EROS AS COSMIC SORROW: LOCATING THE LIMITS OF DIFFERENCE IN JULIAN OF

NORWICH'S REVELATION OF LOVE AND THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

Author(s): Nicola Masciandaro
Source: Mystics Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1/2 (March/June 2009), pp. 59-103
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20716579 .
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 Ibi. 35. Sos. 1-2. March June 2009

EROS AS COSMIC SORROW:

LOCATING THE LIMITS OF DIFFERENCE
IN JULIAN OF NORWICH'S REVELATION
OF LOVE AND THE CLOUD OF
UNKNOWING

Every animal after coitus is sad?variously attributed1

Beyond the sphere that widest turns /passes the sigh that issues

from my heart?Dante2

When I am in theGod-Man my soul is alive?Angela of Foligno3

The openings in the envelopes between men and women should

always be mediated by God?Luce Irigaray4

When the soul is trying to overcome sex-duality through detach

ment towards the opposite sex, it ispaving a way for under

standing the experience associated with the opposite sex from

within?Meher Baba5

And the nature of sorrow is double sorrow?C?sar Vallejo6

This essay speculates about the relationship between eros, sorrow, and
place in dialogue with the definitionsof extreme sorrow in two late
medievalmystical texts:JulianofNorwich's Revelation and The Cloud of
Unknowing. Julian defines ultimate sorrow as sorrow in relation to the suf

feringof thedivine other:"of alle paines that leed to salvation, this is

59
 Mystics Quarterly

themost: to se thy love suffer....therwas no paine thatmight be suf

fered like to that sorow that I had to see him inpaine."7 The Cloud
defines ultimate sorrow as sorrow over the fact of oneself: "Alle men
han mater of sorow, bot most specyaly he felith mater of sorow thatwote
and felith that he is.Alle other sorowes ben unto this in comparison bot as
itwere gamen to ernest."8 The conspicuously opposite and complemen
tary nature of these definitions suggests the need for understanding them
as having somethingtodowith each other.Proceeding fromthis
together,
assumption, I look for this "something" in a phenomenological manner, by
paying attention to structural features of eros, sorrow, and place as experi
ential phenomena, not in the reductive sense of stable extra-textual reali
ties that these texts indicate, but in the enlarged and more open sense of
themeaning-experience they produce. Here I take inspiration from Gaston
of thepoetic image inThe
of thereverberation
Bachelard's understanding
Poetics of Space: "In this reverberation, the poetic image will have a so

norityof being. The poet speaks on the thresholdof being.Therefore, in

order to determine the being of an image, we shall have to experience
its reverberation in themanner of...phenomenology."9 In these terms, my

reading accepts the Revelation and the Cloud as poetic texts, as represen
tations whose significance is found by interpretation aiming to harmonize
itselfwith the text's own hermeneutic claims and produce itself as mean

ingful experience of the text's experiential meaning.10 This means embrac

ing a criticism that exceeds the explanatory and keeps an eye on what

Giorgio Agamben diagnoses criticism itself as overlooking: "the fact that

every authentic poetic project is directed toward knowledge, just as every

authentic act of philosophy is always directed toward joy."11

a fundamentalambivalencewithin
Four sectionsfollow.The firstidentifies
the medieval concept of sorrow and suggests a relation between this am
bivalence and thedifferencebetween Julian'sand theCloud's definitions
of sorrow as a gendered, relational difference. The second provides a to

pological reading of the gendering of authorial voice in theRevelation and

the Cloud. The third offers a more general theorization of mystical desire
as erotic longing for absolute place. The fourth interpretsmystical sorrow
as the negative extremity of cosmic desire, an intense being-out-of-place
that paradoxically establishes a new center for experience. The central in

60
 Vol. 35, a'. 1-2, March June 2009

sightdeveloped throughoutis thatJulian'sand theCloud's ultimatesor

rows erotically locate, by a kind of topological triangulation, a place for
difference beyond difference.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF SORROW: "IF A MAN OR WOM

AN WHER THERE, UNDER THE BRODE WATER"

Sorrow is haunted by doubleness. The doubleness of sorrow ismore than

itsmanifestation, like everything else subject to duality, in alternate forms
of good and bad, pleasurable and painful,and so forth.
Rather ithas todo
with a deeper ambivalence within the structure and experience of sorrow
itself, such that sorrow appears to always include or evoke the problem
atic presence of other sorrows, so that the task of defining sorrow inher

ently requires distinguishing between alternate forms of sorrow. Sorrow is

never simply this or that, good or bad, but always one way in a manner that
involvesthepossibilityof coincidingwith itsotheror opposite.A good
example of thisambivalence is provided bymourning,which in a com
plicated way is always both for someone's death and for one's own loss,
at once over another and over oneself. As Augustine's description of his
grief for his mother demonstrates, such doubling of sorrow may also coin
cide with, and indeed be produced by, its reflexive regulation: "I was very
much ashamed that these human emotions could have such power over
me...and I felt a new grief at my grief and so was afflicted with a twofold
sorrow [duplici tristitio]."12 This suggests the possibility of a more general
essential relation between sorrow's ambivalence and its self-reflexivity,
theway inwhich sorrow is always also for itself. In other words, sorrow's
ambivalence appears in the problematical character of a fold. Sorrow is
foldedor self-doublingaccording to itsessential inclusionof itselfas an
object of sorrow, because sorrow, in being sorrow, also sorrows that it sor
rows.13 This is simultaneously what gives sorrow its experiential intensity
and what structures its inherent instability, the ambivalence which intern

ally conditions its limits.

Whence the formalequivalence between the
definition of maximalsorrow by Dante's Francesca?"There is no greater
sorrow than to remember the happy time inmisery"?and the scriptural
double sorrow it echoes: "For a double affliction came upon them, and a

61
 Mystics Quarterly

groaning for the remembrance of things past."14 In this sense, sorrow is the
negativity of its own ambivalence, the experience of its essential relation
to an intimate absent other.

Sorrow's ambivalence is especially evident within themedieval discourse

on sorrow that, rooted in St. Paul's distinction in 2 Cor. 7:10 between
tristitia secundum Deum (sorrow according to God) and tristitia saeculi
(worldly sorrow), both celebrates sorrow as a spiritual virtue and wor
ries over its ethical dangers. In this context, sorrow is not a problem to be

fixed,but a tasktobe faced,a work ofmourning that

must be takenup and
therefore also a labor under which one could not only collapse, but fail.
On the one hand, sorrow, in the form of contrition, is an absolute neces

sity. Only contrition can crush {contritio, from conterere, to crush, grind)
the hardness of will which constitutes sin.15On the other hand, excessive
sorrow is itselfsinfuland may lead to despair, a transitiontraditionally
figuredas being swallowed by sorrow.16 Such failure iswonderfullyfig
ured in the infernal submersion of Dante's sullen :"Fixed in the slime they
say: 'Sad we were [fummo], in the sweet air which is gladdened from the
sun, carrying within ourselves the slothful fumes [fummo].'"17 The pun
of Dante's fummo clarifies what the crushing and swallowing metaphors

suggest, namely, that sorrow's ambivalent power is all about its blurring
of the boundaries between being and affect, its belonging to a mysterious
dimension of extreme desire where how one feels and what one is intersect
in thewill's utmost self-constituting and self-dissolving negativity.

The ambivalence of contritional sorrow is demonstrated in a more precise

way within themedieval definitionof contritionas the greatestof sor

rows on the basis of its relationship to thewill's final end.18 Contrition, as

perfect sorrow, is governed by the paradox of being a maximum intensity

that requires moderation, a kind of an emotional volume control which
must be turned all the way up without blowing the system. This paradox

might be resolved intellectually by distinguishing between the rational as

pect of contrition, which has no proper limit, and the sensible aspect of
contrition, which does.19 Yet from an experiential perspective, this distinc
tion,which runs the riskof reducingcontritionto a kind of subjunctive
act or deferrablepossibilityof itself,only accentuates theparadox in that

62
 Vol. 35. Sos. 1-2, March June 2009

it requires sorrow precisely as an unbounded disproportion between the

intention and the expression of sorrow, between its innermost reality and
its outer manifestation.20 How many tears are enough? How many are too
much? The impossibility of positive answers here, of inherently measur

ingsorrow'sproperbounds,only pointsback to thefactthatsorrow isall

about the unquantifiable, that it concerns a dimension of experience that
is fundamentally incommensurable with stable definition. This instabil

ity is played out in the salvational rhetoric of tears, which circles forever
between the one and themany, between the immeasurable significance of
thealmost insubstantialsingle tearand thenever sufficient
ad infinitum
of unstoppable, innumerable tears.21One tear is already too much. Many
tears are never enough.

