Chapter Two
Heteroglossia
This chapter treats dialogism at the level of heteroglossia: national languages are read in dialogical relationships. The chosen literary text which exhibits multiple national languages is an example of poetry by the seventeenth century Mexican writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. San Pedro Nolasco is a set of poems, eight villancicos, the last of which exhibits extremely dense heteroglossia: in the last 120 lines, there is the polyglotic mixture of Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl. These three national languages interanimate each other; they interact in dialogical relationships.
My reading of San Pedro Nolasco will follow both a preliminary discussion of theory and a general discussion of Sor Juana’s texts. The chapter proceeds as follows: Pretexts (introduction), Texts (overview of the Sor Juana texts), Fractal Heteroglossia (application of theory to heteroglotic reading), and Languages (reading San Pedro Nolasco dialogically). Texts briefly discusses the corpus of Sor Juana’s work but pays particular attention to two works, the Respuesta and San Pedro Nolasco. There is also a brief introduction to the writer, a simple commentary suitable for one unfamilar with colonial American literature. Fractal Heteroglossia recalls the theoertical model delineated in the first chapter and adapts it to the specific needs of reading heteroglotic texts. It provides the tools for analysis of the interanimations among national languages, for reading power relations of languages in dialogue. The final section, Languages, is an applied reading of San Pedro Nolasco. It focuses on the heteroglotic interplay among Spanish, Latin and Nahuatl but also briefly treats the heterophonic interplay among social languages. This chapter does, however, stress heteroglossia; the mention of heterophony, which is fully treated in the following chapter on Shakespeare texts, is provided only for comparative contrast.
Texts
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz lived from either 1648 or 1651 to 1695 in Nueva España, colonial Mexico, and spent most of her life in the provincial capital, Mexico City. She learned to read at 3, dumbfounded scholars of the vice regal court at 16, and became a Hieronymite nun at 18. She wrote a vast body of erudite literature and, at one time, possessed one of the largest libraries in America. During her lifetime she saw the publication of many of her works, including two anthologies published in Spain. She championed the cause of woman’s right to education in the Respuesta (1691). After being admonished to return to religious matter, she ceased virtually all writing, distributed her library, and died in 1695 while nursing nuns during a plague.
The corpus of works attributed to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz provides an especially rich opportunity for the reading of heteroglotic literary texts. Writing as a nun in Mexico City at the end of the seventeenth century, her world was intensly heteroglot, Spanish and Latin. Colonial Mexico, or New Spain, was the locus of prodigious linguistic diversity and offered at least as thorough a polyglossia as Bakhtin observed of Rome and of Renaissance Europe. Spanish was the language of the vice regal court, the government, and other colonial social institutions. Latin was the language of the church, the language of education, and the backdrop for Spanish. Nahuatl was the dominant language of the native populace but was only one of many. Other peninsular colonialists brought Portuguese and Basque to Mexico. Then too there were the dialects, the linguistic mixtures: the Afro-Spanish of Black slaves and the mestizado (mixed Spanish and Indian) Spanish of the Indian and mestizo. Sor Juana’s Mexico was culturally and ethnically diverse and linguistically heteroglotic.
Sor Juana’s social status, first as a member of the viceroy’s court and later as a nun in the convent, required an understanding of both Spanish and Latin. But her knowledge went far beyond the minimun level of competency: Sor Juana was a true intellectual. An often cited example of this is her performance at the vice regal court at 16 when 40 scholars tested her intellectual worth. The Viceroy declared, “in the manner that a royal galleon might fend off the attacks of small canoes, so did Juana extricate herself from the questions, arguments, and objections these many men, each in his speciality, directed to her” (qtd. in Peden 8).
Solid evidence of these skills, along with the demonstration offered by her works, is her famous library. It has been estimated that at one point she had up to four thousand books (this, before she gave her books away in her turn from secular learning). Modern commentors doubt that she could have had such an extensive library in colonial Mexico. As Margaret Sayers Peden points out, that number is roughly equal the total number of books imported into New Spain during Sor Juana’s entire life. Gerard Flynn acknowledges Dorothy Schons’s estimation of Sor Juana’s library as more likely four hundred volumes, because “If Sor Juana had four thousand volumes, she had the best library in all of Spanish America” (Flynn 110). Yet her library was duly famous. Her writing demonstrates that she was extremely well read. For example, that in Luis Harrss’s explication of just three lines of the 975 line poem, El Sueño, he notes allusion to Descartes, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Sigüenza y Góngora, and to Kepler’s astronomical treatise, Somnium, Sive Astronomia Lunaris (1634) (96).
The fame of her works can be measured by an examination of the canon of Spanish literature. In his “A Consensus Canon of Hispanic Poetry,” Howard Mancing cited the occurrences of poems in 100 anthologies of Spanish (peninsular and American) poetry published in the years 1940-80. He eschewed highly selective collections because Mancing measured the degree to which a work is canonical by its rate of appearance in those anthologies “that seemed most representative and inclusive” (53). His results quantify a rate of inclusion which suggests the high degree that Sor Juana’s poetry is canonical. “In the history of Spanish American literature, Sor Juana stands alone, the prodigy of the colonial period…” (Peden 9). From the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, Francisco de Terrazas is the only other colonial American of whose works Mancing is able note even a modicum of representation (Mancing 58-63). The extreme lack of American Spanish poetry both reflects the nearly complete dominance of peninsular poetry in the canon and Sor Juana’s prominent presence.
Yet much more telling than her presence as one of two American writers, is the relative occurrence of her poetry in the corpus of Spanish literature as a whole. In Mancing’s study, her poetry was included in 40 of the 100 anthologies. To put this in perspective, the greatest of the siglo de oro writers appeared in comparable numbers of anthologies: Miguel de Cervantes (34), Luis de Góngora (47), Lope de Vega (46), Francisco de Quevedo (47), Pedro Calderón de la Barca (33). In addition, when noting the frequency of a single poem, the 32 occurrences of “Hombres Necios” is only surpassed by three poems from the above mentioned group, two by Lope de Vega, “¿Qué tengo yo que mi amistad procuras?” and “Pastor que con tus silbos amorosos” and one by Francisco de Quevedo, “Miré los muros de la patria mía” (60-62). Indeed, her “Hombres Necios” surpasses and “Este que ves, engaño colorido” equals the most frequently anthologized selection from Poema de Mio Cid, “La niña de nueve años.”
The corpus of her poetry includes a wide variety of works, the religious, secular, scholarly, romantic and satiric. In terms of forms, the works are as diverse. Modern critics count 63 sonnets, 59 romances, 1 silva, 9 glosses, 16 poems in redondillas (including “Hombres Necios” and “Este que ves, engaño colorido”), 1 poem in quintillas and redondillas, 34 décimas, 10 poems in endechas, 3 poems in lira, and 1 laberinto endecasílabo. To this can be added her masterpiece, the 975 line silva,El Primer Sueño (Grupo Feminista 17-18).
In addition to the poetry, there are many dramatic works. As Peden remarks:
Sor Juana had written plays, had had her plays performed, and had been urged by her confessor to cease writing plays—all nearly a hundred years before the first play by a North American writer had been given a professional performance in the United States. (Peden 12)
The plays divide between the secular and the religious. The corpus of religious drama consists of three autos sacramentales and four loas. Flynn considers the auto sacramental,El divino Narciso (The Divine Narcissus), to be her masterpiece, a work surpassing any of the poetry (Flynn 56). El divino Narciso is an allegory in poetic drama; the myth of Narcissus and Echo is recast in Christian terms. The list of secular drama is more extensive. There are two three-act comedias de enredo, comedies of entanglement: Los empeños de una casa (The Trials of a House) and Amor es más laberinto (Love is the Greater Labyrinth) which she co-authored, writing acts one and three. There are also 2 one-act sainetes, short plays, 14 loas, dramatic poems, and 1 sarao, soiree (Flynn 35).
Then finally, there are the two famous prose works, La Carta Atenagórica, and the Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz. There is also the lost treatise on musical theory, El Caracol. Flynn ranks the Respuesta among her most famous works. He does so with a bit of hyperbole:
The Dream, The Reply to Sor Filotea, some sonnets, and the poem in defense of women, “Hombres necios que acusáis,” are the best-known works of Sor Juana. They are mentioned in every literary history or included in every anthology. (35)
There were many publications of individual works, such as of the villancicos discussed below. In her lifetime, she saw publication in 1692 of a two volume anthology of her poetry and drama. She died in 1695 at the age of either forty-four or forty-six. The posthumous anthology, Fama y obras póstumas del Fénix de México, Dézima Musa, Poetisa de América, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, was published in Madrid five years later in 1700.
