
.l . . f l Sttclt 1!NfelaJl
•·- Of bore dom's thick o me -
These, like the multip e re11g1onso A exandrian s · 0 11t d of sadness, but only boredom hasroots
. . h ' h k d Yncre- ~~~ .
tism were mere p all1at1vesw 1c mas e the illness
a/1 ~e secret is to know how to be bored in an tHtnti11/
without annulling its virulence . A satiated people suf. If Jv1ostpeople, however, never even scratch the s
fers from spleen as much as a man who has lived too ~- . ur-
• [boredom , To live realboredom, one must have
waY
long and knows too much . faceo
◊
s,ylt- ◊
The difference between the sweaty, earthy boredorn
The soul of chose haunt~d by God is like a decayed
of the Russians and the perfumed refinements ofF rench
. l·ccered with half-withered £lowersand rotten
and English boredom is smaller than it seems They ring, 1 .
· are P
s d ept by foul odors. It 1s the soul of blackmailing

I
both caused by a deficiency of the blood. An organic bu s, sw , . . .
. uch as Leon Bloy, and of ant1-Chnst1an Chris-
antinomy causes boredom to secrete corrosive toxins of saints 5
. ch as Nietzsche. I regret that I am not Judas to
anxiety. Any kind of boredom will reveal two things to ttaflS SU
us: our body and the nothingness of the world. God and know remorse.
betray
◊
◊

The only way to love God is to hate him . Noc even
infallible proof of his nonexistence could suppress the
fury of Man, who has invented God to quench his thirst
for love and, especially, hate. Is he anything but the fate-
ful moment when our life totters on the brink of
destruction ? Who cares whether he is or not since
through him lucidity balances itself out with madness
The urge co desecrate tombs and to give life to ceme-
teries in an apocalypse of springtime! There is life only
in spiting death's absoluteness . Simple peasants knew it
when they made love in cemeteries and challenged
death's aggressiveness with their passionate sighs. Sexu-
ality transfigured by tombstones, how tantalizing!
◊

and we discharge our fury by embracing him with mur- It is impossible for us to anticipate the exact moment
derous passion ? when we shall have intimations of the Last Judgment.
◊ Sometimes, in the middle of a vulgar fit of anger, or
Boredom is the ~implest way to abolish time, ecstasy while delivering ourselves of a weighty banality, a sort of
the most complex. The more bored one is, the more terminal emotion seizes us. We can then talkfor hours
self-consciou:: Illn~sses affect specific places in the on end with people we despise, we can say happy and ir-
body, which can be isolated and cured . But boredom relevant things without their noticing how dose we are
spreads over the entire body like a cancer, seeps into our to the Last Judgment, and how lost to the world! He
organs and carves out holes that resemble a system of who does not have a constant expectation of the End is

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 too cowardly to respond to this last provocatio c
n rrorn
God by having an all-out fight with the master of .
versal stupidity, the maker of a mediocre and uni-
superfluous world.
◊
One does not need to be a Christian in order to fear
the Last Judgment, or even to understand it. Christian.
ity did nothing but exploit human anguish to make to
profits for an unscrupulous divinity whose best ally
dread.
w!
◊ resentation of the end of history, whether in sacredor
The Last Judgment appears in consciousness as a
vague and unpredictable moment . It is nevertheless a
stageof anxiety. You think that you are moving with
◊
With springtime comes a longing for death. The Last
ent is the religious expression of this longing.
Judgm ◊
'fhe Last Judgment is God's meeting with the future,
. with the graves.
i.e.,
ihough the Last Judgment is mere nonsense and an
. ult to our intelligence, it nevertheless constitutes an
1ns
useful concept that explains our nothingness. The rep-
profane form, is ~ssential to our spiri~.Thus the most
absurd idea acquires the force of destiny.
◊

■
spiteful dread through absolute infinity, when suddenly Irony is an exercise in metaphysical frivolity.The
there is a new obstacle : the Last Judgment . So what! Is ironic "I" annihilates the world. When nothing is left
God trying to kill us once more? standing, one experiences exciting power thrills.The
◊ ironic mode is a ruse of self-importance: to make up for
Boredom is the only argument against immortality. its nonexistence, the "I" becomes everything. Irony be-
From it derive all our negations . comes serious when it yields an implacable vision of
◊ nothingness. Tragedy is the last stage of irony.
I'm looking for what is. A pointless search. Let's ◊
march to the Last Judgment with flowers in our but- All stands still, even God . Only our heartbeats re-
tonholes! mind us that once there was Time. He who does not
◊ know that he has a heart does not know that Time ex-
I listen to silence and I cannot stifle its voice: it'sall ists and that he lives in Time . The beating of our heart

-
over.These words heralded the beginning of the world, threw us out of paradise; when we understood its mean-
since only silence preceded it. ing we fell into Time.
◊ ◊
Compared to the Last Judgment, everything seems .
Th e repression f . . . ul es is a ma1·or cause
o cnmm al unp s
frivolous, even the idea of God . Once there, you are · and how many
of unhappiness. How many fr ustrauons l
. . . . f 'f co let ourseves
ashamed of all that does not belong to the end. mdlVldualswe could get nd o 1 we were

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go! We bury in our soul h
not killed. Misanth
.
s_t e corpses of th
~ ould we gain by it, We would then know
ropy ts the . ose w h w , cs of history, an d do wit. hout "events.''
mg carcasses. There is a f: ·1 d nuasrna of the. e ave . 115
.1,hat
• vv
a1 e ex .
. P"
1r ,,o I . h po1l1 . .
\ ..,_.
ecut1oner ...tre~. JI che,ig ld know how many times m the cour se of
◊
:. r' l he world is divided b
tn each
oflls, . ,e
sill
we wou
Nfanrose
above himself. Tears bestow on be-
Stu ck . etween ow ·5,orY
. .
f eternity; they save 1t. Thus, for exam-
m the middle th ners and b h1 aura o
. , e poor form th eggars
tent of history. Owners and b 111i11gaJl ld war be without them? Tears transfigure
e colorless . C0 woU
· eggars alik con. e what 'fy · c They hold the key to the secrets of
reactionaries. Neither •h c
w1s rnr chan
e are Pl ' d ;usc1 1 · .
poor are left to struggle w· crinieall A hermeneutics of tears would show us the
h ge or progressth ·verse
b . . tt out thern soc· . e the u111 d from ecstasy to anat h ema.
e a meanmgless concept: their h ietyWould that lea s
. d h . opes way A.

