Lovesickness and the Therapy of Desire Aquinas, cancionero Poetry, and Teresa of Avila's 'Muero porque no muero'

It would seem that love is a harmful emotion. For languor is a kind of sickness, and love causes languor.¹

Modern readers of the poetry of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross are often struck by their use of the language of desire and of courtly love themes also found in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century cancioneros. In an article published over a decade and a half ago, Terence O'Reilly (1992) examined some of the most crucial similarities between cancionero and mystical poetry in the light of Alexander Parker's earlier claims (1985) about the use of the language of religion and the moral value attributed to suffering within the courtly love tradition. As Parker had suggested, cancionero poetry tended to present human love in terms of 'desire without fulfilment', and even if this love might be linked to sexual desire, the focus was generally not on bodily pleasure but on desire (1985: 20–21). In explaining this emphasis on desire, Parker made the provocative claim that 'fifteenth-century poets found satisfaction in posing as suffering martyrs of love' (17). O'Reilly demonstrates that, in the context of Christian ideas about redemption and of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century emphasis on the imitation of Christ, the notion of suffering love was linked to merit and hope. He then turns to the theme of desire as 'longing' in John of the Cross, addressing the controversial question: 'what kind of human love is mystical longing being compared to?' (66).

In this paper, I return to the question of desire, and discuss its function in relation to love. In contrast with Parker's emphasis on the pain and anguish caused by unfulfilled desire and on the constraints of sensory experience as themes found both in mystical and non-mystical love poetry from sixteenth-century Spain, I will look at the notion of wilful desire in cancionero poetry and in Teresa's poem 'Muero porque no muero', against the background of Thomas Aquinas's influential discussion of love, desire and hope as motivating passions belonging both to the body and the sensory soul.

Teresa's 'Muero porque no muero' shares with much of cancionero poetry a concept of love which cannot be understood simply in connection with Neoplatonism and its emphasis on the separation of body and soul.² Her lines 'y causa en mí tanta pasión / ver a Dios mi prisionero'³ point to the notion of love as a passion (emotion) caused by an agent perceived as good or beautiful. This notion was found in Aristotle and in the Aristotelian faculty psychology of medieval Arabic philosophical and medical writers, and expounded by Thomas Aquinas.⁴

When Whinnom refers to medieval psychology as being largely developed by scholastic theologians, he offers an oversimplified account of Aquinas's discussion of love and other passions: 'para los teólogos, el amor, la pasión amorosa, no se distingue de la concupiscencia, la lujuria' (1983: 9). He reduces Aquinas's references to concupiscentia to the theological meaning of this word, simply because this is the usage which has prevailed in the Christian Church. In contrast, the most authoritative English translation of the Summa renders concupiscentia as 'sensory desire', stressing that Aquinas's use is clearly distinct from the theological notion of 'concupiscence', associated with sin.⁵ Distinguishing two types of pleasure (delectatio) – one is experienced in relation to the good things of the intellect and reason, and thus belongs only to the soul, while the other is related to the good things of the senses, and thus belongs to both soul and body –, Aquinas notes that desire strictly speaking is related only to this second type of pleasure and that the Latin term concupiscentia, from con-cupere, makes it clear that the body and the soul are involved together in desire (Aquinas 2006: 1a.2ae, 30.2).

For Aquinas, love is an inclination or sense of affinity towards something perceived to be good, desire is an actual movement towards the loved good when it is not present, or has not yet been attained, and pleasure (or joy) is 'repose in its possession' (23.4). Hope and despair presuppose love and desire, but arise when there is some difficulty in attaining the desired good (23.4; 25.1). Hope causes or increases love, sometimes by arousing pleasure, and sometimes by intensifying desire (27.4). As Aquinas puts it, 'we cannot desire intensely that which we have no hope to attain' (27.4).

