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Performing/Annihilating the Word: Body As Erasure in the Visions of a Florentine Mystic Author(s): Armando Maggi Source: TDR (1988-),

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Performing/Annihil
the Word

in theVisions Body As Erasure of a Florentine Mystic

Armando Maggi

The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual(The Dialogues), the transcriptionsof the mystical monologues of ity. I colloqui Saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (Florence, 1566-I607), questions the meaning of "text" and "genre," the word's intrinsic performativity, the relationship between authorship and readership/audience, and, finally, the connection between gendered/sexual presence and discourse. Unlike any other mystical is not the diegetic reportage of the ecstatic encounters between book, I colloqui the divinity and a "blessed soul." Maria Maddalena did not intend to communicate/teach us anything; not only did she not care for any form of audience or readership, she did not even want this book to be written. Indeed, to approach I colloqui correctly, two essential elements must be kept in mind: First, Maria Maddalena's mystic performances had a specific goal: the expression of the Word. The mystic believed that through oral language she might be able to evoke the Word's being. I colloqui reports the mystic's reiterated attempt to fulfill her task; I colloqui,we may say, is a work in progress. Second, I colloqui was not written by Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi. Her sisters of the Carmelite convent Santa Maria degli Angeli (Saint Mary of the Angels) in Florence transcribed, corrected, edited, and censored her monologues. As soon as the mystic entered a rapture, the nuns took pen and paper and jotted down as much as they could of her spoken words. When she whispered, trembled, screamed, performed a solo "mystery play," spoke with a male voice in the person of the Father and/or the Word, Maria Maddalena was not addressing her audience, her convent sisters. She spoke exclusively because the Word wanted her to summon His being/voice. In the mystic's monologues the Word is the Other, that nonbeing that, as Emmanuel Levinas writes, both dominates and asks us to respond fully to His request for existence; it is that which gives and subtracts sense from our own existence (I98I:2I). Three brief passages from the mystic's monologues summarize this fundamental point:
The Drama Review 41, 4 (Tis6), Winter 1997. Copyright ? 1997 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. II0

Florentine Mystic I I [Y]our idea, your might, your goodness, everything is a language in the Word's God [...]. the Word proceeding from the Word communicates us the Word and unites Him with us [...]. (I96o-I966a, 1:345) [T]he voice of the creaturesis nothing but a little sound that one hears, and then it vanishes. But the voice ofJesus is eternal, so that Truth
is God's being and His voice [...]. (1:I72-73)'

I will belch forth, I mean, I will pronounce the good word, the good
Word, my Jesus, since I hold you in my heart. (I:I52)2

In her performances, the mystic attempts to "belch forth" the Word by means of language, gestures, silences. By focusing on the mystic's most complex vision (chapter 48), this paper will analyze the "fructile chaos, [the] fertile nothingness" of the mystic's liminal performances (I990:I2).3 Maria Maddalena's visions/monologues/plays are both manifestations of the body/ word and erasures of the body/word itself. As will be clear later, the actants present in I colloqui-the transcribers/audience, the performer, her female body, the Word, the Father, the secondary "presences" summoned by the performer (for instance, devils, angels, the Magdalen, Saint John, the Virgin), the text itself-act out their own annihilation. Let us startby analyzingthe text/book. I colloqui cannot be categorizedaccording to any specific genre. It constantlymodifies itself, acquiringdiverse and conis an amalgamof debris of "texts." By this term I tradictoryidentities. I colloqui mean literary"fields"characterized The two-volume by a given performativity.4 I colloqui (altogethermore than 700 pages) revolves around the visions of a young Carmelite nun who was born on 2 April I566 into the noble Florentine family de' Pazzi.5 She was baptized Caterina but took the name of Maria Maddalena when she became a nun. When she was still a child, the Jesuits introduced her to their meditation techniques and to some of their basic writings. She joined the convent SantaMariadegli Angeli when she was I6 (August 1582), taking the veil the following year. A few months later, she startedto perceive the Word's voice, who involved her in intense and often excruciatingdialogues. In June I590, after a five-year "probation,"during which the Word let Satantempt the mystic's soul and body, her visions came to an end. She died in 1607. Although her raptureshad a totally private nature, Maria Maddalenaendeavored to communicate her theological insights by writing to bishops, cardinals, other female mystics such as Catherine of Genoa, and even to the Pope. HowYouridea, yourmight, is a ever, her letters almost never left the yourgoodness, everything convent. In fact, both her confessor and 7 languagein the Words God [..]. The Word proceedthe mother superior, Vangelista del Giocondo, had an ambiguous attitude theWord communicates us theWord and

toward Maria Maddalena's "experi-

ingfrom

ences." On the one hand, the mother (1:345) unites Him with us [... superiorwished to have a "blessedsoul" in her convent. On the other, she was not sure about the characterof Maria Maddalena'sraptures.As a result, Maria Maddalena never played a major role within the convent of Saint Maria degli Angeli, and her mystical performances were kept secret from the external world. Maria Maddalena's letters were destroyed or censored; her attempts to communicate with the higher ranks of the Catholic Church were frustrated. Between I590 and 1607, the mystic lived in a "silenced" condition. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi was canonized in I669, after a long "trial" where more than 50 nuns were asked to testify. I colloquicontains Maria Maddalena's raptures from Christmas of 1584 to 4 is not the mere transcriptionof some discourses June 1585. However, I colloqui

