I was standing on the dais with the officials and other finalists—of course, all men—and I wondered at the water pressure. This fountain squirted and gushed and sported and rolled as if the sprite of a fountain bathing in itself. We were, it was true, on the Alameda, just at the end of the aqueduct, but was there maybe a little wind-assisted pump somewhere? Such reflections on hydraulics soon leading me to notice that the soft jostle on the dais was just as intimate as in the plaza, and less impertinent only to the extent that similarly placed collisions were passed off here as accidents.
Moorish rugs were spread over that half of the dais protected by a canvas pavilion, open across the front and patterned upon the tents of distant Arabia. From the pavilion’s corners, indeed from most of the courtyard columns, rich pennants, paper streamers and bunting drooped prettily. Throughout the patio, people posed studiedly under a fine, warm llovizna.† The evening sky had reached the palest blue edge of grey. In that soft light the ladies gloried in their lambent fabrics; the men stood in quiet counterpoise in soft browns and blacks—charcoals and glosses and mattes. Among us at elbow height wobbled trays of chocolate and nutmeats borne by proud, puffing nymphs with beribboned hair. We were all at least half-aware of the beauty of the scene, and ennobled in a small way by our role in it. The rainfall blessed the women round the dais with sparkling curls and a hint of glaze on our lips, our cheeks, our wrists.
The glazing of our eyes was next effected by the speech makers.
When at last the quartet started up, I turned to Carlos, who had maintained a geometrically fixed distance from me all this time, and asked if the composer was Zarlino. I was quick to admit that I’d read a good deal of orchestral music but had heard next to nothing actually performed. Indeed it was, he said. Perhaps he might be permitted to escort me to a concert or two this month? He was home for all of December from the Jesuit seminary in Puebla.
This was all very quick. I would have to learn to be more careful about such easy openings. Coming up from just behind me was the other prize-winner (and to think I’d assumed the competition had ended), asking if I agreed with Zarlino, against Galilei, that music should have its own voice and not imitate the spoken word.
“My agreement, sir, might depend on the words spoken. In this past hour I find myself quite vehemently swayed towards Zarlino.”
The conversation, as it must, turned to the competition. Carlos briefly feigned shock that a girl should be chosen, let alone a doncella of such tender years. (He was so much older.) But the professor remained so gracious that Carlos soon confided he was relieved not to have embarrassed the family and the name of Góngora, entirely. His true love was mathematics, and he would have the Chair of Mathematics one day.
To repay their grace I reminded them of what the Knight of the Woeful Figure had said about poetry prizes. “Always strive to carry off the second prize, for the first is forever awarded as a favour … the second going to the one who should have placed first—”
“Making third place, second,” said the professor, smiling.
“And the first place, third,” I continued.
“Which, as we know,” Carlos said, “is in actuality second….”
But such an unholy fuss was made when it became known that I had been born in the very year Miguel Sánchez published the first great work on our Virgin of Guadalupe. And had I not just won a great tourney taking her glory as its theme? Surely, said one fellow, this was a sign she had blessed the outcome herself.
It was Carlos who made the discovery. Just how old was I? he’d asked, that is, if he might presume…. So I was born in 1648! (Truly mathematics was his gift.) But what of it, don Carlos?
“Does the lady think it mere coincidencia?” he asked.
Here was an interesting word, I said (because it was new to me—and just as new was the sensation of being caught at a disadvantage). Had he meant the coincidentia oppositorum? But no, obviously he did not mean Guadalupe and I were opposites. Indeed he seemed to mean the reverse—but then what was the reverse of a union of opposites? A disunion of opposites, or a union of dissimilarities—or a complete non-relation of perfect irrelevancies? Well, I couldn’t stand there gaping forever, so I played for time.
“And where on earth, don Carlos, did you hear—“
“It has been newly employed,” he said brusquely, “by a distinguished English scientist, Tomás Browne.”
Fortunately he now went on to laboriously define it, which gained me the time I needed.
“But don Carlos, what can this new term possibly mean? To bring two events into conjunction precisely to say there is none? To say that what appears to mean something means nothing at all? Does your Englishman not offer to refute Superstition only at the cost of making Hazard his cult?”
Just such a conversation as I had dreamt of having one day in the capital …
I went on now rather eagerly—according to my information, English was a mere dialect, a gumbo of German and French, possessing a simplified lexicon improvised to communicate the rudimentary sentiments of global trade and the terse niceties of piracy.
“Which would make it, would it not, gentlemen, akin to the pidgin the Spanish use in the Philippines?”
England, its manners, its mercantile impulse, its rough tongue, creeps into many heated discussions here, for many of my fellow citizens are nervous about privateering, and about being cut off from Spain. Since the rout of our Armada, we spoke of the English, I imagined, much as the Romans had of the pirate fleets of the Vandals.
At this point we had attracted a small audience. It was the best part of the day, a real piratical free-for-all. People jumping in, flailing about, and whenever some fool or parlour wit would take my side, I’d change tacks, for the sheer fun of it. So thick was the spread of confusion that only Carlos seemed to notice, and smiled, I thought, a little wickedly.