La Respuesta
The Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (Response to Sor Filotea de la Cruz) is currently the most popular of Sor Juana’s works. This and the poem “Hombrese Necios” are often cited as examples of early American feminism. The Respuesta and the long poem, El Sueño, represent high points of her career as a writer. They are the most intellectual works, full of allusion, huge in scope. They are, along with the poem, “Hombres Necios,” the most referred to and anthologized of her works. Yet both works were only very recently translated into English. The first translation of LaRespuesta is Margaret Sayers Peden’s A Woman of Genius (1982). The first complete translation of El Sueño is Luis Harss’s Sor Juana’s Dream (1986). Sections of El Sueño have appeared in English, translated by Samuel Beckett, Margaret Sayers Peden, and Glibert Cuningham.
El Sueño, The Dream, is a 975 line poem in the form of the silva, lines without rhyme scheme, predominately seven syllables, occasionally eleven syllables. According to Peden, El Sueño is an “epistemological inquiry that anticipated the Enlightenment,” an extended anabasis, perhaps modeled after Cicero’s “The Dream of Scipio” (Peden 11, Harss 23).
The language of The Dream is Baroque at its most tangled. That means Conceptism: tortuous puns and conceits, fast-moving epigrams, and the joys of paradox; and Gorgorism: endless sentences winding through several paragraphs [sic]; Latinate syntax with extravagant inversions exuding the windy musicality of a pipe organ; interplays of reflecting surfaces that combine metaphysics; the whole leafy verbiage of Baroque wit. And all with a bit of a tropical flourish: the criollo’s obsessive display of bookish learning that showed his mastery of cosmopolitan skills. An even stronger obsession in a woman who had to keep proving herself in her own eyes as well as those of a skeptical world and to whom the abstruse was, in additon, a disguise. (Harss 21)
The Respuesta is “Sor Juana’s prose masterpiece” (Peden 13). It is, in essence, a dialogue with Saint Paul’s dictum, “Mulieres in Ecclesia taceant” (Let women keep silent in church), in which she dialogizes the authoritative discourse.
The Respuesta is also a dialogue in another sense: it is a reply to a letter. The dialogue is acutually more involved, beginning with Sor Juana’s reaction to a 40 year old sermon by one Antonio de Vierya, a Portuguese Jesuit and famous orator. In his “Sermon on the Mondate” Vierya discussed Christ’s finezas, his gifts or kindness to humanity. Sor Juana objected to Vierya’s understanding of fineza:
La concepción de la no-correspondencia reaparece en la argumentacion de su único escrito teológico, la crítica al padre Vieyra: el favor más grande que puede hacernos Dios, su mayor fineza, es no hacernos ningún favor. (Paz Sor Juana 387).
Eventually an unidentified person, but one “whose authority could not be denied,” requested her writing of those views she expressed in dialogues. She wrote the epistolary Critique of a Sermon which, after being circulated hand to hand, reached Don Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz y Sahagún, Bishop of Puebla. The bishop published her critique, entitling it, Carta Atenagórica.
Despite this expression of support for the views in her critique, the bishop wrote Sor Juana, under the pseudonym Sor Filotea, and admonished Sor Juana’s action and suggested, in essence, that she act like a lady.
I have seen your lettter and admired your proofs and the clarity of your argument. Consequently I have had your letter printed. Now I should like to make some suggestions. You have a great talent and although I do not suggest you stop reading books, I do suggest you read more about Christ Our Lord. I do not agree with those who say that women should not be learned. St. Jerome certainly approved of their learning, and in spite of the fact that St. Paul said women should not preach, he did not say they should not learn. I suggest you continue your studies, but you ought to better the books you read, for knowledge should enlighten us and lead us toward salvation. Subordinate profane letters to sacred letters: you must study the latter more. (qtd. in Flynn 18)
The Respuesta is Sor Juana’s reply to the injunction of Sor Filotea, “Sister Lover of God,” the Bishop. It is a assertion of the right of women to have access to language. With an argument a bishop would find hard to refute, she wages “a defense of the rights of women to education and culture that was to find no equal—in America or in Europe—for at least a century and a half” (Peden 4). Education is the means for her to understand theology:
¿Cómo sin Lógica sabría yo los métodos generales y particulares con que está escrita la Sagrada Escritura? ¿Cómo sin Retórica entendería sus figuras, tropos y locuciones? ¿Cómo sin Física, tantas cuestiones naturales de las naturalezas de los animales de los sacrificios, donde se simbolizan tantas cosas ya declaradas y otras muchas que hay? ¿Cómo si el sanar Saúl al sonido del arpa de David fue virtud y fuerza natural de la música, o sobrenatural que Dios quiso poner en Daivd? ¿Cómo sin Aritmética se podrán entender tantos cómputos de años, de días, de meses, de horas, de hebdómadas tan misteriosas como las de Daniel, y otras para cuya inteligencia es necesario saber las naturalezas, concordancias y propiedades de los números? ¿Cómo sin Geometría se podrán medir el Arca Santa de Testamento y la Ciudad Santa de Jerusalén, cuyas misteriosas mensuras hacen un cubo con todas sus dimenciones, y aquel repartimiento proporcional de todas sus partes tan maravilloso? ¿Cómo sin Arquitectura, el gran Templo de Salomón, donde fue el mismo Dios el artífice que dio la disposición y la traza, y el Sabio Rey sólo fue sobresante que la ejecutó; donde no había basa sin misterio, columna sin símbolo, cornisa sin alusión, arquitrabe sin significado; y así de otras sus partes, sin que el más mínimo filete estuviese sólo por el servicio y complemento del Arte, sino simbolizando cosas mayores? ¿Cómo sin grande conocimiento de reglas y partes de que consta la Historia se entenderán los libros historiales? (Peden 35)
It is an intellectual autobiography in which Sor Juana declares as her goal “not worldly fame or forbidden knowledge but the peak of theology, which could be reached only by climbing the steps of the human sciences and arts and mastering the allegorical insights provided by music, geometry and ‘the properties of numbers’” (Harss 5).
The Respuesta is dated March 1, 1691. In response to the bishop’s admonishment, she vowed to stop all but occassional religious writing: “lo que es por mi defensa nunca tomaré la pluma” and “Si algunas otras cosillas escribiere, siempre irán a buscar el sagrado de vuestras plantas y el seguro de vuestra corrección…” (Peden 91; 97-99). After this she only wrote three affirmations of faith, one signed in her own blood, and a few love poems at the request of ladies of the court. She dismantled her library, distributing her books. Despite the vigor of her assertion of the right to write, she never again wrote as before.
The Respuesta is an effective dialogism of both Saint Paul’s dictum and the bishop’s injunction. It is a fine example of heterophonic dialogism: the authoritative discourses of Saint, Bishop, Church and man are opposed and relativized by those of nun and woman. But the Respuesta also manifests heteroglotic dialogism: it is primarily a Spanish text but it is very thoroughly suffused with Latin. Latin is the authoritative discourse (language); Spanish is more an individual assertion of language. Latin represents the etymological authority of language (as a backdrop for Spanish), of Church, of education, and of man, (as in Mulieres in eccelesia taceant).
Yet Sor Juana’s discourse does not pit America against Europe; instead it asserts the interconnection of the two. Her vision remains that of the New World European. Octavio Paz notes this “cosmopolitanism” of her intercultural discourse:
The similarity between the evolution of Anglo-American and Spanish American literature results from the fact that both are written in transplanted languages. Between ourselves and the American soil a void opened up which we had to fill with strange words. Indians and mestizos included, our language is European. The history of our literatures is the history of our relations with the place that is America, and also with the place where the words we speak were born and came of age. In the beginning our letters were a reflection of European ones. However, in the seventeenth century a singular variety of baroque poetry was born in Spanish America that was not only the exaggeration but at times the transgression of the Spanish model. The first great American poet was a woman, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her poem El Sueño (1692) was our first cosmopolitan text; like Pound and Borges later, the Mexican nun built a text as a tower—again, Tower of Babel. As another example of her cosmopolitanism, in other poems the Mexican note appears together with a mixture of languages: Latin, Castilian, Nahuatl, Portuguese, Indian, mestizo, and mulatto dialects. Sor Juana’s Americanism, like that of Borges, is a cosmopolitanism; this breed of cosmopolitanism also expresses a Mexican and Argentinian mode of existence. If it occurs to Sor Juana to speak of pyramids, she cites those of Egypt, not of Teotihuacán; if she writes an auto sacramental such as El Divino Narciso, the pagan world is personified not by a Greek or Latin divinity but by the pre-Colombian God of the harvests. (Children 138)
American identity in general and Mexican identity in particular are connected with linguistic ties to Europe and its traditions. The form of polyglot literature reveals the links.
By mixing Latin with Spanish and by employing so learned a Latin, the Respuesta dialogizes the authoritative discourse; it relativizes Latin from the status as the language to that of a language. This heteroglotic dialogism parallels that on the level of heterophony: the conflicts between national languages are also realized among social languages.
