Hearing Voices: Aurality and New Spanish Sound Culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 9781496212795, 1496212797

Table of contents :
Cover
Frontmatter
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Prelude
1. Harmony: Order and Authority in Occasional Poems
2. Resonance: Intersections of Music and Other Arts
3. Sound: Female Auralities in the Villancicos
4. Echo: Repercussions of Feminine Intellect
5. Silence: Transgressions and Feminine Revoicings
6. Coda: Re-sounding Voices
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Further Series Titles

Citation preview

Hearing Voices

N e w H i s pa n i s m s Anne J. Cruz, series editor

H E AR I NG VO I C ES Aurality and New Spanish Sound Culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Sarah Finley

U n i v e r s i t y o f N e b r a s ka P r e s s   Lincoln and London

© 2019 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska An earlier version of chapter 5 was originally published as “Embodied Sound and Female Voice in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Canon: Romance 8 and El divino Narciso” in Revista de estudios Hispánicos 50, no. 1 (March 2016): 191–­216. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Finley, Sarah, author. Title: Hearing voices: aurality and new Spanish sound culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz / Sarah Finley. Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2019] | Series: New Hispanisms | “An earlier version of chapter 5 was originally published as “Embodied Sound and Female Voice in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Canon: Romance 8 and El divino Narciso” in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 50, no. 1 (March 2016): 191–­216—­T.p. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018017412 isbn 9781496211798 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn 9781496212771 (epub) isbn 9781496212788 (mobi) isbn 9781496212795 (pdf) Subjects: lcsh: Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sister, 1651–­1695—­Criticism and interpretation. | Sound poetry—­Mexico—­History and criticism. | Sound in literature. Classification: lcc pq7296.j6 z6613 2019 | ddc 861/.3—­dc23 lc record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2018017412 Set in Arno by E. Cuddy.

For Mónica Díaz

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. —John Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo”

Contents

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Prelude 1 1. Harmony: Order and Authority in Occasional Poems 13 2. Resonance: Intersections of Music and Other Arts 59 3. Sound: Female Auralities in the Villancicos 93 4. Echo: Repercussions of Feminine Intellect 127 5. Silence: Transgressions and Feminine Revoicings 151 6. Coda: Re-­sounding Voices 185 Notes 193 Bibliography 211 Index 223

Illustrations

1. Fame with trumpet 26 2. Fludd’s universal monochord 46 3. Kircher’s universal monochord with Muses 49 4. La Asunción de la Virgen  108 5. Assumption of the Virgin  110 6. Anacamptic triangle 134 7. Echoic diagram of “clamore” 148

ix

Acknowledgments

Numerous colleagues, friends, and mentors have been instrumental in writing this book, and I gratefully recognize their contributions. First, the support of Christopher Newport University was important for bringing the project to fruition. Institutional funding enabled me to conduct archival research in Mexico and also offset publication costs. Colleagues in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures encouraged my scholarship and protected the writing and research time necessary to prepare the manuscript. Jana Adamitis, Laura Deiulio, Elaine Miller, and Danielle Velardi were especially supportive in this regard. Last but not least, a heartfelt thanks to my academic confidants Rocío Gordon, Elena Valdez, and Alonso Varo Varo for their unflagging friendship and enthusiasm. Generous colleagues outside my institution shaped the book as well. Enrico Mario Santí and Moisés Castillo helped plant its first seeds, and their guidance was a prelude to the final product. Nuria Salazar, Doris Bieñko, and other members of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia’s interdisciplinary seminar “Los conventos de monjas, arquitectura y vida cotidiana: del virreinato a la posmodernidad” responded enthusiastically to an early overview of the project and suggested refinements. Stephanie Kirk, Rosalva Loreto López, Ricardo Miranda, Sarah Owens, and Rosa Perelmuter also exchanged ideas with me and recommended valuable bibliography. Alicia Ramírez kindly aided in gaining access to xi

resources at the Biblioteca Palafoxiana in Puebla, and librarians at Mexico’s Biblioteca Nacional and at the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia helped locate resources that strengthen my arguments. I also thank the institutions that granted permission to reproduce the images in this book: the Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Cornell University Libraries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museo Nacional de Arte, in Mexico City. Working with Anne Cruz, Alisa Plant, and the University of Nebraska Press editorial team has been a privilege. Thoughtful comments from anonymous readers improved the manuscript, and I appreciate their expert reactions. A prior version of chapter 5 appeared in the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. I am likewise grateful to the journal’s reviewers for astute feedback as well as to the editors for permission to publish the piece here. An intellectual flight like this is a labor of love for the author and also for those who surround her. I am fortunate to have enjoyed the support of family and friends throughout the process. First, my mother, Annie Shelby, taught me thoughtfulness and tenacity, key qualities for completing a monograph. She sought out resources to develop my musical and academic interests from a young age, and I am grateful for the encouragement she continues to provide. I dedicate the book to Mónica Díaz, who embodies the spirit of Sor Juana. She is a devoted friend, an accomplished scholar, and one of the most inspiring women I know. Mónica celebrated every victory as I submitted the proposal and prepared the manuscript, and she offered invaluable advice along the way. The project would not be the same without her. Finally, Behzad Raiszadeh is my shoulder to lean on and a constant source of support and laughter. The journey has been far richer with him by my side. Kheyli doostet daram.

xii Acknowledgments

Introduction Prelude

[Speech is] to open up a passageway through the organs by burrowing through the canal of a wound narrow but deep enough to involve the innermost muscles; whether it is that of an artist from the opera, cut from the heart of the rock, or fashioned in the most supple steel if it is that of a singer, emerging from the moist earth of a hot-­house or stretched out in breaking glass filament if that of one of the creatures more readily called the cantratrices than chanteuses (even though cantateur is an unknown species); or whether it is the most vulgar voice, issuing from the most insignificant being for the most insipid ballad or most trivial refrain, mysterious is the voice that sings, in relation to the voice that speaks. —­Michel Leiris, quoted in Derrida, Margins

References to sound and music in the work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz have long intrigued readers, for they offer insight into the nun’s sound world and evidence for her engagement with Western music culture. Poems like Romance 21 and Loa 384 (Encomiástico poema a los años de la Excma. Sra. Condesa de Galve) explicitly comment on early modern music theory, while figured sound and silences in Primero sueño (exact date unknown but in or before 1691) and the Respuesta a sor Filotea (1691) exceed logos and its complement, reason—­perhaps channeling mysticism’s orality. Prior approaches to the poet’s aurality have either focused on vestiges of early modern music culture (Mario Lavista, Pamela Long, Ricardo Miranda, 1

Mario Ortiz, and others) or else treated acoustical tropes as expressive devices (Electa Arenal and Elena del Río Parra). While such methodologies highlight aural metaphor in Sor Juana’s poetry and lend insight into her musical thought, they leave us wondering about her engagement with nonmusical sound. I respond to these lacunae by rereading the poet’s oeuvre from a sound studies perspective that considers aurality and its resonances with other areas of inquiry. The approach draws out previously marginalized components of Sor Juana’s acoustical inheritance and results in new interpretations that attend to sonority’s intersections with significant themes in her writing, including gender, agency, and authority. Each chapter develops one strand of the nun’s aurality, and I highlight correlations among them for a comprehensive overview of her poetic soundscape. These resonances or sonorous relationships all come together in chapters 5 and 6, which explore imaginings of sound in the Respuesta a sor Filotea and Primero sueño. The auditory lens that previous chapters establish lends new insight into two of Sor Juana’s most studied works. Sor Juana and Music

There is no doubt of Sor Juana’s theoretical and practical interest in music. The first reference to her musical knowledge is from Jesuit priest Diego Calleja’s “Aprobación,” a short biography that accompanied her third publication, Fama y obras póstumas (1700). In his account Calleja affirms that Sor Juana led solfège classes at the Convento de San Jerónimo and also penned a treatise to facilitate her sisters’ musical education: “se professa con esmero tan edificativo el Arte del a Musica, por agradecer à sus carissimas Hermanas el hospedage cariñoso, que todas la hizieron, estudió el Arte muy de propósito, y le alcançò con tal felicidad, que compuso otro nuevo, y mas fácil, en que se llega à su perfecto uso sin los rodeos del antiguo método: obra, de los que esto entienden, tan alabada, que bastava ella sola, dizen, para hazerla famosa en el Mnndo [sic].”1 Complex references to practical and theoretical music pepper Sor Juana’s oeuvre and support Calleja’s remarks about her abilities. Nonetheless there is no other evidence to suggest that the nun educated her companions. In 2 Introduction

fact, Long notes Sor Juana’s disavowal of her pedagogical vocation in the Respuesta a sor Filotea and argues that it is unlikely that the poet taught music to her fellow nuns.2 Given Long’s insight and Stephanie Merrim’s observation that the hagiographic register of Calleja’s piece may blur fact and fiction, it is important to approach the Jesuit’s account as a historical document as well as an ideological one.3 Within this context Sor Juana’s aptitude for musical instruction resonates with discourses in exemplarity among religious women. Despite potential limitations, the singing manual mentioned in the “Aprobación” seems to correspond with a mystery in the reconstruction of Sor Juana’s musical knowledge. The allusion to a written document brings to mind El caracol, the nonextant treatise that she penned for viceroy Tomás de la Cerda’s wife, María Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga, Countess of Paredes (1649–­1729). The countess was one of Sor Juana’s close friends and intellectual champions. In fact, she was instrumental in publishing the poet’s first anthology Inundación castálida (1689). Romance 21 indicates that Sor Juana wrote the treatise at the vicereine’s request but begs forgiveness for never sending it: De la Música un Cuaderno pedís, y es cosa precisa que me haga a mí disonancia que me pidáis armonías.4

Regardless of whether the countess ever received El caracol or not, scholars have been unable to locate the document. Nevertheless Romance 21 includes a gloss of its contents, and there are hypotheses about how the work engages debates from Sor Juana’s time. El caracol’s title may lend particular insight into the treatise’s main ideas and has provoked varied interpretations. For instance, Salvador Moreno notes that the conch shell’s helix recalls instruments in Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher’s encyclopedic musical treatise Musurgia universalis (1650) that take their form from spiral cochlea.5 Octavio Paz’s polysemous reading deepens Moreno’s observations by drawing out harmonic Introduction  3

resonances: the helix also visually reproduces the mathematically perfect intervals of the Pythagorean tuning system (310).6 Paz relates El caracol to the poet’s defense of classical approaches to temperament elsewhere in her oeuvre. His interpretation aligns with the affirmation in Romance 21 that Sor Juana named her treatise El caracol because “es una línea espiral / no un círculo, la Armonía.”7 Echoing Paz’s observations about harmony, Ortiz takes a more precisely musicological perspective to situate Sor Juana’s ideas about tuning within sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century music culture. Specifically, he hypothesizes that the elusive document rewrites ideas about music theory from one of only two volumes that remain from the poet’s library: Italian Renaissance thinker Pietro Cerone’s El melopeo y maestro: tractado de música theorica y practica (1613).8 An extant copy of the book signed in the poet’s own hand—­“Su discípula, Juana Inés de la Cruz”—­makes for tantalizing connections. Both Paz and Ortiz call attention to the ironic content of Sor Juana’s signature in her copy of El melopeo y maestro, which they read as a response to Cerone’s disapproval of women musicians.9 Indeed, Sor Juana’s reference to herself as a music theoretician in El melopeo y maestro indicates her advocacy of the role of women in music and helps contextualize the feminine aurality that I draw out. El caracol’s title and other allusions to a harmonic spiral suggest that Sor Juana favored the Pythagorean tuning system developed during the sixth century bc and widely employed in Western music until the beginning of the fifteenth century. Based on the equal intervals of the tetractys (ratios of 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3) and their resonances with underlying cosmic and earthly structure, Pythagorean tuning privileges mathematical perfection over musical function. From a practical standpoint, the principal imperfection of the Pythagorean system is the syntonic comma (the discrepancy between two enharmonic notes that arises as a result of the perfect intervals employed in Pythagorean temperament), which impedes transposition. During the Renaissance, theorists challenged this view and argued that music—­traditionally part of the number-­based quadrivium—­ was more closely related to the rhetorical arts of the trivium. Distanced 4 Introduction

from the certainty that characterizes scientific and mathematical thought, music became a malleable art whose communicative potential could be harnessed and manipulated. As a result, musicians began to experiment with various systems of temperament to eliminate the syntonic comma through artificial narrowing of the perfect fifth (the basis of the Pythagorean scale). These innovations led to the seventeenth-­century development of well or circular temperament, in which harmony adopts a circular form to facilitate transposition. Contrapuntally, in the opening chapters of La musa y la melopea: La música en el mundo conventual, la vida y el pensamiento de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ortiz turns to archival resources to reread Sor Juana’s practical and theoretical representations of music within the context of the New Spanish convent. He rightly argues, “El estudio de la cultura musical conventual . . . es fundamental para lograr una mayor comprensión del papel en general que este arte tuvo en la vida y pensamiento de Sor Juana.”10 By considering sociohistorical resonances of the poet’s musical inheritance through the lens of convent music making, Ortiz significantly enriches understanding of the topic and also draws Sor Juana into broader discussions about the music cultures of early modern religious women. My interpretation in chapter 5 of the relationship between Sor Juana’s representations of feminine silence and the Church’s anxiety about women’s voices engages related musicological approaches. Paz and Ortiz’s scholarship on Sor Juana’s musical inheritance are among the most notable; however, their approaches privilege musica theorica and musica practica over other areas of the nun’s auditory imagination.11 I respond to such lacunae by drawing out previously unexplored auralities, and two important contributions inform the overall argument. First, Miranda delineates three separate areas of inquiry that aid in reconstructing the poet’s knowledge: the historical context of the loas and villancicos, theoretical debates, and finally metaphors and other examples of figured music in the poet’s oeuvre.12 His preliminary readings of poetic representations of sound in Sor Juana’s oeuvre are the foundation of several interpretations in this book. Complementarily, Long focuses on the poet’s Introduction  5

musical imagery as a window into the relationship between musicological and literary discourses of her epoch. While analyses of musica theorica echo Ortiz’s reading, Long’s treatment of the relationship between Sor Juana’s dramas and villancicos and seventeenth-­century Mexico’s music culture is an important advance, particularly since she emphasizes the possibility for music to lend insight into marginalized cultural plurality. My own interest in attending to feminine voices that were perhaps less audible during Sor Juana’s time and in prior scholarship illustrates such tendencies. Figured Sound in Sor Juana’s Work

Complementary to music-­based inquiries into Sor Juana’s reimaginings of acoustics, scholars like Arenal and del Río Parra interpret topoi such as silence or echo as figurative devices. Their readings are sensitive to underlying cultural links between sound and poetry and yield a critical vocabulary that elegantly draws out the poet’s aurality. Nonetheless, interpretations that view auditory tropes as metaphor risk marginalizing music’s deeper symbolism. Del Río Parra distances her work from musicological approaches and focuses instead on nonmusical acoustic themes: “quitado el contexto musical real, encontramos un espacio muy diferente donde desaparece cualquier vestigio de esferas sonantes, de música cósmica acorde y armoniosa reflejo del orden del mundo de raigambre órfica.”13 For this scholar, metaphors rooted in the music of the spheres are distinct from music making. Nonetheless, Renaissance and early modern thinkers explored and indeed exploited links between the two realms, as readings of Sor Juana’s aurality will show.14 Although del Río Parra is sensitive to the overwhelming sonority of the nun’s oeuvre, separating philosophical approaches to harmony from practical ones proves challenging. For her part Arenal uses aurality as a critical lens to draw out Sor Juana’s refiguring of gender, knowledge, and related themes: “Like a baroque concerto, El sueño is made up of a multiplicity of voices in a complex weave of rhythms, tonalities, and melodies. Sor Juana favored the word concierto (concert) for its musically and semantically connotative properties. This 6 Introduction

and other musical analogies are among the terms she uses, sometimes to flaunt, others to conceal, her overriding interest in the reorchestration of sounds and silences. Traditional scores were too discordant and disconcerting to the ears of (female) intelligence.”15 To be sure, the aurality that characterizes Arenal’s language points to an opportunity to deepen understanding of how sonority intersects with other areas of the nun’s poetic imagination. I build on the observation by examining physical, aesthetic, and philosophical constructions of sound that further contextualize Sor Juana’s aurality. For all this it becomes clear that musicological and critical canons circumscribe prior approaches to sound in Sor Juana’s oeuvre, and their lacunae therefore resonate in understanding of the poet’s aurality. Indeed, disciplinary boundaries isolate sound and music from areas like literature, philosophy, and science. Recent scholarship has begun to challenge these paradigms and draws out deep resonances among early modern sound culture and other subjects. For instance, Penelope Gouk attends to interrelationships of music and scientific thought in seventeenth-­century England to challenge repression of relationships crucial historically to Western music culture. Similarly, Gary Tomlinson and Veit Erlmann counter ocularcentric approaches to early modern philosophy with readings of sound’s importance. Tomlinson draws out Renaissance intersections of music, natural philosophy, and the occult to highlight alternative ontologies that were distinct from reason. In a similar vein Erlmann’s Western otological history (otology: the affective and physiological study of the ear) opposes resonance to reflection and notes that the latter transcends distinctions between subject and object.16 Both readings draw aurality, ear, and harmony into early modern discourses of subjectivity: Tomlinson with his remarks about music and magic as “an intersubjective conception of knowledge,” and Erlmann through commentary on René Descartes’s engagement with auditory physiology in L’homme (written in 1633, published posthumously in 1662) and Jacques Derrida’s insistence on the proximity of inscription to presence, resulting in the so-­called phonophobism of De la grammatologie (1967).17 Introduction  7

With these advances in mind, a closer examination of Sor Juana’s aurality draws out music’s intersections with seemingly nonauditory fields, including mathematics, natural science, visual arts, and even rhetoric. Indeed, as I will argue throughout Hearing Voices, the nun’s engagement with music, harmony, and other auditory themes extends well beyond musica practica and musica theorica. Key here are unexplored sonorities in Sor Juana’s works that deepen understanding of her acousticomusical inheritance. My interpretations delve into cultural implications of the poet’s representation of sound to lend a fuller perspective to prior studies. By approaching aurality through a sound studies lens—­as opposed to a narrower focus on music theory and, to a small degree, musical practices—­I show how the auditory intersects with themes like agency, order, and intellect. Within this context attending to underdeveloped areas of Sor Juana’s acoustical inheritance is an especially relevant objective. Among others, significant influences include Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher’s acoustical and musical treatises Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova (1673), links between harmonic imaginings of the cosmos and representations of civic order, and sonorous discourses of exemplarity in New Spanish convents. Overview

Advances in musicology and cultural criticism as well as developments in sound studies are all useful for grappling with these challenges and resonate throughout the book. Indeed, renewed interest in music’s intersections with other areas of early modern thought and historicomusicological readings of sound’s cultural resonances (Cullen Rath, Smith), especially in pre-­twentieth-­century Spanish America (Baker and Ochoa Gautier [Aurality]), contribute to what one might call “the auditory turn” in cultural criticism. Such interpretations establish methodologies and critical questions that inform Hearing Voices. In addition, from a philosophical perspective Adriana Cavarero, Mladen Dolar, and others reconfigure the metaphysics of voice and disentangle phonos, logos, presence, and related concepts. Advances like these are pertinent to my particular interest in feminine auralities as a response to women’s marginalization in New Spain’s 8 Introduction

patriarchy. Finally, cognitive literary studies scholars (Crane, Pickavé and Shapiro) heighten sensitivity to nonvisual senses in sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century cultural production. Cognitive approaches resonate particularly with Sor Juana’s interest in psychophysiological dimensions of sound perception and musica pathetica in chapters 1 and 2 and elsewhere. Each chapter engages a separate strand of the poet’s aurality and seeks to contextualize it with broader discourses in New Spanish sound culture. My main purpose is to identify influences on Sor Juana’s sonorities that complement and extend the musical Pythagoreanism that Paz, Ortiz, and others highlighted. Key subjects include music’s separate intersections with politics and visual art, sonorous representations of the Virgin Mary, musical practices in New Spanish ceremonies, early modern acoustics, and convent sound culture. By attending to the nun’s engagement with her acoustical world, I aim to establish paradigms for listening to Sor Juana’s poetry that exceed textual and linguistic limits. Chapter 1 considers harmonic representations of civic order, obedience, and tempered government in often overlooked loas and occasional pieces that honor viceregal authorities. Reading musical conceits in these pieces as eloquent metaphors without attending to their aural context marginalizes an important feature in Sor Juana’s courtly tone. I argue that such works harmonize with emblematic representations of political power in Hapsburg Spain, Spanish America, and beyond. The interpretation identifies a previously marginalized area of Sor Juana’s intellectual inheritance and also highlights the rich musical tradition that informs figured sonorities in her work. Chapter 2 considers another type of aural representation: musicopoetic portraits that explore links between sight and sound through polysemy, puns, and other poetic devices. Indeed, careful attention to the concealed meaning of symbols in Redondilla 87, Romance 41, Loa 384, and others draws out juxtapositions of visual art, writing, and music making. For interpreting such relationships, new resources for the study of Kircher’s musical and acoustical thought develop Paz’s brief observations about Sor Juana’s inheritance of Kircherian alignment of eye and ear. The Jesuit’s Introduction  9

parallel approach to light and sound transmission in his acoustics resonates in the portraits’ conflation of music, visual art, and poetry. Moreover, previously unexamined vestiges of Kircher’s ideas about sensory cognition, musica pathetica, and musica poetica yield additional evidence for the nun’s engagement with Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova. Chapter 3 situates feminine sonorities from the villancicos and other imaginings of ritual music within the New Spanish soundscape. The Marian villancicos written for the Feast of the Assumption are central to my interpretation. Some refigure traditional musical iconography associated with the event to sound women’s intellect and agency. Others—­mostly from the 1677 attributed sequence for Assumption—­re-­sound the Virgin’s harmonies through her musical participation in diverse ceremonies. Complementarily, a reading of the “Letras sagradas en la solemnidad de la profesión de una religiosa” draws out vestiges of the ceremony’s musical form that offer valuable insight into the novice’s experience of the rite. Contrapuntal to prior scholarship on the villancicos’ importance for sounding popular and liminal voices, I highlight correspondences among sonorous representations of Mary and other musical conceits. My objective is to offer a balanced perspective: just as sound strengthens the Virgin’s authority and agency, so it also marginalizes musical figures in other contexts. Historical and musicological secondary materials sharpen sonorous references in all of these works, and in turn, I highlight areas where the nun’s musical representations might contribute to understanding of acoustical practices in New Spain. Chapter 4 examines embodied sound as locus of female agency in Sor Juana’s reimaginings of Echo and Narcissus in Romance 8 and El divino Narciso. I argue that these pieces draw on correlations between seeing and hearing as well as voice’s physical and pathetic effects to refigure women’s aurality as counterpoint to patriarchal visuality. Debates in acoustics, musica pathetica, and the music of the spheres resonate in both works and lend insight into Sor Juana’s engagement with early modern sound culture. As in chapter 2, vestiges of Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova

10 Introduction

are especially salient, and Kircher’s influence on sonority in Sor Juana’s poetic imagination once again appears greater than previously thought. Chapter 5 considers voice and silence in the Respuesta a sor Filotea, Primero sueño, and related works. Given these pieces’ woman-­centered themes they establish useful paradigms for examining intersections of gender, sound, and knowledge. Like in chapter 4 visuality is linked to masculine themes of reason and intellect while aurality offers a feminine alternative to such motifs. Gendered discourses on sound from convent rulebooks, sermons, and other primary materials contextualize Sor Juana’s feminine sonorities with approaches elsewhere in New Spain’s ecclesiastical culture. Furthermore, sound studies offers theoretical precision that distinguishes between silence and soundlessness to refine readings of repressed women’s voices. I extend such observations to propose a distinction among dysphonia (disordered voice), aphonia (loss of speech), and silence (voicelessness) that attunes itself to nuanced imaginings of voice. The critical lens attends to tensions that Sor Juana’s works establish with patriarchal constraints on women’s aurality here and, in fact, throughout the book. I conclude with a reflection on how Primero sueño’s auralities highlight sound’s intersection with significant areas of Sor Juana’s poetic imagination and invite further research.

Introduction  11

Chapter 1

Harmony Order and Authority in Occasional Poems

From heralding trumpets and Amazon songstresses to musical encryptions of virtues, aural representations of nobility in Sor Juana’s oeuvre feature a fascinating acoustical fabric that echoes in the emblematic tradition of the Hispanic world and beyond. While prior scholarship generally views such sonorities as an imaginative series of metaphors, I argue that they draw out sound’s importance for conceptualizing civic order in early modern culture. Vestiges of the harmony-­based worldview known as the music of the spheres are key here. Adherents of this classical doctrine understood cosmic and earthly structure through a musicomathematical lens rooted in Pythagorean ideals. Thinkers approached planetary rotation as potential sound whose consonance or dissonance, although imperceptible on Earth, affected one’s worldly experience. Likewise, humans became a microcosm of the universe with physical and spiritual properties that adhered to harmonic principles. Within this framework, concordance and sympathy among the three areas of musical thought—­musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis—­emerged as ideological tools for constructing and illustrating order.1 This chapter’s readings will attend to such themes to show how auditory language in Sor Juana’s occasional works refigures harmonious representations of political authority. Sonorous renderings of civic order especially stand out in pieces that commemorated noble birthdays, funerals, and accomplishments. According to Paz, Sor Juana authored 216 occasional works, many of which she 13

dedicated to her most important patrons, Tomás de la Cerda and María Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga.2 Despite the number of occasional poems in the nun’s canon, prior scholarship tends to overlook these pieces. Paz and George Anthony Thomas separately respond to the trend—­ which they attribute to Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo’s devaluing of the literary content of Sor Juana’s courtly and political poems—­by attending to occasional poetry’s importance for understanding constructions of political authority in New Spain. Paz argues that ceremonial language can shed light on sociopolitical hierarchies. He notes intersections of order, harmony, and ritual elements like song and dance, but the analysis leaves room for further exploration of sonorous references.3 Complementarily, Thomas takes a gendered perspective, arguing that “for an early modern woman writer, the occasional mode was a sanctioned means of inscribing herself into literary and political spheres that would otherwise be inaccessible.”4 His readings draw out themes like genre bending, authorship, and narrative authority and view them in light of the nun’s participation in New Spain’s social hierarchies. This chapter unites Paz’s observations about poetic representations of viceregal power and Thomas’s interest in gendered reworkings of courtly tropes under a musical lens that attends to harmonic imaginings of authority. More than isolated figures rooted in a topic that the poet favored, I contend, Sor Juana’s musical renderings of nobility intersect with a broader acousticoemblematic tradition that sounded early modern Europe’s sociopolitical fabric.5 To this end, Sara González’s reading of musical representations of power in Hapsburg Spain deeply informs the analysis. While Paz notes that the occasional poems “son emblemas verbales de una relación política sobrentendida,” my auditory approach shows that nonverbal cultural production also contributes to the pieces’ reimaginings of authority.6 Complementary to the primary focus, this chapter’s interpretations also highlight sound’s intersections with agency, gender, visual art, and other concepts that will recur throughout Hearing Voices. Overall aurality in these pieces and elsewhere in Sor Juana’s oeuvre challenges ocularcentric readings and beckons a more attentive “listening.” 14 Harmony

Interrelations of Harmony and Authority in Early Modern Political Theory

Concordant approaches to social order and musical representations of the state inherited from Antiquity underlie Sor Juana’s courtly auralities. Plato’s approach to links among harmony, morality, and civic organization in the Republic, Laws, and Timaeus is seminal for understanding the topic, and works like Aristotle’s Politics and Aristides Quintilianus’s On Music further develop musicopolitical thought. Earthly and human resonances of the music of the spheres inform such imaginings, which extend man as microcosm to include the state. Indeed, Plato and Aristotle are among the first to explore the possibility that creating and appreciating harmony could affect virtue in the listener’s soul. In light of such connections, both promote music education for strengthening civitas. Plato defends the position in the Republic: isn’t this why the rearing in music is most sovereign? Because rhythm and harmony most of all insinuate themselves into the innermost part of the soul and most vigorously lay hold of it in bringing grace with them; and they make a man graceful if he is correctly reared, if not, the opposite. Furthermore, it is sovereign because the man properly reared on rhythm and harmony would have the sharpest sense for what’s been left out and what isn’t a fine product of craft or what isn’t a fine product of nature. And, due to his having the right kind of dislikes, he would praise the fine things; and, taking pleasure in them and receiving them into his soul, he would be reared on them and become a gentleman. He would blame and hate the ugly in the right way while he’s still young, before he’s able to grasp reasonable speech. And when reasonable speech comes, the man who’s reared in this way would take most delight in it, recognizing it on account of its being akin?7

Here the philosopher describes music’s ethical influence and clarifies its edifying purpose. He later explains the affective impact of each musical mode and advocates two for harmonizing ideal society: Dorian (which stirs militant passions) and Phrygian (useful for restoring concord). The Harmony  15

implications are that a well-­tuned individual is consonant with a concordant civic body, which, in turn, resonates with cosmic harmony. Early modern political thought drew on latent connections between consonance and governance to reinforce civic order in emblematic works, advice to princes, sermons, and other cultural artifacts. Within this framework, the monarch harmonizes disparate civic elements and thus re-­sounds municipal unity and sovereign authority. Musical archetypes of the nobleperson therefore attend to balanced governance as the capacity to temper or harmonize a kingdom’s plurivocality. Complementary to resonances with classical imaginings of the harmonic state, early modern renderings develop the trope so that it engages additional discourses of power. For instance, some depictions refigure Scholastic intersections of the Pythagorean and Christian cosmos by emphasizing links among the king, God, and universal order. Others attend to moral resonances among the ideal ruler, his or her dominion, and the heavens. They syncretize Platonic and Aristotelian approaches to consonance’s moral effects with Christian ones (David’s music healing Saul, for example) and also draw on early modern explorations of sound’s psychophysiological influence. While prior scholarship tends to marginalize music’s resonances with sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century political theory, two notable advances inform my approach to such themes in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Gonzalez and Katherine Butler separately draw out the relevance of these and other paradigms in the Hispanic world, Elizabethan England, and beyond, and their observations are crucial to this chapter’s interpretations. Gonzalez remarks, “Musical iconography was a key factor in conveying an ideal image of the ruler as a guarantor of political harmony both in and beyond the palace, with different meanings that proclaimed either the subject’s expectations . . . or a divinized idea of power disseminated from court.”8 In similar fashion, I argue that harmonic representations of viceregal rule in Sor Juana’s occasional poetry intersect with the harmonious Pythagorean cosmos and thus re-­sound New Spain’s political hierarchies.

16 Harmony

Musica Mundana and Civic Authority

Gonzalez observed that harmonic representations of power especially persisted in seventeenth-­century Spain and its colonies, where they channeled debates about monarchal authority and also reinforced sovereign rule before a fractured and declining state. To this end music’s role in imagining social hierarchies is particularly evident in Sor Juana’s loas for Hapsburg king Charles II’s birthday, where sonorous tropes in pieces like Loa 374 sound the ruler’s power and imagine consonance among all elements of his reign. The opening verses first sound the musical theme with two choruses whose references to musica mundana conceptualize earthly order and social hierarchies: coro 1: Hoy, al clarín de mi voz, todo el orbe se convoque; que a celebrar tanto día, aun no basta todo el Orbe.9

Musical iconography is important here, for the choir’s collective voice as horn draws out themes of royalty and civic harmony.10 Indeed the trumpet commonly opened sacred and secular processions during the early modern period. Its incorporation in the opening lines of Sor Juana’s piece reflects the practical music context (the loa is a play that would have incorporated performance elements) and also invokes images of the entire community responding to the trumpet call to celebrate Charles II’s birthday with song. In this sense, the comparison reinforces the monarch’s dominion over his subjects, for John Wallace and Alexander McGrattan note that ever since its Western reemergence during the Crusades, the trumpet has channeled themes of sacred and secular authority.11 Along the same lines the horn in Loa 374 recalls Charles II’s resonances with celestial order by drawing out his role in maintaining cosmic harmony. Royal symbols in the subsequent verse emphasize the elements’ alignment with the king’s trumpeting voice:

Harmony  17

Hoy, para el Natal de Carlos, vistan libreas los Montes, púrpura y oro las Rosas, nueva fragancia las Flores.12

Nonauditory sensory references particularly stand out here. Purple and gold livery combines with floral perfume and resonates with the call to celebration. As a response to the opening line’s aural invocation such imagery draws out sympathy as means of conceptualizing interconnectivity. In this way, the figures channel Erlmann’s observations about resonant imaginings of conjunction.13 Furthermore, the representation attends to harmony as a nonaural concept by drawing out its connections with sight, smell, and other senses. While auditory tropes appear almost peripheral to the opening lines’ construction of royal authority, the second chorus’s response clarifies sound’s musical and cosmic significance: coro 2: Hoy a la dulce armonía de mis bien templadas voces, los Orbes Celestes paren sus movimientos veloces.14

Like the previous example the music of the spheres resonates here as a sign of agency. The first chorus compares the voice to a musical instrument capable of rousing the earthly elements in honor of Charles II’s birthday, and the second develops the theme with universal counterpoint. Indeed, the sun, the stars, and the other planets all take part in the musicopoetic homage to the king. Parallel to the mountains and flowers from the prior strophe, these verses figure civic consonance with images of cosmic elements dressed in royal garb: Hoy, para el Natal de Carlos, de tejidos resplandores vistan galas las Estrellas.15 18 Harmony

Such similarities heighten the universal and mundane relationships that illustrate monarchal authority in Loa 374. Sympathy is particularly important for exploring links among earthly and celestial elements in the play’s opening lines and elsewhere in Sor Juana’s auditory representations of noble authority. The concept is rooted in the Stoic sympatheia, which imagined harmonic connections among body, soul, and cosmos. Acoustically the term describes the relationship between two oscillating bodies whose shared resonant properties incite motion in one another. Sympathy’s aural treatment took on particular importance in early modern culture, when empirical approaches to sound and music making began to lend to it a practical reality that had long been explained hermetically. At the same time the emergence of physiological and philosophical accounts predicated on the relationship between corporeal and mental experiences, (Descartes’s Les passions de l’âme [1649], for example) provoked renewed interest in the relationship between artistic expression and sympathetic emotion. Together the two intellectual currents informed approaches to music making that were sensitive to the art form’s expressive properties.16 Likewise intersections of philosophy, natural science, and musica practica resonate all throughout Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic works. Sympathy persists in the opening lines of Loa 374, where the second chorus’s tuneful song (the “bien templadas voces”) is consonant with the first chorus’s opening trumpet fanfare. Quasi-­anaphoric repetition of the first line of each strophe in Coro 2’s verses heightens the contrapuntal relationship established between the two parts and strengthens musical parallels through poetic structure. Both voices sympathetically influence cosmic and natural elements and cause them to harmonize with odes to Charles II. The gesture is particularly striking in Coro 2, whose song stops the planets in their tracks so that their motion might resonate with laudatory music for the monarch.17 Continuing, Loa 374 further develops the musical celebration’s cosmic impact. In the second scene, the heavens and four earthly elements wonder at the divine force powerful enough to affect them. Fuego speaks of a Harmony  19

“poderosa violencia, / disfrazada en dulce canto,” and Aire remarks upon an “articulado clarín / hiriendo mi cuerpo vago.”18 The violence of these representations aurally reimagines the vulnus caecum—­the Lucretian wound of love that persists in courtly poetry and other amorous pieces—­ and underscores music’s capacity to influence the elements as well as its affective properties.19 Furthermore, subsequent references draw out Pythagorean intersections of harmony and mathematics. Indeed, Agua calls the mysterious force “primorosa armonía,” and consonant song—­ “concento numeroso”—­acts on Tierra’s “siempre fijo centro.”20 While Fuego and Aire describe music’s psychophysiological impact on listeners, Agua and Tierra highlight the underlying cosmic force that makes it so potent: divine harmony. Música replies antiphonally to the elements’ queries, and the responses heighten moral resonances with Platonic and Aristotelian approaches to concord and balanced governance. In Loa 374, such constructions resonate in the alignment of harmony and qualities like love and respect. For example, while the elements’ lines in Escena II emphasize Música’s cosmic influence, the character’s replies link consonance and integrity: Del Respeto el justo reverente aplauso, os llama al festejo del ínclito Carlos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Del Amor el dulce espíritu blando, os busca al obsequio del ínclito Carlos.21

This harmonic representation of civic order depicts music as the underlying force of universal concord. In a performative gesture that reflects the listener’s concordant engagement with the loa’s musical text, consonance resonates as an outpouring of love and respect for the monarch. The metaphor can also apply to the performance context. In this sense, the 20 Harmony

singers and instrumentalists that perform the piece honor Charles II and reinforce universal and civic order through the harmonies they produce. As it turns out, devotion to the king harmonizes the elements. The quality appears as the figure Amor in the third scene, much of which consists of a monologue that explores love as a consonant force: Y ya que juntos os miro, nobles Elementos cuatro, cuya fecunda discordia es madre de efectos tantos vosotros, que variamente con paz y guerra luchando, sois contrarios muy amigos, y amigos muy encontrados.22

Concordia discors—­the Antiquity doctrine that harmonizes disparate but concordant elements whose musical relationship leads to universal consonance—­resonates in these lines. References to the monarch’s capacity to unite the dissonant characters Fuego, Aire, Agua, and Tierra in honor of his birthday as well as antitheses like peace and conflict recall Harmonia’s origins, for the goddess of concord was the daughter of Ares, the war deity, and Aphrodite, the divine ruler of love. In this way, the reference channels vestiges of concordia discors in early modern monarchal emblems, on which Gonzalez remarks.23 Later in the scene Amor highlights the cosmic significance of the union of opposites and affirms that love is the unifying force that tempers dissonance among “los seis / artificiosos” by calling them to the royal festivities: hoy ansiosamente os llamo al más debido festejo, al más merecido aplauso.24

The polysemous six relates to the number of characters in the loa (the four elements, Cielo, and Amor) and recalls Renaissance music theorist Harmony  21

Gioseffo Zarlino’s senario as musical and universal cipher, in light of its musical, Pythagorean, Christian, and astrological symbolism. The senario aligns Sor Juana’s loa with modern musical thought, for Zarlino’s model extended the Pythagorean harmonic ratios to include five and six. The modification reflects compositional practices by reframing thirds and sixths as consonant intervals, based on their perfect numerical representation. Amor relates the two integers and draws out their sacred nature: y a ti, Cielo, que influyendo en tus movimientos varios, divides hermosamente en cuatro partes el año, pues a todo lo sublunar, a expensas de tu cuidado, vive a merced de tus lluvias y al influjo de tus astros; y yo, que siendo el Amor, soy alma de todo cuanto ser ostenta en lo viviente, y existencia en lo crïado:25

A closer look reveals that Amor’s discourse features even deeper resonances with Zarlino, for it includes key subjects that Jairo Moreno draws out in the theorist’s elaboration of the senario in Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558) following the very progression that Moreno describes in the treatise’s fourteenth chapter: cosmic and mundane influences on temporality; being and cultural expression, including “poetry and song, the artifices of ‘man.’”26 Sor Juana’s inheritance of the Zarlinian tradition is clear. As I argue, the third scene of Loa 374 reimagines the senario as musical-­civic emblem and situates Charles II within the harmonic universe: hoy es el día en que el León de España, Carlos, 22 Harmony

para iluminar el Mundo nació entre divinos rayos. Nació cifra, nació copia de tanto Ascendiente claro, a no ser como ninguno, el que se adornó de tantos.27

These strophes’ luminous imagery depicts the king as sun, and underlying themes of concordia discors resonate with Gonzalez’s reading of how one common emblematic representation—­royal subjects as lyre—­links noble figures to the solar deity Apollo. The association emphasizes the ruler’s ability to “harmonize” disparate voices within the dominion, just as the god’s instrument brings the seven scale tones together to make consonant music.28 As it turns out, universal concordance in Loa 374 manifests itself as civic duty and loyalty to the king. At the end of Escena III Cielo remarks on the earthly and celestial elements’ conformity, and Amor calls on these subjects to respond sympathetically to her voice—­an echo of the music of the spheres—­with exemplary obedience. The exchange draws out music’s role in reinforcing social order and recalls Spanish political writers’ responses to the Machiavellian marginalization of royal virtue in promoting civic concord. Within this context, Gonzalez observes that thinkers like Juan Baños de Velasco y Azevedo, Antonio Pérez de la Rúa, and others drew on harmony and the music of the spheres to imagine the ruler’s consonance and its resonances in his subjects.29 Loa 374 employs similar imagery to connect love, obedience, and the organized state: cielo: Ya obedientes a tu voz, conformes, Amor, estamos esperando sólo el orden de salir de empeño tanto. amor: El orden será, decir siguiéndose por sus grados, Harmony  23

guardando el natural orden que la poderosa Mano de Dios a todos nos puso, cuando nos sacó del Caos. Y porque mejor se entiendan los lugares que señalo, de la Música los ecos os servirán de reclamo. Seguid las sonoras huellas de sus numerosos pasos, para que vais prosiguiendo lo que ella fuere apuntando.30

These lines underscore harmony’s importance for imagining divine and earthly order. Within this context, music is compared to God while its “ecos” symbolize man, created in the likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). Humans therefore mirror the divine, and the aurality associated with the comparison conceptualizes the relationship in terms of harmony. Miranda remarks on links between sound and presence in Sor Juana’s poetic imagination: “para existir, para ser del mundo conocido, el sonido es elemento fundamental.”31 The scholar’s observations respond particularly to lines from Loa 374’s fifth scene: “aire: y porque seáis, del Mundo, conocido, / música: Sonido.”32 While aural approaches to being here and elsewhere in the nun’s oeuvre are indeed intriguing, musical representations of the consonant universe like in Loa 374 sharpen Miranda’s remarks. Harmony orders the cosmos, and sound becomes a means of accessing the world. Sor Juana’s works engage such constructions and exploit the musician’s dominion over concord. Harmony is not a constant force but a malleable one, subject to sympathetic alterations. As I shall argue throughout the book, Sor Juana’s imaginings of sound aurally engage mundane and heavenly hierarchies to revoice them, often in a feminine key.

