El sueño: The spatialization of a poetic text

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El sueno: The spatialization o f a poetic text Nanfito, Jacqueline Clare, Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, 1988

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles

El suefio: The Spatialization of a Poetic Text

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languagues and Literatures

By

Jacqueline C. Nanfito

1988

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The dissertation of Jacqueline Clare Nanfito is approved.

Jos6 Pedro Segundo

Enrique RodrfgQez-Cepedj

CK-

Shirley Arora, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

1988

ii

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DEDICATION

To my husband, Enrique, to my mother, and in memory of my father

iii

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CONTENTS

DEDICATION.............................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................................... v VITA..........................................................................................

vi

ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION.................................................................vii

CHAPTER ONE:

Spatiality of the Poetic Text in the Baroque ....1

CHAPTER TWO:

The Notion and Function ofSpatiality in Sor Juana's El sueno...........................................................35

CHAPTER THREE: CHAPTER FOUR:

Spatialization of Form in El suefio ...................... 63 The Spatializing Function of the Principles of Recurrence and Amplification............................... 97

CHAPTER FIVE:

Symbolic Imagery and the Spatialization of the Poetic Id e a ...........................................................163

CHAPTER SIX:

The Spatialization of the Temporal Dimension in El sueno..................................................................222

CONCLUSION:

.................................................................................. 266

REFERENCES:

.................................................................................. 275

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my most genuine appreciation to Dr. Shirley Arora, the chair of my dissertation committee, for her invaluable guidance and critical expertise throughout the preparation of this dissertation.

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VITA

January 15, 1957

Born, Omaha, Nebraska.

19 7 9

B.A., St. Mary's College Notre Dame, Indiana

1 9 7 9 -1 9 8 2

Teaching A ssistant . University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1982

M.A., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1 9 8 3 -1 9 8 6

Teaching Associate University of California, Los Angeles

19 8 6

Ph. D. Candidate University of California, Los Angeles

1 9 8 6 -1 9 8 7

Teaching Fellow University of California, Los Angeles.

1987

Assistant Professor, Scripps College Claremont, California

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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

El sueno: The Spatialization of a Poetic Text

By

Jacqueline Clare Nanfito Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languagues and Literature University of California, Los Angeles, 1988 Professor Shirley Arora, Chair

This dissertation examines the spatializing tendency that is operative on all levels of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's El sueno. It considers the maximization of the spatial dimension as one of the fundamental organizational principles in this celebrated p o e tic text of the Latin American Baroque.

The purpose of this study is

to approximate the poetic conception of space in the text, both as a philosophical construct and as a literary phenomenon, in order to establish the necessary

textual

evidence for an essentially

"spatial" reading of this poem. The first chapter examines the spatial conception of the artistic mechanism in the period desginated as the

"Baroque",

while the second chapter focuses more specifically on the notion

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and funtion of spatiality in El sueno. analyze

the

techniques

em ployed

by

The next three chapters the

poet

to

achieve

spatialization of form and content on the distinct levels of the poem:

structural, stylistic and thematic.

The spatial orientation

that conditions the poem and contributes to its overall unity is visible in the symmetrical structuring of the poematic space, in the stylistic patterns of repetition and accumulation, and in the insistence upon dynamic images of an aerial, ascensional nature, all of which enhance and amplfiy the poetic, idea. The

sixth

and

final

chapter,

concerned

with

the

spatialization of the temporal dimension in the text, further reveals El sueno as a poetic text which transcends the boundaries of space through the establishment of relationships-- horizontal and

vertical--am ong

d istin ct

spatiotem poral

realities,

and

surmounts the temporal barrier of sequence inherent in the lit­ erary act through the techniques of juxtaposition and simultane­ ity.

Unfolding within the immobilized instant of spatialized time,

El sueno is a dream of height born in the emulation of verticality.

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CHAPTER ONE

SPATIALITY OF THE POETIC TEXT IN THE BAROQUE As with many artistic creations of the Baroque, the maxi­ mization of the spatial dimension figures among the fundamental organizational principles in the premiere poetic text of the Latin American Baroque, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's El sueno 1. In an

iT his is the title that Sor Juana uses when she refers to the poem in her «Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz», Obras com pletas. Vol. IV, ed., introd. and notes Alberto G. Salceda (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1957), p. 471. The poem was first published, however, with the title "Primero sueno, que asfintitulo y compuso la madre Juana Ines de la Cruz, imitando a Gongora" in the second volume of her works, Segundo volumen de las obras de Soror Juana Ines de la Cruz, monja profesa en el convento de San Geronimo de la Impe­ rial Ciudad de Mexico (Sevilla, 1692). Unless otherwise indi­ cated, all references to Sor Juana's work will be to the O b ra s c o m p le ta s. the first three volumes of which were edited by the late Dr. Alfonso Mendez Plancarte. The fourth volume, edited by Alberto G. Salceda, contains the c o m e d ia s. the sain etes and the works in prose of Sor Juana, and completes the series of her Obras com pletas. published in Mexico (1951-1957). This is gen­ erally regarded as the principal critical edition of Sor Juana's w orks.

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attem pt to surpass the lim its inherent in the human condition, and transcend the unknown dimensions of the intellect and the threshold of illimitable reaches of interior space and time, physi­ cally spatial reality is defiantly challenged as this seventeenth century Mexican artist strives to attain a truly creative style ca­ pable of encompassing the totality of a reality which is increas­ ingly more mutable and polymorphic.

Among the dialectics of

physical space exploited in this quintessential baroque com posi­ tion are such qualities as depth, in the colonization of interior, subjective states and places, and the philosophical profundity of the poetic thought; polarity, in the dualistic opposition of imagistic forms and thematic principles, and in the dialectic unity and coexistence of contraries; with

those

images

height, in the identification of the soul

of elevation—particularly

winged

beings—

which are associated with the celestial sphere, thereby confer­ ring upon spatiality a moral dimension; expansion, in the exu­ berant amplification of significant motifs, and in the establish­ ment of distance—physical and psychic, spatial and tem poral— between the poetic images, and between the distinct planes or spheres of the poetic reality; and centrality, in the inferences and references to the mystic Center^:

^The same notion recurs in the "Respuesta", Obras com ple­ tas. IV, p. 450. "Todas las cosas salen de un Dios, que es el centro a un tiempo y la circunferencia de donde salen y donde paran las lfneas criadas."

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y a la Causa Primera siempre aspira —centrico punto donde recta tira la lrnea, si ya no circunferencia, que contiene, infinita, toda esencia

(vv. 408-411)

It is, however, the dialectics of verticality/horizontality and as­ cent/descent, visible in the multiple aerial images and in the dy­ namics of forward

and upward advancement and retreat of both

animate and inanimate beings, which perhaps most singularizes this poetic text and elevates it to the apex of the poetic canon of the Latin American Baroque. The violation of spatial and temporal boundaries inherent in the poem serves to liberate the poetic expression of the most intimate dimension of the ontological process manifested in the oneiric odyssey of the soul.

In the course of just one night,

which constitutes the actual literary time of the text, the reader traverses multiple coextensive spaces, accompanying the soul to such remote corners of the universe as the island of Pharos, in the reference to the legendary lighthouse (vv. 267-269) ; the an­ cient capital of Egypt, Cairo, with reference to the two pyramids (vv. 340-349); and the island of Crete, in the suggested presence of the labyrinth from which Icarus escaped on wings of wax (vv. 466-468).

With the soul acting as visionary and guide, the

reader passes

sym bolically

from

the

subterranean

depths

of

Hades, or the nether world, ruled by Pluto (vv. 53-53, vv. 716718) to beyond the celebrated heights of Olympus (vv. 310-314),

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higher than the symbolic flight of the eagle, and far above the Egyptian

pyram ids

(vv.

340-413)

and

the Tower

of Babel

("aquella blasfema altiva Torre", vv. 414-417), two architectural marvels of antiquity that testify to man's innate desire to scale the heights and to construct an edifice that affords communica­ tion with the celestial sphere of Eternal Truth. Before undertaking a rigorous analysis of the spatializing mechanisms operative on the various levels-structural, linguis­ tic and thematic—of this poetic text, it is necessary to first ex­ amine the concept of "baroque" as a literary phenomenon, which is at once a definitive style and a particular attitude toward re­ ality, in order to apprehend the tendency toward spatialization in El sueno as an essential function of the poetic construct of the Baroque.

Only after comprehending the formal, organizational

principles underlying the artistic composition of this dramatic, dynamic style can one begin to grasp the significance of the spa­ tial dimension in Sor Juana's poem. From its inception, the notion of "baroque" appears to have been destined for obscurity and misinterpretation.

During the

seventeenth century, the period which is generally regarded as the cultural and aesthetic manifestation of the "baroque", the term was invested with an essentially derogatory connotation, due to its original meaning in Portuguese as a designation for a pearl irregular in shape:

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Un estilo se sobrepone al otro . . . El estilo de la civilizacion se llama clasicismo. Al estilo de la barbarie, persistente, permanente debajo de la cultura, £no le daremos el nombre de barroco? Es llamada barroca la gruesa perla irregular. Pero mas barroca, mas irregular todavfa, el agua del oceano que la ostra metaformosea en perla, y a veces, inclusive, en los casos de logro fehz, en perla perfecta.

It is noteworthy that in the Chinese tradition, the pearl sym bolizes

"genius

in

obscurity "4, for -that is precisely the

essence of the baroque imagination: nious, elaborately

em bellished

the construction of an inge­

structure

whose syntactic

semantic ornamentation is carefully wrought by a

dynamic

and and

impassioned artistic imagination which delights in difficult con­ ceits

and

deliberate

am biguities.

By

extension,

the

term

"baroque" was applied to all visual, musical and literary art forms that were considered deformed, excessive or extravagant. The baroque literary imagination was regarded as an indication of excess, the sign of elan, the portentous display of verve or liveliness of spirit which animates the artistic composition.

And

close examination of the subsequent evolution of the term re•2

Eugenio D'Ors, Lo barroco (Madrid:

Aguilar, 1964) p. 24.

^Antoine Beaumont, Symbolism in Decorative Chinese Art (New York: Pantheon, 1949), as quoted in Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A. Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), p. 239.

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veals that the pejorative m oral and affective connotation has persisted even through the twentieth century.

In a series of

studies published under the title Storia dell' Eta Barocca in Italia. Benedetto Croce accepts the term "baroque” as designative of a particular cultural and artistic period, although he understands it negatively as not only an aesthetic sin, but rather a sin which is at once human, universal and perpetual . . .

for that which is

truly art is never baroque, and that which is baroque is not art.** Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, the German art historian Heinrich W olfflin proposed to trace the transition in Roman architecture from Renaissance to Baroque.^ In the preface to the first edition of his Renaissance and Baroque W olfflin clearly indicates that the subject of his study is "the disintegration of the Renaissance", and the aim "to investigate the symptoms of decay and perhaps to discover in the capri­ ciousness and the return to chaos a law which would vouchsafe one an insight into the intimate workings of art."

Rather than

viewing "baroque" as merely an aesthetic aberration associated

^Benedetto Croce, Storia dell' Eta Barroca in Italia. siero. Poesia e letteratura (Rome: Bari, 1925), p. 83.

Pen-

^Heinrich Wolfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, trans. Kathrin Simon, intro. Peter Murray (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966; Munich, 1888). ^W olfflin, p. 14.

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with a particular cultural and artistic period in history, W olfflin regarded it as a distinctive stylistic alternative to the "classicist" tendency in the artistic creation of any given place or period in time, thereby conferring upon it an essentially objective, struc­ tural signification or meaning, opposing it diametrically to the art forms representative of the preceding Renaissance and the sub­ sequent period of classicism. In attem pting to system atically characterize and thereby differentiate between Renaissance and Baroque forms, W olfflin established a number of "principles" by which one could recog­ nize and distinguish these two formal artistic systems or tenden­ cies.

Among those features which he illustrates as the distin­

guishing

traits

of the Baroque

tendency

are

the following:

"painterliness", which undermines the predominantly linear style of the Renaissance; the creation of an open form, heightened by the monumentality and multiplicity of the constituent parts; and the illusion of movement, as opposed to the permanence and tranquility sought by the Renaissance artist, achieved in part throught the use of light and shade ("chiaroscuro", "claroscuro") not to create and delineate form, but rather to dissolve it, and also by the multiplication of contours which entice the eye and suggest the contemplation of spaces beyond the limitations of the canvas or the written page.

Endeavoring to explain the dissolu­

tion of the Renaissance style, and to achieve a more precise defi­ nition of the Baroque style, Wolfflin examines parallel develop­ ments in the spatial or visual arts and literature (the latter of

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which traditionally has been regarded as a temporal, non-spatial art form), comparing, for example, the solemnity and restless­ ness of M ichelangelo's sculpture and painting with the essen­ tially spiritual mood prevailing throughout Torquato Tasso’s epic masterpiece Gerusalemme liberatta (Jerusalem Delivered. 1575). The significance of Wolfflin's essay is that it introduced the concept of a literary "baroque", and further suggested that par­ allels exist between spatial and non-spatial art forms.

Among

the foremost characteristics of the baroque style which confirm the notion of correspondences between literature and the arts, and accordingly advance the idea of the baroque literary con­ struct as fundamentally spatial in form, are " . . . the depreciation of the separating, defining line; the development of an open form that is not a self-contained unity; the tendency to merge the fig­ ure with its environment; the use of light not to construct but to dissolve form —[and]

all these seem to encourage a literary,

moral, and philosophical approach to represented form."

Q

The

aesthetic objective of the baroque poet is not so much the imita­ tion of the physical, phenomenal world, but rather the creative modification of it.

The baroque imagination seeks to convey an

image of reality which is continually in flux, through the pre-

^Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Liter­ ary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Prvden to G r a y (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), p.101.

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sentation of an artistic space which is, itself, forever in a state of perpetual motion and transformation. In general, the term "baroque" has been associated with a particular plastic, creative force that prevailed throughout Eu­ rope and America in the seventeenth century. insisted upon further ments:

Some critics have

dividing it into three distinct cultural mo­

mannerism, baroque and rococo^.

Some regard it as an

anti-classical artistic trend that parallels the mannerist sty le -0; for Arnold Hauser, for example, both the mannerist and baroque tre n d s . . . were the product of the same spiritual crisis; both expressed what had become an open split between the spiritual and physical values on the harmony between which the survival of the Renaissance prin­ cipally depended . . . In contrast to the broadly uni­ form and balanced outlook of the Renaissance, man­ nerism is characterised by an antithetical, ambivalent sense of life that expresses itself in apparently irrec­ oncilable formal structures. The baroque again ex­ presses a more uniform attitude to reality . . . unlike ^See Emilio Orozco Diaz, Manierismo v barroco (Salam anca: Anaya, 1970); Helmut Hatzfeld, Estudios sobre el Barroco (Madrid: Gredos, 1964); and also by Hatzfeld, The Rococo: Eroti­ cism. Wit, and Elegance in European Literature (New York: Pega­ sus, 1972). Arnold Hauser, Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renais­ sance & the Origin of Modern Art. trans. Eric Mosbacher (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 151-152.

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the more superficial points of contact between man­ nerism and the Renaissance, the Baroque and the Re­ naissance share a whole series of common character­ istics that are of more basic importance. Among the parallels which do exist between the mannerist and baroque tendencies are the follow ing enumerated by Hauser: dynamic representation of space, asymmetry principle, the inclination to the obscuration forms,

and the trend to the forced, the

as a compositional and complication of

strained, and the sur­

prising. Others have seen the Baroque as merely another manifes­ tation of Renaissance style.

According to Wylie Sypher, a simple

contrast between "renaissance" and "baroque" will not suffice, for during

the period included within "the

renaissance", ranging

from the beginning of the fourteenth to the end of the seven­ teenth centuries, there are several different, often coextensive orders of style: One might, indeed, say that styles in renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture run through a full cycle of change in which we can identify at least four stages: a provisional formulation, a disintegra­ tion, a reintegration, and a final academic codifica­ tion—a cycle roughly equivalent to a succession of art styles or forms technically known as "renaissance" (a term, here, of limited meaning), mannerism, baroque, and late-baroque (having close affinities with academism and neoclassicism) . . . If we can find analogies of form within the various arts of the re-

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naissance, we possibly can define for literature as well as for painting, sculpture, and architecture the m echanism s of a changing renaissance style that emerges, tranform s itself, re-em erges, and at also plays itself out in a severe equation. 11

It has been suggested that the Baroque is essentially the artistic

embodiment of a spiritual attitude,

the

aesthetic exter-

nalization of an internal crisis, and that it represents the artistic aspiration of "la Contrarreforma y el

A b s o lu tis m o " .^

Others

have

suggested that "baroque" is any period in which there pre­

vails

a m arked predilection for

fice.

exuberant

and

excessive arti­

Rene Wellek contends that at least one half of the history

of the world and all artistic creation is baroque in nature, re-

11 Wylie Sypher, Four Stages of Renaissance Style: Trans­ formations in Art and Literature 1 4 0 0 -1 7 0 0 (New York: Dou­ bleday & Co., 1955), pp. 6, 10. 12w erner Weisbach, El Barroco. arte de la Contrarreforma (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1948); See also Hauser (1965, p. 153), for whom "the baroque was essentially the art of the Catholic restoration and the Counter-Reformation . . . the expression of a more popular, more emotional, spiritual outlook." l^E ugenio D’Ors, Lo barroco. See also Rene Wellek, "The Concept of Baroque in Literary Scholarship" in Concepts of Criti­ cism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 77-109.

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garding as baroque every human endeavor that is neither purely classical, nor illuminated by the arid light of the intellect. It is unquestionable that the comprehension of any artistic work, spatial or non-spatial, of the Baroque or of any given pe­ riod, is inconceivable without taking into consideration the an­ tecedents which affected and conditioned it.

For Wolfflin, the

sequence Renaissance-Baroque is a necessary and irreversible evolution.

And Spitzer further observes that "siempre, y no solo

en el siglo XVII, despues de un arte clasico viene un arte barroco . . . W olfflin coloca en lugar de la antigua apreciacion critica, clasico=medida, barroco=exageracion, la afirmacion de una evolucion historica necesaria."! 5 T he

B aroque

c h a ra c te ristic a lly

tends

tow ard

the

metaphorical, and its often dramatic images and allusions sug­ gest the surpassing of the physical environment and material existence which in and of themselves are not sufficient for the construction of an imaginary world.

It is the optimal and

quintessential

capacity

thought.

m anifestation

of man's

for

symbolic

The creative function of the baroque literary artist,

which is essentially the invention of a new objectivity, is the am plification

of physical reality, the rendering

of space as

pluridimensional and polyvalent, through the creation of a poetic

14wellek, p. 92. Spitzer, pp. 311-312.

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language which, based upon the principle of correspondences, is often destined for other than material things.

It is the apogean

activity of man, or the "animal symbolicum", as Ernst Cassirer has called him: No longer can man confront reality immediately . . . He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial m e d i u m . * 6

In many ways, the Baroque represents the challenging of spatial and temporal limitations of the artistic work, as the dy­ namic movement of its very line and form suggests the presence of other realities beyond the canvas or the printed page.

In the

realm of literary creation, it often implies the total rupture of the denotative, direct level of language and the inversion of logical categories in an attempt to construct a highly stylized, spatialized linguistic

configuration which delights

meanings

and the reverberation

as we shall see in El

in the

of images.

m ultiplicity of The baroque poem,

sueno. responds to a thematic pluralism

which implicates a displacement of the central motive, resulting in the refraction of the principal theme into subordinate yet

l^E rn st Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 25.

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com plem entary

unities

theme of the poem.

which

parallel

or

m irror

the

central

These secondary sections of the poem are, in

turn, often segmented, resulting in an intricately woven web of relations of diametrical tensions, and in an irradiation and an­ nexation of imagistic fragments.

Nonetheless, the contrastive

formulation of the constitutive elements is essentially an oppository symmetry which further develops, exemplifies, and under­ scores the

principal theme.

baroque s u b o r d i n a t e s

Arnold Hauser contends that "the

details for the sake of a uniform effect,

and does so, not so much by1 the reduction and concentration of elements, as by permitting a dominant theme or accent to pre­ vail." * 7 In his Manierismo v Barroco. Emilio Orozco argues that in the realm of art, the principle of equipoise characteristic of Re­ naissance classicism is subordinated, if not subverted, in the sub­ sequent artistic and cultural periods to the baroque aesthetic ideal of an ostentatiously conceptual intellectualism; that there is in the 17th century a predilection . . . lo mismo en la estructura de sus lienzos que de sus poemas, no solo de acomodar en distribucion complicada sus elementos dentro del conjunto compositivo, sino en alterar la logica y natural valoracion de esos elem entos desarrollando los introducidos como secundarios hasta imponerse cuantitativamente

l^H auser, pp. 274-275.

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a nuestra primera vision o iectura cual si fueran Ios 18 principales, objeto o asunto, del poema o el cuadro.

In an attem pt to promote greater understanding and ap­ preciation of the Hispanic Baroque, several literary critics have investigated the notion of "baroque" and sought to identify the characteristics that determine and delimit it as both a historical period encompassing certain social and cultural conditions in Spain, and as an artistic and literary movement that, while pos­ sessing idiosyncratic traits, shares affinities with the European baroque

phenom enon. 19

The seventeenth century, in Spain as

well as throughout Europe and America, is one in which the mental processes of the human intellect acquire an essentially spatial configuration.

18

It is a period marked by dramatic changes

Emilio Orozco, Manierismo v Barroco. pp. 185.

See Emilio Orozco Diaz, "Caracterfsticas generales del siglo XVII," in Historia de la literatura espanola. ed. J. M. Diaz Borque (Madrid: Biblioteca Universitaria Guadiana, 1975), II, pp. 15-125; Guillermo Dfaz-Plaja, El espfritu del Barroco (Barcelona: Critica, 1983); Jose Antonio Maravall, La cultura del B a rro c o : Analisis de una estructura h isto ric a (Barcelona: Ariel, 1980); Ludwig Pfandl, Historia de la literatura nacional espanola en la Edad de P ro (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1952), pp. 235280; Stephen Gilman, "An Introduction to the Ideology of the Baroque in Spain," S y m p o s i u m . 1 (Nov. 1946), 83-107; and Americo Castro, De la edad conflictiva: El drama de la honra en Espana v en su literatura (Madrid: Taurus, 1963).

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and pervaded by a profound sentiment of crisis, provoked in part by the discoveries and advancements in the realm of sci­ ence, and the spiritual conflicts which arose out of the Reforma­ tion and the Counter-Reformation.

The expansion of geographi­

cal, political and intelectual horizons during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had fostered an awakening of man’s con­ sciousness of other worlds, and contributed to an even greater awareness of the pluridimensionality of reality.

The discovery of

new frontiers in science, of new means of conceptualizing, con­ templating and analyzing the multifaceted nature of reality en­ couraged the questioning of established scholastic doctrine re­ garding the composition of the cosmos, and consequently ef­ fected changes and new modes of being in nearly every aspect of European life.

According to Frank J. Wamke, the Baroque vision,

conditioned by an "intensification of the conflict between hu­ manism and religion, has as its core a systematic doubt in the validity of appearance, a doubt which expresses itself as an ob­ sessive concern for

a p p e a r a n c e ." 2 0

Baroque art in Spain is ultimately and consequently the aesthetic manifestation of the crisis and inquietudes arising out of the complex, composite nature of seventeenth century Spanish society.

According to Leo Spitzer, the Spanish Baroque consists

20Frank J. Wamke, ed. European M etaphysical (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 2.