Following tearsbeyond theproblemof sinand intoa regionof experience

thatmedieval contritiondoctrinemight implybut could but notmap, the
Revelation and the Cloud take sorrow to its limit in an affective encoun
terwith the divine that breaks sorrow's intrinsic doubleness and discloses
the thresholdof duality.Both works reflectupon the essentiallymixed
and ambivalent character of sorrow only to seek sorrow's purification in
itsmaximum intensification. Julian's sympathetic sorrow, a radical ex
pression of the "marvelous medelur both of wele and of wo" (52.6-7)
is
conditioning temporal life, perforce also an experience of the love that

grounds it: "For ever the higher, the mightier, the swetter that the love is,
the more sorow it is to the lover to se that body in paine that he loved"

(18.6-7). So theCloud author similarlyexplains that"This sorow,yif it

be trewelyconseyvid, is ful of holy desire; and ells might neverman in
this liifabide itne bere it" (44.1561-63). But it ispreciselyas a bearing
of the unbearable, as sorrow asymptotically becoming pure sorrow, that
sorrow achieves significance in these works. In the Cloud, the contempla
tive "goth ni wood for sorow" (44.1570). In theRevelation, sorrow for the

suffering God participates in the universal absolute sorrow of the cosmos:

and erth,failedforsorow in therkind inthetimeofCris
"The firmament
tes dying" (18.13-14).

In a fundamental way, Julian and theCloud do the same thingwith sorrow,

which is to find at its extremity an opening to untrammeled joy. For each,

63
 Mystics Quarterly

the experience of extreme sorrow is fulfilled in a vertiginous inversion that

both erases sorrow's ambivalence and establishes the reality of an ecstasy
that is non-dualistic, independent of its opposite. In the Cloud, perfect
sorrow transcends its auto-factical cause (the fact that one is), opening
the soul "to resseive that joye, the whiche revith fro a man alle wetyng
and felyngof his beying" (44.1560-61). In theRevelation,participationin
the "onspekabyl" (20.rubric) suffering of God arrives, just when it seems
that"the lifemight no lengerlast" (21.7), at an absolutelyunpredictable
sympathetic transformation: "He changed in blisseful chere. The changing
of his blisseful chere changed mine, and Iwas as glad and mery as itwas

possible" (21.8-10). These self-transformations partake of the broader

movement within late medieval
religion towards affective identification
with divinity and the representation of God as suffering.22More ,
impor
tantly,theytraceultimatesorrowas belonging to theessentiallymystical
desire to experience God directly as real being, as themovement of a soul
thatwould unveil the divine via intimate exposure to the ultimate negativ

ity.To embrace the suffering of sorrow, rather than seek a way around or
through it, is to touch, hold, and cling to the real, to go all the way with
it.This means allowing sorrow's swallowing and crushing dangers to turn
on oneself, letting oneself be, as Miguel de Unamuno recommends, con
sumed by themystery:

Do not take opium, but put salt and vinegar in the soul's

wound, for when you sleep and no longer feel the suf
fering, you are not. And to be, that is imperative. Do not
thenclose your eyes to the agonizing Sphinx, but look
her in the face, and let her seize you in her mouth, and
crunch you with her hundred thousand poisonous teeth,
and swallow you. And when she has swallowed you, you
will know the sweetness of the taste of suffering.23

In this sense, despite the radical difference in their trajectories, Julian's

and the Cloud's sorrows arrive towards the same point, a place of supreme

actualityfromwhich authenticpassion doublyflows: "The rootof all pure

joy and sadness is that theworld is as it is."24Can the difference between
these inverse sorrows thus be grasped as an essentially relational differ

64
 Ibi. 35, Xos. 1-2, March June 2009

enee, as the perspectival separation between two sides of the same sorrow?
Is there an essential intersection between the dyadic appearance of these
sorrows and the doubleness of sorrow itself?

A positive answer to thesequestionsmay be soughtwithin the topologi

ca! relationship between eros and cosmos, between erotic desire as desire
forplace, forbeing (in) theplace of theother,and cosmos as thebody
whose placelessness is the ultimate ground of all erotic desire, of love
thatdemands the tangiblepresence of the loved.25For themystic, desire
ends inGod as the identityof place and body, as the beingwho is its
own place, at once the place of itself and the place of cosmos.26 Mysti
cal desire forGod may be, as Georges Bataille glosses it,the impossible
desire "to be everything[tout]" but thisdesire, takingplace not ex nihilo
but in theembodied person,articulatesitselfvia body as thecontainerof
desire, as theplace where one is and the one desired is not.27 Following
the pattern of sexual prepositionality, such articulation takes two forms: to

place oneself into the place of the other and to place the other within one's
place. From this perspective, we can begin to see how Julian's and the
Cloud's mystical sorrows are symmetrically feminine and masculine re

spectively, precisely because of theway each fulfills itself as an inversion

of the prepositional phenomenology of sexual desire. Where the feminine
text's sorrow performs, in themode of compassion, a spiritual entering of
oneself-in-the-other, themasculine text's sorrow experiences, in themode
of ravishing, the spiritual entering of the other-in-oneself. The feminine

mystic penetrates God, finds herself enclosed inGod, unites with God as
her place. The masculine mystic is penetrated by God, finds God within
himself, unites with God as God's own place. Understanding this inverse

symmetry requires neither fixing nor exploding the meanings of "mascu

line" and "feminine." Instead it calls for seeing them as dimensions of an
inclusive, divine structure of desire through which the feminine/masculine
distinction becomes simultaneously more arbitrary and more significant.
Each mode of entering/being-entered opens a place where one is/becomes
theother.Both sorrowsare gendered relationshipsto somethingbeyond
gender,by definitionbelonging towomen andmen throughtheirintrinsic
Mystical sorrow is a placefor genderbeyond/behind
undefinability. gen
der.28

65
 Mystics Quarterly

If, as Ruth Mazo Karras hasshown, medieval sex was transitive, not

something persons did, had, or made together, but "something that one
person did to another," then what these sorrows witness is precisely the
cosmic limitofmedieval sex.29This limit,which themystic finds inter
nally within his or her body, coincides exactly with the external boundary
of theuniversewhere individuatedplace givesway to theplace of every
thing. Dante marks this boundary with a conspicuous and final neologism:
"veder voleva come si convenne / l'imago al cerchio e come vi s'indovd'

[Iwanted to see how the imageconformsto thecircle and how ithas its
how the image {la nostra
place therein]{Paradiso 33.137-38), literally,
effige,thehuman image) enwheres itself where
there, itfindsor becomes
or takes place for itself. The reflexive erotic transitivity of this expression
for the cosmic place of the human corresponds to the manner inwhich
themystical sorrowsof Julianand theCloud, throughtheheat of radical
displeasure and refusal, unconceal a place where the will, released from

duality,finds itselfas already inpossession of and possessed by itsremot

est and final object.30 Mystical sorrow, an extremity of affective, intransi
tive action, something one does with oneself over something but never to
another, here becomes the means of an absolute transitivity which places
one in the deepest erotic relation to the cosmos. In a period marked by
the deprivitization of contrition and the ascendancy of space over place,
Julian's and the Cloud's sorrow thus open possibilities of new and deeper

intimacy with the world.31 As productions of new forms of personal cos

mic presence, they participate inversely inmodernity's replacement of a
cosmo-centric with a world-eccentric subject, for "it was only toward the
end of theMiddle Ages, ina timewhen itsbasic epistemologicalfeatures
began to lose their appearance of being 'natural,' that such implications
were increasingly made explicit."32

LOCATING DIFFERENCE: "IF A MAN OR WOMAN WEIER

THERE, UNDER THE BRODE WATER"

Julian's and the C/ow?/-author's relative modes of authorship fit within

the paradoxical patriarchal theology of gender that was normative for
medieval Christianity: "Androcentric dualism correlative with a meta

66
 Ibi. 35, a . 1-2, March June 2009

sexual Godhead, where the sexless rational soul is created in God's im

age although human maleness exemplifies the excellence of asexual

Godlikeness."33 Where Julian's authority is embodied, individualized, and

subjective, the Cloud's authority is disembodied, anonymous, and objec

tive (hence my habit of referring to one as person and the other as text).
Where Julian speaks in terms of what happens to her, the Cloud speaks
in terms of what happens to one. These differences would seem to fulfill
the male privilege of asexual universality, the denial of that privilege to
women, and the conventional qualitative distinctions between feminine
and masculine types of mysticism.

Yet sucha dualisticand simpledistinctionbetweenJulian'sand theCloud's

modes of authorship, at once correct and contradicted by medieval coun

terexamples of male subjective and female anonymous authorship, are

as problematic as the feminine vs. masculine mysticism distinction is to

begin with.34 Contemplation and writing, like other human practices, are
never simply feminine or masculine but rather structured through gender
as an essentially relational category, above all, as the relation of real per
sons to their sex and its social and psychic constructions, which are in a
fundamental way ongoingly given to the self, part of the undetermined tak
ing-place of individual, individuated beings, their unique embodiment.35
Indeed, mysticism generally seems to be a relation to world that under
stands and experiences gender's relationality to a conspicuous, even ex

acerbated, degree precisely because of its determined encounter with the

givenness, arbitrariness, and negativity of one's taking-place as the ground

of a desire "to be everything." As such, mysticism is bound to gender not
but as a siteof strugglefor identity
as a termof identity as both including
and transcending gender. The mystic wrestles with gender, struggles with,

through, and against it in a longing that takes and must take eros beyond
eros. As an essential component of its spiritual coup, mysticism occupies

gender as simultaneously irrelevant and transcendent, as always both be

longingto and exceeded by themysteryof the taking-placeof things,the

thatwhich is thecontentof themystical andwhich as such savesmysti
cism itself from essentialism.36 So authorship in mystical texts appears
both heavily, phantasmagorically gendered and especially epicene in the
sense that Laurie Finke has developed the idea in relation tomedieval au

67
 Mystics Quarterly

thors, as "a third termwhich is not a category or a sex in itself, but a space
of possibility thatputs sexual identityintoplay."37
Mysticism creatively
messes with one's being "woman" or "man."