24 Harmony

The Loa a los años de la Reina Madre, Doña Mariana de Austria, Nuestra Señora (380) includes another notable example of aurality’s intersections with universal and civic order and their embodiment within the ruling figure. The piece honors Charles II’s mother, Mariana of Austria, with concordant elements whose consonance celebrates her birthday and sounds authority: Y unidos en sonoras consonancias, el Fuego, la Tierra, el Viento y el Agua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ¡festejen, asistan, celebren, aplaudan del más luciente Sol la mejor Alba!33

Fama’s invocation unites the elements in a gesture that resonates with representations of concordia discors in Loa 374, where Tierra, Fuego, Agua, and Aire harmoniously join to commemorate Charles II’s birthday. While each of the earthly substances was a character in the previous example, in the ode to Mariana de Austria, the four deities personify the elements and develop sympathetic reactions to the monarch. Indeed, classical mythology associates Mars with fire, Neptune with water, Ceres with land, and Venus with air. Escena II opens with a response from each of the gods that establishes auditory themes and also refers to Fama’s attributes: marte Bella Deidad, que en las señas de lo parlera y alada, neptuno Ave, que con los indicios de lo que vuelas y cantas, venus Diosa, que con las insignias de las lenguas y las alas,

Harmony  25

ceres Ninfa, que con las premisas de lo que tocas y parlas34

Here, the repetition of words like “alas” and “vuela” recall winged representations of Fama while sonorous tropes like “parlera” and “lenguas” channel depictions of the deity with a trumpet, which symbolized her alignment with rumors and gossipmongers. The deity sometimes appeared in early modern emblems and other representations as a reminder of the posthumous rewards of preserving one’s reputation. Royal emblems particularly favored the topic. For instance, in Dutch engraver Hendrick Goltzius’s Fame and History (1586, fig. 1), Fama rises above contrasting symbols of vanitas—­including a skull, a tomb, and urban ruins—­and rejuvenation—­among others, a phoenix and wheat. The piece celebrates Hapsburg monarch and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552–­1612), and as such, Gianni Guastella interpreted the scene in light of the ruler’s accomplishments and memento mori iconography: “The engraving highlights the idea of the glory that accompanies every gallery of illustrious men. It is clear that the link between the depiction of Fama and the sequence of exemplary uiri illustres constitutes a crucial point of the series presented to the emperor Rudolf. Renown, proclaimed by the blare of a trumpet, survives beyond the confines of an individual’s life and renders his name illustrious everywhere.”35 The trumpet in Loa 380 thus extends royal iconography associated with the instrument in Loa 374. As a sign of Fama’s loquacity, the trope symbolizes heroic deeds that persist beyond a ruler’s death. To give another example of emblematic representations of Fama, Marco Antonio Ortí’s Siglo quarto de la Conquista de Valencia (1640) features a similar image. The work commemorates James I’s 1238 conquest of Valencia with a depiction of Fama striking a bell. Like Goltzius’s Fig. 1. Fame with trumpet. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection 1949 (49.97.696).

Harmony  27

engraving, Ortí’s imagining includes the paradigmatic trumpet that lies on the ground near the deity. The commentary that accompanies the rendering explains the goddess’s role in establishing James I’s valiant reputation: “Acudieron a la satisfación de lo que debían al Rey don Jaime, el Poeta con el pensamiento del Geroglífico y la Fama con lo prudente del acuerdo de arrojar el instrumento común, y elegirle nuevo para la publicación de sus grandezas.”36 Once again, the passage links Fama and her sonorous attributes to noble prestige by recalling her association with rumor and public character. Similar themes persist in Loa 380, which celebrates the regent as the nexus of the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and mother of the young king Charles II. Aural representations of the monarch’s grandeur are salient in the opening quatrain from Fama’s monologue in Escena II: Atended, y no equívocos estéis; y pues es áncora a los discursos náufragos, mi voz sonora os sacará a la playa.37

Here, sonorities like “atended” and “voz sonora” recall the deity’s role in proclaiming Mariana’s glorious deeds and establishing her reputation. Continuing, Fama elaborates on the queen’s virtues with a reference that compares the Hapsburg alliance that she perpetuated to the Ottoman Empire’s conquests: la que, cual Fénix única de la Alemania cándida, quiso, con vuelo rápido, hacer a España su feliz Arabia.38

The previous verse’s aurality lends an auditory bent to Fama’s praise for the monarch and thus resonates with sonorous renderings of the goddess that reinforce civic authority. The four deities associated with the elements—­Marte, Venus, Neptuno, and Ceres—­echo Fama’s sonority in their responses. First, Marte 28 Harmony

celebrates Mariana with horns and drums that evoke images of military prowess: “y respondan festivos / los clarines y cajas.”39 Next, musicalized birdsong in Venus’s tribute highlights the queen’s beauty: . . . porque a mi belleza, en la suya mejorada, saluden con los gorjeos de sus arpadas gargantas.40

Continuing, Neptuno invokes a chorus of nymphs whose voices harmonize with the monarch’s consonance: “aplaudiré, al ronco són / de marinas consonancias.”41 Finally, Ceres draws out other sensory homages to Mariana: Y así, todo aquello que sobre mis hombros descansa, o bien con sér insensible o ya con forma animada que vive, siente y discurre, todos su Beldad aplaudan. (Con la música:) Háganle salva las Flores con olores, con su verdor las Plantas; y repitan los polos la aclamación sagrada: ¡que triunfe, que viva la Aurora de Alemania!42

In these verses words like “aplaudan” and “aclamación” echo the other gods’ tributes to Mariana of Austria. Therefore, the aurality that persists throughout this section of Loa 380—­particularly with respect to gestures of reverence before the queen—­also extends to Ceres’s lines. Given the sensory bent of “olores,” “verdor,” and other terms throughout Ceres’s discourse, the imagery thus attends to harmony as an underlying force Harmony  29

for the pleasing nature of nonauditory sensibilities and also highlights their resonances with Mariana. Once each of the elemental deities has presented him-­or herself, Fama invites them to sing the monarch’s praise. As in previous examples, Fama’s lines and the gods’ replies emphasize the harmonious nature of Mariana’s rule with musicopoetic language: váyanse dividiendo en sus coros líricos, porque pueden los ecos cláusulas entonar armoniosas, rémoras que suspendan el viento.43

The gods then join together in consonant song, and each offers Mariana tributes related to his or her element. Together they harmonize their respective parts of the universe as concordia discors, and cosmic accord reflects the queen’s authority. Sonorous references in Fama’s opening lines reinforce consonance as a sign of good governance. Themes of concordia discors and musica mundana in another loa—­ number 377—­also merit attention. Like loas 374 and 380, harmony among the elements in Loa 377 is key for representing civic authority. The piece commemorates Charles II’s birthday by drawing out noble resonances with José de la Cerda, son of the count and countess of Paredes. It culminates in an accordant homage among nature’s components: Eolo (wind), Pan (mountains), Syrinx (water), and Flora (flower). Aurality is apparent in the loa’s main characters, for all of the deities in this universal metaphor also bear some connection to music making. Pan’s rustic instrument, constructed from Syrinx herself, is counterpart to Apollo’s elegant lyre; Eolo is both the dwelling of the birds and a reference to air, the medium of sound transmission; and finally, Flora (whose Greek counterpart is Chloris) was married to Favonius (Zephyrus), another wind god.44 Consonant with this chapter’s central argument, musical themes therefore inform Loa 377’s natural-­ mythical microcosm and reinforce aural representations of José de la Cerda’s nobility. 30 Harmony

Throughout Loa 377 the characters’ musical symbolism pairs with political metaphors and vestiges of musica mundana to reiterate links between harmony and civic order. For instance, in Escena II each god introduces him-­or herself with allusions to governmental authority. Eolo remarks: Yo que Presidente Dios de la raridad del Aire soy, y a quien toca el gobierno del imperio de las Aves45

Here, the deity refers to himself as president of the skies and refers to his power to rule over the air and birds. Continuing, Siringa echoes with a description of her own reign: “yo reino en las Fuentes, / como tú en los Vientos reinas.”46 Along the same lines, Pan’s opening monologue also draws out themes of authority: yo de sus frescuras soy frondoso Presidente, a quien adoran los bosques.47

Just as Eolo is president of the skies, so Pan highlights his dominion over the forest. All of these metaphors underscore the deities’ authority over their elemental empires and channel sonorous representations of power in early modern emblems. Sonorities in the gods’ opening monologues deepen the loa’s aurality and pair with themes of governance to symbolize civic harmony. In such references, musical figures draw out consonance among the natural components under each deity’s reign. For example, Eolo describes harmonious birdsong at daybreak as a tribute to the sun, ruler of the sky: quiero ser el que primero convoque, congregue y llame las canoras moradoras de sus puras raridades, para que en dulces motetes, Harmony  31

para que en diestros discantes, para que en trinos acordes y en mensurados compases, de su volante Capilla haciendo armonioso alarde, su misma región admiren, al Viento, que habitan, paren, suspendiendo con los ecos al que con las alas baten, aplaudiendo su venida, pues no será nuevo darle las norabuenas al Sol la Capilla de las Aves48

In these lines, the birds’ harmonious song and ordered rhythm underscore concordant relationships among the sun and his citizens (“moradoras”). Like Loa 374 and other political works, the Apollonic sign symbolizes royalty here. Indeed, the poem’s opening verse establishes the universal metaphor by comparing Charles II to the sun: “Al luminoso Natal / del Sol, Hispano Monarca.”49 In light of this relationship, musical tropes in Eolo’s opening monologue imagine concordance among the king and his subjects. Eolo is not the only deity to invoke harmonious governance in Loa 377. Siringa replies contrapuntally with an aural rendering of the springs’ reverence for Carlos II: pues tú en tu imperio convocas toda la alada caterva, yo convocaré en el mío todas las Fuentes parleras, porque unas con transparentes, y otras con arpadas lenguas, ya en gorjeos, ya en cadencias, ya en corrientes, ya en cadencias, la bienvenida le demos50 32 Harmony

Like in Eolo’s monologue, auditory references in Siringa’s lines represent universal and political order. The repeated term “cadencia” is especially significant in this context, for it refers to both regular meter and the consonant harmonies that signal the end of a musical phrase. In alignment with Siringa’s aurality, Flora draws out the underlying harmonies of the flowers’ agreeable sight and smell: luzcan vistosas las Flores, pues no es menor consonancia que la que halaga al oído, la que a los ojos halaga.51

Just as in Loa 380, the goddess’s affirmation attends to accord and proportion as two loci of all sensory pleasure, not only hearing. The verse’s sonority thus prepares subsequent imaginings of the sun’s role in nurturing the flowers and promoting their beauty. Within the context of the loa’s cosmic-­political allegory, sunlight’s nourishing effect on the fauna recalls concordant resonances among the ruler and his or her subjects. Complementary to links between harmonic and civic consonance, concordia discors resonates throughout the loa because of the gods’ musical symbolism and the aurality that the opening lines establish. For example, the theme is evident in the final lines of the second scene, when the characters harmonize their elements to honor José de la Cerda: eolo Pues unidos todos cuatro, nuestra aclamación empiece, convocando yo a las Aves: siringa yo, a los Ríos y a las Fuentes; flora yo, a las Rosas y a las Flores pan yo, a los Árboles y Mieses.52 Harmony  33

Here the gods call on their subjects and demonstrate their sovereignty. The opening of Escena III further elaborates the political metaphor with such references as “imperio vago de las Aves,” “reino de las Fuentes,” “patria de las Flores,” and “dominio de las Plantas verdes.”53 Along with the deities’ musical significance, the concordant alignment among the elements heightens themes of concordia discors. The trope also manifests itself on a poetic level. In addition to figurative references to world harmony, abundant symploces in the third scene and throughout the loa emphasize consonance among Eolo, Siringa, Flora, and Pan. The opening lines of the third scene exemplify this rhetorical harmony: eolo ¡Ah, del imperio vago de las Aves! siringa ¡Ah, del fluxible reino de las Fuentes! flora ¡Ah, de la amena patria de las Flores! pan ¡Ah, del dominio de las Plantas verdes! coro 1 ¿Qué quieres a las Aves? coro 2 ¿Qué a las Aguas les quieres? coro 3 ¿Qué mandas a las Flores? coro 4 ¿Qué en las plantas pretendes?54

34 Harmony

In this way, the loa’s form also resonates with sonorous representations of cosmic and civic order. The parallel poetic structure deepens concordant imaginings of the king and his dominion and also hints at another important theme in Sor Juana’s aurality: interrelations of music and rhetoric. I will return to the topic in chapter 2. For the time being, one additional resonance of concordia discors in Sor Juana’s political and occasional poetry deepens my reading with classical references to the origin of the goddess Concordia and heightens correlations among harmony, authority, and love. Loa 381 honors the Marquise de la Laguna’s birthday, and concordia discors persists throughout as a symbol of the nobleman’s dominion over discordant components or “ordenado desorden.”55 The loa likens the viceroy to both Mars and Adonis, who “[v]ivan . . . / en un supuesto.”56 Such comparisons draw out Tomás de la Cerda’s stately qualities and his ability to harmonize contrasting elements. Mars’s military prowess highlights the marquise’s strength, while Adonis’s beauty draws out the ruler’s physical attractiveness as a sign of balanced temperament. The latter deity also highlights the subjects’ love for the ruler in an anti-­Machiavellian gesture that echoes Loa 374 and other political works. Lastly Adonis introduces a trope that returns in auditory renderings of affection in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. The youth’s amorous impact resonates with the Lucretian-­Petrarchan vulnus caecum, which generally imagines the phantasm of his physical beauty as an arrow that wounds the beloved’s eye. Contrapuntal harmonic themes in Loa 381 lend a sonorous twist to visual imaginings of trope and challenge ocularcentric approaches to it. The gods of war and love are not the only deities that contribute to themes of concordia discors in Loa 381. Indeed, the piece features Bellona as Mars’s female counterpart or his “hermana” and Venus as Adonis’s female foil.57 In the second scene Bellona and her Amazons engage Venus and the nymphs in a musical duel over whether the viceroy more closely embodies Mars or Adonis. Aural references pepper their contrapuntal dispute, and in the fifth scene Concordia herself emerges to settle the argument. The

Harmony  35

loa figures the compromise aurally, and a complex harmonic-­semiotic web emerges. Concordia’s resolution of the dispute among Bellona and Venus strengthens resonances of concordia discors and emphasizes the marquise’s ability to harmonize opposing themes like love and war. As elsewhere in this chapter’s interpretations, the resonances with concordia discors also illustrate the ruler’s capacity to unify disparate civic elements. Moreover, sonorous themes related to Mars and Adonis’s female foils form part of the nun’s broader interest in gendered auralities, a central topic for many of Sor Juana’s auditory imaginings. A closer examination of the loa clarifies. In the very first scene, the two Coros’ introduction establishes the central themes’ importance: coro 1 Hoy es el feliz Natalicio de Adonis, que de Amor nace para matar de amores. coro 2 Hoy es el Natal del glorioso Mavorte, que en triunfos nace para engendrar blasones. coro 1 Y así las dulzuras coro 2 Y así los horrores coro 1 que el sentido halagan, coro 2 que los aires rompen, coro 1 de liras, coro 2 de cajas, 36 Harmony

coro 1 que suenan acordes, coro 2 que hieran violentas58

These lines contrast love and war (“las dulzuras” and “los horrores”), tropes that become consonant under the viceroy’s harmony. They also prepare the aural vulnus caecum that appears later in the poem with an imagining of harmony’s impact on the listener that draws on the arrow of love imagery. Indeed, the sounds of a concordant band of lyres and idiophones (“cajas”) wound the listener and, within the representation’s Lucretian-­Petrarchan context, generate amorous feelings. Along the same lines the juxtaposition of the Apollonic lyre and Dionysian drums heightens themes of concordia discors. First, the lyre represents harmony, beauty, and order. In this way the instrument relates to Adonis’s pleasing physical aspect. In contrast the drum channels the chaos and impulsiveness associated with Dionysus. Although aerophones are the deity’s most recognizable musical attributes, Gonzalez notes that the raucous sounds of “drums, flutes and symbols” also figure into his representation.59 Despite disharmony among these lines’ acoustical references, they sound concordantly in honor of the viceroy’s birthday and thus establish his harmonizing capacity. Subsequent verses introduce Venus and Bellona and further develop imagery from prior examples. For instance, Venus remarks on the sonorous attributes of love for the marquise: bien es, que suaves voces digan en cláusulas tiernas a los Cielos, que las oyen.60

Here love is the product of a tempering force, and its impact resonates in gentle, harmonious song. In contrast Bellona’s opening monologue includes military instruments: Harmony  37

Cuantos al clarín esperan, que les dé militar orden; cuantos al pífano atienden, cuantos oyen los tambores61

The horns and drums in these lines resonate with the boisterous music of Dionysus. As in other auditory representations of noblemen and women I examine in this chapter, they also underscore the ruler’s authority, imagined here with aural imagery. Such tension between Venus’s gentle tune and Bellona’s harsh military call is significant, for it prepares ensuing imaginings of the marquise’s power as concordia discors. The second scene emphasizes the contrast, for Venus’s nymphs “cantarán los Adónicos loores” while Bellona’s Amazons “con ecos de victorias, / solas cantemos las Marciales glorias.”62 This section deepens aurality’s role within the loa’s semantic framework by raising another sonorous theme that is relevant here as well as in other works that I explore in Hearing Voices: the musicopoetic portrait, one of chapter 2’s central topics. Once twin choruses of nymphs and Amazons open the scene, Venus and Bellona join the song. Their lines present harmony—­ not verse—­as essential to the loa’s representation of the marquise. The distinction highlights music’s importance for imagining civic authority and also attends to the ode’s performance context, which likewise constitutes a viceregal portrait. Venus’s response to the nymphs elaborates the clearest relationship: el asunto de mis voces no es literal, ni celebro con él al antiguo Adonis; sino que quiero, con estos alegóricos colores, copiar del Cerda invencible63

Sound stands out in Venus’s reply, as in Bellona’s description of her lines’ purpose to 38 Harmony

nueve lenguas a su Fama, nuevo lustre a sus blasones, entonando, a los Años.64

Like in Loa 380, Fama and related sonorous tropes underscore harmony’s significance for representing the marquise. The meaning is both poetic and extrapoetic, for musical language attends to the viceroy’s harmonizing effects on the opposing deities and their related elements as well as to the loa’s musical accompaniment. In this sense music making not only becomes linked to civic duty but also resonates with the ruler’s physical and moral aspect. The debate between Venus and Bellona over which represents the Marquise de la Laguna culminates in a vocal duel in Escenas III and IV. A chorus joins each character, and self-­conscious references to song like Venus’s command “entonad con razón” and Bellona’s insistence that “a Marte por vencedor / todo el Cielo cantará” deepen the second scene’s harmonic portrait.65 Finally, the fifth scene introduces a new character—­ Concordia (Harmonia’s Roman counterpart)—­to resolve the dispute. First the goddess emphasizes her sonorous symbolism: “¡Escuchadme, escuchadme, escuchadme! / ¡Atendedme, atendedme, atendedme!”66 The commands’ aurality stands out here and furthers my argument that sound figures strongly in Sor Juana’s imaginings of political authority. The theme persists in Loa 381, for Venus and Bellona highlight the power of Concordia’s consonant voice in their replies. Venus affirms: “debo / a tu voz elocuente / los más felices medios,” and Bellona echoes: “ya convencidas / a tu acento nos tienes.”67 Acoustical imaginings of agency such as these—­in particular with respect to voice—­contribute to aurality as an expression of authority here and elsewhere in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Given the chapter’s focus on sonorous tropes as representations of political authority, it is pertinent that Concordia’s opening monologue strengthens the relationship between civitas and concordia discors. First, she represents the musical contest between Venus and Bellona with emphasis on the diverse personal interests of a civic governing body: Harmony  39

Allí los Ciudadanos son todos tan corteses, que el interés ajeno sólo tienen por propios intereses.68

Municipal themes in these lines prepare the deity’s subsequent description of her harmonizing purpose: a componeros vine: que mi piedad no puede sufrir que en las Deidades, siendo contra su ser, discordia reine.69

Concordia discors resonates more fully here than anywhere else in the loa. Concordia relates the consonance she describes to cosmic and earthly celebrations of the marquise’s birthday. In the last of her opening strophes the goddess metaphorically aligns herself with the ruler: “siendo la Concordia, / de su gobierno soy el Presidente.”70 The parallel relationship between concord and good governance could not be clearer. Complementary to figured references to concordia discors that draw out the viceroy’s tempering influence, Concordia also constructs the loa’s accompanying music as a harmonizing force: y que unidos los Coros, ordenadas se alternan las cláusulas de Marte, de Adonis con líricos motetes.71

This strophe anticipates counterpoint among the two choruses that the loa features in Escena VI and draws out the potential for the piece’s musical performance to reproduce the ruler’s consonance. The imagining emphasizes harmony’s capacity to affect listeners through sympathy and draws out music’s role in generating and maintaining civic concord. Moreover, it alludes to intersections of rhetoric (Mars’s clauses) and music (Adonis’s motets). Chapter 2 will consider the two forms’ connections and 40 Harmony

implications for understanding Sor Juana’s aurality in greater detail. For now, I turn to representations of harmonious governance that approach the ruler’s physical beauty and even temperament as signs of universal order, divine mandate, and influence on his or her subjects. Noble Resonances of Musica Humana

Connections between universal harmony, order, and civic authority also feature in Loa 384, a musicopoetic work that commemorates the birthday of Elvira de Toledo, Countess of Galve. Like Loa 380, Loa 384 aurally imagines feminine authority, and resonances of musica humana deepen my readings of the nun’s inheritance of the emblematic tradition and its musical portrayals of good governance. Furthermore, the piece incorporates theoretical discourses in harmony into imaginings of political power. Loa 384 is one of Sor Juana’s most explicit accounts of music’s place within her worldview. Among other auditory themes, it features Música and the six notes of the Guidonian hexachord (the basis of the diatonic scale) as characters and includes a monologue in which Música explains the poet’s ideas about music theory. The piece thus elaborates a striking musical allegory that has drawn the attention of many. Among others, Paz and Ortiz drew out Neoplatonic correspondences of visual and musical beauty’s resonances with the soul and attended to vestiges of El melopeo y maestro, León Ebreo’s Diálogos de Amor (1535), and Baltasar de Castiglione’s Cortesano (1528).72 Paz also commented on intersections of harmony and geometry, and Lavista further developed the observation.73 Complementarily, Miranda highlighted music’s relationship with the occult.74 While prior interpretations focus on the nun’s engagement with music theory or philosophy, consideration of harmony’s significance within this chapter’s political context deepens understanding of the poem’s figured sound. Likewise, chapter 2 will deepen Paz’s observations about Kircherian correspondences between seeing and hearing in Loa 384.75 Musical representations of the vicereine’s authority resonate particularly with emblematic imaginings of nobility. For instance, Música alludes to Harmony  41

links between Pythagorean harmony and governance in her opening lines. The character first highlights music’s affective power and remarks that de tonos, voces y mensuras hago un compuesto armonïoso.76

To be certain, the reference highlights arithmetic correspondences among musica mundana, musica humana, and musica practica. Furthermore, the last quatrain of the opening monologue features political language that is pertinent to harmonic imaginings of power: De este, pues, Imperio mío los dulces ecos invoco, que Vasallos de mi Reino son, o partes de mi todo.77

The verse features a musical metaphor whose twofold symbolism merits clarification. First, the six tones of the diatonic scale—­characters that appear in Escena II—­are the vassals of Música’s kingdom, and together their harmonies constitute her unity. Moreover, civic language figures consonance among musical elements and underscores the countess’s authority by channeling the aural representations of power that this chapter explores. While harmonic imaginings of authority resonate obliquely in the opening scenes, the final strophes of Loa 384 confirm the relationship between music and civic power. In the last lines, the six musical notes join together to celebrate the viceroy and vicereine’s reign. References to concordia discors abound, and several characters’ acclamations balance governing bodies and political elements. For instance, Sol and La describe how the rulers’ harmonies manifest themselves as peace and justice in other civic instruments: sol Y el docto Senado,

42 Harmony

que justo concilia hacer de la Paz medio a la Justicia, coro ¡viva, porque el Pueblo a su ejemplo viva! la Y los Tribunales, en quienes estriba del Real aumento la exacta medida.78

Here references to measurement and equilibrium among judicial factions emphasize the viceregal couple’s even temperament (both psychophysiological and moral) and its influence on other municipal bodies. Mathematical framing of balanced governance recalls Sor Juana’s Pythagoreanism and the music of the spheres, both themes that relate to descriptions of Elvira’s physical beauty from earlier in the poem: solamente quiero que se mire la conveniencia que hay de Armonía a Hermosura pues una mensura mesma, aunque a diversos sentidos determinada, demuestra la Armonía a los oídos y a los ojos la Belleza.79

The Pythagoraean approach to the countess’s appearance aligns with Ortiz’s remarks about the subject’s centrality in Loa 384, like his reading of the poem’s opening lines establishes: “Two ideas are introduced in these verses: first, the relation between beauty and proportion and, second, the limitation of the senses in perceiving beauty.”80 Chapter 2 considers

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such links among mathematics, harmony, and visuality in detail. For my argument here, parallel consonances of the ruler’s countenance and civic influence contribute to harmonious imaginings of royal virtues that resonate in the passage, just as in Loa 380. This and similar representations respond to the Machiavellian privileging of political ends over the ruler’s morality. Indeed, Gonzalez observes that in the Spanish context, “musical metaphors permeated the discourse on the meanings of these cardinal ‘virtues,’ offering different paradigms for the God-­like king who keeps the community in harmony to suit the different political positions.”81 Moreover, she notes that many theorists understood the monarch’s physical beauty as an outward sign of moral equilibrium.82 Loa 384 responds to all of these tendencies and establishes a poetic web that links harmony, virtue, and physical appearance to the vicereine’s civic authority. The well-­known musical word game to which much of the piece is dedicated following Música’s introduction is important for delving into concordant representations of exemplary moral qualities. In the second scene, each of the six notes of the diatonic scale—­Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, and La—­establishes its musical function based on principles of music theory. The third scene develops consonance’s links with nonmusical subjects, for the characters identify each note’s corresponding virtue. A reading of one example illustrates the theme. Following Música’s exposition of connections among music, the cosmos, and time in the opening scene, Ut, the scale’s lowest pitch, affirms “en ‘virtud’ el Ut suena.”83 Música responds by relating Ut’s virtue to the Countess of Galve: Y bien se muestra que es la Virtud, de Elvira, la primer prenda.84

As the scene progresses, each pitch introduces a new principle and comments on Elvira’s embodiment of the characteristic. In this way, each of the hexachord’s tones sounds a moral quality that resonates with the vicereine’s overall ethical composure. Together, the notes and their various combinations have a tempering influence on dissonance, just as the 44 Harmony

countess can balance her subjects and other civic elements sympathetically. Here, as in other works this chapter has examined, music is significant for imagining the ruler’s prudence and its impact on society. Explicit links between temperament and harmony elsewhere clarify cosmic harmony’s importance for imagining Elvira de Toledo’s authoritative disposition. For instance, Sol details her association with diligence and also underscores the characteristic’s sympathetic effects: Solicitud, que desea que los afectos del alma de sí salgan a dar muestra; que es consecuencia, que rebosa en el alma, si sale afuera.85

Musica humana and theories of resonance inform the representation of devotion as a product of the soul’s harmony and are also salient in other characters’ lines. Furthermore, semiotic associations among the hexachord tones, their corresponding qualities, and the Countess of Galve’s name deepen intersecting discourses in harmony, noble virtue, and the ruler’s impact on his or her subjects. Lavista attends to the musical characters’ lexical resonances in Loa 384. Indeed, the first syllable of each note’s corresponding quality is the same as the musical tone (“Fa” and “Fama,” for example). Lavista remarks that the gesture refigures the Guidonian hexachord’s appellative origins: the pitches’ names consist of the first syllable of lines from the “Hymn to St. John.”86 Such unity channels themes of concordia discors and prepares subsequent development of the trope’s verbal resonances with Elvira de Toledo’s name. Indeed, the card game continues by associating of the first letter of each tone of musical scale with the spelling of elvira. Throughout the scene Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, and La arrange and rearrange placards with their names to form anagrams of the vicereine—­“elvira sola”—­and her husband—­“el silva amor.” Música’s reaction highlights the noble pair’s underlying harmonies: Harmony  45

¡Pues mirad si con razón de las letras me valí, cuando en ellas anteví cifrada su perfección! Pues retrata el Diapasón, sierpe que muerde su cola, a esta Música Española; y en sus cadencias hará que en el re, mi, fa, sol, la se contenga elvira sola.87

The totalizing reference to the diapason or just octave (a 2:1 ratio, according to the Pythagorean system) contains all six tones of the hexachord. Moreover, in musical imaginings of the universe, the interval represented the distance between the heavens and earth. Robert Fludd’s universal monochord illustrates such representations, for the “diapason materialis” that stretches from “Terra” to the sun spans one octave (fig. 2). The concordia discors of cosmic harmony implies unity among the notes’ associated virtues, and the Elviran anagram draws out resonances with the countess. The curious comparison with a serpent recalls a harmonic imagining of the cosmos from Franchinus Gaffurius’s Practica Musicae (1496) that also appears in Kircher’s commentary on an Egyptian obelisk in the Roman Piazza Navona, Obeliscus Pamphilius (1650, fig. 3). The diagram inherited discourses from Antiquity that incorporated the Muses into universal organization by arranging them on a monochord’s steps and associating each one with a planet. Apollo, his band of musicians, and the Graces (in Gaffurius’s rendition) reign in the heavens, and a three-­headed snake traverses the entire figure. Thalia, the muse of comedy, begins the scale below Earth, while Urania, associated with astronomy, soars above the rest in a celestial position. Euterpe, the muse of song, occupies the seventh Fig. 2. Fludd’s universal monochord. Courtesy of Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

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position, which is also the octave. Musical tone and mode names from Antiquity like proslambanomenos complete the representation. The snake metaphor in Loa 384 recalls Gaffurius’s figure and Kircher’s replication of it and thus deepens themes of harmonious totality and its resonances with the vicereine. Furthermore, given the Muses’ association with writing, music making, and the sciences, the reference establishes oblique relationships among learning and artistic production, divine consonance, and the countess. In this sense, the connections echo intersections of sound and feminine intellect to which I will return in subsequent chapters. Moreover, recalling the Muses also highlights art’s moralizing capacity and therefore channels Platonic imaginings of the subject. Intersections of music, politics, and praise for the countess in Loa 384 come together in the final scene to underscore civic authority. At the very end of the piece, Música invokes the Countess’s ability to harmonize citizens from all social classes and thus heightens vestiges of concordia discors: La Nobleza y Plebe, que formal unidas un perfecto todo de partes distintas.88

Just as Sol and La drew attention to how the sovereign’s disposition tempers justice in the previously cited verses, this quatrain highlights consonance’s unifying effect on diverse social classes and their interests. Like in Loa 374, musical references in Loa 384 aurally imagine civic harmony. They resonate with the poet’s inheritance of the music of the spheres and with Christian responses to Machiavellian theories of governance in political treatises and emblematic literature. Loa 384 is not the only one of Sor Juana’s works to imagine the ruler’s resonances with cosmic organization and sympathetic effects on his or her subjects. To give another example, Romance 13 (1680–­83) deepens Fig. 3. Kircher’s universal monochord with Muses. Courtesy of Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

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acoustical imaginings of civic order with Neoplatonic representations of the just and virtuous ruler. Complementary to the previous example, Romance 13 relates elemental concord to the viceroy’s physiopsychological balance: Vuestros humores proceden con modo tan regulado, que en la acción y la pasión no den ni reciban daño Próvida Naturaleza, aquel intenso cuidado que para formaros puso, ponga ahora en conservaros. Humildes los Elementos a vuestros pies humillados, lo que en inclemencias suelen, os tributen en halagos. Del Sol obsequioso os sirvan los resplandores templados; que quien nació entre laureles, mal puede temer los rayos.89

Themes from aural imaginings of royal dominion in Loa 374 and Loa 384 persist here. For instance, the two middle stanzas reinforce cosmic resonances of the concordia discors ruler’s prudent disposition with references like “Naturaleza” and “los Elementos.” Additionally, the last quatrain’s auditory imagery—­the Sun’s “resplandores templados”—­further attends to the harmonic underpinnings of the marquise’s disposition. Just as in Loa 374, the Sun symbolizes the nobleman as well as the divine, universal, and civic organization that has been important throughout this chapter. In this way, its well-­tempered radiance aligns viceroy and God and illustrates the two rulers’ roles in maintaining cosmic balance among heavenly and earthly organization. 50 Harmony

Recapitulation: Concordia Discors and Noble Portraiture

The musical representation of José de la Cerda and Charles II in Loa a los años del rey [IV] 377 engages harmonic representations of civic order by exploring concord among the elements. Acoustical themes resonate via the associated gods’ musical symbolism: Eolo, Siringa, Pan, and Flora. Later in the work, the deities elaborate on how their sung praises honor the Hapsburg king. I deepen the reading by considering aural themes in the loa’s representation of the monarch and José de la Cerda’s harmonious relationship with him. As a prelude to chapter 2’s consideration of correlations between aurality and visuality in Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic portraits, here I explore how intersections of sight and sound complement imaginings of authority as concord. While the fifth scene truly develops the relationship between seeing and hearing, Flora’s lines in the second prepare the connection: y alegres las Aves cantan, luzcan vistosas las Flores, pues no es menor consonancia que la que halaga al oído la que a los ojos halaga.90

The verse juxtaposes birdsong and the flowers’ visual beauty. Consonance is the underlying force that makes each pleasing, and it establishes an equal relationship between the two. In this sense, the metaphor develops representations of civil rule as concordia discors, for synecdoches of disparate elements join together harmoniously. Furthermore, the reference links also sensory stimulus and perceiver via consonance and alludes to aurality’s affective capacity. Intriguing as they may be, Flora’s lines are only a preamble to the sonorous themes in Loa 377. Indeed, Escena V explores interrelations of seeing and hearing through a musicopoetic portrait that uses aural tropes to portray the elements’ song in honor of José de la Cerda as a likeness that replicates and honors the king, Charles II. Concepts like harmony and sympathy are essential to the parallel. First, such tropes reflect consonance among the ruler and his subjects. Moreover, aural imaginings of the Harmony  51

relationship between the two exceed spatial constraints that separate the monarch (in Spain) and the viceroy’s child (in New Spain). Notably the latter characteristic channels Kircher’s imaginings of sound transmission across long distances and shows how the poet adapted emblematic and acoustic discourses to an American context. Eolo’s opening invocation establishes key topoi in the loa’s acousticopoetic portrait, including the capacity of sound and obedience to transcend continental separation. Bearing in mind the poem’s harmonic representations of concord among the monarch and his subjects, here loyalty to Charles II aligns with aurality: Y porque con mejor viso lleguen nuestros parabienes, ¡oh excelso, sagrado Carlos! (que aunque parecéis ausente, no lo estáis, que a la lealtad nunca hay ausencia en los Reyes; y así, aunque parece que lo estáis, Señor, atendedme como muy presente, porque os tengo yo muy presente); y porque con mejor viso (otra vez repito) lleguen a vuestros sacros oídos nuestras voces reverentes, quiero probar que los cuatro, en el modo que conviene, vuestra deidad retratamos . . .91

It is first pertinent to consider the aural-­visual polysemy associated with representations of Charles II and its resonances with other acousticopoetic portraits in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. First, “viso” simultaneously refers to visual likeness, Aristotelian species, and even light waves. The Diccionario de Autoridades indicates “metaphoricamente se toma por la semejanza, 52 Harmony

que una cosa tiene con otra al parecer”; “se toma assimismo por la onda de resplandor, que hacen algunas cosas heridas de la luz”; and finally, “significan también el respecto, calidad ù parecer de las cosas en orden al concepto, que se debe formar de ellas. Lat. Aspectus. Species.”92 Such visual tropes seem connected with the portrait evoked in line 366, and yet they also appear at odds with aural vestiges like “atendedme,” “vuestros sacros oídos,” and “nuestras voces reverentes.” Vestiges of concordia discors and its relationship to civic harmony can clarify sound’s importance. Indeed, the first two lines of Eolo’s monologue present sound—­ “nuestros parabienes,” a reference to the deities’ sung praise in the prior scene—­as the king’s likeness or “viso.” The strophe subsequently connects themes of loyalty, hearing, and presence, and in this way echoes concordant representations of sovereign love and obedience, as in Loa 374. Continuing, Eolo affirms that the four elements join together as a portrait of Charles II. Like elsewhere in the poem, symploces at the end of the monologue poetically reinforce the deities’ implied harmony. In the remainder of the scene, the elements invoke another character that better represents the king: Reflejo. While the concept of “reflection” at first appears entirely linked to the visual, my reading will draw out sonorous vestiges that recall harmony’s role in imagining royal power. Indeed, the defense of the portrait as a “Reflejo” of Carlos II elaborates on the symbol’s significance for both seeing and hearing: siringa Detente, pues; no prosigas: que si retratar pretendes las perfecciones de Carlos, nadie parecerse puede sino el Reflejo, a sus luces. flora Bien dices; pues solamente puede parecerse al Sol, quien el mismo Sol engendre. Harmony  53

pan Es verdad, porque sus luces retratarse no consienten sino de sus mismos rayos, sirviéndole de pinceles; y dar a los Años a Carlos, sólo puede dignamente quien se perfecta imagen suya. eolo ¿Pues quién serlo puede, sino el Reflejo? Y así, me parece conveniente llamarlo. siringa No es menester, porque ya en la transparente superficie de las aguas, de los rayos refulgentes del Sol se forma. pan Y en trono de cristales aparece y como a segundo Sol, Aves, Plantas, Flores, Fuentes solemnizan su venida, diciendo en coros alegres93

These lines debate the most precise medium for rendering the monarch. Reflejo—­reflection—­the gods conclude, is the most apt form. As expected, visual art resonates powerfully, and “luces,” “Sol,” “pinceles” (allusions to

54 Harmony

the painter’s hands) “transparente,” “rayos refulgentes,” and “cristales” all form a semantic web whose visuality must not be overlooked. Attending to the reflection’s aurality is likewise crucial, for it draws out Kircherian links between sight and sound that inform the loa’s reimagining of harmonic representations of royal authority. First, one must consider resonances of concordia discors and civic authority elsewhere in the loa. In fact, such aural themes also stand out here. The plural significance of “Sol” becomes the crux of this construction and refers to the light of the sun (visual reflection), the monarch himself (center of his dominion), the fifth grade of the musical scale (a perfect consonance of 3:2 according to the Pythagorean system), or the harmonies of Apollonic music. Equally important are the sonic allusions that serve as bookends to Escena V. Along with sound’s prominence in Eolo’s opening lines, Pan’s closing reference to the worldly chorus whose song rouses Reflejo supports an oblique aural reading of the figure. With these resonances in mind, in addition to the apparent influence of Kircherian anacamptics and catroptics on Sor Juana’s intellectual inheritance, it becomes clear that the king’s reflection is at once visual and aural. As a matter of fact, Reflejo’s self-­introduction in the sixth scene elaborates these very connections among visual portraiture, harmony as a representative mode, political authority, and finally, resonances with the music of the spheres. Like in other parts of the loa, the monologue attends to the ruler’s sovereignty with references like “obedece” and a depiction of the monarch’s reflection in clear water as “influjos.”94 Such tropes of power recall imagery related to consonance among the elements and their concordant praise of José de la Cerda in Escena II. Similar language in the sixth scene echoes previous allusions and therefore resonates with concordia discors. It is likewise notable that both the king and his reflection channel such imaginings of power, a characteristic that deepens my aural reading of Reflejo. Continuing, Reflejo establishes the Marquise de la Laguna’s son as a likeness of Charles II:

Harmony  55

fuerza es que la imagen de Carlos se muestre en la Real Laguna.95

The wordplay with the marquise’s title—­which, of course, symbolizes water’s reflective properties—­appears to confirm the portrait’s visuality once and for all. Nevertheless, the final lines of Reflejo’s opening speech draw out underlying planetary harmonies: y pues Josef solo ser retrato puede que sus perfecciones copie dignamente, y hoy pisa el Sol Carlos, con pasos lucientes, el último signo del Zodíaco ardiente, a José, que es solo su imagen, compete celebrar sus Años.96

On one hand, these lines can refer to visual beauty’s origins in Pythagorean harmony. On the other, however, representations of universal consonance make it impossible to deny either José de la Cerda’s aurality—­linked, of course, to his noble authority—­or the possibility of an aural portrait predicated on links between sight and sound in early modern thought. Conclusion

Musical references in Sor Juana’s political loas and occasional poetry form an intricate semantic web for imagining governmental power, as they figure civic order, authority, and related themes. Antiquity discourses that related harmony and civitas as well as musical iconography from early modern emblems stand out as crucial in the poet’s engagement with the topic. As is so often the case, the nun did not simply reiterate inherited tropes 56 Harmony

and concepts. Rather, true to a tendency that Anna More described as “innovation within a tradition,” Sor Juana’s pieces refigure a rich acousticopoetic legacy to conform to her own intellectual interests.97 Along these lines, auditory conceits intersect with subjects that resonate with the poet’s broader intellectual interests, including agency, gender, and knowledge. Prior methods attended to Sor Juana’s engagement with music theory but marginalized aurality’s correlations with nonmusical themes such as these. Here and throughout the book, I respond by situating the nun’s sonorities within the acoustical fabric of early modern sound culture and also considering them as part of her overarching poetic project. There is little doubt that concord and universal harmony figured prominently in Sor Juana’s approach to civic authority and order, particularly since musical references stand out notably in several key works. Such aurality complements ocularcentric interpretations that privilege writing as a primary epistemological and ontological mode in constructions of political hegemony as well as Sor Juana’s poetry. Indeed, by considering sonority in occasional repertoire and other works, I strengthen prior scholarship and draw out vestiges of New Spain’s rich sound culture throughout the poet’s oeuvre. This chapter’s readings particularly attend to aurality’s role in establishing and reiterating political power. The themes resonate not only with emblematic music iconography—­as discussed here—­but also with sonorous performances of authority in sacred and secular ceremonies from the New World and beyond. Chapter 3 examines interrelationships of sound and ritual in Sor Juana’s poetry and especially focuses on feminine reimaginings of voice and agency in the villancicos. First, however, I turn to another topic that harmonizes with the nun’s musical representations of noble figures: acousticopoetic portraits.