Poetry

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of the reelaboration of two ideas, one medieval, another renais­ sance, into a third idea "que nos muestra la polaridad entre los sentidos y la nada, la belleza y la muerte, lo temporal y lo eterno."21

In the works of nearly all the principal writers of the

latter half of the Spanish Golden Age—Cervantes, Gracian, Lope, Gongora, Quevedo, Calderdn, Sor Juana Inds de la Cruz—the reader encounters a heightened perception of the spatial and temporal dimensions of reality, and a preoccupation with tran­ scendent matters, often manifested in thematic dualities such as reality-appearance

("realidad"-"apariencia"), life-dream

"sueno"), life-death ("vida"-"muerte").

("vida"-

In Spitzer's own words,

"el dualismo siempre esta allf, presente; el tema barroco por excelencia es el d esenga no , el sueno opuesto a la vida, la mascara opuesta a la verdad, la grandeza temporal opuesta a la caducid a d ." 2 2

The human intellect of the seventeenth century had be­

come increasingly aware of the illim itable implications of a pluridim ensional reality, and the Hispanic baroque imagination was anxious to explore and exploit the inexhaustible richness of the spatial and temporal aspects of the artistic work.

21 Leo Spitzer, "El Barroco espanol,” in Estilo v estructura en la literatura espanola (Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1 9 8 0 ) , p 3 2 4 . 22Leo Spitzer, p.

318.

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W ithin the realm of literary production, many critics of Hispanic literature have dem onstrated the continuity between the Baroque and the

R e n a issa n c e ^ .

Baroque poetics, based

upon the principles of rhetoric, logic and poetics, derives its the­ ory ultimately from the precepts of Aristotle, Horace and other authorities from Antiquity, and as such, continues the Renais­ sance trad itio n .^ 4

Furthermore, the publication of several im-

23 Bruce W. Wardropper, "Temas y problemas del barroco espanol," in Sislos de Pro: Barroco. ed. Bruce W. Wardropper, Vol. Ill of Historia v crftica de la literatura espanola. ed. Francisco Rico (Barcelona: Editorial Crftica, 1 9 8 3 ) . "La continuidad entre el Renacimiento y el Barroco se manifiesta de un modo evidente en la abundancia de traducciones e imitaciones de autores clasicos . . . El Barroco espanol hereda tambien la mayor parte de sus temas del Renacimiento, que a su vez habfa tornado muchos de la Antigiiedad . . . " (pp. 7 - 1 0 ) . The following studies are mentioned by Wardropper as sources for further investigation on this topic: Theodore S. Beardsley, H ispano-Classical Translations Printed between 1 4 8 2 and 1 6 9 9 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1 9 7 0 ) ; Marfa Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La tradicion clasica en Espana (Barcelona: Ariel, 1 9 7 5 ) ; Otis H. Green, Spain and the W estern Tradition: The Castilian Mind in Literature ftom El Cid to C alderon. 4 vols. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1 9 6 3 , 1964,

1965,

1966).

24A ntonio M arti, La preceptiva retorica espanola en el Siglo de P ro (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1 9 7 2 ) , p. 2 7 8 . According to Marti, the works of these theoreticians "forman la triada de tratados literarios de mayor interes en el sigo XVII". See also Jose Rico Verdu, La retorica espanola de los siglos XVI v X V II. (cont. next page)

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portant aesthetic Philosophfa

treatises in

Spain—Alonso Lopez Pinciano’s

antigua po6tica (1596), Francisco Cascales' T a b la s

p o e tic a s (1617), and Jusepe Antonio Gonzalez de Salas' P o e tic a a ris to te lic a

(1633)—reaffirm ed rather than revolutionized

classical literary theory of the

p e r i o d . 25

the

Yet, in the actual real­

ization of the literary act, many renovations and innovations w ere

being

in tr o d u c e d .2 6

The poetic theory underlying the

compositions of Gongora, for example, is based upon the princi­ ples of intensification and elaboration of the expressive modali­ ties inherited from the Renaissance, which not only effect a new

(Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientfficas, 1973); Aldo Scaglione, The classical theory of composition from its ori­ gins to the present (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). 25 See Antonio Vilanova, "Preceptistas del los siglos XVI y XVII," in Historia general de las literaturas h i s p a n ic a s . e d . Guillermo Dfaz-Plaja, introd. Ramon Men6ndez Pidal, 5 Vols. (Barcelona: Editorial Barna, 1953), III, pp. 567-692. 26Bruce W. Wardropper, "Temas y problemas del barroco espanol," in Siglos de Pro: Barroco. pp. 8-9. It is interesting to note here that shortly after the publication of El Pinciano's P h ilo so p h ia. which is in accordance with the Renaissance hierar­ chical division of genres, Lope de Vega published his Arte nnevo de hacer c o m e d ia s (1609). which m odified significantly the Aristotelian principles and would have a profound impact upon subsequent literary production in Spain and Spanish America.

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conception of the poetic construct, but also convey distinct atti­ tudes towards m aterial reality, thereby heightening the spatial and temporal dimensions of the artistic work.27 rence

And the recur­

of certain them atic emphases and "lugares com unes"—

"desengano", "mundo al reves", "pequeno mundo del hombre", theatrum

m undi. "La vida es sueno", etc.—in the literary text of

the Baroque clearly indicates a heightened sensibility to the am­ biguity and ambivalence of both the spatial and temporal dimen­ sions of reality, and a significant m odification in the literary treatment of these concepts, which ranges, as Emilio Orozco Dfaz has put it, from the "nostalgia del parafso perdido hasta la nueva concepcion del espacio y sentido del tiempo como rafz del estilo" 28

2 7According to Damaso Alonso, "La poesia gongorina demuestra aquf . . . lo que constituye su nota constante, desde cualquier punto que se la mire: el ser una exageracion, una intensificacion dinamica, una condensacion cuantitativa de los ele­ mentos renacidos de la tradicion clasica." ("Alusion y elusion en la poesia de Gongora," in Siglos de Pro: Barroco. p. 4 1 1 ) . For Fernando Lazaro Carreter, "Existe, pues, un largo trecho caracterizado por una reelaboracion intensificadora de temas y procedimientos . . ." (Espiritu barroco v personalidad creadora: Gongora. Ouevedo. Lope de Vega [Salamanca: Anaya, 1 9 6 6 ] , pp. 8 6 - 8 7 ) . 28Emilio Orozco Diaz, Temas del Barroco: De poesia v pintura (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1 9 4 7 ) , p. 3 7 .

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The dynamic will to effect changes by means of the poetic word, to realize tranformations and transfigurations within the space of the literary construct, is perhaps the most unique ele­ ment of the "espi'ritu barroco y personalidad characterizes

the

forem ost figures

of the

c re a d o ra "2 9

Spanish

Gongora, Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Calderon.

that

Baroque:

Given the variety

of stylistic and thematic emphases among these writers, many critics agree that it is more suitable to consider the Baroque as an

ensem ble

constitute

an

or

group

artistic

of coetaneous movement

styles

expressing

that conjointly shared

spiritual

preoccupations, rather than attempting to advance the notion of a

single,

uniform

And the two paramount styles

tre n d .3 0

characteristic of the Spanish literary Baroque are conceptism, which essentially concerns the expression of thought by means of "conceptos" or ingenious intellectual conceits, and culteranism, also known as cultism and gongorism, whose primary concern is the creation of a literary space filled with verbal preciosities and a highly poetic vocabulary.3 1 29Lazaro Carreter (1966). 30See Rene Wellek, pp. 69-127; and Frank J. Wamke, V er­ sions of Baroque (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). 31 See Andree Collard, Nueva poesia: Conceptismo. culteranismo en la crftica espanola (M adrid: Editorial Castalia, 1971) on the origins and uses of the word "concepto". It acquired (cont. next page)

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But contrary to the traditional idea that these two baroque styles stand in diametrical opposition ("nada mas opuesto entre si"), it has been argued that culteranism is actually a form of c o n c e p tis m .3 2

W hile each may represent a distinct stylistic

fame as a rhetorical term with the definition that was given by Baltasar Gracian, who along with Quevedo is regarded as the master of conceptism in prose, in his Agudeza v arte de ingenio. 2 vols. (1642; ed. Evaristo Correa Calderon, Madrid: Clasicos Castalia, 1969): "es un acto de entendimiento, que exprime la correspondencia que se halla entre los objetos" (I, p. 55). A c ­ cording to Alexander A. Parker, "Conceptismo y culteranismo," in Siglos de Pro: Barroco (pp. 110) "el procedimiento metaforico caracterfstico de la epoca debe denominarse conceptismo . . . La naturaleza esencial del concepto , en que se basa este estilo, es el establecer una relacion intelectual entre ideas u objetos remotos; remotos por no tener ninguna conexion obvia o por ser en reali­ dad completamente disfmiles (’relaciones ficticias y arbitrarias’, se les suele llamar) . . . [E]l efecto que debe producir un concepto bien ideado es comparable al del relampago en una tempestad nocturna: ilumina con repentina brillantez los objetos que la oscuridad no dejaba distinguir." 3 2 x h e quoted words are from Ramon Menendez Pidal, "Oscuridad, dificultad entre culteranos y conceptistas," R om anische Forschungen. 56 (1942), 211-218. For Lazaro Carreter, cul­ teranism "aparece, pues, como un movimiento radicado en una base conceptista" (Espfritu barroco. p. 59). Alexander A. Parker further elaborates on this point: ”[S]era util emplear la palabra culteranismo para denotar, en primer lugar, la latinizacion del lenguaje (cultismos, hiperbaton, etc.), y en segundo lugar, el empleo de las metaforas genericas tipicamente gongorinas (n i e v e , (cont. next page)

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tendency within the literary text, culteranism

and conceptism

conjoin as constitutive elements of the formal artistic system of se v e n te en th

c e n tu ry

S panish

B aroque

lite ra tu re ,

w hich

outwardly is m ultifaceted and multidirectional, but inwardly op­ erates along the same spiritual and artistic axes. Although the term "baroque" is borrowed from the history of the plastic arts, in its broadest sense it does not denote a spe­ cific artistic style, but rather designates an entire historical pe­ riod, approxim ately the seventeenth century, and accordingly, the diverse

constituent ram ifications—cultural, ideological and

aesthetic—of that historical reality.

In Latin America, for exam­

ple, the Baroque does not manifest itself exclusively in artistic forms, although Hispanoamerican art "es en su porcion mds importante, la expresion mas caracterfstica de lo

b arro co ".

33

This

period is a decisive one in the history of Latin America, particu­ larly with regard to the development and evolution of both ide-

oro, cristal etc.). Aunque estas ultimas se basan, logicamente, en conceptos implfcitos, su empleo sistematico les priva de todo elemento de penetracion intelectual; vienen a ser nada mas que 'bello eufemismo', como ha dicho Damaso Alonso, y constituyen un lenguaje poetico nuevo y culto . . . El culteranismo me parece ser un refinamiento del conceptismo, injiriendo en el la tradicion latinizante." ("Conceptismo y culteranismo", p. 110). 33 Marques de Lozoya, "Arte," in El legado de Espana a A m e ric a , ed. Jose Tudela, 2 vol. (Madrid: Ediciones Pegaso, 1954), II, p. 518.

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ological and artistic expression, for it is in this period that a more authentic means of self-expression is sought through artistic cre­ ativ ity . Es dentro de la corriente barroca hispanica donde el arte de la America espanola deja de cehirse a la interpretacion mas o menos exacta de los temas europeos para encontrar lo que habfa de mas original en el fondo de las culturas primitivas, en el clima y en la naturaleza del mundo nuevo. Si en el gotico y en elRenacimiento el arte americano no es sino un reflejo apagado del peninsular, en el barroco vuela por su cuenta con impulso p r o p i o . 3 4

The Baroque of Latin America traditionally has been char­ acterized in terms of its dependence upon or divergence from the Spanish

B a ro q u e .

35

Mariano Picon Salas, for example, has

compiled a list of those traits considered typical of the Latin 3 4 Marques de Lozoya, p. 574. 3 5 See Em ilio C arilla, La literatura barroca en Hisp a n o a m e ric a (New York: Anaya, 1972), who maintains that the A m erican Baroque was an "arte de blancos” (pp. 35-36); Bernardino Bravo Lira, ed., El Barroco en H ispanoam erica: m anifestaciones v sisnificacion. (Santiago de Chile: Alfabeta Impresores, 1981); Alfredo A. Roggiano, "Acerca de dos barrocos, el de Espana y el de America," in El barroco en America. Actas del XVII congreso del Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoam ericana (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1978), pp. 3 9 -4 7 .

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American, or Colonial, Baroque, which "se basa en complejidad y contradiccion; enrevesamiento y demasfa; patetism o y demasfa, represion y evasion; alegorfas, emblemas, etc.; burla y groserfa (lo bajo y realista de la satira, por ejemplo), frente a la cultura aristocratica y al arte ludico".36

All these characteristics are not

unique representations of the Baroque in Latin America, but rather universal m anifestations of the baroque orientation in artistic expression.

To regard the exuberant, enduring spirit of

the Latin American Baroque as merely a parallel expression of the European phenomenon, however, is to deny it substance, and to

underestim ate

its

complexity,

authenticity

and conviction.

From its very beginnings, Latin American literature has offered a genuinely unique, particularized expression of reality, regardless of the influence, direct or indirect, that Spain and other European countries exerted upon its literary production.

Upon its discov­

ery, America became an polymorphic, illim itable space for the creative imagination of the Renaissance man.

Throughout the

cartas de relacion and the c ro n ic a s. the phenomenal world is at once observed with exceptionally rigorous detail, and perceived and depicted as a veritable earthly paradise, a land of enchant-

3 6 Mariano Picon Salas, De la conquista a la independencia: Tres siglos de historia cultural hispanoam ericana (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1965), pp. 74-75.

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ment and ceaseless wonders that finds its literary counterpart in ancient legends and books of

c h iv a lry

.3 7

Other literary works,

such as the epic poem of Colonial Latin America, similarly dedi­ cate a considerable amount of space to the exaltation and de­ scription of the beauty and marvel of the American landscape and its inhabitants, although in numerous instances such a vision is a m isrepresentation, given the continued dependence upon "topoi" or literary common places, as well as the prevailing ten­ dency to idealize the findings in the New World.

The sixth oc­

tave of the "Canto I" of Alonso de Ercilla y Zufiiga's La Araucana.

3 7 se e Irving Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being an Ac­ count of Books and Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth Century New World (Cambridge: Harvard Uni­ versity Press, 1949); E dm unds O 'G orm an, The Invention of A m erica (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961); Andres Antonio, "El mito de la Edad de Oro en las letras hispanoamericanas del siglo XVI," T hesaurus. 31 (1973), 279-230; Alejandro Cioranescu, "La conquista de America y la novela de caballerfas," Estudios de literatura espanola v comparada (La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna, 1954), pp. 29-54; Stephen Gilman, "Bernal Diaz del Castillo and Amadis de Gaula ," Homenaje a Damaso A lonso (Madrid: Gredos, 1961), II, pp. 99-114; Mario Hernandez Sanchez-Barba, "La influencia de los libros de caballerfas sobre el conquistador," Revista de Estudios Americanos. 19 (1960), 235236; Alberto Sanchez, "Los libros de caballerfas en la conquista de America," Anales C e rv a n tin o s. 7 (1958), 237-260; Rudolph Schevill, "La novela historica, las cronicas de Indias y los libros de caballerfas", Revista de Indias TBogotal. 59-60 (1943), 173196.

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for example, initiates a lengthy description of Chile, the Chilean people and their customs: Chile, fertil provincia y senalada en la region antartica famosa, de remotas naciones respetada por fuerte, principal y poderosa; la gente que produce es tan granada, tan soberbia, gallarda y belicosa, que no ha sido por rey jamas regida ni a extranjero dominio sometida.3 8 And Bernardo de Balbuena’s G randeza

M exicana. while indis­

putably adhering to the European ideal, has been designated, nonetheless, as a kind of poetic topography, for "Balbuena se convierte en el primer cultivador estrictamente literario del exo3 8 Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga, La Araucana. introd. Ofelia Garza de del Castillo, 3rd ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1975), p. 16. Luis Inigo Madrigal points out that this lengthy description "sirve al proposito de informar a los desinformados espanoles sobre esa, en la epoca, casi desconocida region del imperio . . . Ercilla no cantaba tiempos remotos, pero si remotfsimas naciones, y de all! la necesidad ^tediosa? de esas estrofas del Canto I." ("Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga," in Epoca C olonial. Vol. I of Historia de la L iteratu ra H ispanoam ericana. ed. Luis Inigo Madrigal [Madrid: Ediciones Catedra, 1982], pp. 193-194, note 26). Madrigal also indicates that, according to E. R. Curtius (European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask [New York: Harper and Row, 1953]), the practice of beginning a narrative poem with a panegyric of a city or a country had been common since the Middle Ages.

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tismo americano . . ."39

Whereas the chroniclers of the sixteenth

century adjust their vision of America in order to corroborate the classical myths and legends which inspired their adventures in a newly discovered land of mythical proportions, the Hispanoamerican writers and poets of the seventeenth century no longer depend exclusively upon literary topos and mythical an­ tecedents to depict spatial reality.

In the view of Octavio Paz:

La forma abstracta y lfmpida de los primeros poetas novohispanos no toleraba la intrusion de la realidad americana. Pero el barroco abre las puertas al paisaje, a la flora y a la fauna y aun al indio mismo. En casi todos los poetas barrocos se advierte una consciente utilizacion del mundo n a t i v o . 4 0

Another factor that distinguishes the literary production of the Latin American Baroque is the emergence of an authentically American consciousness that gives poetic voice to a quest for lib­ eration and identity. period,

These themes recur throughout the Colonial

finding resonant expression in

a work such

as the

39M arcelino Menendez y Pelayo, Historia de la poesia his­ p a n o am erican a (Madrid: Librerfa General de Victoriano Suarez, 1911), I, pp. 57-58, 4 0 Octavio Paz, "Introduccion a la historia de la poesia mexicana", in Las peras del olmo (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma, 1965), p. 12.

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Comentarios reales^ 1 of El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Yet it is in the literary mechanism of the Baroque that they encounter a far more dynamic and mobile means of representation. The Renaissance ideal of spatial harmony and uniformity, based upon a relationship of equipollence between man and his environment, gives way in the literary Baroque of Latin America to a more dynamic conception of space which is increasingly per­ ceived as a vital, interacting force in a dialectical relationship with man.

The tendency toward a predominantly planimetric

arrangement of spatial relationships within the literary construct is replaced by the organizational principles of correspondence and recurrence that contribute to the rendering of space in depth and in

p lu rid im e n s io n a lity .4 2

The intensification of the system

41 El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales (Mexico: Espasa Calpe Mexicana, 1983). As the first great mestizo inter­ preter of pre-Columbian reality in Peru, el Inca strives to rescue his people from the stigma of barbarism and inferiority, liberat­ ing the Incan culture from the depths of oblivion to which it had been relegated by many European historiographers. 42oam aso Alonso asserts that the literary expression of the sixteenth century is characterized by general linguistic dualities and a fundamentally binary movement, indicative of a balanced, harmonious conceptualization of reality, whereas in the seven­ teenth century, pluralities and other stylistic complications—par­ allelism s, correspondences, incremental orderings, multiple rea­ sonings, etc.—serve to establish order in a "mundo en frenesi". ( Seis calas en la expresion literaria espanola [Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1970], pp. 32-39) (cont. next page)

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of perspective, proportions and tectonics that underlies the liter­ ary work of the Renaissance serves to heighten the spatial di­ mension of the Baroque literary construct which, responding to an internally organized logic, attempts to transgress the immedi­ ately visible and penetrate to more profound depths. According to Irving Leonard, the Baroque in Latin America is particularly noteworthy for its tenaciousness and exuberant endurance.

As he indicates: It is not easy to penetrate the inner reality of an era whose anachronistic spirit deliberately strove to con­ ceal substance behind the elaborate facade of intri­ cately ornate design . . . This inwardly pulsating and externally inactive stage of historical evolution in New Spain or Old Mexico is conveniently call the Baroque Age . . . [L]ike the motifs of a contemporary sculptured retable, the life and culture of Old Mexico present an elaborate pattern of "whorls w ithin whorls» and the whole cannot be c o m p r e h e n d e d . " 4 3

In

order to comprehend

the complex

nature

of Latin

American baroque poetry, it is necessary to look beyond the surface textures of the excessive ornamentation on the facade of the poetic edifice, discovering in the intricate filigree designs a singularly private imagistic system that reveals an attempt by

4 3 Irving A. Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico (A n n Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), p. viii.

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the artist to reestablish order in an apparently chaotic world, and create harmony in an incoherent, seemingly disjointed uni­ verse.

The increasingly composite, paradoxical nature of the

re­

ality (sociopolitical, religious, economic, etc.) that corresponds to the seventeenth century in Mexico, for example, generates a pervasive ambiguity that is translated into byzantine configura­ tions, such as Sor Juana’s El su e n o .

The deliberate attempt to

create obscurity, indeterminacy, and ambiguity in this baroque poem is indeed reflective of the trend away, from a clearly delin­ eated, ideal normative conception of the universe toward a more inclusive, comprehensive vision of reality that entails, sim ulta­ neously, a more lyrical rendering of the subjective landscape within the inner world of the artist. In the Baroque period the essential elements of Renais­ sance art acquire a heightened accentuation, assuming an un­ precedented dynamic and dramatic character. piring

to evoke a merely form al

Rather than as­

or aesthetic response,

the

baroque writer aims to engage the reader and provoke a total human response, at once religious, philosophical and emotional. Reflecting the objectives of rhetoric, the skilled

baroque artist,

such as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, seeks both to delight with po­ etic and rhetorical wizardry, and to teach and move the reader to criticize and question.

Through the combining of intellectual

force with imaginative persuasion, Sor Juana creates a literary space that resounds

with

the harm onious

blending

of logic,

rhetoric and poetics, and she succeeds not only in equalling her

31

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contemporaries, but, indeed, surpassing them in the creation of a profoundly symbolic poetic work that reflects the subtleties and complexities of both the microcosm and the macrocosm. Characteristic of the baroque poet is Sor Juana's conscious, willful intent to integrate into the poematic construct all the di­ mensions and

subtleties of space.By endeavoring to possess

space and all its physical properties through

total com prehen­

sion, in one way or another Sor Juana surrenders herself to it; by investigating it and exploring it, she allows herself to be domi­ nated by it.

For the relationship between man and space has

traditionally been one of either harmony or conflict, but rarely ever one of indifference. Space, consequently, determines being and beings, in the sense that the growth and development of these are contingent upon their ability to adapt to the sur­ rounding physical environs.

Nonetheless, the complex interac­

tion o f the individual with external phenomena and influences, the receiving

and

deciphering of the signals and information

transmitted, is

not merely a means

sure of creative capacity. but

the

aggregate

of survival,

but also a mea­

According to Salinas, poetry is nothing

of relations

between

external rea lity —the

usual and ordinary reality of the outside world—and psychologi­ cal reality, or the

p o e tic

s o u l.4 4

And characteristic of the

baroque creative imagination is the obstinant will to reshape the 4 4 pedro Salinas, Reality and the Poet in Spanish (Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1 9 4 0 ) , p. 4 .

Poetry

3 2

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human universe by means of symbolic thought, to ignore time and geographic boundaries and thereby discover and conquer new frontiers in the realm of literary creation. The baroque poem functions as a sort of magnetic force, drawing together and uniting in the poetic act phenomena which are

apparently

rhythm.

contradictory,

but

have

the

same

essential

These rhythmic modes allow for the establishment of

associative relationships between elements pertaining to distinct spatio-tem poral spheres, through

the formal expression

of a

fluid, dynamic movement which results from the vitality inher­ ent in those elements.

The baroque poet characteristically pos­

sesses the capacity to perceive the subtle bonds, the correspon­ dences that unite the many diverse phenomena in the universe, and the ability to hear the secret voices with which words from distinct worlds communciate

with one another.

