Waarschijnlijk inspelend op het feit dat volgend jaar overal
gevierd zal worden dat de R.K. heilige Teresa van Avila vijfhonderd jaar
geleden geboren werd, verschijnt volgende maand de vertaling van
Julia Kristeva, Teresa,
My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila. Transl. of Thérèse mon amour by Lorna Scott Fox. Columbia University Press, November 25, 2014
Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal
fantasy, Teresa, My Love follows Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst,
academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint
Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life. Traveling to
Spain, Leclercq, Kristeva's probing alterego, visits the sites and embodiments
of the famous mystic and awakens to her own desire for faith, connection, and
rebellion.
One of Kristeva's most passionate and transporting works,
Teresa, My Love interchanges biography, autobiography, analysis, dramatic
dialogue, musical scores, and images of paintings and sculptures to embed the
reader in Leclercq's — and Kristeva's — journey. Born in 
1515, Teresa of
Avila survived the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite
Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her
writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her
consciousness, a state Kristeva explores in relation to present-day political
failures, religious fundamentalism, and cultural malaise. Incorporating notes
from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical
references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary
society and the individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her
own character.