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Armando Maggi

or performances. The nuns/authors originally meant to compose something like a Catholic hagiography, inserting only a few utterances of the visionary within their moralizing narration. The nuns attempted to follow the hagiographic genre (the description of the inspired life of a "blessed soul"), even though they knew that the genre traditionally dealt with deceased and often canonized religious figures. Thus, the first chapters/visions of I colloqui a Medieval hagiography, (approximately from vision I to vision I8) resemble but they do not coincide with it because they, paradoxically, recount a series of mystical events as if the occurrences were both live (and thus not-yet-interpreted by the Inquisition) and past (and thus already approved by the Church). These first chapters are rather brief; they often merge several visions together and report only those utterances that the nuns still remember at the moment of their writing. In these first sections, the nuns invert the sequence of the utterances themselves, in order to "clarify" the visionary's discourse.6 Moreover, since the mystic's performances often include long silences, the nuns also feel free to make up dialogues between the "blessed soul" and the Savior. They make the divinity speak through a patchwork of biblical quotations: My dear daughter, I want to spend time enjoyably with you [...] given that today is that day in which I decided to shed so much Blood for my creatures'sake, now I want to draw you, my creature, toward me [ad me ipsum].You know that I said that when I was on the cross, I would draw ad me ipsum;and the other [sentence]: Et everything to me: Omnia traham delitiemee essecumfilijshominum.(I:55)7 However, the mystic's orality is given progressively more space within the nuns' manuscripts. Her sisters cannot help noting the "great and beautiful way she speaks" and her imposing gestures (2:336). Finally, they also insert the mystic's silences and exclamations in the attempt to recreate the orality of her discourses. The nuns are so overwhelmed by the mystic's performances that sometimes they forget to write down her words and to describe her movements. They simply enjoy the "show." As a consequence, in most cases the nuns' reportages are a mixture of hagiographic narrations, brief summaries of those parts of the mystic's monologues that they have missed, long sections of those very monologues along with the mystic's silences and exclamations, descriptions of the mystic's gestures, of her walking through the convent, of her running up and down the stairs toward the kitchen garden or the chapel, and also their (the nuns') subsequent interpretations of almost every part of the mystic's performances. The length of the transcribers' intrusions varies dramatically. Their "explanations" can be either a few words placed into brackets, or short paragraphs,or even entire pages, when the mystic's discourse has been particularlycryptic to them. As will be apparent in my analysis of vision 48, the mystic's words often do not have a particularaddressee. Her utterances may be either parts of a solo mystery play, responses to the Word's questions (unheard by the transcribers,who perceive only one side of the dialogue), private musings, or, finally, expressions of sheer physical suffering. I colloqui thus defies any classification. Its performativity is random and multifaceted. Even its authorship is questionable, primarily if we consider that the mystic abhors her sisters' work. Left alone with some of the nuns' books, she burnt them, provoking the rage of her confessor (de' Pazzi I96o-1966b, I:3233). Maria Maddalena believed that the written page betrayed her effort to "belch forth" the Word. The Word can only be uttered through oral language. As the quotation at the beginning of this article demonstrates, the mystic considers the Word a voice. In order to give the Word a body, she must

Florentine Mystic articulate His voice. Thus, we might say that the written I colloquiis a text/ performance rejected by its main performer in the very act of performing it, since each performance is a mere attempt to give the Word a body/voice. As Louis Marin reminds us, every text possesses both a body and a space, the space of the text being that of the text's body as it is dismembered or articulated in its existence, i.e., in its being performed. The text is thus "the most powerful revenant of its own body" (1971:386). I colloqui as a body is not only "dismembered," as Herbert Blau defines the postmodern physicality; it is denied/annihilated in its actualization (1991:83). For that matter, I colloqui sharesinteresting aspects with specific forms of contemporary performance art, heir to the so-called "Happenings."8 After analyzing Maria Maddalena's visionary performances, I will compare I colloquiwith Linda Montano's monologue Mitchell'sDeath (1978), a "visionary" work that has striking similarities to the Florentine nun's discourses.

I 13

"The Word" is an index that points to a void and that obliges the erased main performer, the mystic, to hold a diegetic discourse on His nonbeing.

First of all, it is essential to understandthat Maria Maddalena'sperformances have "a nondiegetic structuringof time and space." In fact, the mystic's monologues question any form of structure, including narrativity, time, and space, but they also question the denial of structure. Her performances occur as a linguistic flux which both accepts and denies any structuring.Some sections of her performancesare "decontextualized,"nondiegetic, and thus make the transcribers feel compelled to insert their exegesis, which itself decontextualizes the flux of the mystic's decontextualized orality (Erickson 1992:5I). A second crucial element of Maria Maddalena's rapturesis that, as Richard Schechner writes about Happenings, they "deal with all three terms of the perception triad. [...] The thing-done is no longer any more important than
those who do it and those who witness it" (I995a:217). Both the mystic's

orality and the nuns' transcriptionsmake the "message" dependent upon both the performer's body/voice and the audience, that is, the transcribersthemselves. In I colloquithe three terms of the aesthetic triad interact with each other in a rather complex manner. For the moment it will suffice to say that I colloquiis the performance not only of the mystic, but also of the nuns who "are there" when the "thing" happens and who "make the thing happen" by writing down the "happening of the thing." I colloqui thus results from a double performance, a performance within and after a performance. Other fascinating elements come to the fore if we examine chapter 48 of I colloqui,the most disturbing vision in the entire book. In the previous visions the mystic has gone through a severe process of internal purification, which concludes with her mystical marriage to the Word. According to her sisters' manuscript, in vision 39 the mystic mimes the act of receiving a nuptial ring from the Word. The nuns connect the mystic's silent gestures to a topos of Medieval hagiography, the narration of Saint Catherine's spiritual marriage to Jesus. Since she has completed her purification, in the vision 48 Maria Maddalena is allowed by the divinity to participate in the Word's funeral. This is a crucial moment in Maria Maddalena'smystical experience.