One of the dis­

tinctive traits of the baroque poet is this creative power to con­ stellate semantically remote and counterposed elements, fusing them into radiant images that illuminate the coexistent and co­ extensive spaces of the poetic construct.

And it is precisely

through this latent dynamism that the baroque poem El sueno transports the reader to the domain of the imaginary, to the cosmic realm of the infinite, where one is free to experience the intensity and depth of the immanent and the intimate, and visu­ alize the invisible.

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Rather than attempting to recreate a verisimilar, static and symmetrical reproduction of reality, as was the aesthetic objec­ tive in the Renaissance, the author of El sueno reveals a fascina­ tion with optical, illusory effects that allude to the multivalent, multifaceted and mobile nature of seventeenth century reality. The baroque form of this poetic construct is unquestionably dy­ namic; it reflects the endeavors of the poet to create an indeter­ minate mobility which no longer corresponds to the realm of the tangibly experiential or the definitively essential, so characteris­ tic of the classical Renaissance period.

As the following study

will reveal, this poem represents the shift in emphasis in the artistic text from a unilateral conception of the essential nature of the observed reality, to a decisively open, fluid perspectivism that bestows upon the text its characteristic suggestiveness and dynamism.

The recurrent allusions to m ultiple, coextensive

spaces within the text heighten the notion of space as progres­ sively expansive and dynamically polyvalent, and consequently contribute to the creation of a fundamentally spatial form which is the hallmark of the artistic work of the Baroque.

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CHAPTER TWO

THE NOTION AND FUNCTION OF SPATIALITY IN SOR JUANA'S "EL SIJENO"

"Of all metaphors, those pertaining to height, ascent, depth and fall are exceptionally axiomatic. Nothing can explain them but they can explain everything." (Gaston Bachelard, L'Air et les songesl*

The notion of spatiality occupies a place of fundamental importance in many of the literary creations of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.

The spatialization of both form and content in her poetic

work assists in rendering visible the intangible complexities and mysteries underlying the whole of creation, and reveals in the

* G aston B achelard, L'A ir et les songes: Essai sur l'imagination du mouvement (Paris: Libraire Jose Corti, 1943) p. 18; original in French: "[D]e toutes les metaphores, les metaphores de la hauteur, de l'elevation, de la profondeur, de l’abaissem ent, de la chute sont par excellence des metaphores axiomatiques. Rien ne les explique et elles expliquent tout."

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real world a hidden order, a harmonious system of correspon­ dences that is latent in it and can be realized most efficaciously through the poetic, imaginative, imagistic word which serves to signify other realities.

Her relentless search for the most pro­

found expression of reality, and ultimately of the eternal, uni­ versal truths, is manifested in the incorporation into her works of terms and techniques borrowed from the plastic arts—color, form, dimension, perspective, etc.—all of which enhance visual­ ization.

The terminology that is employed, for example, in the

analogy drawn in El suefio between the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the reflective, creative capacity of the Imagination, is pre­ cisely that which pertains to the realm of the plastic, spatial art of painting: asi ella, sosegada, iba copiando las imagenes todas de las cosas, y el pincel invisible iba formando de mentales, sin luz, siempre vistosas colores, las figuras no solo ya de todas las criaturas sublunares, mas aun tambien de aquellas que intelectuales claras son Estrellas, y en el modo posible que concebirse puede lo invisible, en si, manosa, las representaba y al alma las mostraba (vv. 280-291)2 ^Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras com pletas. ed., introd. and notes Alfonso Mendez Plancarte (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1952) Vol. I, p. 342. As a general rule, subsequent

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It is, nonetheless, the predominance of aerial and dynamic vertical imagery in El sueno that best characterizes the spatial orientation of Sor Juana's poetic imagination, as this critical ex­ amination of her poetic text aspires to reveal.

These images,

manifestations of a dynamic will to act on or within a physically spatial reality, allow the reader to examine the continuum of the imagination of this Baroque poetess as it progresses from the real to the imaginary.

By bridging the gap. between the objective

reality of the universe, and the interior, subjective reality of the poetess' imaginative universe, these images afford the reader ac­ cess to the innermost creative processes of the poet and ulti­ mately reveal the essentially aerial, ascensional nature of Sor Juana's most accomplished poetic text. The consciously spatial awareness manifested in El sueno is operative on all levels of the poetic text: the thematic and the structural.

the linguistic/stylistic,

Principally, it pervades the

formal, objective aspect of the composition, endowing it with a characteristic and fundamental spatial orientation that conditions and shapes it, and ultimately gives it its definitive configuration. Spatial form further implicates, however, all of those subjective processes that are related to aesthetic perception, receptivity

references to the poetic text El sueno will be indicated by verse number(s) immediately following the citation and will be to this edition.

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and reader response.

The self-reflexive nature and the very

inter-referentiality of

the metaphorical images and the m ytho­

logical

allusions within El sueno amplify and heighten

mordial spatial dimension of the text.

the pri­

As with many literary

works of the Baroque, there is in Sor Juana's poem a conscien­ tious employment of a systematic code of interdependent signs, denoting other realities, which, in turn, must be deciphered by the reader.

The reader or receptor, therefore, plays a crucial role

in the mentally visual reconstruction of this poetic text charac­ terized

by its constellation of meanings, its amplification of ref­

erents,

its proliferation of ambivalences, all of which constitute

the essence of the belletristic artifice of the Baroque. The specific intent of this study is to realize a systematic description of the literary space in Sor Juana's most celebrated poetic

composition, El sueno. thereby establishing the

textual

evidence necessary to illustrate the intrinsically spatial orienta­ tion characteristic of the literary text designated as "baroque". Just as W olfflin concentrates essentially and emphatically upon the spatial dimension of Baroque arquitecture in an attempt to broaden and enhance

the understanding of this artistic

style, I

would hope to advance the argument for a fundamentally spatial reading of the poetic construct of the Baroque, as it manifests it­ self in this poem, given the consciousness of spatiality operative on the distinct levels—thematic, structural and stylistic—of this text.

It is also hoped that the attempt to define Sor Juana's rela­

tionship to the world

and her perception of the notions

of time

3 8

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and space in relationship to the individual will contribute to a greater understanding of her consciousness, and of the dynamic process of artistic creation at work within the quintessentially «baroque» construct that is El sueno. The spatial consciousness that pervades the poem is largely the

resu lt

of

Sor

Juana's

natural

inquisitiveness.

In

the

"Respuesta" she defends herself by attributing her zeal and pas­ sion for learning and for literature to the "natural inclination" that compels her to discover the systems of correspondences and analogies linking together all orders of reality.

She justifies her

continuous study of diverse topics and subjects on the grounds th a t . . . se ayudan dando luz y abriendo camino las unas para las otras, por variaciones y ocultos engarces— que para esta cadena universal les puso la sabiduna de su Autor--, de manera que parece se corresponden y estan unidas con adm irable trabazon y concierto.^

Even when her books were taken from her, she says, " . . . [yo] estudiaba en todas las cosas que Dios crio, sirviendome ellas de letras, y de libro toda esta maquina universal.

Nada vefa sin

refleja; nada oia sin consideration, aun en las cosas mas menudas

3

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. IV, p.

4 5 0 .

3 9

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y materiales . . .

The enigmas and complexities of physical re­

ality intrigue her as much as do the inexplicable mysteries of the spiritual, metaphysical realm.

However, the difficulty of appre­

hending space in all its abstract complexity does not prevent her from attem pting to incorporate it, along with its characteristic m ultivalence and m ultidim ensionality, into the domain of her intellectual acquisitions.

On the contrary, her intellectual curios­

ity impels her to strive for a more immediate and intimate knowledge of space in all its physical and transcendental m ani­ festations.

Everything that is observed, from children's games to

culinary phenomena, is conceived in its spatial dimension, ac­ quiring a geometric configuration in which the m ost esoteric philosophical and divine secrets are manifested: Estaban en mi presencia dos ninas jugando con un trompo, y apenas yo vi el movimiento y la figura, cuando empece, con esta mi locura, a considerar el facil moto de la forma esferica, . . . y no contenta con esto, hice traer harina y cernerla para que, en bailando el trompo encima, se conociese si eran cfrculos perfectos o no los que describfa con su movimiento; y halle que no eran sino unas lfneas espirales que iban perdiendo lo circular cuanto se iba remitiendo el impulso. Jugaban otras a los alfileres . . . yo me llegaba a contemplar las figuras que formaban; y viendo que acaso se pusieron tres en triangulo, me ponia a en^Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. IV, p.

4 5 8 .

4 0

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lazar uno en otro, acordandome de que aquella era la figura que tenia el misterioso anillo de Salomon, en que habi'a representaciones de la Santfsima Trinidad . 5

As the above passage from the R e sp u e sta might indicate, geometric forms are almost an obsession, and indeed figure ex­ tensively throughout the work of this seventeenth century Mexi­ can poetess.

While her literary creations are fundamentally the

expression of an authentic creative process that is realized by means of

an open system of images, these texts also implicate

another creative ual:

power possessed by

this highly gifted individ­

a process of creativity leading not only to scientific and ob­

jective knowledge, but ultimately and most importantly, to the revelation of the highest spiritual principles, through the investi­ gation and comprehension of mathematical and physically spatial realities: Con esto proseguf, dirigiendo siempre, como he dicho, los pasos de mi estudio a la cumbre de la Sagrada Teologxa; pareciendome preciso, para llegar a ella, subir por los escalones de las ciencias y artes humanas; porque ^corno entendera el estilo de la Reina de las Ciencias quien aun no sabe el de las ancilas? . . . iComo sin Ffsica, tantas cuestiones naturales de las naturalezas de los animales de los sacrificios, donde ~*Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. IV, p.

4 5 9 .

4 1

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se simbolizan tantas cosas ya declaradas, y otras muchas que hay? . . . ^Como sin Geometria se podran medir el Area Santa del Testamento y la ciudad Santa de Jerusalen, cuyas misteriosas mensuras hacen un cubo con todas sus dimensiones, y aquel repartamiento proporcional de todas sus partes tan maravilloso?^

Her obsession with the observation and investigation of both physical and metaphysical realities conditions her appre­ hension of physical space--its functions and properties—and con­ sequently compels her to amplify the spatial dimension of the literary text in an effort to encompass the totality of reality evoked in the poematic space: Si veia una figura, estaba combinando la proporcion de sus lfneas y mediandola con el entendimiento y reduciendola a otras diferentes . . . y es de tal manera esta naturaleza o costumbre, que nada veo sin segunda consideracion.^

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. IV, pp.

4 4 7 - 4 4 8 .

7

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. IV, p.

4 5 8 .

4 2

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Unforgettable are the amorous triangles that have been o

embodied in sonnet form

and the pyramidal forms of El sueno.

both illustrations of the abstract, geometric configurations that are protracted in her literary creations,

serving to designate

higher levels of reality, m etaphysical and spiritual principles. Indeed, the formal and stylistic symmetries that underlie the poem —a m ere

"papelillo",

purportedly the only com position o which she wrote for her pleasure —truly achieve a perfection that is singular within the poetic canon o f . the Spanish Baroque. But of all the images that are chosen to amplify the poetic idea, it is those

that are unquestionably

spatial in

orientation—those

that accentuate the dramatic aerial and ascensional character of the poem—that are genuinely capable of integrating heaven and earth, dreams and reality, and that most adequately afford the poet the lyrical expression of human subjectivity within the poematic space by means of dialectical tensions and thematic vari­ ations.

Q

The celebrated "encontradas correspondencias" are found in such sonnets as "Que no me quiera Fabio, al verse amado" (#166, Obras completas. Vol. I, p. 288), "Feliciano me adora y le aborrezco" (#167, Obras completas. Vol. I, p. 288) and "Al que ingrato me deja, busco amante" (#168, Obras com pletas. Vol. I, p. 289). ^Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. IV, p.

471.

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Like her predecessor Gongora, Sor Juana is an enthusiast of the material world.

Nonetheless, as Octavio Paz demonstrates,

El mundo de Gongora es un espacio henchido de co­ lores, formas, individuos y objetos particulares; las dos "Soledades" son dos silvas descriptivas: el mar y el campo, sus trabajos y sus fiestas. "Primero sueno" tambien es una silva pero no es una description sino un discurso y su tema es abstracto; . . . En Gongora triunfa la luz: hasta la tiniebla, resplandece; en Sor Juana hay penumbra: prevalecen el bianco y el ne­ gro. En lugar de la profusion de objetos y formas de las "Soledades", el mundo deshabitado de los espacios celestes. La naturaleza—mar, monte, rfo, arboles, bestias—desaparece, transform ada en figuras geometricas:

piramides, torres, obeliscos.*®

The poetry of Gongora, like that of many of his contempo­ raries, is grounded in physical reality.

However, because of the

urgent need to examine those material realities from various distinct perspectives, the baroque poet departs from a strictly mimetic portrayal of reality and employs techniques such as pe­ riphrasis and metaphor which enable him to establish relation­ ships between heterogeneous, often incongruous, physical ob­ jects, exhausting all descriptive possibilities in an attempt to as­ tonish the reader through the revelation of the multiple implica-

Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz o Las trampas de la fe (Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, 1982), p. 470.

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tions of spatial reality.

According to Pedro Salinas, the poetic in­

sufficiency of material reality compels the Baroque poet to seek to transform it, elevate it above its natural forms, and transmute it into another kind of aesthetic—more plastic and sonorous-reality; through the magical power of metaphor and image, the poet operates on material reality with the intention of intensi­ fying its characteristics to the extreme.* *

The employment of

such rhetorical devices as "antithesis" (the balancing of parallel words

or

w ord

groups

that

convey

opposing

ideas)

and

"oxymoron" (the juxtaposition of words of opposite meaning) serves to amplify and multiply the reality or realities of the poematic

space, and to mirror the paradoxical nature of physical

reality

in the seventeenth century in all its complexity and am­

bivalence.

In the words of Hauser, the seventeenth century

work of art depends on the defiance of the instinctual, the naively natural and rational, and the emphasis laid on the obscure, the problematical, and the ambigu­ ous, the incomplete nature of the manifest which points to its opposite, the latent, the missing link in the chain . . . Paradox in general implies a linking of irreconcilables, and discordia concors , the label ap­ plied to mannerism, undoubtedly reflects an essential element in it. It would, however, be superficial to regard the conflicting elements that make up a work

** Pedro Salinas, pp. 139-140.

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of mannerist art as mere play with form. The conflict expresses the conflict of life itself and the ambiva­ lence that underlies the whole of the mannerist out­ look. This is based, not merely on the conflicting nature of occasional experience, but on the perma­ nent ambiguity of all things, great and small, and on the im possibility of attaining certainty about any­ thing. All the products of the mind must therefore show that we live in a world of irreducible tension and mutually exclusive and yet inter-connected opposities . . . Everything is expressed in extremes op­ posed to other extremes, and i t . is only by this para­ doxical pairing of opposites that meaningful state­ ment is possible.^ 2 The imagination of the baroque poet reaches beyond the phenomenal world, given that the examples afforded by reality as certitudes, are, in fact, only appearances.

It magnifies and

deepens material reality; it gathers the whole world into a sim­ ple image in an attempt to more properly and adequately fuse emotion and symbol.

In the baroque exuberance of El sueno. the

traditional descriptive patterns so highly esteemed in the Re­ naissance—those "cro n o g ra p h ia

"loci descriptio" 1^

such

as

"topographia"

—are replaced by another aesthetic ideal:

and that

l^H auser, p. 13. 1 O

Heinrich Lausberg, Elementos de retorica literaria. trans. Mariano Marin Casero (Madrid: Gredos, 1975; Munich: Verlag, 1963), p. 180.

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of the graphic expression of the poematic space not as a lineal, bidimensional, orthogonal construct but rather as a geometrically open, dynamic and polymorphic configuration that tends toward the dissolution of form. But whereas the baroque poet seeks to exalt and transform reality, often replacing it with an elaborate ideality, Sor Juana’s objective in El sueno is to transgress the material world, etherealize it, internalize it, thereby rendering the poematic landscape apprehensible only by the enlightened eyes of the intellect.

Her

principal concern is not with the glorification of external reali­ ties, but rather with an inner essence that, like herself, is in a process of development.

Whereas the baroque poet responds to

novelty and variety, associating colors and forms, and moving in the direction of more superficial transformations, the imagining forces of Sor Juana's spirit are guided by the search for that which is essential and eternal.

Accordingly, the images that re­

cur in her poetic text are those that have weight and perdurability, echoing and reverberating in the minds of countless succes­ sive readers. For purposes of our analysis of El sueno. a precise defini­ tion of the term "baroque" is really of no great importance.

What

is of interest, however, and pertains to the overall significance of the poem in terms of its structure, its thematic cohesiveness and its essentially spatial form, is the emphasis on excess, eccentric­ ity and extravagance that is characteristically baroque.

In the

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initial reference to Icarus in the poem (vv. 466-467), Sor Juana appears to censure the mythological son of Daedalus, for not having heeded the advice of his father,

the architect of the

labyrinth for the Minotaur in Crete who devised wings of wax for his and his son’s escape from that same labyrinth, where they had been imprisoned by King Minos.

Enthralled with the newly

acquired power that the wings afforded him,

Icarus dared to fly

too high and far too close to the sun, an act that resulted in his precipitate fall into the sea.

As with Phaethon, another mytho­

logical figure that has traditionally symbolized blind ambition and obstinacy, it is not the danger of erring that is the principal theme, but rather the exemplary effort to exceed and elevate oneself to the heights of eternal fame and glory: al animo arrogante que, el vivir despreciando, determina su nombre eternizar en su ruina. Tipo es, antes, modelo: ejem plar pernicioso que alas engendra a repetido vuelo, del animo ambicioso que —del mismo terror haciendo halago que al valor lisonjea—, las glorias deletrea entre los caracteres del estrago. (vv.

800-810)

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The baroque philosophy of the imagination, then, as it is manifested

in El sueno. links beauty to the notion of excess, and

to a willful attempt to transgress the arbitrary boundaries that lim it the potentialities of unrestrained expansion.

Sor Juana's

choice of the mythological figure of Phaethon and that of the ea­ gle

as m ost representative

of the poem’s protagonistic

soul

clearly indicates that within the confines of the baroque mental­ ity, it is human imprudence that is beautiful, for the individual truly realizes himself only by reaching above and beyond him­ self. 14 W ith the publication of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's aes­ thetic treatise L aokoon in the mid-eighteenth century, a decisive distinction was made between the temporal arts (music, dance and literature) and the spatial arts (painting, sculpture and ar­ chitecture), the former being based upon consecutiveness in time and the latter on coexistence in space.

Nonetheless, the relation­

ship between literature and the spatial arts has been recognized since Plato and Aristotle, and particularly since Horace uttered the phrase ut pictura poesis which would categorically become the justification

for the parallelism between the Sister Arts,

l^ S e e Georgina Sabat de Rivers, El Sueno de Sor Juana: tradiciones literarias v originalidad (London: Tamesis Books, 1977), pp. 91-96.

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painting and poetry.*^ and

literary

critics

Throughout the centuries many writers

have

recognized

that

numerous

literary

techniques are indeed borrowed directly from the spatial arts. In his work on Baroque lyricism in Germany, for example, Andre Moret asserts that "it is legitimate to transpose the artistic notion of the baroque to literary terrain.

These two fields offer

remarkable parallelism from various points of view."* ^ During the period in which Sor Juana was writing, rhetoric was a universally recognized and respected science, and was studied in nearly all disciplines.

In the "Respuesta", Sor Juana

sings the praises of the art of rhetoric for having aided her in the comprehension of the Sacred Scripture:

"^Como sin Retorica en-

* ^ In the words of Plato, "The poet is like a painter" (R epublic, trans. Paul Shorey, London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1959). According to Aristotle, "The plot, then, is the first essen­ tial of tragedy . . . and character takes the second place. It is much the same in painting; for if an artist were to daub his can­ vas with the most beautiful colors laid at random, he would not give the same pleasure as he would by drawing a recognizable portrait in black and white." (P o e tic s, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1977). The phrase is found in the Ars Poetica. trans. H. R. Fairclough (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1977). Andre Moret, El lirismo barroco en Alemania (Madrid: G redos,1968).

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tenderia sus figuras, tropos y locuciones?"

17

Among the princi­

pal objectives of seventeenth century literary composition which, like theological indoctrination, was dependent upon the rhetori­ cal theory and practice prevailing at the time, was the generation of an iconic literary art in which the silent forms of the written art work could find a voice and speak.

Figurative "seeing", as a

metaphor for understanding, was best achieved through the em­ ployment of those tropes or images which, are imbued with the powerful properties of the natural world: Saint Augustine, for example,

light, color, space.

For

the spontaneous and dynamic

movement of the spirit found its visual parallel in fire.

18

And

for St. Thomas Aquinas, c 1aritas—illum ination or lum inousness— was one of the basic qualities of beauty, and was inspired not only by the Platonic analogy between light and beauty, but also from the religious view that God is Light and that all Truth is

17

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. IV, p.

447. 1 O

Augustine, C o n fessio n s (13.9.), "Inardescimus et imus" ("We are inflamed and we go") as cited in Aiden Nichols, O.P., The Art of God Incarnate: Theology and Image in Christian Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981), p. 66.

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L ig h t.

19

The powerful stimulus of visual objects and images for

concentrated meditation, as Saint Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Ex­ e rc ise s so convincingly

d e m o n s tra te ^ ,

further strengthened the

relation of texts to images by which the one illuminates the other.

And in the poetic text of El sueno. there is an intimate

relationship between pictorial visualization and the total poetic structure in the preference for those images of a visually graphic yet oneiric elasticity whose aerial, ascensional nature serves to heighten, amplify, and clarify the landscape and inner reality of the poem.

^ S a in t Thomas Aquinas, Summa T h e o lo g ic a . Ed. and tr. Fathers of the English Dom inican Providence (New York: Benzinger Brothers, Inc., 1947), 39.8; and John 1: 1-15. 2 0 los Ejercicios de San Ignacio a la luz del Vaticano II. ed. Pedro Arrupe (Madrid: La Editorial Catolica, 1968), pp. 425-426: "La funcion, por tanto, de la contemplacion . . . es producir algo dindmico en el presente y capaz de desarrollar su dinamica trascendente en el futuro." Severo Sarduy insists upon the iden­ tification of the European Baroque with the Counter-Reformation, and specifically with the Jesuit order: "Cifrado, pues, en barroco, el metodo, el modo, pero tambien la vocacion primera de este estilo, que no por azar ha podido relacionarse con la expansion jesuftica: la pedagogfa, la expresion energica que no solo da a ver, sino que 'pone las cosas frente a los ojos'." (B arroco [Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1974], p. 17).

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"Ecphrasis", described by Jean Hagstrum as a set descrip­ tion intended to bring person, place and picture vividly before the eye, aims at giving voice and language to the otherwise mute art

o b je c t^ l,

and at achieving "enargeia", or the attainment in

verbal discourse of verisimilitude of a natural quality, or of a 22 pictorial quality that is highly natural. Regarded by Lausberg as a rhetorical figure of "accumulatio", during the Middle Ages "ecphrasis" was primarily an ornamental digression that, along with the essential features of "descriptio" (color, form, etc.), served to induce particular

v i s u a l i z a t i o n . 23

attention

was

given

in subsequent literary periods, to

the rhetorical

devices

of

"accumulatio" and "amplificatio", as well as "evidentia", with its equally descriptive and demonstrative purpose, which consists in the accumulation of vivid, concrete details aimed at making the argument visible, and consequently more intelligible and con­ vincing to the

r e a d e r .2

4

21 Hagstrum, The Sister Arts , p. 18 (note 34). 2 2 Ibid., p. 12. 23Lausberg, pp. 179-180. 2 4 The concept of poetry as a persuasive, practical art is derived, in part, from the teachings of Cicero, who declared that the source of all good writing is "to know" (sapere ). And knowl­ edge is furthered through the employment of those rhetorical

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W hat

m ust

be

noted,

however,

is

that

with

baroque

rhetoric, these devices acquire an unprecedented autonomy, and impart an increasing consciousness of the spatial dimension of the literary text.