As an interesting postscript to Sor Juana’s feminist discourse, it is worth mentioning the legacy of respuestas her work has inspired. There is much answering to her famous poem known as “Hombres Necios,” (“Simple Men,” probably playing on both the Spanish necio, foolish, simple, and the Latin nescio, I don’t know ) but more properly, “Arguye de inconsecuentes el gusto y la censura de los hombres que en las mujeres acusan lo que causan” (“Arguing that there are Inconsistencies Between Men’s Tastes and Their Censure When They Accuse Women of What They Themselves Do Cause”). Médez Plancarte cites “dos nuevas réplicas,” two parodies, one by Marvelo, the 1903 “Hembras Necias” (“Simple Women”) and Diódoro de los Santos’s 1951 “¡Oh mujeres, que acusáis…!” (Oh Women Who Accuse…!”) (2, 528-30). A more current reply is José Antonio Burciaga’s 1986 “Retefeminista” (“Hyperfeminist”). These responses, if read literally, function to cut off the male-female dialogue and reimpose the authoritative male monologue. If read ironically, however, these respuestas continue the dialogue through a parody which functions in its interplay with the original.
Villancicos
The texts of focus for this study are quite different from the Respuesta,El Sueño, or “Hombres Necios;” they are the religious villancicos. Sor Juana wrote several collections of villancicos. The “‘juegos completos’ para Maitines” and “Letras Sagradas para cantar” which are attributed to her “con plena autenticidad” include: four for Asunción (published in Mexico City, 1676, 1679, 1685 and 1690), San Pedro Nolasco (in Mexico City, 1677), two for Concepción (Mexico City, 1676; Puebla, 1689), two for San Pedro Apóstol (Mexico City, 1677 and 1683), Navidad (Puebla, 1689), San José (Puebla, 1690), and Santa Catarina (Oaxaca, 1691) (Médez Plancarte 2, xlvi). These “complete games for devotions at matins” and “sacred letters for singing” were religious-poetic-dramatic devotions written to be sung on specific holy occasions. Margaret Sayers Peden, employing litotes, likens them to Christmas carols, as does the Princeton Encyclopedia (Peden 3, Preminger 893). Sor Juana’s villancicos were performed by nuns for their morning devotions in church. They must have functioned as expression of both faith and poetry in musical theater.
The villancicos are actually sets of villancicos, written for a particular saint or feast day. There are usually eight villancicos which are divided into three nocturnes. Each villancico usually consists of a short estribillo (refrain) and coplas (stanzas). The estribillo varies considerably in line length, number of lines, and rhyme scheme. In San Pedro Apóstol, 1683, for example, the estribillo in the sixth villancico is three stanzas (four, three, and four lines), five to eight syllables, in rimas asonantes, assonant rhyme. The estribillio in the next villancico, the seventh, is only two lines, six and ten syllables, but also assonant rhyme. On the other hand, the coplas tend toward greater regularity: a series of equal length stanzas, recurring line lengths, and some rhyme scheme. In Asuncíon, 1676, the coplas in the seventh villancico are quintillas, “a 5-line octosyllabic strophe having two rhymes in consonance and having the following restrictions: there may not be more than two rhymes or two consecutive rhymes and the strophe may not end with a couplet” (Preminger 684). A much more common form of coplas is the redondilla, the octosyllabic quatrain, often rhymed ABAB. Other verse forms which occur, diálogo, jácara, ensaladilla and tocotín, are discussed in the reading of the San Pedro Nolascovillancicos.
The Sor Juana villancicos are very polyglot religious poetic theater. These performances brought into the church ceremony the extant heterophony and heteroglossia of colonial Mexico. “Entre las muchas aptitudes que poseía Sor Juana debemos contar la de poder imitar con facilidad el modo de hablar de la gente del pueblo” (Leal 58). That is, into the Spanish and Latin of nuns and priests, the Sor Juana villancicos wrote in other social languages and other national languages. The bilingual heterophony of nun and priest social languages was augmented with the dramatic representation of characters who spoke different social languages: the Black slave, student and Aztec baker in San Pedro Nolasco, for example. The bilingual heteroglossia of the villancicos was already prescribed, given the presence of Spanish and Latin in the colonial Catholic church, but the social reality of colonial Mexico was much more diverse. The villancicos, therefore, began bilingual, but to the Spanish and Latin were added the other spoken national languages, for example, Nahuatl (Asunción 1676, San Pedro Nolasco 1677); Portugese (San Pedro Apóstol 1677); Basque (Asunción 1685).
Médez Plancarte and others attribute the San Pedro Nolascovillancicos to Sor Juana despite her paratextual denial. In her own copy of the 1677 publication, Sor Juana problematizes the question of authorship with a handwritten disclaimer. As Médez Plancarte notes,
Y en cambio, nuestro texto depuró su genuinidad —en los de S. Pedro Nolasco—, relegando a las Notas aquellos inferiores y espurios “Villancicos que se cantaron en la Misa”, frente a los cuales nos dejó Sor Juana —en su ejemplar de la edición aislada de 1677—esta anotación de su puño y letra: “Éstos de la Misa no son míos”…. (2: xlvii)
Also, as Luis Leal notes, there is another handwritten ascription: on the title page of the 1677 edition of San Pedro Nolasco, as reproduced in Médez Plancarte’s edition, there is, “una nota manuscrita anguiqua: ‘De la M. Juana Inés de la Cruz’,” and further, “y en el texto anotaciones y correcciones autógrafas de Sor Juana” (2, 51). That is, another note claims Sor Juana’s authorship and the text is corrected in Sor Juana’s hand.
The version of San Pedro Nolasco used for this study includes the dedication which was missing, as were those of San Pedro Apóstol (1677) and Asunción (1679), from the first anthology and excludes the final “Villancicos que se cantaron en la misa” which appeared in every version from 1677 to the 1941 Sor Juana—Poesías Completas, edited by Ermilo Abréu Gómez. Despite its anonymous original publication as a single work in 1677, San Pedro Nolasco has been attributed to Sor Juana ever since its inclusion in the first anthology, Inudación castalida de la única poetisa, musa dézima Soror Juana de la Cruz, Madrid, 1691. Today it is universally considered authentic, and yet the note which rejects as spurious the mass villancicos, simultaneously legitimizes and problemetizes that authenticity. In its clarification of authorship, the paratextual disclaimer introduces ambiguity by undermining the accuracy of the text. She does not mention San Pedro Nolasco specifically in the Respuesta, that feminist and autobiographical manifesto of a writer.
Yet even mention in the Respuesta is itself only of limited help: Sor Juana disclaims voice, but not the authorship of most of her works. The notable exception in the Repuesta is the long poem, El Sueño, “aquí surge la relación de la Respuesta con el único texto que, según escribe Juana allí mismo, escribió por gusto El Sueño o Primero Sueño” (Ludmer 50). It is the only text she authored for pleasure. Other texts may have been written by Sor Juana, but they were written for others and not of her volition. Consider her comments in the Respuesta:
Y, a la verdad, yo nunca he escrito sino violentada y forzada y sólo por dar gusto a otros; no sólo sin complacencia, sino con positiva repugnancia, porque nunca he juzgado de mí que tenga el caudal de letras e ingenio que pide la obligacion de quien escribe; y así, es la ordinaria respuesta a los que me instan, y más si es asunto sagrado: «¿Qué entendimiento tengo yo…” (25)
El escribir nunca ha sido dictamen propio, sino fuerza ajena; que les pudiera decir con verdad: Vos me coegistis. (27)
Demás, que yo nunca he escrito cosa alguna por mi voluntad, sino por ruegos y perceptos ajenos; de tal manera que no me acuerdo haber escrito por mi gusto si no es un patelillo que llaman El sueño. (89)
She was forced, “violentada y forzada” to write for the pleasure of others. She recalls only writing the trifle, El Sueño, by her own volition. In her own handwriting at the the end of San Pedro Nolasco she specifically disclaims “estos de la misa.” In the Respuesta she generally disclaims most of the work attributed to her as not being “cosa alguna por mi voluntad.”
Fractal Heteroglossia
The plan for reading dialogism among languages in the eighth villancico of San Pedro Nolasco is to apply the method developed in the model presented in the first chapter. The reading of Spanish-Latin-Nahuatl interanimation is given form by the seven facet analysis of the fractal: level, set, genre, locus, tropics, force, and logism. Three facets, level, set, and genre, are relatively general classifications. They treat national language interanimation as discursive activity and define its attributes. The next three facets, locus, tropics, and force, are more specific; they define the discursive activity, denoting the dynamics of discourse. Together attribute and dynamics prescribe the quality of the final facet, logism. The resulting reading determines the dialogic or monologic quality of the national language dialogue.
Attribute
Three national languages contribute to the text San Pedro Nolasco; they interanimate at the level of heteroglossia. This intratextual, trilingual interanimation affords the opportunity for reading polyglot dialogism. The dialogisms read transpire within the set of national languages. While there is also much heterophonic interanimation in San Pedro Nolasco, it will not be the prime object of focus here. The focus is rather, on heteroglossia. The chapter three reading of Shakespeare plays emphasizes heterophony, and the final chapter reading explores the heterosemia of prediscourse and paradiscourse. The heteroglotic set of language is further characterized by genre: Latin and Spanish, for example. Each discursive inter-linguistic interanimation within the text occurs at the level of heteroglossia. Set and genre are further discussed below.