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The vision startson 17 May 1585, a Friday evening, and lasts 40 hours, until Sunday morning. It is the longest vision/text of the entire book. The Word Himself warns Maria Maddalena of the arduous task she is going to face. The Word asksher to follow Him into His sepulchre. The first words of the mystic's longest monologue are indeed a response to the Word's (unheard)request: as long as you were underground, Oh eternal Word, so long? [silence] forty hours I mean, in the sepulchre, and during that time you were in limbo in the Father'sbosom, and underground?And I'll follow you with admiration. (2:285) The entire vision thus "takes place" in the Word's tomb and is a meditation on the Word's corpse and on the act of dying. The tomb equals the Father's bosom, as if the Father were pregnant with the dead Word. As we will see later, the mystic's performancesrepeatedly blur the limits of sexual subjectivity. The above passage constitutes the leitmotif of vision 48, which takes up 70 pages in I colloqui.The words themselves are repeated and varied throughout both portions of the text, the excerpts from the mystic's monologues and the nuns' exegesis of those very excerpts. After reporting the mystic's first words, the transcribersstate that she kept quiet for a long while, interrupting her silences with deep sighs and scalding tears. Her sisters also point out that she comes out of her rapture "sometimes to take care of her physical needs." According to the nuns, Maria Maddalena enters this vision at "the 2Ist hour," whereas the Word has been/is buried at "the 24th hour." After inserting their a posteriori interpretations of the dynamics of the forthcoming/past vision, the nuns transcribea second introductory excerpt from the mystic's words: And it will be fulfilled the time of forty hours [silence] so that at the dawn of your happy day of Sunday I'll be there, yes [silence] one can really call it the day of the Lord. (2:286) The nuns stress that these words are in fact a dialogue between the mystic and the Word, even though they, the audience, cannot hear Him. A third passage concludes this sort of proem: Oh yes, you were not in the sepulchre at this time. Yes, I'll get there myself later, yes, sure! [silence] Oh yes, during this time the mystery of the
Trinity will be fulfilled, 'cause it'll be two nights and one day [...]. (2:286)

As the passage clearly shows, Maria Maddalena is going to perform a solo mystery play, reenacting the death of the Word by constantly shifting temporal categories. She reminds the Word of the fact that now he was not in the sepulchre yet. At "the 22nd hour" the mystic kneels down on the floor with hands crossed and head downcast. The writers assume that she must be looking at the corpse of the Word lying on the ground, and that she pronounces the following words in the person of the Virgin Mary: Offero tibi Pater per omnem creaturamSanguinem quem effundit ipsum Oh Father, Unigenitum Filium tuum pro redentione humana. [silence] come [silence] your Only Begotten and his Mother that nourished and
nursed him. (2:287)9

The actual vision thus starts with an act of identification. The mystic is at the same time the Virgin and herself as she acts the role of the Virgin. Her

Florentine Mystic I15 gestures express despair, the nuns point out; she seems to be cleaning the Word's corpse of his clogged blood and of the spit of the Roman soldiers. While she kisses the floor as if, the nuns write, she were kissing that corpse, Maria Maddalena articulatesher sorrow by referring to the Word both as "my
Son and my Groom" (2:287).

This is one important aspect of the liminal performances of the Florentine visionary. We must keep in mind that the meaning of her gestures is the result of an interpretation. The nuns are adamant about this. They state that the mystic's movements remind them of some Pieta--the cliched image of the Word's deposition from the cross, with his mother and the other pious women bent over his body ("she seemed as if she had before her one of those images of Jesus when he is removed from the cross, as one sees in some Pieta" [2:287]). The mystic's performative identity is given to her by the anonymous writer(s) who see(s) her vision as a form of "translation"of a pictorial image onto a body performance."? I colloqui is thus a text performed in complete anorefer to herself/themselves einymity. The editor(s)/transcriber(s)/narrator(s) ther as "one," or "we," or "I," although we have no clue who this "I" is. Moreover, the mystic herself has no name; at the most she is called "the blessed soul." Her name "MariaMaddalena"is totallyabsentfrom I colloqui. The mystic takes up several (fictional) identities, starting from the Virgin, whose name "Mary"is clearly stated on the page, later the "Magdalen,"and finally the "Father." Otherwise, Maria Maddalena does not exist within the performance; she is erased in the act of performing. She actsherself as a bodyin pain: exclusively Oh Word, no more offenses [silence] no more offenses [silence] where are Oh Word, so much pain [silence] Oh goodJesus. you, goodJesus? [silence]
(2:3 I)"

Therefore, by becoming/identifying with/playing the role of the Virgin, the mystic enters a diegetic performance. However, later she discards her identification with the Mother; she is a physicality that allows the performance to perform itself at random. I will belchforth,I mean, I will pronouncethe good Indeed, after contemplating the sinceI holdyou in my corpse of the Word, she walks to the word, thegoodWord, myJesus, choir in the chapel. The choir beh comes the sepulchre of the Word. heart. (1:12) She mimes the act of deposing a body on the floor and says: "The head will be here" (2:290). Expressing her despair before that dead body, she first talks in the person of the Mother ("Come, Angels, take and bury my Son and your Creator [...] please, come take it" [2:290]); then she is a virgin, the Spouse of the Word: "I prided myself on having an immortal Groom and
now I see them bury you
[...].""2

This constant transformationof performed identities is a basic trait of Maria Maddalena's text. Maria Maddalena has no identity by herself. Her identity is the diegetic flux of the performance itself. The main performer of the vision acts "in-between identities; in this sense, performing is a paradigm of liminality" (Schechner 1985:295). This essential anonymity/liminality of the text primarily involves the divinity, the Word. The entire text, one must remember, is the description of an occurred absence; the Word is a non-Word, is a nonexistent presence. The Word is a reminder, a sense of guilt for the mystic. Her performanceis a paradox;she must articulate/summon a dead word. After having meditated upon the Word's corpse, the mystic addresses the Magdalen: "Oh Magdalen, what are we going to do without our Love? [si-