Rather then merely serving as ornaments to

the belletristic edifice, they often constitute the structural and them atic

foundations

erected,

and

provide

poematic space.

upon

which

the

means

the poetic by

which

construction to

am plify

is the

In El sueno. for example, it is the notions of

recurrence and amplification that are the fundamental organiza­ tional principles in the text, and whose function is to dynamize the poem's central images, thereby contributing to the spatialization of form and content. In the earliest of Spanish literary texts one can find an overriding tendency to allegorize space, such as in the works of Berceo and countless other medieval texts that employ certain devices which dynamize the argument, as indicated in the fol­ lowing passage from Ad H erennium (trans. Harry Caplan [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977], IV [LV, 68] pp. 405-409), a work ascribed to Cicero: "It is Ocular Demon­ stration when an event is so described in words that the busi­ ness seems to be enacted and the subject to pass vividly before our eyes. This we can effect by including what has preceded, follow ed, and accompanied the event itself, or by keeping steadily to its consequences or the attendant circumstances . . . Through this kind of narrative Ocular Demonstration is very useful in amplifying a matter and basing on it an appeal to pity, for it sets forth the whole incident and virtually brings it before our eyes."

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images and symbols as a means of illustrating, and thereby re­ vealing, the transcendent truths inaccessible to Man.

In the

cultural and literary periods following the Middle Ages in Spain, the principal aim of incorporating iconic imagery into literary compositions was precisely to enable the reader to visualize and puzzle

out a hypothetical interpretation of the text, in addition to

aiding

in the objectification of feeling, mood and emotions.

Throughout the Renaissance, space comes to be immortalized in such "common-places" or lugares com unes. as the bucolic garden of Garcilaso or the starry night sky of Fray Luis de Leon, which present man in a perfectly ordered harmony with his natural surroundings.

The poetic attitude during the Renaissance toward

material reality is either that of idealization, or that of the spiri­ tual flight of the mystics attempting

to flee from the material

realm;

a conscious effort on the

and in both instances there is

part of the poet to create a more sublime, ethereal space by means of the literary act. As Pedro Salinas observes, in the poetic space of the Baroque, reality is not merely a point of departure that is tran25 scended in order to attain higher conceptions. Given its foun­ dation upon material reality, the poetic construct of the Baroque is generally associated with physical sumptuousness and an em ­ phasis on corporeality.

Nonetheless, physically spatial and tem ­

poral reality often becomes simply the platform upon which an­ ^ S a lin a s, p. 139.

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other more complicated and multivalent reality is constructed, a network of relations which serves to connect the described real­ ity with other peripheral realities based upon those poetic corre­ spondences perceived by the Baroque poet as similes or as m etap h o rs. As the poetic construct evolves over time, one encounters an increasingly intimate relationship between iconic or pictorial visualization and total poetic structure.

The very notions of spa-

tiality and spatial form with regard to literary analysis, however, have attained full consideration only with the publication in 1945 of Joseph Frank's pivotal article "Spatial Form in Modern L ite r a tu r e "

9 f*

which, in turn, generated a number of critical

studies on the spatial aspect of the

t e x t . 27

According to Frank,

when the inherent consecutiveness in language is undermined through

the

suppression

of causal/tem poral connectives—those

9 fi

Joseph Frank, "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," T h e Sewanee R e v ie w . No. 13 (1945), pp. 47-62; rpt. in his T h e W idening Gvre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), pp. 18-35. 27 Among the preeminent works on this topic are Maurice Blanchot, L 'espace litteraire (Paris: Gallimard, 1955); Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space trans. Maria Jolas (Paris, 1964; Boston: Beacon Press, 1969); Edgar Moutsopoulos, La conciencie de l’espace (A ix-en-Provence: Editions Ophrys, 1977); and Gerard Genette, "La litterature et l’espace" in his Figures II. (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), pp. 57-74.

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words and words groups by which a literary work is tied to ex­ ternal reality

and to the tradition of m im esis—the reader is

forced to perceive the elements of the literary composition not as unrolling in time but as juxtaposed in space, and the full signifi­ cance of the work is given only by the reflexive relations among 28 the various units of meaning. Frank also finds a striking anal­ ogy between Proust's narrative method and the Im pressionist p a in ters: The Impressionist painters juxtaposed pure tones on the canvas, instead of mixing them on the palette, in order to leave the blending of colors to the eye of the spectator. Similarly, Proust gives us what might be called pure views of his characters—views of them "motionless in a moment of vision" in various phases of their lives—and allows the sensibility of the reader to fuse these views into a unity. Each view must be apprehended by the reader as a unit; and Proust's purpose is achieved only when these units of mean­ ing are referred to each other reflexively in a mo29 ment of time.

What is of critical consequence here is not solely the im­ plied parallel between painting and literature, but more

impor­

tantly, the emphasis on the simultaneous and reflexive nature of

2 ^Frank, p. 10. 2 ^Ibid., p. 25.

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the literary text, and the significant role of the reader in the re­ construction of the text in an attempt to grasp the totality of the meaning.

The poetic work of the Baroque, and accordingly

Sor

Juana's El sueno. must be viewed as an organic, functional whole whose reality is created by and dependent upon its primordial systemic unity, which is derived from the meaningful relation­ ships of its constituent elements, which are, in turn, integrally connected by means of an intricate and involved system of cor­ relations, comparisons and contrasts.

While this complex chain

or web of meanings is undeniably revealed to the reader in tem­ poral succession, given the inherent nature of language as a car­ rier of messages imbued with significance, the poetic construct is also realized in space, in that it requires that the reader con­ stantly return to and reconsider, simultaneously rather than in diachronic succession, the poem's structural elements and images in an attempt to disclose previously concealed or obscure mean­ ings. Here and elsewhere within this study, the phrase «spatial form» refers to the formal considerations and the artistic ren­ dering of space on all levels of the literary work.

Bearing in

mind Frank's basic conception of the notion, the term can be ap­ plied to the poetic text of the Baroque, and in particular, to E l su en o . which essentially can be defined in terms of a whole po­ etics of spatial consciousness.

The appeal to the spatial dimen­

sion of reality is constant throughout this text and takes on dif­ ferent forms as the poetess delineates, or gives poetic configura-

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tion to, the infinite relationships that exist between man and space.

The most obvious are the direct references to the visual,

in the celebration, for example, of architectural marvels (the pyramids, the Tower of Babel, etc.) and natural phenomena (the sun, the rose, etc.), and also in the recurrence of verbal construc­ tions that emphasize ocular activity.

Spatial form further entails

the thematization of space, the formal treatment of space as a metaphorical image, a verbal icon, and can be observed in the abundance of images of verticality, in particular, those of an aerial, ascensional nature, whose function is to amplify and dy­ namize the poetic space, thereby revealing the hidden corre­ spondences in the universe, and rendering them visible to the eyes of the intellect.

As an integral component of the literary

text, space is invested with literal and symbolic value in E 1 su en o . serving both geographical (topographical)

and symbolic

ends; hence, the repeated association within the text of some spaces with specific place symbolism:

the mountain as repre­

sentative of trials and aspirations, for example, symbolically af­ fording a passage from one mode of existence to another, and the road or path (suggested throughout the poem), as signifying epic adventure and change.

The notion of spatial form within the po­

etic text of Sor Juana also refers to the architectural or structural phenomena (parallelism s, juxtapositions, etc.) that expand the parameters of the poetic construct through the creation of pat­ terns of repetition that serve to echo rhythmically the poetic

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idea, thereby confirm ing the text's spatializing tendency, and contributing to the spatialization of form and content. The Renaissance is characterized by the prevailing ten­ dency in the artistic work toward a closed, linear approach to structure and content, known in musical terms as "contraposto" or "counterpoint", in which a closed system is created around a central axis, and sustained by centripetal tendencies.

In the

Baroque period, on the other hand, there is a decided preference for the "fugue" form, or "formas que

v u e la n " 3 0 ,

with its open

system and centrifugal forces that heighten the sense of drama and dynamic movement within the work, and contribute to the spatialization of form and content.

All that is harmonious and

orderly during the Renaissance turns problematic, enigmatic and emblematic, as many literary creations of the Spanish B aroquesuch as those of the picaresque and the c o n c e p tis ta can attest.

tradition—

In direct opposition to the clarity and linearity char­

acteristic of the Renaissance period, the tendency in the Baroque period is to shift away from a clearly visual imagination toward

30D 'O rs, p. 179. "Hace ya algunos anos fue lanzada una formula, para ayudar a la comprension respectiva de las morfologfas clasica y barroca, . . . Oponfanse en la misma [formula] las 'formas que vuelan' a las 'formas que pesan'; y esto, no solo por lo que dice relacion con la tectonica de una fachada o de un cuadro, sino con la de una composicion musical, de una teoria cientffica o de una institution polftica."

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a fundamentally open, subjectively perceptual and "painterly

3 1

concept of the artistic work, toward a detailed presentation of physical objects and phenomena effected through

the poetic

powers of evocation and suggestiveness, in an attempt to capture the distinct moods and atmospheres of an ambivalent and multivalent reality. Desiring to create a novel aesthetic experience which will provoke in the reader a sense of wonder and awe, the Baroque poet begins concentrating more emphatically upon decoration and digression.

Linearity, statis, unity and simplicity of impres­

sion, all characteristics of the Renaissance, cede to the reigning principles of dynamism, dramatic expression and appeal to the visual.

The balanced equilibrium of form so characteristically

distinctive of the Renaissance period is now undermined by rapid movement, opposing tensions, contradictions and compli­ cations, all structural devices upon which Baroque art is con­ structed.

In the words of Eugenio D'Ors: Siempre que encontramos reunidas en un solo gesto varias intenciones contradictorias, el resultado estilistico pertenece a la categoria del barroco. El espiritu barroco, para decirlo vulgarmente y de una vez, no sabe lo que quiere. Quiere—he aqui estas columnas, cuya estructura es una paradoja patetica— gravitar y volar. Quiere—me acuerdo de cierto an-

Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles of Art History, trans. M.D. Hottinger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 18-29.

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gelote, en cierta reja de cierta capilla de cierta iglesia de Salam anca-levantar el brazo y bajar la mano. Se aleja y se acerca en la espiral . . . Se rie de las exigencias del principio de contradiccion.3 2

In the baroque poem the reader is made aware of the very spectacle, the dramatic presentation and theatricality of the baroque mechanism that upstages the totality of the work in an effort to elevate and embellish the constituent parts of the poem. This detraction from the centrality of interest is achieved not only through the autonomy of the linguistic and imagistic details, but also through the juxtaposition of light and shade ("chiaroscuro"), and the multiplication of contours and fluidity of line, all of which contribute to the creation of a centifugal force that heightens the sense of dynamism and movement in the overall design of the poematic space.

As Wolfflin observes, the

Baroque never offers us perfection and fulfillment, or the static calm of "being", only the unrest of change and the tension of transience.

33

And in the quintessential baroque poem El sueno.

the most salient characteristics are indeed its very dynamism and mobility, as Sor Juana is seeking not simply unity, but more importantly, the poetic transmutation of reality by means of the spatialization of the poetic idea on the formal, thematic and stylistic levels of the text. 32D'Ors, p. 38. 33Wolfflin, p. 14.

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CHAPTER THREE

SPATIALIZATIQN OF FORM IN "EL SUENO”

The spatial consciousness that characterizes El sueno is manifested dynamically on each level of this poetic text.

But it is

perhaps on the structural level that the reader is most immedi­ ately confronted with the primarily geometrical, symmetric spa­ tial form and nature of the poem, which essentially takes the shape of an imaginary voyage into the realm of the infinite in search of knowledge.

Structure, or the disposition of the distinc­

tive parts constituting a coherent, meaningful unity, is a funda­ mental principle underlying the work:

a sort of aesthetic life-

support system for Sor Juana's poetic idea.

Roland Barthes con­

tends that: There is a belief that great structures, serious sym­ bols, grand meanings are built upon an unimpressive foundation of ordinary acts . . . Now the notion of structure does not support the separation of founda­ tion and design, insignificant and significant; struc-

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ture is not a design, a schema, a diagram:

everything

signifies something. *

U nderlying the composition

are fundamental allegories—

personal and theological—that serve as a scaffolding for the poematic structure and lend thematic coherence and unity to the composition, as Constance M. Montross has demonstrated in her analysis of Sor Juana's literary work.

El su en o exemplifies the

creation of a model of a vertically oriented universal system in which the "upper sphere" is associated with "spirituality", hence "superiority",

and the "lower sphere" with "materiality", and

consequently, "baseness".

According to Montross,

the protago­

nist of the poem -the soul—is placed within a Thomistic universe that is characteristically hierarchical and diversified in nature; and within that hierarchy, spiritual creatures, made of fire and air, are higher than corporeal beings, whose bodies also contain earth and water.

Because it is precisely the spatially superior

sphere that the soul aspires to transgress, it should not come as a surprise to the reader that the poetic images and thematic motifs *Barthes, S /Z . trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974; pub. orig. Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1970), p. 51. 'y

Constance M. Montross, Virtue or Vice? Sor Juana's Use of Thomistic T hought (Washington, D.C.: University Press of Amer­ ica, 1981), p. 39f. ■5

Montross, pp. 41-42.

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that recur and reverberate during this oneiric flight to upper­ most intellectual heights tend to have been inspired by the those two m aterial elem ents—fire and a ir—that m ost truly m anifest the will of the poetic imagination to ascend and transcend and tran sfo rm . There is in the poetic text of Sor Juana a new conception and treatment of the poematic space, that is distinct from that of her predecessors. sueno

The landscape that is evoked and painted in E l

is of a highly geometric, architecturally stylized nature, a

fundamentally mental construct apprehensible principally by the inner eye of the Intellect.

The description that prevails through­

out the verses is that of a natural world that is not sensuous by nature, but rather abstract, conceptual, heightened by the use of adjectives that tend to reinforce the geometric nature of the im ­ ages.

The primordial imitative function of poetry, so highly es­

teemed by the Renaissance artist, is relinquished, replaced by the innovative motivating principle of dynamism that underlies the poematic construct of the Baroque.

Sor Juana strives for the

creation of an imaginative, revolutionary poetry that, freed from the yoke of description and an excessively conceptual represen­ tation, renounces immediate reality and converts it into a more fully and authentically human space of lyrical, subjective inti­ macy.

The baroque imagination at work within El sueno. never

satisfied with a mere mimetic reproduction of physically spatial and temporal reality, acts directly and dynamically upon mate-

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rial reality in order to successfully translate it into an intelligible surreality, at once particularly human and

universal.

Architectural constructions, like geometrical forms, have long been recognized as iconic signs denoting other symbolic re­ alities.

Throughout the ages, numerous buildings, both sacred

(basilicas, cathedrals, temples, tombs, etc.) and secular (palaces, houses, etc.), have been endowed with semantic or symbolic functions, in that they have often represented objects much more im portant than

themselves,

and revealed a great deal

about how a given culture imagined the cosmos.

Beyond serving

very specific utilitarian purposes, churches and temples have functioned symbolically as miniature replicas or images of the universe

("im ago

m u n d i" 4 ).

These sacred buildings were not

only conceived as artful configurations of volumes and spaces, but more importantly, as a simulacrum or symbol of Heaven or Paradise.

Their semantic function was to represent symbolically

and iconically that supernatural, invisible reality that is Order and Light and Truth, comprehensible exclusively to the eyes of the Intellect.

If, then, the temple is an iconic sign or metaphor

for heaven, by extension, the arch is representative of the as^Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. xiv of the Introduction. All subsequent references to Cirlot will be taken from this text, with the exception of a few that appear exclu­ sively in the Spanish version, D iccionario de simbolos tradicionales (Barcelona: Ed. Luis Miracle, 1958), which will be indi­ cated accordingly.

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cending movement of the soul and symbolic of its passage from the terrestial sphere into the divine realm of Truth and Knowl­ edge. W hereas

the

truly

representational

art

form s—painting,

sculpture, etc.—draw their topics from the external world, de­ picting man and nature, architecture neither imitates nor draws on sensory experience.

Like music, it is essentially a creative art,

an art that suggests moods and evokes emotions.

And when the

architectural forms are constructed with the creative power of poetic language, as in El suefio. the most subjective depths of the imagisitic being are evoked, as form takes flight and invites the reader to participate in a voyage to the inner recesses of the po­ etic imagination. The poem commences on an architecturally and geometri­ cally spatial note, and the selection of the descriptive adjective "piramidal" as the initial word implicates a conscious attitude toward space on the part of the poetess.

P iram id al modifies the

shadowy creature of night that attempts to rise above the sublu­ nary sphere and transgress the celestial lunar regions.

The very

characterization of night in terms of a shadow is, in itself, sig­ nificative, as it can be seen as a symbolic, spatial prefiguration of the poem's protagonist, the soul, which like the night seeks to abandon the realm of unenlightened and unevolved creatures, and aspire to the heavenly orb that is the luminous manifesta­ tion of all Knowledge and Truth.

Apart from this initial pyrami­

dal form, the reader will encounter other representations of fail-

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ure and defeat, all of which m etaphorically and spatially illus­ trate the ascent and futile attem pt by the soul to perceive the incom prehensible and unintelligible. The entire composition is suggestive of an architectural construct,

and

its

paradoxically

curvilinear

form

(ascendent

movement followed by an inclination downward) calls to mind the structure of an arch.

Those readers familiar with Sor Juana’s

"Carta Atenagorica" will recall that in an attempt to defuse criti­ cism, she evokes an arquitectural metaphor and likens the ser­ mon of Vieyra to a structure with a weak foundation and beau­ tifully adorned exterior: . . . algunos discursos que allf hice de repente sobre los sermones de un excelente orador, alabando algunas veces sus fundam entos, otras disintiendo, y siempre admirandome de su sinigual ingenio, que aun sobresale mas en lo segundo que en lo primero, porque sobre solidas basas no es tanto de admirar la hermosura de una fabica, como la de la que sobre flacos fundamentos se ostenta lucida, cuales son algunas de las proposiciones de este sutilfsmo talento, que es tal su suavidad, su viveza y energia, que al mismo que disiente, enamora con la belleza de la oracion, suspende con la dulzura y hechiza con la gracia, y eleva, admira y encanta con el todo.

In a period in which form a often takes precedence over fondo. it isn't surprising that the poetess concedes that form may enchant and persuade, despite the weakness of the underlying

argu-

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ments.

And like her contemporaries, she endeavors to erect an

ornate, highly stylized linguistic structure that will bedazzle the re a d e r. In viceregal Mexico the arch is an architectural construct of historical,

social and cultural significance,

a comm em orative

structure that serves as the passageway into New Spain for the newly appointed officials of the Spanish empire.^

The truly

functional nature of the arch--a physical construction serving as a support for a wall or another weight—is subordinated to a no­ bler objective:

that of serving as a canvas for the depiction of

allegorical representations utilizing mythological figures that il­ lustrate certain qualities or traits of the appointees.

Constance

Montross cites the use of the "Triumphal Arch", constructed in honor of the Viceroy's entry into the city, as a symbolic base for the allegorical composition Neptuno alegorico. in which the virtu­ ous character of don Tomas Antonio Lorenzo Manuel de la Cerda is praised.^

In architecturally metaphorical terms, El sueno is

quintessentially one of these symbolic arches with a semantic 5paz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, pp. 205-206. "La costumbre de levantar arcos triunfales para celebrar la entrada de los virreyes se remonta a los primeros anos de la Nueva Espana . . . Siguiendo el ejemplo europeo, se encomendaba a poetas y artistas reconocidos el tema y la arquitectura de estos monumentos, asi como la redaccion del texto que obligadamente los acompanaba." £

Montross, p. 46.

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function.

Constructed with the poetic word, it serves to com­

memorate the eternal, willful struggle of the human spirit to at­ tain greater knowledge, and thereby gain access to the im ­ mutable truths.

It is Sor Juana's poetic monument dedicated to

the eternal triumphs and tribulations of the heroic individual who perseveres in the attempt to transcend the physical and temporal constraints that lim it the optimal realization of one’s inherent potentiality. According to Cirlot in his Diccionario de simbolos tradic io n a le s . the arch is a vehicle or medium of energy that em­ anates from the conflicting tensions created by the vital and spiritual forces within the individual.

As an attribute of Apollo,

the arch or bow, along with the arrows, symbolizes solar energy: 7 its rays and its purifying, life-giving powers. The rounded shape of the arch is suggestive of that form which is most per­ fect, most magnificent and most comprehensive—the circle—and consequently contributes to the visualization of the harmony, unity, and infinity of the Supreme Being.

As the essential form

of a hunter's bow, the arch is a means of accumulating energy which at a subsequent moment can be released and put into movement.

And in El su e n o . it is the archbaroque structure

which, founded upon the rhythmic accruement of antithetical tensions, dynamizes the poetic idea, and contributes to the real^Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Diccionario de simbolos tradicionales (Barcelona: Ed. Luis Miracle, 1958), p. 95.

-

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ization of a literary art that soars unfettered through space and time.

For while most traditional criticism has tended to view the

literary composition as crystallized in the word, permanent and immobile, the poetic art of El sueno must be perceived as based upon the laws of dynamics rather than those of stasis.

Each

verse of the composition stretches the poematic arch a bit fur­ ther, contributing to the accumulation of tension which will ulti­ mately be released in the form of intimately lyrical and subjec­ tive energy, in one of the more climatic moments of the poem when the first rays of dawn's light appear and vanquish the night, signifying the restoration of balance, order and harmony within the poematic cosmos. The text of El sueno is composed of a series of successive tensions engendered by the conflicting juxtapositions and oppo­ sitions underlying the poetic structure.

As with the more so­

phisticated and complex musical compositions of the Baroque, the system atized contrast of thematic m aterial, the alternation between recurrent imagistic leitmotifs, the rigorous polyphonic structure that underlies and supports the aerial poetic edifice, all contribute to the creation of conflicting tensions that ultimately are resolved in a euphonic synthesis.

The harmony of this poe­

matic arch, then, is at once a unity and a contradiction; for al­ though the opposing tensions and contrary forces are oriented in distinct directions, they are, nonethess, sustained in a state of equilibrium by virtue of the composition's dialectical dynamism.

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Of all the architectural structures protracted throughout E l su e n o . the one that dominates the poetic landscape is the pyra­ mid, the essentially triangular form that, like the arch, geometri­ cally and spatially symbolizes the urge toward ascension inher­ ent in human nature, the aspiration toward the higher unity, too ward the Origin or the Irradiating Point. The reader of this poem is immediately forced to contemplate this magnificent, yet mysterious structure—a paradoxical edifice of flight and balance-, as the spatial arrangement of its components suggests at once energy and movement along the vertical axis, and the harmonic resoiution of the impact of unity upon duality: Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra nacida sombra, al Cielo encaminaba de vanos obeliscos punta altiva, escalar pretendiendo las Estrellas;

(vv. 1-4)

Also symbolic of man's ambition and subsequent failure to gain immortality is the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), that archi­ tectural icon that signifies the catastrophic attempt by men to erect a tower whose top would communicate with the heavens, and by which their name would be immortalized.

Such an auda­

cious act of defiance against the Omnipotent Creator resulted in the imposition of a state of chaos and a lack of communication among men.

As another structural form distinguished by verti-

^Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 332.

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cality, the Tower heightens the visual, aerial dimension in E l sueno.

