Loa to Divine Narcissus

r· 'v I ' I .. I t..._,___ LI flW(!) (;)@Ul11€iIDZl&W@(3 :. • ' STAGES OF CONFLICT A Critical Antl;iology of Latin American Theater and Performance Edited by Diana Taylor and Sarah J. Townsend Translation coordinator, Margaret Carson • '! THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS Ann Arbor rt ) ,. ~.. < ;'l I !I -'I I 1 .~; To Latin American theater artists, who have long shown us how to ' live and work in troubled times. ~'• Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2008 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @) Printed on acid-free paper 2011 2010 2009 2008 4 3 2 1 •J No pan of this publication may be reproduced, ' stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, I without the written permission of the publisher. I 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the j British Library. ! library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stages of conflict : a critical anthology of Latin American ~i theater and performance I edited by Diana Taylor I and Sarah]. Townsend; translation coordinator, t;, Margaret Carson. { I p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [238]-253). ISBN-13: 978-0-4 72-07027-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-IO: 0-472-07027-4 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-472-05027-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-472-05027-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Latin American drama-20th century-Translations into English. l. Carson, Margaret. 11. Taylor, Diana, 1950- lll. Townsend, Sarah]. PQ7087.E5S77 2008 l: 862'.608-dc22 2008011484 l~' J I , .' \\ \ 80 BOLIVIA I ALMAGRO May he perish and with him, all his descendants, MEXICO My noble and only lord, and destroy his house. L__ _ he is surely dead. Nothing shall remain of this infamous soldier. SPAIN Those are my orders. 1f that's true, take him away. The Loafor the Auto Go, put him on the fire. Sacramental of The Divine Narcissus (Sor Juana Ines de la NOTES 9. A sacred precinct or Temple of the Sun. Cruz) 10. A corn husk. All notes to this play are by the translator. 11. The mother of Atau Wallpa. 1. A brightly colored bird. 12. A philosopher. 2. A term applied to all sacred objects or places. 13. Inca Hua.scar was the first-born of Wayna There was nothing ordinary about her person or her 3. A bear. Qhapaj and the brother of Atau Wallpa. He was de- life. She was exceptionally beautiful, and poor. She was 4. Conical tumulus; funerary towers constructed by feated and killed by Atau Wallpa's army in a war of the favorite of a Vicereine and lived at court, courted the Indians for burial. succession. by many; she was loved, and perchance she loved. 5. According to legends, he was the first Inca. 14. A bird with a brown breast and white tail. Abruptly she gives up worldly life and enters a con- 6. One of the three most important Inca gods ac- 15. A red string wrapped around the forehead that vent-yet, far from renouncing the world entirely, she cording to the Spanish chroniclers. indicated royal status. converts her cell into a study filled with books, works 7. The father of Atau Wallpa. 16. The last of the Incan cities and the hiding place of art, and scientific instruments and transforms the 8. A kind of deer. of the last Inca king, Manco Inca. convent locutory into a literary and intellectual salon. She writes love poems, verses for songs and dance tunes, profane comedies, sacred poems, an essay in theology, and an autobiographical defense of the right of women to study and to cultivate their minds. She becomes famous, sees her plays performed, her poems published, and her genius applauded in all the Spanish dominions, half the Western world. Then suddenly she gives up everything, surrenders her library and collections, renounces literature, and finally, during an epidemic, after ministering to stricken sisters in the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Portrait attributed to Juan de convent, dies at the age of forty-six. Miranda. (From the Direcci6n General de! Patrimonio, -Octavio Paz, Sor Juana, or the Traps of Faith Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico, Mexico City.) Even in her own time, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, born Juana de Asbaje y Ramirez de Santillana, possibly between 1648 and 1651, in the town of San Miguel de Nepantla near Mexico City, was considered to be an extraordinarily brilliant and creative thinker. Most of her learning was self-taught. Minimal instruction was available to girls, and women were not allowed to attend university. She wrote, "[When I] discovered that in the City of Mexico there was a university