I 6

Armando Maggi lence]Be hopeful, my daughter" (2:292). Then, walking as if she were participating in a funeral, Maria Maddalena enters the nuns' scriptorium, which in her "mystery play" becomes the Virgin's house. Here she meets with her Son/Groom's disciples (2:293). Peter arrives first: "Come in, come in, Peter, come, come here, although you have betrayed my Word, he is benign, and if he has forgiven you I forgive you myself. You know, he has forgiven Magdalen, and he will forgive you as well" (2:293-94). Maria Maddalena mimes the act of accompanying the invisible Peter to a chair. Then, John ("Oh John, please come in!"), Jacob, and Joseph step into her room. Magdalen, Peter, John, Jacob, and Joseph pay a respectful visit to the Mother/ Spouse of their dead friend. The burial has already taken place in the chapel; in the scriptorium the deceased is commemorated by his family and his friends. The vision/narration in fact revolves around a silent/silenced corpse. The performer without a name performs/utters an absent word/Word. Only invisible presences are allowed to be called by their names (Magdalen, Peter, John, etc.). The text is grounded on an absence; its diegesis acts out the Word's erasure. "The dead, rotten body is this thing that no longer has any name in any language [...,] and the unnamed God has vanished together with this unnameable thing" (Nancy 1994:18). It is crucial at this point to discuss the absence of the name of the third performer, the Word Himself. If, as Marin underscores, every first name is a Peirciean index-a sign that refersto an object in a "dynamicway" since it refers both to the object itself and to the memory of that object (like a hole in a wall might be a reminder of a bullet)-we may infer that a first name is similar to a gesture that at the same time signifies and shows its object, even if this object is absent (I97I:24). Therefore, a first name says nothingand everything of its object (25). This is a crucial element of MariaMaddalena's performance.Is "the Word" a first name? "The Word" is an index that points to a void and that obliges the erasedmain performer,the mystic, to hold a diegetic discourseon His nonbeing. That the deceased Word in vision 48 possesses no given identity is evident by the way the mystic uses His two "first" names, "the Word" and "Jesus." Whereas during the diegetic sections of the vision-the mystery play concerning the burial of the Son of God-the mystic addresses the second person of the Trinity as "the Word" (thus summoning His nonpresence, his being as a "rotten" corpse), when she embodies her self in her expressions of sheer pain she pronounces the term "Jesus."However, "Jesus"is not an index; "Jesus"is the annihilation of any diegetic performance. "Jesus,"or "my Jesus," or "good Jesus" all signify a despair that imposes itself as an absolute, all-erasing saying. "Jesus"and "the Word" thus indicate two different "objects." "The Word" exists as an absent actor of a mystery play. "Jesus"is not a first name of someone whose first name is "Jesus.""Jesus"is the name of someone else's disquiet. I colloqui, and in particularvision 48, is the biography of a void, or, better yet, this text is the biography of a performer (the mystic) who performs the biograis also the auto-biographyof the phy of a void (the Word). However, I colloqui transcribers who perform their own biography by withdrawing from the performer'sperformance. As Marin states, "the subject, the 'I' constitutes itself the other" (1981:46). The transcribers by quoting the other and by appropriating reveal themselves by exposing the performerto her performance,as, in a similar when she performsthe absence of the manner, the performer(the mystic) is there Word, who makes the mystic perceive His presence as guilt. At least in the first section of vision 48, the Word enacts the mystic's guilt for being unable to summon His being. In other words, the mystic, the Word, and the nuns are both performersand performed, both presencesand silenced bodies.'3 The act of performing one's self and being performed through one's own performance is one of the major aspects of Linda Montano's video Mitchell's

Florentine Mystic

I 17

Death, a monologue recounting the moments after her husband's suicide or accidental death. Like Maria Maddalena's discourse, Montano's monotonous recitation does not have a specific addressee. Montano reads a text into a microphone without looking at her audience; like the Florentine mystic, Montano speaksan absence to an absence. We have seen that Maria Maddalena is aware of the fact that, although she is compelled to speak, her speaking will not give a body to the Word. Similarly, Montano repeats her words with no actual pathos; her narration will not summon her husband's presence. She speaks as if she were reciting the rosary in a Catholic church. Montano knows the rhythm and the cadence of the rosary. Indeed, like Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, she studied to become a nun (Shank I979:44). Through an electronic device Montano's voice echoes as if she were a member of a chorus. She is merely a voice among other voices; her words are often blurred, indistinct. The comparison between Montano's monologue and Maria Maddalena'silluminates some fundamental elements of both performers' "philosophy of language." In the act of reciting the rosary, the subject does not focus on the content of his/her saying. The "mysteries"repeated throughout the rosary revolve around a death-the Word's withdrawal from the world-and the "others"' (his mother's, the Magdalen's, his disciples', etc.) mourning over his occurred absence. The event narratedis a void articulatedby a voice that aims to "absorb," to appropriate that very void. More than remembering the Word, the subject memorializes the Word's absence by reproducing that absence in the physicality of his/her voice. Both Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi and Linda Montano perform a death (the Word, Montano's husband) and are performed through their "silencing" voices. Both of them speak in order to originate silence. Silence does have a "story," a plot, which is secondary to the act of "giving life" to silence itself. Maria Maddalena participates in the Word's funeral; Montano gazes at her husband's corpse: I can't believe what I'm seeing his face bloated a bit certainly distorted a hole the size of a silver dollar on his right cheek his face intact but so changed a pink putty fills the hole little pieces of it in his hair his eyebrows ruffled not neat toJobthat Oh, it will happento me whathappened everything impassive not mowasproved first in his thingsand thenin himself bile like sleep but too still for [siare I Mitchell sleep you asleep in the neighbors and thenin myselfbelence] before touch his arm [...]. (1987) Reading this passagecould be misI don'tknowif you wantthe bodytofinish in this leading. In fact, in addition to those rhythmical pauses present at the end I'm on earthor way.[silence] I don'tknowwhether of each "mystery" of the rosary, in heaven, in hell or in the abyss. Montano's voice has a repetitious in(2:311-12) tonation. Montano's brief silences, moreover, do not follow a narrative/ rhetoricalpattern. The speakerbreathesin and out the "stations"of her narrated void (Montano's calling up her friends to tell them about Mitchell's death; her moments of sudden despairand fatigue; her driving to KansasCity to attend his funeral);it is through breathing that the void is narrated.Mitchell's death is embodied in a breath: "Don't be afraidMitchell it's ok pups go on don't be scared surrenderwhatever fearsyou are experiencing are only illusions go on and don't
fear don't worry no more worry [...]" (1987). Montano's words are a litany. A

fore in the bodyand thenin thesoul. [...] MyJesus,

litany is a speech with no silences that only articulatessilence.