Julian's and the Cloud's ceaseless use of the construction "a man or a
woman" offers a suggestive index of gender's relationality and the am
bivalence of itsmattering.38 The phrase, as meaning simultaneously that
one's being a woman or a man does not matter to what is being said and
what isbeing saidmatters specificallytowomen andmen as such (and
that
never meaning "man" or "woman" as abstract universals), defines a space
of sharedsingularitythatbears comparisontoGiorgioAgamben's concept
ofwhatever being (quodlibetens):

Quodlibet ens is not "being, it does not matter which,"

but rather "being such that it always matters." The Latin

always already contains, that is, a reference to the will

(libet). Whatever being has an original relation to desire.
The Whatever in question here relates to singularity not
in its indifference with respect to a common property...
but only in itsbeing such as it is. Singularityis thusfreed
from the false dilemma that obliges knowledge to choose
between the ineffability
of the individualand the intel
ligibility of the universal.... The singularity exposed as
such iswhatever you want, that is, the lovable...The lover
wants the loved one with all itspredicates, its being such
as it is.39

On this model "a man or a woman" may be understood not only as an

inclusiveChristiangestureand/ordefinitionof audience, but exactlywhat
would give these meaning in the first place: an expression of a loving

knowing recognitionof gender as a particularand particularlyimportant

aspect of human singularity that takes a dual form. Julian and the Cloud
desire the reader as "a man or a woman," the reader as gendered, which
means the reader not despite being man or woman, but as being man or
woman, as belonging to the space of gender as a space of the or, a being
one way thatexists in relation to the possibilityof being another.The

68
 loi. 35, a . 1-2, March June 2009

indifference to gender that belongs to "a man or a woman" is a relational

indifference, not a pure indifference or disregard towards the terms of dif
of differenceitself,of being in themidst of
ference,but the indifference
difference. "A man or a woman" acknowledges gender as a situation, a
only inrelationto other
place that,likeall otherplaces, achieves identity
places and as such is forever ex-posed to the impossibility of place per
se, its lack of itself.And as a fundamentally sexual distinction, the phrase
within thedifferent
gesturesbothfrom whichGod
eroticpositionsthrough
is loved and towards love as what takes eros beyond gender?a trajectory
that finds concrete form in the gender-neutral terms Julian and the Cloud
use to address the reader singly: "thou towhome this booke shall come"

{Revelation,86.20),40"ghostlyfreende" {Cloud, 75.2527).

Place opens up a way, a third term for interpreting gender, and thence the
genderof authorship, without reducingittofixedmasculine and feminine
qualities.There is ample ground fordoing so: the individualexperience
of body as theplace of oneself,traditional
definitionsof sexual difference
in terms of shape and space (inside and outside), and the social gender

ing of space and place, to name the most obvious.41 Nor is itnecessary to
conceive of place itself, following Plato's cosmic receptacle {hupodoch?,
chord), Aristotle's definition of place as vessel, and/or Irigaray's woman

as-place, as essentiallyfeminine(howeverfruitful
thatthinking
might be)
unless we are married to the masculinity of what is not or other than or

beyond place.42 Indeed, the fact that place has for so long been concep
tualized and figured as feminine and the feminine as place, should make
us all the more attentive to those places where this association is loos
ened or undone. That Julian and the Cloud pressure the orthodox gender
God's metasexualityas multisexuality(God
of theGodhead by thinking
as mother, brother, father, spouse) and asexuality (God as being), respec
tively,and at the same timeemphasize (via thefiguresof theVirginMary
and Mary Magdalene, respectively) the conventional gendering of the hu
man-divine relationship inwhich love of the God-Man is feminine/femi

nizing is thusan invitingindicationthattheymay also be doing something

innovative, avant-garde with place, finding in ita place for gender and thus
also a space beyond it.43

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 Mystics Quarterly

To beginwith, thedifferentrelationsbetween authorityand place in the

Revelation and the Cloud, their different configurations of the intersecting
bodies of author, text, and reader, are in and of themselves constitutive of
such a finding. Parallel to their alternate definitions of sorrow, these works

display complementary erotic geometries, sexual shapes, which I will try

to sketch, not to determine gender, but to understand it as a transitional

space, a place that, like the human body which holds it,we are all, regard
less of whence and whither, passing through. Julian places her text inside
of her, inthevisionaryspacewhere readingitbecomes at once sharingher
vision and listening to her interpret itfor us. On the one hand she presents
herself as the "simple creature" (2.1) and feminine carrier of masculine
divine authority: "For I am a woman, lewed, febille, and freylle. Botte I
wate wele, ths thatI saye I hafe itof the shewingeof him thates sover
ayne techarej."44 On the other hand, she herself is the text, the authority
which is being glossed in a self-constituting act of auto-commentary.45 If
we move throughJulianto get tohermeaning it is only tofindher there,
all themore present in theplace of itstruth.
This happensmost radically
in theway her own understanding(the interpreting subjective intellect)
with thedivine voice (the revealedobjectiveword) so
becomes identified
that the boundary between vision and intuition, perception and thought is

completely blurred: "And itwas answered generally thus" (5.9-10); "And

I was answered inmy understanding" (5.11-12); "Then he, without voys
and opening of lippes, formed inmy soule these words" (13.3?4); "Than
had I a profer inmy reason" (19.4); "Then brought oure lorde merily to
my mind" (21.10); and so forth.
The totaleffectof suchphrases is toopen
Julian's text as a new somewhere, a third place, that is at once intimately
within her and elsewhere, a voice from heaven that is one's own. Insofar
as the reader arrives there by entering an author who offers herself as its

vessel, this space is unmistakably, genitally feminine. But once we are

thereit ishard to saywhat happens to thisgender,especially by theend of
when thisplace isexpanded and revealedas theverygroundupon
thetext,
which isbeing read:
it

The boke is beg?nne byGoddes gifteand his grace, but

it is not yet performed, as to my sight. For charit? pray
we alle togeder, with Goddes working: thanking, trusting,

70
 ibi. 35, a . 1-2, March June 2009

enjoying,for thuswille oure good lordbe prayed,by the

understanding that I toke in alle his owne mening, and
in the swete words where he seyth f?lle merely: "I am

groundof thybeseeching" (86.1-5)46

Julian's text thus fulfills itself as the creation of a new territory, an inter
section of book and world as a place where the reader can move/stand in
the very possession of what he seeks, "to enjoyen inHim in this passand

journeyof this life" (86.3415-16). Compare thiswith theCloud, which

concludes by positioningthe reader in themiddle of themovement and
futurity of her desire and self-becoming:

For not what thou arte, ne shat thou hast ben, beholdeth
God with hismercyful ighe;bot thatthatthouwoldest be.
And SeinteGregorytowitness that"all holydesiresgrow
en bi d?laies; and yif theiwanyn bi d?laies, thenwere thei
never holy desires." For he that felith ever les joye and
les innewe fyndingesand sodeynpresentaciounsof his
olde purposid desires... holy desires weren thei never....
Farewel, goostlyfreende. (75.2519-24)

In contrast to the Revelation, through which the reader enters the author
and therediscovers a place of ongoing fulfillment,
theCloud is a place
where the author enters the reader, stirs her desires, and finally departs in
thepromise of her individualspiritualdestiny.The Cloud's mode of au
thorshipis thusgendered ina distinctlydifferent
way, likea disembodied
phallic logos moving the reader under its power. In contrast to Julian's

receptivewriting (speakingas hearing),theCloud maintains thevoice of

a direct commanding "I" throughout the text: "I preie thee and I beseche
thee" (218); "thou schaltwel understondethatIfynde" (1.224); "Look up
now, weike wreche" (2.249); "Do on than, I preie thee, fast" (2.261); "Bot
of oo thingIwarne theeamonges alle other" (4.377-78); "Bot now thou
askestme" (8.515); "And lokethouhave nowonder of this"(9.610); "Lo!
Freende" (17.868); "Now trewlythou seistwel; for therewolde I have
thee" (68.2296-97); and so forth. Here too a new, third place is sought,
the place of possession and ravishing, where one, displaced by another,

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is present, somewhere, but without being in place: "Theder beheeld sehe

with al the love of her hert. For fro thens list hir not remove for nothing
thatsehe saw ne herde spokenne done aboute hir,bot satfill stille inhir
body" (17.851-53). In sum, Julian's and the Cloud's authorial voices are

fundamentally related to their particular contemplative ends (revelation

and ravishing) via their positioning and placement of the reader in a space
or state to achieve them. In the Revelation, the voice of authority, the di
vine voice of Julian/God, is something to hear and overhear with her, to
listen to in an intimate absolute inner space where God holds everything
and words are spoken that place us within God. In the Cloud, the voice of

authority is a disembodied voice of the master, deictic and exhorting, a

voice which makes us see, do, and become what it speaks of and so places
us outside self.