“And after all,” I said, on just such a tack, “there is our own debt to Latin. Few would think our Castilian the poorer for it.”
“No great poetry,” thundered some bluff wit in return, “has ever come from any Protestant country!”
“Was there not once word,” I asked, “of a great flourishing on their stages at the same time as Spain’s own best day?” I had heard of at least one great play—on the wizard Faustus, no less—and was distracted by a thought: how curious it was that such a character should take the name of ‘one favoured by the augurs.’”
“But señorita, what notice should we take of their dramatists,” Carlos said slyly, recalling me from my reverie, “when the English have closed their own theatres down?”
“Señor, do the Iberians not consider our Mexican culture to be a pidgin of like kind, precisely when they themselves have not produced a great poet for, what, a generation now? We should not be similarly complacent.” He seemed prepared to agree so I tacked instead into rougher waters, arguing that any country capable of producing a great queen might just be ready to make one decent poet.
“Perhaps you’d care to amplify—”
“Well, yes, don Carlos, happily. Imagine, if you will, a great pidgin poet.”
There was a gratifying moment of silence. Carlos nodded, appearing to consider this seriously. Then a thick-whiskered fellow said, “Señorita, you have the mind of a man.”
“Ah, the mind of a man.” I eyed them each in turn, taking my time. “A man, perhaps, caballeros. But which man …”
We were interrupted then, and I felt sorry Carlos was going back so soon to the seminary in Puebla. But we still had a month and there would be other receptions.
I did get to take home a glittering prize. A jewelled snuffbox I couldn’t wait to use.
As for the winning poem, I’m sorry it was not so good. Better than Carlos’s but not much. Here in the city, craftiness and the contrivances of fashion counted for more than substance—Art takes form, form takes substance, substance takes craft. Or so it was said. How they worshipped at the shrines of their subtle framing devices. And at line
s ending in unexpected rhymes, such as urraca / saque / triquitraque / matraca. … I would do many like this to earn my keep.
I was already a little sick of hearing about Guadalupe, but I owed her something better. One day I would write a poem for Carlos, for he had been truly passionate about her. If his poem had displayed slightly less skill, so also had it used less trickery than mine.
After just a few such experiences in the arena, I would come to feel that poetry written for the tastes of its time could almost never be great. We must write through our time, or even to it, but never for it. Poets must concern themselves with neither fashion nor even what people want, but with vision—raw and immediate—of what lies beyond our eyes. Beneath this, our great Dream of Common Sense.
But a poetry competition was not the place for such concerns, and this not quite the day for leaving the last childish things behind.
People were kind. “The Poetess, the Poetess!” they had cried as I left the ring, and again on my way to the carriage from the parade marshal’s house. At the receptions that month, the gentlemen proved very attentive. Having Isabel’s features and increasingly her form no longer seemed so terrible.
And I was out of my cave.
The boulder had been rolled back—the jar unsealed and Hope† broken free. I was determined Aunt María would never seal me in again.
There were receptions and luncheons and balls for the Poetess to go to, and she would no longer be denied. In another fortnight the prizewinners were to have an audience with their majesties, the Viceroy and his German wife. A German. Here was a people that elected its emperors.
Her hair, they said, was of spun gold.
So much the better—but I was to meet my first Goth.
JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ,
“Echo, finding Narcissus on a mountaintop”
THE DIVINE NARCISSUS
Alan Trueblood, trans.
… tiende la vista a cuanto
alcanza a divisarse
desde este monte excelso
que es injuria de Atlante.
Mira aquestos ganados
que, inundando los valles,
de los prados fecundos
las esmeraldas pacen.
Mira en cándidos copos
la leche, que al cuajarse,
afrenta los jazmines
de la Aurora que nace.
Mira, de espigas rojas,
en los campos formarse
pajizos chamelotes
a las olas del aire.
Mira de esas montañas
los ricos minerales,
cuya preñez es oro,
rubíes y diamantes.
Mira, en el mar soberbio,
en conchas congelarse
el llanto de la Aurora
en perlas orientales.
Mira de esos jardines
los fecundos frutales,
de especies diferentes
dar frutos admirables.
Mira con verdes pinos
los montes coronarse:
con árboles que intentan
del Cielo ser Gigantes.
Escucha la armonía
de las canoras aves
que en coros diferentes
forman dulces discantes.
Mira de uno a otro Polo
los Reinos dilatarse,
dividiendo regiones
los brazos de los mares,
y mira cómo surcan
de las veleras naves
las ambiciosas proas
sus cerúleos cristales.
Mira entre aquellas grutas
diversos animales:
a unos, salir feroces;
a otros, huir cobardes.
Todo, bello Narciso,
sujeto a mi dictamen,
son posesiones mías,
son mis bienes dotales.
Y todo será Tuyo,
si Tú con pecho afable
depones lo severo
y llegas a adorarme.
