'As a nun of converso
background, a sickly woman who at times suffered severe
paralyses, and a woman bucking the patriarchal Catholic
hierarchy, Teresa de Avila was in many ways a
marginalized individual. The Inquisition subjected her
to a prolonged investigation, and even many of her own
confessors didn’t take her seriously until, in 1554, the
Society of Jesus established a colegio in Avila, and she
began working with Jesuits like Juan de Prádanos. In
spite of these obstacles, Saint Teresa wrote extensively
on the spiritual life, revived the primitive rule of the
Discalced Carmelites, and founded convents all over
Spain. She accomplished her most productive work in
spite of—or perhaps, because of—her marginalization.
Eric W. Vogt has followed in Saint Teresa’s footsteps.
He writes in his Preface that at one point in his career
he abandoned academia, “which had grown increasingly
hostile to anything and anyone publishing Eurocentric or
Catholic works.” Although the excessive zealousness of
the revisionists marginalized him, it also afforded him
the “splendid isolation” he needed to produce this fine
translation of Saint Teresa’s poetry. He rejoices that
“political correctness is collapsing under the weight of
its own absurdity,” but acknowledges that sometimes the
estrangement of scholars pursuing unfashionable
disciplines can have positive consequences. Quoting from
George Steiner’s After Babel, he notes: “A degree of
exclusion, of compelled apartness, may be one of the
conditions of valid work.”
In recent years,
translation, especially of canonical writings, has been
one of those activities most often disparaged by
academic departments. Paradoxically, professors of
trendy fields such as Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies,
and Comparative Literature are the ones most likely to
benefit from good translations of the works of Teresa de
Avila. At the “Conference on Women Writers of Later
Medieval and Early Modern Spain and Colonial Latin
America,” held in Charlottesville in the fall of 1997,
several scholars working in these fields lamented the
lack of reliable English versions of Saint Teresa’s
writing. In a sense, Vogt is striving to return to the
“primitive rule” of scholarship, which stresses
canonicity, esthetic and humanistic values, historical
grounding, and adherence to text. Vogt’s “Critical
Introduction” places Saint Teresa’s work in the
political, historical, and religious context of Golden
Age Spain, where faith permeated every aspect of life.
He humanizes his subject by stressing her earthiness—
for example, her fondness for music and cooking—as well
as her political savvy and sincere affection for her
fellow nuns. Vogt explores the major literary influences
on Saint Teresa’s work, including the chivalric novels
she so loved as a girl. These, along with the works of
Loyola, inspired her use of military images and her
notion of life as a form of spiritual warfare against
the World. Saint Teresa’s versions a lo divino of
profane love poetry evince the influence of Courtly Love
on her poetic compositions, in which God and the soul
are sometimes depicted as lovers. Among the pious books
that Vogt examines are Saint Ignatius’s Spiritual
Exercises and Thomas A. Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ.
He also mentions Jerome’s Letters, Augustine’s
Confessions, and a number of other works. Of course, the
Bible was also an important influence on Saint Teresa’s
writing, and Vogt points out in his extensive notes
instances of biblical intertextuality.
Vogt shows clearly
that Saint Teresa was an intellectual, in spite of her
protests to the contrary. Of course, he is not the first
scholar to point this out, but here his comments provide
a necessary framework for the poetry. Vogt also offers a
useful analysis of Saint Teresa’s versification, noting
that because of the dearth of autograph fragments or
even reliable copies, he has not been able to establish
the earliest version of each poem. He points out that of
the thirty-one extant poems attributed to Saint Teresa,
only one uses a nonnative strophic form, the octava
real, which was imported from Italy. However, although
Saint Teresa used traditional forms, she often modified
them, imbuing them with new vigor. Vogt discusses the
difficulties in trying to classify Saint Teresa’s poetry
metrically, among them the discrepant terminology used
by authorities such as Morley and Bruerton and the
seventeenth-century cleric Juan Díaz Rengifo, author of
Arte poética española. The section concludes with a poem-by-poem
metrical analysis of all of Saint Teresa’s compositions.
In spite of Vogt’s objections to faddish literary
theories, he does not limit his “Selected Annotated
Bibliography” to standard, time-worn tomes, but in fact
includes many new, cutting-edge studies such as those by
Gillian Ahlgren and Alison Weber. The section also
includes some delightful surprises, such as Carolyn
Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast, on the religious
significance of food for women in the Middle Ages. For
the most part, the translations themselves are excellent-accurate,
engaging, and rhythmic. Saint Teresa wrote much of her
poetry for her friends and fellow nuns. Sometimes she
wrote to celebrate a special occasion, sometimes as an
expression of pure joy. Although these are carefully
composed poems, many exhibit the exuberance of popular
poetry. Several are cast as dialogues between rustics.
Others are courtly poems a lo divino.
Often it was
impossible for Vogt to retain the meter and rhyme of the
original. However, he does succeed in capturing the flow
and tone of Saint Teresa’s verse and the passion of her
voice. Vogt has produced a highly readable translation
of Teresa de Avila’s poetry that will be enjoyed by
scholars and non-scholars alike'.
Bárbara Mújica
(Georgetown University)
