CORPUS EPOCHALIS. MYSTICISM, BODY, HISTORY Calin Mihailescu

Document generated on 10/01/2021 9:20 a.m. Surfaces CORPUS EPOCHALIS. MYSTICISM, BODY, HISTORY Calin Mihailescu Volume 1, 1991 Article abstract The discourse of the body and history in the mystical tradition, especially URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065257ar Pascal. De Certeau on the history of Mysticism, Deleuze and Guattari on the DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1065257ar body. See table of contents Publisher(s) Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal ISSN 1188-2492 (print) 1200-5320 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Mihailescu, C. (1991). CORPUS EPOCHALIS. MYSTICISM, BODY, HISTORY. Surfaces, 1. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065257ar Copyright © Calin Mihailescu, 1991 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ CORPUS EPOCHALIS MYSTICISM, BODY, HISTORY Calin Mihailescu ABSTRACT The discourse of the body and history in the mystical tradition, especially Pascal. De Certeau on the history of Mysticism, Deleuze and Guattari on the body. RÉSUMÉ Le discours du corps et de l'histoire dans la tradition mystique, particulièrement Pascal. De Certeau à propos de l'histoire, Deleuze et Guattari à propos du corps. In the attempt to revisit Christian mystical literature today, one comes to the point where an apparently misplaced question has to be addressed: how are we to think of the bodily conditions under which one can subsist beyond the impact of time? This question appears to provoke either nonsensical or ironic answers, because mysticism is usually interpreted within either a (neo) Platonic or a Christian-eschatological hermeneutic framework. For Plato, and later for the middle Platonists (Celsus, Albinus), and neo- Platonists (Plotinus, Proclus), the material body is relegated to time, and death is perceived as a moment of eliberation from accidental impositions. To reach a level of changelessness means to rid of time and body, that is, to come to the knowledge that the soul does not die and does not mingle with the body (Phaedo 78c). There exists a certain tendency to overstate the influence of neo-Platonic thought on Christian mysticism (especially on such seminal figures as Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita (V-VI-th century), Meister Eckhart (XIII-XIV) and Saint John of the Cross (XVI)). In this light, the desire of the mystics to leave this world, to "get lost" (Weltlossigkeit) is understood as a seemingly Platonic disregard of materiality. The following step - -- the inclusion of mysticism in the great tradition of Western "idealist" metaphysics -- is easy to make, and the mystics have often been called to justify the grand theories which will stay in power until the critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger. On the other hand, Christian eschatology, a way of thinking already historicized by the end of the New Testament, provides a powerful framework that may include and disposses mystical thought of its irreductible particularities. The "immortality of the body" in eschatological thought amounts to mortification, with the difference that one does not find an Egyptian mummy in a "post-apocalyptic pyramid": here the body is mortified by omission. In Christian terms, an "eschatological body" is utter nonsense. As the Christian apocalyptic thought focuses on the moral aspects of the Last Judgment, the body is relegated to a space that is absent from Christian discourse. For Bultmann this process amounts to a major displacement in the history of Christian thought: the eschatological other- worldly substitutes the un-worldly from which Christ emerges. The real urgency imposed by Christ's presence and absence is traded for a "delayed urgency," a feeling common to all members of the race. The concept of Christian history emerges as the way toward the second coming and the Last Judgment, and in this historicization the experience of the individual, of his body, of utter urgency, is marginalized or lost. Christian mysticism stands for the values displaced by historicization. For the mystics, death is always around the corner: not the death threatening a people, announced by the Vetero-Testamentary prophets, not the death of the human race, but the death of the mystic, "my death". For the mystics, death is the extase matérielle: matter steps outside of matter but not in the concept. The mystical recovers the materiality of nothingness, outside any possible distinction between natural and supernatural, however these terms are defined. The mystic is the one who can unashamedly say: I die, and come back and say it again. One of the consequences of the opposition between what is roughly differentiated here as Christian mysticism