THE EROS OF PLACE: "FOR THE HIGHE AND THE

NEXTE WEY THEDER IS R?NNE BY DESIRES"

Julian's and the Cloud's modes of authorship articulate desire for a place

beyond differencefromwithin the place of difference.But what is the

eros of place? By what (in)directionsis place desired?After all, follow
ingAristotle, whose definition of place would seem to articulate our or

dinary, everyday experience and understanding of it, place is precisely

what is not, can never be lacking. As "non-portable vessel" and "inner
most boundary of what contains" (Physics 212a), place is an omnipresent

possession. Every body has place, everyplace has body (Physics 209a).
Places change, but place itself is an inalienable attribute whereby every
body is in the cosmos, which itself is "not anywhere as a whole, nor in any

place" (Physics 212b). Place is thus ina sense cosmos itself,thealways

present term that makes everywhere somewhere. Yet place's very pleni
tude is also thegroundsofwanting it.The immobilityof place makes it
ceaselessly unpossessable, relational, something never graspable as such
but only prepositionally, inmotion towards or rest in it. So Averroes's

commentary on the immobility of Aristotelian place suggests an originary

relation to desire: "Place is that towards which something moves or in
which something rests. If something were tomove toward a termwhich is

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itself inmovement, the thing would be moving in vain."47 For as soon as

rest and movement mean anything more?when have they never??place
is already a sea of trouble. The moment we want place as something more
than we can define it as, then place's own prepositional logic threatens
eitherto remove it in regress(where isplace?) or collapse it in tautology
(you are here). Never possessing it, never lacking it,we desire place as
an inevitable impossibility,
whether negativelyas what is beyond body
(nowhere, void, utopia,) or positively as what incorporates all bodies, their
sum (self,body,world, cosmos, everything).
infinite Eitherway thedesire
for place moves from the body, the boundary between self and cosmos that
is the place of place, towards what would give or return place to the self.

Eros, love that demands the presence and possession of the loved, is the
vain movement of Averroes (fr. habere ereosl) towards something that is
itself inmovement, a desire for another boundary, another body, a place
for our place. So the sorrow of eros is that two bodies cannot occupy the
same place.48 Yet perhaps sorrow can take eros where it cannot go. Via

compassion or sorrow for the other, love thatwould take the place of the
other, one enters the other from within, feels what the other feels, takes
place in the other. And via contrition or self-sorrow, love which would
make way for the other, one is opened by the other from within, no longer
feels oneself, becomes a place of the other. Sorrow, as desire's utmost

negativity, is then the space of its inversion, the place where desire finds
itself, knows itself as already in possession of what it seeks. So these two
sorrows would touch, arrive at the same place. Is itpossible they do not?

Mystical desire, erotic need for the remotest omnipresent other, is in these
termslongingforabsolute place. More precisely, it is desire for the full
presence of a situation in which the two regions or dimensions where
Aristotelian place breaks down, the intimate and the cosmic, are fused or
found to be identical.The union or intersection
of these twodimensions
constitutes the presence of God or having the absolute at hand. How de
sireforsuchunionplays out poeticallycan be grasped in relationtobasic
phenomenological insightsintothe topologicalfluidityof human experi
ence, theplaceless zone fromwhichHeidegger findshimselfsayingthings
like, "When I go toward to the door of the lecture hall, I am already there,
and I could not go to itat all if Iwere not such that I am there.... I already

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 Mystics Quarterly

pervade the room, and only thus can I do through it."49 It is here that the
immanence of a third place, a zone thatmight contain from within the ap

places projectedby thedualityof selfandworld, comes

parentlydifferent
into view. Building on Donald Winnicott's concept of childhood's transi
tionalobjectswhich belong to "a zone of experiencewhich isbetween the
thumb and the teddy-bear," Giorgio Agamben sketches such an alternative

topologyfromits intimateside:

[This] topology...has always been known to children, fe

tishists, "savages," and poets. It is in this "third area" that
a science of man truly freed of every eighteenth-century

prejudice should focus its study. Things are not outside us,
inmeasurable external space, like neutral objects (ob-jec
ta) of use and exchange; rather,theyopen tous theorigi
nal place solelyfromwhich theexperienceofmeasurable
external space becomes possible. They are therefore held
and comprehended from the outset in the topos outopos

(placeless place, no-place place) inwhich our experience

of being-in-the-world is situated. The question "where is
the thing?" is inseparable from the question "where is the
human?"50

"Where am I?" may thus very well be a question towhich mysticism holds
an essential relation, not as a simply conceptual or posed question, but as
the palpable embodied feelingof craving to knowwhere one is,which
opens theaporeticor suspendedspace inwhich themystical impulsecon
ceives and seizes itself as topological desire.51 So the Revelation begins
with Julian's longingtobe inanotherplace, tobe "withMary Magdaleyne
and with other that were Christus lovers," to have "bodily sight...of the

bodily paines of our savior," to be "one of them and have suffered with
them" (2.8-13). And the Cloud's first contemplative instructions employ
a comparable vocabulary of spatio-visual orientation: "Look up now...and
see what on than, I preie thee, fast. Look now forwardes,
thou arte.... Do
and lat be bacwardes" (2.249-61). Mystical desire for place is thus more

exactly a desire to translate the here into the Here, to have the placeless
absolute in the terms of what is present and at-hand, for that iswhere the

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boundaries of Aristotelian place are always already broken down, above

all within the spatiality of one's own body as the ever-present transitional

objectbetween selfandworld. Inotherwords, body itselfis theprimordial

"third area" which, being forgotten as such via habitual identification with
itas amere thingamong things,isbehind the longingfortheplaceless/its
own-place and proportionally constitutes this longing as erotic, as desire
for the other in the same terms through which one most intimately has
oneself As Merleau-Ponty explains:

The word "here" applied tomy body does not referto a

determinateposition in relation to otherpositions or to
external coordinates, but the laying down of the first-co
ordinates, the anchoring of the active body in an object,
the situation of the body in face of its tasks.... As far as

spatiality is concerned...one's own body is the third term,

always tacitly understood, in the figure-background struc

ture, and every figure stands out against the double hori
zon of external and bodily space.52

At the limitof thisdouble horizonappears thefigurewithoutbackground

or the background without figure, the external "third area" or remotest
where which Plato says is only perceived as in a dream, without proper

perception:

And there is a thirdnature,which is space [ch?r?\and

is eternal, and admits not of destruction and provides a
home for all created things, and is apprehended when
all sense is absent,by a kind of spurious reason,and is
hardly real?which we, beholding as in a dream, say of
all existence that itmust of necessitybe in some place
and occupy a space, but that what is neither in heaven
nor inearthhas no existence.Of theseand otherthingsof
the same kind, relatingto the trueandwaking realityof
nature, we have only this dreamlike sense, and we are un

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 Mystics Quarterly

able to cast off sleep and determine the truth about them.
(Timaeus 52b)

Or we could say,more directly, that this external space, neither intelligible

nor sensible, which Derrida has worked to explicate as a "third gender/
all opposition,a preoriginpriorto all dis
genus" standingbefore/beyond
course, "which counts on the origin as on a normal couple" is felt directly
in the body as thatwhich already contains it.53 In other words, ch?ra is a

phenomenonof theperson thatfeels it,thefunnyfeelingof being at once

absolutely somewhere and nowhere that happens when one tries to see the
place where "one" is. It is felt theway all and especially our deepest desir
ing and questioning is felt: as an event, as passion holding the whole per
son and so undoing, like Augustine's "quaestio mihi factus sum" [I have
become a question tomyself], the boundary between being and feeling.54

The contentofmystical longing,as the impossibledesiring-questioning

of
impossible place, is not a perceived object, a there, but a must be or unseen
is grounded in theactualityofwhat is here, in the inexplicablefact that
something is happening, that one actually does exist, has body, the most
intimate wrestling partner through which and with whom we struggle to
get a grip on ourselves, cast off sleep, determine the truth about things,
find where here is. The question Where am I?, traversing a space bounded
fromwithin by the intensity
with which it is felt,desireswhat ismost
remote, not objectively, for the sake of asking about it, but only as that
which would give place to the present, locate it somewhere. If,when the

question achieves this location, it is not by hittingitsmark or findinga

point that discloses the questioner as on a map, but only by mirroring
thequestioner,givingplace to theirinexplicablepresence, thefacticityor
actualityor thatwhich is sowonderful/terrifying/beautifulthat itmay as
well be called (andmight verywell be) God.55Ch?ra, called by Derrida
"a strange mother who gives place without engendering," is the place of
the question and is question itself.56What can be said of the question can
be said of her.

Acknowledging this identityalso helps to clarify the vexed boundary,

friendship, and mutual (en)gendering between the discourses of philoso

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phy andmysticism.Philosophy also originates inerotic,felt, impossible

questions,but puts thepassion and thebody thatbirthedthemaside, to
leave them(ratherthan letthemplace one) in theabyss, as if indeferral
of their consummation, preferring to appropriate questioning as praxis,
to replace the question's original passion with a passion for questioning.
So philosophy ishauntedby ch?ra as itsoriginaleros, theforgottenlove
within itthatgave/givesthequestionand,which being forgotten, remains
perceivable only externally,barely,throughthedream of questioning, in
the form of remotest all-containing space.57 Mysticism, on the other hand,
takesup thequestions it isgiven as passion, as belonging to theplace that
conceived them. It knows and insists even foolishly that the question's
answer is not its understanding but its desperate and everyday experience
with themaswith body,withwhat
and so liveswith questions,places itself
will not go away.