Desire (or longing) and sadness (or languor) are the passions which arise in the lover when the beloved is absent: 'if the object of love is actually possessed, the result is pleasure and enjoyment. If it is not, two emotions result: first, sadness over its absence, which is often called languor (thus Cicero [De Tusculanis Questionibus III.II] applies the term 'ailment' above all to sadness); and second, intense desire for its possession: and this is often called fever' (Aquinas 2006: 1a.2ae, 28.6). But, of course, the meanings of 'presence' and 'absence' will depend on how union is understood. For Aquinas, there are two types of union, two ways in which a person may be united to the object of his love: one is 'union in reality' ('secundum rem'), in which the loved thing or person is present with the lover; the other is 'affective union'.⁶ In the first, love acts as a cause, by moving the lover to seek the presence of the loved thing or person; in the second, love is the tie, the union itself (28.1).

One of the effects of love, according to Aquinas, is that it makes the mind of the lover turn to thinking about the beloved ('scilicet facit meditari de amato'), and as a result of this intense preoccupation, the mind withdraws from other concerns ('intensa autem meditatio unius abstrahit ab aliis') (28.3). This model explains a number of crucial themes related to the concept of love in medieval and sixteenth-century Spain: lovesickness as a mental fixation which can lead to mental and physical illness, the cancionero notion of love and desire as a prison, and the cultivation of love of God as a way of turning one's mind from worldly concerns.

Parker suggests that 'on the purely human level' the cancioneros' 'cult of suffering, this equation of love with death and the longing for death, represent the abdication of all rationality, the subordination of reason to passion' (1985: 18). But, as I will show in the next few pages, phrases such as 'muero porque no muero' could be wilfully used on both human and spiritual levels to cultivate passion as a means to attain affective and cognitive union with the beloved. In emphasizing love and desire as affective ties between lover and beloved, mystical and cancionero poets used seemingly repetitive formulations such as the 'wound of love' and 'languishing with love', which drew not only on the Song of Songs and its exegeses, but also on other (often conflicting) inherited interpretations of love as sickness, to which I now turn.

Lovesickness and Desire

The notion of love as sickness, as a disease of the soul which could lead to madness, was shared by a number of philosophical traditions. For Aristotle, sexual desire, caused by the perception of a beautiful 'object', would alter the body's temperature and physiological balance, and could lead to madness.⁷ Aristotle, nonetheless, also acknowledged that the appearance of a beautiful person might produce sexual arousal without necessarily producing the kind of emotion that would lead to action, and that the perception of an 'object' as beautiful would often also produce joy or pleasure, as moving forces irradiating from the heart.⁸ It follows from this that it is possible to cultivate joy and pleasure by thinking of the beloved as 'beautiful'.

The Epicurean materialist Lucretius separated love from erotic passion, seeing the latter as the cause of perturbation, tribulation and madness.⁹ He noted how, in the context of popular views of erotic passion as a disease and as a source of weakness and instability, a lover would form the 'false belief' that sex could put an end to the longing which constrained him. Longing and desire would also lead to false beliefs about the beloved's worth: 'men, blind with desire, attribute to women excellences that are not really theirs. And thus, we see women who are in many ways misshapen and ugly being the objects of great delight, and of highest honor'.¹⁰ Arguing that desire influences perception, Lucretius questioned the lover's belief that his desire is aroused by the sight of the beloved (Lucretius 1963: 735–822). He suggested that the wounds of erotic love could be cured through promiscuity (which would help counteract the belief that the beloved held the key to the satisfaction of one's desires), by avoiding looking at the beloved, or by turning one's thoughts in some other direction. More importantly, he also warned against the vain longing and obsessiveness of the 'religion of love', in which the beloved was seen as an embodied divinity.