and Christian eschatology lies in that a historical discourse on mysticism can be but a falsification of its object. One feels compelled to address the concepts of 'body' and 'history' in a way that attempts to overlook historical discoursing by suggesting a non- historical "temporal frame". Our story begins with St. Francis of Asissi's showing of the godly scars and ends, more than four centuries later, with the concealment of the "divine wounds". Pascal's heritage of struggle and complications, of dialectical tension, is with us, and our critical thining tries to reinvoke the existence of a natural body not devoid of spirituality, while St. Francis's heritage, too essentially simple, is lost somewhere, beneath the cloth of our "delicacy." While in his cell on Mt Averno in 1224, Francis of Asissi was visited by a seraph in the likeness of Christ crucified, who, embracing him, produced upon his hands, feet, and side five wounds. The stigmata have been seen (by Pope Alexander IV among other less illustrious Christians), "documented" by Tommaso of Celano in both of his biographies of St Francis, and made the object of a legendary reverence for the founder of the Franciscan order. The stigmata provided the Franciscans with something no other religious order could claim: for neither St. Benedict nor St. Bernard nor Francis' contemporary, St. Dominic, could prove that they had conformed their lives to Christ to the point of imitating the scars of the Passion. Far from being the only or the first stigmatic recognized by the Church, Francis is the most famous. His example triggered a true epidemic that swept across Europe for centuries. So far, more than 300 persons have been identified as having been stigmatized, sixty of whom were declared saints or blessed in the Roman Catholic Church, which, routinely very careful when it came to sanctifications, could not help but sanction the validating proof of the stigmata. The story of the paramount mark of the imitation of Christ: the scars of Passion sanction lived experience according to true faith. As the body of the faithful receives the sign of grace, the boon of the elect, an inquiry into the secular rationalizations of this experience proves unrewarding. On the one hand, there is the explanation which traces the origins of the wounds back to an act of self-infliction in a state of exaltation, epilepsy, etc. (often associated with female frailty.) On the other hand, the suspicion that the stigmatized is a con man (or con woman for that matter) denies a certain individual the right to claim divine affliction. Both rationalizations say nothing more than that there are individuals who either are under the spell of illusion or are trying to fool the others. In a more 'systematic' mood, these explanations can be taken as techniques of how not to suspend our disbelief in the likelihood of the divinely inflicted wounds. This would lead inductively to the general statement "there are no stigmata." But what counts is the symbolic value of the wounds, for the stigmatized body is Christ-like. Unlike the umbilical "scar," marking our lost communion with another body, the five stigmata of Francis celebrate the divine embrace and mark the promise of salvation. Francis is a man of God: he bears the divine trademark. At the other end of our story, which happens to take place on the night of November 23rd to 24th, 1654, in Paris, Blaise Pascal had an ecstatic experience. Following his nuit de feu, he finally committed himself to fight for the Christian faith as it was understood by bishop Jansenius' followers. Relatively shortly thereafter (January 23, 1656), this "ami dévoué et sûr de Port Royal" was to publish (although the author's name was not publicized then) the first of his Lettres Provinciales in which the attack on the moral laxity preached by the Jesuits is typically Jansenist. Pascal never spoke about his experience, and, if it were not for a piece of paper found, a few days after his death, sewn in the lining of his coat, the world would not have had any notice of what happened that night. When, eighty years later, in 1742, this piece was first published, it has been given the title Le Mémorial. Although the text is a most revealing proof of Pascal's conversion, one should not infer -- though it has been often inferred -- that the Mémorial represents a final reconciliation of the opposite sides of his thought. Nor should one decide hastily that the Mémorial has left a clear imprint on his subsequent writings; the Pensées and the Provinciales have, stylistically speaking, little in common with it. Both Pascal's faith and his style require that his search go on. Pascal's God, who is neither found nor lost but always present, utters Tu ne me chercherais si tu ne m'avait trouvé..

Load more