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According to Michel de Certeau, mystic experience is manifested in paradoxes. These paradoxes are connected either to the content or the form of experience. While mystic experience is always an extraordinary event that disrupts the framework of normality, the subject of the experience takes it to be a manifestation of the universal. The object of the experience is a mystic phenomenon that reveals itself but remains hidden at the same time. Descriptions of mystic experience use the rhetoric of the abnormal or the radically alien while they communicate a content which the reporter believes cannot be communicated (Certeau 1990). Whether or how Pascal's texts belong to the tradition of mystic literature has long been debated in the reception of his writings. The discussion is based on the one-page text later named, in which he records his direct experience of God. This event, called a second conversion, took place on November 23, 1654 and brought about a turn in Pascal's life. He interrupted his research in mathematics and physics for a while and joined the Jansenists. Some years later, he began to write the apology of Christianity today known as Pensées. It is undeniable that Pascal's theological and religious writings reflect the experience recorded in Memorial, and in this sense Memorial is thought to be centrally important in the exegesis of his texts after 1654. However, it is perhaps worth asking whether Memorial can be considered a mystic text. Basically, this is a question of definition to which the answer depends on how the concept of the "mystic text" is defined. As we have seen, according to Certeau's definition the experience of God is expressed in the form of paradoxes in mystic texts.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-45069-8_12

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