Were these thoughts transmitted to Julian ofNorwich and theC/owd-author,

whatwould theythinkabout them?How would theirthinking differ?
And
have to do with theirgender,the shape of their
whatwould thatdiffering
eros, whatever itwas? Instead of answers I offer only another place for

seeingthe limitof theirdifferenceintheprinciplethat"theaestheticcenter

of metaphysics is the elemental passion for place."58 And a rather narrow
one, since there is not sufficient space here to hold the rich landscape of to
pological images within the Revelation and the Cloud, from Julian's being
"cladde and enclosed in the goodness of God" (6.37) and "alle grounded
and roted in love" (49.4) to the Clouds cosmic-cosmopolitan love of the
here-now of nowhere: "I had lever be so nowhere bodely, wrastlyng with
thatblyndenought thanto be so gretea lordethatImightwhen Iwolde
be everywherebodely,merilypleiingwith al thisoughtas a lordewith his
owne" (68.2304-306). But ifplace does shape inthesetermstheirspiritual
eros,what is theplace(s) of theirsorrow?As Augustine defines it,sorrow
is a kind of passionate anti-passion or painful counter-volition: "cum...
dissentimus ab eo quod nolentibus accidit, talis voluntas tristitia est" [sor
row is thewill's disagreement
with somethingthathappened against our
will].59 Where does this put mystical sorrow, sorrow sharing in the elemen
tal passion for place? Where does mystical sorrow take place?

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 Mystics Quarterly

THE SPOT OF PERFECT SORROW: "WHER IS NOW ANY

POINT OF THY PAINE OR OF THY AGREFE?"

Sorrow centers. Noisy, musical, auto-deictic, onanistic, keeping itself se

cret,calling attentionto itself,in thecave of theworld,making a scene,

holding itselfin,holdingonto itself,prolonging itself,pushing itself,as if
tears could come from one's crown, exhausting itself, finding itself, some
where else, here. Sorrow centers the one who sorrows. But it centers to
an opposite point from where one might be envied for being "centered,"
the supposed stillnessof equipoisewhere one is always alreadyor stably
centered. Instead sorrow centers to a new center, to which itmoves, not

bymoving towards itat all, but by pushing itselfback into it,as if intoa
more primordial place, in refusal of what cannot be moved, what cannot
go away, what should not be, what must be for one to sorrow. The sorrow
er centers himself in reverse, by repulsion into an unknown remembered

place, pushingagainst the immovable.Like a metaphysicalburrowingor

birthing, not born into something, but born from, backwards, upsidedown,
intowho knows where, theway we were born.

The centering function of mystical sorrow is visible and readable first of

all in its social dramas, for example, in the public sobbing of Margery
Kempe, "solowde and so wondyrfull that itmade the pepyl astonyd," or

Angela of Foligno's screaming at the entrance to the church of St. Francis

atAssisi: "Afterhe [God] hadwithdrawn,I began to shoutand to cryout
without any shame: 'Love still unknown, why do you leave me?'"60 These
scenes turn around a double movement: toward the sorrower as a center
of social attention, a conspicuous presence, and toward the sorrower as an
opening, a conspicuous absence. Sorrow decenters itswitness by moving
their attention to a new center, the invisible origin of the sorrow. The mystic
sorrower phenomenally appears as a displaced place. She is unmistakably,

unavoidably there, embodied, sounding, gesturing, and she is elsewhere,

with God She is an absence/presence,
or out of her mind. for some a divine

plenitude, for others a void to be filled with vain imaginings and explana
tions. A question, a ch?ra. Accordingly, the interpretive coping of those
who witness these spectacles without understanding specifically concerns
with issuesof place: "Sum bannydhir; sumwisshed sehehad ben in
itself

78
 Ibi. 35, \os. 1-2, March June 2009

thehavyn; sumwolde sehe had ben in the se ina bottumlesboyt" (Book

ofMargery Kempe, 28.1601-02); "I toldher that,henceforth,she should
never again dare to come toAssisi, since thiswas the place where this evil
had seized her" (Bonaventure, 136). These are scenes where the world is
terrified by an excessive deixis, a voice that points everything to itself,

says nothing, and so becomes capable of all meaning. We cannot say what
sorrow says. Nor can we say that itdoes not say anything. It is non-com
municative communication. The translation of sorrow into some form of
statement, to a meaning, loses precisely is essence as something before
and beyond meaning, as an experience and felt presence. And yet sorrow
mean, pointbeyond itselftowardswhat must be behind it,as
does signify,
cause or reason, perhaps more powerfully than any other kind of expres
sion. Sorrow demands an answer, an interpretation.

The semantic power of sorrow shares in the phenomenology of the ques

tion, which also does not have meaning as such, but which is never prop
erly meaningless. Sorrow is a kind of visibile question and sonic chora,

something whose witnessing equals having itas a question, whose hearing

means feeling it as an imperceptible space. "O vos omnes qui transitis per

viam, /Attendite,et videte /Si est dolor sicutdolormeus!" (Lami :12) [O

you all who pass by this way, attend and see if there is any sorrow like
my sorrow!]The significanceof these lines is thattheysaywhat sorrow
always does, that they translate what a sorrower never needs to say. To
attend to sorrow is to see an //or a why, as Angela's verbal screaming
also attests: "I could not nor did I scream out any other words than these:
'Love still unknown, why? why? why?' Furthermore, these screams were
so chokedup inmy throatthatthewords were unintelligible"(142).What
makes it through Angela's throat, as itwere, is the pure question, the re
As question, sorrow
mainder of her speech subtractedof intelligibility.
does not ask about something, nor does itnot ask about things, having of
course also context, politics, history.61 Sorrow asks instead about itself,
about itsown takingplace, only not as a topic tobe asked about,which is
what itswitness provides. As question, sorrow is instead both unanswer
able and its own answer, as played out in our instinctive answering of
another's sorrow with our own and our own with more sorrow, more tears.
Is there sorrow like your sorrow? Yes and no, none and only. This signifi

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 Mystics Quarterly

canee of sorrow as expression is the question of its own taking place, its
individuated event, which includes to an unspeakable degree sorrow itself,
its belonging towhat it refuses, what happens against itswill.

Understanding sorrow as centering, as emplacing to an unseen center,

clarifiesitspositionas theoriginal/originating
languageofmysticism,the
vocal source of its authority. Angela's screaming is the beginning of her
text,itstakingplace: "itwas thefirstand startingpointof everythingthat
I, brother wrote
scribe, of these divinewords" (135-36). As Michel de
Certeau has explained, mystic authorship is essentially about place, about
the proximity and intersection between what it says and where it says:

Where should Iwrite? That is thequestion theorganiza

tion of every mystic text strives to answer: the truthvalue
of thediscourse does not depend on the truthvalue of its
propositions,buton thefactof itsbeing intheveryplace
at which the Speaker speaks.62

It is the extreme simultaneity of sorrow's being at once here and elsewhere

that defines its power and its danger, the beauty and terror of its ability to

speak without and not without speaking. Remembering Dante's infernal

sad, it is precisely being out-of-place that constitutes their sin and contra

passo: sorrowful in the sunshine, now under slime. And theirwords, like

Angela's, remain in the throat and arrive only by translation: "Quest'inno

si gorgoglian ne la strozza, / ch? dir noi posson con parola integra" {In

ferno 125-26) [Thishymntheygurgle in theirthroats, which theycannot

saywith whole words]. The mystic (like the black metal artist,thefla
menco singer, et al.) makes in a space of separation between
dark music
self and language, transmuting sorrow's negativity or evil, its swallowing
hell mouth, into a new space for, and a new place to find the real. But this
is only the outside of themystic, a place of nearness to a new center, a new

authority that speaks here from somewhere else. Where is she? Where
is the who who speaks so strongly through the prison of the throat, who
walks so painfully and easily across the enclosure of language?

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 Voi 35, X os. 1-2, March June 2009

ofmystical sorrowthatboth
Julianand theCloud articulatean interiority
can and cannot be called interior, a place where the division of reality into
internal and external, subjective and objective, both no longer obtains and
still does. This place is intimate and expansive, local and total, a cosmic
locus amoenus or universal love spot unveiled by sorrow. In Julian, this

spot takes on the form of an absolute relationality. Julian sorrows a sorrow

like no other for an other, a compassion for the "onspekabyl passion" (20.
rubric)amplifiedad infinitum
throughthe loop of suprasubjectivelove:
"And every mannes sorow, desolation, and anguish he sawe and sorowd
for kindnes and love. For in as mekille as our lady sorowde for his paines,
as mekille suffered he sorow for her sorowse, and more over, in as mekille
as the swete manhed of him was worthier in kinde" (20.17-20). Julian's
sorrow accordingly concludes in a perfect joyful co-being or double-cen
with Christ thatis fulfilledin therealizationthatshe is actually
teredness
inside the cross she beholds:

Sodenly, I beholding in the same crosse, he changed

in blisseful chere. The changing of his blisseful chere
changed mine, and Iwas as glad and mery as itwas possi
ble.... I understonde thatwe be now, in our lords mening,
in his crosse. (21.8-12)

The unbearable experience of being outside and separate from inverts to

thewonderful fact of being already within. In the Cloud, the reverse hap
pens. Here perfect sorrow experiences, not identification with an other,
but the unbearability of self-identification, the crushing, entombing pain
of being oneself:

forhe findethevermorehiswetyng and his felyngas it

were occupied and fillydwith a foule stinkynglumpeof
himself...ofte he goth ni wood for sorow; inasmochel, that
he wepith andweilith, strivith,
cursith,and banneth,and
to
schortly sey,hym thinkiththathe berithso hevy a birth
en of hymselfthathe rechithneverwhatworthof hym,so
thatGod were plesid. (44.1567-73)

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 Mystics Quarterly

This sorrow leads to the joy, not of enclosure, but of escape, identified by
L?vinas as "the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break thatmost radi
cal and unalterablybindingof chains, the fact thatthe I [moi] is oneself
[soi-m?me]."63 Yet the Clouds sorrower does not break out of self into

anything, a new container, but is rather purely opened from within via the
very ecstasy of escape, via becoming "abil to resseive that joye, thewhiche
revithfroa man allewetyng and felyngof his beying" (44.1560-61).