I 8 ArmandoMaggi Maria Maddalena considered silence a crucial element of her performances. Indeed, in "colloquio" 48, after having met with her Son's/Groom's disciples, she lowers the tone of her voice to a barely audible mumbling (2:299). The nuns write that "one could understandwhat she was seeing better through her gestures and movements than through the words she was saying" (2:299-300). All of a sudden, the mystic stands up and opens the window, exclaiming: "Yes, confused before but now in everything [silence]and he placed them in hell. [silence] Who has ever seen such a speed?" According to the nuns, the visionary is being attacked by a horde of devils. She defends herself by throwing the "bad angels" out of the window down into the courtyard: Go [silence] and he sublimatedour yell, scream as much as you want [silence] humanity with their confusion [silence] nothing more is known. (2:300) Her fight with the devils introduces the most dramatic passage of the text. The devils have instilled in the mystic's mind the awareness of the Word's irrevocable death. The mystic is "enlightened" by the devils. The sepulchre (the choir in the chapel) contains nothing but a mute body. The devils expose the mystic to "the vortices in which the body that lets loose its hold on the levels of the world [...] gets drawn" (Lingis 1994:23). By recognizing the other's/the Word's nonexistence, the mystic's body "becomes the double of the other," putting itself "wholly in the place of the death that gapes open for the other" (Lingis I994:18I). Maria Maddalena'sbody startsshaking and wriggling, "as if she were dismembering herself inside." Her broken discourse begins as follows: Oh, it will happen to me what happened to Job that was proved first in his things and then in himself [silence] before in the neighbors and then in myself, before in the body and then in the soul. [...] My Jesus, I don't know if you want the body to finish in this way. [silence] I don't know whether I'm on earth or in heaven, in hell or in the abyss. [silence] Oh You that walk tell if me someone has ever suffered good Jesus. [silence] by like me. [silence] Oh good Jesus. [silence] Oh good Jesus. [silence] Oh good if I ascend to heaven you'll be there, if Jesus, it's clear to me, yes [silence] I descend to hell there you are. [silence] Oh goodJesus [silence] Oh good are all Love but are all Oh Word, when Jesus, you you purity. [silence] are you coming? [silence] Oh good Jesus. [silence] My Jesus, you want it, Good Jesus, good Jesus [silence] I perceive neither you yes, yes. [silence] nor myself. If I am in you, you know it. [...] I'm a nothingness [...].
(2:311-12)

Still engrossed in her vision, Maria Maddalena participates in the night Mass. Throughout the celebration, she shivers and whispers, "My Spouse, my Lover, my Beloved, tell me, why are you waiting so long?" When she takes Communion, her mystical performance acquires a drastic shift. The mystic startscommenting on the nature of "the Soul, the Body, and the Blood." For Maria Maddalena, Communion equals physicality, blood, and the Word's blood. In order to "be ready," the mystic says, "one must fulfill three conditions, in the soul, in the body, and in the blood" (2:313).14 The transcribers are astounded by the fact that, after speaking of "soul, body, and blood," all of a sudden Maria Maddalena has acquired a male voice. She is no longer the Mother/Spouse; she speaks as the Father (2:314). The Father is entitled to specify the modalities of the soul's purification. Whereas so far the vision has focused on the Word's corpse, now it relates the word of the Father. The mystic "lends" her female body, her mouth, her tongue, to the

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de' I The youngCatarina Pazzi was the daughter of Father's~Florentine before ~~~~~~~~~~~clusively, the nobility shejoined the convent SantaMariadegliAngeli as MariaMaddalena in (Photo 1582. courtesyof Armaindo MaeOi)

Father who states His Law. From now on the text is essentially, but not ex clusively, the Father's sermon. The mystic performs a male preacher who delivers a well-articulated speech concerning two major themes: the procedures necessary to attain an interior purity; and the "acts" that the dead Word "operated"/"operates" in His, the Father's, bosom during the three days of His, the Word's, death. the extremely long and convoluted sermon is performed by a body deprived of a fixed identity/sexuality. Following the structure of the so-called sermon practiced/theorized by the German mystic and preacher "9thematic" Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300--I36I), the Father makes use of two basic rhetorical devices: dilation and amplification. After having announced the theme of his sermon, He divides it into several sections (divisions), and then He amplifies them in specific subchapters (distinctions). A "clausio," a sort of summary of both divisions and distinctions, will lead to a brief closing prayer (see Schmidt I985).'s However, His discourse is intersected by two different kinds of aside discourses: the mystic's (female) voice, who often asks herself/the (male) preacher to repeat and to clarify his sentences because they are too "hard"for

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her; and the mystic's (female) expressions directed to the Word's corpse. In fact, in this final section of her vision the mystic performs two double performances at the same time. First, she is herself a female disciple/daughter who listens to the Father, who imposes His discourse/narration on/of the Word, the deceased Groom of the (male) Father's (female) audience. Second, the mystic also is/performs the (female) soul who at moments feels lost because of "her Word"'s absence, and thus cannot help interrupting her (male) monologue with expressions of despair. It is crucial to remember that the Father's "violation" of the female body has occurred when the mystic suffered from intense physical pains and then came into contact (through Communion) with the divinity's flesh. The Father thus enters her body in order to impose His discourse about physicality, gender, and the Word's relation to the (female) soul. For that matter, I find a stunning similitude between the Florentine mystic's sexual ambiguity and "the postmodern dissociation of presence and discourse," as Jill Dolan says about the performances of the male-to-female transsexual Kate Bornstein. "Her [Bornstein's] monologs traded among shifting, constructed identities, layered on a body that has experienced all of these constructions" (1989:66). It is also important to remember that in the Renaissance a shifting sexuality, a "constructed identity," as Dolan says, was usually seen as the mark of a demonic body (devils, witches, possessed souls). As Lyndal Roper points out, "possession [became] a kind of hypermasculine caricature" (I994:I9I). Recounting the trial of a possessed woman in Germany at the end of the I6th century, Roper underscores that the "witch" "display[ed] all the emblems of the classic male vices-drinking, hunting, swearing and whoring. [...] The success of the exorcism was proven when the woman resumed her feminine persona." In another case of possession, the possessed woman reversed her gender: Instead of using [the woman's] female voice and comportment, the Devil spoke through her "with a coarse and almost masculine voice." [...] The possessed woman had two voices, one her normal voice, "natural,small, feminine and virginal," and the other "strange, coarse, unnatural, heavy, masculine snuffling and rasping." (Roper 1994:176)

Whereas so far the vision has focused on the Word's corpse, now it relates the word of the Father. The mystic "lends" her female body, her mouth, her tongue, to the Father who states His Law.