Among the medieval Latin psychological accounts of lovesickness, one of the clearest is that of the Paris physician Gerard of Berry (c. 1237), who describes it as the 'fixation' with the image of a particular woman as more beautiful or desirable than other women, a fixed idea caused by an impaired judgement ('estimative power') and an overheated, dry imagination ('imaginative power'); since the imagination commands the passions, this mental fixation is accompanied by desire and excessive worry (sollicitudo).¹¹ In medieval faculty psychology, the imagination was the power which transformed sense impressions into new images by drawing on previous experience and on the evaluations of the 'estimative power' (also known as 'cogitative power'). As the instrument of passions, the imagination was the amplifying power which transformed the lovers' 'attachment' to their beloved into intense, destructive sorrow which sickened their minds and bodies.

The Galenic medical writings circulating in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain also interpreted lovesickness as a mental fixation upon an object of desire, based on wrong beliefs or false apprehensions. Gordonio dedicates a whole chapter of his Lilio de medicina to amor hereos.¹² The main point he makes is that the lovesick lover believes not only that his lady is superior to all other ladies but also that by attaining her he will be able to attain the happiness he desires:

[…] que quando algund enamorado esta en amor de alguna muger e assy concibe la forma e la figura e el modo, que cree e tiene opinion que aquella es la mejor e la mas fermosa e la mas casta e la mas honrrada e la mas especiosa e la mejor enseñada enlas cosas naturales e morales que alguna otra, e por esso muy ardiente mente la cobdicia sin modo e sin medida, teniendo opinion que sy la pudiesse alcançar, que ella seria su felicidad e su bien auenturança.

(1993: 1, 520)

This mental fixation might become so obsessive that it might lead to mental alienation: 'e tanto esta corrompido el iuyzio e la razon, que continua mente piensa enella e dexa todas sus obras, en tal manera que sy alguna fabla conel non lo entiende, porque es en continuo pensamiento' (520–21). The impaired judgement of those sick with love makes them believe that sorrow and suffering are enjoyable: 'e le semeja que el tristable sea delectable' (522).

Gordonio stresses the importance of curing the lovesick because their obsessive cogitation led them to neglect all other activity, including eating and sleeping, thus causing them to waste away, to go mad, or to die (522–23). Suggesting that persuasion is the best method for curing lovesickness, he recommends arguments such as the dangers of the world, the Last Judgement and the joys of heaven (524). These were not simply theological concepts but were part of a recognizable, widespread belief system, linked to ideas about contemptus mundi. If ideas about eternal suffering in hell or eternal joy in heaven made their way into the imagination of the lovesick, they would excite the passions of fear or hope, thus displacing the image of the beloved as the object of desire and hope. Gordonio acknowledges that such persuasive methods were not always effective with young men suffering from lovesickness, and thus recommends other methods, from flogging, and sad or happy news, to calling in an old woman who would slander the beloved, thus altering the positive image imprinted in the lover's imagination (524–26).

These methods stress the role of the imagination in commanding the passions, and the role played by belief in the workings of the estimative power (judgement) on the imagination. As Gordonio puts it: 'la virtud estimatiua, que es la mas alta entre todas las virtudes sensibles, manda a la ymaginatiua e la ymaginatiua manda ala cobdiciable e la cobdiciable manda ala virtud ayrada e la virtud ayrada manda a la mouedora delos lacertos [muscles]' (521). Gordonio's explanation is based on the distinction made in medieval faculty psychology between the intellectual soul and the sensory soul, and, within the latter, between the cognitive function (pars animae apprehensiva) with its outer senses and its inner wits (imaginatio, estimativa and memoria), and the affective function (pars animae appetitiva), with its concupiscible (appetitus concupiscibilis) and irascible (appetitus irascibilis) functions.¹³

Such distinctions are crucial in understanding Aquinas's definition in the Summa Theologiae of the passions as 'appetitive acts of the sensitive soul' (2006: 1a.2ae, 22.2; 24.2) caused by external objects through the particular evaluations of the cogitative power, or ratio particularis, which judges the object's particular intentions, 'just as intellective reason considers universal intentions' (1a, 78.4). Attributed to the cogitative power, located by physicians in the middle part of the head, was the function of grasping emotionally relevant aspects of objects and arousing appropriate passions to deal with them.¹⁴ As Aquinas stresses, the pre-rational evaluations of the cogitative power which activate the passions could also be assisted and reassessed by the judgements of the intellect in determining the choices of the will (the 'free will', voluntas ut ratio).