arteries, an t e1r despair the bl d fare so . ' V

h' cietys
oo o isto T · es when you want to go on a hunger
owners and the beggars are P , ry. he . .,-hre are um
arasttes on the et . 1 e long to be abandoned and humiliated, spat
poor. There are many recipes ag . ernal
. amst wretched strike-you sby dragged in the gutter, giving up the
none against poverty. ness,hut b passer ,
up011 Y whores and beggars. But your fellow crea-
t among
◊ gh05 cruel that they deny you the freedom to die
The passion for the absolute in the soul f k . curesare 50 · d. · th ·
. lik 1 ompted by an m iscreet pity, ey moisten
ts e an ange grafted on a leper. Everyth· o as ept1c of hunger. P r . . .
.h h . . . · t in ume to rob you of your liberation. So-
. mg t at isne1- o~ I~ Jm
t er God nor worm ts a hybrid. Since we cannot be Y_
.
_1_ everything away from you but it prevents you
c1etytaJ1..es
guardians of infinity, there is nothing left forus to do · g And thus you begin to fear that you will
except mind the corpses! fromdyin·
missevery good opportunity. to cro
akr
.
◊ ◊-
There will be no cure for melancholy as long asthere The frightful suspicion that God might be a second-
is spring. Nature itself is taken ill in springtime, chis rankproblem tears me away from life. Inspired by a lu-
sensual and cruel season which makes you wantto love cidityclose to madness, such suspicions make me cross
and die. myarms and shrug my shoulders: what else can I do?
◊ Could it be that even God has been corrupted by the
Venice is not a historic reality but a function of mel- futilityof existence? Could the illness of the inessential
ancholy, a town of tears caught between doubts and haveaffected his essence? It must be so, since we doubt
dreams. bothhis health and his virtue! God is no longer; not
◊ evenour curses could bring him back to us. In what old
.'.· I often think of a hermeneutics of tears, whichwould people'shome does he drag on his existence? I under-
'uncover their origins and list all possible interpreta- standnow: he is the absolute that sparesitself! This

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 a Christian point of view,the leper wh. I
world does not deserveanything better than a senile
f rorn . o oves
osy is superior to the one who merely ac .
his 1epr ceptsit,
God. •ng rnan who suffers to the one who has r · d
◊
chedy1 . . .. es1gne
. If., despru.rto compromise.
hllllse . Bylegitimizingcrever,
Life is a realityonly for wholesome people, high Christianity has made possible a "culture" of saints.
priests of eternal stupidity! ◊
◊
Without illness there is no absolute knowledge.Ill-
The ringing of bells announces the Last Judgment. ·s the primary cause of history; sin, onlya
For two thousand years bells have been predicting the / ness1
I ii seco~ary one. .
end, fillingwith solemnity the agony to which Chris-
' \ feonsciousness 1sa symptom of estrangementfrom
tianity has condemnedus. When their ringing echoes
li(ecaused by illness. Everything that is notnaturewas
insideyou, you are ripe for the Judgment, and if your
\ revealedco the first sick man when he lookedup at the
heart sounds like a broken bell, it means chat the sen-
skyfor the first time.
tence is without appeal.
◊
I am fond of nations of astronomers such as the

•
). Mysticismis without meaning as long as you don't
Chaldeans,Assyrians, Egyptians, pre-Columbians.They
hear the musicof silence.
refusedto make history out of love for the sky.A nation
◊

There are moments when evenche most humble that lovesneither the sky nor earthly conquestsshould
Christianconverseswith God on an equal basis. Reli- not be allowed to live. There are only two waysto die
gion allowsour pride these small satisfactions without right:on the battlefield or under the gaze of a star.
◊
whichwe woulddie suffocated by coo much modesty.
Atheism flattersour loveof liberty: addressing Godfrom 4J-We are not when we are at one with the world.Our
aboveraisespride co the status of semidivinicy.He who desireto escape the world and thus be ourselvessends
has neverhad contempt for God is predestined to slav- us on a quest for suffering. Asceticism is the paroxysm
ery. We are us only co the extent chat we humiliate him. of such desire, a systematic insomnia and starvation.
◊ Self-tortureintensifies subjectivity.Suso's torments,for
· He who is not happy naturallyknows only the happi- example,so minutely detailed in their horror, aimat
ness that followsafter moments of despair.I'm afraidof constantwakefulness and bloody lucidity,as if the mys-
fallingprey to an insufferablehappiness which, by tic fearedthat God would desert him during a lull in his
avengingmy past full of dread, would also avengethe agony.Once you have tasted the joys of suffering,you
misfortune of my havingbeen born. arehooked on them for ever.As MargaretMary Ala-
◊ coqueused to say, "life is unbearable without suffer-

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 . 1 and dear-sighted man who no long• b . .
srerue ·1d kn er e1•eves tn
ing!"Through pain, we havehoisted ourselvesto God's hing, The fa1 e man ows everything . h
level. a,0yty be illiterate. Dismissive of everythinevchn~ ough
he rna . . g, e 1s a La
◊ 'oucauld without genius.
JloChe11
All conversionsare sudden but they take years ger- ◊
minatingunderground.We cakethe road to conversion f ''Solitude has_made_me contemporarywith the dead"
at the first disappointment in life. Divine revelations (Barres).There 1sno life, o:y eternity,in solitude.
break out after a long period of incubation; God, like
pus, growsslowlyco a head. We have a conversionif the __ A dull Sunday afternoon in the spring, its deadsi-
divineboil bursts; if not, we live for the rest of our days
-~ ence suddenly s~lit by the crow of a roosterin which
with poison in our veins,i.e., with a God who refusesto
there are intimations of the Last Judgment
show himself ◊
◊
Were I a poet I wouldn't allow Nero to go unavenged.
,l ."The Ageoflnnocence." The more one looks at I know something about the melancholyof mad em-
Reynolds'painting the more one realizesthat our great-
est failureis to haveceasedto be children. Paradiseis a erors. Without the likes of Nero, the deathsof empires

• projectionin the past of chis earlystage in our life, our

only comfort for havinglost our childhood. Look
closelyat the child'sdelicatehand held timidly against
his breast as if to protect his happiness. Has Reynolds
understood all this?Or could ic be thac chose large,
iackstyle, decadence is uninteresting.
◊

Raskolnikov was unquestionably right: on the one

hand there is the crowd living like automata according
to the laws of nature; and on the other, the electedfew
to whom all is permitted since they atone for the shame
shadowyeyesexpressa vaguefear of losses co come?
Children, like lovers,can fortell the end of happiness. of life's mediocrity through the tragic intensityof their
◊ own lives.But then why does Raskolnikovfail?Why is
I havealwayslovedtears, innocence,and nihilism; he eaten by remorse after the crime?Could it be chat
chosewho know everythingas well as the blissfullyig- Dostoevskyfeared the consequences of his ownprin-
norant; failuresand children. ciples?But a man who faced death no longer chinksof
◊ consequences.Raskolnikov's failure is Dostoevsky'sown
- Adolescenceis an intermediarystage linking the cowardice.
paradise of childhood to the inferno of failure. ◊
◊ A criminal saint represents the height of ambivalence,
Failurethrusts us into a paroxysmof lucidity.The a thought worthy of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.
world becomestransparent in the implacableeyeof che ◊