The prepositionality of these two places, conspicuously inverse, holds a

deep relation to what they cannot be reduced to, the spatio-grammatical
structure of sex, according to which it is conventionally considered mas
culine to enter and feminine to be entered. But the place(s) found through
thisgrammardestroysit,notby undoingor doing awaywith it,butby pro
viding a place for its plenitude so open and welcoming, a spacious privacy
and private spaciousness so cosmic that the grammar, like the individual

subjects or soulswho speak throughit,dissolves in itsown fulfillment

without losing identity or structure. Julian enters God through the perfec
tionof her being enteredbyGod, her feelingof thepoint ofGod's pain,
and her visionary and affective entering into the place of the passion. The
Cloud speaks of being enteredbyGod throughtheperfectionof entering
God, one'spainful feeling of oneself secundum deum, from God's per
spective, and its that, "a litylworde of o sylable" that "peersith the eres of

AlmightyGod" (37.1380-83). Together these textsfinda new therethat

is already here, a place of joy discoverable only throughexperience,the
lived passing through of sorrow's perfect negativity, its absolute refusal of
thepossibilityof itsbeing anywhereelse. If this is thenunc stans thetheo
logians talk about, the eternally present place where everything happens,
Julianand theCloud also demonstratethattheNow needs otherplaces to
stand, from which we may love.

Nicola Masciandaro
BrooklynCollege

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 lOL 35, Nos. 1-2, March June 2009

NOTES

1. See Glenn, "Omne Animal Post Coitum Triste," 49-51.

2. "Oltre la sperache pi? largagira /passa sospiroch'esce delmio

core" (Dante, Vita Nuova, 142).

3. Angela of Foligno, "The Memorial," 205.

4. An Ethics ofSexual Difference,80.

Irigaray,

5. Baba, Discourses, 3:81.

6. Vallejo, Selected Poems, 77.

7. JulianofNorwich,WritingsofJulian ofNorwich, ed.Watson and

Jenkins, chap. 17, lines 48-52. Subsequent parenthetical refer
ences are to chapter and line number of this edition.

8. Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Gallacher, chap. 44, lines 1554-56. Sub

sequent references are to chapter and line number in this edition.

9. Bachelard, Poetics of Space, xvi. Cf. Ethan Knapp's recent call

for recognition of the phenomenological project within medieval
studies: "We have reinvented the phenomenological project under
many guises, especially inmedieval studies. The new attention
to the lifeof things,and to theboundaries between thehuman
and the non-human or the post-human all take up very powerfully
thekinds of questions advanced in the twentiesby Husserl and
Heidegger's early work. And our very focus on desires, and wants,
comes back around to intentions and subjects, transcendental or
not....This is not just theNew Middle Ages, this is ourMiddle
Ages, theMiddle Ages of a modern and phenomenological sensi

bility"(Knapp, "Publish or Perish").

83
,^^^^:7 Mystics Quarterly

10. "This boke is beg?nne by Goddes gifteand his grace, but it is

notyetperformed"(Revelation86.1-2); "Reche theeneveryif thi
wittyskon no skyleof thisnought....This noughtmay betirbe felt
then seen" (Cloud, 86.2308-10).

11. Agamben, Stanzas, xvii. Here I would like to thank the anony
mous reviewers of this piece whose comments have proven very

helpful inclarifying
my methodology and intentions.

12. Augustine, Confessions, 9.12.

13. This aspect of sorrow is analogous towhat Martin Heidegger dis

covers in boredom: "We may not make boredom into an object
of contemplation as some state that arises on its own, but must
consider it in theway thatwe move within it,i.e. theway thatwe
seek to drive it away" (McNeill and Walker, trans., Fundamental
Concepts ofMetaphysics, 91).

14. "Nessun maggior dolore / che ricordarsi del tempo felice / ne

la miseria" (Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno 5.121-23, my
translation); "Duplex enim illos acceperat taedium et gemitus,
cum memoria praeteritorum"(Wisdom 11:13). Vulgate cited from
Biblia Sacra, Vulgatae Editionis, edited by Colunga and Turrado;
translation from the Douay-Rheims version.

15. "Contrition implies the crushingof somethinghard and whole.

Now thiswholeness and hardness is found in the evil of fault,
since thewill, which is thecause thereofin the evil-doer,sticks
to its own ground, and refuses to yield to the precept of the law,
wherefore displeasure at a suchlike evil is called metaphorically
contrition" (Aquinas, Summa theologica, Supplement, Q.2, Art. 1).
Cf. OE ?r^ stednes.

16. As Aquinas explains, "Those who are sorrowful fall themore eas
ily into despair, according to 2 Cor. ii.7: Lest..such an one be
swallowed up [absorbeatur] by overmuch sorrow" (Summa theo

84
 Ibi. 35, Nos. 1-2, March June 2009

logica, Pt. 2-2, Q. 20, Art.4). Cf. "Now cometh wanhope, that is

despeir of themercy of God, thatcomth somtymeof tomuche

outrageous sorwe" (Chaucer, "Parson's Tale," X.692). The inter
section between excessive sorrow and despair is exemplified by
Judas inwhom, as a limit case for the ever-present opportunity to

repent, the proportion between the severity of sin and the degree
of sorrow over it is maximized to the point where the sense of

proportion between them becomes lost. InAquinas' commentary

on Judas's despair, this loss of proportion is figured as Judas's

reception of extra sorrow provided by the Devil: "Origen: 'But

when the Devil leave any one, he watches his time for return, and

having taken it,he leads him into a second sin, and then watches
foropportunity fora thirddeceit. So theman who hadmarriedhis
father'swife afterwardsrepentedhim of this sin [1Cor 5:1], but
again the Devil resolved so to augment this very sorrow of repen
tance, that his sorrow being made too abundant might swallow up
the sorrower.' Something like this took place in Judas, who after
his repentance did not preserve his own heart, but received that
more abundantsorrowsupplied to him by theDevil, who sought
to swallow him up, as it follows, 'And he went out, and hanged
himself.' But had he desired and looked for place and time for re
pentance, he would perhaps have found Him who has said, have
no pleasure in thedeath of thewicked' [Ezek 33:11]" (Aquinas,
Catena Aurea: Gospel ofMatthew, Matt 27:1-5).

17. "Fittinel limodicon: 'Tristifummo/ne l'aere dolce che dal sol

s'allegra, / portando dentro accidioso fummo" (Dante, Divine
Comedy, Inferno7.121-23, my translation)."Today thesepeople
would be treated in hospitals. But Dante considered them sinners"

(Curtius,European Literatureand theLatinMiddle Ages, 596).

For an application of premodern concepts of sorrow to contem
porary clinical contexts, see Pies, "Anatomy of Sorrow," http://
www.peh-med.com/content/3/1/17.

18. "According to Augustine {De civ. Dei, xiv. 7, 9), all sorrow is
based on love. Now the love of charity, on which the sorrow of

85
,^::^^^:7 Mystics Quarterly

contrition is based, is the greatest love. Therefore the sorrow of

contrition is the greatest sorrow.... There is a twofold sorrow in
contrition: one is in thewill, and is the very essence of contrition,

being nothing else than displeasure at past sin, and this sorrow, in
contrition, surpasses all other sorrows.... The other sorrow is in
the sensitive part, and is caused by the former sorrow" (Aquinas,
Summa theologica, Supplement, Q.3, Art. 1).

19. "Contrition, as regards sorrow in the reason, i.e. the displeasure

whereby sin is displeasing throughbeing an offenseagainstGod,

cannot be too great; even as neither can the love of charity be
too great, for when this is increased the aforesaid displeasure is
increased also. But, as regards the sensible sorrow, contrition may
be too great,even as outward afflictionof thebodymay be too
great. In all these thingsthe rule should be the safeguardingof
the subject,and of thatgeneralwell-beingwhich sufficesfor the
fulfillment of one's duties" (Ibid., Supplement, A.3, Art.2).

