A History of Spanish Literature

by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

High, and burns with such brave heats,

Such thirst to die, as dares drink up

A thousand cold deaths in one cup."

What Crashaw has here said of her in verse he repeats in prose, and the heading of his poem may be quoted as a concise summary of her achievement:—"Foundress of the Reformation of the Discalced Carmelites, both men and women; a woman for angelical height of speculation, for masculine courage of performance more than a woman; who, yet a child, outran maturity, and durst plot a martyrdom." And all the world has read with ever-growing admiration the burning words of Crashaw's "sweet incendiary," the "undaunted daughter of desires," the "fair sister of the seraphim," "the moon of maiden stars."

Simplicity and conciseness are Santa Teresa's distinctive qualities, and the marvel is where she acquired her perfect style. Not, we may be sure, in the numerous prose of Amadís. Her confessor, the worthy Gracián, took it upon him to "improve" and polish her periods; but, in a fortunate hour, her papers came into the hands of Luis de León, who gave them to the press in 1588. Himself a master in mysticism and literature, he perceived the truth embodied later in Crashaw's famous line:—

"O 'tis not Spanish but 'tis Heaven she speaks."

Her masterpiece is the Castillo interior, of which Fray Luis writes:—"Let naught be blotted out, save when she herself emended: which was seldom." And once more he commends her to her readers, saying:—"She, who had seen God face to face, now reveals Him unto you." With all her sublimity, her enraptured vision of things heavenly, her "large draughts of intellectual day," Santa Teresa illustrates the combination of the loftiest mysticism with the finest practical sense, and her style varies, takes ever its colour from its subject. Familiar and maternal in her letters, enraptured in her Conceptos del Amor de Dios, she handles with equal skill the trifles of our petty lives and—to use Luis de León's phrase—"the highest and most generous philosophy that was ever dreamed." And from her briefest sentence shines the vigorous soul of one born to govern, one who governed in such wise that a helpless Nuncio denounced her as "restless, disobedient, contumacious, an inventress of new doctrines tricked out with piety, a breaker of the cloister-rule, a despiser of the apostolic precept which forbiddeth a woman to teach."

Santa Teresa taught because she must, and all that she wrote was written by compulsion, under orders from her superior. She could never have understood the female novelist's desire for publicity; and, had she realised it, merry as her humour was, she would scarcely have smiled. For she was, both by descent and temperament, a gentlewoman—de sangre muy limpia, as she writes more than once, with a tinge of satisfaction which shows that the convent discipline had not stifled her pride of race any more than it had quenched her gaiety. She always remembers that she comes from Castile, and the fact is evidenced in her writings, with their delicious old-world savour. Boscán and Garcilaso might influence courtiers and learned poets; but they were impotent against the brave Castilian of Sor Teresa de Jesús, who wields her instrument with incomparable mastery. It were a sin to attempt a rendering of her artless songs, with their resplendent gleams of ecstasy and passion. But some idea of her general manner, when untouched by the inspiration of her mystic nuptials, may be gathered from a passage which Froude has Englished:—

"A man is directed to make a garden in a bad soil overrun with sour grasses. The Lord of the land roots out the weeds, sows seeds, and plants herbs and fruit-trees. The gardener must then care for them and water them, that they may thrive and blossom, and that the Lord may find pleasure in his garden and come to visit it. There are four ways in which the watering may be done. There is water which is drawn wearily by hand from the well. There is water drawn by the ox-wheel, more abundantly and with greater labour. There is water brought in from the river, which will saturate the whole ground; and, last and best, there is rain from heaven. Four sorts of prayer correspond to these. The first is a weary effort with small returns; the well may run dry: the gardener then must weep. The second is internal prayer and meditation upon God; the trees will then show leaves and flower-buds. The third is love of God. The virtues then become vigorous. We converse with God face to face. The flowers open and give out fragrance. The fourth kind cannot be described in words. Then there is no more toil, and the seasons no longer change; flowers are always blowing, and fruit ripens perennially. The soul enjoys undoubting certitude; the faculties work without effort and without consciousness; the heart loves and does not know that it loves; the mind perceives, yet does not know that it perceives. If the butterfly pauses to say to itself how prettily it is flying, the shining wings fall off, and it drops and dies. The life of the spirit is not our life, but the life of God within us."