96
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 Weary of consciousness, one dives inc h
Religion exploits latent madness for the good of the . o t c oceanof
soul, and sw1ms among fantastic shapes f .
community. Churches are undercover hospices. They the fl . f o aquatic
'd
tion, mere re ect1ons o the world
harness excessiveenthusiasms, legalize doses of tran- vegeCa ◊ outs1 c.
scendental poison, and thus prevent the world from
The heart in mourning prompts us co think.
turning into a madhouse. ◊
◊
cracking in their coffins, a sound
'There is so much knowledge in melancholy that we I h ear the bones
1 heralding the Last Ju~gment. But we, the living,haveal-
could call it a vice. with God!
◊ dy had our reckonmg
rea
◊
,~.:It is a well-known fact that saints weep when they re-
~,1
It would be hard to find a more self-denying mystic
member a divine revelation. Ignatius of Loyola, for
example, had the revelation of the Holy Trinity during a
thanEckhart, who totally managed to repress his animal
instincts. His rejection of nature led to his Ab-
religious procession, and would start to weep abun-
dantly every time he recalled that moment. The crowd or detachment from wordly things, a
geschiedenheit,
does not know the then , that moment of otherwordly precondition for attachment to God. Aware of the pain-
happiness on which one's whole life turns. Saints have a fuldissonance between life and eternity, he gaveup the
different conception of history: their only historic event former without the least hesitation .
◊
is revelation, which, however, annuls history.
◊ Wherefore the need to add to Ecclesiastes when ev-
According to the mystics, God alone can say "I." erything is already in it? Even more than that, whatever
Here I am, God, awaiting the Last Judgment along with is not in it, is false. "Then my heart was moved to de-
everybody else. You will then judge us en masse,for you spair." Or rather, co truth.
don 't dare look our loneliness in the face. "For too much wisdom increases the bitterness of
◊ our lot, and he who knows too much multiplies his suf-
One melancholy cures another. fering."
◊ Ecclesiastes is a challenging revelation of truths
I won't die before I have killed everything in myself. I which life, forever the accomplice of futility, battles
want to stifle the lamentations of space, crush the cos- against furiously.
mic organ! No dying sun will find its reflection in my ◊
frozen tears. Good health lacks drama. After a long illness, our
cured body imprisons us in poisoned, carnal boredom.

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...!. .,

be f jrne is rhe framework for seeking solutions; death is

Each pain leaves behind an emptiness char can never
filled again. When you become prey co an incura ble ,htsolution.
boredom, illness seems a welcome distraction.
Boredom is melancholic stillness, while despair is ')(Jf '1o rnarrer how educated you are, if you don't think
out about death, you are a mere .fool. A great
boredom burning at the stake. They are both born j.ncensely . . . .
cholar-if he 1s nothing but rhat-1s mfenor to an
il-
of disgust with life. ally
5. re peasant haunted by final questi ons. Gener
Jicera , .
y ·ng science has dulled people s minds by dimin-
There are no conversions. Sc. Paul had always alread speakI , . .

believed. Determinism forces us to expiat e the whims of . h. cheir metaphysical consciousness.

the
existence. Man believes, erroneously, char he lives as
wind blows.He has forgotten the winds of fatalit y!
◊ \ seems ro be st~ in its place. Bur look _out the windo
.: An anxiety born our of nothing suddenly grows in us
an'cfconfirms our homelessness. It is not "psychologi-
cal" anxiety, ic has something to do with what we call
1s mg
◊
r).As you roam through rhe streets of a town, the world
w
, 11-- ' and all will vanish. How
can a mere piece of transparent
i :1 Jassseparate us from life to such an extent? In
1 fact win-
walls. By
' / !ows bar us from rhe world more than prison

■
n,
our soul. In it is reflected the torment of individuatio g at life one begins to forget ir.
i lookin
the ancient struggle between chaos and form. I can L ◊

I never forget those moments when matter defied God. A time will come when worms will dream, nestled
in
I ◊
my bones-a dreadful thought since it is akinto a
Disjunction from life develops a taste for geometry. memory.
We begin to see the world in fixed forms, frozen lines, ◊
rigid contours. Once chejoy of Becoming is gone, every- Schopenhauer maintains that, if we were to invite
the
thing perishes through too much symmetry. What is dead back to life, they would refuse. I believe, on the
ss
known as the "geometrism" of so many kinds of madne
contrary, chat they would die a second time from too
may very well be an exacerbation of the disposition to-
of much joy.
wards immobility characteristic of depressions. Love ◊
forms betrays a partiality for death. The sadder we are,
J The more I read the pessimists,
the more I love life.
the more things stand still, until everything is frozen stiff.
◊
After reading Schopenhauer, I always feel like a bride-
to
groom on his wedding night. Schopenhauer is right
,'. "Suffering is the cause of consciousness" (Dos- is wrong to con-
maintain chat life is a dream. i ut he
toevsky). Men belong to two categories: those who have
understood chis, and the others. demn illusions instead of cultivating chem, for he

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 thereby implies that there might be something bette b
- r ~ Nieczsche. says somewhere: "You have b
l d d
.
ecn searchm
yond them] e heaviest oa , an you have found g
forth ◊ yourself!"
Only ecstasy cures us of pessimism.
Life wot.Udbe u~bearable if it were real. As a dream
it-1sa mixture of charm and terror to which we gladly '
r.,,h
Vf he awareness of time prompts men int
. . .
Oact1on
ever lives m time must become its vict' c .
.
vv O . . . . 1rn, ror time
abandon ourselves. d belie its own nature 1f1t did not swall
~ ul . ~~~
' Consciousness is nature's nightmare. _,..hjng. The roots of our will to self-destruct1· .
e1y.... . . te m our
◊ desireto compete with ttme.
Sunlight is not a good topic for poetry. You can be ◊

grateful for the sun, but can you sing its praises? The
Egyptians made the sun a god so that they could com-
pose hymns in its honor. Light is indiscreet, and when
you are unhappy it is downright vexing. The sun de-
scribes a curve of happiness, but plenitude has never
been a source of poetry.
'--\~The company of mortals is, for a lucidman, pure
,. torture. You have ~ot understood our humantragedyif
you~ave not bled ~o death, having livedamongyour
eerst n full consciousness.
P..-,- ◊

I
,h_
You are free only to the extent that you execratehu-
◊ ~an ity.\9 ne must hate it to have the freedomto
:;;:_The course of meditation : you begin by ignoring the embrace~o many useless perfections, the sadnessand
object and end by ignoring the world. the bliss that lie beyond history, out of time.' Any com-
◊ mitment to the cause of humanity betrayslack of taste
..,:· All landscapes, and nature in general, are a desertion and distinction . Hatred of man makesyou lovenature
from temporality. Hence the curious feeling that noth- as a way to renunciation and freedom rather than, in the
ing ever really is, every time we abandon ourselves to romantic fashion, as a stage in a spiritual odyssey . Hav-
this dream of matter called nature. ing debased ourselves by dabbling in Becoming,it is
Man has played hooky from nature. His successful high time we rediscovered our initial identity, which
evasion is his tragedy. consciousness has shattered in a delirium of mega-
Love of nature is an expression of regret. One loves lomania. I can't see a landscape without longingto
it least when one has no consciousness. Wh en one is destroy everything that is noncosmic in me. Over-
part of a landscape, one cannot appreciate ic. The whelmedby vegetable nostalgia and earthly regrets,
dim-witted and the blessed are not descended from I would like to become plant and die at sunset every
Adam. day.