And the allusion to the inability of time to erase the vast

m ultiplicity of linguistic systems throughout the world is yet further evidence that among the prevalent organizational trends within the poem is the subordination

of

the temporal aspect to

the spatialization of form and content: ...aquella blasfema altiva Torre de quien hoy dolorosas son senales —no en piedras, sino en lenguas desiguales, porque voraz el tiempo no las borre— (vv. 414-417)

In sim ilar fashion,

the sacramental "auto" entitled "El Divino

Narciso" also evokes this legendary architectural structure as a means of underscoring the foolish and futile attempt by man to reach beyond his human capacities to comprehend the incom ­ p reh en sib le: Pero apenas respiro del dano, cuando soberbia, con homenajes altivos escalar el cielo intenta, y creyendo su ignorancia que era accesible la Esfera a corporales fatigas y a materiales tareas, altiva Torre fabrica, pudiendo labrar mas cuerda inm ateriales escalas hechas de su penitencia.

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A cuya loca ambicion, en proporcionada pena, correspondio en divisiones la confusion de las lenguas; que es justo castigo al que necio piensa que lo entiende todo, que a ninguno entienda.9

As subsequent verses of this "auto" reveal, the fate of men who attempt to build such a structure, one whose height would compete with that of the celestial region, is to remain in a state of moral, philosophical and intellectual blindness, immobilized in an unevolving state of spiritual atrophy for refusing to contem­ plate the Light which is the Truth: sin que quedara criatura, por inmunda o por obscena, que su ceguedad dejara, que su ignorancia excluyera; y adorando embelesados sus inclinaciones mesmas, olvidaron de su dios la adoracion verdadera; conque amando Estatuas su ignorancia ciega, vinieron a casi

^Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras completas. Vol. Ill, p. 38.

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transformarse en ellas.10

In El sueno the Tower of Babel also performs a very spe­ cific and determinative semantic function, in that like the pyra­ mids, it denotes height and, therefore, is symbolic of ascent.

In

terms of the symbolism of height or level, whereby physical height implies spiritual elevation, this architectural configura­ tion, like the Egyptian pyramids, is the structural expression of the link between earth and the heavenly orb.

The architec­

turally symmetric magnificence of the pyramids is celebrated by Sor Juana in a lengthy passage in the poem: Las Piramides dos -ostentaciones (v. 340) de Menfis vano, y de la Arquitectura ultimo esmero, si ya no pendones fijos, no tremolantes—, cuya altura coronada de barbaros trofeos tumba y bandera fue a los Ptolomeos, que al viento, que a las nubes publicaba (si ya tambien al Cielo no decia) de su grande, su siempre vencedora ciudad —ya Cairo ahora— las que, porque a su copia enmudeofa, (v. 350) la Fama no cantaba Gitanas glorias, Menficas proezas, aun en el viento, aun en el Cielo impresas: estas —que en nivelada simetrfa l^ S o r Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras

com pletas. Vol. Ill, p.

38.

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su estatura crecfa con tal diminution, con arte tanto, que (cuanto mas al Cielo caminaba) a la vista, que lince la miraba, entre los vientos se desparecfa, sin permitir mirar la sutil punta (v. 360) que al primer Orbe finge que se junta, hasta que fatigada del espanto, no descendida, sino despenada se hallaba al pie de la espaciosa basa, tarde o mal recobrada del desvanecim iento que pena fue no escasa del visual alado atrevimiento—, cuyos cuerpos opacos no al Sol opuestos, antes avenidos (v. 370) con sus luces, si no confederados con el (como, en efecto, confinantes), tan del todo banados de su replandor eran, que —lucidos-nunca de calorosos caminantes al fatigado aliento, a los pies flacos, ofrecieron alfombra aun de pequena, aun de senal de sombra: estas, que glorias ya sean Gitanas, o elaciones profanas, (v. 380) barbaros jeroglfficos de ciego error, segun el Griego ciego tambien, dulcfsimo Poeta segun de Homero, digo, la sentencia, las Piramides fueron materiales tipos solos, senales exteriores de las que, dimensiones interiores,

(v. 399)

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especies son del alma intencionales: que como sube en piramidal punta al Cielo la ambiciosa llama ardiente, asf la humana mente su figura trasunta, y a la Causa Primera siempre aspira --centrico punto donde recta tira la linea, si ya no circunferencia, que contiene, infinita, toda esencia—. Estos, pues, Montes dos artificiales (bien maravillas, bien milagros sean),

(v. 413)

Throughout these verses there is a relentless insistence upon the ascensional nature of these structures, and accordingly, upon their characteristically spatial orientation:

in the reference

to their expanding symmetry ("que en nivelada sim etna / su estatura crecfa"), as well as their celebrated heights ("altura coronada"), in which the adjective coronada suggests the circular shape which symbolizes both preeminence and spatial lim itless­ ness; in the characterization of the base of the pyramids as spa­ cious ("la espaciosa basa"); in the analogy drawn between the pyramids and hieroglyphics ("barbaros jeroglificos"), which fur­ ther underscores the visual, iconic nature of these architecturally spatial constructs; and in the differentiation established between the outer and the symbolic interior spaces of the pyramids ("las Piramides fueron materiales / tipos solos, seiiales exteriores / de las que, dimensiones interiores, / especies son del alma inten­ cionales").

The aerial, spatial nature of the passage is further­

more heightened by the references to the wind and the clouds

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("tumba y bandera fue a los Ptolomeos / que al viento, que a las nubes publicaba"; "entre los vientos se desparecfa"); and, per­ haps, m ost significantly in the comparison made between the pyramids and the ambitious, burning flame which, like other im­ ages of verticality, is seemingly attracted upwards by the light ("como sube en piramidal punta / al Cielo la ambiciosa llama ardiente").

For it is the image of the flame, an upright and vertical

object, that inspires dreams of height and flight, liberating and elevating the dreamer.

In the words of Bachelard,

The flame is a valiant and fragile vertical. A breath disturbs it, but it rises up anew. A lifting force re­ stores its magic . . . A gentle but firm dynamic force draws dreams toward the heights. One may well be interested in the inner swirls surrounding the wick, and see in the depth of the flame stirrings where shadow and light struggle. But every dreamer of flame lifts his dream toward the summit. It is there that fire becomes light . . . The greatest dreams are in the heights. The pyramid is regarded as a iconic sign expressing the whole of the work of creation in its three essential a sp e c ts^ ; but within the specific context of El sueno. its other semantic func-

11 Gaston Bachelard, La flamme d'une c h a n d e ile (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), pp. 60-61. l^C irlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 225.

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tion is to signify the perfection of the Trinity, suggested symboli­ cally throughout the poem in such references to threefold phe­ nomena as the moon's three phases, " . . .

la Diosa / que tres ve-

ces hermosa / con tres hermosos rostros" (vv. 13-15); man's composite nature, "compuesto triplicado, / de tres acordes lrneas ordenado" (vv. 655-656)13; and his three distinctive intellectual capacities:

"no de las cinco solas adornada / sensibles facultades,

/ mas de las interiores / que tres rectrices son, ennoblecida" (vv. 6 6 4 -6 6 7 ).! 4 The pyramid is seen as the synthesis of different forms, each with its own significance.

Its base is square, and its four

points represent the four basic elements or humors

of

man—

blood, phlegm, cholera and melancholy—as well as the four ma­ terial elements—air, fire, earth and water, so revered by the al­ chem ists

of the past—of which

all creatures

are composed,

thereby representative of the earth, and hence, the material realm.

The apex of the pyramid is the starting-point and the

finishing-point of all things, the "Mystic Centre" to which the hu13Mendez Plancarte, ed., introd., and notes, Qbras completas by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Vol. I, p. 597, note to v. 655. "El hombre es ese triple viviente: vegetal, sensitivo, racional . . . " l 4 Mendez Plancarte, ed., introd., and notes, Qbras completas by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Vol. I, p. 597, note to vv. 666-7. "Estas tres facultades rectrices (las que, como espirituales, deben imperar en el hombre), claro que son el entendimiento, la voluntad y la memoria."

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man soul aspires, the Causa Prim era to which Sor Juana alludes frequently in the both the

"Respuesta"—"Todas las cosas salen de

Dios, que es el centro a un tiempo y la circunferencia de donde salen y donde paran todas las lrneas

c r ia d a s .” 1 5 ~

t and El sueno:

—centrico punto donde recta tira la lfnea, si ya no circunferencia, que contiene, infinita, toda esencia--

(vv. 409-411)

Joining the apex to the base are the triangular shaped faces of the pyram id

which m ost often

sym bolize revelation, the

three-fold principle of creation, and most concretely, fire, which in Egyptian hieroglyphics is associated with the concepts of life and health, and consequently allied with the concept of superi­ ority and control.

While fire may be expressive of animal pas­

sions (when it functions

as a coordinate in the

axis fire/earth

representing eroticism, solar heat and physical energy), it is an also an image of spiritual energy, a coordinate of the axis fire/air linked with mysticism, sublimination or purification, as Cirlot re­ veals in his study of the symbolism of this elemental matter. 1 6 Fire is the principle of life; purifier that rids

and as an agent of idealization, it is a

matter of its

heavier or grosser qualities.

l^ S o r Juana Ines de la Cruz, Qbras

com pletas. Vol. IV, p.

450. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 101.

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Likewise, it is both a source of light that illuminates the world and the mind, and a dynamic force which in El sueno recurrently assumes the form of a swift, penetrating ray of light or lighten­ ing bolt: --contra el Sol, digo, cuerpo luminoso, cuyos rayos castigo son fogoso, que fuerzas desiguales despreciando, castigan rayo a rayo el confiado, antes atrevido y ya llorado ensayo

(vv. 460-465)

de los agravios de la luz apela, y una vez y otra con la mano cela de los debiles ojos deslumbrados los rayos vacilantes

(vv. 506-509)

Ni el panteon profundo —cerulea tumba a su infeliz ceniza—, ni el vengativo rayo fulminante mueve, por mas que avisa, al animo arrogante (vv. 796-800)

Gaston Bachelard recalls the alchemists’ concept of fire as "an El­ ement which operates in the centre of all things", as a unifying and stabilizing factor. fire,

Since all things derive from, andreturn

to,

the alchemists retained in particular the Heraclitean notion

of fire as "the agent of transmutation"; but due to its paradoxical nature, embracing both the good (vital heat, illumination) and

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the evil (destruction, the forces of darkness), fire is the archety17 pal image of phenomena in themselves. As a mediator be­ tween forms which vanish and forms in creation, fire is through­ out Sor Juana's poem not merely a manifestation of verticality and the tendency toward ascension, but also a symbol of trans­ formation and regeneration, as the verses depicting one of the organic processes of the human body—digestion—reveal: Y aquella del calor mas competente cientffica oficina, provida de los miembros despensera, que avara nunca y siempre diligente, ni a la parte prefiere mas vecina ni olvida a la remota, y en ajustado natural cuadrante las cuantidades nota que a cada cual tocarle considera, del que alambico quilo el incesante calor, en el manjar que —medianero piadoso— entre el y el humedo interpuso su inocente substancia, pagando por entero la que, ya piedad sea, o ya arrogancia, al contrario voraz, necia, lo expuso —merecido castigo, aunque se excuse, al que en pendencia ajena se introduce—; esta, pues, si no fragua de Vulcano, templada hoguera del calor humano, ^ B a c h e la rd , The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 57.

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al cerebro enviaba humedos, mas tan claros los vapores de los atemperados cuatro humores, . . .(vv. 234-256) Mas mientras entre escollos zozobraba confusa la election, sirtes tocando de imposibles, en cuantos intentaba rumbos seguir —no hallando materia en que cebarse el calor ya, pues su templada llama (llama al fin, aunque mas templada sea, que si su activa emplea operation, consume, si no inflama) sin poder excusarse habfa lentamente el manjar trasformado, propia substancia de la ajena haciendo: (vv. 827-839) The pyramid has been recognized as one of the most pro­ found and enigmatic architectural symbols throughout the ages, based as it is upon a complex geometrical symbolism that is, in turn, founded

upon the «correspondences»

and consequential

relationships among various patterns of spatial organization.

In

his discussion of the influence that neoplatonic hermeticism and Egyptian symbolism exerted over the theology, philosophy and literature of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Octavio Paz points out that it was a widespread belief that the pyram ids-as well as the obelisks and other hieroglyphic monuments of Egypt-were symbolic expressions, material manifestations of the high-

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est and most profound knowledge.

1o

The symbolic significance

of the pyramidal figures in El sueno resides in the diametrical contrast between

the shadowy pyram id—representative

of the

darker, m aterial forces reigning in the sublunar sphere, which appear in the initial verses—and the luminous pyramid signify­ ing the ascent of the soul, which in turn connotes the ideas of transformation and evolution.

Karl Vossler recalls that in one of

his treatises, Obeliscus A egvptiacus (1666), Kircher reveals that the Egyptians generally would distinguish between a pyramid of light that descended towards the E arth

and another one

shadow, which sought to elevate itself to the heavenly

regions.

of 19

In Sor Juana's poem, this opposition of triangles assumes the form of a combat, with the rival forces of the night assaulting the luminary celestial bodies, and might be interpreted as an alle­ gory of the unenlightened Intellect daring

to conquer those

reigns of supra-human Knowledge; and the superimposition of two complete triangles, one in the normal position and the other inverted—representing respectively fire and water—forms a sixpointed star, or hourglass ("reloj de arena"), as Octavio Paz illus-

1o

Paz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, p. 222.

19Karl Vossler, ed. and introd. Qbras escogidas de Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Mexico: Espasa-Calpe Mexicana, 1969), p. 91.

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trates

in

dem onstrating

the perfectly

sym m etrical correspon20 dences between the various parts of the poem's structure. In the geometric symbolism of the cosmos, two superimposed trian­ gles furthermore constitute a symbol of the inherently paradoxi21 cal human soul. In pyram ids,

Sor Juana's betw een

poem, the opposition between the

shadowy

nocturnal

pyram id

the two of

the

opening verses and the luminous Egyptian monuments which, as legend has it, project no s h a d o w s ^ , is just one of many in­ stances in which a binary opposition serves as the fundamental structuring device within the poem.

Quite true to her baroque

nature, Sor Juana structures this poem spatially, as an intricate interplay of antagonistic forces and antithetical differences pro­ jected in space.

Throughout time man has attempted to compre­

hend the world around him through the construction of religious, social, political and ethical models of the world which are invari­ ably invested with spatial characteristics; and such universal

^®Paz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, pp. 484-486. ^ Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 332. 22M endez Plancarte, ed., introd. and notes, Qbras completas by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Vol. I, p. 593, note to v. 375: "Otra fabula, como la del espejo de Faros, esta de que las Piramides no proyectan sombra jamas."

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models often assume the form of dualities or oppositions, as in "heaven/earth" or "earth/the nether regions", or the form of a hierarchically ordered system.

The language of spatial relations

is one of the fundamental means by which Sor Juana compre­ hends reality in its essential duality-m aterial and spiritual, nat­ ural and cultural—, and gives form to it, assigning to it a partic­ ular moral dimension.

Such concepts as "high/low", "near/far",

"open/closed", etc., are the essential tools and material for the construction of the poetic edifice El suefio with often completely no n -sp atial

content,

signifying

such

abstract

d ualities

as

"spiritual/m aterial", "accessible/inaccessible", "m ortal/im m ortal", "valuable/valueless",

etc.

in

the

hierarchical

stratification

of

sp h eres. Among the salient features of the formal pattern of the poem are the constant tensions, antitheses and paradoxes that underlie and engender the dynamic forces which, by virtue of the balance of oppositions, serve to hold the poetic compositon together and pervade the overall spatial pattern of the composi­ tion.

These dualistic tensions, which lend both structural and

thematic coherence to the composition, are often translated into such metaphors as expansion and dilation, circularity and con­ striction, and are symbolic of the very same opposing forces that are constantly engaged in battle within the poetess, who strug­ gles between reason and passion:

There predominates within

the poetic text of El suefio. consequently, the presentation and

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alternation

of contraries in tight,

tense, im agistic

fragments

serving to illustrate the dual nature and often contradictory na­ ture-universal and individual—of reality.

For the enigma of du­

ality, transposed into the opposition of spatial, temporal, material or spiritual forces, is what constitutes the essence of existence for the whole of creation.

And many of the poem's images them­

selves attest not only to the inherent ambiguity and dualistic nature of space, but also to the contraction of two or more spaces that are in a dialectically conflictive relationships 3, as for exam­ ple in the verses that contrast the underworld of Pluto's kingdom and the Elysian fields, as the soul endeavors to comprehend the direction of the flow of the waters of the fountain Aretusa24: Estos, pues, grados discurrir querfa unas veces. Pero otras, disentfa, S3 According to Georges Poulet (The Metamorphoses of the C ircle, trans. Elliott Coleman [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer­ sity Press, 1959], pp. 174-175), such contractions reflect a quite natural function of the human mind, and the essence of it all is the tension between the subjective consciousness and the objec­ tive things which are rendered in that consciousness. S4in her analysis of this passage of the poem, Montross (Virtue or Vice, p. 75) similarly confirms the contradictory na­ ture of the localities and suggests that "[T]he pleasant and beau­ tiful Elysian fields contrast with the caverns of Pluto's kingdom, a negative maternal figure, 'los horrorosos senos'. The earth is like a mother, for it is the source and end of each body."

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excesivo juzgando atrevimiento el discurrirlo todo, quien aun la mas pequena, aun la mas facil parte no entendfa de los mas maniiales efectos naturales: quien de la fuente no alcanzo risuena el ignorado modo con que el curso dirige cristalino deteniendo en ambages su camino —los horrorosos senos de Pluton, las cavernas pavorosas del abismo tremendo, las campanas hermosas, los Elfseos amenos, talamo ya de su triforme esposa, clara pesquisidora registrando

(vv. 704-722)

Cirlot asserts that duality is a basic quality of all natural processes, and when integrated within a higher context, gener­ ates a binary system based less on the principle of synthesis of a complementary thesis and antithesis, than on the persistence of the dualist state sustained by virtue of an inner equilibrium between the counterbalanced forces and tensions of two oppos­ ing planes or poles. of alchem y,

the

He reasons that "it is as if, in the symbolism twin currents—ascending

and descending—of

solution and coagulation were kept in perpetual rotation. this is, in fact, not the case:

But

the positive forces triumph in the

end—they transmute matter (that is, the passive, negative or

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inferior principle), redeem it and bear it upwards."

25

The dual

nature of all created beings—m ineral, vegetable, anim al—is a theme that is rigorously developed throughout the Baroque. Sor Juana's poem, for example, it is transcribed im agistic references to man:

In

in the following

"altiva bajeza" (v. 694); "bisagra

engazadora" (v. 659), that is, man as a hinge or frontier uniting two distinct worlds, the corporal and the spiritual; and "la estatua eminente / que del metal mostraba mas preciado / la rica altiva frente, / y en el mas desechado / .material, flaco fundamento hacfa" (vv. 684-688).26

Among the many other material

and non-m aterial elements in the poem that are revealed in their contradictory m aternal

im age,

nature are the denoting

life,

sea, which is at once a

security,

and

contem plative

serenity, and a symbol of destruction; the sun, another paradox of life-giving and destructive powers; and the moon, with its convex and concave curves, and its successive phases of waxing and waning.

The arch which El sueno structurally suggests is

likewise such a dual symbol, an emblematic, simultaneous repre-

Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 8 6 . 2 6 The statue appears in a dream attributed to King Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2: 31-33). According to Mendez Plancarte (Vol. I, p. 597, note to vv. 684-9), the statue is the "Sfmbolo alia, de los imperios Asirio, Persa, Macedonico y Romano . . . ; y bellamente acomodado aquf a esta mezcla de excelsitud y miseria que somos . . . " (ellipses in original).

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sentation of the "straight" and the "oblique" paths which the in­ dividual must follow in order to gain access to the realm of the inscrutable, the elusive, and the ineffable, the ultimate goal in Sor Juana's search for the universal truths. Symmetry, or the balance of proportions and the corre­ spondence in shape and position of the constituent parts of a whole on opposing planes from a imaginary axis or center, is among the most distinctive and operant throughout El suefio.

fundamental structuring devices

As Constance Montross points out,

for Saint Thomas, this balance of opposites, and the consistency with which contraries are reconciled and move towards their ends, are proof of God's existence and characteristic, therefore, of the universe.

27

Such equilibrium and isomorphism is evident on

nearly every level of the text of El suefio. as a more thorough analysis of the constructive principles of repetition and combi­ nation in the text will subsequently reveal:

on the phonological

level, in such rhetorical figures as "alliteration", which consists of the recurrence of an initial consonant sound, and sometimes of a vowel

s o u n d 2 8 ?

and "anaphora", or the repetition of the same

word at the beginning of successive clauses or 97

v erses^ 9 ;

on the

Montross, p. 43.

28Lausberg, p. 230, note 458. 29Lausberg, p. 131-132, note 266.

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syntactic level, most notably in the parallelisms or "isocolons", which consist in the syntactic correspondences between various parts of the text^O;

and on the semantic level, in the recurrence

of images and thematic patterns whose nucleus of meaning is de­ rived from the accumulation and juxtaposition of diverse, and often seemingly disparate, significants.

The almost perfect ar­

chitectural symmetry of Sor Juana's composition, whose meaning is a function of the valuations of the relative and coordinate re­ lationships between the constituent parts, can be further ob­ served in the disposition of the verses and the distribution of thematic emphases throughout the poematic space in terms of definite spatial relations of position and order. The foremost critics of El sueno have never completely agreed upon the number of parts that constitute its poematic space:

for Mendez Plancarte, there are 1231; for Chavez, 632; for

30Lausberg, p. 168-169, note 337. "La construccion de la frase caracterizada por el isocolon se llama en la epoca moderna 'paralelismo' . . . El isocolon como paralelismo afecta a dos esferas: 1) El 'gran-paralelismo' ('paralelismo externo') consiste en la correspondencia de la sucesion de oraciones . . . 2) El 'pequenoparalelism o 1 ('paralelismo interno’) consiste en la corresponden­ cia (mas o menos exacta) de la sucesion de palabras . . . " 31 Mendez Plancarte, ed., introd., and notes, "El Sueiio" de Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Mexico: Im prenta Universitaria, 1951), p. xxxviii.

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Gaos, 5 ^ 3 ; for Pascual Buxo, 334; an(j Octavio Paz insists upon three

m ajor sections,

seven parts.35 uninterrupted

with

internal

subdivisions resulting in

Vossler, on the other hand, sees the poem as an movement:

El poema, compuesto de novecientos setenta y cinco endecasflabos, en silva, se desarrolla sin cortes bien m arcados, sin in terru p tio n , com o un verdadero suefio. El curso de ideas zigzaguea de motivo en mo-

32Ezequiel A. Chavez, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Ensavo de psicologfa v estimation del sentido de su obra v de su vida para la historia de la cultura v de la formation de M exico (Barcelona: 1931; Mexico: Ed. Pomia, 1970), p. 24. 33jose Gaos, "El suefio de un No. 35 (1960), 54-71.

suefio,"

Historia

Mexicana. X,

3 4 Jose Pascual Buxo, "El suefio de sor Juana. Alegoria y modelo del mundo," in De la croniea a la nueva narrativa mexi­ cana. ed. Merlin H. Forster and Julio Ortega (Mexico: Oasis, 1986), pp. 51-77. The emphasis that this critic places upon the spatial dimension can be observed in his conception of the poem's inter­ nal divisions: " . . . [L]as tres partes de El suefio se ajustan a un modelo tripartito del hombre y del mundo, en cuanto este se concibe dividido en tres orbes o esferas (la de la tierra, la del sol y los planetas, la del Empfreo) de las que resultan ser homologas las partes del cuerpo humano; . . . " (p. 64) 35paz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, pp. 483-484.