with schools where different branches of learning could be stud- ied ... I deluged my mother with urgent and insistent pleas to change my 9 manner of dress and send me to stay with relatives in the City of Mexico so that I might study and take courses."1 As cross-dressing was apparently not an option, she taught herself. Her approach to Latin offers an example of her style of self-instruction: "I used to cut four or five fingers' width from [my hair] ... making it my rule that if by the time it grew back to that point, I did not know such-and-such a thing which I had set out to learn as it grew, I would cut it again as a penalty for my dullness . for I did not consider it I 81 ', t 82 MEXICO The Loa for the Auto Sacramental of The Divine Narcissus 83 right that a head so bare of knowledge should be dressed with hair. "2 Her elements to create spectacles such as medieval mystery plays on carros mother allowed her to go to Mexico City to live with relatives when she was (wheeled carts), Nahuatl versions of biblical stories, tableaux vivants, and about ten years old, and her remarkable intelligence and beauty brought her mock battles between Moors and Christians. Far grimmer examples of to the attention of the court, where she was made a lady-in-waiting to the Church power were performed through the autos-da-fe of the Spanish Inqui- vicereine, the marquise de Mancera, with whom she formed a close bond. It is sition, the public processions and burnings of "heretics" either in the flesh or not clear why she left this position to enter a convent, first in 1666 and then in effigy. Representatives of the Spanish crown rivaled the Church for public permanently when she entered the San Jeronimo Convent in 1669, although, attention with stunning celebrations to commemorate royal marriages, births, given her poor economic circumstances and her self-proclaimed "total disin- deaths, and ascensions to the throne. clination to marriage,"3 it was probably her best option to continue her life of In addition to the intense theatrics that accompanied the emergence of study. Called the "tenth muse" and the "Mexican Phoenix," she attracted visi- New Spain, a lively theater scene sprang up in Mexico in the late sixteenth tors from throughout the viceroyalty of New Spain and Europe who would at- century. The first theater, or casa de farsas, was built in 1587 followed by the tend her regular tertulias (gatherings) in the convent to discuss her work and corral of the Hospital Real de Indios, a permanent theater that contributed to ideas. David Pasto, in the introduction to his translation of her comic cloak- the financial support of the hospital. After the first university of the Americas and-dagger play The House of Trials, states that "the Viceroy and the Vicereine, was founded in Mexico in 1551, university theater became popular, and by as well as other members of the court, visited the convent frequently to attend the seventeenth century plays were regularly staged there. Finally, starting in vespers, hear the musical and dramatic presentations, and chat in the locu- the mid-seventeenth century, the court became another site for theatrical per- tory. "4 Later Sor Juana became even closer with the subsequent viceroy, the formances. Certain conditions were imposed by civil and Church authorities: marquis de la Laguna and his wife, Maria Luisa, the countess of Paredes, with while women were allowed to act, they had to behave in an "honest" manner, whom scholars suggest she had a close, perhaps even passionate relation- and cross-dressing was not allowed. Men and women occupied separate ship. 5 Maria Luisa saw to the publication of a collection of Sor Juana's poetry, spaces in the audience. All texts had to be approved by the archbishop, and Inundaci6n Castdlida, in Madrid in 1689, and Sor Juana dedicated the volume representatives of the law were to attend all performances. 9 It is important to to her. She also wrote work at the request of the vicereine, including The Di- keep in mind, though, for the understanding of Sor Juana's Loa, that two vine Narcissus, whose loa (introductory praise poem) is included here. In spite kinds of performances were prohibited by the Holy Inquisition during this of the protection the court authorities offered her, Sor Juana infuriated strict period: masked dances and festivities by the native populations outside the theologians who attacked her for her love of learning and public profile. 6 realm of the Catholic Church, and performances in the convents (and their After the return of the viceroy and vicereine to Spain in 1688, Sor Juana. was churches).

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