PREFACE

ed, living in the fearsome familiarity of the shadow, she enjoyed them without knowing them. Struck down at every moment by some terrible joy, it is always, she says, for the first time; for the last flash of lightning eclipses all the others. All lights are but shadows next to the final light. The treasures through which her gaze searches are forever inexhaustible, and eternity promises to her ever-renewed joy fresh delights that will never end. When, after having piled the mountains of happiness enjoyed by the elect: those chosen by God for eternal life in heaven upon the mountains of happiness that all men would have enjoyed, if all false joys were changed into true joys and lasted, without interruption, until the end of the world, she searches in every direction, with the anxiety of helplessness, to reach, if it were possible, In this context, the author suggests Angela is trying to find words that "overstate" to match the reality of her experience, though human language inevitably falls short.exaggeration, and when, after having added together all known and unknown joys, she declares herself ready to abandon them all, if she had to choose between them and a single second of the ineffable glory for which there are no words—that glory which is her own glory, her blinding light and her being struck as if by lightning—when she strikes the air with her lips as if to tear from it sounds it does not contain, what we must admire most in her speech is the silence that lies beyond.

In the sixty-first chapter, digging into the