Set, for the level of heteroglossia, signifies language. Polyglot activity is read as discursive activity. But language itself must be considered, for it is a general term with several specific definitions which have specific applications for this study. First, heteroglotic set refers both to language and to the specific national language (but not social language, that being the specific domain of heterophony). Language in its largest and most general manifestation can be subdivided into national languages, and for the more adventuresome of modern theorists, into non-verbal “languages” as well.
The relationship of language and national language can be illuminated by consideration of and comparison to the relationship of langue and parole. Language, in its manifestation as langue, exists as vital backdrop for national languages, which approximate parole. Langue and parole can be seen to enter heteroglotic dialogue as follows: parole, in the act of asserting and defining its self dialogizes the extant milieu of langue. As Saussure states, “Whereas speech [parole] is heterogeneous, language [langage], as defined, is homogeneous” (15). Langue functions as the authoritative context from which parole, as internally persuasive language, must struggle to emerge. Parole, by this definition, must be internally dialogized: it does not exist alone. In this study, however, the heteroglotic dialogism read is primarily that among national languages, similar to dialogism among paroles; that is, without reference to the parole/langue relationship. Yet within the set of national languages, there are still relations of authority and assertions of individuality. All these heteroglotic interanimations are read as discursive interactions; language and language are understood as discourse and discourse.
Genre is the typology of set. For this study, generic classification equals classification by national language. In San Pedro Nolasco there is the heteroglossia of Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl. There is also the heterophonic realm of social languages within Latin (the Church Latin of the epigram and the scholastic Latin of the dialogue) and within Spanish (the poetic Spanish of the introductions, the Afro-Spanish of the estribillo and coplas, the vulgar Spanish of the dialogue, and the mestizado Spanish of the tocotín). But even considering only national languages, the interanimations among Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl offer ample opportunity for analysis of their discursive postures.
Consider the three languages. Spanish is the uniting thread, the link among the three languages of San Pedro Nolasco. Because of this, Spanish takes on the status of the authoritative literary language of the text: it is essentially Spanish poetry. The presence of Spanish is so significant that Latin and Nahuatl occur as relatively incidental linguistic deviation. Latin, on the other hand, is the etymological ur-language from which Spanish springs. It also is the language of the Church and of much writing. In this sense, Latin is the authoritative discourse against which Spanish asserts itself. Nahuatl, is the ur-language of Mexico, the indigenous language of place. But it is obviously culturally and etymologically less important to the European Mexicans, the criollos.
These three genres, three national languages, can be classified as different subdivisions of language in a way very similar to the way social languages can be classified as different subdivisions of one national language. That is, Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl, in San Pedro Nolasco, can be differentiated according to the connotations of their use. Each language is linked to its specific realization in the text. The generic distinctions, rather than merely denominate, signify relations prescribed by the context of the text.
A language is marked by its textual life. This can be illuminated by considering Bakhtin’s appended system of differentiation: genre, profession, social stratum, age, region/dialect, gender, and ethnicity. Because the villancico is drama-like in structure, one can legitimately ask: who speaks Spanish, who Latin, who Nahuatl? An Aztec speaks Nahuatl. A female poet speaks the Spanish introduction. A bachiller, student, speaks the Latin. Languages in dialogue and represented speakers in dialogue. They mark each other.
The distinction between poetic and novelistic language is perhaps the most significant for this study, for it allows a delineation of the linguistics of power. Aligning Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl with the poetic-code-syntagmatic axis or with the novelistic-context-paradigmatic axis is the prime means of identifying the relative authorities of the languages. These three national languages are the genres which constitute heteroglotic interanimation, which interact in power relations, which dialogize.
Together level, set, and genre classify the attribute of each language. The attribute of each language can then be read as it is moved by the dynamics of locus, tropics and force. Attribute and dynamics together constitute the logism: dialogic or monologic.
Dynamics
In this study locus signifies place, but rather than a stasis, it signifies dynamic location. Locus is a mutable and temporal location, akin to Bakhtin’s chronotope. It denotes time and place and movement within a matrix of power relations. Locus is status within a political hierarchy and relative centrality/marginality in relation to the center of power. The locus of Spanish, Latin, or Nahuatl is a political posture toward the other languages, a vantage point of power. In San Pedro Nolasco, each language speaks in discourse with the other languages and speaks with different claims of authority.
Spanish is spoken by the speaker of the introduction; it is a literary, poetic speech. It is also spoke by an Afro-American. It is the colloquial speech of the slave. It is spoken by the barbado (bárbaro), peasant-common man, vulgar and comic. Latin is spoken by a pretentious student. Nahuatl is spoken by an braggart Aztec. All of these are done in the context of poetic praise for San Pedro Nolasco: it is an affirmation of Christianity and negation of Aztec religion; it is the voice of the not completely denizened criollo representing the colonized Afro-American and Aztec; it is the assertion of Spanish and Nahuatl in the Latin dominated Church.
Latin functions as the etymological authoritative discourse from which Spanish must struggle to emerge. At the time of San Pedro Nolasco, Spanish’s two centuries of possessing a written grammar paled in comparison to Latin’s authoritative history. Latin connotes the classical backdrop of Rome, against which the Spanish empire (and language) judged itself. As Latin is the language of the Church, it is the more important language in certain matters. Spanish, on the other hand, also asserts a relative authority. It is the language of the royal court, of politics and virtually all non-religious social institutions. Nahuatl is relatively authoritative only in regard to space: it is an American language. It is also spoken by a large indigenous population.
In matters of the Church, Latin is the authoritative language. In matters of the social world of the criollo and in the literary production of colonial Mexico, Spanish dominated. For the criollo, Nahuatl was always marginal, an internally persuasive discourse, never achieving a status of authority. Latin and Spanish could make claims of high status; Nahuatl could not: Mexican history and etymology were pagan. Latin and Spanish could define themselves at the central locus, but for the criollo, Nahuatl was always eccentric. Use of Nahuatl does not constitute “cosmopolitanism.” The locus of Spanish, Latin or Nahuatl holds a dynamic position from which it interrelates with the others within that matrix of “discursive positionings.”
Tropics is the semantic organization, the method of ascribing meaning to the world and to the alien other. Tropics formulates and prefigures the nature of the relationship with the other first by defining self and then by defining other. It is the rhetorical means of establishing locus. The tropes of language determine knowledge of the other, and give the world meaning. This act expresses power and is a political act.
Bakhtin describes the inequity of language authorities in his discussion of “unitary language,” which is “language from whose point of view other languages… are perceived as objects that are in no way its equal” (Dialogic Imagination 288). This perception of objects that are in no way equal extends to the conception of the speaker of other languages: they are no way equal. As Charles Junkerman asks, “given that we must frame our representations of others by making use of the discourses available to us, is it possible to know others as anything but projections of our own representational practices?” As he answers, “putatively referential statements about things in the world, in fact, tell us less about the things represented than about the relations of power which enable the speaker to make such statements…” (N. pag.). It is through tropics, specifically through metaphor that Spaniards know the Moors as moros perros, Moor dogs, and through synecdoche that the Aztecs know the Spaniards as kaktzopina, gachupines, roughly, kicking boots.
There is an assertion of power in the use of Latin by the student in the dialogue of the eighth villancico of San Pedro Nolasco. The student speaks pompous bombast and in so doing asserts authority over both the other language and its speaker. The vulgar Spanish responses turn the interaction into a carnivalesque dialogue of errors. The student’s discourse makes pretentious Latin religious statements: clearly it situates itself at the central and authoritative locus. The common man’s humorous replies assert an individual, internally persuasive discourse: Spanish dialogizes the authoritative Latin.
The authority of Latin stems from its etymological and syntagmatic antecedence. Latin is history and context for Spanish; it is that linguistic backdrop which prefigures Spanish. Because of this etymology and linguistic history, Spanish is internally dialogized: there are Latin traces in the Spanish utterance. This etymological relationship is very similar to a linguistic genealogy: Latin is the ancestor, Spanish is the pedigreed descendent. Because this chronological relationship is a linear and syntagmatic one, Latin’s claims of etymological authority are tied to a syntagmatic tropics. The assertion of the “unitary language” and monologic authority is essentially a metonymic expression. The influx of Spanish in Church, for example, challenges the historically proper presence of Latin: it dialogizes Latin. The influx of Nahuatl into a Spanish literary text and into the Latin Church, dialogizes both. In both cases, Spanish and Latin exert paradigmatic tropics. In the act of selecting itself to substitute for Latin, Spanish manifests a metaphoric tropics, rejecting syntagma for paradigm. Nahuatl is similarly paradigmatic, but rather than metaphor, it employs irony. Nahuatl not only introduces to Latin hegemony a different language (much more different that Spanish), it also upsets the basic cultural underpinings: Latin and Spanish are languages of Christianity; Nahuatl clearly is not.