Harmony  57

Chapter 2

Resonance Intersections of Music and Other Arts

Good love is therefore the desire of that beauty which you see both of soul and also of body; and to it, as to its true goal, [the lover’s soul] beats and unfolds its wings to fly. It has two windows to aid in this flight: the first, which sends it to the beauty of soul, is hearing; the other, which carries it to beauty of body is sight. —­Pietro Bembo, Opere in voglare, quoted in Tomlinson, Music

The first volume of Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis opens with an intriguing canzone that Roman physician and mathematician Francesco Maria Pompeo Colonna (1646–­1726) penned. The text attends to many of the connections among painting, poetry, and writing that resonate in Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic portraits. As such, it becomes a fitting entry into this chapter’s exploration of intersections of aurality and visuality, particularly in light of resonances with Kircher’s musical thought that I will draw out: Non è musica sol quella, ch’vdiamo, Ma tutto quello, che s’odora, e tocca, E tutto ciò, che mai prova la bocca, Che chiamiam gusto, e quanto mai vediamo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  E se frà quelle mistion ce fanno Proporzione armonica s’accorda 59

L’occhio dell’uom con quei color concorda, E se non vi si trova, in odio s’hanno. De gli odori, e sapor l’iftesso intendi, E nel dar noia ad un l’odor, ch’apporta Diletto all’altro, à contemplar ti porta, Et ivi occulta musica comprendi. Music is not only the one that we see, But all that is smelled and touched, And all that the mouth ever tasted, That which we call flavor, and so much more we never see. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And if among those combinations here made Harmonic proportions are reconciled The eye of man with such color agrees And if they are not found, hatred is here contained. In odors and flavors you perceive the very same And disturbing one smell, which provides Delight to the other, leads you to contemplate, And therein you perceive occult music.1

Colonna’s text resonates with the crux of my interpretation of links between seeing and hearing in Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic discourse, particularly given strong vestiges of Kircher’s musical treatises in such works. Themes that already stood out in chapter 1—­the music of the spheres, intersections of harmony, and sensory perception—­are salient in these lines and throughout my readings. Additionally, the canzone seems to privilege aural representation, thus introducing a position that is central in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Indeed, both Colonna’s and Sor Juana’s poems appeal to the ear and therefore become symptoms of the poetic aurality that my sound studies reading draws out within Sor Juana’s work. With such topics in mind, chapter 2 examines links among music, writing, and painting that contribute to a broader alignment of hearing 60 Resonance

and other sensory modes (in particular, seeing) in Sor Juana’s works. In light of the Baroque fascination with sensuality, I approach the interrelated artistic forms as affective devices and consider the manner in which their juxtaposition might heighten each aesthetic mode’s capacity to work on human emotion. Among other voices that echo in the poet’s engagement with these themes, Kircher’s approach to musica poetica and musica pathetica, or musical pathos, in Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova is especially notable in the intersections of visual art, rhetoric, and music that this chapter explores. Complementarily, auralities in the poetic portraits also develop acoustical paradigms from chapter 1 as well as several that will appear later in the book. Sor Juana and Kircher

Kircher’s work stands out in seventeenth-­century music culture, for the Jesuit turned to rational order and scientific observation to demystify the fundamentals of sound and music. This chapter significantly develops prior readings of the poet’s engagement with Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova. I contend that these treatises were fundamental to Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic imagination, and many of my readings here will show how the nun transposed Kircher’s aurality to harmonize with her own intellectual interests. As Marie-­Cécile Bénassy-­Berling, José Pascual Buxó (Sor Juana), Karl Vossler, and others observe, there is little doubt that the Jesuit’s influence is omnipresent in Sor Juana’s writings.2 In Paula Findlen’s words, “The world that Sor Juana presented her readers was an edifice built by Kircher.”3 Nevertheless, while many draw out Sor Juana’s engagement with other areas of Kircher’s natural philosophy, only Paz attends to the poet’s inheritance of the Jesuit’s musical works. Indeed, the scholar underscores Kircherian resonances of Sor Juana’s fascination with intersections of musical sensing and emotion and also highlights correspondences between Kircher’s alignment of sight and sound and the poet’s work.4 The observations are astute, but limited primary and secondary resources have made developing them further challenging. Resonance  61

Until recently, musicological approaches have marginalized Kircher’s musical texts. Despite the vast distribution of Musurgia universalis throughout Europe, China, and the Americas, the Jesuit’s contributions to Baroque music theory have been overlooked for the most part. Existing scholarship (largely German and Italian) sometimes relies on the abbreviated German translation of the tome, failing as a result to recognize important sections of Kircher’s extensive work. Moreover, English-­language studies mostly include superficial references to the Jesuit’s engagement with other theorists, as John McKay notes.5 In response to these lacunae, however, emerging musicological and historical scholarship deepens understanding of Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova by contextualizing Kircher’s musical ideas with broader intellectual discourse of his time.6 Along with Kircher’s marginalization within musicological canons, a dearth of primary resources for considering Sor Juana’s inheritance of Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova also limit inquiry. Although scholars like Findlen and Elías Trabulse affirm that it is likely that Sor Juana had contact with Kircher’s works, the lack of extant materials from the poet’s library makes it impossible to determine which tomes formed part of her collection.7 Difficulties in establishing concrete connections have led to trepidation about the poet’s relationship with Kircher on the part of scholars like Antonio Alatorre, who questions the possible connections between the Jesuit’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–­54) and the pyramids that are central symbols in El sueño.8 In response to the dearth of materials for exploring Sor Juana’s inheritance of Kircher, Findlen identifies one alternative resource. Indeed, she observes that an ironically thin volume—­supposedly the Opera kirkeriano—­appears in both Juan de Miranda and Miguel Cabrera’s portraits of the poet (respectively, 1714 and 1750). While the paintings’ historical accuracy is debatable, of course, Findlen suggests that the book may be a sign of how prominently Kircher’s work figured within Sor Juana’s library.9 Along the same lines, references to Kircher in Sor Juana’s works strengthen hypotheses about his importance for her poetic imagination. First, Romance 50 explicitly remarks on the nun’s Kircherian bent: 62 Resonance

Pues si la Combinatoria, en que a veces kirquerizo, en el cálculo no engaña, y no yerra en el guarismo.10

Here, the neologism kirquerizar (“to Kircherize”) highlights Kircher’s impact on Sor Juana’s writing, just as Trabulse notes.11 Another reference appears as part of a discussion on order in the Respuesta: “Es la cadena que fingieron los antiguos que salía de la boca de Júpiter, de donde pendían todas las cosas eslabonadas unas con otras. Así lo demuestra el R. P. Atanasio Quierquerio en su curioso libro De Magnete.”12 While Sor Juana does not cite the correct title of the Kircherian work here, Paz hypothesizes that one of three different treatises inspire the cosmic image to which she refers: Magnes, sive de arte magnetica (1641), Mundus Subterraneus (1665), or Magneticum Naturae Regnum (1667).13 Kircherizing New Spain

From all this, it becomes clear that Sor Juana engaged with the Jesuit’s vast corpus on some level. In lieu of primary resources that directly connect the two figures, the circulation of Kircher’s works in New Spain, especially Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova, can establish possible points of contact with Sor Juana. Findlen reminds us that many New World intellectuals imitated Kircherian ideas and behaviors—­a sign of the Jesuit’s nearly iconic influence in the Americas.14 Indeed, there were numerous connections to Kircher in New Spain. First, the viceregal confessor François Guillot (1601–­86, rebaptized as Francisco Ximénez in America) studied with Kircher in Avignon. Ximénez regularly corresponded with his old mentor between 1655 and 1672 and eventually established a Kircherian repository at Puebla’s Colegio del Espíritu Santo. Additionally, Alejandro Favián (b. 1624), another of Kircher’s correspondents, was so enthralled with the scholar that he treated Kircher’s portrait as if it were a shrine, conversing with it as he strove to imitate his intellectual hero. Resonance  63

Favián’s engagement with Kircher is valuable for delineating the New Spanish dissemination of Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova and the ideas contained within these works. In a letter to Kircher dated February 2, 1661, Favián recounts his failed attempt to build a lyre, which he believed would help him to better understand mathematics. He blames his failure on the dearth of materials available for the study of musical instruments in New Spain: porque no tenemos en qué estudiarlo; tanto que discurriendo (esto por especulación) en la música acerca de un instrumento della, que es la lyra, cosa que en estas partes no sólo no se había visto, más nadie sabía lo que era, queriendo, pues, hacer una por lo que había leído de las humanidades que hay acerca della en los autores antiguos, no me era posible atinar su composición y forma por no tener noticia bastante della, ni haberlo yo visto, ni tampoco hallar quién supiese dar luz para ello y así, sobra decir, es posible que no se halle algún libro que trate de los instrumentos, y posible que no haya habido autor que éstos explique y dé a entender.15

Subsequently Favián relates a dream in which he envisions a book that holds all of the lyre’s secrets. He remarks that the source of this dream is likely an encounter with Francisco Ximénez: “Esto [el sueño] me sucedió cuando, de muy breve tiempo, yendo a decir misa al dicho Colegio del Espíritu Santo, como siempre, me dio noticia el padre Francisco Ximénez de los libros, por ser como lo es muy mi amigo, que Vuestra Reverencia le había enviado y el primero que me puso en las manos fue el que yo había soñado, que es el de la Misurgia universal [sic].”16 Favián goes on to explain that he was so enthralled with Ximénez’s copy of Musurgia universalis that he asked his friend to write to Kircher on his behalf to request copies of all of his works. The priest explains that he has included 250 reales de a ocho, which Kircher can distribute according to the price of each volume. Musurgia universalis is, of course, among those included in a list of Kircherian works that Favián most coveted: 64 Resonance

[y] así por esto me pareció conveniente remitir a Vuestra Reverencia ducientos e cincuenta pesos en reales de a ocho; suplicándole de mi parte, aunque no lo he servido, me honre y favorezca en que esto tenga la ejecución que deseo; que espero en Nuestro Señor, ha de tener muy buen despacho mi pretensión siendo cosa de Vuestra Reverencia a quien, sin haber visto, estimo como a oráculo de las ciencias y amo como a padre, haciendo de arte que todas las obras lleguen a esta tierra y, principalmente, aquellas dos que dice la nota del Catálogo de los libros non reperiri amplius, que son Primitiae gnomicae cacoptricae y el Specula melitensis por ser sumamente deseados, que no se dejarán de hallar como Vuestra Reverencia me favorezca en que se busquen, el Mundus subterraneus en 10 libros divissus con el Ars magna quam combinatoriam appellamus que es uno de los que más deseamos ver con los dichos notados y, sobre todos, la Misurgia [sic] universalis.17

In addition to the requested volumes, Favián also asks Kircher to send one of the musical automatons that he had likely seen in his friend’s copy of Musurgia universalis.18 The Kircherian craze of the mid-­to late 1600s influenced some of the most prominent scholars of the following generation, including Sor Juana’s good friend Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (1645–­1700). As noted in his last will and testament (1700), Sigüenza y Góngora’s library included almost the entire Kircherian oeuvre. The document also shows that the four volumes that Sigüenza lacked were part of the Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo’s holdings: “Assi mismo les dono adhos M. R. PP. El juego de las obras del Pe. Athanacio Kirchero, para que con quatro que a mi me faltan que ay en dha. Librería de San Pedro y San Pablo quede Cabal dho. Juego. Con cargo que me han de entregar a mi ó a mi heredero veinte y quatro tomos que les sobran este Juego.”19 Favián’s account of purchasing Musurgia universalis, his reference to materials from this work, and Sigüenza’s indication that the entire collection of Kircherian works was available in Mexico are all strong evidence for Sor Juana’s engagement with the text, either directly or through her dialogues with other scholars. Resonance  65

Kircher’s Music

A brief overview of Kircher’s ideas about sound and harmony will draw out broad resonances with Sor Juana’s aurality. Perhaps Kircher’s most important musical work, the encyclopedic Musurgia universalis is an inquiry into the sensory perception of music. Although Charles E. Brewer describes it as an “incidental work” or a lesser publication between two more ambitious treatises, Musurgia universalis became one of the best-­ known musical treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.20 Personal correspondence and commercial ledgers yield evidence that, of the fifteen hundred copies originally printed, the treatise was circulated in China, London, Eastern Europe, and the Americas.21 As Dietrich Bartel notes, Kircher’s diverse background as a Jesuit scholar, scientist, and mathematician afforded a unique perspective on the physiological and philosophical implications of music making.22 Among other topics, this treatise is notable for its broad approach to sound, extensive instrumental catalog, and dual engagement with musica pathetica and musica poetica. Another distinguishing characteristic of Kircher’s musical oeuvre is the prominence of music-­making devices. For the scholar, music is the natural language of the universe and a sign of divine organization. Ever fascinated with machines and apparatuses, both treatises feature such automatons as talking statues, speaking tubes, a hydraulic organ, and the famed Katzenklavier (cat piano). Furthermore, Phonurgia nova includes hypotheses about the physical explanation for the echo, architectonic acoustics, and other auditory subjects. Departing from the early modern assumption that sound was produced through air displacement and, like light, could be refracted off various surfaces, Kircher’s inquiry into acoustics is primarily related to sound’s behavior in different spaces. The section titled “Architectura echonica,” for example, analyzes the echoic properties of a variety of reflective spaces. Kircher’s inquiry into sound amplification also stands out. Combining his own investigation of optics, geometry, and architectural acoustics, for example, book IX of Musurgia universalis reiterates Kircher’s argument in Ars magna that sound sources tend to behave like light sources (sonus simia 66 Resonance

lucis). He theorizes that sound, like its visual partner, would be conically dispersed from its source. The implication of this hypothesis is that the size of the area within which acoustic simulation is audible becomes inversely proportional to its distance from the source. By manipulating the shape of a room, the Jesuit reasons, one could predict or even control echo audibility. Kircher tested his theories by visiting (or, as is the case here, sending other scholars to experience and report on) such architectural-­ acoustic marvels as the Villa Gonzaga-­Simonetta, in Milan. Apparently, the location of one of the upper windows took maximum advantage of the relationship between sound and space, permitting listeners to hear many more echoes than those audible in other parts of the building. Using the architectural drawings that Father Matthäus Storr delivered, as well as his own hypotheses, Kircher determined that the window’s position with respect to the angles of the walls was one factor in this location’s amplified acoustics. Many of Kircher’s experiments sought to take advantage of acoustical properties to manipulate and amplify sound. For instance, this tendency stands out in his proposal for sound transmission to remote locations in Phonurgia nova. Moreover, talking statues, speaking tubes, and the water-­powered organ that Kircher invented are additional examples of attempts to mechanize or manipulate sound through acoustics, musica pathetica, and related themes. For instance, take this description of the talking statue from Phonurgia nova: Inside a room abcd, where a spiral-­shaped tube (cocleato) was put and moved in E or in the vertical conduit S, lies a statue having moving mouth and eyes and having breathing life through the entire mass of the body. This statue must be located in a given place, in order to allow the end section of the spiral-­shaped tube to precisely correspond to the opening of the mouth. In this manner it will be perfect, and capable to emit clearly any kind of sound: in fact the statue will be able to speak continuously, uttering in either a human or animal voice: it will laugh or sneer; it will seem to really cry or moan; sometimes with great astonishment it will strongly blow. If Resonance  67

the opening of the spiral-­shaped tube is located in correspondence to an open public space, all human words pronounced, focused in the conduit, would be replayed through the mouth of the statue: if it is a dog’s bark, the statue will bark, if someone sings, the statue will answer with singing and so on. If the wind blows, this will be taken into the spiral-­shaped tube; therefore the statue will be forced to emit very strong breaths. Applying the breath to a pipe, it will play. Bringing the trumpet near to mouth of the statue, the musical instrument will play and it will make innumerable fun effects of this kind, provided that the spiral-­shaped tube is disposed with the greatest of attention.23

In Kircher’s description, the spiral-­shaped cocleato becomes the statue’s sonorous mechanism. This device can amplify auditory stimuli and resound them through the statue’s mouth, giving the illusion that the figure can speak. In a gesture that is symptomatic of the Baroque fascination with marvel and illusion, the Jesuit thus draws on his understanding of acoustics, otology, and more to alter auditory perception through sound manipulation. In chapter 4, Sor Juana reiterates the gesture, and her poetic reimaginings (or “mechanizations”) of sound echo Kircher’s fascination with acoustical devices. Musica Poetica and Musica Pathetica in Kircher

The strands of Kircher’s musical thought that draw out links between aurality and visuality in the acousticopoetic portraits resonate most strongly with this chapter’s themes. Originating with Cicero and persisting through the Renaissance and well into the early modern period, musica poetica is a tradition that considers links between music and writing. Kircher’s approach to the topic is unique, as Bartel observes. Unlike earlier philosophers, many of whom sought to systematize and categorize the relationship between musical and rhetorical figures (a practice known as Figurenlehre), Kircher underscores affective properties of music and writing that resonate in his approach to the relationship between these two art forms.24 68 Resonance

Given Kircher’s close connections to Rome, I hypothesize that contact with the city’s intellectual scene may have influenced his distinctive treatment of musica poetica. Indeed, while Protestant German theorists tended to catalog musical and rhetorical devices to exploit the didactic and evangelical properties of music-­as-­text, Italian Baroque scholars were generally more preoccupied with music’s ability to imitate or directly stimulate the emotions. In other words, the text-­based German Protestant tradition treated music as a form of language, only privileging the former because of its structural relationship to the written or spoken word. Based on this view, language became the principal performative medium; music was secondary. By contrast, ideas about the pathetic effects of music nurtured the Italian approach to musical ornamentation. Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 1520–­91), Giulio Caccini (1551–­1618), and other theorists associated with the Florentine Camerata defended the performativity of music itself and rejected models that ascribed linguistic meaning to sound.25 Both currents resonate in Kircher’s affirmation that the intersection of music and language manifests itself through structural similarities as well the two mediums’ capacity to influence human affect. Kircher’s treatment of musica pathetica is indeed distinct. This line of thought is closely related to, among other influences, the emphasis on musicorhetorical connections in seventeenth-­century German theory as well as the Italian Baroque’s interest in the musical representation of human emotion. In fact, Kircher was one of the first scholars to develop a theory of Affektenlehre, which assigns human sentiments to musical elements like rhythm, interval, and ornaments. The scholar’s catalog of Affektenlehre focuses on music’s capacity to imitate or invoke vocal inflections that correspond with certain emotions (a staccato figure might recall laughter, for example). An explanation from Musurgia universalis clarifies the position: “Our musical figures are and function like embellishments, tropes, and the varied manners of speech in rhetoric. For just as the orator moves the listener through an artful arrangement of tropes, now to laughter, now to tears, then suddenly to pity, at times to indignation and rage, occasionally to love, piety, and righteousness, and so to other such Resonance  69

contrasting affections, so too music [moves the listener] through an artful combination of musical phrases and passages.”26 To develop these ideas, Musurgia universalis includes a classification of musical intervals that associates them with the eight sentiments that music can invoke: love, mourning or longing, happiness, anger, sympathy, fear, bravery, and wonder. Kircher argues that these fundamental emotions are the root of other feelings like hatred or dismay. Far from a romantic or idealist construction, Kircher’s musica poetica draws on scientific and philosophical currents of his day. Above all, the Jesuit turns to Pythagorean mathematics, empirical science, and the Galenic doctrine of the humors to rationalize emotional reactions to musical stimuli. For instance, Kircher associates musical proportions with the composition of air itself. He argues that sound vibration stimulated the air, which, in turn, moved through the ear, thus affecting the bodily humors. Harmonic oscillation, in this sense, is central to Kircher’s hypothesis about music’s ability to affect human emotion, known as musica pathetica. The Jesuit thus views the connection between music and affect as rooted in harmony—­a sensible manifestation of Pythagorean divine numbers. The process illustrates the relationship among mathematics, human physiology, and musica pathetica that contemporary scholarship often marginalizes. Also rooted in the medical science of the time, Musurgia universalis details three ways in which music can act on the human soul. The first two are based on the widespread belief that the Devil’s cithara could be used to agitate and unbalance the humors. Within this chapter’s argument, however, I highlight the physiological effect of harmony as musical affect. Kircher maintains, The harmony has such power over the human spirit, as much as it similarly moves and excites the inner implanted air or living spirit, according to the harmonic motion of the air, whence the delight and sweetness of the music. If determined and proportioned numbers [i.e., meter and rhythm] are added, the harmony has a doubled effect, and moves the spirit not only to inner emotions, but also to outer bodily movements, as 70 Resonance

in dancing. . . . If the power of speech is added to this, especially when it is expressively moving, and contains a beautiful story or a sad case, then the harmony possesses an exceedingly great power to excite all sorts of emotions. However, the disposition of the soul, or the capacity of the audience must first exist; otherwise one would be able to move stone more easily than a man.27

Here Kircher establishes four conditions for music to alter the organization of the humors, thus influencing emotional responses. These circumstances include both musical and extramusical features: the performers’ interpretative skills, the time and place of the performance, the musical mode of a particular composition, and most important, the work’s theme, among others. The theme is especially important to the scope of this chapter’s analysis, for it alludes to a distinguishing relationship between music and writing in Kircher’s work. Vestiges of the Jesuit’s unique engagement with musica poetica and musica pathetica resonate with intersections of music, art, and writing in Sor Juana’s poetry. Harmony and Painting in Sor Juana

Scholars have long identified painting and visual mechanisms as important components in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. First, Luis Avilés, Emilie Bergmann, José Pascual Buxó (El resplandor intelectual), Sylvia Graciela Carullo, William Clamurro, Frederick Luciani, Kathryn M. Mayers, and Georgina Sabat de Rivers contribute to current understanding of the role that optics and visual culture play in the poet’s works. Several of their perspectives particularly inform my readings of sound in Sor Juana’s oevure. For instance, Luciani attends to the influence of Kircherian technologies of seeing and hearing on the poet’s writing. Treatises like Ars magna lucis et umbrae and Musurgia universalis feature diagrams for fantastic devices that manipulate the senses. Luciani maintains that through Sor Juana’s pen, these instruments probe epistemological and ontological limits.28 Complementarily, my readings further understanding of the relationship between Kircher’s sonorous and visual imaginings and Sor Juana’s. Resonance  71

Bergmann, notably, draws the early modern ideology of the music of the spheres into discussions of Sor Juana’s visuality. She remarks on the significance of musical thought in poetic portraits like Romance decasílabo 61 and Redondilla 87. She observes, “ Visual imagery forms a distinct and coherent whole. . . . This whole is viewed in the framework of a cosmic order encompassing sidereal music, graphic symbols and visual forms under the sign of divine music, Apollo’s lyre.”29 Bergmann is sensitive to the underlying role of harmony in Sor Juana’s ekphrastic representations, and my readings complement these insights by further drawing out acoustic tropes that also form part of Sor Juana’s pictorial-­poetic language. Finally, Mayers offers a gendered and criollo perspective on Sor Juana’s engagement with painting that resonates with the sonorous imaginings of feminine beauty that this chapter explores. Her interpretation reconciles the writer’s Petrarchan (European) poetics with more recent studies that aim to situate the poet’s oeuvre within New Spain’s sociopolitical context, and resonates with my interpretation of harmonious representations of female beauty as a response to the painted subject’s marginalized voice in Redondilla 87, Loa 384, and others.30 She employs a critical methodology to which she refers as the “two-­continents framework,” which views the transformation of Petrarchan topoi in Sor Juana’s blasones, or emblems, as symptoms of seventeenth-­century New Spain’s sociocultural tensions.31 Thus, reading Sor Juana’s poetic portraits against those of Spanish poet Luis de Góngora (1561–­1627), Mayers maintains, “Where Góngora’s recomposition of classical and Petrarchan tropes intensified the tendency Petrarchan portraiture already had to elevate the authority of the poet by reducing the agency of his object of representation—­a dynamic of visual power that indirectly supported a Conquest model of relationships between subject and object—­Sor Juana’s portraits effect two far-­reaching stylistic changes that at once restore to the female object some of the agency lost in Góngora’s transferal of emphasis from content to form, and reflect back to the viewer the fundamental insufficiency of European modes of viewing.”32 Not unlike Bergmann’s ekphrastic analysis of the sorjuanine canon, Mayers’s interpretation of such engagement with Petrarchan poetics 72 Resonance

abounds with references to the visual nature of painting and poetry. Yet despite her sensitivity to musical references in Sor Juana’s portraits, this reading disengages sound from visual representation as well.33 Nevertheless, the underlying ideology of early modern painting links visual and aural realms. Indeed, the Pythagorean proportions that defined cosmic organization (musica mundana), the human soul (musica humana), and music making (musica instrumentalis) also informed Renaissance doctrines of visual art and architecture. Such connections between harmonic-­mathematical concepts of divine order and visuality were a legacy from Antiquity’s celebration of the interrelated concepts of form, beauty, and harmony. They persist in Sor Juana’s writing, for the musical overtones of poetic portraits in Redondilla 87, Loa 384, and others draw out intersections of painting, rhetoric, and music making. These correlations deepen prior observations about Sor Juana’s engagement with Kircher’s musical treatises, for his concepts of musica poetica and musica pathetica resonate strongly in the musicopoetic portraits. Both Renaissance and Baroque aesthetic ideologies are salient in the poet’s tandem treatment of music and painting. On one hand, the texts that I will examine illustrate Sor Juana’s objectivist position on beauty, understood to favor the rational perspective that characterized a Renaissance worldview. On the other, both the ambiguous lexicon that refers to music and writing and the underlying defense of music’s affective capacity in these works reveal characteristic Baroque sensuality. In this context, the alignment of aurality and visuality in Sor Juana’s writing resists interpretations of early modern culture that would privilege vision and overlook hearing.34 By thus highlighting the role of hearing in Sor Juana’s parallel treatment of poetry, visual art, and music, I will continue to draw on aural modes of knowing in seventeenth-­century scholarship to lend new insight into the nun’s oevure. To be certain, some approaches to Sor Juana’s poetic portraits obliquely attend to their aurality. Notably Lisa Rabin’s analysis of early modern engagement with the paragone, the Renaissance debate about the mimetic properties of painting and sculpture, employs sonorous language to draw Resonance  73

out female subjects’ marginalization. Rabin compares poetic representations of women by Petrarch, Francisco Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, and Sor Juana with their visual counterparts, and she equates the painted portraits that inspired such works with silence, as “the painted image of a beautiful, silent woman.”35 For Rabin silence becomes an acoustical metaphor for the limits of visual representation. She argues that visual portraits leave Petrarch, Sor Juana, and others disillusioned by the subject’s lack of sentimental depth. “The dissonance between an internal image of the beloved and external one in the portrait poems” is at the root of this poetic tension.36 Here, aural references like “silent,” “dissonance,” and “resonate” offer a compelling counterpoint to the visually dominant critical language that distinguishes Bergmann’s and Mayers’s works. They can also serve as an entrance to my own reading of aurality in Sor Juana’s poetic portraits. Cosmic Beauty in Redondilla 87

The best-­known acousticopoetic portrait is Redondilla 87, which exploits a lexicon shared by music and poetry to describe a painting of the beloved Feliciana. Kircher’s musica poetica and musica pathetica can shed light on how the forms’ alignment heightens the representation’s affective capacity. First, the opening lines set up the theme by juxtaposing aural and visual approaches to beauty: Cantar, Feliciana, intento tu belleza celebrada; y pues ha de ser cantada, tú serás el instrumento.37

These lines compare Feliciana to either a musical or a written instrument, and polysemy allows for a reading of the poetic description of her beauty as song or verse. Miranda notes that the musical references in this portrait form the basis of a metaphor that the poet frequently employs, whereby beauty is expressed in musical terms. He rightly argues that the interpretive potential of the poet’s musical metaphors is rooted in the complex 74 Resonance

relationship between musical and cosmic harmony in the early modern worldview.38 My own reading of Redondilla 87 arises from Miranda’s astute observations about the semiotics that distinguishes references to music, painting, and poetry. First, it is pertinent to consider the layers of meaning that complicate any interpretation of “cantar.” On one hand, this verb can allude to the vocal production of musical sound. On the other, it can also refer to poetic recitation, thus recalling early Greek lyric or the Middle Ages’ juglares and trovadores. A similar syntactic complexity characterizes “instrumento,” which can refer to either music or poetry. When considered in light of its relationship to the musical connotations of “cantar,” an “instrumento” is a sound-­producing device, according to the Diccionario de Autoridades: “Se llama en la Música qualquier machina ò artificio hecho o dispuesto para causar harmonía, ò con diversidad de cuerdas, dispuestas y templadas proporcionalmente, como el Harpa; ò con la compresion del viento, con las mismas proporciones, como el Clarín; o mediante golpe, ò pulsación, como la Campána.” As the definition affirms, musical instruments are fashioned to yield a specific array of mathematically proportional sounds. The artifact thus becomes an “artificio” designed according to a theory of musical sound. Indeed, the affirmation that a musical instrument “causes harmony” reminds us of the renewed interest in sympathetic resonance during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Understood as a musical instrument, Feliciana becomes a resonator that provokes the narrator’s “song” or “poem.” This sympathetic relationship is the result of a transmission of energy caused by the two bodies’ identical or proportional frequency. On both a literal and a metaphorical level, the image of Feliciana as an acoustic resonator emphasizes the attraction that the narrator feels toward her. Continuing, an “instrumento” is not just a musical device; it can also evoke the written word. In this context, “instrumento” takes on a juridical meaning: “Se llama también la escritura ù otro papel, que sirve para justificar alguna cosa o certificarla.”39 Feliciana thus simultaneously becomes a musical apparatus designed to produce harmony (a mathematical and spiritual principle) and a written instrument that attests to her beauty. Resonance  75

Comparing the subject to a legal or juridical document that verifies her attractiveness also establishes a relationship between the lyric subject’s body and the poem itself. Indeed, precise descriptions of the poetic portrait seem to serve the very same juridical function, rendering the poem as an aesthetic testimony of sorts. Sor Juana’s redondilla therefore signifies Feliciana’s beauty with musical and pictorial references to achieve a more expressive description. Within this context, the alignment of painting, music making, and writing illustrates the alignment of aural and visual cultures. Early modern understanding of sound as air particles helps us to contextualize the musical underpinnings of this poetic portrait. Invoking song and musical instruments in Redondilla 87 implies that the poem is perceived aurally, not visually, as a musical portrait of Feliciana. As such, the rendering appeals to the ear rather than the eyes. For Feliciana’s acoustic representation to be transmitted, a force—­Feliciana’s beauty, in this case—­is necessary to displace the vapors. Throughout, the poem describes the subject’s beauty in terms of the proportions that define her body and soul: her “harmony.” In this sense, the agreement or harmony that underlies Feliciana’s beauty becomes the force that sounds the instrument of her body by displacing air particles. These particles subsequently enter the audience’s ear. They cause the auricular air (the vaporous humors) to react sympathetically, thus inducing in the “spectator” or “audience” a pleasant reaction to Feliciana’s harmonic beauty. As such, Sor Juana’s insistence upon “singing” her subject’s beauty might be read as a means of eliciting the most intense affective reaction from her audience. The remainder of Redondilla 87 divides thematically into three sections and a conclusion. The first of these divisions (lines 5–­24) uses musical terms to describe Feliciana’s facial features: De tu cabeza adornada, dice mi amor sin recelo que los tiples de tu pelo la tienen tan entonada; 76 Resonance

pues con presunción no poca publica con voz suave que, como componer sabe, él solamente te toca. Las claves y puntos dejas que Amor apuntar intente, del espacio de tu frente a la regla de tus cejas. Tus ojos, al facistol que hace tu rostro capaz, de tu nariz al compás cantan el re mi fa sol. El clavel bien concertado en tu rostro no disuena, porque, junto a la azucena, te hacen el color templado.

These lines reflect the doctrine of musica humana, for they describe the microcosm of the human body, harmonically measuring the relationships among its components. The six-­note hexachord thus resonates in Feliciana’s semblance—­her hair is compared to la, the “tiple” or highest degree of the series; the measure of her facial features is compared to re, mi, fa, and sol, the middle notes of the hexachord; and finally, her mouth is associated with ut, the lowest tone.40 Feliciana’s physical appearance and musica humana therefore form one central metaphor in Redondilla 87, wherein the poetic subject’s body-­as-­hexachord recalls musica mundana. Music once more appears to be key to divine and earthly order, not unlike themes of the music of the spheres that chapter 1 highlighted. And yet the invocation of painting in Redondilla 87 beckons additional consideration of visual art’s role within these images. Indeed, by combining musical terms with the body’s physical description, the narrator appeals to both eye and ear to reinforce her portrayal of Feliciana. Resonance  77

Complementary to harmony’s parallel with visual art, aural-­ocular lexical ambiguity in these lines also aligns music and poetry. For instance, the verb “componer” might refer to either “En la Poesía es hacer versos, por el artificio y compostra que tienen de sylabas y consonantes” or “En la Música es poner en solfa, segun las reglas de ella, los versos, motetes y otras cosas semejantes.”41 Similarly, “clave” can evoke writing (“se llama también la nota, explicación, ù declaracion que se hace y pone al principio de algun libro ò escrito, para la inteligencia de lo que en él se dice debaxo de algúna cifra ò composicion artificiosa y mysteriosa”) or music making (“en la Música es el signo que se colóca al principo de una de las líneas del Pentagráma para determinar à qué signo corresponde cada una de las otras líneas y espácios”).42 These and similar examples from Redondilla 87 thereby become paradigms of musica poetica in Sor Juana’s portraits. Complementary to vestiges of musica poetica and musica pathetica in Redondilla 87, aurality’s association with feminine intellect merits attention here. Gendered sonorities resonate with acoustical language in Rabin’s reading of painted female subjects. The persistence of such themes indicates a paradigmatic tendency to link aurality and women’s knowledge, a topic that chapters 4 and 5 will examine fully. For now, in Redondilla 87, correlations among Feliciana’s voice, writing, and music making draw out the theme: Tu discreción milagrosa con tu hermosura concuerda; mas la palabra más cuerda, si toca al labio se roza. Tu garganta es quien penetra al canto las invenciones, porque tiene deducciones y porque es quien mete letra.43

These lines praise Feliciana’s wisdom, equal to her beauty. In an ingenious departure from the ocularcentrism that defines Petrarchan female beauty, the beloved’s voice (or intellect) resonates as a complement to her physical 78 Resonance

appearance. Additionally, the semantic web connects reason with song and Feliciana’s vocal apparatus. First, the “deducciones” to which the poet refers can allude to the Guidonian hexachord or the conclusions reached through logical reasoning: “En la Musica es una progression natural de seis voces, que suben por este orden, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, y baxan contrapuestas la, sol, fa, mi, re, ut.”44 Similarly, “letra” signifies three different types of language: written, spoken, and sung. Even when considering the musical definition of “letra,” it remains unclear whether the act of “mete letra” refers to singing or composing verse: “En la Música es la que se acomoda y escribe debaxo de los puntos de la solfa, porque al principio de este Arte enseñan a cantar el punto, y después a poner la letra: y en la misma facultad componer letra por punto es ajustar el canto con la letra.”45 These aspects notwithstanding, one important feature remains clear: Feliciana’s intellectual capacity, like her physical beauty, is the product of harmonic correspondence, and the alignment of music and knowledge is a product of the poet’s Pythagoreanism. In light of such emphasis on Feliciana’s intellect, themes that might be characterized as “protofeminist” thus become linked to the web of musical signification that resonates throughout Sor Juana’s oeuvre, as subsequent chapters will show. The connection between voice and intellect stands out in my reading of Redondilla 87, and the functions that the poem attributes to the throat can further clarify this point. For instance, line 30 affirms that Feliciana’s voice is responsible for introducing “invenciones” in song. On one hand, the term can refer to the rhetorical devices used in writing or oral discourse. On the other, it recalls the illusion, and indeed deception, that distinguishes the Baroque: “Se toma muchas veces por ficción, engaño ù mentira.”46 The ambiguity that has been central to my interpretation is present here, for the verse suggests that voice (“tu garganta”) is, at once, both the root and the illusion of reason. Such lexical ambiguity reinforces the link between music and rhetoric in Redondilla 87. Feliciana’s intellect, associated with her voice, has the capacity to ornament poems and melodies. At the same time, however, voice is also the root of illusion or deception, and perhaps, even, the musical-­poetic trick that distinguishes the piece. Resonance  79

An additional alignment of voice and (female) intellect in Redondilla 87 furthers my analysis. The second of the two quatrains mentioned earlier happens to be the seventh of fourteen, arguably the crux of Redondilla 87. This structural characteristic buoys the significance of the voice-­thought connection within this poem and Sor Juana’s oeuvre in general and inaugurates a significant shift within the redondilla—­the lyric narrator’s interaction with the object or portrait becomes evident for the first time: Conquistas los corazones con imperio soberano, porque tienes en tu mano los signos e inclinaciones. No tocaré la estrechura de tu talle primoroso: que es paso dificultoso el quiebro de tu cintura.47

In these stanzas, the lyric narrator struggles to faithfully represent Feliciana—­or, if you will, to find his or her own voice. Specifically, the difficulty manifests itself in musical and mathematical descriptions of the inexpressible physical beauty of the rest of Feliciana’s body in the poem’s final section. Such problematizing of the subject (narrator or painter)–­object (Feliciana or portrait) dichotomy recalls music’s representative capacity. Indeed, allusions to the musicopoetic capacity of Feliciana’s voice in lines 25–­32 appear to challenge the lyric narrator’s/painter’s engagement with her as object. The impossibility of expressing the aesthetic perfection of the body therefore relates to the artist’s/writer’s incapacity to reproduce in language (portraiture) the exact mathematical proportions that govern her physical beauty. In this sense, aurality, and more specifically harmony, exceeds physical representation. Additional acoustical themes from Sor Juana’s oeuvre resonate within Redondilla 87 and merit critical attention. To this end, figurative language in the example above associates intellect, learning, affect, music, and 80 Resonance

rhetoric. The alignment of music, text, and affect in particular can be interpreted as a possible vestige of Kircher’s musica pathetica and also draws out vestiges of musica poetica. As elsewhere in the poem, lexical ambiguity is critical for underscoring links between music and poetry. For instance, the “signo” associated with Feliciana’s hand can refer to a number of signifiers. Two definitions are of particular interest. The first evokes writing: “Significa también ciertas rayas, y señales, que al fin de la escritura, ù otro instrumento ponen los Escribanos y Notarios en medio del papél con una cruz arriba entre las palabras, que dicen en testimonio de verdad, con lo que se le da mas fé al testimonio, ù escritura.”48 The allusion to the “inclinaciones” that Feliciana holds in her hand underscores the poetic nature of this “retrato” by reminding the reader that, in spite of the visual images that the poem might bring to mind, it remains a scriptural representation. The second definition of “signo” relates to the Guidonian hand that musicians often used to learn sight singing: “En la Música son aquellos nombres, que los Prácticos dán à las cuerdas de que se compone el systema de Guido Aretino, formandolas de las siete letras primeras del Abecedario, y de las voces, que les corresponden.”49 Guido d’Arezzo (ca. 995–­ca.1033) developed the Guidonian hand as a pedagogical tool. His innovation was based on three separate hexachords (groupings of six pitches whose function is similar to that of a modern Western scale). By assigning relative syllables to each of the pitches in a hexachord (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la), d’Arezzo also formulated a system of movable pitch names known as solmization. Although the hexachord is no longer the basis of Western music theory, solmization remains in use today. Concerning the Guidonian hand, each pitch corresponded to a different joint or part of the hand, thereby encompassing the entire palette of musical harmonies. Students and instructors would use this device mnemonically, signaling each note’s location on the hand as it was sung. The practice persisted during the seventeenth century, so it is likely that Sor Juana was familiar with the Guidonian hand. Within the context of Redondilla 87, the tactile-­ visual-­aural relationship becomes particularly salient, as it recalls the Resonance  81

link between music and writing, as well as the physical, human nature of Feliciana’s body. Moreover, the Guidonian hand, as a microcosm in which all musical harmonies can be contained becomes yet another reiteration of the music of the spheres within the poem. Mathematical themes related to the Pythagorean construction of musica humana persist in Redondilla 87 as well. In fact, the remaining stanzas of the section at hand provide a commentary on the harmonic-­mathematical motifs of beauty that appear in the first verse. For example, the “paso difficultoso” can refer to a common measurement of about 2.3 feet, which corresponds roughly to the distance of an average step as derived from the ancient Roman half-­passus or gradus. Given the prominence of musical themes throughout Redondilla 87, it is likely that “quiebro” in the following line designates the small pause that occurs between two grace notes: “La pausa breve y harmoniosa que se hace con la voz en un gorgeo, cantado, y como quebrandola.”50 Following the music-­measure relationship that the poem previously established, the description of Feliciana’s waist relies on musical and geometric terms to express the difficulty of measuring precisely the curve. Finally, the closing lines of Redondilla 87 circumscribe Feliciana’s beauty within the cosmic harmonic scheme and confirm the narrator’s amorous sentiments: Tu cuerpo, a compás obrado, de proporción a porfía, hace divina armonía por lo bien organizado. Callo, pues mal te descifra mi amor en rudas canciones, pues que de las perfecciones sola tú sabes la cifra.51

Here, “compás” clearly alludes to drawing or painting the body. The reference recalls an instrument that, much like today’s compass, was a mathematical and architectural tool for inscribing perfect circles: “Instrumento de hierro, 82 Resonance

bronce o otro metal, compuesto de dos puntas largas, que se juntan perfectamente por los extremos, y están nidas por la cabeza o parte superior con un fiel ajustado para poderlo abrir y cerrar. Su uso principal es para tomar las medidas y formar los círculos que se quisieren, a fin que lo que con él se mide y compassa sea cierto y arreglado.”52 Moreover, the term also happens to refer to embodied musical time: “En la Música, es el tiempo que hai en baxar y levantar la mano el Maestro de Capilla, ò el que rige el canto.”53 The definition recalls Roger Mathew Grant’s corporeal reading of motus in early modern music theory. Indeed, the scholar noted that a number of musical treatises theorized beat in terms of thesis and arsis: respectively, upward and downward motions of the conductor’s hand. Previous interpretations see this gesture as performative; however, Grant argued that the hand’s movement (motus) made beat (tactus) sensible.54 The conclusion is intriguing for reading Redondilla 87. Indeed, understanding beat (compás) as embodied musical time strengthens the corporeal resonances of the musical/geometric compass that outlines Feliciana’s physical proportions. Theories of beat inform another musicopoetic portrait in Sor Juana’s oeuvre as well. Primero sueño’s representation of the sleeping body also intersects with these themes by drawing out interrelationships of time and harmony in representations of musica humana. Links between motus and meter resonate with the soul’s conceptualization of the sleeping body in the section that Alfonso Méndez Plancarte referred to as “El Dormir Humano.” For instance, lines 205–­9 liken the rhythm of the body’s biological hum to a clock: el del reloj humano vital volante que, si no con mano, con arterial concierto, unas pequeñas muestras, pulsando, manifiesta lento de su bien regulado movimiento.55

The polysemous reference to the body/clock’s hand in line 206 is notable for linking musical beat and the temporal continuum. First, the allusion brings to mind the manner in which the timepiece mechanically marks Resonance  83

time. Moreover, it evokes the vertical hand motions—­the thesis and arsis—­that kinesthetically govern musical beat and recalls once more vestiges of Aristotelian motus that Grant draws out in early modern constructions of meter. Continuing, musical representation of the body’s vital functions—­an arterial concert—­extends the clock metaphor and draws out an additional dimension of the portrait: links between music and physiology. In light of early modern medicine’s interest in the bodily microcosmos, Grant observed that music theorists often referred to both the two-­part cycle of the human pulse—­consisting of the systole and diastole—­the beating time with the hand to describe musical meter. He includes an example from Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle that illustrates the connections: “it seems as though the measure has taken its time and regulation from the beating of the heart, or the pulse, or the arteries, for the lowering of the hand corresponds to the systole, or the compression and lowering of the heart, and the lifting to the diastole, or the dilation and elevation.”56 As Grant notes, the temporal links that Mersenne considers establish a musicomedical analogy that can be traced to Galen, Avicenna, and other early physicians and persisted well into the Renaissance in the musical treatises of Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia and Gaffurius.57 The acousticopoetic portrait of the sleeping body in Primero sueño echoes these discourses by imagining the heart as a bodily clock whose vital functions resonate in an “arterial concert.” Harmonic Portraiture in Loa 384