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Life resembles springtime hysteria.
◊ be
I am neither unhappy enough to be a poet nor as in-
different as a philosopher. But I am lucid enough to be
a condemned man.
◊
')j_"I live on what makes other people die" (Michelan-
'gelo). There is no better definition of loneliness.
◊ slumber like them in unconscious torpor. AmI attached
·:J f he world is nothing but a place in which we exercise
' L..., •
our sadness. y,le need something to think about, and
so we have made it into an object for meditation. Con-
sequently, thought never misses an opportunity to de-
stroy it.
◊ self.
After ecstatic joy comes the plunge into the deep sea
of triviality.
The earth has grown musty from too many tears.
◊ ◊
Boredom is tuneless matter.
Melancholy is the unconscious music of the soul.
Tears are music in material form.
◊
Buddha must have been an optimise. Otherwise
wouldn't he have noticed that pain defines not only ev-
eryth_ing there is but also what is not? Being and
noch1_ngnessocistonly through suffering. What is the
v01d if not a dream of pain that has not come true? Nir-
vana represents ethereal suffering, a more refined form
of _corture. ~bsence signifies lack of being but not of
pam. For pam precedes everything, even God.
◊
don't think that I have missed any opp .
I h ortun 1ty for
ingsad. It is my uman vocation.
◊
I have never felt closer to death than in the moments
When
I loved live most.. Terror ties me to the worId more
thanvoluptuous plemtude.
Ifl didn't drag death after me through the ups and
downs of life, I would seek a place among animalsto
to death only by a secret vegetable longing, a sort of
complicity with Nature's funereal movements?Or
rather, is it pride , a refusal to ignore the fact that we are
bound to die? For nothing is more flattering than the
thought of death-only thethought,
though, not death it-
As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget chat
I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget
about it.
The hatred of everything, of beings as well as of
things, generates images of desolation. We begin to re-
gret that there are too few deserts on this earth, we want
to flatten the mountains, we dream of harsh Mongolian
sunsets.
~ Christian ascetics thought that only the desert was
without sin, and compared it to angels. In other words,
there is purity only where nothing grows.
◊
While reading subtle and useless philosophical po-
lemics at the library, an irresistible longing for the
desolation of deserts would sometimes grab hold of me.
Then I would begin to see everything topsy-turvy, and
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 .....
revem . . It was as if
l · th easb urdity oflogical problems.
rocks starte d to tu mble down, d1slocatmg concepts in a
massivelandslide of the spirit.
◊ thewin
/fhe a proach of death revives the sexual instinct:
outhfi}desires burn again in a sickly conflagration of
:he blood. Death and sexuality mingle together in the
spasms of agony and render it both terrifying and vo-
luptuous. Were someone who knows nothing ~bout
sexual intercourse to overhear two people making love,
he would thinkhe is witnessing a deathbed scene, so
closely does death resemble life at its supreme moment.
One can't deny the funereal nature of sexuality: the same
temporary hoarseness in the voice, the same complicity
I with the shadows, the same strange and disgusting besti-
ality casting a dismall pall on the pleasures of a delicate
soul. When the will to die is intense, it becomes stimu-
lating, serving life more than any human hope , stirring
up our pride more than any passion.
◊ crime, exile, all choices that favor solitude , are inextrica-
The desire to humiliate oneself out of spite for hu-
manity, to play the victim, the monster , the beast! The
more one wants co collaborate, the more one thinks al-
truistically about the other, the more inferior one is. The
otherdoesnotexist-this is an obvious and comforting
conclusion . To be alone, horribly alone, is the only im-
perative, and it must be obeyed at any price. The
universe is a solitary space, and all its creatures do noth-
ing but reinforce its solitude. In it, I have never met
anyone, I have only stumbled across ghosts.
◊
l06
saence can ~e s~ deep sometimes that you hear
oughts rustling 1~ freshly dug ~raves. The light flutter
~butterfly wings m the mountain~ , when the wailingof
0
. d dies down, vexes even their hushed silence I •
. t 1s
chmoments that you notice the distant pale blue
at so .h. h'
d fallin love wit tts serap 1cand silent stu-
sky, an k b . . .
·d· I love the s y ecause it 1snot intelligent. I
P l lty•
t the stars have never known a thing.
suspec ◊
Would we remember anything that was not tinged
•chbitterness and replete with intimations of mortal-
WI . f f'C .
. , Without the pronuse o su renng a woman brings
1ty ,
with her when she thinks she makes us happy, love
would be powerless to attenuate the dullness of life. The
trace of pleasure in the soul? A crater of lucidity.
◊
I often think of chose anarchists who, before the
crime, shut themselves up with women to drown in orgy
the last shreds of commitment and remorse. Suicide,
bly bound up with images of women, for breaking with
women symbolizes the renunciation of life. Misogy-
nists, philosophers, and slaves have reduced women
either to the constructive role of motherhood or to fu-
tile whoredom-out of hatred, wisdom, or stupidity
respectively. But because women witness their self-
destructive moments, because men need them in their
dark agony, I feel less contempt for these creatures who,
faced with the choice between sainthood and harlotry,
suffer a drama of which we remain utterly ignorant.
The highest homage you can pay a woman is to think
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 ave nothing more to lose. If women
of her when you h . .
were not so cent r al to our renunciations, we would have
. hc to despt·se and pity them . But death lends them a
a ng
helping hand.
Our cosmic terror springs from the me~ory of the
· ht agai·nst which God fought his first battle·
enelless mg
He partly won, for he made ~ight and day alternat~.
Man tried to establish the reign of day by conquenng
the night altogether; he was successful only in his imag-
ination. We sleep not to rest but to forget the night we
should have defeated.
◊ thing must be m agreement; d1vme goodwill contributes
From the cradle to the grave,each individual pays for
■
the sin of not being God. That's why life is an uninter-
rupted religious crisis, superficial for believers,
shattering for doubters.
◊ its own devices would self-des truct. What would hap-
We live in the shadow of our disappointments and
wounded self-esteem. Our mad thirst for power cannot
be quenched by anything in this world . Th is earth is not
big enough for the devastating sweep of our godlike
drives.
'>iReligion comforts us for the defeat of our will to
power. It adds new worlds to ours, and thus br ings us
hope of new conquests and new victorie s. W e are con-
verted to religion out of fear of suffocating within the
narrow confines of this world. Thus a mystical soul
knows no other enemy but God. He is one last strong-
hold that must be conquered.
◊ of our destiny.
108
I th ink of Man and sec only shadows·• I t h'In k of
shadows and see only myself.
◊
"'e take turns sharing power with God H
VY' . • cncc two
. reconcilable ways of looking at the world s,·n .
1r . , cc nei-
ther we nor God will make concessions.
I sometimes feel that those philosophers who cx-
lained the relationship between body and soul b
p .. . . . . y
seeing divme intervention m every action must have
been right, though only partially. They did not sense
that this world would have returned to chaos without
God's constant intervention at_e~ery moment. Every-
to this precarious equilibrium .
God is meddlesome, he is present everywhere. Could
we smile without his approval? The faithful who invoke
him at every turn know very well that the world left to
pen, I wonder, if God would return to his original
passivity?
On e cannot share power with God. One can replace
him, follow after him, but one can ne~er stand next to
him, for he hates Man's prid e. Man either loses himself
in God or taunts him, but no one has ever remained
level-headed in his presence. To be God's temporary re-
placement is Man's uniqu e ambition .
Our failures are nowhere more in evidence than in the
mysterious swinging motion that throws us far from
God and brings us back to him. An alternation of tri-
umphs and failures , it inscribes the entire hopelessness
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 ◊