Aquinas argues that even though the passions are experienced passively, in the sense that they always affect the body, increasing or decreasing the heart rate, and making the heart contract or dilate, 'there is no reason for thinking that passivity always implies some failure by natural or rational standards' (24.3). Criticizing the Stoics' view of the passions as ailments, and their failure to recognize that passions can be 'subsequent to rational judgement', he maintains that passion can have moral value. If passion results from determination (i.e. when the higher part of the soul is 'so strongly bent upon some object that the lower part follows it'), it acts as 'a sign of the will's intensity, and hence an index of greater moral worth'; other times, passion may be embraced because it is motivating (i.e. 'a man may make a deliberate decision to be affected by an emotion so that he will act more promptly, thanks to the stimulus of the sensory orexis [appetitus sensitivus]'), and thus 'adds to the action's worth' (24.4).

In contrast with Aquinas's emphasis on the role of the will in directing the passions, medical writings suggested that lovesickness affects the will: 'los enamorados tienen ajena la imaginacion, y la voluntad con ella' (Villalobos 1950: 488–89). An example of how such conflicting views inform cancionero poetry is the recurrent theme of love as a prison, which may in some cases be read as a denial of the lover's free will, while in other cases it may be used to stress the lover's wilful submission to passions which were useful because they helped him feel connected to the beloved:

La que tengo no es prission,vos soys prission verdadera,que me teneys de maneratan preso que defensionno la quiero aun que la ouiera.

(Quirós, in Castillo 1511: fol. 211r)¹⁵

The desire or the sorrow caused by the lover's absence or rejection would not be easily given up because these passions might provide a pleasurable, gratifying experience of connectedness:

La tristeza dellamortenella es tanto plazercomo sentilla es dolor.

(Lope de Sosa, in Castillo 1511: fol. 123r.)

As Aquinas noted, pleasure is not simply the consequence of attaining or obtaining what one desires, it requires the perception of oneself as doing so; this also means that love and desire may be accompanied by pleasure if this attainment is anticipated (2006: 1a.2ae, 33.1). While medical writers like Gordonio argued that the lover's experience of sorrow as enjoyable should be read as a symptom of impaired judgement, it would be difficult to apply this argument to the delectable sorrows with which the cancioneros so obsessively deal, as we will now see.

Affective and Cognitive Union with the Beloved in cancionero Poetry

The cancionero poets who sang about suffering love may have simply chosen this theme because it was popular with audiences, they might have been addressing the object of their love, claiming to be suffering (and even feigning it) as a way of requesting a 'gualardón', or they might have been expressing a state of mind with which they identified because it provided a focus for their own passions as a source of motivation. In all these cases the poet was in a different position from that of the alienated lovesick lover who might not be able to step back to look at his or her condition. For instance, Don Juan Manuel writes from the position of the lover who, holding the image of the beloved in his imagination, experiences intense sadness:

La vuestra forma excelente,Que mi memoria retiene,Ante mis ojos se vieneComo si fuese presente:Y con esto mi sentidoA mi triste entendimientoDeja triste y afligido,Tan cercano de tormento.

(Menéndez y Pelayo (ed.) 1890–1908: III, 330)

Sadness and sorrow have two functions here: they are the relevant passions to experience in the absence of the beloved, and thus are in themselves proof of love, while they also reinforce the cognitive and affective connection between lover and beloved.