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tivo, en inversiones audaces, circunloquios y metaforas.3 6

And to a certain degree, Vossler is correct, given that the poetic form of El

suefio. the "silva", is a proliferative discourse that

flows freely and continuously throughout the poematic space and lacks

sharply delineated dem arcations between parts and se­

quences.

Thus it would seem both an artificial and arbitrary act

to seek an orderly, logical division of the constituent parts and sections of the poem.

Nevertheless, as Octavio Paz has indicated,

" . . . hay zonas que participan de distintos modos, temas y tonalidades.

El poema sucede en el espacio de una noche y sus

cambios son analogos a las insensibles variaciones de la sombra, la luz y la temperatura, de la cafda del Sol a su aparicion por el O r ie n te ." 3 7

Thus the tripartite division postulated by Paz corre­

sponds to the structuring of the poem in terms of successive phases

o f physical realities,

through

the

creation

and pro­

longation of dualistic states which imply the counterbalancing of the tensions inherent in the binary operations that constitute the ordered

pattern

of

body/soul, life/death.

cosm ic

events:

dusk/daw n,

night/day,

Additionally, such a division further con-

3*>Karl Vossler, "Introduccion," Obras escogidas de S o r Juana Ines de la Cruz , (Mexico: Espasa-Calpe Mexicana, 1 9 6 9 ) , p. 21. 37Paz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, p.

483.

9 3

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firms the extrinsically spatial orientation of

the poem by

at­

tributing to it a triangular structure that, as hasbeen observed in the previous analysis of

the symbolic function

of pyramids, is

unquestionably one of the most salient of the multiplex geomet­ ric constructs protracted throughout El suefio. However, it is in the quintuple partitioning that Jose Gaos assigns to the poem where the reader most senses the underly­ ing symmetries on both the structural and the thematic levels of the poem: . . . [E]l poema tiene solamente las siguientes cinco partes: la media noche, el dormir, el suefio, el despertar, el amanecer. Se trata de una composicion de una simetrfa perfecta en torno a un centro: en los extremos, la media noche y el amanecer; el dormir y el despertar, entre los extremos y el centro; en este, el suefio. Esta estructura resulta reforzada por el numero de versos de las cinco partes: 150 la noche, 115 el dormir, 560 el suefio, 59 el despertar, 89 el amanecer . . . Pero la simetrfa no es meramente cuantitativa. Es, ademas, de la siguiente indole cualitativa o espiritual por los temas: en los extremos, los procesos y fenomenos f i s i c o s del conticinio y el amanecer; entre los extremos y el centro, los procesos fisio ld g ico s del dormir y del despertar; en el centro, el p ro c e so p siq u ico y espiritual del suefio. Pero la simetrfa de la composicion entrafia aun mas otras mas sutiles que se destacan al adentrarse por la textura fntima y movil del poema.3 8

3 8 Gaos, pp. 56-57.

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The poem opens and closes symmetrically with a descrip­ tion of the antagonistic cosmic forces that reign in the universe, an allegorical struggle between night and day, shadow and light, between the forces of an unevolved, unenlightened state of being and the power of reason and intellectual inquiry.

The shadowy,

cosmic ambience that Sor Juana evokes in the opening stanzas of El suefio. standing in diametrical opposition to the closing verses which herald the arrival of the dawn, is just one of many images in the poem that reflect the dialectical process in which the dy­ namism of opposition affords the poet the opportunity to incor­ porate into the text a m ultitude of nuances and coextensive spaces.

Each poetic image offers the reader the experience of

language creation, as each image is the result of a long process of progressive, dynamic transformation that begins in the mind of the the artist and ends in that of the reader, through the inter­ mediary of a newly found reality, the poetic word.

Through the

poetic process, the image is lived, experienced and re-imagined in an act of consciousness that restores at once its timelessness and its novelty.

Through its capacity to create new images,

the

poetic language of El suefio creates reality instead of being de­ pendent upon it. As a literary artist, Sor Juana is a heroic individual who ac­ cepts the challenge of physically spatial reality and measures her

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own creative energies and potential in dialectical opposition to it. This baroque poet, like other literary craftsmen, re-creates the world

she confronts, transform ing it through

tially spatial—images, restructuring ments of her own subjective being.

m aterial—essen­

it to make it express ele­ The fundamental scheme of

the symbolic structure in El suefio is the willful ascent through the element of air.

And this predilection for the dynamic, aerial

element is the direct, concrete expression of the philosophy of the superior individual who exercises creative power in the con­ struction of a poetic edifice which revolves arojnd the vertical axis of sublimation; the axis by means of which one is able to go beyond first impressions to a more profound significance of re­ ality.

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CHAPTER FOUR

THE SPATIALIZING FUNCTION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF RECURRENCE AND AMPLIFICATION

The extraordinary force and richness of Sor Juana's poetic language are the result of her genius, the spirit of unbridled cre­ ativeness promoted in the Baroque age, and the theory of com­ position grounded in formal logic and rhetoric that was inherited from the Renaissance tradition.

Her poetry, particularly El su en o .

reflects the aim of the baroque artist to achieve a style which is at once consciously

obscure—hieroglyphic

aesthetically pleasing.

and polyvalent—and

Throughout the poem both physical and

conceptual space are heightened through the use of established literary and rhetorical figures or conceits—extended metaphors, sem antic

and

syntactic

com plications,

conceptual

word-play,

mythological allusions—all of which constellate and reverberate, in an echo-like fashion, and consequently contribute to the over­ all organic unity of the central theme treated on the various con­ stitutive planes within the polyphonic and plurivalent text. Among the principal aims of Sor Juana's poetic art is to de­ light the reader with the creation of a literary space which, like the rhetorical topos (commonplaces) and figures of speech which largely determined the definitive form and style of the literary

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composition of the Baroque, encompasses a particular mode of eloquence.

By studying the singular manner in which she orga­

nizes and configures this literary space, according to certain gen­ eral principles of recurrence, the reader is better able to envi­ sion, and thus comprehend, the creative process of the poetic imagination which manifests itself on all levels of El suefio. In addition to the principles of equilibrium and isomor­ phism which characterize the organization of the literary art form of the Baroque, it is the fundamental phenomenon of recur­ rence which largely determines the configuration of the poematic space, as a thorough analysis of the constructive principles of repetition, combination and amplification, systematically operant throughout the text of El sueno. will subsequently reveal.

The

poetic functions of rhythm, rhyme and meter, which are all based upon the notion of repetition, not only endow the text with melodic movement on the phonetic level, but also assume an im­ portant semantic role, in that, for example, the juxtaposition of sim ilar or dissim ilar elements that they occasion can infinitely expand the potentiality for surprising semantic revelations.

On

the semantic level, as will be demonstrated later, the constitutive principle of recurrence is observable in the reverberation of im­ ages and thematic patterns whose nucleus of meaning is derived from the accumulation and juxtaposition of seemingly disparate significants.

On the syntactic level, it is most notable in the par­

allelisms or "isocolons", which consist of the syntactic correspon­ dences between various parts of the text; and on the phonologi-

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cal level, in such rhetorical figures of repetition as alliteration and anaphora.

Before proceeding with a detailed analysis of the

textual illustrations of the poetic function of recurrence on the linguistic level of El suefio. it would be wise to first peruse some of the other stylistic peculiarities—morphological, metrical, se­ mantic, etc.—which reveal a fundamental spatial orientation on the part of this baroque poet. In contrast to those elements of the poem's structure which obtain their meaning solely from the positioning of lexical items, in particular the phonological elements, the grammatical units of the poem's structure exist somewhat independently in relation to the others, in that they convey relational meanings.

The initial

use of the third person narrator, for example, to relate the events of the oneiric journey undertaken by the soul serves to delineate the spatial boundaries of and within the poematic events not only through the establishment of a distance between the reader and the lyrical subject, but also between the lyrical subject and the objective realities at large which impede its as­ censional progress to the boundless heights of Omniscience.

The

structure of subjective-objective relations in the composition, often formulated in terms of conflict or struggle, is furthermore expressive of the author's poetic vision of the world, in that these relations are representative of the numerous adversities and obstacles in the material world which confront the protagonistic soul in its attempt, parallel to Sor Juana's, to ascend to a higher level of existence.

The subsequent interpolations, how-

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ever, of the poetical voice in the form of first person possessive determinant ("De esta serie seguir mi entendimiento", v. 617), first person verbal conjugations: aquellas tres oficiosas, digo,

(v. 47)

A la region primera de su altura (infima parte, digo, dividiendo en tres su continuado cuerpo horrendo, (vv. 327-329) segun de Homero, digo, la sentencia,

(v. 399)

el Hombre, digo, en fin, mayor portento

(v. 690)

segunda ambicion, digo,

(v. 795)

—lineas, digo, de luz clara— salian,

(v. 947)

and the lyrical first person subject pronoun ("el Mundo iluminado, y yo tion of the

despierta", v. 975) reveal a more intimate identifica­ narrator with the poem's diegetic process 1.

Indeed,

the presence of these first person determinants seems to suggest l"Diegesis" is a semiotic concept that proceeds from French narratology. In this study the term is employed not inthe sense in which it is derived from Plato's The R epublic, as being opposed to "m im esis", but rath er as refe rrin g to the spatiotem poral universe designated by the narrative (poetic) text. See Gerard Genette, Figures of Literary Discourse, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 1 2 8 -1 3 3 .

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a progressive interiorization of the poematic space, to the point that

the

distance

initially

established

betw een

the

diegetic

events and the objective, omniscient third person narrator has all but disappeared by the closing verses, as the poetic narration acquires an increasingly autobiographical texture.

Furthermore,

the intercalation of the first person plural possessive indicator ("m ientras nuestro

Hem isferio la

dorada / ilustraba del

Sol

madeja hermosa", vv. 964-965) serves to amplify the spatiotemporal param eters of the poematic cosm os, which is protracted into the extradiegetic sphere through the incorporation of the reader into the narration as a participant in the concretization of the vast universe of the poem.2

While Sor Juana avails herself

of every resource of language and imagination to give life and dynamic movement to her richly laden poetic thought, it is the pow erful

m etaphoric

construction

which

perhaps

m ost

con­

tributes to the creation and configuration of a novel poetic realAccording to the phenomenological theory of art, the interaction between the structure of a literary work and its recipient is central to the reading and comprehension of the text, which itself simply offers "schematized aspects" through which the subject matter of the work can be produced, while the actual production takes place through an act of concretization. See W olfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic R esponse, trans. David Henry Wilson (Baltimore, MD: The John H opkins U niversity Press, 1978), pp. 20-21; and Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art. trans. George G. Grabowicz (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 276281. 2

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ity.

In addition to the poetic device of repetition that manifests

itself on all levels of the composition, El suefio utilizes extensive metaphorical imagery as a means of providing structural support for the poetic idea which is developed continously throughout the space of the poem.

Barthes’ definition of the rhetorical figure

of metaphor clearly concurs with our argument that the function of the devices of amplification and repetition is to expand the text by means of a process of contrast and comparison, serving at once to unify it, and to render it polyvalent; [T]he excess of metaphor . . . is a game played by the discourse. The game, which is a regulated activity and always subject to return, consists then not in piling up words for mere verbal pleasure (logorrhea) but in multiplying one form of language (in this case, comparison), as though in an attempt to exhaust the nonetheless infinite variety and inventiveness of synonyms, while repeating and varying the signifier, so as to affirm the plural existence of the text, its return . . . The game here is grammatical in essence . . • [I]t consists in presenting, acrobatically, for as long as possible, the plural diversity of possibilities within a singular syntagm, to "transform" the verbal propo­ sition behind each clause . . . to produce a constant model carried out to infinity, which is to constrain language as one wishes: whence the very pleasure of p o w er.3

3Barthes, S/Z. p. 59.

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As a rhetorical trope based upon the notion of similitude, the metaphor allows for the Promethean expansion and elabora­ tion of the poetic idea.

By affording the opportunity to go be­

yond the denotative meaning of a given lexical item, metaphors repeatedly enhance the emergence and m ultiplication of vast reaches of time and space within the poem.

The architectural

metaphor with which the text commences, which characterizes the night, Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra nacida sombra . . . ,

(vv. 1 -2 )

is also systematically suggested in subsequent verses which de­ scribe the ascendent flight of the soul and that of the numerous other winged creatures of the poem.

In the mythological allusion

to Nyctimene, metaphor once again serves to impart vividness to the depiction, as heaven is suggested architecturally as a temple: . . . las sagradas puertas . . . , faroles sacros de perenne llama

(v. 28) (v. 33)

and the spatial dimension of this passage is further heightened by the arch of the temple which, by extension, suggests the no­ tion of an entrance or a threshold opening onto other physically spatio-temporal realities.

Both the sea and the mountain are de­

picted as comforting, enveloping maternal images, as a subsef-

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quent, more detailed look at the semantic function of these im ­ ages will reveal.

Sleep, or the natural suspension of conscious­

ness during which the powers of the body are restored, is de­ scribed as a temporal death: . . . muerte temporal . . . (v. 198) el cuerpo siendo, en sosegada calma, un cadaver con alma, muerto a la vida y a la muerte vivo,

(vv. 201-203)

The bodily functions are likewise presented metaphorically: lung

as a magnet for the wind

the

("iman del viento", v. 213), the

heart as a clock ("reloj humano", v. 205), and the stomach as a forge or furnace: . . . fragua de Vulcano, templada hoguera del calor humano, The creative imagination

(vv. 252-253)

is equated with the legendary

mirror of the lighthouse of Alexandria: . . . Y del modo que en tersa superficie, que de Faro cristalino portento, asilo raro fue, . . .

(vv. 266-269)

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The inadequacy of the soul's intellectual capacity and the subse­ quent failure to comprehend the totality of the observed reality is expressed metaphorically as a glass or receptacle too small for its content ("de objeto tanto, a tan pequeno vaso", v. 558), and also as a shipwreck Las velas, en efecto, recogidas, que fio inadvertidas traidor al mar, al viento ventilante —buscando, desatento, al mar fidelidad, constancia al viento —, mal le hizo de su grado en la mental orilla dar fondo, destrozado,^ (vv. 560-567)

Man's paradoxical, composite nature is similarly illustrated in metaphorical terms:

as the culminating literary masterpiece

of the Eternal Author ("y ultimo de su Eterno Autor agrado", v. 674); and as a marvelous edifice designed and contructed by the Great Arquitect with his "Sabia y Poderosa Mano", an edifice whose tripartite structure, compuesto triplicado, ^Mendez Plancarte, ed., introd. and notes, Obras com pletas by Sor Juana ines de la Cruz, Vol. I, p. 611. In his prose version of the poetic text, Mendez Plancarte identifies this "mental shore" as that belonging to the coast of the Sea of Knowledge: "en la costa del oceano del conocimiento." ►

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de tres acordes lineas ordenado y de las formas todas inferiores compendio misterioso

(vv.

655-658)

is embellished with five exterior senses-sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch--, and three interior faculties which signify memory, understanding and will^: no de las cinco solas adornada sensibles facultades mas de las interiores que tres rectrices son, ennoblecida

(vv. 664-667)

Another artistic metaphor evoked in the description of Man is that of the splendid statue which appeared in Nebuchadnezzar's symbolic dream (Dan. 2: 31-3), adapted to the poetic idea in El suefio of Man's dual nature, at once base and sublime: o la estatua eminente que del metal mostraba mas preciado la rica altiva frente, y en el mas desechado material, flaco fundamento hacfa, con que a leve vaiven se deshacfa— (vv. 684-689)

^Mendez Plancarte, ed., introd. and notes, Obras com pletas by Sor Juana ines de la Cruz, Vol. I, p. 613 (prose version): . . . ennoblecidas con las tres facultades interiores --memoria, entendimiento y voluntad . . . "

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As a densely symbolic construct, El principle

suefio operates on the

of suggestion in addition to that of representation.

In

this respect, it is unmistakably analogous to the spatial arts whose ability to be expressive is often independent of direct ref­ erences to the exterior world.

While some of the poematic forms

are captured with detailed precision—the regulating functions of the vital organs of the body, the natural processes inherent in the rose, etc.—, the essential function of description in these verses is to enhance and promote semantic unity by emphasizing the characteristics of a particularly symbolic image in relation to another textual image or imagistic fragment on the basis of per­ ceived sim ilarity or dissim ilarity, thereby contributing to the overall coherence and cohesiveness of the composition.

Descrip­

tion, therefore, is not the predominant poetic structure of the poem, but rather fuses with other poetic modes (the narrative, the expository, the argumentative) more peculiar to the philo­ sophical, metaphysical poem that is El sueno. in an attempt not to mimetically portray some aspect of objective reality, but rather, in the departure from that reality, to evoke a fundamentally in­ tellectual time and space.

The description of the natural phe­

nomenon of beauty manifested in the rose is an excellent illus­ tration of this point:

it does not arise solely out of a poetic intent

to exalt or extol the wonders of Nature, but more importantly, the inductive image of this flower establishes an axis of contem­ plation along which the reader is transported metaphorically to another realm, the mythological world of Venus, and from there,

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to a higher sphere of critical meditation upon such philosophical concerns as beauty and vanity, and by extension, the eternal question of ephemerality: quien de la breve flor aun no sabfa por que eburnea figura circunscribe su fragil hermosura : mixtos, por que colores —confundiendo la grana en los albores— fragante le son gala : ambares por que exhala, y el leve, si mas bello ropaje al viento explica, que en una y otra fresca multiplica hija, formando pompa escarolada de dorados perfiles cairelada, que —roto del capillo el bianco sellode dulce herida de la Cipria Diosa los despojos ostenta jactanciosa, si ya el que la colora, candor al alba, purpura al aurora no le usurpo y, mezclado, purpureo es ampo, rosicler nevado : tornasol que concita los que del prado aplausos solicita : preceptor quiza vano —si no ejemplo profano— de industria femenil que el mas activo veneno, hace dos veces ser nocivo en el velo aparente de la que finge tez resplandeciente.

(v. 730)

(v. 740)

(v. 750)

(v. 756)

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And the essential purpose of this descriptive passage is to rein­ force the them atic unity underlying

the com position, as the

verses which follow in succession confirm the poetic idea that the soul's aspiration to greater knowledge is a futile endeavor, given its incapacity to comprehend even the "smallest mystery" of the universe, as represented by the rose: Pues si a un objeto solo —repetfa tfmido el pensamiento— huye el conocimiento y cobarde el discurso se desvia; (v. 760) si a especie segregada —como de las demas independiente, como sin relacion considerada— da las espaldas el entendimiento, y asombrado el discurso se espeluza del diffcil certamen que rehusa acom eter valiente, porque teme —cobarde— comprehenderlo o mal, o nunca, o tarde £Como en tan espantosa (v. 770) maquina inmensa discurrir pudiera, cuyo terrible incomportable peso —si ya en su centro mismo no estribara— de Atlante a las espaldas agobiara, de Alcides a las fuerzas excediera; y el que fue de la Esfera bastante contrapeso, pesada menos, menos ponderosa su maquina juzgara, que la empresa de investigar a la Naturaleza? (v. 780)

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The literary style revealed in El sueno is largely the result of the poetic form chosen by the poetess-the "silva"—as the ex­ pressive

means

most appropiate

to the

philosophical and intellectual ideas.

development

of her

Like her contemporaries,

Sor Juana cultivated many of the diverse meters and rhyme schemes in vogue during the Baroque:

the refined Italianate

forms and meters of the Renaissance tradition, such as the son­ net and the hendecasyllabic line ("verso endecasflabo"), as well as the more popular forms and meters of the older tradition, such as the "romances", "villancicos" and "seguidillas”.

However,

it is the "silva” that most affords her the possibility of developing freely and at greater length a genuinely intimate poetic form that mirrors her own subjective universe with its predominantly intellectual landscape. The "silva" is the lyrical manifestation of the tendency among the seventeenth century poets to seek out poetic forms that systematically evolve towards complication in terms of both structure and style.

Often the themes, forms and poetic tech­

niques employed by these poets are the same as those that were in vogue during the Renaissance.

However, the heightened

awareness of the complexity, the dialectical tensions and para­ doxical nature of an increasingly multivalent and pluripotent so­ ciety

marked by political, economic, scientific and religious

change compels the baroque poet to intensify and elaborate on the canonized elements of his predecessors.

The aesthetic ideal

of the seventeenth century is no longer the simplicity and clarity

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of the denotative line founded upon the literary principle of di­ achrony, but rather the creation of a belletristic labyrinth that reflects perspectivism and synchroneity, two of the fundamental structuring principles of the baroque mechanism, as well as the multidimensional vision of a dynamic reality perpetually in mo­ tion. It is precisely the "silva" that is the most plastic or flexible of the poetic forms known to the baroque poet, capable of virtu­ ally unrestrained expansion in an effort to develop the poetic idea to the maximum.

According to Eugenio Asencio, the "silvas

m etricas"--a sort of lyrical subgenre—made their appearance in the poetry of Andalucia, Castilla, and Aragon at the turn of the seventeenth century, between 1603 and 1613; and as a novel poetic form, the "silva" was cultivated and perfected by the ma­ jor Spanish poets of the Vega.6

period, such as

Gongora and Lope de

According to Asencio, Hasta 1613, las silvas metricas eran breves encomios o vituperios lfricos que no rebasan los cien versos. A partir del triunfo tan polemico de Gongora . . . , la silva suscita una pequena revolucion, crea variedades nuevas de contenido y modulacion, invade los dominios de la octava real, del terceto, de la cancion petrarquesca. La gloria de Gongora suscita imitaciones de las "Soledades" que, ya que no la in-

^Eugenio Asensio and M. J. Woods, "Formas y contenidos: la silva y la poesfa descriptiva," in Siglos de oro: Barroco. p. 676.

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spiracion, em ulan rasgos externos: la sintaxis laberintica del parrafo alimentado por incontables incisos, aposiciones, conjunciones coordinantes y hasta subordinantes . . . 7

With regard to its style, Sor Juana's poem essentially con­ tinues the baroque tradition inherited from the Spanish Golden Age writers.

The title of the poem, originally called El sueiio in

the R e s p u e s t a

(1690), is lengthened in the

1692 edition—

"Primero Sueno, que asf intitulo y compuso la Madre Juana Ines de la Cruz, imitando a Gongora"--, and indicates the possible in­ fluence that the author of the "Soledades" had upon the concep­ tion and realization of the composition, particularly with regard to its formal and stylistic aspects.

For apart from the identical

formal structure of the poem—the "silva"—, and the numerous mythological allusions,

it is on the linguistic, stylistic lev e l-in

the selective use and recurrence of elevated, erudite vocabulary rem iniscent of such poetic works as the "Soledades" and the "Fabula de Polifemo and Galatea"--where the reader is likely to find the most decisively direct imitation of Gongora. These stylistic parallels manifest themselves in such liter­ ary

devices

as

the extensive

em ploym ent of m etaphor,

the

"intuitive perception of the similarity in dissim ilars"^, as illus-

^Asencio, p. 679. 8 Aristotle, Poetics. 22, p.

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trated

above;

in

the

rep eated

use

of

such

figures

as

"hyperbaton", which, as Lausberg indicates, is equated with the figure "transgressio", in that it entails a transgression, or depar­ ture from ordinary word order^; and "periphrasis", or circumlo­ cution, "[que] sirve fundamentalmente para expresar el caracter compuesto (encubierto por el vocabulario convencional) de la realidad

concreta."*®

For both Gongora and Sor Juana, these

rhetorical devices afford an effective means of amplifying and enhancing the poetic thought.

The separation of central elements

in a decisive part of period or phrase by means of the intercala­ tion of other periodic members not rightfully belonging to that place, as with "hyperbaton", not only serves to intensify the eu­ phonious quality of the verse, but also to focus the reader's at­ tention

upon

the

significant words

of the

segment, thereby

strengthening the poetic idea by prolonging and protracting it through

the versicular space of the com position.