I often think of the hermits of ancient Egypt who

dug their own graves and wept in thei_nday and night.
When asked why they cried they replied that they wept
c • h.
◊

I no longer have anything to share with

cept with G o d ' ror Just a w ile longer.
◊
anyone Ex
. -
l
The more shocking a paradox about God .
for their soul. . is, the bee-
In the infinity of the desert, a grave is an oasis, a r it expresses h1s essence.
.
Curses are dos
. er to
G
od
te
place for comfort. To have a fixed point in space, one thantheology and philosophical meditation · A'imed at
digs a hole in the desert. And one dies so that one won't men, they are vu 1gar an d of no consequence O
· ne swears
a man's God, not at t h e man. The latter 1s •
· 1nnocenc·
get lost. at
God is the .source of error and sin. Adam's c_11 '.
. ~~a~
Why do you !~clc my memory? What's the use of vine cafa..rrutym the first place. God realized in Man all
remembering me? Will you ever be able to measure your his possibilities for imperfection and corruption. We
fall and the presence of my anxiety within your own? were made to save divine perfection. All that was "exis-
Turn your back on creation, and save me by forget- tence" in God, temporal infection and decay,was

I ting me!
Forget me, for I want to be free, and never fear, I shall
not waste my thoughts on you! Dead to each other, who
would prevent us from doing as we pleased in this de-
rerouted th.rough men, while God salvagedhis nothin _
ness. We are his dump into which he has emptied g
himself.
Since we carry God 's burden, we feel entitled to swear
serted cemetery to which, in your divine ignorance, you at him. God suspects this, and if he has sent Jesus to re-
have given the name Life! lieve us of our pain, he has done so out of remorse,not
◊ pity.
It has often been said that as long as there is suffering ◊

there will also be a God . But nobody seems to have no-
ticed that suffering can also negate God, and onc e
voided by excessive suffering, nothing in the world can
restore him to power. Negating God in the name of ra-
tionalism, skepticism, or indifference pales in
comparison with the rejection of God sprung from the
frenzy of agony.
◊
The ultimate goal of all religions: life as a diminution
of the soul.
In the last stage of sadness , there are no longer any
differences between tears and stones . The heart turns
into rock, and the devils skate on your frozen blood.
◊
All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.
◊
One st arts to beli eve in God out of pride, which is an
honorable, if not an altogether pleasant, act. If you don't
take an inte rest in him , you end up interested in man-
kind. Could you fall any lower than that?

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◄

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..
◊ m the world b h con-
The dead center of existence: when it is all the sarne
co you whether you read a newspaper article or think
of God.
◊
•'Fan cannot decide betw~en freedom and happiness.
1
On one side, infinity and pam; on the other, security
and mediocriry)Man is too proud to accept happiness,
and has fallen too low to have contempt for it.
Happiness engenders inferiority complexes. Who can
be proud because he does not suffer? The awkwardness
of ordinary people in front of chose who suffer betrays
and confers origi-
our conviction chat pain is ~0ctive
~or one does not become a
nality upon a human being:
-to say nothing of
man through science, art or-religion
philosophy-but through a self-conscious rejection of
happiness, ~hrough a ~mdam~nt.al inability to be happy.
◊ -
The moralists were naive enough to distinguish de-
spair from pride. We seem to oscillate between
hopelessness and pride; in fact we are too proud co
hope. The less hope we have, the more proud we are.
Despair and pride grow so closely together chat even the
keenest observer cannot tell them apart . Pride forbids
hope, and prevents us from escaping the abyss of the
self. Despair takes on a somber air of grandeur without
wh~chpride would be a mere petty game or a pitiful il-
lus10n.
◊ ing else could explain my dread of drowning in deep
As a function of despair, God should continue to ex-
isc even in the .face of irrefutable proof chat he does not
II2
. t Truly, everything can be used as argum f'or or
ex1s· . . enc
·nst him, because everything ot
aga• . . . . .
e s and denies his d1vm1ty.Blasphem y and
r1rrn . . prayer are
ally J·ust1fied. When uttered m the same b~.~ h
~
comes very dose to the Supreme Equivocator.
◊
f ery time I am sad it is as if each fiber in mybod
I ads tarted to think, as if poison had seeped into ea;
cell, and depression enveloped me like a shroud1 Sick-
ness is tJie cris_isof organic reflexivity.Tissues begin to
be;;;e of themselves, individual organs acquire con-
sciousness and separa~e from t~e rest of the body. Only
, \I in sickness do we real12e how little we are in control of
ourselves. Illness makes our body parts independent,
while we remain their slave until the end. Illness is an
organic state of consciousness, the spirit lose in the
I body.
The restlessness of sleepless nights digs trenches
where the corpses of memory are rotting .
◊
When everything is rot, and bones and faiths alike
begin to rattle, a sudden light erupts and lifts your
spirits. Is it the phosphorescent light of rot? Who could
tell? No terror can be compared to chis instant of para-
dise in which you forgive God and forget yourselfi
◊
Life must have poured its last dregs in me, for noth-
and stagnant waters. I am like chose fish who die
str anded in swamps, away from their usual habitat.
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 The regret of not ~~ing plant~ ~rings us closer to
Man-a hero of semidark.ness-swims in dead waters
. than any religion. One 1sm paradise only asa
arad ,se
and stirs them only to be sure that they will not fail to
P But we left that stage a long time ago: we would
swallowhim. Plant- destroy so mu ch to recover paradise! . .
Sm is the
have to
·bility of forgetfulness. The fall-emblem of our
' Every time I look for a word that -will fill me with sad iI11poss1 . .
contentment, I invariably come across the same one: condition-ts a nervous exacerbation of con-
huillan .
forgetfulness.Not to remember anything, to look but . ess. Thus a human bemg can only be next to
sciousn .
. not to see, to sleep with eyes open towards the Incom- whereas plants sleep in him the sleep of eternal
Go,d
prehensible! fi0 rgetfulness. The more awake we are, the greater the
stalgia that sends us in quest of paradise, the sharper
no
Such fierce longing to press God on my heart as if he the pangs of remorse t h at reunite . .h h
us wit t e vegetable
were a loved one in the throes of agony, to beg of him world.
one last proof of his love only to find myself with his
corpse in my arms! I could easily convert to a religion which preaches