Aquinas refers to this kind of cognitive and affective connection when explaining mutual indwelling ('mutua inhaesio') as the effect of love. Cognitively ('quantum ad vim apprehensivam'), the beloved dwells in the lover by being constantly present in the lover's thoughts (as suggested in St Paul's phrase 'I hold you in my heart', Phil. 1:7), while the lover is present in the beloved by striving to know him or her deeply ('non est contentus superficiali apprehensione amati […] ad interiora ejus ingreditur' (2006: 1a.2ae, 28.2)). Affectively ('quantum ad vim appetitivam'), the beloved is present in the lover as a result of the affection aroused when thinking about the beloved, whether it is pleasure in the beloved's presence or desire in the beloved's absence (28.2).

When Cartagena writes of a kind of love which does not need a reward, he stresses how the lover can find satisfaction in the belief that the beloved 'wants' his passion:

Que pago de mi aficionNo lo pido ni se esperaPues me muestra la razonQue en querer que por vos mueraMe days pago y gualardon.

(Cartagena, in Castillo 1511: fol. 123r)

The love described in this stanza may not be as selfless as the claim 'no lo pido' suggests. The lover appears to be self-centred, rather than striving to understand the beloved or consider what is best for her. The beloved mainly provides a focus for the thoughts and passions of the lover, who believes her to be the worthiest possible object of his love:

[…] y si no me gradesceysel mal que por vos me vienedigo que muy bien hazeyspues mas que todas valeysque mas que todos yo pene.

(fol. 123r)

Here we are not dealing with lovesickness as a disease, as described by Lucretius, Gerard of Berry and Gordonio. It is not a case of excessive passion caused by a 'false apprehension' of the beloved's worth, but a deliberate decision ('me muestra la razón') to connect with her through intense desire and sorrow: 'por vos muera'. If (feeling, cultivating, or simply claiming) intense love and desire for the beloved gives the lover a purpose, thinking of her may also sustain him affectively, giving him a sense of coherence and moral worth.

The recurrent references in cancionero poetry to the notion of 'morir' were so charged with meaning that it is often difficult to interpret them linearly, but it is nonetheless possible to agree that they are all expressions of intense emotion, intense passion. On the most literal level, phrases such as 'que por ti muera' might refer to the slow process of 'dying', as the effect of languishing with desire in the beloved's absence, perhaps even foregoing food and sleep. They could also refer to the unrequited lover's declared intention of committing suicide, used as a threat to provoke a change of heart in the beloved.

A less literal but equally powerful use of the notion of 'morir' to mark intense desire is found in poems such as Juan del Encina's '¡no te tardes, que me muero / carcelero!', in which the beloved is urged to provide a long-term cure for the lover's desire through reciprocated love: 'porque no pierda la vida / […] / prometiendo no olvidarme' (1496: fol. 95r). The lover here aspires to both affective and cognitive union, to 'mutual indwelling'.

Associated with the idea of languishing with desire was the use of parodoxes about living death, or living yet dying, which accentuated the pain, or even despair, of loving without reward, as in Meneses and Duarte de Britho:

[…] porque es tormento tan fierola vida de mí, cabtivo,que no vivo porque vivo,y muero porque no muero.

(Resende, Cancioneiro General; cited in García de la Concha 1978: 341–42)

Y con tanto mal crescido,de todo ya desespero;que por vos, triste cabtivo,ya no vivo porque vivoy muero porque no muero.

(Cited in García de la Concha 1978: 342)

In such paradoxes, 'muero' does not simply refer to suffering love, but also to desiring death as a release (Parker 1985: 17). Of course, the desire underlying them is also paradoxical, since the more one desires, the more alive one feels. Ultimately, by writing 'muero' the poet is not letting himself die of sorrow, but is giving sorrow and desire an aesthetic form, which can in turn produce pleasure.