The student’s employment of Latin in a dialogue with a Spanish speaker is effectively metonymic speech. It asserts authority over the the other’s language, and metonymically, over the other speaker. The student locates himself at the locus of power; his is the authoritative discourse; he valorizes linearity and the syntagmatic and combinatory axis of language; his speech supports the established historical etymology. His language and its tropics are political expressions and a manifestation of power. This metonymic language defines self and other by renaming, by seeing meaning in combinatorial and syntagmatic relationships: it treats the dialogue as an occasion for seeing combinations (rather than asserting selections) according to a preinscribed etymology. Meaning is the re-definition of elements which are seen to exist in the linear, syntagmatic relationship. This syntagmatic tropics aligns this linguistic use with Bakhtin’s notion of poetry and myth: monologic.
On the other hand, when the common man replies in vulgar Spanish, his discourse asserts presence for Spanish in the Latin context: the Church, education, culture. The employment of Spanish functions as the selection of an alternate language which relativizes the “unitary language.” Replying in Spanish makes Latin one of two spoken languages and erases Latin’s status as the solitary language. The claims of centrality of the authoritative discourse manifest in its vision as the discourse, all else exhibiting varying degrees of marginality. In the context of the student-common man dialogue, Latin presents with the authority of langue. The Spanish retorts relativize it. This alternate selection, Spanish in place of Latin, employs a paradigmatic and metaphoric tropics. Paradigm and metaphor ascribe meaning by a process of transference, they make meaning by selecting. The paradigmatic discourse is similar to Bakhtin’s novelistic and dialogic discourse.
Force is used here in Bakhtin’s sense: it is centripetal or centrifugal. Force is the effort exerted by the tropics from the vantage point of locus. A language as discourse exerts energy which supports or dialogizes the authoritative discourse. Its movement toward the central locus of power supports the authoritative discourse and is centripetal. Its movement toward the margins, away from the center, relativizes the authoritative discourse and is centrifugal. In the Spanish-Latin dialogue, Latin is centripetal, Spanish is centrifugal. In the Spanish-Nahuatl dialogue, Spanish is centripetal, Nahuatl is centrifugal. Force, along with locus and tropics, functions as the energy which motivates attribute and so realizes the power of the specific use of language, as dialogism and monologism.
This study reads San Pedro Nolasco as a discourse among three national languages. This reading focuses on the clarification of attribute and dynamics of each language in order to read their interanimations. The juxtaposition of languages allows the reading of heteroglotic dialogism. The languages can then be characterized monologic (asserting monologue and one correct language) or dialogic (overturning monologue and asserting exotopy).
Languages
The villancicosSan Pedro Nolasco provide an interesting conjunction of history, lyric, and discursive interaction. The villancicos are written for a saint who is historically the redeemer of slaves. Flynn notes this in describing the role of the Black in the poems, “He has heard that St. Peter Nolasco redeems the slaves but he cannot believe he did anything for the blacks because he knows from experience the whites get all the good things and live up there in the palace” (85). María Esther Pérez sees a focus on other slaves in Lo americano en el teatro de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz:
Otros de los tocotines de Sor Juana lo encontramos en un grupo de villancicos escritos en 1677 y dedicados a San Pedro Nolasco, el santo francés fundador de la Orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, que dedicó su vida a la libertad de cristianos cautivos de los sarracenos y de ahí que dedique Son [sic] Juana este tocotín a los indios, a quienes, en cierta forma, también consideraba esclavos de los españoles, como raza conquistada. Este tocotín está escrito en náhuatl y en castellano «algo amestizado»… (221)
For Pérez, two elements signal the dedication of the villancicos to the Mexican Indians: Nolasco’s history of freeing captive Christians, and the presence of the Nahuatl tocotín. The Indians were, “en cierta forma,” slaves of the Spaniards. The villancicos use the history of Nolasco as a means of conveying meaning about slaves, be they African (Flynn) or American (Pérez).
What is important for this study is the similar point both critics were getting at: the meaning of San Pedro Nolasco is bound inseparably from its heteroglossia. Flynn alludes to the historical Nolasco as a means of introducing “the one durable part of all these villancicos, the poetry of the Negro,” that is, the Afro-Spanish and slave heterophony. Pérez identifies purpose in the dedication to the Indians which is realized by the tocotín, by the Spanish and Nahuatl heterolgossia. Linguistic interanimation in San Pedro Nolasco parallels the content of the lyric and the historical referent Nolasco: all are concerned with power relations, especially that which liberates the oppressed.
Form
The general form of the villancicos has been discussed in the section Texts. Specifically, the San Pedro Nolascovillancicos are structured as follows:
Figure 10
Structure: San Pedro Nolasco
The dedication consists of title, epigram, ten lines of verse dedication, and the paratextual designs and hand written note. The title is fully Villancicos, qve se cantaron en los maitines de gloriosissimo padre S. Pedro Nolasco, Fundador de la Sagrada Familia de Redemptores del Orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, dia 31. de Henero de 1677. años. The epigram is a Latin quote from the Bible, Matthew 22: “Cujus est imago haec et super scriptio? Cæsaris. reddite, ergo, quæ sunt Cæsaris, Cæsari c. 22. Mat..” The dedication is two stanzas of ten lines each and an ABBAACCDDC rhyme scheme.
The First Nocturne consists of three villancicos. VillancicoI begins with an estribillo (lines 1-13) and is followed by coplas (14-53): seven stanza of seven lines. Villancico II has an estribillo (1-6) and coplas (7-54): twelve quatrains. Villancico III has a quatrain estribillo (1-4) and coplas (5-36): eight quatrains.
The Second Nocturne is very similar in form. Villancico IV begins with a three line estribillo (lines 1-3) and is followed by coplas (4-27): six quatrains. Villancico V has an estribillo which consists of two quatrains and a quintilla (1-13) and coplas (14-49): nine quatrains. Villancico VI is designated a jácara. The jácara provides relief from the previous serious religious verse. The Concepción, 1689, villancicos contain a jácara which is introduced with “en una Jacarandina / quiso, cantando uno solo / aliviar con lo ligero / la gravedad de los tonos,” “in a little jacara one alone wanted to relieve the gravity of the tones with lightness” (Médez Plancarte 2, 116). The villancico-jácara has an estribillo (1-6) and coplas (7-58): thirteen quatrains.
The Third Nocturne is different, linguistically and formally. Villancico VII is similar to the others; it begins with a three quatrain estribillo (lines 1-12) and is followed by coplas (13-62): ten quintillas. It is the last, Villancico VIII, which varies so greatly. It is designated the ensaladilla, the salad, the mixture. It is divided not only into estribillo and coplas, but also into diálogo, introducción, and tocotín. It is also divided among Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl text (there is also further heterophonic subdivision). The ensaladilla begins with two quatrains (1-8) which is followed by a four line estribillo (9-12) which is designated Puerto Rico. This is in Afro-Spanish. The coplas (13-62) are six quatrains, also in Afro-Spanish. Next follows Prosigue la Indroducción, the Introduction Continues (37-44), two quatrains which comprise the first of the two introductions. This is followed by the diálogo, dialogue (45-64), alternating Latin and Spanish couplets. There are another two quatrains of Prosigue la Introducción (65-72). Finally, there is the tocotín, twelve quatrains of monologue, Spanish and Nahuatl intermixed. For an overview of the linguistic and formal structure of the last villancico see figure 11.
The complexity of the final villancico provides the reason for its choice for this study. In 120 lines there is more than ample trilingual heteroglossia (not to mention heterophony) to permit the reading of national language interanimation in the literary text.
Figure 11
Structure: Villancico VIII
Text
The villancico begins with two stanzas which set the scene. The poet-narrator introduces, in Spanish, the Afro-American singer who is to present the slave’s song.
Villancico VIII.—Ensaladilla
A los plausibles festejos
que a su fundador Nolasco
la Rendentora Familia
publica en justos aplausos,
un negro que entró en la Iglesia 5
de su grandeza amirado,
por regocijar la fiesta
cantó al son de un calabazo:
Villancico VIII.—Ensaladilla
To the plausible festivities
that the Redeeming Family
made public with fair applause
for Nolasco, their founder,
a Black, whose great size was noticed,
entered the Church and
to liven up the festivities
sang to the music of a calabazo song:
The language is correct Spanish (especially compared to what immediately follows). The lines are octosyllabic with the regular alternating rhyme scheme of the quatrain. One pair of lines (1 and 3), however, are distinguished by the lack of rhyme: festejos and familia. Attention drawn to this irregularity: the festivities and the redeeming family do not rhyme, harmonize; the do not go together. Lack of rhyme signals, on the content level, a lack of harmony.
The estribillo is designated Puerto Rico and is the only named estribillo in San Pedro Nolasco. Puerto Rico, along with Cuba, are main centers for the importation of African slaves, much more so than Mexico.
Puerto Rico.—Estribillo
¡Tumba, la-lá-la; tumba, la-lé-le;
que donde ya Pilico, escrava no quede! 10
¡Tumba, tumba, la-lé-le; tumba, la-lá-la;
que donde ya Pilico, no quede escrava!
Puerto Rico.—Refrain
Tumba, la-la-la; tumba, la-le-le;
Where Pilico is, no slave remains!