20. On this paradox Margery Kempe's "boistous sobbying" is instruc

tive. Not only can itnot be kept in, but "the more that sehe wolde

labowryn to kepe it in er to put it awey, mech the more schulde

sehe cryen and the mor lowder" (Staley, ed., Book ofMargery

Kempe, chap. 28, lines 1611-12). In effect,Margery's handling of

her sorrow (which includes but also exceeds sorrow over sin) both
fulfillsand destroys(like thenew law to theold) theauthorityof
the contrition doctrine. Adherence to the principle of measure in
the expression of sorrow breaks the principle. Hence the recep
tion of Margery's sobbing as "slander" by some persons: "Ower

mercyfulLord vysytydthis creaturewyth plentyuows teerysof

contricyon day be day, in so mech that sum men seyden sehe
mygthwepen whan sehewold and slawnderedthewerk ofGod"
(Prologue, lines 31-34).Furthermore, Margery's volume points
to another important aspect of sorrow, namely, that its intensity
is not only a relationbetween thewill andwhat displeases it,but
a relation between that displeasure and its expression, an expres
sion that experiences and an experience that expresses. In other

86
 Vol. 35, Nos. 1-2, March June 2009

words, there is a phenomenal place in sorrow where pain and the

expression of pain coincide, where the holding-on of the will to
itsmissing or violated objectmeets theholding-inof thevoice
of thatwill. Hence the "otherness" of sorrow's voice, at once in
timate and inhuman, on which see Cohen, "Becoming-Liquid of

Margery Kempe," 154-87.

21. For example, inDante's Divine Comedy, Buonconte diMontefeltro

is saved, as a devil complains, for "una lagrimetta" [one little tear]

{Purgatorio, 5.107). The power of the single tear was a motif fre
quently employed by medieval preachers. As Giordano da Pisa

put it,"Or vedi grande cosa! Or ti vo' mostrare la virt? de peniten

zia come passa tutte le virtudi dei tutte le cose di questo mondo,
che non si potrebbe dire: non dico mare, no, ma una sola lagrima
di dolore del peccato, chevanga di buon cuore, sola una, vedi vert?
c'hae?" {Quaresimale fiorentino, 80). Of the endlessness of tears,
St. Francis providesa good example: "Truly,even thoughhe had
attained purity of heart and body, and in some manner was ap
proachingtheheightof sanctification,he did not cease to cleanse
theeyes of his soulwith a continuousfloodof tears.He longed
for the sheerbrillianceof theheavenly lightand disregardedthe
loss of his bodily eyes" (Bonaventure, "Minor Legend of Saint
Francis," 695). In these terms the unquantifiability of tears be
longs to their being an inverse relation between inner and outer
sight. Cf. "Than had sehe so meche swetnes and devocyon that
sehemythnotberyn it,but cryid,wept, and sobbydfuiboitowsly.
Sehe had many an holy thowtof owr Lordys passyon and behld
hym inhir gostly syghtas verily as he had ben afornhir inhir
bodily syght"{Book ofMargery Kempe, 78). Derrida explains this
inverse relation as an unveiling of eye itself: "Now if tears come
to theeyes, iftheywell up in them,and iftheycan also veil sight,
perhaps they reveal, in the very course of this experience, in the

coursing of water, an essence of the eye, of man's eye, in any case,

the eye understood in the anthropo-theological space of the sacred
allegory. Deep down, deep down inside, the eye would be des
tined toweep. For at the very moment they veil sight, tears would

87
^^^^^ Mystics Quarterly

unveil what is proper to the eye" (Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind,

126).

22. See Ross, The Grief ofGod andMarrow, Passion Iconography in

Northern European Art.

23. Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense ofLife, 283.

24. Agamben, The Coming Community, 90.

25. The question of place is fundamental toWestern mysticism, as

evident in St. Paul's displacement, "caught up into Paradise?
whether in thebody or out of body I do not know" (2 Cor. 12:3),
and the topos theou,theplace ofGod, figuredas Sinai inPseudo
Dionysius'sMystical Theology,where thehere of divine union is
found:"And yethe [Moses] does notmeet God Himself, but con
templates, not him who is invisible, but rather where he dwells....
His unimaginablepresence is shown,walking theheightsof those
holy places towhich themind at least can rise. But then he [Moses]
breaks free of them.... Here, renouncing all that themind may con
ceive...Here, being neither oneself nor someone else" ("Mystical
Theology," 137, lines 1000D-1001A).

26. "God, then, being immaterial and uncircumscribed, has not place.
ForHe isHis own place, fillingall thingsand beingabove all things,
andHimselfmaintainingall things.Yet we speak ofGod having
place and theplace ofGod where His energybecomesmanifest"
(JohnofDamascus, "Exposition of theOrthodox Faith," 15).Cf.
Augustine: "Non enim regionibus longe est quisque a Deo, sed af
fectibus. Amas Deum, prope es. Odisti Deum, longe es. Uno loco
stans, et prope es, et long es" [No one is far from God spatially but
in feeling. Love God and you are near. Hate God and you are far.

Standing in one place, you are either near or far] (Ennarationes in

Psalmos, 84.10.11, PL 37:1077). Cf. Plotinus: "We cannot think
of somethingof God here and somethingelse there,nor of all
God gathered at some one spot: there is an instantaneous presence

88
 Ibi. 35, Nos. 1-2,March June 2009
^^^^^

everywhere,nothingcontainingand nothingleftvoid, everything

fullyheld by thedivine.Consider our universe.There is
therefore
none before itand therefore it is not, itself, in a universe or in any

place?what place was there before the universe came to be??its

members formand occupy thewhole. But Soul isnot inthe
linked
universe, on the contrary the universe is in the Soul" (Enneads,
5.5.9).

27. Bataille, Guilty, xxxii.

28. Cf. "For Irigaray, mysticism is a 'place' in which subjectivity

takes place differently.
is thoughtdifferently, When themystic
plunges into this 'abyss' of consciousness, this unspeakable place
of all thosequali
of unknowing,she is strippedof all attributes,
ties that define 'being,' that constitute the 'subject'.... In losing her

'person' and her 'name,' as well as all (known, phallic) properties,

themysticmoves out of the reach of thisphallic economy.No
longersubject,she isalso no longerobject of thesubject" (Priest,
"Woman and God, God as Woman," 20).

29. Karras, Sexuality inMedieval Europe, 4.

30. Teodolina Barolini finds inDante's interpenetrative neologisms a

"transcendent linguistic eroticism" (Barolini, Dante 'sPoets, 116).
See also Psaki, "The Sexual Body inDante's Celestial Paradise,"
47-61.

31. On theprivatizationof contrition:"Although the value of self

examination was never disputed among thirteenth-century theo
logians,the independentefficacyof a privatelycultivatedcontri
tion (and the private life around it) certainly came under fire.... It
became more difficult for theologians to imagine contrition as an

independent and private means of penance.... Just as the attention

thatwriters likePeterAbelard and PeterLombard paid to contri
tion is often taken as evidence for an increased sense of self or a
renewed sense of personal privacy, the various transformations in

89
V"^^^7 Mystics Quarterly

the role and access to contrition in the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries are often viewed
as developments that slowed down,
shut down or even reversed these advances" (Denery, Seeing and

Being Seen in theLaterMedieval World, See also Lochrie,

Covert Operations, 12-55). On the displacement of place by
space: "The Middle Ages contributed two new senses of infinite

space to thegatheringfieldof forces thatwere graduallygranting

primacy to space over place...(a) imaginal-hypothetico-specula
tive, a space projected in a series of bold Gedankenexperimente
thatwere not idle excursions but disciplined and serious efforts to
graspwhat spacewould be like if ithad no imaginablelimits;(b)
divine, that is, an attribute of God or, more strongly still, identical
with God's very being as immense beyond measure.... In both of
these...cases, we witness place becoming space under our very
eyes.... The adventurous avenue toward infinite space opened up
decisively after the thirteenth century in theWest.... From an en
tirelyimaginedand divine statusthatwas fullygained byA.D.
1400, such spaces became actual in the form of an earth and a sky
that lay ready for discovery and possession not only by thought
and faith but also by arms" (Casey, The Fate of Place, 114-15).

32. Gumbrecht, Production of Presence, 25. Cf. the explicit eccen

tric centering of the human in Pico della Mirandola's De homi
nis dignitate:"Constrainedby no limits[saysGod toAdam], you
may determine it for yourself, according to your own free will, in
whose handwe have placed you. I have placed you at theworld's
center so that you may thence more easily look around at what
ever is intheworld" (ThePico Project,UniversityofBologna and
Brown University, http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_
Studies/pico/, lines 20-21).

33. Borresen, "Female Godlanguage inChristian Spirituality," 36.

34. See Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy, 7-9.

90
 Voi 35. Nos. 1-2. March /June 2009

35. Cf. Hollywood's anti-essentialist, anti-idealist comments toward

Luce Irigaray's understanding of sexual difference: "Irigaray
claims thatwe cannot thinkthebodywithout thinkingsexual dif
ference, but in fact (dual) sexual difference is an ideal category
that is incapable of encapsulating the complexity, ambiguity, and

multiplicityof bodily experience.Human bodies may always be

sexed, but, as both biological science and cultural theories of in

tersecting identities show, human bodies are not only nor simply
sexed. When sexual difference becomes the site of human be

coming and divinity,bodies and themultiplicityof differences

grounded in bodies that are and/or can be constitutive of human
are effaced"(SensibleEcstasy, 233).
identity

36. "Nothow theworld is, is themystical,but thatitis" (Wittgenstein,

Tractatus Logico-PhilosophicUs, 6A4). Cf. "God or the good or
theplace does not takeplace, but is the taking-placeof theenti
ties, their innermost exteriority. The being-worm of theworm, the
being-stone of the stone, is divine. That the world is, that some
thing can appear and have a face...this is the good" (Agamben,
Coming Community,14).The distinctionbetween thatand what
(quodditas vs. quidditas) shows up in relation both to the Cloud's
"sorrow...that he is" (44.1554-55) and to Julian's vision of the
"the gretdeed" (32.27) throughwhich "alle manner thingshalle
be wele" (32. 14-15) and which will be seen "fulhedeof joye"
(32.16) and "marvelous joy" (36.10): "When I saw the shewing
continued, I understode itwas shewede for a gret thing that was
thanfortocome,which thing God shewde thathimselfshulddo it,
which dede hath thepropertiesbefore saide....But what thedede
shuldbe, itwas kepteprivytome" (36.14-18).

