SP2: Lecture on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

The Poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

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5. Hybrid difference

Despite what I have been saying so far, Sor Juana's work is not simply a copy of contemporary European styles. There is a difference between the European Baroque and that of New Spain. Just as Spanish baroque architecture was able to absorb hispano-arabic designs as seen, for example, in the San Telmo palace in Seville or in the Sacristía de la Cartuja in Granada (see illustration), so in the Spanish Colonies in America, the Baroque feasts on the mixture of races and cultures, providing a sumptuous display of transfigured symbols and signs. Spanish and indigenous iconography begin an often violent hybridization. The Christian Virgin Mary is fused with indigenous belief systems in the apparitions of the Virgen de Guadalupe (first said to have appeared in 1531 - see http://www.iglesia.org.mx/virgen/index.htm), golden maize takes the place of wheat as symbol of fertility, the classical image of the Sun as Phoebus hints at the sun-worship of the Aztecs.

This form of difference, the beginnings of a hybrid European and American culture, is reflected in some of Sor Juana's popular villancicos or songs. Poem 258 playfully ilustrates this hybridization, at the very level of the signifier. The language of this poem is a far cry from the sophisticated classical reference of Sor Juana's courtly poems:

258

Maitines de la Asunción, México, 1679; del Villancico Octavo, en forma de ensaladilla

[. . .]
Estribillo 1-¡Ha, ha, ha!
              2-¡Monan vuchiá
              he, he, he,
              cambulé!
              1-¡Gila coro,
              gulungú, gulungú,
              hu, hu, hu!
              2-¡Menguiquilá,
              ha, ha, ha!
Coplas        1-Flasica, naquete día
              qui tamo lena li glolia,
              no vindamo pipitolia,
              pueque sobla la aleglía:
              que la Señola Malía
              a turo mundo la da.
              ¡Ha, ha, ha! &.
                  2-Dejémoso la cocina
              y vámoso a turo trote,
              sin que vindamo gamote
              nin garbanzo a la vizina:
              qui arto gamote, Cristina,
              hoy a la fieta vendrá.
              ¡Ha, ha, ha! &.

[. . .]

Just as interesting is Poem 281, which shows a marked hesitation over the possibilities of hybridizing Christian mythology with the racialized imagery associated with the indians: here the Virgin Mary, Nuestra Señora, is black, and the poem seems caught between contradictory significations of the colour black: it wants to explain that the Virgin is "black and comely", like the Spouse of the Song of Songs, yet also wants to emphasize that her blackness does not make her impure:

281

Maitines de la Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora, Puebla, 1689, Villancico Séptimo

Estribillo Morenica la esposa está,
porque el sol en el rostro le da.

Coplas    Aunque en el negro arrebol
              negra la esposa se nombra,
              no es porque ella tiene sombra,
              sino porque le da el sol
              de su pureza el crisol,
              que el sol nunca se le va.
                  ¡Morenica la esposa está,
              porque el sol en el rostro le da!
                  Comparada la luz pura
              de uno y otro, entre los dos,
              ante el claro sol de Dios
              es morena la criatura;
              pero se añade hermosura
              mientras más se acerca allá.
                  ¡Morenica la esposa está,
              porque el sol en el rostro le da!
                  Del sol, que siempre la baña,
              está abrasada la esposa;
              y tanto está más hermosa
              cuanto más de él se acompaña:
              nunca su pureza empaña,
              porque nunca el sol se va.
                  ¡Morenica la esposa está,
              porque el sol en el rostro le da!

[. . .]

There is an uncomfortable wavering in this poem between Christian and Aztec belief systems -- the God that ensures the 'purity' of the Black Spouse, is 'dangerously' close to a to Sun God, while blackness in the poem hovers between the 'evil' it is associated with in the Christian tradition, and a sign of the favour bestowed upon her by this Sun God. The black Virgen de Guadalupe (see illustration) is still worshipped today in Mexico. In the poem, the hybridization of two cultures in the melting-pot (crisol) of the Mexican sun, and the hybridization of two codes of belief, the Christian and the Aztec, produces an excess of significations, creating multiple and contradictory connotations.This difference, the difference of the racial other, haunts many of these poems as both a hesitation of signficance and a celebration of 'otherness'.

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