Tumba, tumba, la-le-le; tumba, la-la-la;
Where Pilico is, remains no slave!
The Black sings in very Afro-Spanish. It mimics Afro-American heteroepy: the proper esclava is mispronounced escrava. The letter l functions as a free variant, denoting the ethnicity of the speaker: esclava marks the criollo; escrava, the Afro-American. He identifies himself as Pilico, perhaps Perico, parrot. Pilico’s speech functions as an internally persuasive discourse when opposed the poetic Spanish of the preceding two stanzas. It is an unrestrained musical outburst, the joy of liberation.
The coplas continue Pilico’s discourse. They are six stanzas of Afro-Spanish slave language which articulate the slave’s views.
Coplas
Hoy dici que en las Melcede
estos Parre Mercenaria
hace una fiesa a su Palre,
¿qué fiesa? como su cala.
Eya dici que redimi:
cosa palece encantala,
por que yo la Oblaje vivo
y las Parre no me saca. 20
La otra noche con mi conga
turo sin durmí pensaba,
que no quiele gente plieta,
como eya so gente branca.
Sola saca la Pañola;
¡pues, Dioso, mila la trampa,
que aunque neglo, gente somo,
aunque nos dici cabaya!
Mas ¿qué digo, Dioso mío?
¡Los demoño, que me engaña, 30
pala que esé mulmulando
a esa Redentola Santa!
El Santo me lo perrone,
que só una malo hablala,
que aunque padesca la cuepo,
en ese libla las alma.
Coplas
Today she says that at the Merced
those Merced fathers
are celebrating their father.
What party? Like their house.
She says he redeems:
it seems enchantment,
because I live at the slave works
and the fathers don’t take me out.
The other night with my Congalese woman
I was sleepless and thinking
that he doesn’t like dark people
the way he does his white people.
He only takes the Spaniard;
but God, here’s the thing
though black, we are still people,
even though they call us brutes!
But what am I saying, my God?
The devil who deludes me
has me murmuring this way
about that redeeming Saint.
May the Saint forgive me,
for such evil speech,
for even though my body may suffer,
its this that frees the soul.
Again ethnicity is marked by variant phonology; for example, R becomes L (Oblaje, plieta); E becomes I (dici); D becomes L or RR (Palre, perrone); S and T are dropped (somo, fiesa). There is further variation in morphology, syntax, and diction. Note the variation in lines 1-3: “Hoy dici que en las Melcede / estos Parre Mercenaria / hace una fiesa a su Palre…” rather than, “Hoy dicen en las Mercedes / estos Padres Mercearias / hacen una fiesta a su Padre….”
The content of the coplas seems very anti-authoritative: the slave rejects a racially biased Christianity. This seems quite radical for 1677. But by speech end, rejection has changed to an affirmation of the Church’s designated saint and its religion. The original rejection was not truly the slave’s views because, as he claims, the devil made him do it. The facts that the slave is associated with Puerto Rico and that the slave is African rather than indigenous American further dilutes the sting of the statement: it is, after all, a criticism over there. It is, nevertheless, a remarkable pronouncement for a 1677 carol performed in church.
The poetic-narrator returns and announces the arrival of new characters: the bachiller, the student, and the barbado (bárbaro), the common man:
Prosique la introducción
Siguióse un estudiantón,
de Bachiller afectado,
que escogiera antes ser mudo
que parlar en Castellano. 40
Y así, brotando Latín
y de docto reventando,
a un barbado que encontró,
disparó estos latinajos.
The Introduction Continues
Then followed a plodder,
a haughty bachelor,
who would rather choose to be mute
than speak Castilian.
And so, gushing Latin
in learned bursts,
he shot these Latinate phrases
at a barbarian he met.
The two stanzas prefigure the reading of the forthcoming dialogue. The student’s use of Latin is provided a prescribed context: it is deemed a pompous, bombastic, and questionable medium for dialogue prior to the first utterance. The Spanish speaker, however, is no better; he is a barbardo, probably an error for bárbaro, barbarian. Médez Plancarte notes the classical definition, “por bárbaro, en su clasica acepción del que ingnora el latín o no comprende la lengua en que se le habla” (2: 374). He cits Ovid’s “Barbarus hic ego num, quia non intelligor ulli,” (I am the barbarian here, because no one understands me) (2: 374). The student and the bárbaro seem an unlikely couple to realize effective communication, and, as the dialogue reveals, they do not.
The dialogue is composed of alternating couplets, the student’s Latin and the common man’s Spanish. The Spanish speaking bárbaro does not understand Latin and so fails to understand what is spoken to him. The Latin speaking student commands silence, “because I do not use the Spanish language.” This comic failed communication approaches the social irony Bakhtin termed carnivalesque. Yet this miscommunication communicates in its failure: its meaning is dialogical. The silly dialogue between Latin and Spanish dialogizes the hegemony of Latin, and it does so as part of a religious ceremony in church.
Diálogo
Est. Hodie Nolascus divinus
in Caelis est collocatus.
Hom. Yo no tengo asco del vino,
que antes muero por tragarlo.
Est. Uno mortuo Redemptore,
alter est Redemptor natus. 50
Hom. Yo natas buenas bien como,
que no he visto buenos natos.
Est. Omnibus fuit Salvatoris
ista perfectior Imago.
Hom. Mago no soy, voto a tal,
que en mi vida lo he estudiado.
Est. Amice, tace nam ego
non utor sermone Hispano.
Hom. ¿Que te aniegas en sermones?
Pues no vengas a escucharlos. 60
Est. Nescio quid nunc mihi dicis,
nec quid vis dicere capio.
Hom. Necio será él y su alma,
que yo soy un hombre honrado.
Dialogue
Stu. Today the Divine Nolascus
was hired by Heaven.
Man I get no nausea from wine,
I would die to drink it.
Stu. One redeemer has died,
another redeemer is born.
Man I eat good sweet cream
since I haven’t seen good births.
Stu. Of all, was most perfect,
of the Savior, this image.
Man Magician I’m not, I swear by
the things I’ve studied in my life.
Stu. Be quiet, friend, because
I do not use the Spanish language.
Man You drown in sermons?
Well, don’t come to hear them.
Stu. I do not know what you now say
Nor understand what you want to say.
Man Simple will he be and his soul
since I am an honorable man.
The humorous miscommunication rests on the bárbaro’s paradigmatic reading of the Latin as Spanish. It is a comic reversal of the Latin claims to etymological precedence. It is accomplished in a manner similar to the slave’s: heteroepy marks the different social class. U becomes O and instead of Nolascus divinus, Divine Nolasco, the bárbaro hears asco del vino, nausea from wine. U to O and Redemptor natus, redeemer is born, becomes buenos natos, good sweet-cream. Imago, image, becomes mago, magician. Tace nam ego (speak no more), sounds like te hace anegar (it makes you drown). In response to the injunction to cease speech, the bárbaro questions, “¿Que te aniegas en sermones?” (Are you drowned in sermons?). The drowning force, Latin sermons, seeks the termination of dialogue with the Spanish. Finally, nescio, I do not know, becomes necio, simple or foolish. In all, a humorous conflict of languages which realizes the dialogism of the authoritative discourse.
The poet-narrator again intervenes, in another introduction, and announces the indigenous voice and point of view.
Prosique la introducción
Púsolos en paz un Indio
que, cayendo y levantando,
tomaba con la cabeza
la medida de los pasos.
El cual en una guitarra,
con ecos desentonados, 70
cantó un Tocotín mestizo
de Español, y Mexicano.
The Introduction Continues
An Indian put them at peace
who, with his head’s
rising and falling, took
the measure of their steps
He, who on a guitar
with discordant echos,
sang a mestizo tocotin,
Spanish and Mexican.
Two quatrians of correct Spanish. It is worth noting that the Mexican words incorporated into Spanish, tocotín and Mexicano are not italicized. In the preceding dialogue, however, the student’s Latin was italicized. There is very obvious rhyme and meter here: octosyllabic lines with a rhyme scheme of ABCB and DEFE. Line 70, “con ecos desentonados,” is a very harmonic line, rich in assonant echo. It belies the content “with discordant echos.” The Spanish poetic commentary is harmonic, musical; the Indian’s song is prejudged to be disharmonious.
The tocotín follows, concluding the villancico and the entire work, San Pedro Nolasco. The preceding introduction has prefigured the reading of the tocotín, as the other had for the dialogue. The indigenous Mexican is said to make peace through discordant echos. The dialogic conflict between Latin and Spanish is to be healed by the Indian’s poorly executed song. In other words, Nahuatl lacks the harmony and poetry of Spanish but it is, nevertheless, effectual. It is significant that Nahuatl, etymologically related to neither Spanish nor Latin, is the perlocutionary reconciler.
Tocotín
Los Padres bendito
tiene ò Redemptor;
amo nic neltoca
quemati no Dios.
Sólo Dios Pilzintli
del Cielo bajó,
y nuestro tlatlácol
nos lo perdonó. 80
Peros estos Teopixqui
dice en so sermón
que este San Nolasco
miechtin compró.