Besides the aesthetic pleasure produced by the rhythm, the rhyme and the sounds of cancionero poems and songs, their poetic elaborations of the theme of suffering love may have also had a therapeutic function in creating some form of catharsis for writer or listener. In the Discalced Carmelite convents founded by Teresa of Avila letrillas and coplas were used for recreation and as means to encourage love for God.¹⁶ Further evidence suggesting that the nuns might have believed in the therapeutic effect of love songs is found in the hagiographic account of how the nuns in the convent sang about love-suffering to uplift John of the Cross's spirits after he had escaped from his confinement:

Quien no sabe de penasen este valle de dolores,no sabe de cosas buenas,ni ha gustado de amores,pues penas es el traje de amadores.

(Cited in Parker 1985: 19–20)

John of the Cross was reported to have been so moved by the singing that he experienced a mystical rapture, ecstasy. This would suggest that affective union with the beloved can be cultivated through a deliberate use of the imagination, by feeding it images about how best to love.

Defining extasis as 'being carried outside of oneself' as an effect of love, Aquinas explained that it can take place through the cognitive faculties ('secundum vim apprehensivam') or through the affective faculties ('secundum vim appetitivam', 2006: 1a.2ae, 28.3). Cognitively, a lover may experience extasis by being 'elevated above his normal powers', 'raised to an understanding of things above the range of reason and the senses', being 'carried beyond the natural limitations of rational and sensory knowledge', although it is also possible for a lover to fall below his normal state, into an ecstasy of violent passion or madness ('cum aliquis in furiam vel amentiam cadit dicitur extasim passus', 28.3). Affectively, 'the lover is carried outside of himself in so far as he wants and works for his friend's good. However, he does not want his friend's good more than his own' (28.3). Even though Aquinas's extasis, translated into English as 'transport', has a wider range of meanings than the term ecstasy, his definition stresses the continuity between human love and spiritual love.

Teresa's 'Muero porque no muero'

The following letrilla, glossed in Teresa's 'Muero' poem, might have been among the cancionero-type songs of human love used in Teresa's convents as means of cultivating love and affective union with God:

Vivo sin vivir en mí,y de tal manera espero,que muero porque no muero.

(Santa Teresa 1986)

Its first line can be seen to refer to the kind of extasis described by Aquinas as the effect of love, while it also evokes St Paul's claim about the effect of God's love for him: 'it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me' (Gal. 2:20). Teresa, indeed, had referred to how she remembered St Paul's words when she felt God dwelling in her: 'que ni me parece que yo vivo, ni hablo ni tengo querer, sino que está en mí quien me govierna y da fuerza, y ando como casi fuera de mí, y ansí es grandísima pena la vida' (1986: CC 3.1).

By changing the second line of the traditional letrilla, Teresa appears to stress less the intensity of her desire and expectation ('y de tal manera espero') than the high aspirations which underpin her desire ('y tan alta vida espero'). Among her polysemic references to 'dying', the phrase 'muero de amor' can refer to three levels of experience which can take place simultaneously: the human 'languishing with love', the ascetic 'dying to the world to dwell more in God' and the mystical suspension of all sensory and intellectual faculties (cogitative power, memory, reason). As she notes in the Moradas, all three forms of 'dying' were part of her experience of mystical prayer:

No hay mejor prueva para entender si llega a unión, u si no, nuestra oración. No penséis que es cosa soñada, como la pasada; digo soñada, porque ansí parece está el alma como adormizada, que ni bien parece está dormida, ni se siente despierta. Aquí, con estar todas dormidas, y bien dormidas a las cosas del mundo y a nosotras mesmas (porque en hecho de verdad se queda como sin sentido aquello poco que dura, que ni hay poder pensar anque quieran), aquí no es menester con artificio suspender el pensamiento; hasta el amar, si lo hace, no entiende cómo, ni qué es lo que ama, ni qué querría, en fin, como quien de todo punto ha muerto al mundo para vivir más en Dios; que ansí es una muerte sabrosa, un arrancamiento del alma de todas las operaciones que puede tener, estando en el cuerpo; deleitosa, porque anque de verdad parece se aparta el alma de él para mejor estar en Dios, de manera que aun no sé yo si le queda vida para resolgar (ahora lo estava pensando y paréceme que no; al menos, si lo hace, no se entiende si lo hace); todo su entendimiento se querría emplear en entender algo de lo que siente, y como no llegan sus fuerzas a esto, quédase espantado de manera que, si no se pierde del todo, no menea pie ni mano, como acá decimos de una persona que está tan desmayada que nos parece está muerta.

