That's what the title is in English, but as of now, the book is only available in its original language. However you can get a taste with a translated chapter from Český shoegaze mezi Východem a Západem at The Quietus on the group Here.
And here is an interview, transcribed in English, with Hroch, for Radio Prague's website.
Until Miloš mentioned it, I had no idea there had been such a significant shoegaze scene in the Czech Republic during the early '90s. But I had come across the scene's leading group The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa - they got some positive coverage in the UK music press and I remember liking the records I heard. (Here is Hroch's piece for The Guardian from a few years ago on the group).
What intrigued me initially was the name The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa itself. Round about that time I had read Malcolm Bowie's guide to Jacques Lacan, where much is made of Bernini's famous sculpture of Saint Teresa of Ávila in the throes of mystic ecstasy. So I did wonder whether the group had been reading up on Lacan's idea of feminine jouissance as an ineffable pleasure-pain spasm. I should imagine all is revealed in Whisper Aloud.
This is Saint Teresa's own account of her mystical raptures, some of which involved levitation. In this vision, an angel immaterializes:
"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying"
There is an alternative title of the sculpture - The Transverberation of Saint Teresa
Transverberation is an obsolete term that means "piercing through the breast" - but you could imagine it as a newly coined bit of wordplay that you might see in the late '80s / early '90s,.used as the name of a club on a flyer, or a song or album title. Trance + Reverberation = Transverberation. I can just see "Transverberation" as the title of a Spacemen 3 EP, or a remix album of Chapterhouse tunes.
Talking of wordplay, this a good track title - "Interstellar Overdose" - from when E of S T went in an ambient / post-rock direction
Fun fact from the Guardian piece on E of S T - there is a fictional group based on them, The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, in Men In Space, a novel by Tom McCarthy, of Remainder fame, who was a resident of Prague in the years immediately after the Velvet Revolution. The imaginary band takes its name from a paining by Pietro Perugino that also features a transverberation.
Did I just write "paining" rather than "painting"? An inspired slip of the tongue, or typing finger in this case.
Teresa makes a fleeting appearance in this Hardly Baked post about the sexy psalms of One Dove
"Light spinning round a saint
Light colored wild sign...
Light talking gold into rain
Light thriving dark into saint
A cat in gold goes alone
Theresa's sound for the king"
At least one Songmeanings commenter insists this song is about Teresa of Avila.
I'd like to think it's about Teresa Nervosa of the Butthole Surfers.
Updated: passed this church in Silverlake yesterday
There's a school as well
A "micro-school" apparently - and it's to close at the end of the school year, sadly.
Classes in levitation?