Yo al Santo lo tengo
mucha devoción,
y de Sempual Xúchil
un Xúchil le doy.
Téhuatl so persona
dis que se quedó 90
con los perro Moro
impan ce ocasión.
Mati Dios si allí
lo estoviera yo,
censontle matara
con un moxicon.
Y nadie lo piense
lo hablo sin razón,
cani panadero,
de mocha opinión. 100
Huel ni machicahuac
no soy hablador,
no teco que mati,
que soy valentón.
Se no compañero
lo desafío,
y con se poñete
allí se cayó.
Tambien un Topil
del Gobernador, 110
caipampa Tributo
prenderme mandó.
Mas yo con un cuahuil
un palo lo dió
ipam i sonteco
no sé si morió.
Y quiero comprar
un San Redemptor,
yuhqui el del altar
con su bendición. 120
Tocotín
The blessed fathers
have a redeemer
I don’t believe it
I know my God.
Only God dear son
descended from Heaven
and our sin
he forgave us.
But these fathers
say in their sermon
that this Saint Nolasco
bought all.
I have for the Saint
much devotion,
and from the perfect flower
I give a flower.
You, his persona,
it is said, remained
with the Moor dogs
at one time.
If had been there, God knows,
I would have killed
four hundred
with one blow.
And no one believes it
I speak without sense
inasmuch as I am a baker,
with many opinions.
He can forget me
I am not a talker,
my master knows
I am a bully.
One of my friends
I challenged,
and with one punch
there he fell.
Also one officer
of the Governor,
because of taxes,
was sent to get me.
But with a stick I
gave it to him with a stick
onto his head
I don’t know if he died.
I want to buy
a redeemer Saint,
like that at the altar,
with his blessing.
The tocotín, despite the warning of disharmony, unfolds in regular four line stanzas with a single assonant rhyme scheme. The form of the tocotín negates the introduction’s prejudgment: the Aztec’s discourse dialogizes the poet-narrator’s discourse. Were the lines eight or sixteen syllables, this would follow the structure of the romance. But the tocotín has shorter lines, mostly five or six syllables. The rhyme scheme maintains regular rhythm despite the profusion of consonants that the Nahuatl provides. Despite the very great difference in phonemic combinations in Nahuatl from those in Spanish (a much great difference than Spanish and Latin) the rhyme and rhythm prevail. Note the second stanza, lines 77-80: “Sólo Dios Pilzintli / del Cielo bajó / y nuestro tlatlácol / nos lo perdonó.” The very obvious assonance, the recurrence of O, clearly signifies verse. Even with the influx of Nahuatl, the continual vocalic return to O asserts obvious rhyme.
The Spanish and Nahuatl diction clearly marks the speaker as non-criollo, as either a mestizado Indian or a mestizo. In the first stanza, for example, the Spanish and apparent affirmation of Christianity, “Los Padres bendito / tiene ò Redemptor” (The blessed fathers / have a redeemer) is followed by the Nahuatl rejection of such Christianity, “amo nic neltoca / quemati no Dios” (I don’t believe it / I know my God). But who would understand? Only the Dios in the rejection is in Spanish; it is preceded by the Nahuatl no which can be read as the Spanish no. Bilingual Aztecs would understand, as would Sor Juana and a few priests and nuns. Yet the intrusion of Nahuatl into the Spanish lauds, has the same effect linguistically as it does semantically. It effectively dialogizes the Spanish discourse and, by extension, the content of that discourse.
There is also continued employment of variant Spanish. There is redundant use of lo as in “Yo al Santo lo tengo.” And as in the coplas and in the dialogue, heteroepy marks difference: the variant pronunciation in the tocotín signifies indigenous Mexican, Aztec. Luis Leal documents the transformation of U to O: ò (un), so (su), estobiera (estuviera), mocha (mucha), poñete (puñete), morió (murió) (61). It is interesting to note that the U to O movement also applies to the Nahuatl: the text states Sempual Xuchil instead of Cempoalxóchitl. The heteroepy points to variant Spanish and as well as variant Nahuatl. Perhaps the tocotín is a mestizo tocotín rather than an Indian tocotín: since both Spanish and Nahuatl are dialogized. Indeed, there is one other reason for the phonetic variance, “Una de las razones, mas no la única, por la cual los indios mexicanos cambiaban la u en o, era el hecho de ser la u, entros los aztecas, sonido propio del habla de las mujeres” (Leal 61). That is, among the Aztecs, the U was a feminine phoneme, part of female parole. The divergent pronunciation signals an assertion of masculinity by the speaker of the tocotín.
In terms of content, the tocotín is similar to the coplas. Again there is the initial rejection of Christianity which is followed by an ultimate affirmation of faith. The first stanza declares to the Nahuatl speakers the rejection of Christianity as embodied by San Pedro Nolasco. The rejection is linked to the mercenary nature of Nolasco and his order. As the title of the villancicos note, Nolasco is founder of the order of Nuestra Señora de la Merced. The Aztec focuses his attack on Nolasco’s redemption through the buying of souls. The Aztec affirms belief in the son of God and continues to demonstrate his faith and valor by discussion of a hypothetical crusade. If he had gone to the Holy Land, he would have killed four hundred Moor dogs with one blow. This signifies several things; the speaker is foolish, over zealous; the use of Spanish implies cultural translation because there are no Moors in Nahuatl. The speaker continues to devalue his position, including his strong rejection of Nolasco, by admitting his occupation: he is a baker and apparently bakers are characteristically given to prattle. Then there follows description of a valiant display of machismo: he attacks an officer sent to collect taxes. Again the Aztec baker rejects a monetary activity. In the final stanza, there is the conclusion which is rather odd. It does not turn to an unqualified affirmation of faith by the embracing of the unitary San Pedro Nolasco. Rather, the Aztec wants to buy a Saint, a San Pedro Nolasco. The villancicos end on this note. San Pedro Nolasco is relativized by an Aztec baker; he wants one of him.
Heteroglossia in the Villancico
The first printing of San Pedro Nolasco has as title page:
Villancicos, / Que Se Cantaron / En Ios Maitines Del Gloriossimo Padre / S. Pedro Nolasco, / Fundador de la Sagrada Familia de Redemp- / tores del Orden de Nuestra Señora de la / Merced, dia 31. de Henero de / 1677. años, / [Device] / Dedicatoria / Cujus est imago haec et super scriptio? Cæsaris. reddite, ergo, quæ sunt Cæsaris, Cæsari c. 22. Mat.
En fee de sentencia tal
Por punto de lay, ajusto
Que la Imagen fiempre es justo
Se buelva a su Original.
Que ella es de un Cesar señal
Conosco si atiendo al cuya:
Mas supuesto que sea suya
Por lo quen en esta diviso
Otro ay à quien es preciso
Que Cesar de Dios se arguya.
De este Cesar oy mi voz
Publicara el sello à la luz
De el ser señal de la Cruz,
con que es señal que es de Dios,
Para en uno son los dos;
O Julia Cesar Augusta,
Nuestra atencion muy bien gusta
Si oy à vos, la Imagen vuestra
Consagra: que es gloria nuestra
A vueltas de ser tan justa.
De la M. Juana Inés de la Cruz [handwritten]
The introduction to the San Pedro Nolasco is clearly marked by the presence of Latin, both in the biblical epigram (“Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”) and in the dedicatory evocation of Caesar, “O Julia Cesar Agusta….” The title page prescribes a historical and linguistic context for the villancicos. Rome is the historical antecedent; Christianity the cultural; and Latin the etymological. The allusion to Caesar, the biblical quotation, and the use of Latin all signify a pre-inscribed order and predicate a relationship between that order and the text. This relationship is illuminated by the fact that the title and dedication décimas (ten line stanzas) are in Spanish. Simply put, San Pedro Nolasco and the Spanish language follow as modern descendents and inheritors of Rome, Christianity, and Latin.
Latin is a marker of classical tradition, Christianity, empire, learning, culture. It is also generally, but especially in a religious text like San Pedro Nolasco, a marker of the Catholic Church. Its presence in a text evokes all that it connotes and, metonymically, the text becomes defined by those connotations. San Pedro Nolasco is given the air of the classics and is made more holy merely through the use of that other language. The Spanish in San Pedro Nolasco is, however, not Latin: it is another language than that which bestows so much. Juxtaposed to the Latin, the Spanish is contemporary rather than classic; it is farther from both Caesar and Jesus; it is less authoritative. While the Latin elevates the text, it devalues the dominant linguistic medium. But San Pedro Nolasco also contains Nahuatl. The presence of the pagan language elevates Spanish: Spanish may not be classical Latin, but it is its descendent, and clearly, it is far removed from the Nahuatl of pagans.