In addition to Redondilla 87 and Primero sueño, Loa 384 can further the understanding of Sor Juana’s treatment of the representative capacities of divine harmony, beauty, music, and poetry. Like Redondilla 87, the loa establishes the importance of key themes from the very beginning. First, a tentative objectivist position on beauty aligns harmony and physical appearance. Moreover, a parallel relationship between seeing and hearing deepens my overall challenge to ocularcentric readings of Sor Juana. Indeed, the opening lines establish beauty’s underlying harmonies and also juxtapose visuality and aurality: 84 Resonance

Si en proporciones de partes solo consiste lo hermoso que no entienden los oídos y que lo escuchan los ojos58

The distinctive play on words “escuchan los ojos” associates hearing with the eyes and equalizes sight and vision. Indeed, the ear fails to perceive acoustic beauty, while the eye, instead of capturing beauty visually, actually hears it. Moreover, from the perspective of the loa’s performance context, seeing harmony alludes to viewing onstage vocalization and also recalls consonant bodily proportions, echoing Redondilla 87. Lexical ambiguity thus becomes a crucial symptom of the intersection of aurality and visuality that resonates with my argument. In this context, “entender” refers not only to rational understanding. The verb also channels aural perception: “Se toma también por oír, percebir lo que se habla ù dice, comprehenderlo y hacerse capaz de ello; y assi quando hablan muchos à un tiempo y con alboroto y confusión, ò en lenguaje diverso que uno ignóra, se dice que no entiende [l]o que dicen.”59 Drawing on etymological resonances, the reader is confronted with an abstruse text whose meaning varies, depending on context. Like Redondilla 87, Loa 384 exploits semiotic instability, echoing loosely the epistemological, ontological, and optical/otological tensions that characterized the seventeenth-­century worldview. In addition to the polysemy of such signifiers as “entender,” the hyperbaton and its semantic effects in the opening quatrain’s last two lines are also notable. If, indeed, the syntax of “que no entienden los oídos / y que lo escuchan los ojos” is a distortion, then the text could also be rearranged to produce different interpretations. One might conclude that the figure privileges hearing: “que no entienden los ojos / y que lo escuchan los oídos.” Or else, perhaps, the opposite—­hearing is downgraded in favor of sight: “que no escuchan los oídos / y que lo entienden los ojos.” Regardless, the ambiguity of these two lines underscores Loa 384’s exploitation of Baroque fascination with obscurity and illusion to align visuality and aurality. Resonance  85

Both harmonic representations of nobility from chapter 1 and Ortiz’s observations about physical beauty’s arithmetic roots resonate in the poem’s imagining of the countess’s age and aspect: y si el curso de la Edad, del Sol en el claro torno, tantos como giros, cierra diapasones luminosos: hoy, que belleza y edad componen al bello asombro de Elvira, aunque falta en uno lo que le sobra en el otro.60

In the year since the vicereine’s last birthday, the earth has completed one full rotation around the sun, a revolution whose sound can be used to measure the planet’s path and, consequently, the countess’s age. The poem expresses such resonance in terms of harmony—­as a just octave (diapason). This relationship between universal structure and consonance is an example of Sor Juana’s musical Neoplatonism and also resonates with musical intersections of time and motus that I addressed earlier in the chapter. Given the significance of harmony to the early modern cosmos, one might read Sor Juana’s Loa 384 in an alternative fashion: the eye senses numerical ratios that the ear cannot. Or else the Countess of Galve’s beauty exceeds music. And yet, by nature of the poetic structure, sight relies on aural perception (“que lo escuchan los ojos”). Like in Redondilla 87, beauty appears as an objective, numerical quality. By associating pleasing aesthetic properties with mathematical proportions, Loa 384 recalls the Pythagorean principles of consonance and harmony. The poem’s insistence on the notion of “eyes that hear,” so to speak, likewise invokes the music of the spheres, thus implying that beauty derives from the intervals that define cosmic harmony. Once more, Sor Juana’s work establishes a link between music making and the cosmos that evokes musica mundana. 86 Resonance

Parallels between mathematics and music are undoubtedly important for untangling the philosophical-­semantic web that informs Loa 384’s portrait of the countess. Because of this relationship, one might also propose that in the poem mathematical and geometric proportions channel aural perception. Both the allusion to musica mundana and the substitution of hearing for sight in the very first lines suggest that visuality offers limited access to the harmonies that constitute beauty. Rather, music turns out to represent these proportions more faithfully, as the poem affirms: sólo la Música sea quien, con ecos numerosos celebre su edad, si acaso no son sus números sordos.61

The link between sound and numbers challenges purely rational constructions of early modern mathematics. By highlighting the sensible nature of music and its underlying Pythagorean proportions, these lines recall early modern sensitivity to acoustical stimuli that may well exceed the modern day’s, since in seventeenth-­century Western culture the construction of sound and silence may not have been necessarily analogous to the audible/inaudible binary opposition, as I will propose in chapter 5. Consider, for example, the concept of inaudible planetary revolution and its centrality within the doctrine of musica mundana. Although the human ear was not able to perceive this acoustical revolution, early modern scholars did not exclude the importance of universal sound. Similarly, Loa 384 evokes the sensible quality of numerical relationships, a property that music illustrates particularly well by nature of its reliance on harmonic proportions. The idea affects understanding of “silence” in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Read from this perspective, silence does not become a sign of absence. Rather, it designates a space of hypersensitivity that encourages the reader to be attentive to sounds and voices that might not otherwise be perceptible. In Escena III of Loa 384, Música further develops the Pythagorean defense of mathematical proportions as the basis of beauty: Resonance  87

Así, la Beldad no está sólo en que las partes sean excesivamente hermosas, sino en que unas a otras tengan relativa proporción. Luego nada representa a la Belleza mejor que la Música . . .62

If beauty is based on mathematical proportions, then musical harmonies become one of the most effective means of representation. By recalling the Pythagorean intervals on which the divine harmonies of the cosmos are based, music evokes God’s perfection. In this sense, beauty is discrete and objective. It lies not “in the eye of the beholder” but rather in the numerical relationships that determine aesthetic properties. The proportions themselves are not perceptible to the senses yet resonate with the soul (it, too, being made up of a numerical construction, according to the doctrine of musica humana). The manner in which the ear, as primary aural sense organ, appreciates harmony and transmits it to the soul therefore becomes crucial to my reading. Indeed, as Música’s self-­introduction continues, she refers to her special ability to affect the soul, relying once again on lexical ambiguity to align music and poetry: Facultad subalternada a la Aritmética, gozo sus números; pero uniendo lo discreto y lo sonoro, mido el tiempo y la voz mido: aquél, breve o espacioso; aquésta, intensa o remisa; y de uno y otro compongo aquel indefenso hechizo que, ignorado de los ojos, 88 Resonance

sabe introducirse al alma y, dulcemente imperioso, arrebatar los afectos, proporcionando a sus modos ya el alterar sus quietudes, ya el quietar sus alborotos.63

This passage privileges the ear and reinforces music’s sonorous properties. The aurality that governs Música’s opening discourse echoes Kircher’s musica pathetica and explanation of the relationship between music’s affective power and bodily humors. For Sor Juana, as for Kircher, the relationship among sound, hearing, humors, and temperament underlies approaches to music’s affective properties. Given the alignment of visuality and aurality elsewhere in the poem, music’s appeal to both the eye and the ear thus strengthens its affective potential. The polysemous relationship between harmony and writing informs both Redondilla 87 and Loa 384, and such privileging of music above poetry can also draw out musical resonances in the poem’s form. Sor Juana’s Musical Writing

In addition to lexical ambiguity and word painting in Loa 384, the structure lends itself to a musical and rhetorical reading. The piece is divided into six scenes, an arrangement that can be read as an echo of the musical notes of the hexachord—­ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la. Given this parallel and music’s importance throughout Loa 384, the piece can be read as a poetic hexachord. The underlying musical structure is significant, for it increases the work’s affective capacity and blurs the distinction between poem and song, a blurring that recalls the musica poetica tradition. Moreover, it reiterates the mathematical-­harmonic cosmic structure that the music of the spheres proposes, thus becoming yet another resonance of this theme within Sor Juana’s work. The personification of “Music,” as well as each of its “echoes” or tones, further reinforces my view that Loa 384 can be interpreted as both a visual and an aural text. Lending corporality to these musical components Resonance  89

renders them present, particularly when the piece’s dramatic performance is considered. As characters, Música and her harmonic components support interpreting the homage to the Countess of Galve like a poetic hexachord. Finally, a musical interpretation of the poetic form recalls Loa 384’s performance context. Although there is no extant score, actors would have sung their parts and thus strengthened resonances with the hexachord. The hexachord conceit also deepens the text-­music relationship in Loa 384, for Música manipulates the scale tones to create celebratory phrases about the Countess in Escena VI. The gesture channels a compositional technique known as word painting: Mas, con todo, quisiera que en aquestas Seis Voces algo hubiera que en particular más nos expresara el Asunto; mas ya, sin bien repara mi atención en las tarjas, de ellas quiere ver mi curiosidad lo que se infiere. Idme dando las tarjas, por si acaso A otro sentido de sus letras paso.64

Throughout this scene, Música rearranges the six degrees of the Guidonian scale to form such phrases as “elvira sola.”65 The musicopoetic encryption recalls an early modern composition technique in which the melody of a cantus firmus was arranged such that the vowels of Guidonian solmization syllables could be associated as text and strengthen the rhetorical theme of a work through musical “writing.” Zarlino coined this nomenclature as soggetto cavato dale vocali di queste parole (literally: “a subject carved from the vowels of these words”) in his Le istitutione harmoniche (1558). Composers used the soggetto cavato to embed names of monarchs or important benefactors within their works. One oft-­cited example of this practice is Josquin des Prez’s Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie (late fifteenth century), which encodes the name of Hercules, the Duke of Ferrara. Similarly, a short composition at the opening of Kircher’s Musurgia universalis encodes Leopoldo, the Austrian archduke’s name. 90 Resonance

This is not the only example of musicopoetic encoding in Loa 384. Lavista has identified a similar instance of soggetto cavato in the loa (although he does not refer to it as such): the moral description of the countess that chapter 1 considered can likewise be read as reinscription of Guidonian solmization: música De modo que Virtud y Regocijo el ut, re, son, según vuestra voz dijo: y Miramiento y Fama es el mi, fa, quien dulcemente clama; y en la Solicitud, que se ve unida con Latitud, sol, la va contenida; que las Seis Voces son, que tan usadas, Escala de Aretino son llamadas.66

As I remarked in chapter 1, Lavista astutely connects this passage to Guido d’Arezzo’s development of solmization, commenting that Sor Juana’s association of the degrees of the scale echoes their original association with the text of the eighth-­century hymn “Ut queant laxis”: Ut queant laxis Resonare fibris Mira Gestorum Famuli Tourum Solve Polluti Labii Reatum.67

With this in mind, Lavista remarks, “Bien sabía todo esto Sor Juana cuando identificaba en la Loa 384 el nombre de cada nota con una palabra.”68 My own interpretation of the feature elsewhere in the poem complements Lavista’s observations by identifying additional allusions to this Guidonian operation in Loa 384. Complementarily, such musical encoding engages resonances beyond Guido d’Arezzo and thus becomes another symptom of the alignment of aurality and visuality. Resonance  91

In addition to word painting, and bearing in mind Kircher’s influence on Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic discourse, it is also important to note resonances between musical writing in Loa 384 and an elaborate system for correlating the alphabet with musical compositions based on the type of instrument and the number of times a note was played in succession—­the “Combinatoria” that she referred to in Romance 50. Escena IV of Encomiastico poema, it seems, alludes directly to these anagrams: música Juntando lo que acrisola la Anagrama en las vocales, hallo que dicen cabales los ecos: elvira sola.69

These lines appear to refer to the same Kircherian anagrams as highlighted in Romance 50 and thereby strengthen the alignment of music and writing through musica poetica. Both Kircher’s and Zarlino’s practices systematize a means of musical writing, a topic of likely interest to Sor Juana, given the engagement with musica poetica that I defend. Conclusion

I have endeavored in this chapter to draw out yet another distinguishing trait of Sor Juana’s aurality: the alignment of visuality and aurality by means of the juxtaposition of rhetoric, music making, and painting. Indeed, poems like Redondilla 87 and Loa 384 lend themselves in particular to a reading of Kircher’s unique approach to intersections of musica poetica and musica pathetica. Furthermore, when read against Pompeo Colonna’s poetic opening for Musurgia universalis, the sorjuanine works examined in this chapter also seem to become glosses on Colonna’s canzone. In addition to vestiges of Kircher’s thought, my readings here draw out themes that will resonate in subsequent chapters. Among others, these include connections between music and body; links among voice, gender and intellect; and finally, aural and visual reflections. 92 Resonance

Chapter 3

Sound Female Auralities in the Villancicos

A study of sound and music making in Sor Juana’s canon would not be complete without considering the villancicos. Descended from the Spanish popular villanesca genre and adapted to an American context, these musicopoetic works played a significant role in New Spanish sound culture. Generally comprising nine songs, spread across three nights (nocturnas), the villancicos are miniature dramas that feature choirs, soloists, and instrumental accompaniment. In contrast with Tridentine insistence on Latin masses, the villancicos include vernacular texts whose frequent imaginings of accent, colloquial speech, and other defining characteristics of popular figures resonated with the audience.1 Prominent writes and composers—­including Gaspar Fernández (1566–­1629), Manuel de Sumaya (1678–­1755), and Ignacio Jerusalem (1707–­69), among others—­ penned these villancicos for spectacular public ceremonies to celebrate Catholic feasts, Christmas, Assumption, and Conception. They attend to the audience’s social and racial diversity and, as such, sometimes recall music’s role for evangelization in the Americas with a didactic tone. Sor Juana authored lyrics for twenty-­two villancico cycles (more than one hundred pieces, according to Calleja: twelve sequences whose authorship has been determined and ten more attributable sets) and also penned a handful of other ritual texts, including a set of letras for the profession of a novice nun. In light of such works’ popular tone (at least in the case of the villancicos) and consciousness of the audience, they are useful for 93

literally drawing out liminal voices, particularly indigenous, black, and rural ones. Beginning with Dario Puccini, prior criticism has attended amply to such diversity and emphasized its importance for understanding New Spain’s mestizaje. The observation informs overwhelming scholarly interest in drawing out symbols and representations that contribute to the syncretic blend of Sor Juana’s ritual pieces. Some, like Sabat-­Rivers, have focused on how the villancicos harmonize linguistic representations of difference: “el modo especial de habla de estos tipos, además del distintivo ‘lenguaje’ musical, establece diferencias raciales donde se encaja al blanco, al negro y al indio.”2 Others have taken a musical approach. For instance, Long acknowledges Sor Juana’s general inheritance of Mexico-­ Tenochtitlan’s pluriculturalism, emphasizing combined “Spanish, Indian and African” themes or dance forms in the villancicos and elsewhere in her work.3 Still others attend to the piece’s dramatic context with readings of theatrical elements (Tenorio) and a performative approach (Robinson). There is considerably less scholarship on the insight that the villancicos and other ritual pieces might offer into the poet’s participation in New Spanish music culture. While there are no extant examples to suggest that Sor Juana set her own villancicos, musicologists have drawn out connections with important chapelmasters and musicians. A pioneer in the study of early Spanish American music making, Robert M. Stevenson, affirms that among other anonymous composers, Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico maestro de capilla José de Loaysa (ca. 1630–­95) set some of the poet’s villancicos.4 Despite the archival challenges of examining New Spanish music, scholars like Aurelio Tello are conducting relentless archival work to recover settings of Sor Juana’s texts that advance inquiry into connections between the poet’s villancicos and other important figures (particularly Antonio de Salazar) in New Spanish music culture. Regardless of striking feminine representations of music and evidence of gendered approaches to sound in seventeenth-­century New Spain, scholarship on the villancicos does not consider aurality from a woman-­ centered lens. This chapter addresses such lacunae by drawing out feminine sonorities from these pieces and other ritual texts. Harmonic imagery 94 Sound

linked to the Virgin Mary in villancicos that celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, a set of poems written for a novice’s profession, and a pair of female musicians will all be pertinent for establishing paradigms of women’s voice in the ritual texts and beyond. The poet’s aural reimaginings often respond to masculine paradigms of knowledge and agency. Indeed, in the ritual texts, sonorous representations of Mary and others re-­sound aural discourses to attend to feminine authority, intellect, and related themes. Secondarily, my focus on Sor Juana’s engagement with New Spanish sound culture also draws out vestiges of her soundscape so that readers may appreciate more fully the villancicos’ musical and extramusical context. Marian Harmony in the Villancicos

Although Sor Juana’s ceremonial works appear to marginalize female characters and women’s voices, Mabel Moraña argued that frequent reimaginings of Mary respond to the lacuna.5 Echoing Moraña’s observation, acoustical representations of the Virgin are the most salient feminine auralities in Sor Juana’s ritual pieces. Indeed, Marian sonorities abound in the villancicos and resonate with harmony’s sacred construction within the early modern worldview. Sound is especially salient in cycles that celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, where it makes the contrast between heaven and earth sensible and also relates to themes like agency and immortality. Moreover, as Miranda recalled, music was an important component in early modern imaginings of the Assumption, the Annunciation, and the heavens in general.6 The best-­known musical representation of the Virgin is from Villancico 220 (Assumption 1676). The piece lauds Mary “la Maestra Divina / de la Capilla Suprema,” who leads heavenly choirs to harmonize heaven and earth.7 Throughout, imagery rooted in the music of the spheres and musica speculativa highlight Mary’s divine perfection and agency, made audible as cosmic harmony and its resonances. Villancico 220 has attracted critical attention for the insight that representations of the Virgin’s song can lead into understanding of Sor Juana’s musical inheritance. For instance, Méndez Plancarte and Long separately Sound  95

argue that the overriding theme of the music of the spheres is a sign of Mary’s capacity to mediate between heaven and earth.8 For his part, Paz draws out Christian resonances in the musicopoetic metaphors, and Stevenson observes the poet’s inheritance of Cerone’s El Melopeo y Maestro.9 Miranda attends more closely to links between music and Mary herself and notes that in Villancico 220, the Virgin is “la encarnación de la armonía perfecta, donde no hay disonancias.”10 While Miranda’s observations hint at the possible intersection of sound and gender in this work, scholars have not fully explored the topic. Nonetheless aural representations of the Virgin in Villancico 220 as well as of other women from Sor Juana’s ritual texts merit attention. Among other resonances, agency relates to feminine sonorities throughout the poet’s oeuvre. Villancico 220 is no exception. In the opening lines, the lyric narrator demands the audience’s attention: ¡Silencio, atención, que canta María! Escuchen, atiendan, que a su voz Divina, los vientos se paran y el Cielo se inclina.11

Here, the order to listen and attend to Mary’s song signifies her voice’s agency. Verbs like “escuchar” and “atender” suppose active listeners whose purposeful focus on phonic qualities of the Virgin’s voice is notable.12 From the very beginning of the villancico, the Virgin’s tones elicit a powerful sympathetic reaction from the winds and heavens. Both the music of the spheres and theories about hearing inform the representation of the natural elements harmonizing with Virgin’s voice. As I have shown, such imagery is not unique to this piece and persists elsewhere in Sor Juana’s writing, paralleling portrayals of noble figures (chapter 1) and Narcisa’s voice in Romance 8 (chapter 4). The command “Escuchen, atiendan” invites listeners to experience Mary’s voice sympathetically as well. Sensitivity to the sociohistorical 96 Sound

nuances of listening sharpens understanding of sonorous reception here and throughout the poet’s oeuvre.13 Indeed, the emphasis on auditory perception draws out sound’s capacity to act on the audience through physical and psychological transformation. Correspondingly the nun’s engagement with the theme echoes early modern interest in aurality’s epistemological and ontological resonances. As in previous chapters, related developments in acoustics, musica pathetica, and musica poetica underlie Sor Juana’s aural imaginings in Villancico 220. Consequently, the command to “listen” to the Virgin in Villancico 220 invites the audience to experience the material and affective impact of her harmonies. As we shall see, “listening” not only refers to the Virgin’s song. It also beckons spectators to attune themselves to underlying consonances of concepts like cosmic order and exemplarity. Indeed, the poem’s musical figuring of the Virgin extends beyond her voice and broadly resonates with the early modern worldview. For instance, the second copla echoes the Virgin’s journey heavenward with a description of her song that ascends the musical scale. More than the “linda imagen” that Paz describes elsewhere in Villancico 220, I argue that the acoustical metaphor invites the reader to listen to or sympathetically experience Mary’s Assumption14: Desde el ut del Ecce ancilla, por ser el más bajo empieza, y subiendo más que el Sol al la de Exaltata llega.15

These lines’ imagery merits a closer reading. In prior scholarship, Stevenson emphasizes how musical figures illustrate Mary’s ability to harmonize celestial and mundane dissonances.16 Representations of the Virgin’s consonance persist throughout the poem and are often associated with her voice. In addition to the opening copla, such tendencies become apparent in affirmations like “en Ella / no hay semitono incantable, / porque ninguno disuena” and “sube a la mayor alteza, / a gozar de la Tritona / las consonancias eternas.”17 In each example, antithetical musical Sound  97

references generate tension by juxtaposing dissonance and consonance. Complementary to vestiges of Cerone that Stevenson notices in the opposing musical figures, such imagery also recalls Hill’s Gassendist interpretation of contrasting sonorities in Primero sueño: consonance is much more pleasurable following dissonance.18 Hill’s reflection is useful here for drawing out the listener’s experience of discord and its resolutions in Villancico 220. Indeed, not only do the poem’s musical antitheses figure Mary’s role as mediator between heaven and earth. From a practical standpoint, they also sweeten the Virgin’s consonances by preparing them with dissonances. Stevenson is not the only scholar who has taken note of Villancico 220. Complementarily Long highlights music’s significance for imagining the Assumption here and elsewhere in Villancico 220. For instance, she observes that “sol” is part of a wordplay that conflates the sun and the fifth degree of the diatonic scale: “As Mary has ascended from the status of ‘handmaiden of the Lord’ past the sun into heaven where she is now the Queen, so the choir ascends from ut past sol to la.”19 Rising pitch therefore figures the Virgin’s physical and moral ascent heavenward. The play on words that Long draws out channels Neoplatonic representations of the universe like Mersenne’s “Harmonie universelle” from Harmonie universelle. Mersenne’s illustration features a common early modern trope: it imagines cosmic order as a lyre and thus spatializes harmony. Scale degrees ascend the instrument’s neck, and associated elements like land or the stars indicate progress heavenward. A giant hand grasps the tuning peg and metaphorically represents harmony’s divine origins. “Sol” appears in the middle of the diagram, and the corresponding sun highlights it as the transitory pitch between earth and heaven. While Long interprets Sor Juana’s metaphor within the context of “symbolic and allegorical roles [of musical imagery] in the villancicos,” it is also important to recognize the poet’s inheritance of related tendencies in seventeenth-­century sound culture to attend to reimaginings in Sor Juana’s work.20 From this perspective Villancico 220 feminizes representations of universal harmony like Mersenne’s by incorporating Mary’s voice. 98 Sound

Both Long and Stevenson’s interpretations resonate with the opening lines’ entreaty to sympathetic listening. On one hand, the opening “Escuchen, atienden” bids the audience to participate in the tempering that Stevenson highlights. Just as Mary harmonically aligns heaven and earth, so she also attunes individual musica humana to divine consonance. On the other, the acousticopoetic imagery that Long emphasizes sounds the Assumption and heightens perception of the event. Both musica pathetica and musica poetica are important here, for the opening command “escuchen, atiendan” invites the audience to internalize the musical representation of the Assumption—­which resonates with the soul’s Pythagorean architecture—­and sympathetically experience it. “Listening” therefore refers to meaningful aural attention that can provoke psychophysiological changes. Within this context voice becomes a powerful force that can reaffirm or alter cosmic order because it recalls universal harmony. In addition to the musicopoetic representation of Mary in Villancico 220, several other villancicos draw on the music of the spheres to represent the Assumption as well. For instance, Villancico 273 (1685 Feast of the Assumption) evokes harmony among the four elements to depict earth’s joyous reaction to the Virgin’s ascent: Fue la Asunción de María de tan general contento, que uno con otro elemento la festejan a porfía. Y haciendo dulce armonía el Agua a la Tierra enlaza, el Aire a la Mar abraza, y el Fuego circunda el Viento.21

Like many of the nun’s villancicos, the piece self-­referentially evokes its musical form and represents the sung performance as an echo of harmony among water, air, earth, and fire. In this way musica practica reflects the Sound  99

elements’ musica mundana, whose consonance resonates with Mary’s heavenly ascent and natural accord. Finally, emphasis on joyous reactions to the Assumption in the cabeza’s last strophe—­“¡Ay qué alegría, / ay qué contento, / ay qué alegría!”—­highlights music’s affective potential, just like in Villancico 220.22 Themes of musica mundana in Villancico 273’s opening lines are salient throughout the poem and resonate with my reading of feminine sonorities in Villancico 220. For example, acoustical tropes in the coplas reiterate the distinction between earthly discord and celestial harmony in the poet’s earlier representation of the Assumption: 1.—­Las Aves con picos de oro saludan mejor Aurora, y una y otra voz sonora sale de uno y otro coro, cuyo acento no es, sonoro, de humano, imitado, acento.23

Here concordant birdsong contrasts with dissonant human voices, and the polysemous characterization of birdcalls as “sonora” links musical and moral order. The Diccionario de Autoridades defines the term aurally—­ “lo que suena bien à los oídos, ò suena mucho; pero suavemente”—­and ethically—­“metaphoricamente significa lo recto, concorde, y perfecto en las acciones.” To this end, both the aviary choirs and strains of musica mundana in Villancico 273 dually resonate with descriptions of the Virgin in Villancico 220 and elsewhere in Sor Juana’s work, for Mary’s inherent harmony relates to the consonant tones of her voice as well as to her virtue. Auditory representations of musica mundana accompany additional representations of the Virgin in the villancicos as well. Just as in Villancico 273, musica pathetica stands out as an underlying theme in many of these works. Indeed, Mary’s aurality and associated sonorities symbolize the Virgin’s accord with world harmony. Within this context, audible sentimental reactions recall the psychophysiological impact of Pythagorean order and its auditory resonances. For instance, in Villancico 251 (1679 100 Sound

Feast of the Assumption), the elements sound grief at Mary’s departure with sighs and groans: Todos los elementos lamentan tu partida; mida, mida tu piedad sus lamentos: oye en humilde ruego a la tierra, a la mar, al aire, al fuego. Las criaturas sensibles y las que vida ignoran, lloran, lloran con llantos indecibles, invocando tu nombre el peñasco, la planta, el bruto, el hombre. A llantos repetidos, entre los troncos secos, ecos, ecos dan a nuestros gemidos, por llorosa respuesta, el monte, el llano, el bosque, la floresta.24

Unlike previous examples, the aural tropes in these lines are neither musical nor linguistic but rather consist of vocalizations to express loss. In this sense, such expressions can be read as disordered sound, whose emotional strife—­a product of dissonance with musica mundana—­contrasts with celestial and Marian consonance. Discordant representations of earth mourning the Virgin’s death in Villancico 251 and other pieces re-­sound auralities that Gonzalez draws out in Hapsburg funerary practices. Indeed, the scholar notes that eulogies for monarchs and other rulers often highlight the disorder of grieving earthly and heavenly elements. In such imagery, the underlying music of the spheres ideology combines with the dissonant soundscape of a city in mourning to produce an “atmosphere Sound  101

of chaos, of broken harmony.”25 Similar imagery characterizes many of Sor Juana’s villancicos for the Assumption, and in this way, sonorous representations of Mary’s death heighten the Virgin’s imperial resonances. The theme is important in Villancico 251, and celestial harmonies are dissonant with mundane vocalizations throughout the piece. As Mary reaches heaven in the estribillo, the angels receive her with song. Festive trumpets celebrate the arrival and resonate with her harmonies. As in previous examples, these acoustical tropes evoke literal music making and can also sound Mary’s concordant relationship with universal music: ¡Sonoro clarín del viento, resuene tu dulce acento, toca, toca: Ángeles convoca, y en mil Serafines mil dulces clarines que, haciéndole salva, con dulces cadencias saluden el Alba!26

These lines’ polysemy draws out consonances between Mary and the angelic choirs. First, given self-­referential allusions to the villancicos’ musical form elsewhere in Sor Juana’s work, the “sonoro clarín de viento” that sounds in greeting suggests that the accompanying music included a bugle. In fact, perhaps it was a prominent feature of the estribillo. Scholars have observed imaginings of musical accompaniment elsewhere in the nun’s villancicos. Stevenson remarks that the first villancico of the third nocturno from the 1691 Feast of St. Peter the Apostle lists the accompanying instruments from the setting of Antonio de Salazar, chapelmaster at Mexico City Cathedral.27 Among these, he includes the bugle, which was used widely in New Spanish celebrations and festivals. For example, in an overview of musical practices in eighteenth-­century Guadalupan popular celebrations, Drew Edward Davies notes descriptions of bugle music in some primary sources. He observes that just as in European contexts, “loud instruments such as shawms, flutes, drums and pealing 102 Sound

bells dominate the exterior processional soundscape, while ‘sweet’ vocal music characterizes elevated interior spaces.”28 References to the bugle in Villancico 251 thus offer insight into the accompanying musical performance and highlight the piece’s popular nature. Such allusions are undoubtedly useful for piecing together New Spain’s acoustical landscape and offer rich opportunities for further study. For now, I limit myself to the intersection of aurality and the feminine in Sor Juana’s villancicos. Complementary to its practical significance, Villancico 251’s “clarín” also refers to consonance and illustrates Mary’s harmonious relationship with the heavens. One entry in the Diccionario de Autoridades notes, “Metaphoricamente se toma por qualquiera sonido ò canto claro y sonóro: y con especialidad se dice del canto de las aves y páxaros.” Consequently, the festive instrumentation of Villancico 251’s celestial and actual musicians also resonates with the Virgin’s voice: “resuene tu dulce acento”. A polysemous reading of “acento” deepens the interpretation, for the term refers to “La suavidad y dulzúra de la voz, el modo con que el Músico entóna y canta, según reglas y puntos de Musica” (Diccionario de Autoridades). The harmonic symbolism of “clarín” and “acento” therefore invite a reading of vocal agency in the estribillo’s first two lines: that the celestial and earthly music to which “clarín” alludes might resonate with Mary’s song. Here as elsewhere in the villancicos, vestiges of the music of the spheres allows for a reading of “song” that refers to actual singing and to the Virgin’s inherent harmonies. In addition to these resonances, Villancico 251, like Villancico 220, imagines the Virgin’s ascent with antithetical aural tropes. The earthly elements respond to Mary’s departure with nonmusical and nonlexical vocalizations. In contrast, angelic musicians welcome the Virgin with concordant song. A contrapuntal reading of these acoustical imaginings suggests that the dearth of music on earth thus reflects man’s disordered or fallen nature while heaven’s consonance resonates with divine harmonies. Polysemy deepens such interpretations. Just as “clarín” in the estribillo’s opening lines may allude to the piece’s accompaniment, the “dulces cadencias” of the final line also recall the villancico’s form. Indeed, the Sound  103

cadence reference signals the end of the musical and poetic phrases and emphasizes the finality of Mary’s journey heavenward. Additionally, the Diccionario de Autoridades draws out the term’s Neoplatonic resonances: “Cierta medida y proporción que se guarda en la composición, assí de prosa y versos, como en la pronunciación y modo de cantar. Usase desta voz con especialidad en las composiciones metricas, de quienes se dice que tienen cadéncia y harmonía quando están bien executadas.” In this sense, “cadencia” highlights the angelic chorus’s consonance and—­in a performative gesture—­also imagines the villancico’s harmonious musical accompaniment. Mary’s Assumption culminates in a tuneful cadence, and musica instrumentalis and celestial musica mundana resonate with the event’s consonant perfection. Villancico 251 is not the only of Sor Juana’s works to link grief, sin, and dissonance. Other Assumption sequences feature similar representations. For instance, the Villancico VII from the 1686 set (attributed to Sor Juana) represents earth’s sadness at Mary’s absence with sighs, groans, and sobs: ¡Escuchad los suspiros, escuchad, Virgen bella, los sollozos más dulces entre lágrimas tiernas, con que, al partiros, el Orbe se lamenta!29

Here, vocal expressions of grief transcend the presence-­bounded spaces of audibility, and earth’s lament becomes perceptible despite the Virgin’s distance. Like in Loa 377 (chapter 1) or Lira 211 (“Óyeme con los ojos, / ya que están tan distantes los oídos”), acoustical transcendence of spatial bounds recalls Kircher’s experiments with transmitting sound over long distances and explores intersections of hearing, voice, and presence.30 Earth’s sadness at the loss of Mary resonates throughout the piece, including in the calls of fish and birds that the opening endechas feature: De los mares los Peces sumergidos, se quejan 104 Sound

de que el mar caudaloso de vuestra gracia inmensa hasta el Empíreo se suba y los desecha. Y las aves llorosas, por el aire ligeras, en míseros gemidos, en muy tristes endechas, la partida lloran de su hermosa Reina.31

Nonhuman voices mournfully echo the Virgin’s departure and deepen sonorous representations of grief. The downward motion of birds’ tears contrasts with sighs that rise upward toward the heavens. In a dramatic scene, sea dwellers complain (“explicar con la voz la pena o el dolor que se siente,” according to the Diccionario de Autoridades) so forcefully that the sound causes an earthquake or tsunami. The underwater voice’s physical effects particularly evoke nonaural experiences of sound. As Nina Sun Eidsheim observes, water does not transmit sound through the tympan like air does but rather makes it audible through vibrations in the skull bone.32 In this way, Sor Juana’s acoustical representation of earth privileges physical and sonorous meaning making over semantic signifiers. While animate life forms lament Mary’s departure, nonaural elements of the natural world also channel absence in Sor Juana’s villancicos. Indeed, flowers wilt and trees drop their leaves in gestures that echo the animals’ sounded grief. Furthermore, representations of human mourning as loss of voice contrast with the opening lines’ animal sounds: Afligidos los Hombres, sin voces su tristeza, con lágrimas sus ojos, el sentimiento muestran, pues no les permite hablar tan grave pena. Y así, de mis clamores cesan ya las endechas, Sound  105

pues mejor silencioso el corazón dijera lo que articular no puede ya la lengua.33

Strong emotions exceed voice’s capacity in these verses, for Mary’s absence leaves man unable to verbally express grief except through rude noises or “clamores.” Although human affliction is not audible, I maintain that the opening “escuchad” permits the listener to understand human mourning as voice, particularly in the context of aurality’s nonauditory resonances. Furthermore, just like in Villancico 220, musica pathetica and theories of sensory perception persist in this villancico’s imagining of voice. First, the animals and earth express grief at the Virgin’s departure with sounds that make breath particularly audible—­sighs, sobs, and groans. Such expressions highlight air’s role in sound transmission and consequently draw out shared material characteristics with pneuma. In light of these resonances, vocalizations make loss—­the psychological result of changes in pneuma—­audible. Within this context, human loss of audible voice is intriguing. While the poetic subject’s expression exceeds speech at the end of the piece, voice (nonlinguistic and nonauditory) is still salient. Resonance and sympathy inform the closing lines, which affirm “el corazón dijera / lo que articular no puede ya la lengua.” For all this, when considered in light of the opening command “escuchad,” the villancico thus highlights voice’s material dimensions as significant for hearing, even in the face of decreased or absent audibility. Reimaginings of Musical Iconography and Practices

Diverse discourses in sound and music making inform Sor Juana’s imaginings of the Assumption. Complementary to such influences as musica speculativa, musica pathetica, and New Spain’s soundscape, early modern music iconography also resonates in the villancicos. For instance, the angelic consort that responds to Mary’s ascent “con dulces cadencias” in Villancico 251 recalls a frequent trope in Renaissance and Baroque religious art: celestial musicians accompanying the Assumption and 106 Sound

other Marian representations.34 Indeed, musical imagery heightens the contrast between earth and heaven in pieces like Juan Correa’s La Asunción-­Coronación de la Virgen (1689) and Cristóbal de Villalpando’s La mujer del Apocalipsis (ca. 1685–­86), both in the sacristy of the Mexico City Cathedral, and Alonso López de Herrera’s La Asunción de la Virgen (ca. 1625). All of these pieces feature angelic musicians that surround Mary and sound her celestial nature. In La mujer del Apocalipsis, a heavenly consort of organs and string and wind instruments sharply contrasts with the terrestrial raucousness of St. Michael’s fight against the seven-­headed dragon. Indeed, grimacing soldiers with swords in motion and the monster’s bellows define the discordant soundscape. La Asunción-­Coronación de la Virgen represents Mary’s heavenly ascent with angels playing bassoon, harp, and horn. An open score orders the accompaniment, and the musicians’ absence from earth distinguishes mundane and divine. López de Herrera’s La Asunción de la Virgen likewise harmonizes the Virgin’s Assumption with a celestial ensemble that includes a lute, an organ, a horn, and a pair of singers (fig. 4). Studies in music iconography can shed light on Sor Juana’s representation of angelic choirs. For instance, according to the Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography, heavenly consorts accompanying the Virgin channel music’s classical association with immortality.35 The contrast between earthly grief and celestial song that characterizes Villancico 251 is likewise apparent in Renaissance pieces that engage the theme, including Ambrogio Bergognone’s Assumption of the Virgin (1522, fig. 5). Moreover, David Rothenburg notes that Renaissance visual art sometimes draws on musical imagery in Scripture, and “decidedly unrealistic musical ensembles” combine trumpets, harps, and similar instruments in an unlikely manner and appear alongside Mary.36 Finally, María Elena Santos observes that celestial musicians in Villalpando’s La mujer del Apocalipsis resonate with Jacobus de Voragine’s representation of the Assumption in the 1285 hagiographic anthology Legenda aurea. Numerous incunabula of Voragine’s collection appeared in the thirteenth century, and the development Sound  107

Fig. 4. La Asunción de la Virgen. Courtesy of Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.

of the printing press only heightened the book’s popularity, which lasted well into the sixteenth century.37 The text also circulated in New Spain, and angel choirs in the villancicos heighten its importance in the nun’s intellectual inheritance, an area to which Margaret Parker attends in her reading of the villancicos to St. Catherine of Alexandria.38 Santos also remarks on the manner in which New Spanish sound culture surely influenced Villalpando’s representation of heavenly music.39 With this in mind and given the performance context of Sor Juana’s villancicos, I argue that some of the nun’s poetic reimaginings of celestial choirs can also lend insight into musical practices of her time. The fourth piece from the 1677 Assumption cycle is one such work. The villancico depicts a band of soldiers that carry the Virgin heavenward with musical accompaniment. Polysemy contributes to a soldierly reworking of the celestial choirs that celebrate the Assumption. Furthermore, the representation may offer insight into military bands in New Spanish funeral practices: Con pífanos y clarines, porque es una Arca cerrada, templada para los Cielos, hoy ha de servir de caja. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Con instrumentos sonoros, Haciéndole en ellos salva, Sobre sus hombros María Sin peso les da la carga.40

Polysemous wordplays in these lines draw together the Assumption, war, and music making. First, the “Arca cerrada” refers to the coffin that contains the Virgin’s body and the Ark where Noah protected select creatures from the flood. Furthermore, the masculine pair “arco” alludes to a weapon—­the bow and arrow—­and a musical instrument—­the bow of chordophones like the violin or cello. “Templar” further develops such motifs. According to the Diccionario de Autoridades, the term can describe Sound  109

tuning (“en la Mùsica, vale poner acordes los instrumentos segun la proporción harmonica”), a blacksmith’s technique (“se aplica tambien à los metales: y es darles aquel punto, delicadeza, y fineza, que requieren para su perfeccion”), or the maritime practice of adjusting sails according to wind speed (“en la Marinería, significa moderar, y proporcionar las velas al viento, recogiendolas, si es mui fuerte, y extendiendolas, si es suave, ò blando”). With the underlying polysemy in mind, the Virgin’s coffin becomes a vessel sailing heavenward that serves as a refuge from earthly corruption, a finely crafted arrow aimed toward paradise, and a perfectly tuned string instrument that is consonant with the divine. Multiple meanings of “caja” also develop the poem’s plurivocality. Among other definitions in the Diccionario de Autoridades, “caja” is a synonym for “coffin” as well as for a musical instrument, specifically “el tambor, especialmente entre los soldados.” From one angle, “caja” describes the Virgin’s casket and from another, it rounds out the band of soldier-­angels that accompany the procession. Furthermore, the term refers to the stock of a rifle known as the harquebus: “La madera en que está puesto el cañón y la llave para poder usar del: la qual tiene su coz para afirmarla en el hombro, y poder hacer bien la puntería.” In this way, “caja” also compares the coffin to a weapon and thus resonates with themes of war. All of these references draw out links between military bands and harmony and portray soldier musicians as a sign of the struggle between good and evil. The theme is most evident toward the end of the piece, in a stanza that represents Mary as a shield that protects against the Devil: Su escudo es, y tanto vale con la gente reformada, que basta contra el Demonio este escudo de ventaja.41 Fig. 5. Assumption of the Virgin. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Fletcher Fund 1926 (27.39.1).