… so let your gaze take in
all the land it surveys
from this lofty summit
that leaves Atlas in the shade.
See, into the valleys
those streams of cattle pour
to graze on the emeralds
that stud each valley floor.
See, like drifts of snow,
the curdled milk in jars
puts the jasmine to shame
with which dawn snuffs out stars.
See red-gold ears of grain
sending billows everywhere
like waves of watered silk
stirred by waves of the air.
Behold the rich ores
those swelling mountains hold:
how they teem with diamonds,
glow with rubies and gold.
See the leaping ocean
how the dawn’s welling tears
are congealed in conch shells
and turn into pearls.
See, in those gardens,
how the fruit trees flourish;
behold the broad range
of rich fruits they nourish.
See how green crowns of pine
on high summits endeavour
to repeat the exploit
of the giants storming heaven.
Listen to the music
of all those singing birds.
In all of their choirs
sweet descants are heard.
See from pole to pole
realms spread far and wide.
Behold the many regions
which arms of sea divide,
and see the ambitious prows
of those swift-sailing ships—
how they cleave in their passage
the azure’s crystal drift.
See amid those grottoes
creatures of every sort,
some timidly fleeing,
some bursting fiercely forth.
All this, fair Narcissus,
is mine to dispose of;
these are my possessions,
they accompany my love.
All is yours to enjoy
if you cease to be cold,
put severity aside
and love me heart and soul….
†No procession without a dragon or monster
†CAUTION: BULLFIGHT IN PROGRESS
†jade
†victory lap
†Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, 1645–1700, mathematician, astronomer, historian, mythographer
†drizzle
†probable reference to Pandora
AUTO TOUR27
It had turned out to be a fine day of jousting, after all, but what I missed in the bullring that day was spectacle, high drama. There was low comedy, and the high comedy of our English-pirate free-for-all. And low drama, for the two full minutes it took the Viceroy to look over every part of me before awarding his prize. No, I wanted colours and costumes and light—fireworks, fine voices and much finer poetry. Ceremony. I was not so very different from everyone else here. Juvenal was not mistaken in prescribing bread and circuses as the philtre for enthralling us.
Uncle Juan had largely financed the tournament, so as we rode back home from the parade marshal’s house I gave him back the snuff box. I couldn’t help asking if my victory had been paid for, since he’d paid for everything else. The carriage drew up before the house.
“You have done more for my standing with the new Viceroy in one day, Juana Inés, than my underwriting a dozen of these affairs.”
He helped me down from the carriage, then walked quickly to the door. But once there, he paused to hold it open for me. There he stood: big and stocky, earnest and calm. And for no particular reason he struck me as brave, not in bluster and brandish of steel, but quietly, steadily brave. I liked him. As I brushed past, he held up a hand to detain me. “Oh—and Juana Inés, whatever else I may do,” he said with a wry quirk of a smile, “I never tell a viceroy what poets he should like.”
He did no
t posture or pretend. This was a business proposition, and while business was obviously good, I sensed it was also precarious. His network of alliances went to the top of both the Cabildo and the Audiencia, and into the lower echelons of the court. But one does not approach a viceroy with money. I was an asset now. I found I didn’t mind. I had met a few of his associates at the house. Serious, earnest … if anything, a little preoccupied. Since they were much like him, I guessed that these were not just associates but friends. No posturers or hypocrites. I’m sure Uncle Juan knew these, too, and saw to their handling and care. What I liked is that he didn’t have them at his house.
But he was not much of a family man. He seemed no more interested in poor Magda than he had been in me up till now. And there was something strained between him and Aunt María, who seemed more anxious with secrets all the time. His parents we hardly saw. I did have an intuition that the canvas dam across the courtyard and fountain had been more their idea than his, and that they might have preferred to get their water elsewhere. It arrived in the city all the way from Chapultepec springs via the aqueduct to the Alameda. The mains had been clay, then lead for a while; then someone somewhere in the city administration read a book of Roman history, and they were clay again (whose almost weekly repairs, in our neighbourhood at least, Uncle Juan paid for).
He also paid his debts, and he knew just what to get me. The Poetess and her escorts had been reserved a private box at the theatre. I loved the theatre—I just knew it, even though I’d never been. But I had read a hundred plays, made them burn like fire in my mind—these were our painted books.
He wouldn’t come with us, being too serious for such things, but he did insist Aunt María and Magda go. It would do them good to get out. It would do Magda good.
They squeezed—parts of me—into another of Magda’s old gowns. But it was of a lovely, sky-blue satin, which set off to advantage, I supposed, my black hair and black eyes. And then we were in the carriage, as the three of us had been on so many trips to the cathedral. I could not ride even a short way facing backwards without feeling ill, so as always María and Magda sat facing me. The ride was mercifully brief.
It was the single greatest thrill of my life to arrive for the first time at the theatre, ablaze with light, in a gleaming coach drawn by matched horses, steel tack flashing silver. As I stepped down I could hear the orchestra warming up above the shouts and cries of the coachmen jostling for position.
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