37. Women 'sWriting inEnglish, 95.

38. See Revelation, 10.18, 14.27, 34.12, 39.2, 40.22-23, 62.23, 65.1,
73.12.

39. Agamben, Coming Community, 1.

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V~^^^7 Mystics Quarterly

40. Cited from textual notes, London, British Library MS Sloane

2499.

41. On thebody as place see Casey, Fate ofPlace, 202-42. On place

and sexual difference, see Irigaray, Ethics of Sexual Difference,
34-55 and 83-94. On the gendering of space, see Hanawalt, "At
theMargins ofWomen's Space," 1-17; Colomina and Bloomer,
eds., Sexuality and Space', and Birkeland, Making Place, Making
Self

42. "Just, in fact, as the vessel is transportable place, so place is a

non-portable vessel" (Aristotle, Physics, 4.4.3, line 212b). On

Aristotle's definition, see Casey, Fate of Place, 50-71. "The
mother and receptacle of all created and visible and in any way
sensible thingsis not to be termedearthor air or fireorwater, or
any of theircompounds,or any of theelementsfromwhich these
are derived, but is an invisible and formless being which receives
all things and in some mysterious way partakes of the intelligi
ble, and ismost incomprehensible" (Timaeus, 51a, line 1177). On
the place of Plato's receptacle/c/z ra in feminism, see Bianchi,

"Receptacle/Ch?ra," 124-46. "As for woman, she is place. Does

she have to locateherself inbigger and biggerplace? But also to
find, situate, in herself, the place that she is. If she is unable to con
stitute,within herself, the place that she is, she passes ceaselessly
throughthechild inorder to returnto herself (Irigaray,
Ethics of
Sexual Difference,35).

43. Julian's understanding of God's multisexuality is developed most

clearly inher explicationof theTrinity:And thus I saw thatGod

enjoyeththathe isour fader,andGod enjoyeththathe isourmod
er, and God enjoyeth that he is our very spouse, and our soule his
loved wife. And Crist enjoyeth that he is our broder, and Jhesu

enjoyeth that he is our savior" (Revelation 52.1?4). The Cloud's

understanding of God as asexual is developed most clearly in the
idea of the"naked being" ofGod: "For thofal itbe good to think
apon the kindenes of God, and to love Hym and preise Him for

92
 loi. 35. os 1-2,March June 2009
"^^^^

hem: yit it is ferbetyrto thinkapon thenakidbeyngofHim, and

to loveHim and preiseHim forHimself (5.446-48). See also
Myles, "Existential Metaphysics of the Cloud Author," 140-68.
Julian's love ismodeled primarily on the Virgin Mary's compas
sion forChrist: "Here felt I sothfastlythatI lovedCrist somuch
abovemyself thatther was no paine thatmightbe sufferedlike to
that sorow that I had to see him in paine. Here I saw in parte the

compassion of our lady, Saint Mary. For Crist and she was so oned
in love thatthegretnesof her lovewas cause of themekillehede
of her paine" (17.50-18.3). The Cloud's love ismodeled primarily
on the contemplative love of Mary Magdalene: "And in heryng
of His worde, sehe beheld not to the besines of hir sister...ne yit
to theprecioust?ofHis blessid body,ne to the swetevoyce and
the wordes of His Manheed...bot to the sovereynsest wisdom of
His Godheed lappid in thederkwordes ofHis Manheed; theder
beheeld sehe with al the love of hir hert...with many a swete priv?
and lystyloveput upon thathighe cloud of unknowyngbitwixhir
and hirGod" (17.846-52). Note thattheapophaticrhetoric,rather
thanexcluding the sensual from the contemplativevision, only
transmutes it to a higher plane.

44. Julian of Norwich, "A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman" 6.36

38.

45. "Denied access to the sacrament of holy orders, women were

acknowledged to be possible recipients of extraordinary experi

ences of the spirit. In this situation, women's experiences of God's

presence become the text they interpret, both cataphatically and

apophatically,inorder to apprehendandwrite about thedivine"
(Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy, 9).

46. I see an affinity

herewith Hildegard of Bingen's explanationof
why women, under the Old Law, did not require circumcision:
"For a woman is not to be circumcised, since thematernal taber
nacle is hidden within her body and cannot be touched except as
fleshembracesflesh;and also she isunderthepower of a husband

93
"^:^^^:7 Mystics Quarterly

like a servant under his master" (Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias,

2.3.21, p. 177). Externally, outside of the inner space of thewoman
there is hierarchy and dominance over her. Yet this dominance is
defined as extra ("also") and thus potentially irrelevant because
thebody of thewoman is self-covering, with
alreadyperforming
in itself its own protection. Similarly, the interior of thewoman's

body, though a distinctly feminine space for the "maternal taber

nacle," is also a place for the undifferentiated meeting of flesh, the
common matter of male and female. Julian's work, then, may be
seen as externalizing, opening a feminine inner space beyond the
feminine?"I saw the soule so large as itwere an endless warde"

(68.2)?translating flesh into ground and thus displacing the un

necessary master.

47. Averroes, Commentarla magna in octo libro Aristotelis dephysico

auditu, quoted inDuhem, Medieval Cosmology, 142.

48. Another place to find this sorrow would be in nostalgia for Eden
as erotic longing for a place when things were in place, cosmically
and genitally. Thus Augustine's imagination of prelapsarian non
penetrative sex, which problematically doubles as erotic fantasy:
"The seminal flow could have reached the womb with as little

rupture of the hymen and by the same vaginal ducts as itat present
the case, in reverse, with themenstrual flux.... The trouble with the

hypothesis of a passionless procreation controlled by will...is that

ithas never been verified in experience, not even in the experience
of those who could have proved that itwas possible.... Hence,
today it ispracticallyimpossibleeven todiscuss thehypothesisof
voluntarycontrolwithout the imaginationbeingfilledwith there
alities of rebellious lust.It is this lastfactwhich explainsmy reti
cence; not, certainly, any lack of proof for the conclusion my mind
has reached" (CityofGod, 14.26).The exilic externalejaculation
of Augustine's imagination, at once pure and polluted, a kind of
sexual weeping over a lost body/place, defines the gratuitous, ex
tra space of human sexuality, its desire for a sex that is both pure
sex and not sex.

94
 35, Nos. 1-2.March June 2009
^^^^^

49. Heidegger, "BuildingDwelling Thinking," 157.

50. Agamben, Stanzas, 59.

51. Cf. Carmel Bendon Davis's recent conceptualization of mystical

space, on the model of mise en ab?me, as a space including (or we
could say a place for) all spaces: "mystical experience...[is] not

only an exclusively 'inner' apprehension but also an embodied

one thattakesplace inwhat I designatemysticalspace. This is the
multifaceted space of mystical experience and its subsequent rep
resentations (social and textual). It incorporates all aspects of the
mystics' life...[and] can be considered as analogous to the literary
figure of themise en ab?me, and impression of infinite regress that
duplicateswith all its layersthequalities of the larger,initiating
structure without" (Bendon Davis, Mysticism and Space, 6).

52. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, 115.

53. Derrida, "Kh?ra," 124-26.

54. Augustine, Confessions, 10.33.

55. "THE OBJECT OF ECSTASY IS THE ABSENCE OF AN

OUTSIDE ANSWER. THE INEXPLICABLE PRESENCE
OF MAN IS THE ANSWER THE WILL GIVES ITSELF,
SUSPENDED IN THE VOID OF UNKNOWABLE NIGHT"
(caps inoriginal:Bataille Reader, ed. BottingandWilson, 45).

56. Derrida, "Kh?ra," 124.

57. Cf. "The discourse on kh?ra thus plays for philosophy a role
analogous to the rolewhich kh?ra 'herselfplays for thatwhich
philosophy speaks of, namely,thecosmos formedor givenfrom
accordingto thepardigm" (Ibid., 126).

95
^^^^^ Mystics Quarterly

58. Tymieniecka, Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of

Reason, 412.

59. De civitate Dei, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 14.6.

60. Book ofMargery Kempe, 28.1582-83; Angela of Foligno, "The

Memorial," 142.

61. "Here what cannot be observed is stated as possible, extraordinary,

miraculous. religious language, inhabited by the experience
This
of sorrow, increases as the effectiveness of democratic institutions
decreases; the former isweakened when the latter is strengthened.
It is thefigureofwhat cannotyetbe articulatedinany sociopoliti
cal form"(de Certeau,Capture ofSpeech, 84-85).

62. de Certeau, "Mystic Speech," 199. Karma Lochrie develops

Certeau's model in relation to medieval theories of body in
Margery Kempe and the Translations of theFlesh.

63. L?vinas, On Escape, 5 5.

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