Sound  111

Although sound and music are not central themes here, the antithetical imagery resonates with juxtapositions of consonance and dissonance that I previously examined. Given harmonic representations of good and evil elsewhere in Sor Juana’s work, this villancico’s musical tropes also channel concord. Readings of military bands as a sign of order in popular and religious processions deepen the theme. For instance, David Coifman observes that the highly structured sound culture of troop performances in eighteenth-­century Venezuela “implies a musical organization comparable to the hierarchy signaled by their uniforms and marches during these military celebrations.”42 Coifman’s interpretation suggests that the martial ensemble in Villancico IV further links music and order in the 1677 set for the Assumption. Both the harmonizing significance of “templar” and the juxtaposition of drum and coffin via “caja” lie at the heart of this association. Just as the rhythmic drumbeat symbolizes musical organization and its effect on the soldiers’ marching bodies, so the box that contains Mary’s body becomes a sign of her ordering force. Rhythmic representations of the Virgin’s agency bring to mind Descartes’s reading of beat’s physical effects in the Compendium Musicae (1618). Kate van Orden notes that Descartes’s mathematical rationalism and experience with bodily governance through discourses in Renaissance dance, civilité, and military training under Maurice of Nassau shaped the philosopher’s unique engagement with music. Indeed, rhythm’s prominence in the Compendium distinguishes it from other treatises’ melodic focus. Van Orden argues that the physical discipline and military soundscape of Descartes’s three years at Breda contributed to notable links among concussus—­understanding of sound perception as the result of beating or shaking on the ear that, in turn, impacts the soul—­rhythm and dance in the philosopher’s exploration of music’s corporeal resonances.43 She quotes from Lord William Brouncker’s 1653 translation of the Compendium: “For this Rule is there kept, that we may distinguish every stroke of the Musick with a single motion of our bodies to the doing of which we are also naturally impelled by Musick.”44 Descartes’s ideas about rhythm or beat therefore extend Neoplatonic constructions of music’s influence on 112 Sound

the soul by deepening sound’s corporeal resonances. Sor Juana’s villancico bears a striking resemblance to the Cartesian approach, for it similarly highlights sound’s physical impact on the body through the polysemous linking of the Virgin’s agency, a drumbeat, and the soldier’s movement. For all this, it is important to explore one more aspect of military music in Villancico IV for the 1677 Assumption: Sor Juana’s representation may also indicate the use of martial ensembles in seventeenth-­century ceremonies. The question is ripe for further research, for scholarship on military bands in New Spain overlooks the nun’s time period. Instead, it favors the immediate post-­Contact era, when martial music served as an instrument of acculturation, or the early nineteenth century, when such acoustical practices abounded in public festivals throughout Europe and the Americas.45 Nevertheless, even early accounts can lend insight into the acoustical fabric that informed Sor Juana’s depiction of soldier musicians. For instance, the “instruments of war” that Viceroy Don Luis de Velasco lists in his 1557 decree to an Otomí military commander include “drum [caja], bugle [clarín sonoro], fife [pífano].”46 The nun’s villancico lists these exact instruments: “pífanos y clarines” and the polysemous “caja” at the stanza’s end. The resonance is notable inasmuch as it alludes to the significance of military ensembles in public ceremonies well into the seventeenth century. Re-­sounding the Body

Other villancicos from Sor Juana’s 1677 Assumption cycle explore order and agency with acoustical metaphors as well. For instance, the ensaladilla—­Villancico IX—­also features bodily imaginings of music. In light of José Antonio Robles Cahero’s observation that Sor Juana’s villancicos show diverse castes making popular music, it is pertinent to attend to intersections of race and aurality in Villancico IX and others.47 Indeed, scholars like Sabat-­Rivers (“Blancos, rojos”) and Yolanda Martínez–­ San Miguel have attended to racial and socioeconomic “polyphony” in the villancicos.48 Sabat-­Rivers emphasizes the figuring of diverse voices that lent an American tone to Sor Juana’s villancicos and others from Sound  113

Spain’s American territories while Martínez–­San Miguel proposes an “epistemología inter-­cultural” that considers new modes of knowing that the pieces’ plurivocality establishes.49 These and other prior studies rightly draw out the importance of Sor Juana’s villancicos for making liminal voices audible. I contribute to such tendencies within this chapter’s auditory context by considering marginal characters’ sonorities. My purpose is to draw out resonances with musical practices that reinforce and also challenge social hierarchies that marginalized popular figures. The interlude offers counterpoint to this chapter’s primary focus on female auralities, for it illustrates how just as reimagined auditory discourses highlight women’s intellect and agency, so they also reproduce conventional social hierarchies in New Spain. Villancico IX from the 1677 set for Assumption is one example of how music making and race intersect in Sor Juana’s ritual pieces. In this work, black slaves add their voices to the festivities through song and dance. Harmony incites dance, and the alignment of song and lyric extends my previous reading: La fuga sonora que suena lucida, escrita en latín y dicha en romance, de las voces que Angélicas suenan su triunfo glorioso es sólo el tu-­autem. Aunque gorrón en danza me meta la dulce armonía que suena en los aires, por decirla bailando de gusto delante de todos, estoy casi, casi.50

While the prior example focused on rhythm’s corporeal resonances, these lines explore harmony’s physiological effects. Given vestiges of Kircher’s musical and acoustical treatises elsewhere in Sor Juana’s work, it is pertinent to draw out vestiges of the Jesuit’s approach to music’s medicinal capacity in Villancico IX. Specifically, the suggestion that the harmonies of “la fuga sonora” cause listening subjects to dance channels accounts 114 Sound

of tarantism, a physical and psychological affliction that the bite of the Lycosa tarantula caused. This condition was especially prevalent in Naples, Apulia, and other areas. It could be cured with compulsory dancing, induced by a specific musical style—­the tarantella.51 The theme captivated Kircher because of his interest in links between music and magic. Indeed, Musurgia, Phonurgia nova, and Magnes, sive De Arte Magnetica (1641) include notation for therapeutic compositions for tarantism and explanations of how lyric, rhythm, melody, and harmony all trigger the listening subject’s dance.52 In light of Sor Juana’s inheritance of Kircher’s ideas about music and harmony, Villancico IX’s resonances with tarantism merit attention. In fact, although the poem appears to privilege harmony as the primary motivation for dance, it also cites verse and melody. Angelic voices celebrate the Assumption with a sonorous “fuga,” intoning a vernacular version of the Latin lyrics. The compositional style to which these lines refer channels Kircher’s emphasis on melody’s role in healing tarantism through the tarantella. While early uses of “fugue” vary, by the late seventeenth century, the term generally designated an imitative contrapuntal work that featured separate voicings of one or two short, melodic lines (known as the subject and countersubject). Given melody’s prominence in the fugue, Villancico IX’s reference highlights the musical element as “sonora” and “lúcida.” Thus, like in Villancico 273, auditory and moral resonances of “sonora” musically imagine the Virgin’s exemplarity. This work’s engagement with psychophysiological discourses in sound expands my previous reading by drawing out the Platonic and Aristotelian musical ethos that resonated in chapter 1’s interpretations. Likewise, “lúcida” channels light, knowledge, and the divine in a way that highlights music’s quality and deepens links with Mary. For all this, it is clear that discourses on melody’s impact on listeners informs sonorous references in Sor Juana’s ensaladilla. These lines’ representation of verse is also significant for drawing out resonances with Kircher’s tarantism. Singing “en romance” is an important distinction, for it calls attention to the unlettered, black Sound  115

listening (and dancing) subject’s engagement with song text. One might even suppose that the portrayal channels rhythm, for Kircher notes that tarantella pulses “accommodate verses written in the Sicilian dialect added below the [harmonic] phrase, and it is said to have a miraculous power of exciting those affected by the tarantula.”53 Along the same lines, Sor Juana’s villancico imagines audience perception of celestial harmonies through the experience of lyric—­specifically, the tu autem. In Catholic liturgy, the words “tu autem, Domine miserere nobis” conclude breviaries. Moreover, the formula sometimes served as a memento mori. The imagery thus lends a further moralizing tone to the angelic fugue that “es sólo el tu-­autem” as well as the celebratory dance that it incites. Continuing, Villancico IX relates to discourses on tarantism in other ways that allow for a reading of the piece as a Christianized tarantella. For instance, subsequent verses detail frenzied movements that channel accounts of the curative dance: Perico, con otros Negros, dando de contento brincos, aunque los estribos pierda no ha de perder su estribillo.54

Miraculously, the dancing subjects leap and jump in spite of their shackles’ weight. Sor Juana’s portrayal thus channels accounts of the tarantella’s physical effect. Drawing on such records, Jean Fogo Russell describes the dance as “an unco-­ordinated jerky movement of limb and body in time with the lively tune; . . . a lamentable medicinal dance which evokes pity, a miserable torture done out of fear of the belief in the curative power of dancing.”55 At first glance, the imagery contrasts with Villancico IV’s Cartesian imaginings of music’s capacity to discipline and order the body. The slaves’ joyful, unrestrained motions exceed the physical limits that their chains impose and suggest that salvation in Christ can liberate dancers from earthly bondage. Nonetheless, the subjects are not entirely free, for the estribillo’s rhythmic form guides motion. 116 Sound

The detail is significant. First, it channels early modern discourses on the relationship among verse, music, and dance, including Kircher’s approach to the tarantella. Moreover, the substitution of verse for physical bonds responds to anxiety about slave rebellions and resulting attempts to curb or prohibit public song and dance among blacks in the metropolises of seventeenth-­century New Spain. In this sense, the representation resonates with performances of “a submissive and loyal Afro-­Mexican vassal” that Linda Curcio-­Nagy observes in public spectacles.56 Sor Juana’s engagement with music’s psychophysiological effects in Villancico IX therefore aligns with social hierarchies and even reinforces them. Other villancicos also engage sound’s impact on the body to respond to social tension in New Spain, particularly from a racial perspective. For example, the ensaladilla for the 1686 Assumption cycle (attributed) highlights music’s role in representing Mary’s ascent and guiding reactions among unlettered populations. In the introduction, two peasants intone a rustic song that features music and dance but lacks verse: Con sonajas en los pies dos Patanes han entrado, de la Provincia que dio antonomasia de Payos; y así, con solemne pompa, sin estribillo entonaron, porque hasta ahora sus pies de estribillos no han gustado.57

The musicians accompany themselves with foot rattles that sound as they dance. Just as in my previous reading of Villancico IX, here lyric’s regular meter channels themes of order. Consequently, verse’s absence in the peasants’ song suggests that their movements are frenzied and incomprehensible within official discourses of dance. Moreover, the percussion instruments with which the dancers accompany themselves marginalize or Sound  117

even exclude these figures within the villancico’s performance context, for church ensembles infrequently included idiophones, as Ortiz observes.58 Like elsewhere in the villancicos, however, Mary acts as an ordering force to discipline the musicians’ performance and, eventually, draw them into the Church. The dancer’s rattles awaken a pair of black women and persuade them to join the festival with song: En esto entraron dos Negras que dicen las despertaron de los Payos las sonajas, no el rumor del campanario. Los Azabaches con alma su cántico comenzaron, y novedad fue en Maitines ver las Tinieblas cantando:59

Race and gender doubly marginalize the singers, and their exclusion from the Church is particularly noteworthy. In fact, the narrator insists that the peasants’ rude instruments—­not the church bells—­invite the women to the festival. The distinction indicates that the black singers, like the rural dancers, do not (at first) participate fully in the celebration’s religious overtones. Nonetheless the musicians soon voice their own devotion to the Virgin and sing: Flacica, turu la Negla hoy de guto bailalá, polque una Nenglita beya e Cielo va gobelná.60

The verse suggests that Mary inspired the women’s music making. Such imagery recalls song and dance’s evangelizing roles in New Spain from Contact onward, for syncretized forms were effective for promoting Christian ideology. Furthermore, it resonates with psychological and affective references from the ensaladilla from the 1677 Assumption sequence by 118 Sound

emphasizing once more how the dancer’s rhythm acts on the singer’s soul and gives way to song. Aurality and Temporality

Complementary to representations of music and dance, Sor Juana’s villancicos explore other acoustical influences on the human body as well. For instance, the first piece of the 1677 set for Assumption compares the Virgin to a clock’s face whose angelic chimes mark time’s passage: Como Reloj soberano la más soberana Reina, el parabién de que sube al Cielo, es en-­hora-­buena. Rodeándola por instantes los que al Empíreo la llevan, cada ángel es un volante que sin cesar le hace rueda. Por los aires a la vista, viendo todos su belleza, siendo ellos los campanudos, la Virgen es la de muestra.61

Here, themes of order are salient in the numbered passage of time. Likewise, references to proportion draw out the Virgin’s inherent harmonies, imagined morally and acoustically. For example, Mary’s ascent is “un instante ajustado / al Cielo desde la tierra” and her exemplarity harmonizes with the heavens62: porque achaques no padezca, hoy cuando sube a los Cielos con la Gloria se concierta.63

As elsewhere, resonances with celestial music make Mary’s humility and decorum audible. Furthermore, links between time and harmony echo Sound  119

Aristotelian approaches to temporality as motus, just like Loas 376 and 384 (chapter 1). Aristotelian intersections of time and harmony are not the only notable resonance in Sor Juana’s temporal imagining of the Virgin from the villancicos for the 1677 Feast of the Assumption. Like in other ritual texts, convent sound culture also informs the piece’s aural temporalities. Indeed, church bells played a significant role in the aural fabric of New Spanish convents and beyond. Following highly structured patterns, chimes marked the canonical hours and called the nuns to prayer, confession, chores, or the refectory. Likewise, particular tolls summoned convent officials, including the abbess, the doctor, and even the cook. Special ring sequences or reverent silence marked feast days, and the bells also announced ecclesiastical processions and rites to noncloistered neighbors. The chimes thus constituted a signifying system that governed religious women’s activities. A 1744 reprint of Julius II’s 1509 set of rules for Conceptionist nuns underscores the bells’ ordering function: “Tengan gran cuenta las Religiosas, en oyendo la primera señal de la campana, de dexar toda ocupacion que tuvieran y ir a pagar al Señor la deuda que se le debe de sus alabanzas, con gran puntualidad, y espíritu.”64 Indeed, the chimes served as an audible reminder of order within cloister walls and beyond. Rosalva Loreto López attends to such practices in a study of how convent bells contributed to the soundscape of eighteenth-­century Puebla de los Ángeles. She argues that the chimes sounded the relationship between city and cloister by alerting the public to otherwise private (and also unheard) celebrations within the convent.65 Furthermore, she notes that the peals served as earthly resonances of divine harmony: “Cada hora de cada día las campanas recordaban a los habitantes de ciudades y pueblos occidentales que la armonía musical reordenaba el ruido del mundo, y que, mediante sus acompasados repiques, Dios la devolvía periódicamente a la humanidad.”66 In this sense, church bells became an acoustic reminder of divine consonance, manifested temporally here. 120 Sound

Harmony, time, cosmic order, exemplarity, and discipline within convent walls all resonate in the first villancico from the 1677 sequence for Assumption. The themes come together in the estribillo, which likens the Virgin to Prime, or the first canonical hour: A estas horas, que sube la Reina por esos Cielos lucida antorcha, por Oficio, parece que tiene las Horas: cuando toca, repican a Maitines y Laudes a la que es Prima.67

These lines contrast Matins and Lauds, respectively sung at nighttime and dawn, with Prime, the first daylight office. Such imagery associates Mary with light and in this way channels chapter 1’s discussion of the sun’s resonances with authority and the divine. Opposition between day and night throughout the poem develops the trope and lends a chiaroscuro tone. The representation also draws out the bells as an aural symbol of sacred consonance. Here, however, the Marian reimagining deepens sound’s significance as feminine agency, a theme that resonates in other villancicos as well. Continuing, subsequent lines further draw out time’s harmonic roots and acoustically imagine the Virgin’s ascent as consonant with divine order: “con la Gloria se concierta.”68 Moreover, a pun in one of the last verses connects the cosmic clock to harmony: “es Reloj que con la Gloria / está corriente y con-­cuerda.”69 Here, “concordar” can refer to musical consonance, the harmony of a string instrument like the Apollonic lyre, or simply, a watch with a chain. The chordophone to which these verses compare Mary is a multifaceted symbol whose resonances heighten the Virgin’s sacred authority. The themes echo representations of the Virgin’s intellect in works like Villancico 220, and her ability to mediate the heavenly light with the darkness—­sin—­of Earth resonates with concordia discors. The villancico’s representation of Mary’s dominion therefore channels harmonic imaginings of power associated with viceroys, kings, and other noble figures. Sound  121

Harmony and Order

Harmony as a symbol of agency and divine order is particularly important in the villancicos, for lyrical references recall the accompanying music’s harmonizing impact and highlight the significance of these pieces’ performance context. Yet another piece from the 1677 set for Assumption, Villancico VI, also revoices conventional imagery of the Virgin ascending to heaven with polysemous aural references to order. Like many of Sor Juana’s other villancicos, the piece develops a play on words centered on “contar”—­to count and to tell. For instance, the opening copla can be read as a poetic portrait of Mary. The lyric narrator admires the Virgin’s lyrical beauty and establishes the villancico as a likeness: “la he de contar, voz en cuello, / para ver si sé contar.”70 A subsequent reference to painting—­“Tanta gloria y alegría / que nadie pintar osara”—­further engages visual art.71 Harmony resonates obliquely throughout Villancico VI, and the pun accentuates the poem’s consonance by drawing attention to underlying Pythagorean intervals. Like the poetic portraits chapter 2 examined, Villancico VI deepens Ortiz’s observations about the nun’s arithmetic approach to aesthetic pleasure, for it aligns painting, poetry and music making. One of the final coplas features the most prominent aural references: Con acordes instrumentos y tiernas elevaciones, la llevaban muy atentos sobre sus hombros, millones de Espíritus, sin más cuentos.72

In these lines, consonant strains of the accompanying celestial instruments deepen harmonious representations of Mary, and, as elsewhere in the poem, mathematical themes recall the poet’s musical Pythagoreanism. Indeed, the villancico plays with the polysemy of “contar” to underscore the poem’s rhetorical account of Mary’s perfection as well as its underlying proportions. Among the others, one copla stands out for making the relationship explicit: 122 Sound

Mas para que no disguste mi cuenta, que tanto dura, sino que de ella se guste, con la Aritmética pura de Dios tuvo buen ajuste.73

The mathematical perfection of the narrator’s “cuenta”—­calculation or, by extension, account of the Assumption—­represents the divine as a numerical proportion. Lines in the subsequent copla specify both God and Mary as the source of such perfection: “la contara / sólo Dios, y su María.”74 Within the context of the extended Pythagorean metaphor, “ajuste” is especially important for drawing out correlations among mathematics, harmony, rhetoric, and beauty. The term’s definition in the Diccionario de Autoridades recalls its underlying aurality: “Concierto, composición, tratádo hecho de acuerdo y conformidád.” Such resonances therefore highlight auralities within the rhetorical-­ mathematical imagery that describes the culmination of the Virgin’s earthly life and also harmonize with themes of musica poetica from elsewhere in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Sound and Ceremony

Finally, auditory imagery in one more of the 1677 villancicos for the Feast of the Assumption merits attention. The fifth piece compares Mary’s heavenly ascent to a graduation ceremony, the culmination of academic achievement. Given Sor Juana’s intense longing to study in the university, the work resonates in a personal way with the poet’s position on women’s education.75 Within this context, musical representations of the Assumption also commemorate the Virgin’s scholarly accomplishments: ¡Grado, grado, que tocan las trompetas, alto, alto, y en los aires suenan las chirimías con atabales! Porque la Reina, Sound  123

celestial Doctora, pura Maestra, con instrumentos ¡todos los que acompañan van de los Cielos!76

The polysemy of “grado”—­a reference to the joy that distinguishes the Assumption and to Mary’s university title—­is key to these lines’ dual meaning. From one perspective, the verse describes the festive music that accompanies the Virgin’s ascent and that the villancico celebrating the occasion reiterates. Here, “grado” describes the jubilant intention with which participants approach song: “vale tambien voluntad y gusto: y assí hacer una cosa de grado, es hacerla de buena gana, o de voluntad” (Diccionario de Autoridades). However, from another perspective, the term also highlights Mary’s scholarly accomplishments. In this light, representations of music making in Villancico V from the 1677 sequence echo lavish graduation ceremonies in early American universities. José Antonio Márquez González has been able to shed light on the order of such rituals using mandates like the Recopilación de Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias (1680). Like Sor Juana’s poem, his description begins with a parade that includes festive musical accompaniment to mark the occasion.77 Other notable elements that indicate the poet’s familiarity with doctoral graduation ceremonies include the practice of reading and responding to the doctoral exam; the subsequent vejamen, that satirized the candidate; and placing the mortarboard upon the graduate’s head.78 The graduation metaphor persists throughout the villancico. For instance, the first strophe compares the Virgin to Minerva and thus underscores her academic prowess. Continued musical references connect feminine intellect with aurality, similar to other examples in Sor Juana’s oeuvre where I have drawn out this relationship: A la Minerva Divina, para darle el mayor Lauro, sobre el punto más subido le están a puntos tocando.79 124 Sound

Significantly, these lines indicate that music is the best means of praising the Virgin. Indeed, according to the Diccionario de Autoridades, “punto” not only describes the point of elevation to which Mary ascends. It also refers to harmony among musical instruments: “en los instrumentos músicos es el tono determinado de consonancia, para que estén acordes.” Thus, an interpretation that focuses on the strophe’s semantic plurality emphasizes the manner in which the musical celebration’s harmonies resonate with Mary’s erudition and scholarly accomplishments. Before concluding, another sonority from the ritual texts merits attention: the representation of a newly professed nun’s song in “Letras sagradas en la solemnidad de la profesión de una religiosa.” Sor Juana authored the texts for a profession ceremony: an important monastic ritual during which a novice swears obedience, chastity, poverty, and cloister. Profession marked the novice’s ultimate denial of the outside world and entry into convent life. Upon professing, the nun became a bride of Christ. Spectacular public ceremonies marked the occasion and underscored the convent’s role within the broader community, despite Tridentine trepidation before religious women’s music making.80 Wealthy families often commissioned the poems, plays, and song texts featured in the rite of passage, and Sor Juana may have written her “Letras sagradas” at the request of a novice’s family. Read as song texts, Sor Juana’s “Letras sagradas” shed light on the nuns’ musical presence in the profession ceremony, and the first-­person narrative offers echoes of the novice’s experience. The perspective is especially valuable, for as Lavrín remarks, there are few extant personal accounts of the rite of passage.81 To this end, the letras lend insight into nuns’ experience of links among the secular public, convent life, and the divine in the profession ceremony. Thomas observes that the set’s poetic addressees progress from rural peasants to celestial angels.82 From a musical perspective, the characteristic highlights profession’s earthly and heavenly nature. Moreover, resonances with the ceremony’s musical characteristics in Sor Juana’s “Letras sagradas” highlight the ritual soundscape’s importance for dramatizing such connections. Indeed, Josefina Muriel and Luis Lledías Sound  125

maintain that music played a significant role in profession ceremonies: “las jóvenes doncellas al tomar los hábitos se enfrentaban a todo un aparato litúrgico que se desplegaba en torno a ellas, donde la tradición y el culto se vinculaban con la música para unirse con la comunidad y con lo sobrenatural.”83 Therefore, vestiges of the liturgy’s musical components in Sor Juana’s letras can draw out the novice’s experience of the ritual. For instance, a shift from third-­to first-­person in Sor Juana’s third letra reflects contrast between grandiose, antiphonal pieces like the Veni Sponsa Christi and the novice’s sparsely accompanied solo Suscipeme, Domine.84 While all of the letras focus on the novice’s spiritual union, Thomas notes that the third distinguishes itself with an inventory of luxury objects associated with profession.85 The third letra’s musical resonances make the distinction all the more notable, for the personal tone that Thomas highlights harmonizes with the solo voice of the Suscipeme, Domine. In this sense, one might read Sor Juana’s poem as intimate counterpoint to the ceremony’s ritual texts, for her rendering of the newly professed nun’s song draws out her personal experience. For all this, it becomes clear that while aural representations of the Virgin are not singular within New Spanish sermons and ceremonial texts, resonances of feminine intellect, voice, and celestial harmony distinguish Sor Juana’s approach to this topic from others. Furthermore, the nun’s imagery draws out Mary’s sonority, while other depictions connect the Virgin with exemplary feminine silence. Complementary to the manner in which aurality imagines and reorganizes world order in Sor Juana’s oeuvre, pieces like the Letras sagradas, Marian villancicos, and other texts this chapter examined suggest that sound and music also respond to social hierarchies’ marginalization of some discourses, in particular: women’s voices. The chapters that follow will engage such themes more fully.

126 Sound

Chapter 4

Echo Repercussions of Feminine Intellect

Complementary to the manner in which Sor Juana’s constructions of female voice respond to the figurative bit that the Church imposed on women, gendered links between aurality and intellect in the poet’s oeuvre challenge visual and masculine hegemonies in knowledge production. To this end, while feminist scholarship on Sor Juana has drawn out rich reimaginings of masculine paradigms in the nun’s canon, related intersections of sound and knowledge remain to be developed.1 Nevertheless, acoustical themes abound in Sor Juana’s numerous defenses of women’s learning. For instance, Villancico 220 connects the Virgin Mary’s song and the beauty of her voice with reason: En estas especies musicales tiene tanta inteligencia, que el contrapunto de Dios dio en ella la más Perfecta.2

Here, celestial harmony resonates with Mary’s voice and feminine intellect—­that is, women’s inheritance of the scholarly legacy that Sor Juana attributed to St. Catherine of Alexandria, Isis, and the Virgin as theologian, among others. The alignment of song and knowledge illustrates Sor Juana’s refiguring of aurality in light of her concerns about gender. Indeed, by likening Mary’s scholarly aptitude to her musical skills, the nun legitimizes women’s intellectual activity despite the manner in which 127

it challenged ideals of feminine piety. As Colleen Baade observes in her study of music in early modern Spanish convents, while some cloistered women and religious thinkers viewed nuns’ musical performances as obstacles to exemplary humility, others interpreted them as enlightening displays of divine harmony.3 Villancico 220 exploits these conflicting discourses of piety, for linking Mary’s intellect to song and the music of the spheres suggests that displays of feminine erudition—­like skilled music making—­could become instruments of spiritual edification. Consequently, a dialectics of gender and piety overlaps with reason and sound and beckons a rereading of female voice in Sor Juana’s canon. With all this in mind, I seek to put my prior remarks about Sor Juana’s aurality into dialogue and contextualize them further by attending to the poet’s gendered auditory poetics. My argument in this chapter is that links between eye and ear drawn from geometrical acoustics, sensory perception, and affect theory all inform Sor Juana’s reimagining of sound as an alternative, feminine space. The Ovidian archetypes Narcissus and Echo prove especially useful for drawing out refigured paradigms of gender and sound. Connections among aurality, women’s expression, and agency inform Sor Juana’s feminine reimaginings of Echo in Romance 8. The work develops auditory responses to visual topics like the vulnus caecum—­the “blind or secret wound” that causes lovesickness and is generally associated with vision.4 Furthermore, it also conflates gender via powerful representations of women’s song that blur the roles of Echo/Narcissus and Siren/Ulysses. This chapter thus examines scientific and theoretical tenets that inform the construction of Narcisa’s voice in Romance 8. In light of female aurality’s prominence in Romance 8’s reimagining of the Ovidian myth, I also consider how my rereading of Narcisa’s song resonates with sonorous tropes in the auto sacramental El divino Narciso. Such themes are useful for sharpening Kircherian vestiges in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Notably, Kircher’s theories of geometrical acoustics along with his ideas about hearing and musical pathos—­developed in Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova—­persist in the nun’s reimaginings of Narcissus and Echo and elsewhere in her canon, as chapters 1 and 2 illustrated. To 128 Echo

give an example of Sor Juana’s reimagining of sound in the Ovidian myth, in Romance 8, a feminized Narcisa falls in love with her voice instead of her reflection. Sound and light thus become interchangeable. A precise description of the trajectory and reverberation of Narcisa’s song heightens the poem’s aurality by substituting phonos for the personified Echo and also recalls an acoustical diagram from Phonurgia nova. Geometric Acoustics and the Aural Vulnus Caecum

Let us begin by exploring a sorjuanine trope in which Kircher’s geometric acoustics resonates: Sor Juana’s reimagining of ear—­instead of eye—­as origin of the wound of love. Visual metaphors of attraction and connections between sight and Cupid’s arrow were common in medieval and early modern cultural production. Antiquity constructions of vision as a link between subject and object informed the development of this topic, and ocular themes like fantasy, contagion, and (visual) penetration persisted in later imaginings. Marion Wells’s term for love’s “blind or secret wound” particularly illustrates underlying themes of vision, and I borrow it here to refer to Sor Juana’s auditory refiguring: her aural vulnus caecum. The vulnus caecum intersects with themes like desire, courtly love, and lovesickness. Marsilio Ficino’s De amore (1484) transmitted the concept to early modern culture in a rereading of Eros’s violent physical and psychological effects in Lucretius’s De rerum natura (first century bc): “Lucretius can only mean that the blood of a man wounded by a ray of the eyes flows forward into the wounder, just as the blood of a man slain with a sword flows onto the slayer.”5 In the Ficinian imagining, theories of intromission—­whereby visually sensible objects emit species or likenesses of themselves that stamp their image on the viewer’s eye and penetrate it—­guide the wound of love and link it to light rays that shoot from the love object and make him or her visible. In contrast, Sor Juana’s aural vulnus caecum draws on geometric acoustics and responds to Ficino’s ocularcentrism by replacing light with sound as amorous weapon. The best example can be found in Romance 8, which links hearing and desire through reworkings of Narcissus (sight or eye) Echo  129

and Echo (sound or ear). At the heart of Sor Juana’s poem, a fundamental question challenges Ficinian visuality: if the same geometric principles guide light and sound reflection (respectively, catroptics and anacamptics), how does voice compare to eye as an amorous weapon? For Sor Juana, the answer appears to lie in Kircher’s musical and acoustical theories. The opening lines of Romance 8 establish paradigms of Sor Juana’s aural vulnus caecum. Indeed, connections between Narcisa’s voice and the wound of love become evident in the very first verse: Hirió blandamente el aire con su dulce voz Narcisa, y él le repitió los ecos por bocas de las heridas.6

Here, voice’s sweetness contrasts with the damaging impact of Narcisa’s song. The lament’s brutal effects recall the erotic violence that characterized the wound of love in De rerum natura and De amore. Furthermore, these lines highlight the physicality of both song (sound) and romantic attraction. Such focus on bodily and material themes seems at odds with the courtly tradition’s idealization of chaste, Neoplatonic love. Possible sources of acoustical and erotic materiality in Romance 8 include medicoliterary discourses of lovesickness inherited from Antiquity—­a tradition to which Wells refers as amor hereos—­and Kircher’s ideas about musical pathos. As we shall see, drawing out resonances of these traditions can complement Sor Juana’s well-­documented engagement with courtly love and contextualize links among body, mind, sound, and the passions in Romance 8 and elsewhere in her canon. Sor Juana’s comparison between Narcisa’s song and an arrow resonates with links among voice, music, and eros in other sacred and secular works of her time. Wells’s reading of the early modern inheritance of the Ficino-­Lucretian vulnus caecum offers a tentative reading of these themes’ intersection: “if, as Ficino’s discussion of fascination suggests, the penetration of the lover through the eye can prove radically destabilizing, it seems plausible that the penetration of the lover through the ear might 130 Echo

be equally dangerous.”7 Along such lines, works like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) explore erotic interrelationships of seeing and hearing, like Mercutio’s description of Romeo’s lovesickness illustrates: “Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead: stabbed/ with a white wench’s black eye; run through the ear with a/ love-­song: the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind/ bow-­boy’s butt-­shaft: as is he a man to encounter/ Tybalt?”8 Here, Mercutio highlights the seemingly parallel nature of love’s visual and auditory weapons by blaming his friend’s enamored state on the “white wench’s black eye” and the “love-­song” that wounded him. In a New Spanish context, Francisco Navarro Carranza develops a metaphor similar to Sor Juana’s to describe John the Baptist’s preaching talent in the 1703 sermon Voces del cielo repetidas en la tierra: “Porque tiene la saeta las propiedades de la voz: tanto mas briosa se dispara, quanto mas oprimida se detiene, tanto con mayor valentia toca el blanco, quanto mas se ajusta a la cuerda. Era Juan voz, y era saeta, y fue natural, que lo que tenia de oprimida, esso tuviera de alentada. Sucedió con el Baptista lo q’ con los instrumentos, quanto mas se tiran las cuerdas en el temple, tanto mas se levanta la voz en el sonido.”9 Navarro Carranza likens John’s voice to a dart whose impact depends on the tautness of the bowstring. He draws on the concept of resonance to further link the saint’s vocal discourse to a musical instrument. Indeed, the strings of a lyre, violin, or similar instrument are tightened in the tuning process. When acoustic proportions are perfectly aligned, sympathetic resonance—­a phenomenon in which a vibrating string physically impacts a neighboring one because of harmonic similarities—­can occur. The reaction produces additional fundamentals (the original frequency) or overtones (related harmonic intervals) and thus amplifies sound. Like Sor Juana’s representation of Narcisa’s song, then, Navarro Carranza’s metaphor for John the Baptist’s voice refigures the vulnus caecum as auditory and highlights the voice’s affective capacity. It becomes useful to explore further the concept of lovesickness that resonates in Sor Juana’s aural vulnus caecum. Lovesickness or amor hereos generally refers to psychic and physical effects the lover suffers when the Echo  131

body’s overheated spirits cause the beloved’s phantasm (a mental image that facilitates perception and cognition, according to Aristotelian theories) to dominate judgment and develop as obsession. Symptoms might include listlessness, sighing, loss of appetite, and general lack of interest in the outside world. Left untreated, the most severe cases could lead to the death of a patient who wasted away from love. To avoid such excessive fixation on a love object, medical and literary sources prescribed a variety of treatments, from soothing music and baths to therapeutic intercourse. Early modern culture inherited ideas about lovesickness from ancient medical and literary authorities, and Muslim physicians filtered these ideas to the West during the late medieval period. Mary F. Wack has noted that Hippocratic medicine and Ovidian love poetry are key discourses in the early development of this theme. Galen’s diagnostic approach to unfulfilled desire’s damaging effects drew Eros into debates on humoral medicine. Meanwhile, Ovid’s recommendations in Remedia amoris popularized remedies for such symptoms and thus became “a locus for interchange between medical and literary views of love.”10 Following Hellenic and Roman explorations of love’s psychosomatic effects, Rhazes and other Muslim medical scholars systematized Galen’s accounts during the ninth century and recognized lovesickness as an authentic disease for the first time. Just over two hundred years later, Constantine’s translation of Ibn al-­Jazzar’s Viaticum—­a compendium of Islamic medicine—­filtered pathological interpretations of lovesickness to Europe via prominent medical centers like the School of Salerno and the University of Paris. Arnald of Villanova, Dino del Garbo, Peter of Spain, and others syncretized inherited medical and literary accounts of lovesickness with the Judeo-­Christian worldview. As a result of these transformations, vestiges of amor hereos become apparent in courtly discourses. Wells sharpens understanding of this inheritance by drawing out the two themes’ complementary nature while noting that perceived distinctions between lovesickness as medical anomaly and courtly love as cultural hegemony channel mind/body dualism: “The true counterdiscourse to Platonic eros is thus not the sexualized love of the troubadours, but the medical discourse of love in which the tense 132 Echo

dialectic between body and soul unmasks a problematic tension within Platonism itself.”11 From this perspective, amor hereos focused on adverse physiopsychological effects of unnatural romantic attachment while fin amour celebrated chaste love of beauty as one step in understanding God’s love and discouraged the fascination with an individual that purportedly led to lovesickness. Sight and visual beauty were thus important concepts for lovesickness and desire in general. As Shadi Bartsch reminds us, in Antiquity it was a small step from ocular species’ physical contact with the eye and “an eroticized notion” of vision.12 Indeed, love and erotic obsession commonly originated with the vulnus caecum: the beloved’s beauty wounding the lover’s eye. Vestiges of ancient optics’ corporeality along with vision’s links to fascination, memory, sacred and secular devotion, possession, and even immoral sensuality all resonated within early versions of love at first sight.13 In Romance 8 Narcisa’s harmonious song replaces visual beauty as the wound of love’s sensual dart, and Kircher’s geometric acoustics offers a foundation for drawing aural themes into the ocular conceit. Whereas the poem’s first verse establishes auditory motifs, a description of the weapon/voice’s path in the second evokes the aural vulnus caecum: “De los Celestiales Ejes / el rápido curso fija.”14 Here, the repercussive trajectory of Narcisa’s song recalls an anacamptic diagram from Phonurgia nova (fig. 6).15 Found at the opening of the volume’s first book, “Phonosophia anacamptica,” the “phonic triangle” illustration describes echoic pathways of sonic events. Sound—­a straight line between source A and various receiving points—­reflects or echoes according to principles of Euclidean geometry. Read through this lens, “Ejes” and “curso” invoke the geometric contours of Narcisa’s echo and recall Kircher’s anacamptic theories. Romance 8 is not in fact the only one of Sor Juana’s poems to consider sound’s erotic potential and explore Kircherian anacamptics. Indeed, Romancillo heptasílabo 57 also engages the aural vulnus caecum: ¿No has visto, Fabio mío, cuando el Señor de Delos Echo  133

Fig. 6. Anacamptic triangle. Courtesy of Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

hiere con armas de oro la luna de un espejo, que haciendo en el cristal reflejo el rayo bello, hiere, repercusivo, al más cercano objeto?16

Just as in Romance 8, Cupid’s arrow becomes linked to love’s reciprocal effects. While visual language appears to dominate the reflection evoked in the lines above (“espejo” and “cristal,”), “rayo” can refer to the projection of acoustical or optical species. This aural/visual ambiguity recalls Kircher’s geometrical acoustics by exploiting physical similarities of sight and sound. Auditory resonances elsewhere in these verses strengthen the apparent juxtaposition of sight and sound and thus recall Sor Juana’s aural vulnus caecum. For instance, “repercusivo” can indicate reciprocal violence 134 Echo

(“Retroceder con violencia un cuerpo, de otro en que ha herido”) or else refer to the sympathetic vibrations that cause echo (“Se toma también por lo mismo que Reverberar, o resaltar”).17 Once more, sound and the vulnus caecum become linked through geometrical acoustics’ alignment of eye and ear as well as the violent physicality that often characterizes encounter with a love object. Visuality, Aurality, and the Music of the Spheres

While striking on its own, Sor Juana’s aural vulnus caecum also contributes to the poet’s broader exploration of sight and sound. In Romance 8, for instance, the conceit prepares a debate about the erotic effects of voice and aspect: Tan bella, sobre canora, que el Amor, dudoso, admira si se deben sus arpones a sus ecos, o a su vista: porque tan confusamente hiere, que no se averigua si está en la voz la hermosura, o en los ojos la armonía. Homicidas sus facciones el mortal cambio ejercitan: voces, que alternan los ojos; rayos, que el labio fulmina. ¿Quién podrá vivir seguro, si su hermosura divina con los ojos y las voces duplicadas armas vibra?18

Throughout these verses, eye and ear are aligned. The opening lines juxtapose Cupid’s dual weapons by attending to Narcisa’s physical (“bella”) Echo  135

and harmonic (“canora”) beauty. The acoustical significance of “canora”—­ “[s]onoro, entonado, y que tiene melodía en la voz y dulzúra en el modo de articular y cantar,” according to the Diccionario de Autoridades—­can lend insight into the aesthetics of Sor Juana’s aurality. On one hand the musical representation of beauty in Romance 8 and other sorjuanine poems can be interpreted as a symptom of the Pythagorean inheritance that Paz, Ortiz, and Trabulse have recognized.19 Within the music-­of-­the-­spheres framework, planetary rotation emitted sound, and the resulting cosmic consonance or dissonance affected one’s worldly experience. Man became a microcosm of the universe whose physical or spiritual properties could be conceptualized as harmonic relationships. From this perspective, perfect (harmonic) mathematical ratios reflected cosmic order and also signified beauty, just as previous chapters confirmed. Sor Juana’s Pythagoreanism and its underlying aurality influenced other themes in her poetry as well. For instance, the concept resonates within the poet’s reimagining of female agency via music and voice. One example is Villancico 220, which draws on musical metaphors to represent the Virgin Mary as “la encarnación de la armonía perfecta.”20 In this work, the Virgin’s consonant song becomes a microcosm of universal harmony and signifies her heavenly dominion: Por los signos de los Astros la voz entonada suena, y los Angélicos Coros el contrabajo le llevan.21

Here, Mary intones the otherwise inaudible sounds of planetary rotation, and angelic choirs accompany with a contrapuntal melody. The harmony between the two parts corresponds to musical intervals among revolving celestial bodies and thus recalls the music of the spheres. For all this, the Virgin’s supremacy becomes clear: she voices the entirety of the heavens and as such, her song—­the cantus firmus of the Pythagorean universe—­ influences all other cosmic elements. 136 Echo

Descriptions of Narcisa’s voice in Romance 8 engage similar themes. Consider the following example: “y en los elementos cesa / la discordia nunca unida.”22 Here, the heavens harmonize with the singer’s Pythagorean echo, and Narcisa’s song becomes the locus of (erotic) power. Women’s voicing and silence are indeed significant in these lines and elsewhere in Sor Juana’s canon. Arenal, Ludmer, and Merrim interpreted this persistent aurality through feminist lenses and argued that acoustical references form a contrapuntal—­if not feminine—­discourse.23 Romance 8 appears to contribute to such “reorchestration” by drawing on aurality to illustrate Narcisa’s power in lines 7 and 8.24 Moreover, resonances of the music of the spheres and other auditory discourses exceed metaphor and hint at the nun’s deeper engagement with early modern sound culture. Hearing and Musica Pathetica

Song’s affective capacity and its relationship to female agency are also significant to aurality in Romance 8 and El divino Narciso. Like geometric acoustics, Renaissance and Baroque explorations of music’s psychological and physiological effects also resonate in Sor Juana’s aurality. Specifically, Pythagoreanism combines with Kircher’s ideas about auditory perception and musica pathetica (music’s ability to arouse and alter the passions) to establish a powerful acoustics of women’s voice. Drawing on links among Boethian musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis that were the basis of Renaissance medical and hermetic treatises, Kircher conceived of music as a potent force that closely related to temperament.25 He reasoned that sound—­the gaseous product of collisions among displaced air particles—­entered the human ear and came into contact with the humoral vapors that determined one’s disposition. This material similarity between sound and the humors made aural stimuli particularly effective in altering temperament. Indeed, Kircher’s lengthy description of hearing in Musurgia universalis syncretizes natural philosophy, the music of the spheres, and Aristotelian cognition: Echo  137

From all this I infer that the marvelous power which music has for moving the emotions does not proceed directly from the soul, for that, being immortal and immaterial, neither gives proportion to notes and sounds, nor can it be altered by them: it comes rather from the spirit [spiritus], which is the instrument of the soul, the chief point of conjunction by which it is annexed to the body. The spirit is a certain very subtle sanguine vapor, so mobile and tenuous that it can easily be aroused harmonically by air. Now when the soul feels this movement, the various impulses of the spirit induce in it corresponding effects: by the faster or stronger harmonic motions of the spirit it is excited or even shaken up. From this agitation comes a certain rarefaction causing the spirit to expand, and joy and gladness follow. The emotions felt will be stronger as the music is more in accord and proportion with the natural complexion and constitution of man. Hence when we hear a perfectly crafted harmony or a very beautiful melody we will feel a kind of tickling in our heartstrings, as if we are seized and absorbed by the emotion. These various effects are best promoted by the different modes or tones of music.26