(1986: 5 Moradas 1.4)

Teresa's reference to dying to worldly concerns as a way of better dwelling in God is one of the main themes propounded in Kempis's Imitation of Christ.¹⁷ In line with the emphasis which Kempis places on subjecting one's will to God's, Teresa writes of how her passions and her will ('el corazón') are united affectively with the will of God, who, as she believes, had 'wanted' her to be his:

Vivo ya fuera de mídespués que muero de amor;porque vivo en el Señor,que me quiso para sí;cuando el corazón le dipuse en él este letrero:que muero porque no muero.

Her line 'muero porque no muero' might be read as referring to the suffering caused by separation: 'I am dying because I cannot die and be with God' (O'Reilly 1992: 66). Nonetheless, her desire for permanent union with God coexists with her willingness to remain alive, and continue to suffer, as a way of demonstrating her love for God: 'y la mayor cosa que yo ofrezco a Dios por gran servicio, es cómo, siéndome tan penoso estar apartada de El, por su amor quiero vivir' (1986: CC 3.10). This is not simply sensory desire, produced by sensory perceptions of images of Christ's Passion or sorrowful songs about love. It is an aspiration of the rational soul (reason and the will) affecting bodily and sensory experience: 'determinarse a padecer por Dios y desear tener muchos trabajos y quedar muy más determinada a apartarse de los contentos y conversaciones de la tierra' (6 Moradas 2.6). Her dying to the world, her withdrawal from concerns unrelated to her love for God, seems to illustrate Aquinas's account of the effects of love and the intense preoccupation which comes with it (2006: 1a.2ae, 28.3). It differs from the withdrawal from the world described in Gordonio's account of lovesickness in that Teresa does not abandon all activity to spend all her time thinking of and pining for her beloved. Instead, she gets on with the challenging and physically demanding tasks of founding convents and writing numerous practical and pastoral letters. In embracing such challenges, she identifies with the Passion of Christ, encouraged by the belief that he has inscribed in her heart the line 'muero porque no muero' as a reminder that he died for love ('muero') to show the way to eternal life ('porque no muero').

In the second stanza Teresa reverses the courtly love and cancionero convention of placing the first-person lyrical voice in the position of the prisoner, or captive, and the lover, Love, or God in that of the jailer. Thus, where Juan del Encina appeals to his jailer, in a song that can be read in terms of human or divine love (see above), Teresa is unambiguous in claiming:

Esta divina prisióndel amor con que yo vivoha hecho a Dios mi cautivo,y libre mi corazón;y causa en mí tal pasiónver a Dios mi prisionero,que muero porque no muero.

Teresa's perception of God as 'mi cautivo' is not a frightening realization, as Vega suggests, restricting his reading of this stanza to the realm of emotion: 'hete aquí a Dios hecho prisionero o cautivo del alma, pensamiento que asusta y acongoja a la Santa sobremanera, y la mete en tal confusión y dolor que no sabe qué hacer ni qué partido tomar' (1972: 65). On the contrary, it shows her awareness of theological ideas about the effect of incarnation and redemption. By thinking of (and connecting affectively with) Christ's sorrow, she becomes able to direct her own passions ('ha hecho a Dios mi cautivo / y libre mi corazón'). In meditating on Christ's Passion, believing in it as the supreme gesture of God's love for each individual, she uses her imagination to see him (in terms perhaps drawn from the cancioneros) as her prisoner. By dwelling on such images, she cultivates sorrow (the meaning of 'pasión' in this context) as a means of cultivating love. This sorrow is then expressed with the term 'muero': suffering in imitation of Christ's passion becomes the obvious way for the individual to attain eternal life, 'porque no muero'.

