Eroticism of the Infinite: Neoplatonism, Kabbalism and Sufism in the Work of José Ángel Valente

Abstract

Valente's openness towards mysticism directed his poetry and essays to the search for, and the discovery of, universals of being that demonstrated, as the author himself said, ‘the existence of homogeneous structures in the phenomenon of mysticism, whatever their time and place. Certain extreme experiences tend towards analogous forms of language (or of the suspension of language) and towards analogous forms of symbolism’. This occurs especially in the expression of eroticism, as he would try to show. Starting from this point, Valente's creative work and essays became an intercultural space where both diachronically and synchronically Platonism, Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism, the Kabbalah, and Sufism can be found together. Valente also valued many diverse traditions, appreciating ‘poetic as much as religious experience’ in them, but distinguishing between ‘both experiences which we can respectively call the order of the literary and the order of the ecclesiastical’; however, he feels very alien to any formality and orthodoxy.