This passage illustrates the intersection of Pythagorean harmony, musica humana, and Aristotelian perception in Kircher’s understanding of musical pathos and, as we shall see, in Sor Juana’s. Acoustical and cognitive theories inform links among sound, ear, and spirit, all related through their vaporous composition. This physical, embodied aurality becomes essential to Sor Juana’s reimagining of female voice’s power. Gendered sonorities and the construction of Narcisa’s voice in Romance 8 beckon a feminine rereading of links between sound and authority in El divino Narciso’s aural references. The first appears in Scene III, where Eco, Soberbia, and Amor Propio react to two choruses’ song praising Narcissus and God. First, Soberbia affirms the music’s affective impact through a description of her sympathetic response: soberbia Yo atendí sus cláusulas; por más señas, 138 Echo

que mucho más que el oído, el corazón me penetran.27

In these lines, Soberbia attends to song’s acoustical and lyrical qualities. She observes that poetic content (“sus cláusulas”) heightens song’s sensibility (“por más señas”) and thus intensifies her experience of it. The heart (the seat of the soul) therefore engages song more strongly than the ears. This privileging of musical affect recalls the blend of Aristotelian sensory perception, Orphic poetics, and Galenic medicine that inform Kircher’s musica pathetica and resonate in Sor Juana’s aurality. Soberbia’s remarks particularly draw on early modern theories of perception and cognition. First, song radiates species—­likenesses of its sensible qualities—­that activate its corresponding sense organ, the ear. This reaction is possible because of physical likeness between species and organ: air constitutes the medium of sound and also fills the chambers of the inner ear. Although the choruses’ song does not physically alter air in the ear, the organ senses the external stimulus as different from its ordinary composition. The species then represents itself to the internal senses as phantasm—­an image or echo in this case that becomes a sign of the choruses’ song. The body responds cognitively as the ear triggers a physical reaction in the blood vessels connected to it. Both blood and pneuma, a vital vaporous substance that is essential to internal corporeal balance, are fundamental links between the sense organ and other parts of the body. These two elements flow through the blood vessels and carry information from the senses to the heart, the organ most closely related to the soul. In turn, the heart stimulates the soul’s perceptual and intellectual functions (the Aristotelian common sense), which allow the perceiving subject to judge and react to her sensory encounter.28 When Soberbia notes that the choruses’ song penetrates her heart, she refers to this complex cognitive process and highlights music’s affective properties. The physicality of Soberbia’s musical experience recalls Kircher’s musica pathetica; specifically, his argument that the material similarity between Echo  139

sound and the humorous vapors made aural stimuli particularly effective in altering temperament. Complementary to such engagement with sensory perception and cognition, Soberbia’s comments also highlight affective connections between poetry and music. Read from this perspective “cláusulas” becomes a pivotal term whose polysemy draws out song’s lyrical and acoustical content. On one hand the clausula, or cursus, could designate a metrical pattern classical orators used to conclude a sentence. On the other the term might also refer to the first examples of polyphony and, more specifically, upper voices sometimes added to existing plainchant melodies during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It thus becomes unclear whether song, lyric, or a combination of the two intensified Soberbia’s sensory experience. These musicorhetorical links could not have escaped Sor Juana, and it bears note that they seem to indicate the broader intersection of poetry and song in the nun’s thought. Amor Propio’s reaction to the choruses’ song can deepen understanding of how Sor Juana’s Pythagoreanism informs the affective relationship between the two: Yo también, que al escuchar lo dulce de sus cadencias, fuera de mi acuerdo estoy.29

Here, Amor Propio notes that the chorus’s song has made her out of tune, and Kircher’s ideas about music and affect resonate once more. In addition to the Jesuit’s engagement with early modern cognitive theories, Claude V. Palisca observed that the music of the spheres persisted in Kircher’s treatment of musical reception in Musurgia universalis, from which I quote: the sonorous number, as it sets the interior air in motion, impresses on it the harmonic movements, then animates the imagination. The latter, in turn, communicates these impulses to the humors, and the humors, mixed with the vaporous spirit—­the interior air—­, finally move the person to what they convey. It is in this manner and none other that harmony moves the passions.30 140 Echo

According to underlying Pythagorean and Platonic traditions, man’s proportional composition (musica humana) echoed the harmonic structure of the universe (musica mundana). The harmonies of the soul thus resonated with those of the cosmos, and each temperament was associated with precise musical qualities, including modes or pitches. Consequently, sound could reinforce or alter disposition through a sympathetic reaction reflecting either consonance or dissonance with the bodily humors’ harmonies. Just as Soberbia’s response to song engages Kircher’s theories of musical perception, so the Jesuit’s take on sympathy and musical pathos resonates in Amor Propio’s reaction. The choruses’ refrains animate the air in Amor Propio’s inner ear and stimulate her imagination. Underlying harmonies cause a humoral reaction that affects the sounding numbers in both body and soul. The character’s affirmation “fuera de mi acuerdo estoy” indicates that the choruses’ song did not echo her temperamental harmonies, and the dissonance altered their balance. Aural pathos and the music of the spheres also resonate in seemingly nonacoustical conceits that develop Sor Juana’s embodied takes on sound. One such topic is the lodestone as a metaphor for attraction and sympathy in Romance 8, where magnetism heightens the poem’s aural reimagining of female voice and agency: Al dulce imán de su voz quisieran, por asistirla, Firmamento ser el Móvil, el Sol ser Estrella fija.31

These lines portray Narcisa’s voice as a magnetic force that exceeds music mundana and causes a sympathetic reaction in the cosmos. As elsewhere in Sor Juana’s canon, Kircher’s musicoacoustical theories persist here. Specifically, the Jesuit’s exceptional syncretism of magnetism, harmony, and sympathy appears to inform Sor Juana’s metaphor. Several of Kircher’s treatises consider the lodestone a universal force of attraction that is linked to his esoteric take on the music of the spheres, including Magnes, sive De Echo  141

Arte Magnetica, Musurgia universalis, and Phonurgia nova. In these works, themes of magnetism deepen music’s sympathetic impact on cosmic or human harmonies (musica mundana and musica humana). For instance, Mariangela Donà noted that Kircher favored the term “magnetism” for describing music’s attractive and curative properties in his discussion of tarantism as well as elsewhere in Musurgia universalis.32 Such ideas resonate strongly in Narcisa’s voice figured as a lodestone whose powerful force disrupts universal harmony. Thus it becomes clear that physical voice was a powerful stimulus in Sor Juana’s poetic imagination. Song’s harmonies could reflect musica mundana or musica humana and trigger sympathetic responses in the listener. Consequently, voice’s acoustical properties heightened capacity for verbal communication through their ability to trigger an affective reaction. Therefore, song appears to exceed poetic metaphor through embodied aurality. The allegorical character Naturaleza Humana explores this very concept in the first scene of El divino Narciso: Pues volved a las acordes músicas, en que os hallé, porque quien oyere, logre en la metáfora el ver que, en estas amantes voces, una cosa es la que entiende y otra cosa la que oye33

Here, Naturaleza Humana distinguishes between two types of metaphor—­resonant and reasoned. Erlmann’s contrapuntal analysis of the two concepts can be useful for understanding the distinction: “While reason implies the disjunction of subject and object, resonance involves their conjunction. Where reason requires separation and autonomy, resonance entails adjacency, sympathy, and the collapse of the boundary between perceiver and perceived.”34 Erlmann’s reading associates reason with detached observation of sight while resonance—­fundamentally acoustical—­becomes intimate and participatory. By evoking song’s aural/ 142 Echo

verbal duality as well as the reason/resonance dichotomy, Naturaleza Humana invites observers not only to contemplate the auto sacramental’s allegorical significance but also to engage aurally through sympathy—­ physical and psychic reactions that echo external stimuli and thus transcend the limits of self and other. Paradigms of Female Voice: Siren Song

In these final sections I consider how concerns about gender intersect with auditory themes in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. (Female) aurality often appears contrapuntal to (male) visuality. In Romance 8, Narcissus’s foil, Narcisa, voices her agency through song, an affective mode that the poem favorably compares to visual beauty. El divino Narciso likewise explores connections between sight and sound through the allegorical archetypes Narcissus—­who falls in love with his reflected countenance—­ and Echo—­whose reflected voice re-­sounds and destabilizes Narcissus’s masculine dialogue. As elsewhere, scientific and musical theories inform Sor Juana’s reworking of poetic conceits, and each piece develops tension between the unfulfilled Ovidian lovers as a dialectic of visuality (Narcissus) and aurality (Echo). To this end, I will attend to siren song and Echo, two paradigms of women’s voice whose construction in Sor Juana’s canon illustrates how sound as a feminine mode responds to male and ocular hegemonies. To begin, the Siren theme in Romance 8 heightens links between female voice and agency by highlighting the disruptive nature of Narcisa’s echo: El mar la admira sirena, y con sus marinas ninfas le da en lenguas de las aguas alabanzas cristalinas. Pero Fabio, que es el blanco adonde las flechas tira, así le dijo, culpando de superfluas sus heridas: Echo  143

—­¡No dupliques las armas, bella homicida, que está ociosa la muerte donde no hay vida!35

These lines’ portrayal of Narcisa’s voice recalls the Homeric Sirens’ deadly song, which can lure unwary sailors—­suitors, in this case—­to their deaths. Like the marine enchantresses, Narcisa attracts and wounds her lover through voice. The Siren conceit underscores the powerful beauty of women’s song and also channels once more the aural vulnus caecum by highlighting voice as an acoustical weapon. The theme thus contributes to Romance 8’s reframing of gender discourses as well as aural/visual tensions that resonate throughout the poem. Let us further explore the Siren motif ’s significance. First, Romance 8’s reflective take on the vulnus caecum resonates in the final two verses, where Narcisa’s weapons seem to bounce harmlessly off their target and channel Narcissan themes by initiating a reciprocal response in the singer. Taking note of voice’s paradoxical repercussions, Merrim remarks, “It [song] may kill them [Narcisa’s victims], but the implication contained in Narcisa’s name, if left unstated in the poem, is that the song also kills her, the poet-­singer.”36 Indeed, Narcisa appears as deadly singer and victim. Just as she recalls both Narcissus and Echo—­reflected in her name as well as the nymph’s bodily absence in Romance 8—­so Narcisa also becomes both Siren singer and hapless audience. Complementary to her Narcissan resonances then, Narcisa also adopts the masculine role of Ulysses and further distorts the gendered archetypes that the poem engages. Reading Narcisa as both Siren and Ulysses deepens the relationship between women’s voice and agency by portraying aurality as locus of female intellect. First, Narcisa’s siren song appears to exceed finite knowledge. Adriana Cavarero’s feminist reading of the Odyssean Sirens can clarify this point: “They . . . sing words, they vocalize stories, they narrate by singing. And they know what they are talking about. Their knowledge is, in fact, total: ‘we know all [idmen],’ they sing.”37 For Cavarero, the Siren’s 144 Echo

omniscience is as alluring as their vocal beauty. In fact, song turns out to be linked to knowledge, and Narcisa’s Siren voice likewise becomes the locus of (feminine) intellect. To this end the heroine’s capacity to sound divine universal harmony along with the poem’s sirenic references can be understood as overtures to her omniscience. Such resonances illustrate the poem’s paradoxical attitude toward women’s intellectual production, seen as both beautiful and threatening. Narcisa as Ulysses also channels themes of intellect and aurality and thus heightens siren song’s power by embodying its reciprocal effects. Whereas Cavarero argues that Homer’s mythic singers voiced omniscience, Elena Laura Calogero notes in contrast that early modern love poetry frequently associated Ulysses with qualities like moderation and intelligence.38 The hero’s prudence in stopping up his ears to escape the creatures’ threat was essential to such reimaginings. Once again, aural themes resonate here. Since Ulysses was the Sirens’ intended audience or listener, his ear can therefore be read as a counterpart to siren song’s omniscience as well as an additional site of knowledge. Narcisa’s association with Ulysses deepens connections between women’s voice and intellect, sharpens Romance 8’s disruption of gender paradigms and may also lend insight into the poem’s puzzling conclusion. If indeed Ulysses ingeniously thwarted the Sirens’ auditory perils, then Narcisa might also evade the threat of her own voice through cunning and knowledge, by closing her own ears. Unlike her male counterpart Narcissus, Sor Juana’s heroine—­envoiced omniscience—­turns out to be capable of eluding love’s reciprocal effects. Paradigms of Female Voice: Echo

Just as Romance 8 draws on paradigms of women’s song to construct an alternative, feminine knowledge, so El divino Narciso exploits Eco’s repercussed voice as counterpoint to Narciso’s (masculine) discourse. Narciso and Eco’s “duet” in scene XII illustrates tension between the two.39 In this segment, the phonemic contours of Eco’s lines form an anadiplosis that duplicates the ends of Narciso’s utterances and also recalls the “sonetos con Echo  145

eco” of Quevedo and Cervantes. The nymph’s voicing alters the semantic content of her interlocutor’s lines. Consider the following example, in which Eco re-­sounds the final words or syllables of Narciso’s queries to formulate a response: narciso Más ¿quién, en el tronco hueco, eco Eco. narciso con triste voz y quejosa, eco Quejosa. narciso así a mis voces responde? eco Responde. narciso ¿Quién eres, oh voz; o dónde te ocultas, de Mí escondida? ¿Quién Me responde afligida? los dos Eco Quejosa Responde.40

Here, Eco simultaneously reiterates Narciso’s hegemonic discourses and subverts them through partially repeated sound. Because of such tensions, interpreting the nymph’s echo has proven challenging. While some have viewed the transformation of Narciso’s dialogue as a sign of agency,41 others read Eco’s vocal dependence on another as a metaphor for gender politics in viceregal New Spain.42 Indeed, the echoic discourse is complex—­in part because Eco’s contrapuntal response depends on the interplay of masculine and feminine voice and its resonances with other themes from the auto sacramental. I consider the duet’s auditory dimensions and extend prior readings 146 Echo

of the characters’ vocal intersections. While critics like Margo Glantz and Merrim focus on Eco’s poetic and metaphorical possibilities, Aída Beaupied attends to the nymph’s embodied voice and its resonances with early modern sound culture. Her reading intersects with topics that this study has considered and can be useful for relating El divino Narciso to other paradigms of Sor Juana’s aurality. Notably, Beaupied observes that the hermetic association of Eco with sacred wind channels the Pythagorean construction of sound as an echo of divine breath.43 This connection recalls acoustical themes in Sor Juana’s Pythagoreanism and also channels embodied imaginings of Eco’s voice. First, linking the female nymph to the breath of God challenges the “autoridad masculina” of God-­Narciso and thus heightens Linda Egan’s reading of gendered renderings of faith in Sor Juana’s autos sacramentales.44 Moreover, the association relates to Eco’s agency. Indeed, her relationship with air evokes sound’s vaporous nature, which, as previously noted, makes acoustical stimuli especially apt for influencing temperament. I will return to this characteristic presently, but first it becomes pertinent to consider another strand of Beaupied’s reading. Consonant with her hermetic interpretation of Eco, Beaupied also drew out links between Eco and an architectonic figure from Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (fig. 7). The Jesuit’s diagram explores echo’s effects on language by illustrating the repercussed trajectory of “Tibi vero gratias agam, quo clamore?” (“How shall I cry out my thanks to thee?”). Bettine Menke remarks that the figure’s re-­sounding of the final “clamore” self-­referentially “thematize[s] the echo’s formation.” Indeed, “amore” (love) highlights Ovidian resonances while other words recall noise (“clamore”); the figure’s long tradition (“more”); the emanating mouth, speech, or face (“ore”); and the reflecting object (“re”).45 Menke’s observations suggest that echo envoices itself in Kircher’s “clamore” and thus becomes instrumental to the original utterance. Similarly, in El divino Narciso, Eco responds to Narciso via acoustical repercussion and draws out her response, already embedded in his questions. In this sense, Eco becomes yet another paradigm that explores the relationship between Echo  147

Fig. 7. Echoic diagram of “clamore.” Courtesy of Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

female voice and intellect, for the nymph’s envoiced reply anticipates Narciso’s query and recalls her omniscience. The question remains: how are we to interpret Eco’s troubling resonance (re-­sonāns or sounding again)? Drawing on aural themes developed in Beaupied’s interpretation and elsewhere in this chapter, I maintain that the relationship between Narciso’s questions and Eco’s responses might be described sympathetically. Given the persistence of musica pathetica in Naturaleza Humana’s opening reference to resonant metaphor as well as in Romance 8’s exploration of Narcisa’s echo, sound’s affective influence and musica pathetica become relevant here. Since Sor Juana appears to have subscribed to Kircher’s idea that the semantic properties of language can intensify sound’s affective impact, Eco’s repetition of words like “quejosa” (line 1650) and later “amar” signal the nymph’s capacity to reflect the sentiments of Narciso’s original utterance back to him through repercussion.46 Nevertheless, while Eco may feel emotions on hearing Narciso’s voice, her own experience transforms lovesickness and lends a different meaning to the response. If indeed Narciso pines for his own likeness in Naturaleza Humana, Eco transposes such feelings via resonance 148 Echo

and voices her own longing for Narciso. Although the nymph’s echo may appear phonemically imitative or perhaps even secondary, themes of embodied voice and sympathy suggest otherwise. Eco’s repercussed voice therefore becomes a resonance of Narciso’s that offers a semantic and affective reply. Conclusion

Both Romance 8 and El divino Narciso develop embodied women’s voice as feminine counterpoint to Ovid’s tale of Narcissus and Echo. By exploring correlations among sight and sound, acoustics, harmony, desire, sensory perception, and universal order through the Echo motif, these works privilege female voice as the locus of knowledge as well as for its physical and pathetic effects. Romance 8 replaces Narcissus’s visual reflection with Narcisa’s echoed siren song and draws on musical, philosophical, and scientific theories to construct female voice as an alternative to hegemonic discourses. Likewise, El divino Narciso distinguishes between language’s semantic properties and embodied sound’s sympathetic ones. The former becomes linked to such concepts as sight and logic, while the latter echoes universal harmony and heightens one’s sense of the divine. Such tension between reasoned and resonant metaphor subsequently informs Eco’s transformation of Narciso’s lovesick lament near the end of the auto sacramental. Although the nymph’s deformed repetition of her beloved’s lines at first seems unremarkable, the feminine response in fact constitutes a re-­sounding that semantically and sympathetically exceeds Narciso’s original words. It becomes apparent that aurality in Romance 8 and El divino Narciso strongly resonates with early modern sound culture. Throughout this chapter I have sharpened understanding of Sor Juana’s engagement with auditory discourses like acoustics, the music of the spheres, and musica pathetica. Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis and Phonurgia nova stand out as likely sources for the poet’s ideas about sound, music, and hearing. My readings contextualize the relationship between female voice, silence, and agency that others have drawn out Echo  149

in the nun’s canon. Through the lens of aurality, acoustical metaphors emerge as alternative, feminine discourses and challenge Sor Juana’s apparent visuality. Such echoes of broader themes in Sor Juana’s canon beckon rereadings of sound elsewhere in the poet’s oeuvre to strengthen musicoacoustical conceits this study has highlighted and to identify additional paradigms.

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Chapter 5

Silence Transgressions and Feminine Revoicings

Así como del fondo de la música brota una nota que mientras vibra crece y se adelgaza hasta que en otra música enmudece, brota del fondo del silencio otro silencio, aguda torre, espada y sube y crece y nos suspende y mientras sube caen recuerdos, esperanzas, las pequeñas mentiras y las grandes, y queremos gritar en la garganta se desvanece el grito: desembocamos al silencio en donde los silencios enmudecen. —­Octavio Paz, “Silencio”

Previous chapters explored Sor Juana’s engagement with harmony, music making, and women’s aurality as a locus of agency to draw out sound’s importance in Sor Juana’s poetic imagination. Along the same lines, I now turn to the related theme of silence. Soundlessness is a central trope in some of Sor Juana’s best-­known works, including Primero sueño (first published in Seville in 1692) and the Respuesta a sor Filotea (1691). Scholars grappling with the unsettling effects of 151

silence in the nun’s oeuvre have argued that references to sound’s absence can be read as signs of women’s limited agency in New Spain (Ludmer), ironic symbols of humility and obedience (Pamela Kirk Rappaport), transgression (Beaupied), and ultimately, rhetorical and epistemological alternatives to reason, logos, and all that such concepts repress (Moraña, Viaje). To be sure, silence evinces undertones of marginalization, particularly in the context of New Spain’s misogynist ecclesiastical hegemony. Time and again, official Church documents reveal efforts to regulate women’s vocal production by constructing voice’s restraint or absence as a sign of piety, contemplation, and the divine. Nevertheless, other accounts extol the virtues of female speech or song and thus can be read as puzzling counterpoint to exemplary representations of silence. In this chapter, I attend to early modern representations of women’s silence and draw out inherent tensions. My argument is that anxiety surrounding sound’s absence in religious institutions and elsewhere in early modern culture is similarly palpable in Sor Juana’s engagement with the theme, which can be interpreted as affirming and challenging dominant constructions of female voice. Other approaches to silence—­ including convent rule books, sermons, and discourses in early modern acoustics—­aid in situating the poet’s representations of silence within broader early modern culture. This chapter will focus primarily on two of Sor Juana’s most important works: Primero sueño and the Respuesta a sor Filotea. Nonetheless, the paradigms proposed here can also be used to interpret related themes in other sorjuanine and Baroque pieces. Indeed, my auditory approach to rhetorical silence and speechlessness intersects with broader queries about the relationship between Baroque hyperbole and emptiness (sound’s absence). By examining such tension through an acoustical lens, I illustrate how silence or the illusion thereof can become a protected mode for articulating marginalized voices. The interpretation lends new overtones to musical and auditory references throughout Sor Juana’s work, for it foregrounds the political significance of aurality, particularly with regard to gender. 152 Silence

Prior interpretations attend to silence in Sor Juana’s oeuvre and often view the theme as a response to the limits of language, speech, and related epistemologies. For example, Ludmer draws attention to links between speech and knowledge in the Respuesta. In particular, she highlights the performativity of withholding language: “Not knowing leads to silence, is directly related to silence. Here, however, it is a matter of a relative and positional not knowing: not knowing how to speak to one in a superior position, a not knowing that clearly implies recognition of the other’s superiority. This ignorance is thus a specific social relationship transferred to discourse: Juana doesn’t know how to speak from a position of subordination.”1 For Ludmer, silence relates to the epistemological boundaries that social hierarchies—­like New Spain’s masculine ecclesiastical hegemony—­impose. Moraña has attended more fully to quietness’s diverse signifying properties in Sor Juana’s writing, and her flexible approach resonates with my own. The scholar distances her readings from literal silencing but still views the trope as a response to marginalization: “En múltiples casos el silencio se asume como interiorización de la censura impuesta por la cultura de la época, incorporada bajo la forma de una serie de limitaciones entendidas casi como connaturales al pensamiento y al discurso.”2 Like Ludmer, Moraña interprets silence in opposition to knowledge, as a negative expression of intellectual limits (self-­imposed or as a consequence of external hegemonies). In a rhetorical reading of the Respuesta, Julie Bokser draws out the trope’s relationship with other auralities; however, she too views silence as an inversion of women’s repression under masculine ecclesiastical authorities.3 To be sure, these and other readings lend significant insight into muteness as a response to marginalization in the nun’s oeuvre. They channel ideas from Ochoa Gautier’s overview of the acoustical themes, including haunting, presence, and agency.4 Nonetheless, silence is not necessarily the same as soundlessness. With respect to the semiotics of silence, Ochoa Gautier remarks that the “acoustical threshold” is a metaphor for those concepts that elude reason—­marginalization, exclusion, and even excess.5 From an acoustical perspective, it is impossible to overlook John Cage’s Silence  153

musical and written explorations of the trope, for the composer’s observations deepen this chapter’s theoretical underpinnings. Cage famously visited an anechoic chamber and, on hearing his own pulse, concluded that “there is no such thing as silence. get thee to an anechoic chamber and hear there thy nervous system in operation and hear there thy blood in circulation.”6 Indeed, in light of Cage and Ochoa Gautier’s remarks, one might approach silence in Sor Juana’s canon not as sound’s absence but rather as a sign of auditory disorder that challenges epistemological and ontological limits. Reading sound in this way allows for a more precise reading that attends to slippery definitions of the concept and their signifying effects. Sound studies offers a means of grappling with varying degrees of silence by focusing on the auditory perception of sound’s absence rather than its rhetorical significance. Since hearing silence so frequently results in heightened awareness of sounds that are otherwise muffled, an aural interpretation of the theme links soundlessness and marginalizes sonorities. The hazy distinction is useful for teasing out intersections of voice, speech, language, and presence. With these critical parameters in mind, this chapter builds on the work of scholars like Ludmer, Moraña, Bokser, and others for a reading of voice’s absence as it relates to silence in Sor Juana’s writing. I will argue that like soundlessness, murmurs, babbling, and other nonverbal vocalizations challenge dominant discourse and draw attention to marginalized voices and alternative subjectivities. Representations of distorted voice, principally aphonia—­the total or partial loss of speech—­and dysphonia—­deformed vocalization—­guide the interpretation. Such distorted voices highlight the acoustical improbability of silence and thus heighten its threat before ontological and epistemological constructions that privilege language. Horror Vacui: Silent Voids

For all this, a theoretical framework that attends to the tensions in defining silence becomes necessary. One lens through which to grapple with the striking difficulty of distinguishing silence and sound is by equating the

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acoustical impossibility of silence with the Baroque concept of horror vacui—­the neo-­Aristotelian fear of the void that channels themes like death, infinity, the unspoken, and the unknown. Indeed, while prior scholarship on horror vacui focused on visual art and literature, this chapter emphasizes seventeenth-­century strides in acoustics to argue that sound can also be understood as a symptom of the Baroque horror before the vacuum. By interpreting themes of silence through this lens—­for example, the implied quiet when Harpocrates puts his finger to his lips in Primero sueño—­I attend to the Baroque nature of silence in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. In this sense, drawing the reader’s attention to the uncomfortable impossibility of sound’s absence also highlights the ghostly presence of repressed women’s voices in her writing as well as elsewhere in New Spanish cultural production. The relationship between silence and nothingness becomes especially meaningful when considered through the lens of horror vacui. Within the Baroque context, David Castillo argued that the theme’s striking emptiness contrasts with hyperbolic ornamentation and stands in for loss of presence. Indeed, horror vacui channels “a pervasive sense of loss of meaning and a paradoxical longing for the Absolute.”7 Absence or nothingness in Baroque works like the Respuesta therefore disturbs epistemological and ontological stability through themes that include excess, death, infinity, the unspoken, and the unknown. As we shall see, silence in Sor Juana’s oeuvre engages similar concepts and thus channels Baroque anxiety about emptiness. Although prior scholarship on horror vacui focused on visual art and literature, seventeenth-­century experiments with the total absence of sound resonate with early modern debates about the void. Following Evangelista Toricelli’s 1643 discovery of the vacuum, natural philosophers like Otto von Guericke and Kircher began experimenting with the vacuum to determine the relationship between air and sound propagation. For instance, Kircher used a magnet to sound a bell inside of a jar from which he had (supposedly) removed all of the air. If indeed air were necessary

Silence  155

for sound transmission, the Jesuit hypothesized, the bell would not be audible from inside vacuum. The bell rang, and Kircher concluded that sound was not transmitted by air. As it turns out however, the philosopher’s ineffective vacuum pump had not removed all of the air from the pipe. Ten years later Robert Boyle would repeat the experiment with a better pump and conclude that air is indeed central to sound transmission. Sound’s importance in these experiments suggests that like emptiness in visual art, silence was a source of anxiety for Baroque thinkers, for it was linked to the unknown and absence. Therefore, acoustical “nothingness” can be understood as contrapuntal to the vivid sonorities that characterize Baroque texts, and the silences in Sor Juana’s works can lend insight into the early modern fear of emptiness as well as discourses of absence, presence, and self, especially among early modern cloistered women. “Las Mugeres Callen en las Iglesias”: Silencing the Female Voice

The meaning of soundlessness in religious contexts like that in which Sor Juana lived and worked is therefore pertinent to my argument. Given St. Paul’s decree that women should “remain silent in the churches” (1 Cor 14: 34–­36), it is not surprising that early modern religious communities in New Spain and elsewhere strictly regulated and even silenced women’s voices.8 Ascetic orders like the Carmelites advocated for women to keep quiet to foster contemplation, and even more permissive orders frowned on disruptive sounds like loud talking or out-­of-­tune singing. Convent rule books contained detailed instructions for where, when, and how religious women should speak. In fact, it was not unusual to find directives about silence in publications like Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz’s revised rules for the nuns in Puebla’s Augustinian Recollect Convent of Santa Mónica (1691): “Guardese con mucho rigor el silencio, que está librada en él gran parte de aprovechamiento espiritual.”9 Quiet was therefore linked to spiritual development. Along the same lines, a set of Spanish Conceptionist rules from 1509 (printed in Madrid in 1744) affirms that cloistered women should “[g]uarden con grande estudio el silencio; porque en el mucho hablar no falta pecado, y el que no ofende 156 Silence

en la lengua, muestra ser de gran perfeccion; porque la Religiosa que no refrena su lengua vana es su Religion.”10 This and other convent rule books link silence to humility, obedience, and exemplarity. In contrast, speech channels themes of sin and excess. With respect to women’s silencing, perhaps one of the most striking examples of the Pauline influence is that of Francisco Fabián y Fuero, Bishop of Puebla from 1765 to 1773, who issued an edict that prohibited women from singing in church: Por quanto a los principios de nuestro Gobierno de esta Diócesis, y luego que advertimos que se habia introducido en Ella el abuso de llevar y admitir en las Iglesias a que canten en las sagradas Funciones las Mugeres que llaman Músicas Lyricas, no siendo justa la tolerancia de esta corruptela, que sobre ser contra el Espíritu del Apóstol, que prescribe que las mugeres callen en las iglesias, es muy agena de aquella seriedad y respetable circunspección con que en los Templos se deben celebrar los Divinos Oficios, y no puede menos de ser en muchas Personas incentivo sacrílego de Lascivia, Mandamos despachar y de hecho se envió nuestra Órden a las Iglesias sujetas a nuestra Jurisdicion Ordinaria, para que por ningún pretexto o motivo se permitiera en Ellas cantar a dichas Mugeres ni otra alguna.11

Anxiety surrounding the disruptive potential of female voice within the masculine ecclesiastical hegemony is clear in Fabián y Fuero’s edict. In fact, the strict regulation of women’s locution in these and other documents from New Spanish religious communities complement readings of sound as a site of female agency in chapters 2, 3, and 4.12 Correspondingly, I argue that silence—­soundlessness or the impossibility thereof, depending on how one chooses to approach it—­likewise becomes an alternative means of constructing and articulating authority in early modern religious women’s writing. Despite such directives about silence, some sacred writings from New Spain appear dissonant with the apparent repression of women’s voices. Consider, for example, Father José Jardón’s representation of Silence  157

the slave Marcela’s spoken praise of the Virgin in his Marian sermon Lengua, ojos y oídos de una mujer panegirista de la gracia contra la mudes [sic], sordera y ceguedad de un Demonio enemigo de la Virginal pureza. The Franciscan monk penned the text for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and he delivered the homily on December 13, 1699, in the Real y Pontífica Universidad de México. The sermon defends the Virgin’s purity from the moment of her conception. As such, Alejandra Soria Gutiérrez remarked that it dialogues with debates about Mary’s preservation from sin that preceded Pius IX’s official support of the Immaculate Conception dogma in the 1854 papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.13 Jardón develops an important dichotomy to present the argument: an unidentified slave woman that he names Marcela speaks up in defense of Mary’s purity while the Devil refuses to acknowledge the Virgin’s lack of sin. The contrast between the woman’s voice and the Devil’s silence is central to Lengua, ojos y oídos de una mujer panegirista and generates tension with previous examples’ constructions of silence as exemplary. For instance, Jardón connects Marcela’s aural and visual engagement with the Immaculate Conception to the lex talionis (the Old Testament doctrine of “an eye for an eye”) to illustrate the binary opposition between her declaration of faith and the Devil’s deliberate voicelessness: “porque si el Demonio enemigo de la Concepción de maria es mudo, ciego, y sordo; y la muger del Evangelio tiene lengua, ojos, y oydos; cateando vna lengua con otra lengua, aquella muda; esta libre; vnos ojos con otros ojos, aquellos topos; estos linzes: y vnos oydos con otros oydos, aquellos sordos, y atentos estos: La lengua de Marcela . . . Dirá a vozes, lo que aquella oculta en silencio; sus ojos verán en luzes claras lo que aquellos no tocan en tinieblas obscuras: y sus oydos percivirán con atenciones, lo que aquellos no quisieron oyr con respectos.”14 The slave woman’s verbal declaration of faith is performative, particularly in light of the absence of other identity markers. Throughout the text Jardón contrasts the speaker’s humble status with the worth of her utterance: “pero aunque sin nombre, y sin libertad era entendida.”15 In this sense, Marcela’s enunciation affirms 158 Silence

the Virgin’s purity and also signifies the speaker’s presence, substituting for her name here. In contrast with Marcela’s exemplary utterance, the Devil’s silence threatens established order by maliciously retaining news of the Virgin’s Immaculate Conception: Enmudeció el Demonio en la Concepcion de maria, y el callar para no alabar su gracia fue trasa de su malicia, y efecto de su admiración; pero mas mudo parece quando no habla admirado, que quando calla malicioso; porq[ue] el que calla de malicia es mudo voluntario, pues no dice lo que debe; el que calla de admirado, es mudo de impotencia; porque o puede expresar lo que concibe, y como la malicia dexa libre la lengua para las palabras, y la admiración la inabilita para las vozes, es mas mudo el que calla suspenso, y admirado de vn prodigio, que no el que calla sugerido, y inflado de vna malicia. Nunca mas mudó el Demonio que al concebirse maria porq[ue] entonces para hablar no solo se le impidieron las fauces con su malicia, sino que se le sufocaron los órganos con su admiración.16

Here silence’s corporeal effects underscore the subversive nature of the Devil’s refusal to speak. Indeed, the transgression is so great that it stopped up Satan’s jaw and suffocated his viscera. The dreadful physical consequences of withholding voice make horror vacui—­the fear of the vacuum that I previously linked to silence—­palpable in this passage. In fact, horror vacui resonates so strongly here that the very concept of “silence” itself is “silenced.” The term never appears, and the text articulates the Devil’s autosuppression as “calla[r] malicioso” and “enmudec[er].” This deliberate quieting of voice differs from silence or soundlessness because it retains the potential for sound. If Satan’s vocal retention represents his refusal to participate in established order, Jardón’s text negates the potential subversive effects by concealing the possibility that a refusal to speak may result in soundlessness and in something being silenced within that order. Women’s writings from the convent similarly develop alternatives to silence. To give one example, Conceptionist Madre Mariana de la Encarnación (1571–­1657) relates silence to the extraordinary musical talent of Silence  159

her companion Madre Inés de la Cruz in the “Relación de la fundación del Convento antiguo de Santa Teresa.” She confirms that Madre Inés “aprendió [la música] con tanta eminencia, que alcanzó consumadamente toda la ciencia que pudo saber un maestro de música.”17 A daring comparison for a woman, as we shall see. The author turns to silence to soften the bold suggestion that Madre Inés’s musical talents are equal to those of a male chapelmaster: “Y así permitió nuestro Señor que teniendo la plática y ciencia de la música, no tuviere ejercicio y práctica. Porque jamás pudo entonar un solo punto. . . . De manera que las composiciones que hacía eran tan dificultosas (como ella no las entonaba) que no se podían cantar, con que quedó frustrada toda su ciencia.18 On one hand, Madre Mariana’s representation recalls links between silence and female exemplarity, echoing strident regulations about music making and other sonorous practices, like Fabián y Fuero’s edict. On the other, however, the trope responds to women’s marginalization and thus establishes a mode for feminine expression that simultaneously conforms with and challenges patriarchal hegemony. Dysphonia and Aphonia as Responses to Authority

With these considerations in mind, I turn to subtle distinctions between silence and voice in the Respuesta a sor Filotea. As I shall demonstrate, tropes of deformed speech and soundlessness in the epistle threaten established order by highlighting all that suppressed voice might conceal. Before delving in, however, it is necessary to contextualize the work, particularly in light of its possible importance for understanding the nun’s mysterious renunciation of secular learning and pious conversion in 1693 (the year of her jubilee). Sor Juana penned the Respuesta in response to the unauthorized publication by the bishop of Puebla Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz of what he named the Carta atenagórica (initially titled Crisis de un sermon, 1690). Originally an oral discourse that the poet later copied at the request of an onlooker, the Carta atenagórica daringly challenges Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Vieyra’s (1608–­97) interpretation of the finezas, or favors to humankind of Christ. Having obtained a 160 Silence

copy of the document, Fernández de Santa Cruz used the pseudonym Sor Filotea de la Cruz to publish the Carta atenagórica—­unbeknown to its author. The bishop accompanied the work with a prologue known as the “Carta de Sor Filotea,” in which he reproached Sor Juana for her intellectual ambitions. Like many of Sor Juana’s writings, the Respuesta refigures aesthetic formulas and conventions in light of rhetorical objectives. For instance, it is both a self-­defense that responds to Fernández de Santa Cruz’s admonishment and an intellectual confession, just as Octavio Paz notes when he calls the piece an “examen de conciencia.”19 Read from another perspective—­ kinship with religious women’s writing—­Kathleen Myers observes that the Respuesta also shares characteristics with the vidas de monjas, spiritual autobiographies like Santa Teresa’s Libro de la vida (1562–­65) that nuns wrote at the behest of their confessors. Like Paz, Myers draws out textual reimagining: “[Sor Juana] uses the vitae as a model and distorts it for her own ends in the Respuesta.”20 Finally, scholars like Jean Franco as well as Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell have taken a more contemporary stance by reading the Respuesta as a protofeminist manifesto. My objective is to complement previous scholarship by delving into the interstices of sound and its absence in the Respuesta to show how refigured aurality relates to themes like female intellect, ecclesiastic authority, and more. In light of strident tensions between voice and silence throughout the epistle—­for instance, the oft-­cited “el callar no es no haber qué decir, sino no caber en las voces lo mucho que hay que decir,” I argue that the auditory dichotomy is fundamental for understanding the lyric narrator’s textual authority.21 Like others that we will examine, this passage does not present sound’s absence as lack but rather excess: voice becomes quiet when knowledge exceeds its representative capacity. On one hand, such limits might emphasize the distance between sign and signifier and therefore raise questions about language’s ability to capture reality. Nevertheless, on the other hand, soundlessness in the Respuesta appears to flaunt itself before ecclesiastical hegemonies that sought to control or even silence women in New Spain. Silence  161

My reading begins with the opening section that Rosa Perelmuter has identified as the Ciceronian exordium. Here, instances of deformed voice justify the narrator’s silence before Sor Filotea, and aphonia draws out the interrelation of phonos and language. In defense of her own delayed response to the “Carta de sor Filotea,” the lyric voice observes that St. Thomas of Aquinas was silent before Albert Magnus because “nada sabía decir digno de Alberto,”22 St. Isabel, John the Baptist’s mother, was without voice before the Virgin Mary’s “tan desproporcionada visita,”23 and Moses found himself stammering (“balbuciente”) before Pharoah’s power.24 Among other key features in the exordium, Perelmuter cites the prominence of false modesty, a crucial topos for preparing the reader’s favorable reception.25 Within this context, is interesting to note abundant descriptions of aphonia in the previous lines’ construction of false modesty. Indeed, representations of disordered voice suggest that while writing insufficiently represents the narrator’s reaction—­perhaps because of its role in structuring New Spanish social hierarchies—­silent or disrupted speech can signify dissonances marginalized by ecclesiastical patriarchy and by the privileging of writing that reinforces its dominance. A more exacting interpretation clarifies the relationship. The aural polysemy of St. Elizabeth’s reaction before the Virgin links disordered intellect and interrupted speech, for “se le entorpeció el entendimiento y se le suspendió el discurso.”26 Precisely “entendimiento” refers to comprehension and simultaneously draws out aural themes. In this way, the term strengthens the relationship among voice, auditory perception, and knowledge and also problematizes ocularcentric constructions of reason. The etymology of “entender” is useful for exploring such connections. According to the Diccionario de Autoridades, the word relates to hearing: “Se toma también por oír, percebir lo que se habla ù dice, comprehenderlo y hacerse capaz de ello; y assi quando hablan muchos à un tiempo y con alboroto y confusión, ò en lenguaje diverso que uno ignóra, se dice que no entiende [l]o que dicen.” Moreover, the French equivalent—­ “entendre”—­particularly illustrates the term’s auditory vestiges, for it refers to both hearing and understanding: “Percevoir par l’oreille” or 162 Silence