However,

whereas the reaction of Gongora to the spatial dimension is fun­ damentally aesthetic, sensorial, in the case of Sor Juana, it is

^Lausberg, p. 165, note 331. "El hyperbaton {transgressio, transiectio ) es la separacion de dos palabras estrechamente unidas sintacticamente por el intercalamiento de un miembro de la oracion (que consta de una o mas palabras) que no pertenece precisamente a ese lugar. Es una figura de diccion a la que, como figura de pensamiento, corresponde el parentesis . . . " l^Lausberg, p. 103, note 191.

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primarily and indisputably intellectual, cerebral, and the stylistic aspect of the text subserves the overriding tendency to spatialize the principal thematic concerns. In his study of the influence of Gongora upon the Mexican poets of the seventeenth century , Jose Pascual Buxo reveals that among the numerous lexical, syntactic and stylistic peculiarities of culteranism or cultism, the use of neologisms is yet another of the stylistic traits in which El sueno reveals its affinity with the cultivated poetic style of Gongora. H

Like her Spanish Golden

Age predecessor, Sor Juana utilized this linguistic artifice pri­ marily to heighten the chromaticity and sonority of the composi­ tion, as the reader can observe in the final verses which describe the triumphant Dawn's regalia: Llego, en efecto, el Sol cerrando el giro que esculpio de oro sobre azul zafiro: de mil multiplicados mil veces puntos, flujos mil dorados —lfneas, digo, de luz c la ra - salfan de su circunferencia luminosa, pautando al Cielo la cerulea plana; (vv. 943-949)

However, in a substantial portion of the poetic text of E l su e n o . the substitution of these learned words, Hispanized from L atin

and

Greek,

for viable

alternatives

from

the existent

Jose Pascual Buxo, Gongora en la poesfa novohispana (Mexico: UNAM, Centro de Estudios Literarios, 1960), pp. 53-56.

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Spanish lexicon, in addition to the incorporation of other verbal preciosities, essentially serves to create a more difficult and obscure landscape which is not painted with brilliant colors meant to dazzle the beholder, but rather with those "mental" colors fashioned with the deft strokes of the "pincel invisible," visible only to 4 4 1 ).

12

"sus intelectuales bellos ojos"

(vv. 282-283,

The creation or invention of new spheres within the

poematic cosmos is achieved, in part, by dynamic descriptions of a natural world that are not, however, sensuous but intellectual, conceptual; and also by the preference for poetic modes which endow the text with a greater expressive mobility, among which is the descriptive adjective.

It is precisely the recurrent use of

descriptive adjectives which serves to heighten and reinforce the abstract, geometric nature of the intellectual landscape evoked throughout the composition by means of those dynamic, mobile images of matter that reflect the essence of the soul's very being. The initial word of the poem is none other than an adjective— p y r a m i d a l - which, by virtue of the semantic meaning of its form al

design,

im m ediately

intim ates

to

the

reader

the

l^ F o r an extensive analysis of the neologisms that occur th ro u g h o u t El sueno see Rosa Perelm uter Perez, N o c h e intelectual: la oscuridad idiomatica en el Primero Sueno (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1982).

»•

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essentially spatial orientation that will be developed throughout the subsequent

v erses.

13

Another stylistic trait characteristic of

El sueno is the use of the adjective in an antithetical construction with

the

noun,

often

m anifested

essentially a condensed paradox or

in

"oxymoron",

which

is

a n tith e s is ^ ;

solos la no canora compoman capilla pavorosa

(vv. 56-57)

en el fiel infiel con que gobiema la aparatosa maquina del mundo

(vv. 164-165)

compendio que absoluto parece al Angel, a la planta, al bruto; cuya altiva bajeza toda participo Naturaleza

(vv. 692-695)

13 For a more detailed analysis of the history and distribution of Sor Juana's vocabulary throughout the poem, see Perelmuter Perez (1982). l^L ausberg, pp. 192-193. "Una variante especial de la antftesis de palabras aisladas es el o x y m o ru m (oxymora verba ) que constituye una paradoja intelectuai entre los miembros antiteticos. La paradoja puede producirse: a) Por la tension entre portadores de cualidad (sustantivo, verbo, sujeto) y cualidad (atributo, adverbio, predicado) . . . b) Por tension entre cualidades (adjetivos, adverbios) . . . c) Por la distinctio enfatica que enuncia la existencia simultanea de una cosa."

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Adjectives

also

often

figure

in

the

antithetical

construction

"chiasmus”, which consists in the criss-cross ordering and corre­ spondence in meaning or syntax of two pairs of words, as in the verse "muerto a la vida y a la muerte vivo" (v. 203).

The more

complicated chiasmatic configurations, founded upon the inver­ sion of order of words or phrases which are repeated or subse­ quently referred to in the sentence, are yet another means by which the poetess achieves greater plasticity of form and spatialization of the poetic idea: El viento sosegado, el can dormido, este yace, aquel quedo los atomos no mueve,

(vv. 80-82)

mientras aguas y vientos dividian sus velas leves y sus quillas graves—: (vv. 278-279)15

In addition to heightening the semantic value of the words that they modify, the use of adjectives in antithetical parallelisms is indicative of Sor Juana's endeavors to achieve balanced expres­ sion, a semantic and aesthetic

symmetry in the poetic text,

thereby encompassing within the limits of the poetic art form the totality of a paradoxical reality. l^ L a u s b e r g (pp. 194-198) d is tin g u is h e s "pequeiio-quiasmo" and "gran-quiasmo".

betw een

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It is through the recurrence of particular expressive modes or phrases throughout the text that the reader is able to detect an elevated consciousness on the part of the poetess of such spa­ tial concepts as distance, profundity, polarity, perspective, enclo­ sure, etc.

The repetitive use of massive or monumental propor­

tions in the description of the figures and forms that loom in the uniquely geometric, abstract landscape that is El sueno not only serves to suggest a sense of strength, solidity and majesty, but more importantly, to denote a transcendence of the normal spa­ tial lim itations inherent in the composition, and to underscore and

intensify

the

spatial

dimension

of the poem

which is

param ount in the vivification and visualization of the poematic cosmos.

Among the descriptive phrases that signify immensity

and monumentality are those that modify the recurrent images of height and grandeur in the poem, such as the legendary pyramids of Egypt whose symbolic semantic function has already been discussed.

The height of these arquitectural phenomena is

such that they literally dissolve into the element of air with which they are identified, and which engulfs them in their ascent to the Heavens: Las Piramides dos —ostentaciones (v. 340) de Menfis vano, y de la Arquitectura ultimo esmero, si ya no pendones fijos, no tremolantes—, cuya altura coronada de barbaros trofeos tumba y bandera fue a los Ptolomeos, que al viento, que a las nubes publicaba

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(si ya tambien al cielo no decfa) de su grande, su siempre vencedora ciudad —ya Cairo ahora— las que, porque a su copia enmudecfa, (v. 350) la Fama no cantaba Gitanas glorias, Menficas proezas, aun en el viento, aun en el Cielo impresas: estas —que en nivelada simetrfa su estatura crecfa con tal diminution, con arte tanto, que (cuanto mas al Cielo caminaba) a la vista, que lince la miraba, entre los vientos se desparecia sin permitir mirar la sutil punta (v. 360) que al Orbe finge que se junta, . . . It is, however, in the verses that express the soul's reaction to the incomprehensible colossus that is the Cosmos that the po­ etic

notions

of im m ensity

and

im m easurableness

are

m ost

salient. After

a succession of images of height that confirm

the

metaphysics of

the aerial that underlies the text, the soul is pre­

sented as having elevated itself to the zenith of its very essence, believing to be totally beyond itself, in another realm or region: haciendo cumbre de su propio vuelo, en la mas eminente la encumbro parte de su propia mente, de si tan remontada, que crefa que a otra nueva region salfa. En cuya casi elevation inmensa, gozosa mas suspensa, suspensa pero ufana,

(v. 430)

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y atonita aunque ufana, la suprema de lo sublunar Reina soberana, la vista perspicaz, libre de anteojos, (v. 440) de sus inteiectuales bellos ojos (sin que distancia tema ni de obstaculo opaco se recele, de que interpuesto algun objeto cele), libre tendio por todo lo criado: cuyo inmenso agregado, cumulo incom prehensible, aunque a la vista quiso manifiesto dar sehas de posible, a la comprehension no, que -entorpecida (v. 450) con la sobra de objetos, y excedida de la grandeza de ellos su potencia— retrocedio cobarde.

Subsequent references to the Cosmos similarly emphasize its physically inmensurable greatness: . . . la inmensa muchedumbre de tanta maquinosa pesadumbre (de diversas especies conglobado esferico compuesto),

(vv. 470-473)

£Como en tan espantosa maquina inmensa discurrir pudiera, . . .(vv. 770-771)

The diversity and composite nature of the universe alluded to in the first of these passages likewise contribute to the prevailing spatiality in the text by underscoring the multiplicity and multi-

*•

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dimensionality of the visible world, whose comprehension ex­ ceeds the limits of the Intellect. Throughout the poem the reader's consciousness of the spatial dimension is similarly heightened with each poematic counter with all those verbal phrases denoting quentially

en­

visual—conse­

spatial—perception: Y aquellas que su casa campo vieron volver . . .

(vv. 39-40)

. . . Y del modo que en tersa superficie, que de Faro cristalino portento, asilo raro fue, en distancia longfsima se vfan (sin que esta le estorbase) del reino casi de Neptuno todo las que distantes lo surcaban naves —viendose claram ente en su azogada luna el numero, el tamano y la fortuna que en la instable campana transparente arresgadas tenfan, (vv. 266-277) estas —que en nivelada simetrfa su estatura crecfa con tal diminution, con arte tanto, que (cuanto mas al Cielo caminaba) a la vista, que lince la miraba, entre los vientos se desparetia, sin permitir mirar la sutil punta que al primer Orbe finge que se junta, (vv. 354-361)

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por mirarlo todo, nada via ni discemir podia . . .

(vv. 480-481)

con que mas animoso al palio glorioso del empeno mas arduo, altivo aspira, los altos escalones ascendiendo - e n una ya, ya en otra cultivado facultad—, hasta que insensiblem ente la honrosa cumbre mira termino dulce de su afan pesado (vv. 605-612) —de quien ser pudo imagen misteriosa la que Aguila Evangelica, sagrada vision en Patmos vio, . . . (vv. 680-682) Consiguio, al fin, la vista del Ocaso el fugitive paso, . . .

(vv. 959-960)

The notion of visualization also encompasses those verbal ex­ pressions which denote illustration,

demonstration or exem plifi­

cation, as indicated in Lausberg's definition of the rhetorical fig­ ure of

"e v id e n tia "1 6 ,

and may be observed in the following tex­

tual references:

l^L ausberg, p. 180. "Si el objeto que hay que detallar es un objeto de iepresentacion concreta, en particular una persona o cosa (que hay que describir), o un proceso del acontecer colectivo mas o menos simultaneo, entonces el detalle . . . se llama evidentia (illustratio, demonstratio , descriptio . . .)."

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asf ella, sosegada, iba copiando las imagenes todas de las cosas, y el pincel invisible iba formando de mentales, sin luz, siempre vistosas colores las figuras no solo ya de todas las criaturas sublunares, mas aun tambien de aquellas que intelectuales claras son Estrellas, y en el modo posible que concebirse puede lo invisible, en si\ maiiosa, las representaba y al alma las mostraba. (vv. 280-291) Asf linterna magica, pintadas representa fingidas en la blanca pared varias figuras

(vv. 873-875)

su frente mostro hermosa de matutinas luces coronada

(vv. 903-904)

mientras nuestro Hemisferio la dorada ilustraba del Sol madeja hermosa (vv. 967-968)

As the reader can observe from the significant number of verbal constructions which denote visual activity, there is within the poematic space of El suefio a decisive and emphatic insis­ tence upon the notion of "evidentia", the rhetorical device which functions on the principle of accumulation of visual features and s ig n ific a n ts

in ten d ed

to

"illu stra te "

the

tex t,

thereby

"illum inating", and advancing the poetic idea that knowledge, hence enlightenment, is the result of an arduous ascent to the

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heights.

In addition to the verbal expressions that manifest the

concept of visualization, there abound in the text nominal, adjec­ tival and adverbial phrases that underscore the poem's spatial character: estas —que en nivelada simetrfa su estatura crecfa con tal diminution, con arte tanto, que (cuanto mas al Cielo caminaba) a la vista, que lince la miraba, entre los vientos se desparecfa

(vv. 354-359)

Tanto no, del osado presupuesto, revoco la intention, arrepentida, la vista que intento descomedida en vano hacer alarde contra objeto que excede en excelencia las lrneas visiiales . . . (vv. 454-459) Mas como al que ha usurpado diuturna obscuridad, de los objetos visibles los colores, si subitos le asaltan resplandores, con la sobra de luz queda masciego

(vv. 495-499)

y a la tiniebla misma, que antes era tenebroso a la vista impedimento de los agravios de la luz apela, y una vez y otra con la mano cela de los debiles ojos deslumbrados los rayos vacilantes

(vv. 504-509)

no de otra suerte el Alma, que asombrada

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de la vista quedo de objeto tanto,

(vv. 540-541)

The baroque zeal for the pictorially visual or spatial is also observable, for example, in the verses that depict the imagina­ tion as the faculty responsible, along with memory, for the con­ servation and reproduction of images: los simulacros que la estimativa dio a la imaginativa y aquesta, por custodia mas segura, en forma ya mas pura entrego a la memoria que, oficiosa, grabo tenaz y guarda cuidadosa

(vv. 258-263)

The insistence upon these distinctively human capacities for memory and imagination contributes to the prevailing notion of spatiality in the poem not solely because of their ability to retain images pictorially, but also by virtue of the fact that they per­ sistently detain these imagistic fragments in a motionless mo­ ment in time, defying and negating thereby the passage of time, and consequently heightening the spatial character of the text. Because of its capacity to echo or reflect the formal reality of the visible, material world, the mirror is one of the metaphori­ cal images that symbolically represents the fantastic imagination. The m irror is also another of the images that illustrate the poem's characteristic ambivalence in that it is a flat surface that absorbs the forms of external reality and seemingly contains them within.

As Cirlot points out, "it has also been related to

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thought, in so far as thought . . .

is the instrument of self-con­

templation as well as the reflection of the

u n iv e rse ."

1?

in E 1

su e n o it is the mirror of the Lighthouse of Alexandria that Sor Juana evokes to express m etaphorically the nature of the cre­ ative imagination, and also to suggest a means by which the soul may pass to the other side, to other spatio-temporal realms, rather like an "A lm a (rather than Alice) in Wonderland": asf ella, sosegada, iba copiando las imdgenes todas de las cosas, y el pincel invisible iba formando de mentales, sin luz, siempre vistosas colores, las figuras no solo ya de todas las criaturas sublunares, mas aun tambien de aquellas que intelectuales claras son Estrellas, y en el modo posible que concebirse puede lo invisible, cn si, manosa, las representaba y al alma las mostraba. (vv. 280-291)

Numerous sight-images—color, size, shape, position, move­ ment—in the poem similarly contribute to the skillful transmis­ sion of the poetic idea by providing visible detail, and thereby enhancing the vividness and dynamism of the poem’s spatial di­ mension.

In the singularly m agnificent and expressive verse

"del visual alado atrevimiento" (v. 368), the baroque ideal of ex17 Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 201.

#.

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cessive, venturesome boldness that is poeticized in El sueno is dynamized through its fusion with the metaphorical image of flight and the notion of sight. Several verbs and verbal constructions trace specific d i­ rectional movement along the axis of verticality around which the poetic construct revolves.

Some of these verbs clearly ex­

press a descensional or retrograde action, often resulting from an ascent to vertiginous heights: hasta que fatigada del espanto, no descendida, sino despehada se hallaba al pie de la espaciosa basa

(vv. 362-364)

. . . —entorpecida con la sobra de objetos, y excedida de la grandeza de ellos su potencia— retrocedio cobarde. (vv.

450-453)

revoco la intencion, arrepentida

(v. 455)

y a la tiniebla misma, que antes era tenebroso a la vista impedimento, de los agravios de la luz apela,

(vv.

504-506)

Pues si a un objeto solo —repeti'a tfmido el pensamiento— huye el conocimiento y cobarde el discurso se desvia; si a especie segregada —como de las demas independiente, como sin relacion considerada— da las espaldas el entendimiento,

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y asombrado el discurso se espeluza del diffcil certamen que rehusa acom eter valiente

(vv. 757-765)

a la fuga ya casi cometiendo mas que a la fuerza, el medic de salvarse, ronca toco bocina a recoger los negros escuadrones para poder en orden retirarse (vv. 934-937)

Others serve to denote the lack of specificity with regard to di­ rectional movement, particularly in those moments in which the soul finds itself in a quandary, indecisive as to which direction to take: . . . tan asombrado, que--entre la copia puesto, pobre con ella en las neutralidades de un mar de asombros, la eleccion confusa-equfvoco las ondas zozobraba (vv. 475-479) Mas mientras entre escollos zozobraba confusa la eleccion, sirtes tocando de imposibles, en cuantos intentaba rumbos seguir . . . (vv. 827-830)

It is, however, in the verbal constructions which express a dynamic,

ascensional character that the reader perceives

the

prevalent aerial, vertical quality of the movement within the text.

The images of depth and descent suggested by the verbal

expressions recently cited, and those which are expressed in the

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several of the initial verses in which Night and Sleep are person­ ified, merely serve as a basis upon which the soul founds its up­ ward surge into the higher, more ethereal regions.

While move­

ment in either direction along the vertical axis of the text en­ hances the poem's fundamental verticality, and hence, the spatial dimension, there is a decided preference on the part of Sor Juana for those verbal expressions that denote forward, progressive movement, as in the verbal phrases "al Cielo encaminaba" (v. 2) y "escalar pretendiendo las Estrellas" (v. 4), and in the following verses: al superior convexo aun no llegaba

(v. 12)

cuanto mas al cielo caminaba

(v. 357)

que como sube en piramidal punta al Cielo la ambiciosa llama ardiente, asf la humana mente su figura trasunta, y a la Causa Primera siempre aspira

(vv. 404-408)

pues su ambicioso anhelo, haciendo cumbre de su propio vuelo, en la mas eminente la encumbro parte de su propia mente de sf tan remontada, que crefa que a otra nueva region de sf salfa. (vv. 429-434) . . . haciendo escala, de un concepto en otro va ascendiendo grado a grado (vv. 593-594)

*

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con que mas animoso al palio glorioso del empeiio mas arduo, altivo aspira, los altos escalones ascendiendo (vv. 605-608) los que de el ascendiendo soporfferos, humedos vapores

(vv. 845-846)

The establishment of distinct planes in the poematic space is further aided by the use of those adverbs, adjectives and prepositions of location which serve as indicators and determ i­ nants o f spatial ordenation by illustrating such spatial concepts as distance, depth, polarity, perspective, confinement, etc.

The

recurrence of these spatially directional, dimensional markers or modifiers (far too many to attempt to enumerate completely in this study) serves to assist the reader in apprehending the dy­ namically fluid and ambivalent line of movement of the poetic thought

as

it

traverses

vastly

distant

spatiotem poral realm s

which are juxtaposed in pictorial sim ultaneity, thus heightening the consciousness of the paramount spatiality of the text. Also indicative of the poem's rhythmic movement are the numerous prepositional phrases which, at times, serve to delin­ eate such spatial conditions as location and direction. repetitve

patterning

of

these

means of the rhetorical figure

prepositional "an ap h o ra"

constructions

The by

18 in specific verses of

l^L ausberg, p. 131, note 265. "La anaphora (r e p e t i ti o , relatum, relatio ) consiste en la repeticion de una parte de la oracion al comienzo de grupos de palabras sucesivos . . . Con *•

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the poem not only regales the reader by increasing the euphonic quality of the text, but more im portantly, performs the more functional task of underscoring the movement of the poetic idea by accentuating parallel or antithetical structure.

The measure­

less, indiscriminate extent of the effects of sleep upon the crea­ tures of the sublunar sphere is also presented forcefully through the reverberative figure of "anaphora", with emphasis on the antithetical nature of those victimized: desde el cayado humilde al cetro altivo, . . .

(v. 177)

desde la de a quien tres forman coronas soberana tiara, hasta la que pajiza vive choza; desde la que el Danubio undoso dora, a la que junco humilde, humilde mora; (vv.

183-187).

In El sueno. the function of anaphora, which consists in the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of several successive verses or verse members, is to produce an incremen­ tal intellectual effect by insisting upon the significance of the word, particularly in relation to the other elements of the textual

respeto a las relaciones sintacticas y m etricas se puede distinguir: 1) Anafora entre comienzos de versos sucesivos, la cual, al mismo tiempo, es anafora sintactica; 2) Anafora entre comienzo de verso y mitad de verso; 3) Anafora con repeticion de versos enteros; 4) Anafora en diversos lugares del verso . . . "

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segment in which the recurrence occurs.

The following illustra­

tions of this figure in the text should indicate the effectiveness of this device in advancing the poetic idea: aun el ladron dormfa; aun el amante no se desvelaba —y del del del

(vv.

149-150)

no solo oprimidos afan ponderoso corporal trabajo, mas cansados deleite tambien (que tambien cansa(vv. 154-157)

...la Naturaleza siempre alterna ya una, ya otra balanza distribuyendo varios ejercicios, ya al ocio, ya al trabajo destinados

(vv.

161-163)

asi, pues, de profundo sueno dulce los miembros ocupados, quedaron los sentidos del que ejercicio tienen ordinario --trabajo, en fin pero trabajo amado, si hay amable trabajo--, si privados no, al menos suspendidos, (vv.

166-172)

ni a la parte prefiere mas vecina ni olvida a la remota

(vv. 238-239)

bien maravillas, bien milagros sean

(v. 413)

sin orden avenidas, sin orden separadas

(vv. 552-553)

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ultima perfeccion de lo criado y tiltimo de su Etemo Autor agrado

(vv. 673-674)

cuando montes y selvas trastornando, cuando prados y bosques inquiriendo (vv. 726-727) —como de las demas independiente, como sin relacion considerada—

(vv. 762-763)

Ni el panteon profundo —cerulea tumba a su infeliz ceniza--, ni el vengativo rayo fulminante

(vv. 796-798)

Indeed, the reader's apprehension of dynamic movement and the pervasive rhythmic quality of the composition is ascribable to the heightened

repetitions or parallelisms that occur on

nearly all levels of the poetic text, from the stylistic to the the­ matic to the compositional.

The recurrence of textual elements

and segments on the linguistic level—metrical, phonetic, syntac­ tic, lexical, etc.—is manifest in the numerous rhetorical figures of repetition which affect the overall aesthetic impact of the text. These figures of repetition generally assume the form of tropes, or words used to mean something other than their ordinary meaning in order to emphasize and increase the word's forceful­ ness, and schemes, or figures in which words preserve their lit­ eral meaning, but are placed in a significant arrangement of some kind.

According to Lausberg, "Las figuras de repetition al-

macenan la corriente de inform ation y dan tiempo al 'paladeo'

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afectivo ta n te ." l^

del

contenido

inform ativo

presentado

como

impor-

In addition to conferring upon the poetic verse a cer­

tain grace, subtle delicacy and persuasive forcefulness, these fig­ ures subserve the ideal of amplification by enlarging and embel­ lishing the poetic idea; for as Cicero states in De

Oratore. the

"highest distinction of eloquence consists in am plification by means of ornament, which can be used to make one's speech . . . increase the importance of a subject and raise it to a higher level."20 The principal function of these devices or patterns of am­ plification by means of repetition in Sor Juana's poetic text is to change or modify meaning by ordering language in a particular way, m ost often

in terms

of contrast and comparison,

and

thereby to enhance the expression of the very peculiar poetic thought that engendered and gave structure, configuration and coherence to the poem.