■
◊ that to die is shameful. Christianity has flattered too
In KingLear,Shakespeare defines madness as a separa- much che most intimate part of ourselves, turning death
tion of the spirit from disgust of life. into a triumph of virtue. Agony is Christianity's normal
-=¼~This is the madmen's good fortune. Their spirit climate. Everybody dies in this religion, even God , as if
~orlcs nextto sadness, which remains a world apart . We there were not enough corpses already and time weren't
are left with the difficult task of finding a balance be- the slaughterhouse of the universe!
tween wearinessand the spirit. Madmen hardly ever
◊
come face to face with their own sadness. Lucidity is a
It's neither easy nor pleasant to fight with God con-
misfortune.
stantly. But once you start , prompted by an indefinite
◊
urge, you lose all sense of restraint. Superbiais the name
~ow pleasant to have always handy a German mystic,
for Man's presumption . It is the ego's delirium of mega-
a Hindu poet, or a French moralist for use in our daily
exile! lomania, Man's tragic fate . Without this source of all of
our follies and pettinesses, history would be inconceiv-
1 . ~ead day and night, devour books-these sleeping
able. Its ultimate form of expression is constant
pills-not to know but to forget!Jf hrough books you
usurpation of God by Man. He who has experienced
can ~etrac_e
your way back to the origins of spleen, dis-
carding history and its illusions. it to the lase degree in his solitude can have only one
rival: God.
◊

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 If you believein God, yo~are '.11ad~ithout having ong as music addressed God and nor m .
As l . en-as 11.
gone mad. It is similar to bemg sick without suffering hasdo ne since Beethoven-it was the opium d reamof
from any specificillness. tal s Once upon a time, it told of God's lone!·
r:nor · mess,
andconsequently of ours. The violinswerethe sighsof
All that adheres to this world is trivial. That's why archangels,the flute_the angels' lamentations,the organ
there are no inferior religions. Even the most primitive the saints' impreca~1ons.Bach, and t~e Italianmastersof
sacred frisson lends a soul to appearances. In the world the sarne period, did not express feelings,theyserved
grace turns to ashes; beyond,even nothingness becomes ' heaven.It was easy then to suspend your humanityand
grace. abandon yourself in God.
◊

Had we thought about it a little, we could have made Can I ever forgive this earth for countingme among
God happy.But now we have abandoned him, and he is . Own but only as an intruder?
its I

lonelier than at the beginning of the world. ◊

◊ "One thought of God is worth more than the entire

Accordingto Eckhart, God hates nothing more than world" (Catherine Emmerich). Poor saint, she wasso

•
time and our commitment to it. In their longing for terribly right!
eternity, God and Eckhart have only contempt for "the
smell and taste of time." Life is not, and death is a dream. Sufferinghas in-
◊ vented them both as self-justification.Man aloneis torn
Self-consciousrejection of the absolute is the best between an unreality and an illusion.
wayto resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is ◊
saved. Life is too full of death for death to add anythingto it.
◊ ◊

Children scare me. Their eyes contain too many In the depths of our consciousness,paradisemoans
promises of unhappiness. Why do they want to grow and memories weep. In this lamentation, we descrythe
up? Children, like madmen, are graced with innate ge- metaphysicalmeaning of tears, and perceivelife'sun-
nius, soon lost in the void of lucidity. folding as regret.
◊ ◊
· Life is a state of inebriation crossed by sudden flashes ,~.,.,
"", Once you have thoug h t a lot about death, you start
of doubt. Most normal individuals are dead drunk. One to wonder if it wasn't all a huge lie. Having risenabove
wouldn't even dare breathe if one were sober. death, the truths below appear as illusions.
◊ ◊

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 I am altogethertoo much of a Christian. I can tell
from the wayI am attracted by beggarsand deserts,and
fromthe insanefits of pity_to which I am often a prey.
All of theseamount to variousforms of renunciation.
We carryin our blood the poisonous dregs of the abso-
lute:it preventsus from breathingyet we cannot live
withoutit.
◊
-, .✓.
. J· Let God prayfor the man in whom there is nothing
APPENDIX
leftto die!

Saints and Mystics mentioned m

Tears and Saints

I ST. AG N ES, martyr. Died c. 304. One of the most fa-

mous Roman martyrs. Her real story is shrouded in myth,
but she is said to have been a very young girl who refused to
marry and offered her maidenhood to God; she offered her-
self for martyrdom when persecution broke out in Rome,
was executed by a stab in the throat, and buried in the ceme-
tery on the via Nomentana, where a church was built in her
honor c. 350.Her emblem is the lamb.

This appendixwas compiled with information taken from TbtPmguinDimo,uuyof

Saints,ed. Donald Amvater (Middlesex, England:Penguin, 1965);u f"lit UIIDIISSI
DictionaryofthtSaints,ed. F.G. Holweck(St.
(Paris:Larousse,1964); A Biographical
Louis:B. Herder, 1924 ); Jacobus de Voragine,V,, GcLJm ugmd,GrangerRyanand
HelmuthRipperger,trans. (New York:Amo Press,1969); DittionllJlirt 1kspiritvaliti
: Rut andMystic,tranS. and withan
asrlt~.,tt mystiqu,(Patis: Beauchesne,1990); RMmi
introductionby Reynold A. Nicholson (London: GeorgeAllenand Unwin, 1956);
Tb, R•insof tht Heart:S,/m,d Lyrit Rittry ofJtlaludinR.mi, tranS. and with an
introductionby Edmund Helminski (London: ThresholdBooks,1981).

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 they both devoted their livesto caringfor th .
ST. ALDEGUND, foundressofMaubeuge convent. all d h. . c sickto the
. t of risking t e1rown 11ves.The essenceOfh ..
Born c. 6 o in Hainaut, Belgium,of the royal house of the poin . d. h er religious
3 ht is contame m er Trtatist
onPurgatory d S ..
Merovingians.Died in 685of cancer.She is a patroness t houg an pintUIII
againstcancer. Dialogue.

BLESSED ANGELA DA FOLIGNO, matron, CATHERINE OF RICCI, visionaryB

Sr • . · ~nu
ence 2 ; died at Prato,
penitent,mysticalwriter.Born 1248of a noble family;died fl or • 152 . 1590.She wasa nun and prioress
.
. She married veryyoung and led a dissipated life until Dominican convent m Prato, Tuscany Sheh d
1309 0f a . . . · a exccp-
the deathsof her husband, children, and mother, after which . alreligious expenences, such as weeklyecstas1es
uon ' overa
she joinedthe Third Order of St. Francis and did severepen- periodof cwelveyears in which she relivedChrist's passion.
ance for her sins.Famous for her visionsand revelations, she Shewas concerned with reform of the church,and revered
wascalled"MistressofTheologians." She wrote a very pop- the memory of Savonarola, who had been hangedand
ular book of her revelations. burned for heresy by Pope AlexanderVI in 1498.