“Comprendre, indépendamment de la perception physique” (Le Trésor de la Langue Française informatise). Aligning these two concepts underscores resonances between hearing and intellect that challenge epistemological privileging of writing and visuality. Links between voice and authority are also relevant for an exploration of silence in the opening of the Respuesta a sor Filotea. For instance, the trope is evident in the description of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s reaction before his teacher, Albert Magnus: “Y si veo que preguntado el Ángel de las Escuelas, Santo Tomás, de su silencio con Alberto Magno, su maestro, respondió que callaba porque nada sabía digno de Alberto, con cuánta mayor razón callaría, no como el Santo, de humildad, sino que en la realidad es no saber algo digno de vos.”27 The conflation of “voz” and “vos” is inescapable here. Like Thomas Aquinas the narrator remains silent because her response exceeds the ecclesiastical hierarchy—­that is, both Fernández de Santa Cruz’s symbolic authority (“vos”) and her capacity for self-­expression as a religious woman (“voz”). Furthermore, the affirmation establishes striking tension with official directives about quietness and modesty by asserting that the lyric self ’s silence is not a product of humility. In this sense, withholding voice reinforces discourses of censorship by echoing the language of documents like the “Carta de sor Filotea” but also undermines them by signifying the dissenting voices that such directives seek to suppress. Yet another example of dysphonia from the Respuesta’s opening lines further develops links between silent or disrupted speech and agency. Here, the narrator remarks on Moses’s initial trepidation about challenging Pharaoh to free the Israelites (Exodus 6:12): “No se hallaba digno Moisés, por balbuciente, para hablar con Faraón, y después, el verse tan favorecido de Dios, le infunde tales alientos, que no sólo habla con el mismo Dios, sino que se atreve a pedirle imposibles: Ostende mihi faciem tuam.”28 As it may be, the prophet finds himself without words—­although interestingly, not without voice—­before Pharaoh’s power. Moses’s dysphonic stuttering problematizes the artificial conflation of voice and language by privileging preverbal vocalization. The prophet’s stammered response disturbs Silence  163

conventional semiosis but retains all of the powers associated with voice. Indeed, at the end of the passage, Moses fully realizes voice’s performative potential upon receiving a divine infusion of breath. The prophet derives authority here by uttering the words “show me your face,” and the phrase’s airy origin locates the directive’s strength squarely within voice. Moses’s enunciation thus conjures up a slippery, ontological alternative that realizes the impossible: seeing the face of God. Links among voice, air, and God recall “prephilosophical” constructions of phonos that Cavarero drew out: the Hebrew construction of ruah (God’s breath) as the origin of qol (voice). They also channel her observations about the classical belief that the divine seeped out of the earth in an airy form and became the respiration of Pythia’s spoken prophecies.29 Both vestiges resonate with representations of speech and divine breath in the Respuesta, for voice’s performativity in the face of apparent dysphonia recalls constructions of air and sound as expressions of celestial mysteries too complex for verbal expression. In Cavarero’s words: “Even when it is explicitly voice, qol, the divine power pertains to a sphere that distinguishes itself from speech and is independent of it: a pure vocal, indifferent to the semantic function of language.”30 In the context of the Respuesta, Sor Juana’s representation of Moses appeals to aurality’s excess before writing, for the two sonorous elements privilege the narrator’s response by linking her and the prophet to the divine. Moreover, given the epistle’s feminine context, the imagery deepens gendered auralities. Resonances elsewhere in Sor Juana’s oeuvre can deepen understanding of links among breath, voice, writing, and authority. For instance, Silva 215 (“Epinicio gratulatorio al Conde de Galve”), the triumphal ode to celebrate viceroy Gaspar de la Cerda Sandoval Silva y Mendoza’s military victory against the French invasion of Santo Domingo, features numerous dysphonic representations of voice. Like the Respuesta a sor Filotea, both genre and sonority inform reimaginings of false modesty that draw on sound’s sacred and feminine resonances to establish tension with the formula’s conventional purpose. With respect to rhetoric, Thomas observed that Silva 215 rearticulates the traditional epinicion—­a lyric celebration of 164 Silence

athletic or military victory—­as an ode to poetic triumph: “[she] downplays the importance of the Empire’s victory in order to celebrate her fellow American writers.”31 He reads descriptions like “el débil sonido / de rauca voz”32 and “la balbuciente / lengua, en mal pronunciadas / cláusulas” as traces of false modesty.33 The argument is compelling, and the aural significance of such descriptions also merits attention, particularly given dysphonia’s prominence in examples of false modesty in the Respuesta. Indeed, a comparison of the narrator’s utterances with Pythia’s resonates with links between voice and divine breath in the Respuesta: O como de alto Numen agitada la, aunque virgen, preñada de conceptos divinos, Pitonisa doncella de Delfos, encendida, inflamada la mente, entre rotas dicciones, en cláusulas pronuncia desatadas, de voces salpicadas, de estilo inconsecuente, los que en el pecho sella, misterios, que regulan desatinos humanas atenciones . . .34

Here, divine breath infuses or “impregnates” the oracle’s female body. Voice’s physicality contrasts with representations of dysphonic speech and, in this example, becomes a feminine alternative to logocentric expression. Furthermore, language like “inflamada” and “la, aunque Virgen, preñada” recalls the corporeality of mystic nuns’ writings and heightens the construction of the female body as a site of divine knowledge. Such physicality becomes even more apparent in subsequent lines from Silva 215. The next strophe continues to develop the lyric self’s verbal inadequacy before the count’s accomplishments as disordered vocalization. Silence  165

Building on the previous verse’s conflation of divine voice and woman’s body, the description offers a corporeal alternative to dysphonia: y el que no cabe, no sólo en voces sale atropelladas del angosto arcaduz la garganta, pero, buscando de explicarse modos, lenguas los miembros todos quiere hacer, con acciones demandadas, que a copia sirvan tanta.35

Once more disordered voice signifies marginalized or repressed discourses. On one hand, difficult vocal articulation symbolizes the distance between poet and count in New Spain’s sociopolitical hierarchy. On the other, links among voice, excess, and the divine channel once more alternative epistemologies that respond to verbal limits. These themes resonate with Castillo’s observations about horror vacui as a response to Baroque fear of nothingness and completeness and strengthen my observations about aurality and emptiness in Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Complementary to the Respuesta, Romance 8 and other works that I have examined, Silva 215 adds yet another layer of meaning to the poet’s exploration of voice, gender, and agency: Delphic connections between the female body and divine expression that imagine the former as a response to logocentric boundaries. The construction hinges on the feminine embodiment of voice and therefore responds to what Kirk describes as “patriarchal Hispanic society’s desire for the containment of both the female body and the female word.”36 Given Kirk’s observation, representations of aphonia and dysphonia in the Respuesta a sor Filotea and elsewhere in the poet’s oeuvre suggest that women’s voices can destabilize mechanisms of suppression by distancing themselves from logocentric semiosis. In a broader sense, although ecclesiastic authorities marginalized women’s speech in New Spain and other areas, the feminine voice retained traces of agency, however muted they may have been. The lyric self brings this latent performativity to mind when she ironically remarks that Fernández 166 Silence

de Santa Cruz’s actions privilege her beyond the bounds of vocal expression: “de tal magnitud que no sólo no se puede estrechar a lo limitado de las voces, pero excede a la capacidad de agradecimiento . . . Y tal, que enmudecen al beneficiado.”37 The passage acknowledges voice’s limits and suggests that the bishop’s actions transcend verbal recognition of gratitude. The Diccionario de Autoridades entry for “agradecer” frames the action as acknowledgement and compensation of debt: “reconocer, recompensar, confessar y satisfacer en algun modo el beneficio recibido.” The definition draws out aurality’s resonances with power. Indeed, terms like “confessar” and “satisfacer” suggest that expressions of thanks reinforce or even establish authority between involved parties. Therefore, the parallel that the narrator establishes between voice’s limits and the capacity for gratitude—­a sentiment rooted in discourses of influence—­in the Respuesta further illustrates connections between voice and agency. Once again, silence rearticulates Church restrictions upon women’s voice and draws out the inherent threat of imposed soundlessness by connecting it to censura, misogynist hegemony, and excess. Such themes are also evident in the narrator’s acknowledgement of the Inquisition’s threat before a learned woman like Sor Juana: “que yo no quiero ruido con el Santo Oficio, que soy ignorante y tiemblo de decir alguna proposición malsonante o torcer la genuina inteligencia de algún lugar.”38 In this passage, aural tropes represent tension with the Inquisition’s authority. The narrator shies away from conflict or “noise” with Church hierarchy for fear of creating discord with “alguna proposición malsonante.” Exploring the acoustical terms used here can draw out resonances among sound, authority, and knowledge. In addition to the acoustical connotations of “ruido,” the term also designates “litígio, pendencia, pléito, alboroto o discordia.”39 “Malsonante” similarly couches conflict in acoustical terms, for its root verb “sonar” “significa tambien tocar, ò tañer alguna cosa, para que suene con arte, y harmonía.”40 Consequently, “malsonante” also illustrates dissonance and disagreement. Such aural representations of friction with dominant discourses can be understood as vestiges of the music of the spheres, for they resonate with Silence  167

the Platonic views on harmony and authority that chapter 1 explored. Echoing my previous observations, nonconsonant sounds and discord in the Respuesta signify plurivocity and tension with dominant views. Nevertheless, such inharmoniousness also marginalizes such “other voices” as dissonant. Read through this lens, silence is a most threatening form of expression because it exceeds the harmony-­discord binary that effectively suppresses disruptive discourses. Silence I: The Respuesta a sor Filotea

Having examined aphonia, dysphonia, and their resonances, I now turn to the climactic representation of silence itself in the Respuesta. After a lengthy defense that couches the narrator’s inability to reply to Fernández de Santa Cruz in terms of disordered or interrupted speech, the lyric self finally addresses silence’s threat. Indeed, nowhere is soundlessness’s disruptive capacity more striking than in the epistle’s best-­known sonority, in which the narrator insists that withholding voice is in fact the only possible response to the bishop’s betrayal: “y si la he de confesar toda, también es buscar efugios para huir la dificultad de responder, y casi me he determinado a dejarlo al silencio; pero como éste es cosa negativa, aunque explica mucho con el énfasis de no explicar, es necesario ponerle algún breve rótulo para que se entienda lo que se pretende que el silencio diga; y si no, dirá nada el silencio, porque ése es su propio oficio: decir nada.”41 Here, silence is a “refuge” for avoiding an uncomfortable compromise. Indeed, the Diccionario de Autoridades defines “efugio” as “evasión, salída, medio término o recurso para huir de la fuerza de la razón contrária y salir de alguna dificultad.” While at first glance this connotation may make silence appear safe or comfortable, it also suggests that like dissonance, the trope stands in for dissent and plurivocity. Here as elsewhere in my reading of aphonia and dysphonia in the Respuesta a sor Filotea, silence threatens established order by once more drawing attention to repressed voices whose marginalization or absence produces meaning. The Baroque digression at the passage’s end identifies soundlessness’s profoundly disturbing nature and channels the acoustic horror vacui that I examined 168 Silence

at the chapter’s outset: silence says nothing. In this sense, the Respuesta’s pivotal representation of sound’s absence as a void prepares the subsequent reading of the trope’s uncanniness in Primero sueño. Silence II: Primero sueño

Although less prominent than in the Respuesta, silence is likewise central to Primero sueño and merits exploration, especially since the two texts are often read as complementary. The aural nocturnal landscape that distinguishes the poem’s opening lines contrasts with the soul’s soundless journey heavenward. Such links between silence and the search for knowledge resonate with phonic transgressions in the Respuesta, and the feminine lyric narrator’s experience of nocturnal sound aligns with gendered sonorities throughout Sor Juana’s oeuvre. Moreover, Primero sueño’s auditory contrast with striking visuality problematizes ocularcentric tendencies and deepens my argument that Sor Juana’s aurality constitutes a feminine alternative to male-­centered constructions of intellect and vision. Scholarship on Primero sueño amply attends to the poem’s reimagining of rational and visual discourses. In particular, Bergmann, Luciani, Elías Rivers, and others have connected extensive metaphors of sight and optics to the quest for intellectual enlightenment. Complementary to the apparent visuality that characterizes most of Primero sueño, aurality in the first 250 lines offers intriguing counterpoint. Indeed, sophisticated metrical descriptions of the Minyades’ song—­“máximas, negras, longas entonando, / y pausas más que voces, esperando”42—­the “arterial concierto” of the circulatory system and other nocturnal echoes form a complex aural discourse that ocularcentric interpretations risk marginalizing.43 Recent criticism offers some responses to Primero sueño’s challenging auditory interludes. As I noted in the introduction, Arenal argues that underlying musical themes like consonance and dissonance codify women’s knowledge.44 Likewise, Emilie Bergmann observes that the poem’s phonemic content reinforces its semantic inscription of forms and imagery.45 Both readings draw attention to Primero sueño’s aurality by viewing sound as ancillary to rational thought and its associated visual, Silence  169

masculine, and logocentric hegemonies. Along the same lines, Hill has drawn out vestiges of Pierre Gassendi’s atomism and, in particular, his ideas about sound, motion, and space in Primero sueño. Her observation that the poem “shows a highly-­sophisticated knowledge of then-­modern theories of sound and its movement through space” significantly connects aural tropes in Primero sueño with early modern advances in acoustics.46 Nevertheless, like Arenal and Bergman, Hill overlooks tensions between seeing and hearing that lend insight into Sor Juana’s piece and reveal much about their intersection. Auditory themes thus emerge as secondary in prior scholarship, which separates them from or defines them in contrast to dominant concepts like rationality and visuality. Consequently, neither sound’s prominence in the poem’s opening lines nor its connection with visual tropes throughout the piece has received the critical attention it deserves. I therefore seek to respond to such lacunae by drawing out links among Primero sueño’s aurality and notions of vision and reason. The approach attends to the transgressive nature of auditory tropes by arguing that the interplay of sound and silence in Primero sueño creates an uncanny response to visual dominance. Given the construction of aurality as a feminine alternative to masculine ecclesiastical and intellectual hegemonies elsewhere in Sor Juana’s oeuvre, auditory tropes in Primero sueño likewise threaten established order. To begin, the poem’s juxtaposition of seeing and hearing is notable, for sound frequently obstructs or even substitutes sight with fascinating counterpoint. In the opening lines, the shadowy mist that obscures the view of the “optic pyramid”—­according to Hill’s reading—­is also the origin of nocturnal sounds at the end of the same strophe:47 Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra nacida sombra, al Cielo encaminaba de vanos obeliscos punta altiva, escalar pretendiendo las Estrellas; si bien sus luces bellas —­exentas siempre, siempre rutilantes—­ 170 Silence

la tenebrosa guerra que con negros vapores le intimaba la pavorosa sombre fugitiva burlaban tan distantes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . quedando sólo dueño del aire que empañaba con el aliento denso que exhalaba; y en la quietud contenta del imperio silencioso, sumisas sólo voces consentía de las nocturnas aves, tan obscuras, tan graves, que aun el silencio no se interrumpía.48

Indeed, although darkness and fog hamper vision, silence cannot contain the nocturnal voices represented here. While lines 1–­15 focus on the visual experience of nighttime, lines 16–­24 attend to its aural characteristics. The heavy fog that conceals the pyramid in the poem’s opening lines (“la tenebrosa guerra / que con negros vapores le intimaba”) transforms into nocturnal stillness that not even birdsong can disturb in lines 17–­18. Dense vapors surround the pyramid (“del aire que empañaba / con el aliento denso que exhalaba”) and likewise channel connections between seeing and hearing. Indeed, while Hill’s reading of the clouds as stars’ vaporous byproduct links the symbols to light and vision, haze in the opening lines hinders sight and obstructs the view of the pyramid. Furthermore, the poem links the vapor to breath. The connection draws out this symbol’s alignment of aurality and visuality, for air is central to sound production in approaches to aurality from Antiquity to the seventeenth century. Additionally, breath resonates obliquely with the Respuesta’s construction of divine voice as an alternative to writing. Like in the Respuesta, aurality in Primero sueño challenges epistemological and ontological limits. While impaired vision—­clouded reason or Silence  171

impartial knowledge—­is a recurring theme in the poem, sound frequently punctuates the supposed silence of the opening prelude. The contrast recalls a fundamental difference between seeing and hearing: one may close the eyelids and create a physical barrier between the self and the outside world, but completely stopping up the ears is nearly impossible. David Toop attends to such tensions in his reading of eavesdroppers’ hampered or impaired vision in seventeenth-­century Dutch artist Nicolaes Maes’s paintings and the voyeuristic experience of the modern viewer. He remarks, “Speech is marginalized and repressed; action is stilled. After all, each eavesdropper has the choice of interrupting the tryst, berating the maid, ejecting the suitor, but spying is too delicious. The denouement can wait. The story of the space is neither visual nor aural, nor even a flickering fusion of the two, since the eavesdropper cannot see, only look out into an unknown future, and the viewer who she shushes cannot respond by speaking back into the image.”49 In the set to which Toop refers, the eavesdropper uncannily mediates between viewer and subject. The listening subject’s ear perceives lovers’ secret trysts while her visage turns to the viewer. The outward gaze invites the onlooker to spy on the transgressors, but a finger to the lips invokes cautionary silence. Inasmuch as the eavesdropper is an intermediary figure, she challenges the discursive boundaries between viewing subject and object. Complementarily, the conflation of seeing and hearing problematizes Cartesian discourses about the duality of self and other. On one hand, the eavesdropper’s silencing gesture invites the viewer to participate visually in the scene and therefore draws it into the self. On the other, the sign underscores the limits of visual representation, which can depict sound but cannot transmit it. Furthermore, silencing highlights verbal censorship that mimetic distance imposes. Although the viewer may be complicit in the scene, she can never disrupt order by revealing the secret and thus becomes the painting’s other. In Primero sueño, auditory representations of nighttime quietude perform the same function. While the absence of light (ignorance, according to McKenna) is an obstacle to vision and knowing, aurality offers an alternative that exceeds writing and visuality and thus 172 Silence

responds to these modes’ repression or silencing.50 Sound encroaches upon sight, as in the opening lines’ representation of the mist-­obscured optical pyramid, and also violates the silence associated with darkness and lack of understanding. The invocation of Harpocrates, the Hellenistic deity of silence and secrets, deepens sound’s transgressive nature in Primero sueño: uno y otro sellando labio obscuro con indicante dedo, Harpócrates, la noche, silencioso; a cuyo, aunque no duro, si bien imperïoso precepto, todos fueron obedientes51

The god’s performative gesture has provoked intriguing readings of tensions among silence, language, and knowledge in Primero sueño. For instance, Fernando Benítez takes a psychoanalytic approach to the figure and viewed it as a symptom of the author’s repression: es quizá uno de los símbolos que aclara la vida de sor Juana. Desde su entrada al convento se le ordena callar. La monja que se aparece en el locutorio de Jesús María con los ojos vendados y una mordaza en la boca representa la obediencia, el no ver, el no hablar, el convertirse en estatua, y las reglas precisan que el silencio forma parte de lo sagrado. La extrovertida sor Juana ama la plática, la relación con el mundo y todo le prohíbe hablar o escribir. El mismo Núñez o el arzobispo, llevándose un dedo a la boca, le ordenan callar y ella sobre todo, escribe y pide que se le oiga con los ojos, ya que vive prisionera, y en las horas contadas de su locutorio debe tener a la ‘madre oreja’ que escucha y censura sus conversaciones.”52

The interpretation applies crude dichotomy between noise and soundlessness to the poet’s situation in the convent and views sonority through a limited, biographical lens. Complementarily, Rocío Olivares Zorrilla explores Harpocrates’s resonances with silence, blindness, and wisdom. Citing such thinkers Silence  173

as Kircher, Giordano Bruno, and Nicholas of Cusa, she argues that the sounds punctuating nighttime silence in Primero sueño represent man’s imperfect understanding of the divine. Harpocrates’s silence thus contrasts with earthly epistemological limits and therefore represents complete knowledge.53 Once more, then, soundlessness channels horror vacui, for it signifies epistemological excess that language cannot contain. In this context, the nearly inaudible murmurs of the natural world at the poem’s outset temper silence’s threat before the bounds of post-­Cartesian reason. As my reading of the Respuesta a sor Filotea showed, Sor Juana’s oeuvre frequently exploits such connotations to transform silence into an alternative narrative that challenges logocentric hegemony. Along these lines, Bergmann attended the futility of Harpocrates’s intended silencing and noted that “this imposing figure cannot restrain the continuing voice of the poem.”54 Indeed, mute sounds in the next verse thwart the attempt to conjure up silence: “con el susurro hacer temiendo leve, / aunque poco, sacrílego rüido, / violador del silencio sosegado.”55 Consequently, sound in Primero sueño flouts itself in the face of authority and reveals the forbidden.56 Auditory tropes therefore channel the Freudian uncanny’s links with the clandestine by using sound to make secrets accessible, and the poem proposes once more an alternative (at times, feminine) epistemology predicated on sound. Woman-­centered resonances in Sor Juana’s representation of Harpocrates’s silencing beckon further consideration. Specifically, soundlessness’s significance within the early modern religious context can shed light on interrelationships of aurality and transgression. As in the Respuesta, defiant sounds in Primero sueño challenge Harpocrates’s authority and thus symbolically respond to New Spanish ecclesiastical officials’ censorship of women. Without a doubt, the sacrilegious noises that defy the deity’s injunction resonate with the plurivocity that Arenal and Schlau highlight in the writings of early modern Hispanic religious women. According to these scholars, nuns like Sor Juana “circumvented an ideology that promoted women’s silence and learned to couch their thoughts in language acceptable to authority.”57 In other words, religious 174 Silence

women appropriated dominant discourses and rearticulated them as expressive modes that appeared to confirm prevailing ideology while simultaneously subverting it. While Schlau and Arenal refer to writing, I contend that Sor Juana’s engagement with sound and silence in Primero sueño constitutes an auditory imagining of the same tendency. Just as seeming reiterations of dominant narratives in the texts that Schlau and Arenal discuss cannot be taken at face value, neither Harpocrates’s silence nor other imaginings of the trope in Primero sueño solely signify marginalization and repression. Rather, apparent soundlessness invokes volatile auralities that disrupt hegemonic voices while appearing to harmonize with them. Voice and Its Discontents

For all this, it is clear that withholding voice—­along with complementary gestures of silencing and closing the mouth—­relate to themes of transgression and gender in Primero sueño. On one hand, the refusal to speak can be understood as defiant before language’s primacy within post-­Carteisan worldviews. Not participating in the semantic system through speech proposes an aural, nonlogocentric epistemology that Sor Juana’s poetry often associates with female knowledge. On the other, representations of silence respond to ecclesiastical authorities’ desire to contain women’s expression in the New Spanish religious context by simultaneously complying with related mandates and highlighting the acoustical impossibility of soundlessness. In Primero sueño’s opening lines, such connotations are particularly evident in the transgressive sonorities of feminine nocturnal figures adapted from Greek mythology: Nyctimene, the Minyades sisters, and even Ascalaphus, as Bergmann, Merrim, Sabat-­Rivers, and others remarked.58 Among these, Bergmann’s observations are contrapuntally relevant for drawing out intersections of visuality and aurality, for she has shown how the poem reworks optical themes to observe feminine epistemologies. The scholar argues, “The perceptive model for the female intellectual is not the camera obscura, surrounded by light; rather, the ambivalently Silence  175

transgressive nightbird must seek out the luminous temple whose imperfectly sealed doors and windows allow some of its light to escape.”59 In true Baroque fashion, the chiaroscuro is central here. While the camera obscura contributes to a dialectics of light and darkness, the sanctuary of knowledge that Nyctimene visits establishes a third possibility that exceeds rigid binaries of intellect and ignorance. Along the same lines, the nocturnal birds’ aurality as a component of nighttime stillness complements the construction of alternative women’s spaces by establishing a vocal resonator that challenges the sound/silence dichotomy. The poem relates this expressive apparatus to the feminine by locating it in key female figures. For instance, the mouth is central when Nyctimene drinks the oil that lights Minerva’s lanterns: la avergonzada Nictimene acecha de las sagradas puertas los resquicios, o de las claraboyas eminentes los huecos más propicios que capaz a su intento le abren brecha, y sacrílega llega a los lucientes faroles sacros de perenne llama, que extingue, si no infama, en licor claro la materia crasa consumiendo, que el árbol de Minerva de su fruto, de prensas agravado, congojoso sudó y rindió forzado.60

In this passage, the owl imbibes olive oil from the tree of Minerva, goddess of wisdom. Her attempt to devour knowledge is sacrilegious, as Suzanne Shimek notes in a reading of the poem’s sacred symbolism. Indeed, Shimek draws out resonances with medieval depictions of owls that consumed oil from the oil lamps adorning church altars. She argues that Nyctimene’s gesture channels Sor Juana’s dissonance with Church authorities: “Nictimene tries to drink truth from the sacred temple lamp—­a symbol of ecclesiastical powers.”61 By reading Nyctimene’s disruptive action against 176 Silence

patriarchal Church authority—­aligned here with light—­the scholar underscores visuality’s masculine connotations. Complementarily, sonorous vestiges resonate with feminine epistemologies elsewhere in Sor Juana’s oeuvre and also heighten the owl’s disobedience. Indeed, aurality is evident in the contrast between the mouth’s consumption of truth or intellect and its capacities as a vocal resonator that generally creates or dispels knowledge. Since voice is central to logocentric reason, it represents suppression and secrecy, just like the devil’s refusal to speak in Lengua, ojos y oídos de una mujer panegirista or the eavesdropper’s silencing gesture in Nicolaes Maes’s paintings illustrate. Along these lines, physically ingesting wisdom through the mouth can be understood as an even greater transgression. Not only is the buccal cavity a site of vocal retention, but it also signifies appropriation of the very same epistemological reality that silence negates. By drinking the oil that fuels wisdom’s lamps, Nyctimene commits the ultimate poetic rebellion: she consumes knowledge. Given the bird’s feminine symbolism, the mouth’s latent aurality, and Shimek’s masculine reading of light, resonances between the usurpation and Sor Juana’s interest in drawing out women’s intellect become clear. Nyctimene is not the only figure associated with the mouth in Primero sueño. In similar fashion, an eagle consuming the sun’s rays is a metaphor for the soul in the failed first attempt to scale the mountain: el rápido no pudo, el veloz vuelo del águila—­que puntas hace al Cielo y al Sol bebe los rayos pretendiendo entre sus luces colocar su nido—­ llegar; . . .62

Significantly, the eagle is the messenger of Zeus, deity of the sun and sky. Here, the daring raptor tries to drink his master’s light and falls short of the task. The bird’s symbolism and resonances with Nyctimene allow for an oblique reading of these lines’ intersection with themes of gender and transgression. According to Greek and Roman mythology, Zeus’s Silence  177

companion consumed Prometheus’s liver daily as part of the punishment to which the deity condemned the Titan for stealing Olympus’s sacred fire. The eagle’s attempt to drink his master’s sunlight in Primero sueño thus recalls Prometheus’s crime and draws out its disorderly nature. Furthermore, it resonates with Nyctimene’s consumption of flames in the poem’s opening lines.63 Given the eagle’s gendered contrast with Nyctimene and association with the masculine Zeus, the failure to reach the peak and consume divine light comments on the limits of man’s quest for knowledge. Correspondingly, Nyctimene’s consumption of Minerva’s oil—­with all of its feminine resonances—­suggests that a woman’s approach might be more successful in the pursuit of omniscience. Both representations challenge visual approaches to intellect by establishing the mouth as the site of wisdom (as opposed to the eye). Nevertheless, only Nyctimene successfully imbibes knowledge, and as such, buccal epistemologies are linked to the feminine. It becomes clear that the relationship between aurality and knowledge in Primero sueño thus manifests itself as tensions between sight and sound. Other sections of the poem develop these themes as well. For instance, lines 111–­22 feature a description of the natural world at rest that juxtaposes the opening verses’ raucous nocturnal “silence” with sightless eyes: y el Rey, que vigilancias afectaba, aun con abiertos ojos no velaba. El de sus mismos perros acosado, monarca en otro tiempo esclarecido, tímido ya venado, con vigilante oído, del sosegado ambiente al menor perceptible movimiento que los átomos muda, la oreja alterna aguda y el leve rumor siente que aun le altera dormido.64 178 Silence

Here, the lion pretends to keep watch by sleeping with his eyes open while Actaeon—­the hunter transformed into a deer as punishment for spying on Artemis—­perceives nighttime sounds with an attentive ear. The predator-­prey relationship between the two animals heightens visual-­ aural tension and deepens my reading of sound as an alternative voice that challenges existing hegemonies. Indeed, emphasis on the normally dominant lion’s eyes link him to visuality and, by extension, writing and authority. Nonetheless, darkness and sleep prevent the beast from seeing and thus diminish his influence, despite efforts to remain vigilant by keeping the eyes open. In contrast, Actaeon aurally attends to all that darkness and sleep veil. Through auditory perception the deer attunes himself to external stimuli that the lion’s eye overlooked. Just as the narrator in the Respuesta turns to aurality to respond to the limits of social and written hierarchy, so Actaeon’s ear compensates for his subordinate position as prey. As elsewhere in Primero sueño, transgression is an important theme here. Artemis silenced Actaeon by turning him into a stag and essentially stopped the voyeur from voicing his illicit observations. Here, as before, silence is uncanny and signifies indiscretion and concealed secrets, central themes for delving into aurality in Maes’s paintings and Sor Juana’s representation of Harpocrates. Nonetheless, the defiant nocturnal aurality once again conjures up the impossibility of soundlessness and the futility of marginalizing or suppressing voice. Indeed, as a deer, Actaeon may lack the capacity to vocalize the scene of Artemis bathing, but the secret can never be fully withheld and therefore threatens dominant order (which the lion represents in this case). Voicing secrets is an important theme elsewhere in Primero sueño as well. To attend to another resonance of the trope, I return to the poem’s prelude and description of Nyctimene extinguishing Minerva’s lamps. As it turns out, the hapless owl has a counterpart: the choir of female bats known as the Minyades sisters. Indeed, one can establish a relationship between the Minyades and Nyctimene that admits a contrapuntal reading of their roles in Primero sueño. Both are feminine nighttime figures whose Silence  179

animal form results from shame and transgression. Epopeus raped his daughter Nyctimene, and Minerva turned the unfortunate victim into an owl because she was too ashamed to appear in daylight. Similarly, the Minyades refused to participate in orgies honoring Dionysis, and as punishment, the deity transformed them into bats. Such connections allow for a congruent interpretation of the figures that, as it turns out, attends to their complementary aural/visual discourse. Just as Nyctimene ingests the oil that fuels Minerva’s light, so the Minyades consummate her crime by literally revoicing wisdom in a dissonant, frightful song: éstas, con el parlero ministro de Plutón un tiempo, ahora supersticioso indicio al agorero, solos la no canora componían capilla pavorosa, máximas, negras, longas entonando y pausas más que voces, esperando a la torpe mensura perezosa de mayor proporción tal vez, que el viento con flemático echaba movimiento, de tan tardo compás, tan detenido, que en medio se quedó tal vez dormido.65

Once more, the mouth is central to the feminine epistemologies established here. Nyctimene takes knowledge into her body by swallowing it, and the Minyades re-­sound the appropriated wisdom through unharmonious song whose quietness borders on silence. The woman-­owl consumes intellect and her bat-­sisters revoice appropriated knowledge. Their dissonance highlights the gesture’s transgressive nature and resonates with discord as a symbol of plurivocity. Musical representations of disharmony in the description of the Minyades’ song merit closer examination. First, the sluggish tempo of the sisters’ out-­of-­tune serenade reflects nighttime stillness (“la torpe mensura perezosa / de mayor proporción tal vez, que el viento”), and terms like 180 Silence

“máximas,” “negras,” and “longas” describe the longest note values. Just as the “sacrílego rüido” that defies Harpocrates’s entreat to silence are nearly imperceptible and thus give the illusion of complying with the gesture, so the Minyades’ almost soundless song (feminine knowledge) appears to conform to the censorship of women’s voices in New Spanish religious communities. Nonetheless, the dissonance of the “no canora / . . . capilla pavorosa” suggests otherwise, for it highlights the difficulty of harmonizing female expression with the misogynist discourses of ecclesiastical hegemony. With the polyvalence of the Minyades’ tune in mind, it is also pertinent to remark on the acoustical chiaroscuro, in which the bats’ near-­silent singing contrasts with Ascalaphus’s speech: “el parlero / ministro de Plutón.” Ascalaphus recalls correlations among voice, silence, and secrets, for Demeter transformed him into an owl for revealing that Persephone consumed the forbidden pomegranate seeds in the underworld. The Minyades’ song responds to Ascalaphus’s betrayal, for its eerily dissonant quiet illustrates how soundlessness gives voice to the unsaid by drawing attention to its absence. Silent Coda

Hence, the significance of aurality and its relationship to themes like silence, secrets, transgression, and excess in Primero sueño is clear. Nonetheless, despite auditory pervasiveness in the opening lines, the poem becomes truly silent in line 147, when sleep quiets nighttime voices: “El sueño todo, en fin, lo poseía; / todo, en fin, el silencio lo ocupaba.”66 As the soul frees itself from the body, only occasional corporeal sounds punctuate the nocturnal stillness. The contrast establishes aurality as physical and distances it from the soul’s intellectual journey. Indeed, although the narrator imagines the sleeping body’s functions in acoustic terms—­the heart’s “arterial concierto” or the “mudas voces” of the senses, for instance—­auditory tropes soon fade away, only to return when the subject awakens at the piece’s end. I will return to this overall contrast in the next chapter. Silence  181

By way of a conclusion, one last representation of soundlessness in Primero sueño brings together all of the themes that this chapter has explored: silence and its connections with authority, transgression, the feminine, and nonlogocentric epistemologies. In some of the final lines of Sor Juana’s celebrated poem, sound’s absence makes one last appearance and prefaces dawn’s fanfare, which includes heralding sonorities like “bélicos clarines de las aves” and “trompetas sonorosos” that contrast with the dissonant and dysphonic “silences” of night (lines 921–­23). Precisely, the soul reflects on its journey by condemning aspirations of omniscience and declaring that the crime is best left unsaid: O el castigo jamás se publicara, porque nunca el delito se intentara: político silencio antes rompiera los autos del proceso, —­circunspecto estadista—­; o en fingida ignorancia simulara, o con secreta pena castigara el insolente exceso, sin que a popular vista el ejemplar nocivo propusiera: que del mayor delito la malicia peligra en la noticia, contagio dilatado trascendiendo; porque singular culpa solo siendo, dejara más remota a lo ignorado su ejecución, que no a lo escarmentado.67

Themes of punishment and culpability resonate in these lines, as the repetition of “castigo” and “culpa” illustrate. In a similar fashion, “publicar” highlights silence’s essential role for concealing the crime, for the Diccionario de Autoridades affirms that the term can mean “revelar o decir lo que se debia callar.” Furthermore, abundant juridical terms like “político silencio,” “circunspecto estadista” and “autos” highlight the soul’s distance 182 Silence

from the law of the body. Despite the absence of auditory tropes, silence in these lines is uncanny as the apparent soundlessness of the poem’s opening, for its very function is to veil the soul’s delinquency. Silence’s opposition to the corporeal as well as its response to the transgressive quest for omniscience channel once more Kirk’s remarks about “patriarchal Hispanic society’s desire for the containment of both the female body and the female word.”68 If indeed censorship and silencing were mechanisms for controlling women, works like Primero sueño and the Respuesta a sor Filotea reimagine them—­or transpose them—­as alternative expressive modes that challenged masculine dominance from a position of apparent concord. From an auditory perspective, complete silence is nearly impossible. Ancillary to the Baroque horror vacui, true soundlessness perturbs the Counter-­Reformation worldview by channeling themes like death, secrets, and the unknown. From an ecclesiastical perspective, sound’s absence in the form of aphonia or dysphonia simultaneously responded to directives that controlled women’s voice but also resisted them by concealing secrets that should be revealed, for example, before a confessor. As I have shown in this chapter, Sor Juana exploited silence’s threat and its acoustical and cultural paradoxes. Indeed, in two of her best-­known defenses of women’s knowledge, the poet cleverly developed the sonorous cracks of sound’s apparent absence to give voice to marginalized feminine discourses.

Silence  183

Chapter 6

Coda Re-­sounding Voices

The first part of Kircher’s cosmic dialogue Iter extaticum coeleste (1656) relates the ecstatic dream of Theodidactus, a fictional representation of the Jesuit himself that the angel Cosmiel guides through the universe to clarify its hermetic enigmas.1 A group of musicians tuning their instruments to classical modes inspires the dream, and Theodidactus’s journey likewise recalls the cosmos’ divine harmonies. Octavio Paz cites Rubén Bonifaz Nuño’s translation of the third edition of Kircher’s text to describe music’s influence on the slumbering narrator: “las especies de la dicha sinfonía agitaban su ánimo con varias imágenes de fantasmas . . . de repente, como abatido por un grave sopor . . . se sintió derribado en una planicie vastísima.”2 To be certain, the passage underscores music’s primary role in initiating the subject’s ecstatic journey. It also resonates with aural themes in Primero sueño and throughout her oeuvre and is thus a fitting note on which to conclude. Indeed, attending to the progression and resonances of auditory references in Primero sueño shows that sound acts similarly on Sor Juana’s lyric narrator and deepens prior readings of the poet’s engagement with Kircher’s text.3 Karl Vossler, Paz, Elías Trabulse, and Héctor Garza all hypothesize about Sor Juana’s inheritance of Iter extaticum, particularly in Primero sueño. While vestiges of anabasis, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and other shared topics from Iter extaticum and Primero sueño are clear, scholars have overlooked sound’s epistemological resonances in the two 185

works. In fact, Garza comments on the peculiarity of the long poem’s sonorous dearth, in spite of music’s prominence in Iter extaticum: “De algún modo, al erudito alemán la vinculación con la música le sirvió como punto de enlace entre la conciencia en la tierra y la inconciencia del sueño, en el viaje por el universo. . . . Sor Juana no recurre a esa técnica, y es extraño, habida cuenta de su manifiesto interés por la música.”4 The scholar’s observations about how curious it is that Sor Juana’s most personal piece does not engage music are astute, for as I have shown throughout this book, sound played a significant role in her poetic imagination. Contrary to Garza’s marginalization of Primero sueño’s aurality, a reading of musical and extramusical references tells a different story. As a tentative conclusion for reconsidering aurality in Sor Juana’s oeuvre, I will attend to the epistemological and ontological significance of Primero sueño’s auditory imagery. My interpretation relates musical language in the poem to acoustical themes developed elsewhere in the book and also illustrates once more sound’s importance for conceptualizing and reimagining knowledge, power, and the (female) self ’s place in the world. Cosmic resonances are a central theme and echo the acoustical fabric that permeated Sor Juana’s poetic and intellectual inheritance. More than any other example, sonorities in Primero sueño bring together all of the acoustical tropes I have examined here in a gesture that showcases sound’s ontological and epistemological significance. Aural interludes echo the harmony of the spheres and respond to Miranda’s argument that for Sor Juana, vocal and instrumental music offers access to the natural and divine realms: “no es sino la exteriorización de la musica humana, de la música del ser, a su vez reflejo o eco de esa musica mundana.”5 For the attentive listener, the poetic soundscape thus becomes an echoic microcosm that can reveal the secrets of the universe. The conceptual function is palpable in Primero sueño, where auditory themes progress from the nocturnal birds’ cosmic echoes to the body’s vital concert and, finally, culminate in a triumphant avian chorus that restores order at dawn. The poem’s acoustical evolution shows enlightenment as a process by 186 Coda

which the soul becomes attuned to the music of the spheres. In this sense, auralities in Primero sueño paradigmatically voice universal knowledge and are therefore useful for recalling sound’s overall importance in Sor Juana’s intellectual world. Aural themes in Primero sueño are most apparent in the first strophes, which establish sonorities that resonate obliquely elsewhere in the poem. Indeed, just as Kircher’s Theodidactus harmonizes with musica mundana and musica humana through heightened auditory sensing reflected as the concert’s musica practica, so Primero sueño opens with an auditory prelude that draws out echoes of nocturnal silence and contrasts with the soundlessness that characterizes intellectual quest. Contrary to the dulcet harmonies that provoke Theodidactus’s dream, however, initial dissonances in Sor Juana’s poem disturb the silence that chapter 5 explored or reflect the soul’s discord with cosmic order. In counterpoint to my previous readings, here I will explore how the opening acoustical references echo cosmic sonorities and intersect with themes of knowledge and gender that are central to the poem. To begin, the description of nighttime birdcalls from the opening lines connects light’s absence with deep, nearly silent voices: sumisas solo voces consentía de las nocturnas aves tan obscuras, tan graves.6

The juxtaposition of visual and aural experiences reflects the tentative alignment of sight and sound. Moreover, just as scholars like McKenna read nocturnal darkness as ignorance, so the low-­voiced song described here echoes the body’s human condition.7 In particular, such figuring reflects Kircher’s polyphonic imagining of musica mundana in Musurgia universalis. In a representation of the universe that associated each planet with a degree of the Greek musical scale, Kircher associated Earth with proslambanomenos—­the lowest pitch—­and arranged the remaining planets in a choir above it. The Jesuit’s understanding of Earth as the bass of universal music resonates in the opening strophe of Primero sueño and, Coda  187

given the aural progression that I draw out, symbolizes the embodied soul’s earthly state. Continuing, low-­pitched harmony and rhythm from the Minyades’ dirge-­like song acts on the lyric subject and induces slumber: que al sueño persuadía; antes sí, lentamente, su obtusa consonancia espacïosa.8

As we see here, the eerie chorus prepares the soul’s spiritual flight by quieting the mind and further attuning it to the nocturnal soundscape. The imagery recalls Iamblichus’s description of music as part of nightly cleansing rituals and morning routines among the Pythagoreans: “Farther still, the whole Pythagoric school produced by certain appropriate songs, which they called exartysis or adaptation, synarmoge or elegance of manners, and epaphe or contact, usually conducting the dispositions of the soul to passions contrary to those which it before possessed. For when they went to bed they purified the reasoning power from the perturbations and noises to which it had been exposed during the day, by certain odes and peculiar songs, and by this means procured for themselves tranquil sleep, and few and good dreams.”9 In Iamblichus’s account, music prepares the subject for slumber and encourages ecstatic dreams. Similarly, in Primero sueño, the Minyades’ song and other nocturnal sonorities are a prelude to the narrator’s repose. As sleep sets in, mundane and corporeal sounds drown out musical imagery like “máximas, negras, longas entonando” and “consonancia espacïosa” in the first strophes. While auditory metaphors in the initial verses bring musica practica to mind, sonorities in subsequent sections relate to the self ’s musica humana and cosmic musica mundana echoed in the natural soundscape. In this way, Primero sueño’s aurality reflects the music of the spheres and the narrator’s epistemological journey as she seeks consonance with divine harmony. Once the subject falls asleep, the human body sounds its place in the universe. The beating heart becomes an 188 Coda

arterial concierto, unas pequeñas muestras, pulsando, manifiesta lento de su bien regulado movimiento.10

Associations between sound and motion in these lines recall the persistence of Aristotelian motus in early modern music theory and medical texts and relate to the nun’s engagement with the topic elsewhere in her acousticopoetic oeuvre. A similarly intriguing metaphor describes the lung’s function as a magnet that attracts life-­giving breath: “—­pulmón, que imán del viento es atractivo.”11 Such imagery resonates with Kircher’s alignment of magnetism and sympathy, which sees harmony as the underlying force of each. In these and other examples from Primero sueño, the human body’s aurality thus channels sound as a means of imagining divine order. Ultimately, glorious birdsong replaces the discordant night and wakes the narrator from her rapture. Auditory references in the poem’s final lines draw out the parallel nature of sight and sound that has been a central theme throughout this book and also recall sonorous representations of power from chapter 1. Indeed, the very first reference to dawn aligns sunlight and aviary trumpets: Pero apenas la bella precursora signífera del Sol, el luminoso en el Oriente remoló estandarte, tocando al alma todos los suäves si bélicos clarines de las aves (diestros, aunque sin arte, trompetas sonrosos) . . .12

The parallel solar metaphor and emphasis on music in these lines echoes the Apollonic lyre as a symbol of concord and sympathetic influence. Birdsong particularly acts on the spirit and thus illustrates the importance of musica practica for resonating with and influencing both musica humana and musica mundana. The final verses’ sonorities thus signify harmony between the newly edified soul and cosmic order. As I have shown through Coda  189

readings of other references to Sol in Sor Juana’s oeuvre, the symbol’s polysemy brings to mind Apollo’s harmoniousness and role as director of the choir of Muses, the sun’s central position in the solar system, the fifth tone of the musical scale, and intellectual enlightenment. Sound’s centrality and associations with Sol therefore draw out consonances’ importance for conceptualizing cosmic and mundane organization, intellect, and more. Warlike imagery at the end of the poem characterizes the birds’ tribute to dawn and invokes the military deity Mars, and subsequent amorous language recalls the union with Venus that resulted in the birth of Harmonia. First, a metaphor that likens both sunlight and the heralding aviary trumpets to Cupid’s darts channels the aural vulnus caecum that persists in the poet’s love poetry and elsewhere: de su funesta capa los reparos, breves en ella de los tajos claros heridas recibiendo.13

Although the reference to Mars and Venus’s affair is not explicit here, the erotic undertones of the vulnus caecum alludes to the deity’s tryst. Moreover, opposition between night and day aligns with the contrast between war and love. Continuing, the final lines of the same strophe recall Harmonia’s ability to unite opposing elements and deepen previous allusions to Mars and Venus: ronca tocó bocina a recoger los negros escuadrones para poder en orden retirarse.14

Just as Harmonia symbolizes concordia discors and creates harmony among disparate components, so the first rays of dawn resound here as an ordering force that contrasts sharply with the dreary dissonances of Primero sueño’s opening lines. Finally, universal concord brings all of these themes together in the penultimate strophe, where Sol’s diurnal rotation banishes nighttime disorder: 190 Coda

a la que antes funesta fue tirana de su imperio, atropadas embestían: que sin concierto huyendo presurosa —­en sus mismos horrores tropezando—­ su sombra iba pisando, y llegar al Ocaso pretendía con el (sin orden ya) desbaratado ejército de sombras, acosado de la luz que el alcance le seguía.15

Here, words like “sombra” and “funesta” resonate with nocturnal themes from the poem’s first strophe and sharpen the contrast between day and night. Like allusions to disorder from the previous example, the auditory lunar metaphor “sin concierto huyendo” and the accompanying “sin orden ya” recall nocturnal discord and heighten sunlight’s Apollonic symbolism. Such references also resonate with the musical representations of authority that chapter 1 explored. All of these connections among harmony, order, and knowledge resonate with the last line, which reveals the lyric subject as female: “el Mundo iluminado, y yo despierta.”16 The poem concludes with the first and only first-­person reference, and thus reinforces the poetic voice’s subjectivity. Within the context that previous strophes in the final section developed, daylight signifies clarity and concord, and the line’s parallel structure therefore suggests that the narrator is consonant with her surroundings. The world aligns with the poetic self, and the semantic relationship between “iluminado” and “despierta” further harmonizes the two. Primero sueño sounds women’s intellect as concordant with cosmic order, just like so many other pieces from Sor Juana’s acousticopoetic corpus. Following the nocturnal epistemological quest, the narrator’s self-­affirmation upon waking resonates with Apollonic daylight and related themes of harmony, beauty, and rationality. In this sense, the poem voices the lyric subject’s feminine knowledge as consonant with traditionally masculine tropes. Coda  191

Cadence

It is thus clear that in Primero sueño, auditory topoi signify the narrator’s epistemological quest and resonate with the broader intersections of sound and knowledge in early modern culture. Beyond the celebrated long poem, my readings have shown that female sonorities abound as a central focus in the nun’s woman-­centered oeuvre. Poetic portraits like Redondilla 87 respond aurally to the ocularcentric male gaze with representations of feminine beauty. Representations of Mary in the villancicos draw out the Virgin’s divine consonance and resonate with harmonic renderings of authority—­particularly as relates to women—­in the occasional poems and other political works. In the passion play El divino Narciso, Eco’s reverberated discourse reframes Narciso’s utterances and offers a feminine alternative to logocentric (and masculine) expression, while Narcisa’s deadly song in Romance 8 is a powerful, erotic imagining of women’s power. Along the same lines, disordered voice, voicelessness, and silence in Primero sueño and the Respuesta a sor Filotea simultaneously highlight women’s marginalization within New Spanish intellectual and spiritual spheres and also emerge as modes for challenging masculine hegemony. All this contributes to an extrasemantic aurality that strongly associates with women to establish a feminine expressive mode based on the signifying potential of pure phonos. The connections are intriguing and prompt further reevaluation of links among sound, knowledge, gender, and other themes in Sor Juana’s work and beyond. As I have shown throughout Hearing Voices, attending more fully to sonorities in the nun’s oeuvre deepens understanding of how Sor Juana experienced and re-­sounded aural discourses.