It is through the apprehension of Sor

Juana's judicious employment of figures of repetition that the reader of El sueno becomes more sensitive to the poem's organi­ zational process of recurrence, which serves as a dynamic force unifying

the various levels of the poetic composition:

phonemic, the syntactic, and the semantic.

the

The discovery of re-

l^Lausberg, p. 122. 2 0cicero, De Oratore. trans. Horace Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) Vol II., Book III (3.26), p. 112.

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current figures of repetition enables the reader to perceive the intricate web of harmonic and melodic progressions which con­ stitute the rhythmically spatial design of the poem, characterized by dynamic, yet sustained flight. Given

the

abundance

of

the

repetitive

patterns

that

heighten the spatial dimension of the text* prior to compiling a list of illustrative examples it would be avisable to classify these patterns systematically according to whether the recurrence oc­ curs on the level of letters, syllables and sounds, whether it con­ sists in the repetition of words, or whether the repetition is that of phrases, clauses or ideas.

Paralleling the structural and the­

matic crescendo of El sueno. this study will examine the consti­ tutive principle of recurrence in a similarly gradated manner, beginning on the phonemic level, that is, on the level of sounds, and passing progessively through the lexical level and on to the repetitions of more extensive syntactical and semantic compo­ n en ts. Perhaps the most frequent figure

of repetition

on the

phonemic level of the text is alliteration, the recurrence of the same sound or syllable in two or more words of a verse or group of verses.

Generally the repetition is that of initial consonants,

and sometimes of an initial vowel sound; it may, however, entail the recurrence of consonants, vowels, or consonant-vowel com­ binations in medial or even final position.

Alliteration can be

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used with an onomatopoeic in ten tio n al, as the following verses of Sor Juana illustrate: y en la quietud contenta de imperio silencioso, sumisas solo voces consentfa de las noctumas aves,

(vv. 19-22)

Este, pues, triste son intercadente de la asombrada turba temerosa,

(vv. 65-66).

El viento sosegado, el can dormido, este yace, aquel quedo los atomos no mueve, con el susurro hacer temiendo leve, aunque poco, sacrflego ruido, violador del silencio sosegado.

(vv. 80-85)

The interplay of alliterative consonants, liquid, nasal, sibilant and trilled, in these verses serves to heighten the tone-color of the verses by imitating the hushing, sibilant sound that characterizes the sublunar sphere as sleep settles upon its inhabitants.

And in

the following passages, the recurrence of the sibilant "s" sound, combined with the alternating alliteration of the "o" and enables the reader to virtually hear the confusion

the "a",

within the soul

as it gropes for the right path to follow:

2lLausberg, p. 230.

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como el entendimiento, aquf vencido no menos de la inmensa muchedumbre de tanta maquinosa pesadumbre (de diversas especies conglobado esferico compuesto), que de las cualidades de cada cual, cedio: tan asombrado, que —entre la copia puesto, pobre con ella en las neutralidades de un mar de asombros, la eleccion confusaequfvoco las ondas zozobraba; (vv. 469-479) Mas mientras entre escollos zozobraba confusa la eleccion, sirtes tocando de imposibles, en cuantos intentaba rumbos seguir . . . (vv. 827-830)

In the poetic text of El sueno. alliteration supplements the oiher unifying devices in the poem; and, as is typical in the baroque construct, it is carried to the extreme, operating in elab­ orate patterns which enhance the characteristic resonance of the text.

It is largely responsible for internal rhyme, and plays a

significant role in the establishm ent of mood throughout the various sections of the poem.

In the verses:

solos la no canora componfan capilla pavorosa,

(vv. 56-57)

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the repetition of the hard-edged "k" sound underscores the dis­ sonance which characterizes the song of the night intoned by the winged creatures of the sublunar sphere.

Just a few verses later,

. . . el viento con flematico echaba movimiento, de tan tardo compas, tan detenido, que en medio se quedo tal vez dormido. (vv. 61-64)

the recurrence of the "t" and "d" emphasizes the retarded move­ ment of the wind as it succumbs to the lulling song of sleep.

The

fundam entally spatial aspect of the nocturnal choir's song is made evident in the verses su obtusa consonancia espaciosa al sosiego inducia

(vv. 70-71)

by the combination, once again, of resonant (nasal, liquid) and sibilant consonants which suggest the notions of fluidity and protraction through space, and also through the repetition of the vowels "o" and "u" which implicate the notions of depth and solemnity, as well roundness and liquidity. The verses which depict the material elements as maternal figures of rest and refuge are similarly rich in hissing and hush­ ing alliterative consonants, which assist in evoking the notions of warmth and effusive tenderness.

In the poetic portraiture of the

tree as a mother figure, the predominance of the liquid conso-

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nants helps create the image of the rhythmic rocking motion of the tree which lulls to sleep the birds which are cradled in its b ran ch es. Y en la quietud del nido, que de brozas y lodo instable hamaca formo en la mas opaca parte del arbol, duerme recogida la leve turba, descansando el viento del que le corta, alado movimiento (vv.

123-128)

The spatial aspect of the verses is also underscored not merely by the vertical image of the tree, but also by the alliterative rep­ etition of the vowels "e" and "i", whose tense timbre corresponds to a yearning attitude

and is suggestive of the concepts of mo­

bility and height.22 In the section of the poem where Sor Juana elaborates on the physiological functions of the body, the emphasis on the eq­ uity and measured methodicalness with which the digestive pro­ cess operates is achieved in part through the repetition of the hard "k" sound, which suggests a steady, regulated effort on the part of these organs:

22xom as Navarro, Studies in Spanish Phonology, trans. Richard D. Abraham (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1968), p. 121.

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y en ajustado natural cuadrante las cuantidades nota que a cada cual tocarle considera, del que alambico quilo el incesante calor . . .

(vv. 240-244).

In the mythological allusion to the mirror of the lighthouse of Alexandria, the force of the wind on the seas is evoked in the al­ literative repetition of the «v», and of the vowels "e" and "i": mientras aguas y vientos dividfan sus velas leves y sus quillas graves

(vv. 278-279)

In fact, it is through the alliteration of these vowels, along with the recurrence of liquid and labial consonants, that Sor Juana most frequently alludes to the ethereal, essentially spatial ele­ ment of air: el veloz vuelo

(v. 330)

visual alado atrevimiento

(v. 368)

al viento ventilante que alas engendra a repetido vuelo

(v. 562) (v. 805)

y—como de vapor leve formadas— en facil humo, en viento convertidas, su forma resolvieron

(vv.

870-873)

que venia las tropas reclutando de bisonas vislumbres

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—las mas robustas, veteranas lumbres para la retaguardia reservando— (vv. 907-910) The scope of this study does not permit enumeration of all the manifestations of alliteration in the poem. from

the

numerous

illustrations

provided,

It can be seen nonetheless,

that

through this figure of repetition, Sor Juana succeeds in inter­ weaving different alliterating sounds in an attempt to produce intricate,

ornam ental

patterns

that

serve

to

illustrate,

and

thereby emphasize, specific moods or feelings within distinct segments of the text.

When combined with assonance, the re­

semblance of proximal vowel sounds, alliteration produces elabo­ rate sound textures which contribute toward a greater, more dy­ namic parallelism between sound and meaning in Sor Juana’s poem . Among the other rhetorical devices which, like "anaphora", operate at the level of words, and constitute fundamental princi­ ples of recurrence on the stylistic level of this poetic work is the figure "agnominatio" or "admoninatio", in which two words of different

m eaning

but

sim ilar

through the change of a letter or

sound

are

so u n d ^ 3

brought

together

(as in the repetition

"amado", "armado", in relatively close succession in verses 170

2 3 Richard A. Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) p. 3.

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and

174);

and that of

"a n a d ip lo sis"2 4 >

which consists in the

rep­

etition of the last word of a line or verse to begin the next: En cuya casi elevacion inmensa gozosa mas suspensa, suspensa pero ufana,

(vv. 436-437)

. . . -n o hallando materia en que cebarse el calor ya, pues su templada llama (llam a al fin, aunque m as tem plada sea . . . (vv. 830-834).

"Diacope", in which a word is repeated with one or a few words in

b e t w e e n ^ ,

is

y e t

another of these figures of incremental rep­

etition which, by heightening the semantic value of the word, produces a dramatic effect: —trabajo, en fin pero trabajo amado, si hay amable trabajo—

(vv.

de mil multiplicados mil veces puntos, flujos mil dorados

(vv. 945-946)

170-171)

24Lausberg, p. 125. ^^Lanham, p. 33.

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The figure "epanalepsis" entails the recurrence at the end of a verse or sentence of the word with which it

b e g a n ^ 6 :

—depuesta la fiereza de unos, y de otros el temor depuesto--(vv. 105-106) pequenos robos al calor nativo, algun tiempo llorados, nunca recuperados, si ahora no sentidos de su dueho, que repetido, no hay robo pequeno— (vv. 221-225)

"Epizeuxis", or the repetition of a word with no other word in b e tw e e n 2 7 , is but another of the figures of recurrence that Sor Juana employs in the poem: . . . las Estrellas; si bien sus luces bellas —exentas siempre, siempre rutilantes— (vv. 4-6) desde la que el Danubio undoso dora, a la que junco humilde, humilde mora; y el de comprender orden relativo sigue, necesitado del del entendimiento limitado vigor, . . .

(vv. 186-187)

(vv. 595-598)

^^Lanham, p. 42. 27Lanham, p. 46.

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—en una ya, ya en otra cultivado facultad . . .

(vv. 609-610)

And there is, of course, "conduplicatio", or the repetition of a word or words in succeeding clauses or v e r s e s ^ , whereby the recurrence o f certain significant words ("sombra",

"silencio”,

"altivo", etc.) serves as a means of weaving together various textual segments into a cohesive, imagistic unit.

The image of

the shadow, for example, is presented not only in the initial and closing verses: Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra nacida sombra, . . .

(vv. 1-2)

la pavorosa sombra fugitiva

(v. 9)

y a la que antes funesta fue tirana de su imperio, atropadas embestfan: que sin concierto huyendo presurosa —en sus mismos horrores tropezando— su sombra iba pisando, y llegar al Ocaso pretendia con el (sin orden ya) desbaratado ejercito de sombras, . . . (vv. 950-957)

but also intermittently throughout the entire text—both literally, as in the physical absence of light, and figuratively, with refer-

28Lanham, p. 27.

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ence to the state of being unclear or unenlightened—as a means of vividly unifying the poetic thought, and further heightening the interplay of light and shadow so characteristic of the artistic work of the Baroque (the underlining is mine): Este, pues, triste son intercadente de la asom brada turba temerosa,

(vv. 65-66)

como el entendimiento, aqui vencido no menos de la inmensa muchedumbre (de diversas especies conglobado esferico compuesto), que de las cualidades de cada cual, cedio: tan asom brado (vv. 469-475) sirviendo ya —piadosa medianera— la som bra de instrumento

(vv. 510-511)

y asom brado el discurso se espeluza del diffcil certamen que rehusa acom eter valiente,

(vv. 765-767)

Asf linterna magica, pintadas representa fingidas en la blanca pared varias figuras, de la som bra no menos ayudadas que de la luz : que en trenulos reflejos los competentes lejos guardando de la docta perspectiva, en sus ciertas mensuras de varias experiencias aprobadas, la som bra fugitiva, (vv.

873-882)

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A nother

figure

" p o l y p t o t o n " 2 9 j

which

recurs

throughout

El

sueno is

0r the repetition of words from the same root

but with different endings.

This rhetorical device figures among

the favorites of Sor Juana for its ability to amplify the plurivalent texture of the poem, thereby contributing to the spatialization of the poetic form.

In the following verses, for example, the

root word "forma" (and also "niebla", in the first of the examples) is transfigured, like many of the m ythological characters that appear in the poem, to embody other semantic realities, thereby expanding the poetic thought by means of the principle of recur­ rence: —ya no historias contando diferentes, en forma si afrentosa transformadas--, segunda forman niebla, ser vistas aun temiendo en la tiniebla

(vv. 42-45)

y entre ellos, la engaiiosa encantadora Alcione, a los que antes en peces transformo, simple amantes, transformada tambien, vengaba ahora

(vv. 93-96)

y —como de vapor leve formadas— en facil humo, en viento convertidas, su forma resolvieron

(vv.

870-872)

29Lausberg, p. 138. "El p o l y p t o t o n (figura ex pluribus casibus, variatio, declinatio, derivatio ) . . . consiste en la m odificacion flexiva del cuerpo lexico . . . sirve para la intensification de la fuerza semantica."

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Other examples of this effective literary device are as follows: del corporal trabajo, mas cansados del deleite tambien (que tambien cansa objeto continuado a los sentidos aun siendo deleitoso (vv. 156-259) y juzgandose casi dividida de aquella que impedida siempre la tiene, corporal cadena, que grosera embaraza y torpe impide el vuelo intelectual...

(vv. 297-301)

que gloria mas que numero le aum ente-, de cuya dulce serie numerosa fuera mas facil cosa (vv. 390-392) la vista perspicaz, libre de anteojos, de sus intelectuales bellos ojos (sin que distancia tema ni de obstaculo opaco se recele, de que interpuesto algun objeto cele

(vv. 440-444)

traidor al mar, al viento ventilante —buscando, desatento, al mar fidelidad, constancia al viento— (vv. 562-564) cuyas debiles fuerzas, la doctrina con doctos alimentos va esforzando

(vv. 600-601)

la que Aguila Evangelica, sagrada vision en Patmos vio,...

(vv. 681-682)

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y en el mas desechado material, flaco fundamento hacfa, con que a leve vaivdn se deshacia

(vv. 687-689)

si ya el que la colora, candor al alba, purpura al aurora no le usurpo y, mezclado, purpureo es ampo, rosicler nevado

(vv. 745-748)

y el que fue de la Esfera bastante contrapeso, pesada menos, menos ponderosa

(vv. 776-778)

que venfa las tropas reclutando de bisonas vislumbres --las mas robustas, veteranas lumbres para la retaguardia reservando— (vv. 907-910)

There are other particularly important figures of repetition that give spatial configuration to the poem by emphasizing bal­ ance in the periodic structure of the verses, and lending an es­ sentially rhythmic quality to the poetic composition.

The rhythm

of language in Sor Juana's poetic text and its very tempo are very much affected by the use of the figure "epistrophe" or "epiphora" which, as opposed to "anaphora", is based upon phonic correspondences or equivalences at the end of several, generally successive, clauses or verses^O.

This device most commonly

30Lanham, p. 44.

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m anifests itself in the figure "hom oeoteleuton"31, which uses various uninflected words with like endings, and the related fig­ ure

whereby the recurrence is that of differ­

" h o m o e o p to to n " 3 2 >

ent words with sim ilar endings.

Given the inherent tendency

toward rhyme in Spanish and other Romance languages, both of these figures have come to be equated with the notion of "rhyme" in the poetic

w o rk .

33

An illustration or two of these

familiar figures will suffice in order to suggest the implications that these devices of repetition have with regard to the height­ ening and exploitation of the spatial dimension of the poetic text: En los del monte senos escondidos, concavos de penascos mal formados —de su aspereza menos defendidos que se su obscuridad asegurados—

(vv. 97-100)

3 lL au sb erg , p. 176. "El h o m o e o t e l e u t o n (simili modo d e t e r m i n a t u m ) consiste en la igualdad fonica de las term inaciones (acentuadas o no acentuadas) de las ultim as palabras (a veces adicionalmente tambien de otras palabras) de las partes del isocolon." 32Lausberg, p. 176. "El homoeoptoton (simile casibus ) consiste en la correspondencia de formas flexivas (nominales o no nominales), la mayorfa de las veces al final (pero en principio en otras posiciones de las partes del isocolon, sin que por ello se origine siempre un hom oeoteleuton. . . . " 33Lausberg, p. 176.

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cuando montes y selvas trastornando, cuando prados y bosques inquiriendo, su vida iba buscando y del dolor su vida iba perdiendo (vv. 726-729).

In the latter of these two the reader will also find a textual ex­ emplification of another figure concerned with the repetition of words, "polysyndeton", which is a special form of

" a n a p h o r a " ^

in that it consists in the repetition of conjunctions, and as such stands

in

diam etrical

" a s y n d e to n " 3 5 j

opposition

to

the rhetorical figure

of

which is the omission of conjunctions.

It is, however, the repetitions or correspondences that re ­ cur on the level of phrases or ideas that truly constitute the basic aesthetic principle of Sor Juana's poetic utterance.

The entire

text of El suefio is laced with these parallelism s—semantic, syn­ tactic, phonological, etc.—which are organized into a coherent system of relationships that serves as the constitutive foundation for the organization of this artistic structure.

Based principally

upon the relationship of comparison between diverse segments of the poetic text, generally in terms of identity or opposition, the organizational principle of recurrence plays a significant part in the protraction of the poem in space, in that in the act of com­ parison, previously read segments of the composition are resur-

34Lausberg, p. 132. S^Lausberg, p. 162.

*

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rected in an attempt to establish similarities and dissimilarities with subsequent text.

It is precisely through the process of

comparison in the text, effected and heightened by the artistic patterns of repetition, that the composition is revealed anew in a more vast, pluridimensional form, as formerly hidden semantic content is made manifest, reverberating along the fundamental axis of verticality which protracts the poem into the timeless, universal space of imaginative flight. The arrangement or patterning of ideas according to the compositional principle of repetition manifests itself in El sueno in many of the canonized figures of rhetoric that promote bal­ ance and emphasis: repetition

adds

" sy n o n y m ia "3 6 >

weight

and

force

for example, whereby mere to

the

poetic

idea,

and

" c o m m o r a tio " ^ which like "expolitio", consists of the amplifica­ tion and intensification of a thought by means of repetition of that idea in different words.

But it is unquestionably in the fig­

ure of "isocolon", that the reader most readily recognizes the parallelisms which constitute the basis of Sor Juana's poetic con­ struct, in the repetition of phrases of approximately equal length and generally corresponding structure that develop and embel­ lish the poetic idea on the basis of equivalences or diversity of

S^Lausberg, p. 139. 37L,ausberg, P- 178.

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meaning among the constituent parts of the parallel or correla­ tive construction.

In the definition of Lausberg,

El isocolon (c o m p a r , exaequatum membris ) consiste en la correspondencia sintactica de la composition de varias partes (siem pre plurim em bres) de un todo sintactico . . . El isocolon consta, por lo menos, de dos, con frecuencia de tres, a veces de mas de tres miembros (cola o kommata): 1) El isocolon bimembre tiene con frecuencia contenido antitetico . . . 2) El isocolon trimembre se llama tricolon y tiene la perfeccion como contenido semantico . . . 3) El isocolon que consta de mas de tres miembros, asf, por ejemplo, el te tr a c o lo n que consta de cuatro miembros tiene la mayorfa de las veces como contenido semantico la plentitud que sobrepasa !a perfeccion . . . La coordi­ nation sintactica puede expresar dos tipos de relation semantica entre las partes: igualdad de signification y diversidad de significacion.3 8

The parallelisms that underlie many of the poetic verses of El su eiio are at once structural and rhythmic, and, in principle, are founded upon the notions of sameness, antithesis and com­ plem ent. 3 9

To fully appreciate the contribution of this rhetorical

device to the rich rhythmic structure, the highly intellectualized 38Lausberg, p. 168-171. 3 9 See Damaso Alonso and Carlos Bousono, Seis calas en la expresion literaria espanola (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1970), for a brilliant and thorough analysis of parallelisms.

b

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semantic content, and the dynamic movement of Sor Juana's composition, it would be judicious to divide this figure of repeti­ tion into four main types:

1) synonymous parallelisms, whereby

the second phrase or verse reinforces the first by reiterating the thought, in identical or like words; 2) antithetical parallelisms, in which the second phrase or verse negates or contrasts with the first; 3) synthetic or cumulative parallelisms, in which the func­ tion

of the second phrase

or verse, or several consecutive

phrases or verses, is to complement or complete the first; and 4) ascensional,

clim actic

parallelism s,

which

mount

successive

phrases or verses by increasing weight or conceptual import. The first of the kinds of parallelism enumerated above, that based upon contiguity in meaning or exact semantic corre­ spondence, is highly visible in the Sor Juana's poem, as the fol­ lowing parallel configurations reveal: que tres veces hermosa con tres hermosos rostros

ser ostenta

(vv. 14-15)

de su fruto, de prensas agravado, congojoso sudo y rindio forzado

(vv. 37-38)

su obtusa consonancia espaciosa al sosiego inducia y al reposo los miembros convidaba

(vv. 70-72)

el viento sosegado, el can dormido, este yace, aquel quedo

(vv. 80-81)

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languidos miembros, sosegados huesos

(v. 199)

Y aquella del calor mas competente cientffica oficina, provida de los miembros despensera

(vv. 234-236)

Estos, pues Montes dos artificiales (bien maravillas, bien milagros sean)

(vv. 412-413)

—recurso natural, innata ciencia que confirmada ya de la experiencia, maestro quiza mudo, retorico ejemplar . . .

(vv. 516-519)

la vista perspicaz, libre de anteojos cuyo inmenso agregado, cumulo incomprehensible aun al mas bajo, aun al men or, escaso

(vv. 440)

(vv. 446-447) (v. 559)

Las velas, en efecto, recogidas, que fio inadvertidas traidor al mar, al viento ventilante —buscando, desatento, al mar fidelidad, constancia al viento— (vv. 560-564) De esta serie seguir mi entendimiento el metodo querfa, o del infimo grado del ser inanimado (menos favorecido, si no mas desvalido (vv. 617-622) —que hasta a los Astros puede superiores, aun la menor criatura, aun la mas baja,

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ocasionar envidia, hacer ventaja—

(vv. 649-651)

fin de Sus obras, circulo que cierra la Esfera con la tierra, ultima perfeccion de lo criado y ultimo de su Etemo Autor agrado

(vv. 671-674)

quien aun la mas pequena, aun la mas facil parte no entendia

(vv. 708-709)

cuando montes y selvas trastornando, cuando prados y bosques inquiriendo (vv. 727-727) de Atlante a las espaldas agobiara, de Alcides a las fuerzas excediera

(vv. 774-775)

Figuring far less frequently in these verses are the paral­ lelisms of the third and fourth types mentioned above, cumula­ tive and climactic,

which similarly contribute to the amplifica­

tion of the poematic space. very nature,

expand

The cumulative parallelisms, by their

the param eters

of the

through the aggregation of supplemental detail,

poetic as

construct

the following

passages illustrate: la avergonzada Nictimene acecha de las sagradas puertas los resquicios, o de las claraboyas eminentes los huecos mas propicios que capaz a su intento le abren brecha

(vv.

27-31)

todo, en fin, el silencio lo ocupaba: aun el ladron dormi'a;

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aun el amante no se desvelaba

(vv.

mal le hizo de su grado en la mental orilla dar fondo, destrozado, al timon roto, a la quebrada entena, besando arena a arena de la playa el bajel, astilla a astilla

(vv. 565-570)

al supremo pasar maravilloso compuesto triplicado de tres acordes lfneas ordenado y de las formas todas inferiores compendio misterioso: bisagra engazadora

(vv. 654-659)

tocando al arma todos los siiaves si belicos clarines de las aves (diestros, aunque sin arte, trompetas sonorosos)

(vv. 920-923)

148-150)

Though similarly few in number, in comparison with the synonymous and antithetical parallelisms that occupy a sizeable amount of space within the poetic configuration, the climactic parallelism s that do figure in El

sueno serve to build up a

crescendo of force, and thereby heighten the poem’s dynamic as­ censional rhythm ,

as the

subsequent

textual passage demon­

stra te s: las que, porque a su copia enmudecfa, la Fama no cantaba Gitanas glorias, Menficas proezas,