The similarities between Maria Maddalena's performances and that of the possessed are undeniable. In both cases the female sexual identity becomes a caricature of the masculine one when a "superior," male presence enters her body. In this sort of transsexual, liminal presence the woman, both "blessed" and "damned," is a field upon which masculinity performs itself. The woman becomes a hybrid, a suspicious entity whose actual nature and destiny are defined by the male addressee of the woman's performance itself (the judges of the Inquisition, the mystic's confessor, etc.). In other words, man is entitled to "read" the signs that his (the Father's, the Devil's) "writing" has marked on the woman's physical self.

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In Maria Maddalena's visionary performance, the discourse about the body (body as corpse; body as resurrectionof/from the body; body who "operates"in the male bosom during its own death) belongsto the Father.A female "voice" cannot pronounce the sermon of the body. As Helene Cixous reminds us, theatre has always asked the woman to perform her own annihilation: [The woman] is always the Father's daughter, his sacrificialobject, guardian of the phallus. [...I]t is always necessary for a woman to die in order for the play to begin. Only when she is disappearedcan the curtain go up; she is relegated to repression, to the grave, the asylum, oblivion and
silence. (1984:546)

The first theme of the Father's sermon revolves around the acquisition of a perfect purity. The mystic/preacher stresses that, to obtain a flawless purity, "the soul must keep its frailty" (2:3I6). Without embracing its fragility, the soul cannot earn the Father's purity, which is His being itself. As a consequence, without its frailty the soul has no being. Interestingly enough the mystic is addressed by herself/the male preacher as "the soul"; her erased identity becomes even more impalpable. In a similar way, the Word is not the incarnate Word, a dissected corpse any longer. In his Father's speech, the Word is the Word's soul, dead and "active" in his Father'sbosom. The second topic of the Father's speech is indeed the "operations" of the (dead) Word's soul in the Father'sbosom. After stating the theme of his forthcoming sermon, the preacher divides it into four sections. He is going to examine the "acts, the words, the advices, and the contemplations" performed by the dead Son in His bosom. Moreover, He will amplify each section in specific
subsections (2:317).

The preacher says that the soul of the dead Word "operated his operations" by contemplating Him, the Father, and by being contemplated by the Father. The Father's the Wordas a manifestation gaze performs of the Law. Let us summarize this pivotal point: An erased/female body performs the male Law that is allowed. performs a corpse's performance, in which no disruptive improvisation We may say that the Father erases both the female and the male physicality, insofar as He first annihilates the woman by violating her "voice" and then denies the Word his diegetic status of (dead) body. The only form of unexpected improvisation present within the text/sermon is, thus, the sudden, female expression of disquiet for the Word's death. The mystic's panic breaks the discourse of the Father and thus the performance of His Law. Let us compare two brief passages from the last section of the vision. The "soul" asks the Father to clarify a point that she has not understood: FEMALEVOICE: Oh eternal Father, tell me please, what is this infusion. And what kind of contemplationdoes the Word do in you, and what kind of contemplation do you, Father,do in him? How does he contemplate?Please, tell me. MALE VOICE: Oh my daughter and Spouse of my Only Begotten, please pay attention if you want to understand what I am going to tell you now. My Word does a contemplation that is an immense contemplation, incomprehensible and unfathomable to you. And when his Soul entered my bosom, gazing
at me it was clarified with an immense clarification [...]. (2:337)

The core of the Father's sermon is the long description of the effects of the Word's contemplation and of the Father's gaze upon the Word's soul. Indeed, the preacher holds that, through the Word's contemplation, the Father creates two "springs,"one of blood and one of milk. These two sources nourish both

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the "soul" and the Church. The Father speaks in the name of the Institution; His Law/springs "sprinkles"the Church and makes it "fructify" (2:352). After 15 pages of an uninterrupted (male) speech, the (female) soul suddenly remembers that, while she is listening to this sermon, the Word is still in the tomb: FEMALE VOICE: But, oh my soul, you love the Word so much, remember that he is in the sepulchre. [silence]Yes, the Soul must go to the sepulchre to glorify the body, and then to limbo [silence]and I don't know. [silence]Oh lack of time [silence]Oh Soul of the Word, come back to glorify the body in the sepulchre [...]. (2:353) A final change occurs in the text at this point. The male voice disappears; the mystic herself carries on the male discourse. The conclusion of the sermon is performed by a female "voice" that develops the themes initiated by the Father. In other words, the Father has molded the mystic's discourse. Even though the transcribersfail to mark the gender of the speaker, the structure/ ideology of the speech itself is male-gendered. Once she has embodied the Father's discourse, the mystic is allowed to go back to her diegetic performance. The Father has conceived of his speech as a sermon; the style of the mystic's monologue becomes eloquent and solemn. It is also important to note that the mystic's gestures have disappearedfrom the text. The nuns do not report her movements anymore. The text has become opaque. As we have pointed out, the male discourse rejects any form of improvisation. Improvisationdisturbsthe structureof the male sermon. The absence of improvisation (for instance, the mystic's sudden exclamations, her bodily performances, her moving from one room to another, her miming the battle with the devils) negates the creation within the text of "a symbolic interpretive space" (Smith I995:42). The negated body of the performeris in fact the negated spatiality of the text itself. As Gilles Deleuze states, the body/subject "is not exactly a point but a place, a position, a site. [...A] subject will be what comes to the point of view, or ratherwhat remainsof the point of view" (I994:19).