Language and Authority
The epigram establishes a context for the text and begins a dialogue between Latin and Spanish (into which Nahuatl later enters). In the dialogue Latin assumes the locus of the authoritative discourse. The historical and etymological line from Latin to Spanish, locates Latin first and foremost. Spanish, because it is derived from Latin, is metonymically related: its form and essence are rooted in the past. Then too, Latin is the contemporary language of the Church, and as such, it is also metonymically related to Spanish: Spain (and Mexico) is intensely aligned with the religion of Rome. Spanish is one language of the bilingual Catholic Church in Spain and most of America. So in dialogue with Spanish, Latin asserts the historical authority of Rome and the different contemporary authority of Rome.
As noted above in the discussions of the introductions, the Spanish of the dialogue and coplas, is heterophonic. There is a relatively formal and poetic Spanish and much more colloquial Spanish. In addition there are two Latins, that of the epigram and that of the dialogue. The Latin-Spanish dialogue is actually more complex since each language subdivides. There are therefore the heteroglotic dialogues between either of two Latins and either of three Spanishes. Implied in this, of course, is heterophonic dialogue. The two different national languages are realized in various social languages: it is not only Latin and Spanish (heteroglossia) but also Latin student and Spanish bárbaro (heterophony).
The intra-lingual dialogue between the Matthew 22 (or Jesus) and the student is worth considering because it illuminates a mode of discourse which recurs in San Pedro Nolasco: parody. The student parodies the Latin of Rome and the church, because, as the introductions prefigure the student “un estudiantón de Bachiller afectado,” he is pompous and pretentious in his preference to be mute rather than speak Spanish. Latin is realized by a non-Church contemporary, by someone who is represented as foolish. This effectively relativizes Latin: it is the language of choice of someone who was not a representative of the Roman empire and who is not a representative of the Roman church.
The student’s Latin discourse relativizes Latin through parody. It juxtaposes one type of Latin (pretentious, contemporary) with the authoritative Roman Latin. In effect, the parody is realized as if it were a dialogue between two different languages. Bakhtin discusses the heteroglotic character of parody:
Thus it is that in parody two languages are crossed with each other, as well as two styles, two linguistic points of view, and in the final analysis two speaking subjects. It is true that only one of these languages (the one that is parodied) is present in its own right; the other is present invisibly, as an actualizing background for creating and perceiving. Parody is an intentional hybrid, but usually it is an intra-linguistic one, one that nourishes itself on the stratification of the literary language into generic languages and languages of various specific tendencies.
Every type of intentional stylistic hybrid is more or less dialogized. This means that the languages that are crossed in it relate to each other as do rejoinders in a dialogue; there is an argument between languages, an argument between styles of language. But it is not a dialogue in the narrative sense, nor in the abstract sense; rather it is a dialogue between points of view, each with its own concrete language that cannot be translated into the other. Thus every parody is an intentional dialogized hybrid. Within it, languages and styles actively and mutually illuminate one another. (Dialogic Imagination 76)
What is present “invisibly, as an actualizing background for creating and perceiving” is the non-Roman, non-Church character of the student: he is probably most accurately read as an American student. His Latin, regardless of intention, can never be the classical Latin language, its use is rather, reduced to mere stylistic variation. “It was as if the language were being measured against a new world. And the language could not be stretched to fit” (Dialogic Imagination 80). So along with the devaluation that accrues to Latin through its utterance by a pretentious student, there is also the devaluation from its utterance by someone impossibly far removed from either Rome.
The student does not speak alone, nor directly to Matthew or Jesus. His discourse unfolds in interaction with the bárbaro. The previously described interaction is the comic, carnivalesque miscommunication, which reveals to the bilingual reader, the irreconcilability of the two languages. The stretching of Latin and Spanish that the student and the bárbaro accomplish is small in comparison to the linguistic manipulation of the coplas and tocotín. Pilico speaks the slave’s Afro-Spanish, thoroughly marked as alien; the nameless Aztec speaks the hybrid language composed of two irreconcilable national langauges.
Both the Afro-Spanish and the Spanish-Nahuatl hybrid relativize Spanish in a manner similar to that the student’s Latin did Roman Latin. But by relativizing Spanish, the linguistic mixture, especially in the tocotín, effectively relativizes Spanish’s ur-language, Latin. The Afro-Spanish coplas are qualitatively the same as the bárbaro’s dialogue; they both manifest heterophony. Pilico’s discourse diverges from the Spanish of the poet-narrartor much more than does that of the bárbaro. But the tocotín is qualitatively different. It is heteroglotic parody. The presence of Nahuatl, in and of itself, in a Latin and Spanish Church ceremony, dialogizes language and culture.
In his discussion of multilingual dialogue, Bakhtin comments on the Epistolae osbcurorum virorum (1515), Letters of Obscure Men.
This satire is a complex intentional linguistic hybrid. The language of obscure people is parodied; that is, it coalesces into stereotype, it is exaggerated, reduced to a type—when measured against the standard of the proper and correct Latin of the humanists. At the same time, beneath the Latin language of these obscure people their native German tongue shines distinctly through: they take the syntactical constructions of the German language and fill them with Latin words, and they even translate specific German expressions literally into Latin; their intonation is coarse, Germanic. From the point of view of the obscure people this hybrid is not intentional; they write in the only way they can. But this Latin-German hybrid is intentionally exaggerated and highlighted by the parodying intention of the authors of the satire. One must note, however, that this linguistic satire has something of the air of the study about it, a somewhat abstract and grammatical character.
The poetry of the macaronics was also complex linguistic satire, but it was not a parody on kitchen Latin; it was a travesty that aimed at lowering the Latin used by the Ciceronian purists with their lofty and strict lexical norms. (Dialogic Imagination 81).
When applied to the linguistic situation of San Pedro Nolasco, German can be replaced with Afro-Spanish or Nahuatl. The obscure men’s point of view, that such hybrid discourse is not intentional, is reflected in Flynn’s comments on Pilico’s eventual affirmation of faith, “In a primitive way his thought is very cynical and uncharitable, and the Negro repents for having had it” (85). Pilico speaks in the only way he can. But the tocotín provides a case of a much more intense parody.
Nahuatl provided a greater contrast to Latin and to Spanish because it is both pagan and a completely different language. It is not relatively less Latin than Spanish, as English is; Nahuatl is completely not Latin. It is does not enter into that linear historical etymological relationship which establishes a system of values: the more contiguous to Latin the better. Nahuatl cannot be contained on that axis. Its presence, instead, refutes the syntagmatic hierarchy and asserts another relationship, the paradigmatic. The paradigm allows the selection from among various languages, and in so doing, relativizes the languages. Latin becomes just one possible choice, as is Spanish, as is Nahuatl. While Pilico’s discourse is risible and very far from Latin, the Aztec’s Nahuatl is off the scale, and its presence upsets the previously entrenched hierarchy. Nahuatl upsets the power relations established and maintained by a syntagmatic tropics.
One specific consequence of this is that the tocotín dialogizes the Church’s authoritative discourse. Bakhtin notes a similar consequence of the literary parodia sacra:
Another’s sacred word, uttered in a foreign language, is degraded by the accents of vulgar folk languages, re-evaluated and reinterpreted against the backdrop of these languages, and congeals to the point where it becomes a ridiculous image, the comic carnival mask of a narrow and joyless pedant, an unctious hypocritical old bigot, a stingy and dried-up miser….
The sacred Latin word was a foreign body that invaded the organism of the European languages. And through the middle Ages, national languages, as organisms, repulsed this body. It was not, however, the repelling of a thing, but rather of a conceptualizing discourse that had made a home of itself in all the higher reaches of national ideological thought processes. The repulsion of this foreign-born sacred word was a dialogized operation and was accomplished under cover of holiday and festival merrymaking; it was precisely the old ruler, the old year, the winter, the fact that was driven out. Such was the “parodia sacra.” (77)
The tocotín, through the introduction of both a Mexican musico-poetic form into Church ceremony and the Mexican language into Latin-Spanish ritual, effects centrifugal permutation. San Pedro Nolasco is constituted and realized, in part, by Nahuatl. This linguistic presence in dialogue with Latin and Spanish exerts the centrifugal force which undermines a sytagmatically maintained hegemony. The presence of Nahuatl in San Pedro Nolasco manifests a paradigmatic tropics; it presupposes linguistic selection:
Concrete socio-ideological language consciousness, as it becomes creative—that it, as it becomes active as literature—discovers itself already surrounded by heteroglossia and not at all a single, unitary language, inviolable and indisputable…. Consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language. (Bakhtin Dialogic Imagination 295)
The student, the bárbaro, Pilico, and the Aztec, in order of increasing affect, exert those forces which dialogize the hegemonies of Latin and Spanish. Consider Bakhtin’s comments, but in place of peasant, substitute student, bárbaro, Pilico, Aztec, woman, reader:
As soon as a critical interanimation of languages began to occur in the consciousness of our peasant, as soon as it became clear that these were not only various different languages but even internally variegated languages, that the ideological systems and approaches to the world that were indissolubly connected with these language contradicted each other and in no way could live in peace and quiet with one another—then the inviolability and predetermined quality of these languages came to an end, and the necessity of actively choosing one’s orientation among them began. (Dialogic Imagination 296)
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