ST. BRIDGET (Birgitta)of Sweden,foundress. Born in sT. CATHERINE OF SIENA, mystic. Bornat
Sweden,c. 1303;died in Rome, 23July 1373.A noblewoman Siena,,347; died in Rome, 1380.She wasthe youngestdaugh-
who after her husband's death in 1344founded the Order of ter of a Sienese dyer. She resisted her parents'seffortsto

•
the Holy Savior("Brigettines")for women. She spent much
time in Rome, livingchastelyand austerely,tending the sick
and the poor. She claimedto havereligiousvisions and dic-
tated a book of "Revelations"which was both in8uential and
controversial.
(ANN) CATHERINE EMMERICH, Augustinian
nun, Germany,died 1824.She receivedthe stigmata (marks
resemblingthe fivewoundsof the crucifiedJesus) and had vi-
sions. State and religiousauthorities fearingsome kind of
fraud, she becamethe object of a prolonged governmental,
religiousand scientificinquiry.
ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA, mystic.Born at
Genoa, 1447;died there, 1510.At sixteenshe made a marriage
of convenienceto a wealthyGenoan, an ill-tempered and un-
faithful man. In 1473,she underwenta conversion.She was
very devout, going to communion everyday, and was prone
to mysticaltrances.She managedto convert her husband,
marryher and became a tertiary of the Dominicanorder,liv-
ingat home, spending much time in prayer.She experienced
manyecstasies,and receivedthe stigmata,but withoutvisible
lesions. She was surrounded by convertsknownas the "Ca-
terinati." Late in life, she became involvedin publicaffairs,
whenshe mediated between Florence and the papalgovern-
ment, helping to bring Pope Gregory XI back fromAvignon
to Rome. Her dictated Dialogue is an Italian classic.
CHEMS-EDD IN (Shamsu'I-Din of Tabriz).See
Djelal-eddin-Rumi.
CHRIST IN A EBNER, 1277-1356,originallyfrom
Nuremberg,she wrote in the tradition of"nuptial mysti-
cism."(She is unrelated to her contemporary,the Dominican
nun Marguerite Ebner).
ST . CUN E GUN D, Holy Roman empress. Died 1033.
She is reputed to have had a celibate marriagewith her hus-

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 band, Henry II of Bavaria. Both she and her husband were , tr ance, and co mp ose p()('t ry wh1 h his di , ,1
10 t o a , · 1 r 1 JOltr cI
zealous supporters of Benedictin e monasti cism. down. Th e mysacal love poems thu s compom .l wt rr ol-
lected into the Diwa11, written m thr namr of 1hr Ion IUY rr
DI AN A D ' ANDO LO , thirteenth-century nun from
and dedicated to him .
Bologna. Abducted from the convent by her parents, she re-
turn ed co the community and founded the convene of St. DOROTHEA OF MONTAU, pious widow, born m
Agnes. East Prussia 1347; died 1394. She was married against her will
co an armor er, a mean- spirit ed man by whom she had nmr
DIODATA DEG LI ADEMARI , unidentified . children. Her married life was full of grim austerity: she
DJELAL-EDDIN-RUMI (Jalalu'l-Oin Rum i; would bind sharp nut shells around her loins or place chem
Jelaludin Rumi), the greatest mystical poet of Persia. Born in in open wounds so that she wouldn 't enjoy intercourse, and
the province ofKhorasan in 1207; died in Konia (Turkey) in she would burn her nipples so that she wouldn't derive plea-
1273. Rumi's work is a synthesis of Arab, Hellenistic , Herm e- sure from nursing. After her husband's death, she had herself
tic, Christian, Jewish, Indian, and Persian sources. He walled up in a cell at the Cathedral ofMarienweder. She pos-
propounded a religion oflove. Two of his most famous sessed mystical gifts .
works, Diwan-i Shams-iTabriz("The Poems of Shams of Tab-
riz") and the epic Mathnaw("The ECKHART, JOHANN, known as MEISTER
i Book ofHussam "), were

■
inspired by his Platonic love for the "Perfect Man ," i.e., a ECKHART , German mystic, c. 1260-1327 . A Dominican
man in whom divine qualities are revealed, and whom the monk , he was a disciple of Thomas Aquinas. A preacher and
lover sees as his alter ego. Rumi's mystical relation to Ch ems- spiritual guide in religious and beguine communities, he was
edclin of Tabriz is a fascinating love story . According to the accused of uno r thodox views, and his theories were con-
legend, Rumi met a vagrant dervish or holy man who asked demned by the pope .
him a question that made him faint. He then answered the
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. founderoftheFriarsMi-
question, and took the man into his hous e. For two years
nor. Born at Assisi, c. 1181;died in the chapel of the
they were inseparable, steeped in mystical interc ourse, and
Porciuncula, 1226. Son of a wealthy merchant , he led an easy
forgetful of the rest of the world. Rumi 's neglected disciples
life as a young man until sickness and the experience of war
grew jealous and chased Chems-eddin away to Damascus. He
sobered him up. WhLle praying in the church of San Da-
came back, however, at Rumi's entreaties, but after a while
miano one day, he had a vision of Christ who urged him:
myster iously disappeared. He may have been murdered by
"Francis , repair my fallen house!" He took the words liter-
jealous disciples, or he may have gone away for good . Rum i
ally, raising money for the repairs of the church by selling
was overcome by passionate grief, and invented the "whirling
goods from his father's house . H e was disinherited , and
dervish" dance as an expression of his powerful emotion. At
started the poor life of a roving preacher . Along with eleven
the plaintive sound of a reed flute, he would dance himself
other men, he founded the order of the Friars Minor, known