Some twelve years earlier Teresa had written in the Vida about how she had felt constrained by bodily pain and illness until she realized that what was constraining her was not the pain itself, but the fear of becoming more ill, the fear of death:

que no nos matarán estos negros cuerpos que tan concertados se quieren llevar para desconcertar el alma […] hasta tener lágrimas nos hace temer de cegar.

Como soy tan enferma, hasta que me determiné en no hacer caso del cuerpo ni de la salud, siempre estuve atada, sin hacer nada; y ahora hago bien poco, mas como quiso Dios entendiese ese ardid de el demonio, y cómo me ponía delante el perder la salud, decía yo: 'poco va en que me muera'; si el descanso: 'no he ya menester descanso, sino cruz'; ansí otras cosas. Vi claro que en muy muchas, aunque yo de hecho soy harto enferma, que era tentación del demonio o flojedad mía; que después que no estoy tan mirada y regalada, tengo mucha más salud.

(1986: Vida 13.7)

In this passage Teresa uses the first person plural to encourage her readers to overcome the fear of pain: 'hasta tener lágrimas nos hace temer de cegar'. She stresses how she replaced the belief that she needed rest with the belief that this pain would enable her to connect affectively with Christ's Passion: 'no he ya menester descanso, sino cruz'. By identifying with Christ's suffering, she was able to give some purpose to her bodily pain, and also look beyond it, thus losing the fear of pain and the fear of death: 'poco va en que me muera'. Paradoxically, her detachment from her pain made her health improve. Her testimony illustrates in practical terms the link between health and salvation contained in the term 'salud', as used by Juan of Avila in his translation of Kempis: 'en la cruz es la salud y la vida […] en la cruz está el gozo del espíritu' (cited in O'Reilly 1992: 57).

As the fourth stanza of the 'Muero' poem stresses, human suffering is greater, bitterer, when it is not experienced as an act of love. As an act of reciprocated love focused on the sorrowful humanity of Christ, suffering can bring sweetness, the pleasure of affective union with Christ's divinity:

¡Ay, qué vida tan amargado no se goza el Señor!Porque si es dulce el amor,no lo es la esperanza larga.Quíteme Dios esta carga,más pesada que el acero,que muero porque no muero.

Here, as elsewhere, Teresa emphasizes that the joy and pleasure of union with God can be already experienced on earth: 'despertemos ya, por amor del Señor, de este sueño, y miremos que aun no nos guarda para la otra vida el premio de amarle, que en ésta comienza ya' (Meditaciones 3.1). As is suggested in Kempis, it is possible to find heaven on earth: 'que es posible que aun estando en esta vida mortal se pueda gozar de Vos con tan particular amistad […] deshacernos todas y convertirnos en Vos!' (Meditaciones 3.10).¹⁸ It is thus possible to argue that the 'alta vida' referred to at the beginning of the 'Muero' poem is not simply that of eternal union of the soul with God after the body's death, but it is also the spiritual life of feeling connected with God on earth through love, sorrow and joy, through desire, through hope: 'Valgan mis deseos, Dios mío, delante de vuestro divino acatamiento y no miréis mi poco merecer' (Exclamaciones 15.3).

While a number of philosophical traditions (notably Stoicism and Epicurianism) had seen 'desire' as a moral disease and as a source of erroneous judgement, Aquinas convincingly argued that desire could be motivating and, if rightly directed, a source of moral worth. This can be seen in some cancionero poetry, in which the lover's often ambiguous desire, directed to an unattainable or barely attainable object, intensifies the experience of love as sorrow, despair or hope, thus providing a strong affective attachment to (the image of) the beloved. Drawing on cancionero formulations of desire, Teresa's 'Muero porque no muero' suggests that the experience of reciprocated love can also be intensified by wilful desire, and that desire can help the lover move towards, and become transformed into, the beloved.