The negated body of the performer is in fact the negated spatiality of the text itself.

The vision concludes with the resurrection of the Savior. The other invisible characters also come back. The Virgin, John, Magdalen, even the devils appear on the "stage" for a final salute to the performer/audience. Since she has incorporated the Father's Law, the mystic may "speak" the Savior's victory over death. However, as the mystic herself states, the Word/Jesus does not perform His resurrection in the mystic; he "narrates"it to His Mother: "Oh, you narrated your operations, and now you narrate your operations to Mary, yes, they will generate admiration and love in us" (2:368). The mystic does say that she is seeing the resurrectedJesus ("Oh my Word and Spouse, how beautiful you are!"), but she also stresses that the Word "is visiting" his Mother and that the "soul" (the mystic's soul? whose soul?) must follow the Father's instructions if she wants to be visited by the Word (2:369). The vision thus ends as the Father's sermon was supposed to end: by reminding the audience of the procedures necessary to attain a perfect internal purity, which equals a perfect internal "fragility." The mystic is both the soul who has already married the Word and the soul who wishes to be al-

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lowed to marry the Word. One more time, the text is the instability of the performer's identity. I colloquiperforms the ungrounded foundations of any performance. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi is and is not herself. Her being as spatiality is made of remnants, debris, memories, images of previous performances/performers/ narrations. The mystic attempts to "utter" the Word by summoning identities, physicalities, "spaces"that have the consistency of"pure" emptiness. Notes
will indicate the volume and page number. I. Furthercitations for I colloqui 2. The translations of I colloqui used in this paper are from my forthcoming Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi: Selected Revelations. For my translationI use the sole edition of the mystic'svisions: Tuttele Opere(196o-I966). The expression"to belch forth the good word" has a totally differentmeaningin Saint Bernard'sOn the Songof Songs.In sermon 67, 3-5, Saint Bernardactuallyinterpretsthe verb "eructare" as "to belch forth."He holds that, when the soul is full with God's grace, she "belchesforth" the Word. The differencebetween MariaMaddalena's interpretation and SaintBernard's is apparent: whereasin SaintBernardthe act of belching out the Word signifiesthat the soul is content with His grace, in MariaMaddalena"eructare" primarily means"give linguisticexpression" to the Word. "Eructare" is a synonymfor "speaking." With the word "liminal,"I refer to Victor Turner'snotion of an intermediaryfield that spansacrosstwo or more areasof performativity. Here I refer to Richard Schechner's response to W.B. Worthen's "Discipline of the Text/Site of Performance."Although Worthen astutely interpretsBarthes'snotion of text as "the field of the signifier, of textuality, of play, of production" (I995:I5), he equals "text" with "play on stage" (Schechner I995b:37), thus limiting the infinite which transcendthe theatricalstaging. I colloqui range of textual "performances," provides one example of contradictory/ambiguous/self-denying performativity. I borrow these basic biographical elements from the following texts: Catena (i966a; i966b); Secondin (I974); Pozzi (I984). The first biography of the Saint was a brief report written by one of her sistersnine years before the Saint's death. The first actual biography was composed by Vincenzo Puccini, one of her confessors,and was publishedin Florence in 1609. The nuns openly recognize their intrusionin the mystic's discoursein I colloqui (1:320). Refer to Omniatraham ad me ipsum(John I2:32) and Et delitiemeeessecumfilijshominum (Proverbs8:3 ). As Darko Suvin writes: Happeningsare a genre of theatrespectacle,using varioustypes of signs and media organizedaround the action of human performersin a homogeneous and thematically unified way, and a nondiegetic structuring of time and space. (I995 [I97o]:294-95) 9. I do not translatesentences that the mystic pronounces in Latin. In the first part of this excerpt Maria Maddalenasays: "I will offer you, Father, for every creature the blood that your Only Begotten shed for the human redemption." Io. Speaking of the Indian dancer-choreographer Uday Shankar, Joan Erdmanreminds us that Shankar: translatedthe dance from its informal presentation in the royal household and temple sanctuariesinto productions constructed in a Western format. [...] As in the translationof literarytexts, a translationof performanceis for a particular time (one's own) and audience (whether literary,artistic,scholarly, immigrant,elite, public, national, or international).(I987: 65, 69) Maria Maddalena"translates" the deposition, both a cliched painting and a group performance (the Catholic theatricalprocessionsof Good Friday),into a solo monologue/ performancethat denies any audience. I . In the Old Testament "God's invisible presence is asserted, made visible, in the perceivable alterationsHe bringsabout in the human body" (ScarryI985:I83).

3. 4.

5.

6.
7.

8.

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12. As Slavoj Zizek remindsus, when

I am driven to despair, thrown into absolute solitude, I can identify with Christ on the Cross. [...] My personal experience of being abandoned by God thus overlapswith the despairof Christ himself at being abandonedby the divine Father. [...] In Lacanianterms, we are dealing with the suspension of the big Other, which guaranteesthe subject's access to reality: in the experience of the death of God, we stumble upon the fact that "the big Other does not exist." (1995:4o-42) Ziiek refers to Lacan's"Subversionof the Subject and Dialecti of Desire" (1977:317). Thus, we may say that MariaMaddalenaindirectly performsone more identificationwith the Word himself, abandonedby the Father. 13. Interesting similarities can be found between Maria Maddalena's visions and Jerzy Grotowski's "ritual performances,"as he started calling his work when he moved to Pontedera, Italy, in 1985. According to Zbigniew Osinski, Grotowski's "theater"revisions, his work sponds to "a special calling" (I99I:99). Indeed, like MariaMaddalena's "is not easy to verbalize" (IO5). Following the gnostic tradition, both Grotowski and Maria Maddalenaare in search for the "direct experience," the sudden contact with a nonhumanpresence. A certainmysticalcharacter is certainlypresentin Grotowski'sperformances.As one of Grotowski'sperformers writes in his privatediary: Saturday, May 5: During a heavy dance-song sequence Jerzy extracted me from the group and asked me to sit in the yurt. He told me to see if I could perceive any type of spirit in the yurt. [...] He said that both he and another member had seen something, some sort of spirit. (Winterbottom 1991:142, 145) 14. I examine the crucial role played by the term "blood" in the mystic's raptures in "Blood as Languagein the Visions of Saint MariaMaddalenade' Pazzi" (I995). 15. On Tauler's presence in Italy, see Walz (1961), Kennedy (1980:190-92), and Murphy (1974:269-355).