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for their simplicityand humility.In 1224,while prayingin
the Apennines,he receivedthe stigmata(Christ's fivewounds
at the crucifixion)whichhe kept until his death.
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES, bishop and writer.Born
at Annecy,1567;died at Lyons,1622.Son of a nobleman,he
wasordainedpriest againsthis father'swishes.He was sent to
convertthe peopleof his nativeChablaiscountry from Cal-
vinismto RomanCatholicism.Bishopof Geneva,founder
withJanede Chantel,of the Order of the Visitation.His '
most famousbook, ThtLoveofCod,is the story of the lovefor
God in ordinarymen'shearts and lives.
ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, founderoftheSoci-
ety of Jesus. Born at Loyola,Spain,c. 1491;died in Rome,
1556. He wasthe youngestson of an ancient noble Basque
family.Livedfirstas a soldier,waswoundedat the b~ttleof
Pamplona,and duringa long convalescence read the livesof
•
Christand the saints, and decidedto dedicatehimselfto
God. The Societyof Jesuswasorganizedas a regularreli-
giousorderbut with one additionalvow,that of beingat the
pope'sdisposalanywhere,anytime: it is veryactivein the mis-
sionaryand educationalfields.St. Ignatiuswasprone to
religiousilluminationsand left a famousbook, Spiritual&er-
ci~e~,whichinstructsreadersin the steps chathelp co produce
v1s1ons or statesof profoundmedication.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, mysticaltheologian
and poet. BornnearAvila1542;died at Ubeda, 1591.Son of
an impoverishednoblefamily,he becamea Carmelitefriar.
He met Teresaof Avila,and joinedthe fuseof chereformed
housesfor men in the order.For his reformwork,he wasim-
prisonedat Toledoby the Carmeliteprior general,and there
he wrotehis fusepoems.His chiefworksare poemswith cor-
124
respondingcommentaries: ThtDarkN~htofth,Sou/Tht
Spiritual
Canticlt, FlamtofLow.
TheLiving '
~AARGARET OF CORTONA, bornatL av1ano .
1v•
. died at Cortona, 1297.The beautifuld h '
tZ 47' . aug ter ofTus-
can Peasants,she was the mistressof a youngnoblemanto
hom she bore a son. After her lover'sviolentdeath, she was
W
gl·venrefugein .a friend's.house in Cortona· She becamea
Franciscanternary,_leading an austereand devoutlifeof
hardworkand chancy.She convertedmanysinners,andher
confessor, Friar Giunta, recordedher supernaturalrevela-
tions-
ST. MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE, born in
Burgundy,1647;died at Paray-le-Monial,1690. Shewasthe
daughterof a notary, Claud Alacoque,and enteredthe Visi-
tation conventat Paray-le-Monialafter an unhappyand
sicklychildhood. She had four visitationsfromJesusChrist
concerningdevotion towards his heart, symbolof hislovefor
mankind.She suffered persecutionat the handsof theother
nuns,who accusedher of havingdelusions.She becameve
influentialamong Roman Catholicsafter the Feastof the i_
credHeart was made officialin 1856.
MARIANNA OF QUITO, Ecuador,died1645.Also
knownas St. Mariana Paredesy Flores.SouthAmericangirl
whotended the poor and taught Indian childrenin her
home. She undertook harsh penitentialpractices,andduring
an epidemicin Quito she offered her life in expiationfor the
sinsof others. She died soon after.
ST. MARTH A, first century.The sisterof Lazarusand
Maryof Bethany.She servedJesus,and is a patronessof
chosehelpingthe poor. It wasto her chatJesusdeclared:"I
am the resurrectionand the life. . . . "
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ST. MARY MAGDALEN DE PAZZI, mystic.
Born at Florence, 1566;died there, 1607. A Carmelite nun at
seventeen,suffered inner doubts, followed by great spiritual
consolations. Made prayer and penance her vocation.
ST. MARY MAGDALENE. (The same person as
Mary of Bethanyaccording to a Western tradition) . First
century. Maryof Magdaia, healed by Jesus of the "seven
evils," followedhim into Galilee and was present at the cruci-
fixion. With two others, she went and found the empty
tomb. According to Mark , Christ first showed himself co her.
John adds that she was given a messagefor the brethren.
ST. MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, thir-
teenth cenrury.German beguine and mystical writer
associated with the mona.stc:ryof Helfu , Germany. The be-
guines were women who lived poor, austere. chaste, and
chariublc livesapart from the world bur who did not rake
\"Ows,and had no hierarchy of officialsor powerfulmd
wealthyleaders.Their coumerparcs in Southern Europe are
the tertiaries, women who were loosely connected with on~
of the great mendicant ordl-rs, Franciscan:ind Dominican.
MEZZI SIDWIBRIN, unidentified.
ST. PETER Of- ALCANTARA . my,11c. Born in Al-
cantara, Spain, 1499; died JI . Arenas, 1562.Reformer of rhe
Franciscm ordn : the friars lived in grcJI poverry. going bare-
foo1, spending much 11mein soli1ude:ind con1empb1ion.
Confessor 10 t. Tere·a of Avib , he helped her found the firs1
convmr of reformed Clrmd itc nun , Grcaccs1 "pamsh lll) '>-
uc before r. Terc l. he WT 0 te J J;,allJrori Pra)'" ~rid Mfi/11 1111011.
P L OT I N U , N eo-Pbton ic philo,o phcr. Born in10 a Ro-
man family c$tJbl1,hcd 111Egyp1 ( 20 4 -70 A.O.) . Hi,
philos phy mixed pa •rn .ind J m,11ando 1rincs.
IL6
RANCE, ARMAN? ~E, ~be, reformerof the Order
of Trappists. Born and died tn Pans (1626- 1700).
sT. ROSE OF LIMA, recluse.BorninLima,Peru
71). Isa~el de Fl~res y del Oliva, knownas Rose,she
( 1586-i6
wasthe first Lattn Amencan to be canonized.Sherefusedto
marryand became a Dominican tertiary,earninga livelihood
for herself and her family by growingBowersand doingem-
broidery work. The cruel penancesshe inBictedon herself
and her mystical e.xperiencreswerecriticizedby her family
and became the object of ecclesiasticalinquiry.She tended
the poor and the Indians and ,is the originatorof socialser-
vicesin Peru.
HENRY SUSO (Henrich Seuse),called"Amandw,"
German mystic. Born 1295of a noble family;died 1366.He
joined the Dominican order at Colognewherehe studiedun-
der Eckhart. He had frequent visions,and leda lifeof
austerity.He wrote the LittltBookofEttrnalWudom,a gemof
German mysticism.
ST. TERESA OF AV I LA , foundressand mystic.Born
in Avila,Spain, 1515;died at Alba de Tormes, 1582.With
Catherineof Siena, one of the first two womento bede-
clareddoctors of the Church, in 1970.She becamea
Carmeliccnun ac twenty, and sufferedfrom seriousill-health.
She spent much time in contemplationand wasproneco
mysticalecstasy.Among her spirirualexperiences wasthe
pirrcing of her hcJrt by a speJr of divinelove.~ spic~o~her
poor health, she combined a life of concemplanonwithtn~
tenseacriviry,:ind founded convenesunderthe originalsmcc
form of the Carmdice rule. Her nuns wereknownas dlSfalzas
("barefooted"). Her most important writingsaretheL!ft,
1vrirtenat the request of her confessors,ThtWayofPuftct,on,
an
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 instruction manual for her nuns, TheBookofFoundations,
and
TheInteriorCastk.
ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX, Carmelite nun ( 1873_
1g97). She led an uneventful life as a nun until she became ill
with tuberculosis and died after much suffering at twenty-
four. Two years before her death, she was told to write her
recollections of childhood, to which she added an account of
her life. After her death, the book was published under the
d'uneame
title Histoire (TheStoryofa Sou0and was widely read,
making her the most popular nun of modern times.

ST. THOM AS AQUINAS, theologian ( 1225- 1274).

Son of a Lombard nobleman, he joined the Dominican order
and became a mendicant friar. His decision shocked his fam-
. ily, who kidnapped him and imprisoned him for a year. On
his release he went to Paris and Cologne, and in 1256took his
master's degree in theology. His most famous and influential
works are SummacontraGentiks,a treatise on God, and Summa
theologiae,
a systematic exposition of theology. He left the lat-
ter unfinished, declaring: "All I have written seems to me like
straw compared with what I have seen and what has been re-
vealed to me."

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