References
Bernardof Clairvaux On the Song of Songs. Translated by Irene Edmonds. Kalamazoo, MI: 1980 CistercianPublications. Blau, Herbert "The Surpassing 1991 Body." TDR 35, 2 (TI30):74-98. Catena, Carmelo C. "Ambiente del monastero di Santa Maria degli Angeli ai tempi di Santa 1966a MariaMaddalenade' Pazzi." Carmelus 13:21-95. SantaMariaMaddalena de' Pazzi carmelitana; orientamenti ed ambiente in I966b spirituali cui visse.Rome: Edizioni del Carmelo. Cixous, Helene "Allera la mer." Modern Drama27, 4:546-48. 1984 Deleuze, Gilles The Fold: Leibnizand the Baroque. Translatedby Tom Conley. Minneapolis: 1994 University of Minnesota Press. Dolan, Jill 1989 "In Defense of the Discourse." TDR 33, 3 (TI23):58-71.

Erdman,Joan L. "Performance as Translation: Uday Shankar in the West." TDR 31, I 1987 (Ti I3):64-88. Erickson,Jon
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"The Spectacle of the Anti-Spectacle:Happeningsand the SituationistInternational."Discourse 14, 2:36-58.

Florentine Mystic Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and SecularTraditionfrom Ancientto Modern I980 Times.Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress. Lacan,Jacques "Subversion of the Subject and Dialecti of Desire." In Ecrits.Translatedby 1977 Alan Sheridan.New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Levinas,Emmanuel Otherwise than Being or BeyondEssence.Translatedby Alphonso Lingis. The I98I Hague: MartinusNijhoff. Lingis, Alphonso Bodies.London: Routledge. 1994 Foreign Maggi, Armando "Blood as Language in the Visions of Saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi." 1995 Rivistadi letterature moderne e comparate 3:219-35. de' Pazzi: Selected Revelations. New York: PaulistPress. forthcoming MariaMaddalena Marin, Louis de la Passion.Aubier Montaigne:Editions du Cerf. 1971 Semiotique La voix excommuniee. Paris:editions galilee. 1981 Montano, Linda Mitchell'sDeath. In Bad Attitude. Videorecording. New York: Video Data 1987 Bank. Murphy,James in theMiddleAges. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Rhetoric 1974 Nancy, Jean Luc 1994 Bodies,edited by Juliet Flower MacCannel and Laura "Corpus." In Thinking Zakarin,17-3 I. Stanford,CA: StanfordUniversity Press. Osinski, Zbigniew "GrotowskiBlazes the Trails." TDR 35 I (TI29):95-III. 1991 Pazzi, MariaMaddalenade' I96o-I966a I colloqui.Tutte le opere.2 vols. Edited by Bruno Nardini, Bruno Visentin, Carlo Catena, Giulio Agresti. Florence:Curiae Archip. Probatione. Tutte le opere.2 vols. Edited by Bruno Nardini, Bruno Visentin, I960-I966b Carlo Catena, Giulio Agresti. Florence: Curiae Archip. Pozzi, Giovanni Leparoledell'estasi. Milan: Adelphi. 1984 Roper, Lyndal and theDevil. New York: Routledge. 1994 Oedipus Scarry,Elaine The BodyIn Pain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1985 Schechner, Richard BetweenTheaterand Anthropology. 1985 Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. I995a "Happenings." In Happenings and Other Acts, edited by Mariellen R. Sandford,216-I8. London: Routledge. I995b "Response." TDR 39, I (TI45):36-38. Schmidt,Josef "Introduction."In Sermons, 1985 by John Tauler, 1-34. New York: PaulistPress. Secondin, Bruno de' Pazzi, Esperienzae dottrina.Rome: Edizioni del Santa MariaMaddalena 1974 Carmelo. Shank, Theodore "LindaMontano's AutobiographicalPerformance."TDR 23, I (T8I):43-48. 1979

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Armando Maggi Smith, Christopher "A Sense of the Possible: Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised Per1995 formance." TDR 39, 3 (TI47):4I-55. Suvin, Darko 1995 [I970] "Reflections On Happenings." In Happeningsand Other Acts, edited by MariellenR. Sandford,289-309. London: Routledge. Turner, Victor "Are There Universalsof Performancein Myth, Ritual, and Drama?"In By 1990 Meansof Performance, edited by Richard Schechner and Willa Appel, 8-I8. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press. Walz, A.M. 1961 "Tauler im italienischen Sprachraum." In Johannes Tauler, ein Deutscher 371-95. Gedenkschriftzum 600. Todestag. Essen:n.a. Mystiker,

Winterbottom, Philip,Jr. "Two Yearsbefore the Master."TDR 35, I (TI29):140-54. 1991 Worthen, W.B. 1995 "Discipline of the Text/Site of Performance."TDR 39, I (TI45):13-28. Zizek, Slavoj TheMetastases London: Verso. 1995 of Enjoyment.

Armando Maggi is Assistant Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published several articles on female mysticism, Renaissance neoplatonism, Luso-Brazilian poetry, and romancephilology. His volume, I1 fermo fluire delse, a study of Renaissance emblematic literature, will be published in 1998 by Longo. He is currentlystudying Renaissance performancesof exorcism.

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