192 Coda

Notes

Introduction

1. Calleja, “Aprobación,” n.p. 2. Long, Sor Juana/música, 12. 3. Merrim, introduction to Feminist Perspectives, 17. 4. Sor Juana, Obras completas (oc), 1: 61, lines 13–­16. Unless otherwise specified, all quotations of Sor Juana’s work are from the oc, edited by Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (vols. 1–­3) and Alberto G. Salceda (vol. 4). Citations include volume, page number, and lines. 5. Moreno Manzano, El sentimiento, 92. 6. According to the Pythagorean doctrine mathematics was a guiding principle in world order. The tetractys, a triangular representation of the number ten that was constructed from ten points arranged in four separate rows, was especially important to the Pythagorean construction of musical and nonmusical harmony. Nicomachus’s Manual of Harmonics (second century ad) includes a famed anecdote about the intersection of sound and mathematics in Pythagorean harmony. Nicomachus relates that Pythagoras realized that numerical ratio determined the aesthetic properties of sound while listening to the tones that a blacksmith produced using hammers of variable weights. Basing his reasoning on the quadripartite arrangement of the tetractys, Pythagoras demonstrated that musical consonance can be numerically represented with the proportions 4:3 (perfect fifth), 3:2 (perfect fourth), and 2:1 (octave). Within this framework 4:1 represents the double octave and 3:1 is the interval of an octave plus a perfect fifth. 7. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 64, lines 123–­24.

193

8. Esperanza Pulido has remarked on the likelihood that Sor Juana’s library also included Pietro Cerone’s 1609 cantus firmus treatise: Le regole più necessarie per l’introduttione del canto fermo (51–­52). In addition to these resources, Sor Juana’s correspondence—­regrettably not yet recovered—­would undoubtedly expand understanding of her aurality. 9. Paz, Sor Juana, 311, and Ortiz, “La musa,” 248. 10. Ortiz, La musa, 19. 11. Complementary to the studies mentioned here, Mario Lavista, Esperanza Pulido, and Elías Trabulse also sharpened understanding of the poet’s engagement with early modern music theory. 12. Miranda, “Sor Juana,” 253–­54. 13. Río Parra, “Espacios sonoros,” 307. 14. For example, I think of Marsilio Ficino’s astrological music in De Triplici Vita, De vita coelitùs comparanda (published in 1489), which establishes guidelines for songs that act on the musician’s soul and sympathetically attract a corresponding planet’s spirit. See D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic, 3–­24, and Tomlinson, Music, 101–­44, for discussions of Ficino’s cosmic music. 15. Arenal, “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 125–­26. 16. Erlmann, Reason and Resonance, 9–­10. 17. Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic, 6. In addition to Erlmann, Garrett Stewart, and, later, Tomlinson (The Singing) have addressed Derrida’s phonophobism. It is Stewart who first coined the term in his seminal reading of phonic qualities in English texts by John Donne, James Joyce, Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson, Virginia Wolfe, and others. 1. Harmony

1. Following the 1492 printing of Boethius’s foundational Greek music theory treatise De institutione musica (penned in the sixth century bc), the tripartite division among musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis became pervasive in Renaissance and early modern explorations of natural and divine order. 2. Paz, Sor Juana, 249. 3. Paz, Sor Juana, 252. 4. Thomas, Politics, 5. 5. Here and throughout the book, I use “sound” as a transitive verb to underscore aural performativity. Relying on this and other acoustical terms responds to the visual bias in critical language that many sound studies scholars highlight. 194 Notes to Pages 4–14

6. Paz, Sor Juana, 251. 7. Plato, Republic, 80. 8. Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 2. 9. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 280, lines 1–­4. 10. As Miranda points out this is not the only instance in which the “clarín” stands out in Sor Juana’s musicopoetic language (“Aves, ecos,” 101). Villancico 251 (Feast of the Assumption, 1679, oc 2:60–­62) is another example of the intersection of the four elements, the music of the spheres and voice figured as trumpet in the poet’s oeuvre. This time, however, it is the Virgin’s voice that appears as an acousticocosmic force: ¡Sonoro clarín del viento, resuene tu dulce acento, toca, toca: Ángeles convoca, y en mil Serafines mil dulces clarines que, haciéndole salva, con dulces cadencias saluden el Alba! (lines 55–­62) I will consider the representation in detail in chapter 3. 11. Wallace and McGrattan, Trumpet, 72–­73. 12. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 280, lines 5–­8. 13. Erlmann, Reason and Resonance, 9–­10. 14. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 280, lines 13–­16. 15. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 280, lines 17–­19. 16. Claudio Monteverdi’s seconda prattica is one example of this trend. The term refers to a Baroque style that was prevalent in late sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­ century Italian secular works. Followers of the seconda prattica tended to privilege text over its musical setting, favoring the use of highly expressive musical devices to complement or emphasize a piece’s accompanying lyrics. Notable figures associated with this school include Giulio Caccini (1551–­ 1618), Carlo Gesualdo (1560–­1613), Jacopo Peri (1561–­1633), and Monteverdi (1567–­1643). 17. Vocalizations of power in Loa 374 parallel other voices’ harmonizing capacity elsewhere in the nun’s oeuvre. Musical reimaginings of feminine agency are especially notable, and I will explore such resonances in subsequent chapters. Links between song and sympathy are central to Sor Juana’s imagining of the Notes to Pages 14–19  195

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

Virgin Mary’s dominion over the universe in Villancico 220 (see chapter 3) and also representations of Narcisa’s agency in Romance 8 (see chapter 4). Sor Juana, oc, 3: 281, lines 41–­42 and 49–­50. Chapter 4 considers the nun’s sonorous engagement with the vulnus caecum in detail. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 281–­82, lines 54 and 49–­61. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 281, lines 37–­48. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 282, lines 65–­71. Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 51–­52. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 283, lines 88–­89 and 93–­95. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 282–­83, lines 72–­83. Moreno, Musical Representations, 40. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 287, lines 100–­107. Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 14. Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 4–­7. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 284, lines 132–­49. Miranda, “Aves,” 102. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 282, lines 68–­69. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 395, lines 18–­24. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 395, lines 25–­32. Guastella, Word of Mouth, 4. Quoted in Bernat Vistarini and Cull, Enciclopedia, 336. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 396, lines 41–­44. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 397, lines 69–­72. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 397, lines 94–­95. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 398, lines 110–­13. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 398, lines 131–­32. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 400, lines 174–­86. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 400, lines 191–­94. Beginning in the nineteenth century, “siringe” or “syrinx” also came to refer to the vocal apparatus of birds (not unlike the human “larynx”), thus contributing, perhaps, to the vestiges of musica mundana that I seek to draw out (see “syrinx” in the Oxford English Dictionary and “siringe” in José Alemany y Bolufer’s 1917 Diccionario de la lengua española). Sor Juana, oc, 3: 333, lines 35–­38. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 334, lines 89–­90.

196 Notes to Pages 20–31

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

Sor Juana, oc, 3: 337, lines 201–­3. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 333–­34, lines 49–­66. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 331, lines 1–­2. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 335, lines 99–­107. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 336, lines 135–­38. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 338, lines 217–­22. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 338–­39, lines 223–­26. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 338–­39, lines 223–­30. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 406, line 34. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 423, lines 460–­61. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 407, line 171. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 404–­5, lines 1–­11. Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 17. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 406, lines 54–­56. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 407–­8, lines 101–­4. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 409, lines 146 and 155–­56. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 409, lines 158–­63. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 410, lines 176–­78. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 412 and 415, lines 243 and 284–­85. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 418, lines 316–­17. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 420–­21, lines 402–­4 and 410–­11. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 419, lines 350–­53. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 419, lines 358–­61. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 420, lines 400–­401. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 420, lines 394–­97. Paz, Sor Juana, 314–­15, and Ortiz, La musa, 105–­8. Paz, Sor Juana, 317, and Lavista, “Sor Juana Musicus,” 197. Miranda, “Sor Juana y la música,” 261–­62. With respect to Miranda’s observation, I echo Paz that Loa 384 and other musicopoetic works from Sor Juana’s oeuvre channel Kircher’s musical hermeticism (316–­19). Paz, Sor Juana, 313. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 464, lines 62–­64. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 465, lines 81–­84. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 482, lines 519–­28. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 468, lines 177–­84. Ortiz, “Musical Settings,” 243. Notes to Pages 31–43  197

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 4. Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 92. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 471, line 290. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 471, lines 291–­93. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 473, lines 316–­21. Lavista, “Sor Juana Musicus,” 197–­98. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 476, lines 393–­402. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 482, lines 531–­34. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 41–­42, lines 49–­64. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 336, lines 134–­38. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 349, lines 350–­66. All Diccionario de Autoridades citations are from the Real Academia Española’s digital version available at http://​web​.frl​.es​/da​.html. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 350–­51, lines 374–­401. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 352, lines 427 and 449. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 352, lines 454–­56. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 353, lines 470–­80. More, introduction, xiv. 2. Resonance

1. Kircher, Musurgia universalis, n.p., my translation. 2. In addition to those mentioned here, Antonio Alatorre, Aída Beaupied, Ruth Hill, and Georgina Sabat de Rivers also contributed to the understanding of Sor Juana’s engagement with Kircher. 3. Findlen, “A Jesuit’s Books,” 338. 4. Paz, Sor Juana, 317. 5. McKay, “Universal Music-­Making,” 15. 6. During the past ten years, however, a body of Kircherian scholarship has begun to emerge. Among others, Penelope Gouk’s “Making Music, Making Knowledge: The Harmonious Universe of Athanasius Kircher”; Eric Bianchi’s dissertation “Prodigious Sounds: Music and Learning in the World of Athanasius Kircher”; and McKay’s dissertation “Universal Music-­Making: Athanasius Kircher and Musical Thought in the Seventeenth Century” stand out as significant contributions. 7. In addition to Cerone’s treatise, the only other remaining volume from this repository is a copy of Octaviano della Mirandola’s Illustrium poetarum flores (1590) that belonged to the poet’s grandfather. 198 Notes to Pages 44–62

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

Alatorre, “Notas,” 393–­94. Findlen, “A Jesuit’s Books,” 320–­21. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 158, lines 101–­4. Trabulse, “El universo científico,” 47. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 450, lines 420–­21. Paz, Sor Juana, 544, n. 7. Findlen, “Jesuit’s Books,” 322. Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, 8. Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, 9. Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, 10–­11. Osorio Romero, La luz imaginaria, 12. Sigüenza y Góngora, “Testamento,” 171–­72. Brewer, Instrumental Music, 10. See Brewer, Instrumental Music, 11; Fletcher, Study, 76; and Findlen, “Jesuit’s Books,” 317–­18. Bartel, Musica poetica, 106. Quoted in and translated by Tronchin, “The ‘Phonurgia Nova,’” 4. Bartel, Musica poetica, 106. Singular during the first half of the seventeenth century, the Jesuit’s interest in musicorhetorical affect significantly influenced later theorists, including Cristoph Bernhard (1628–­92), whose Tractatus compositionis augmentatus (1660) was instrumental in the reconciliation of musica poetica with the Italian Baroque style. Somewhat later, Johann Mattheson’s (1681–­1764) Die vollkommene Capellmeister (1739) extensively treated the doctrines of music and affect. Led by Giovanni Bardi, the Florentine Camerata is a group of Italian music theorists whose work particularly influenced the development of opera at the end of the sixteenth century. Denouncing the complex polyphony that characterized late Renaissance madrigals, Bardi, Galilei, Caccini, and others defended the representative potential of a simple, “natural” musical style (including a return to monody and syllabic text settings) that they equated with an idealized construction of ancient Greek and Roman music. Jacopo Peri’s Dafne (1597), now lost, was one of the first operas directly influenced by the Florentine Camerata’s ideas. Peri and Caccini’s Euridice (1601) is the earliest extant copy of a Florentine Camerata-­style opera. Musurgia, book V, chapter 19, quoted in Bartel, Musica poetica, 107. The musicorhetorical theme that Kircher introduces at the opening of “De Figuris . . .” Notes to Pages 62–70  199

27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

persists throughout the chapter. Precisely, “De Figuris” includes a catalog of musical devices that Bartel affirms have roots in the classification in Joachim Thuringus’s Opusculum bipartitum de primordiis musicis (1624; 107–­8). For instance, among these is the transitus. In the rhetorical arts, the term describes a transition between parts of a written or spoken text. Kircher, who prefers the related term commissura, relates the concept to passing dissonances in a composition. Likewise, in the eighth chapter of book 8, “Musurgia rhetorica,” Kircher relies on the terminology of classical rhetoric to describe the overarching structure of a musical composition. Departing from models that such theorists as Joachim Burmeister and Gallus Dressler had already put forth, Kircher introduces the classical canons of rhetoric (specifically, the inventio, dispositio, and elocutio) into music composition. The Kircherian musical inventio, for example, refers to the choices that a composer makes prior to setting a text. It includes choosing a theme, a key, a meter, and a rhythm whose materials evoke an affect appropriate to that of the text. Quoted from Andreas Hirsch’s 1662 German translation of Musurgia universalis, book VII in Frandsen, Crossing Confessional Boundaries, 247. Translation by Frandsen. Luciani, Literary Self-­Fashioning, 127. Bergmann, Art Inscribed, 289. Ruth Hill’s Sceptres and Sciences in the Spains: Four Humanists and the New Philosophy (ca. 1680–­1740), Frederick Luciani’s Literary Self-­Fashioning in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Carlos Jáuregui’s Canibalia: Canibalismo, calibanismo antropofagia cultural y consumo en América Latina are representative of this Mexicanist approach. Mayers, “Between ‘allá’ and ‘acá,’” 118. Mayers, “Between ‘allá’ and ‘acá,’” 125–­26. See Mayers’s reading of the poet’s treatment of Lísida’s voice in Romance decasílabo 61, “Between ‘allá’ and ‘acá,’” 119–­20. For example, consider Heinrich Wölfflin’s adaptation of terminology used to describe the visual arts to the literary realm in his canonical Renaissance und Barock (1888), or the ocular-­centric resonances of Wölfflin’s text nearly a century later, in Christine Buci-­Glucksmann’s reading of Baroque visual culture, La folie du voir (1986). Rabin, “Speaking to Silent Ladies,” 149. Rabin, “Speaking to Silent Ladies,” 148.

200 Notes to Pages 71–74

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

Sor Juana, oc, 1: 219, lines 1–­4. Miranda, “Aves,” 15. Diccionario de autoridades. This is far from the only figurative use of the six degrees of the Guidonian hexachord (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la) in Sor Juana’s writings. Later in this chapter, I will examine other references to these pitches in Loa 384. Additionally, Mario Lavista has taken note of the hexachord’s structural importance in the Villancicos de la Asunción (1676), number 220 (see Lavista, “Sor Juana Musicus,” 200; the villancico appears in Sor Juana’s Obras completas, 2: 7–­8). Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “componer.” Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “clave.” Sor Juana, oc, 1: 219–­20, lines 25–­32. Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “deducciones.” Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “letra.” Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “invenciones.” Sor Juana, oc, 1: 220, lines 33–­40. Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “signo.” Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “signo.” Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “quiebro.” Sor Juana, oc 1: 220, lines 49–­56. Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “compás.” Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. “compás.” Grant, Beating Time, 54. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 340, lines 205–­9. Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, vol. 2, “Livre cinquiesme de la composition,” quoted in and translated by Grant, Beating Time, 54. Grant, Beating Time, 57–­58. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 463, lines 1–­4. Diccionario de Autoridades, s.v. “entender.” Sor Juana, oc, 3: 463, lines 5–­12. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 463, lines 13–­16. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 473, lines 333–­40. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 464, lines 65–­80. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 473–­74, lines 337–­44. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 476, line 402. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 473, lines 329–­36. Notes to Pages 74–91  201

67. Quoted in Lavista, “Sor Juana Musicus,” 197–­98. 68. Lavista, “Sor Juana Musicus,” 198. 69. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 476, lines 389–­92. 3. Sound

1. With respect to language, Omar Morales Abril divided the New Spanish villancicos’ representations of the Other into two categories: figured speech that distinguished American-­born characters from foreign ones and linguistic dichotomies like rural and urban or unlettered and lettered (19). 2. Sabat-­Rivers, “Blanco, negro,” 248. 3. Long, Sor Juana/música, 67. 4. Stevenson, Christmas Music, 23–­34. 5. Moraña, “Poder, raza,” 141. 6. Miranda, “Sor Juana y la música,” 266. 7. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 7, lines 7–­8. 8. Méndez Plancarte, “Notas a los villancicos,” oc, 3: 358; Long, Sor Juana/ música, 88–­89. 9. Paz, Sor Juana, 312; Stevenson, Christmas Music, 7. 10. Miranda, “Aves, ecos,” 95. 11. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 7, lines 1–­6. 12. As Tom Rice notes, “Listening is understood to involve a deliberate channeling of attention toward a sound” (Rice, “Listening,” 99). Complementarily, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “to attend” as “to stretch to . . . ; hence, to direct the mind or observant faculties, to listen, apply oneself; to watch over, minister to, wait upon, follow, frequent; to wait for, await, expect.” I refer to the oed for the brevity of its definition, which encompasses all entries for “atender” in the Diccionario de Autoridades. 13. Rice has summarized developments in sound studies and ethnomusicology that broaden approaches to sound and listening (Rice, “Listening,” 101). 14. Paz, Sor Juana, 312. 15. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 7, lines 11–­14. 16. Stevenson, Christmas Music, 7. 17. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 8, lines 36–­38 and 60–­62. 18. Hill, Sceptres and Sciences, 56. 19. Long, Sor Juana/música, 27. 20. Long, Sor Juana/música, 27. 202 Notes to Pages 91–98

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

Sor Juana, oc, 2: 93, lines 1–­8. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 93, lines 11–­13. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 94, 28–­33. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 61, lines 13–­30. Gonzalez, Musical Iconography, 163. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 62, lines 55–­62. Stevenson, Christmas Music, 62. Davies, “Villancicos from Mexico City,” 73–­74. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 312, lines 1–­5. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 313, lines 7–­8. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 312, lines 6–­15. Sun Eidsheim, Sensing Sound, 45. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 312–­13, lines 26–­35. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 62, line 62. Roberts, Encyclopedia, s.v. “immortality.” Rothenburg, Flower, 150. Villalpando’s El dulce nombre de María is an example of the tendency that Rothenburg describes, for a harpist and a horn player feature prominently among the band of angels surrounding the Virgin. Santos, “Musical Instruments,” 121. Parker, “Sor Juana’s City,” 74. Santos, “Musical Instruments,” 123–­24. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 239, lines 31–­43. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 240, lines 67–­70. Coifman, “‘Spirit of independence,’” 113. For a reading of Descartes’s acoustical theories based on the etymology of concutere, see Erlmann, Reason and Resonance, 31–­33. Van Orden, “Descartes,” 30. Scholars like Katherine Brucher and Suzel Ana Reily as well as Guy P. C. Thomson attribute the rise in martial music to two major developments: the invention of the piston valve, which gave brass instruments more melodic flexibility, and the newfound audibility of municipal bands during the consolidation process that followed the French Revolution. Both advances contributed to an increase in martial ensembles throughout Europe and the Americas (Brucher and Reily, “Introduction,” 9–­10; Thomson, “Ceremonial and Political Roles,” 311–­14). New Spain was no exception. For example, Jesús A. Ramos-­Kittrell observes that military musicians were an Notes to Pages 99–113  203

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

important feature of the refined urban spaces that Mexico City sought to establish (Playing, 29). Quoted in Domínguez Torres, Military Ethos, 167. Robles Cahero, “Cantar, bailar,” 46. Martínez–­San Miguel, Saberes americanos, 151–­65. Martínez–­San Miguel, Saberes americanos, 153. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 247, lines 25–­32. In addition to Kircher’s Musurgia universalis, Gary Tomlinson notes that descriptions of the restorative potential of sound are particularly relevant in Marsilio Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda (1489), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1531), and Tommaso Campanella’s Del senso delle cose e della magia (1590). See Tomlinson, Music, 164–­67, for a discussion of each text’s engagement with tarantism. See Gouk, Music, Science, 104–­5, and Fletcher, Study, 101–­2, for readings of Kircher’s approach to tarantism in light of his views on natural magic. See Brewer, Instrumental Music, 3–­9, for examples of Kircher’s tarantellas and English translations of the accompanying discussions of music’s curative properties. Quoted in and translated by Brewer, Instrumental Music, 5. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 247, lines 33–­36. Fogo Russell, “Tarantism,” 419. Curcio-­Nagy, Great Festivals, 58–­59. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 314, lines 1–­8. Ortiz, “Villancicos de negrilla,” 131. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 315, lines 25–­32. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 315, lines 40–­43. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 233–­34, lines 6–­17. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 234, lines 18–­19. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 234, lines 23–­25. Regla de las monjas, 120–­21. Loreto López, “Campanas, esquilones,” 76. Loreto López, “Campanas, esquilones,” 75. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 233, lines 1–­5. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 234, line 25. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 234, lines 32–­33. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 242, lines 4–­5.

204 Notes to Pages 113–122

71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84.

85.

Sor Juana, oc, 2: 243, lines 36–­37. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 243, lines 46–­50. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 242, lines 31–­35. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 243, lines 39–­40. In the Respuesta, the nun affirms, “Teniendo yo después como seis o siete años, y sabiendo ya leer y escribir, con todas las otras habilidades de labores y costuras que deprenden las mujeres, oí decir que había Universidad y Escuelas en que se estudiaban las ciencias, en Méjico; y apenas lo oí cuando empecé a matar a mi madre con instantes e importunos ruegos sobre que, mudándome el traje, me enviase a Méjico, en casa de unos deudos que tenía, para estudiar y cursar la Universidad” (Sor Juana, oc, 4: 445–­46, lines 238–­46). Sor Juana, oc, 2: 240, lines 1–­8. Márquez González, “De exámenes doctorales,” 24. Márquez González notes that two other pieces from Sor Juana’s oeuvre describe graduation ceremonies: Romance 47 and Soneto 199. However, the villancico offers the most complete description of the ritual and is the only work to include a musical reference. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 240, lines 9–­12. For overviews of restrictions on convent music making, see Evangelisti, Nuns, 114–­16, and Monson, Divas, 165–­66. Lavrín, Brides, 26. Many have remarked on the historical importance of the texts and other cultural artifacts that the nuns produced. For example, Craig Monson noted that convent theater in Bolognese profession ceremonies performed monasteries’ “internal hierarchies” (Monson, Divas, 167). In a new Spanish context, Thomas remarked on the “invaluable glimpses of monastic life” that such pieces offer (Thomas, Politics, 15), and Asunción Lavrín argued that profession sermons are useful for reconstructing official representations of convent life (Lavrín, Brides, 78). Thomas, Politics, 18. Muriel and Lledías, La música, 411. See Muriel and Lledías, La música, 411–­12, for a discussion of the musical components of a profession liturgy. For general descriptions of the ceremony in diverse monastic communities see Lavrín, Brides, 75–­77; Montero Alarcón, “Monjas coronadas,” 30–­33; Fisher, Music, Piety, 75–­77; Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 132–­37; and Reardon, Holy Concord, 55–­58. Thomas, Politics, 23. Notes to Pages 122–126  205

4. Echo

1. Among other sources, notable interpretations of Sor Juana’s engagement with questions of gender and knowledge include Merrim’s edited volume Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell’s introduction to Sor Juana’s The Answer/La respuesta, Verónica Grossi’s Sigilosos v(u)elos epistemológicos en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and finally, Kirk’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico. 2. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 7, lines 23–­26. 3. Baade, “Music and Misgiving,” 90–­93. 4. Wells, Secret Wound, 72. 5. Quoted in Wells, Secret Wound, 163. 6. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 29, lines 1–­4. 7. Wells, Secret Wound, 86. 8. Shakespeare, Complete Works, Romeo and Juliet, act II, scene IV, lines 13–­16. 9. Navarro Carranza, Voces del cielo, fol. 1. 10. Wack, Lovesickness, 15. 11. Wells, Secret Wound, 9. 12. Bartsch, Mirror, 67. 13. Bartsch amply attended to the intersection of sight and touch in Antiquity (Bartsch, Mirror, 58–­68). Likewise, see Jay, Downcast Eyes, 38–­48, and Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 22–­24, for discussions of the eye’s complex and sometimes contradictory significance in medieval and early modern cultures. 14. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 30, lines 5–­6. 15. “Phonosophia anacamptica” first appeared in Musurgia universalis, and Kircher subsequently expanded the essay in Phonurgia nova. 16. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 168, lines 13–­20. 17. Diccionario de Autoridades, s.v. “repercusivo.” 18. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 30, lines 13–­28. 19. Paz, Sor Juana, 314; Ortiz, La musa, 127–­29; Trabulse, “El universo científico,” 247. 20. Miranda, “Aves, ecos,” 95. 21. Sor Juana, oc, 2: 8, 51–­54. 22. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 30, lines 7–­8. 23. Arenal, “Where Woman Is the Creator,” 125–­26; Ludmer, “Tricks of the Weak,” 88; and Merrim, Early Modern, 172. 24. Arenal, “Where Woman Is Creator,” 125. 206 Notes to Pages 127–137

25. Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia’s Musica practica (1482), Marsilio Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda (1489), and Tommaso Campanella’s Del senso delle cose e della magia (1590) are several important precursors to Kircher’s theories of music’s psychosomatic effects and particularly to his ideas about sound’s restorative potential. See Tomlinson, Music, 164–­67 for a discussion of Kircher’s engagement with these. 26. Kircher, “On the Nature and Production,” 265–­66. 27. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 32, lines 279–­82. 28. For an overview of the Aristotelian sensory process, see Hatfield, “Cognitive Faculties,” 956–­57. 29. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 32, lines 283–­85. 30. Quoted in and translated by Palisca, Music and Ideas, 195. 31. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 27, lines 9–­12. 32. Donà, “‘Affetti musicali,’” 89. 33. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 32, lines 149–­55. 34. Erlmann, Reason and Resonance, 10. 35. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 30, lines 29–­40. 36. Merrim, Early Modern, 172. 37. Cavarero, For More, 105. 38. Calogero, “‘Sweet aluring harmony,’” 151. 39. Merrim, “Mores Geometricae,” 115. 40. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 75–­76, 1648–­57. 41. Glantz, Borrones y borradores, 195. 42. Merrim, “Mores Geometricae,” 114–­15. 43. Beaupied, Narciso hermético, 121. 44. Egan, “Donde Dios,” 327. 45. Menke, “However One Calls,” 88. 46. Sor Juana, oc, 3: 77, line 1669. 5. Silence

1. Ludmer, “Tricks of the Weak,” 88. 2. Moraña, Viaje, 190–­91. 3. Bokser, “Sor Juana’s Rhetoric,” 6. 4. Ochoa Gautier, “Silence,” 182–­83. 5. Ochoa Gautier, “Silence,” 184. 6. Cage, Silence, 51, all-­capital letters in original. Notes to Pages 137–154  207

7. Castillo, “Horror (Vacui),” 88. 8. Sor Juana explicitly refers to the Pauline injunction on women’s silence in the Respuesta. For a reading of the poet’s reading of the apostle’s entreaty, see Scott, “Sor Juana,” 516. 9. Fernández de Santa Cruz, Regla, 41. 10. Regla de las monjas, 20. 11. Fabián y Fuero, Colección, 1: 485–­86. 12. Rule books and edicts offer abundant evidence of how the Church regulated women’s music making in New Spanish convents. Ortiz cites several more examples in La musa, 29–­30. 13. Soria Gutiérrez, “Lengua, ojos,” 108. 14. Jardón, Lengua, ojos, fol. 6–­7. 15. Jardón, Lengua, ojos, fol. 2. 16. Jardón, Lengua, ojos, fol. 7–­8. 17. Mariana de la Encarnación, “Relación,” 342–­43. 18. Mariana de la Encarnación, “Relación,” 343. 19. Paz, Sor Juana, 538. 20. Myers, “Sor Juana’s Respuesta,” 460. 21. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 442, lines 82–­83. 22. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 440, lines 9–­10. 23. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 440, lines 25–­26. 24. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 442, line 100. 25. Perelmuter, “La estructura retórica,” 153. 26. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 440, lines 27–­29. 27. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 440, lines 8–­12. 28. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 442, lines 100–­104. 29. Cavarero, For More, 19–­20. 30. Cavarero, For More, 20. 31. Thomas, Politics, 49. 32. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 331, lines 3–­4. 33. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 333, lines 63–­65. 34. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 332, lines 38–­50. 35. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 332–­33, lines 56–­62. 36. Kirk, “Women’s Literacy,” 139. 37. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 440, lines 18–­23. 38. Sor Juana, oc, 4: 444, lines 177–­79. 208 Notes to Pages 155–167

Diccionario de Autoridades, s.v. “ruido.” Diccionario de Autoridades, s.v. “sonar.” Sor Juana, oc, 4: 441, lines 68–­75. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 336, lines 58–­59. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 340, line 207. Arenal, “Where Woman Is the Creator,” 125–­26. Bergmann, “Embodying,” 143. Hill, Sceptres and Sciences, 56. Hill, Sceptres and Sciences, 54. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 335, lines 1–­24. Toop, Sinister Resonance, 77. McKenna, “Rational Thought,” 43. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 337, lines 74–­79. Benítez, Demonios, 230. Olivares Zorrilla, “El sueño,” 393–­94. Bergmann, “Embodying,” 152. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 337, lines 83–­85. Toop’s reading of Harpocrates further supports such resonances. The scholar has read Harpocrates’s gesture as “a blockage of secrets” that draws uneasy attention to suppressed or marginalized discourses. In particular, Toop draws attention to the manner in which the sign’s dubious origins heighten its disruptive nature. He notes that the Ptolemaic Harpocrates has its roots in the Egyptian god Horus, whom the Egyptians generally depicted holding a finger to the lips in a symbol for child. Following the Alexandrine victory, the Greeks transformed Horus into Harpocrates and reinterpreted his gesture as an invocation to silence (Toop, Sinister Resonance, 78–­80). Given Harpocrates’s association with secrets, it is striking to note the semantic instability of his commanding gesture, whose cryptic origins challenge its own authority and heighten Primero sueño’s exploration of language’s limits. 57. Arenal and Schlau, introduction to Untold Sisters, 16. 58. Bergmann, “Optics,” 153; Merrim, Early Modern, 192; Sabat-­Rivers, “Feminist Rereading” 148. For instance, Sabat-­Rivers considers the male Ascalaphus a feminine figure because the poet associates him with “womanly” qualities: “the poet has chosen a masculine character who was punished for what has been considered to be one of the vices most characteristic of women: being too talkative.” 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Notes to Pages 167–175  209

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

Bergmann, “Embodying,” 148. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 336, lines 27–­38. Shimek, “Tenth Muses,” 6–­7. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 343, lines 330–­34. The connection that I draw out here echoes Merrim’s observation that Sor Juana’s Nyctimene is “a female Prometheus” (Merrim, Early Modern, 192). Sor Juana, oc, 1: 338, lines 111–­22. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 336, lines 53–­64. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 339, lines 147–­48. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 355, lines 811–­26. Kirk, “Women’s Literacy,” 139. 6. Coda

1. Kircher first published Itinerarium extaticum in 1656. His disciple Gaspar Schott annotated and reissued two subsequent editions titled Iter extaticum, respectively in 1660 and 1671. The tomes differ in structure, and as Garza noted, it is impossible to know which of the three inspired Sor Juana (Garza, “Iter extaticum coeleste,” 61). 2. Paz, Sor Juana, 478. 3. Although Sor Juana’s poem indeed resonates with other examples of music-­ inspired rapture like Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and the Pimandro, as Paz observed, I limit myself to vestiges of Iter extaticum because of Kircher’s omnipresence in my readings (Paz, Sor Juana, 479–­80). 4. Garza, “Iter extaticum coeleste,” 67. 5. Miranda, “Aves, ecos,” 100. 6. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 335, lines 21–­23. 7. McKenna, “Rational Thought,” 43. 8. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 337, lines 68–­70. 9. Iamblichus, Iamblichus’ Life, 61. 10. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 340, lines 207–­9. 11. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 340, line 213. 12. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 358, lines 917–­23. 13. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 358, lines 928–­30. 14. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 358, lines 936–­38. 15. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 359, lines 950–­58. 16. Sor Juana, oc, 1: 359, line 975. 210 Notes to Pages 176–191

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Index

Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations. acoustical metaphors, 74, 97, 113, 150 acousticopoetic portrait, 52–­53, 57; links between aurality and visuality in, 51, 59, 60, 68; Redondilla 87 as Sor Juana’s best-­known, 74–­84. See also musicopoetic portraits acoustics: geometric, 66–­68, 128, 129–­ 35; Kircher inquiry into, 66–­68, 128, 129, 133; metaphors of, 74, 97, 113, 150; Sor Juana’s engagement with, 149 affective properties: of harmony, 29–­30, 70–­71, 114; of music, 15, 20, 42, 68, 73, 89, 100, 138–­40; of song, 137, 139, 142, 188; of sound, 51, 97, 139–­40, 147, 148; of voice, 131, 142 affect theory, 69, 128 agency, 39, 95, 113, 146, 147; female, 96, 136, 137, 141, 143–­45, 152, 195n17; harmony as symbol of, 122; and silence, 152, 163–­64; and Virgin Mary, 112, 113. See also women’s voice and agency Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 204n51

air, 25, 99; and sound transmission, 30, 66, 70, 76, 105, 106, 137, 139, 140, 147, 155–­56, 164, 171 Alatorre, Antonio, 62 Albert Magnus, 162, 163 amor hereos, 130, 131–­33 anagrams, 45, 47, 92 aphonia, 11, 154, 162, 166, 168, 183 Apollonic music, 55; lyre in, 30, 37, 72, 121, 189 “Aprobación” (Calleja), 2, 3 Arenal, Electa, 2, 6–­7, 137, 161, 169, 170, 175 Aristotle, 15 Arnald of Villanova, 132 Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Kircher), 66–­67, 71 Ascalaphus, 175, 181, 209n58 Assumption, 103, 119; artistic representations of, 106–­9; musical representations of, 123–­24. See also Feast of the Assumption cycle Assumption of the Virgin (Bergognone), 107, 110 La Asunción-­Coronación de la Virgen (Correa), 107 223

La Asunción de la Virgen (López de Herrera), 107, 108 “auditory turn,” 8 aurality: affective capacity of, 15, 20, 42, 51, 68, 73, 89, 97, 100, 131, 138–­40, 142, 147–­48; and authority, 31, 167, 174; of birdsong, 31–­32, 51, 100, 171, 176, 187, 189; and civic order and authority, 13–­57; and desire, 129–­30; and ear, 85, 128, 129–­31, 135–­38, 139, 141; and female intellect, 124–­25, 127, 144–­45; and geometric acoustics, 37, 66–­68, 128, 129–­35; intellect’s resonance with, 162–­63; Kircher on, 128, 137–­ 38; and knowledge, 162, 177, 178–­79, 187, 192; and lovesickness, 129; and power, 167; resonance of, in music and arts, 59–­92; and silence, 151–­83; and social hierarchy, 179; and sound, 93–­126; and temporality, 119–­21; and Virgin Mary, 95–­106, 126; and writing, 57. See also hearing; music; sound; voice aurality-­visuality relationship, 150; El divino Narciso on, 143, 149; erotic nature of, 131; harmonic-­ mathematical connections in, 73; Kircher on, 68–­71; Loa 384 on, 84–­ 86, 89, 91–­92; and musical encoding, 91; Primero sueño on, 170, 171, 172–­73, 175, 187; Redondilla 87 on, 81–­82; Romance 8 on, 129–­31, 133, 135–­36, 149; in Sor Juana acousticopoetic portraits, 51, 59, 60, 68 authority: aurality’s resonances with, 31, 167, 174; and harmony, 15–­16, 30, 35, 41, 42, 44, 55, 57, 167–­68; political, 9, 14, 16, 39, 41, 44, 57; royal, 18, 55; and 224 Index

silence, 157, 174–­75, 182; and voice, 163. See also civic order and authority Avicenna, 84 Avilés, Luis, 71 Baade, Colleen, 128 Baños de Velasco y Azevedo, Juan, 23 Bardi, Giovanni, 199n25 Bartel, Dietrich, 66, 68 Bartsch, Shadi, 133 beat, 83–­84, 112–­13. See also rhythm Beaupied, Aída, 147, 152 beauty, 35, 37, 127; cosmic, 74–­84; feminine, 72, 78–­79, 192; and harmony, 80, 82–­83, 84–­88, 123; and love, 59, 133; and mathematical proportions, 43, 56, 82, 86, 87–­88, 123, 136; musical representation of, 74, 76, 136; and song, 76, 143, 144; of soul and body, 59, 76 bells and chimes, 120 Bembo, Pietro, 59 Bénassy-­Berling, Marie-­Cécile, 61 Benítez, Fernando, 173 Bergmann, Emilie, 71, 72, 169–­70, 174, 175–­76 Bergognone, Ambrogio, 107, 110 Bernhard, Cristoph, 199n24 Bianchi, Eric, 198n6 birdsong, 31–­32, 51, 100, 171, 176, 187, 189 body: humors of, 70, 89, 137; and music, 84, 89, 92, 113, 116; and soul, 59, 83, 132–­33, 138, 181, 182–­83; sound’s impact on, 113–­19, 137, 139; woman’s, 165–­66 Boethius, 194n1 Bokser, Julie, 153 Bonifaz Nuño, Rubén, 185 Boyle, Robert, 156

brass instruments, 203n45 breath, 171; divine, 147, 164, 165 Brewer, Charles E., 66 Brouncker, Lord William, 112 Brucher, Katherine, 203n45 Bruno, Giordano, 173–­74 Buci-­Glucksmann, Christine, 200n34 bugle, 102–­3 Burmeister, Joachim, 200n26 Butler, Katherine, 16 Buxó, José Pascual, 61, 71 Cabrera, Miguel, 62 Caccini, Giulio, 69, 195n16, 199n25 Cage, John, 153–­54 Calleja, Diego, 2, 3 Calogero, Elena Laura, 145 Campanella, Tommaso, 204n51, 207n25 cantus firmus, 90, 136 El caracol (Sor Juana), 3–­4 Carmelites, 156 “Carta de Sor Filotea” (Fernández de Santa Cruz), 161 Carullo, Sylvia Graciela, 71 Castiglione, Baltasar de, 41 Castillo, David, 155 Catherine of Alexandria, St., 109, 127 Cavarero, Adriana, 8, 144–­45, 164 celestial harmony, 100, 102, 116, 126, 127 Cerda Sandoval Silva y Mendoza, Gaspar de la, 164 ceremonies, 93, 95; graduation, 124–­25, 205n78; profession, 125–­26, 205n81. See also Feast of the Assumption cycle Cerone, Pietro, 98, 194n8; El melopeo y maestro, 4, 41, 96 Charles II: Loa 374 on, 17–­24; Loa 377 on, 30, 32–­33, 51–­56; Loa 380 on, 25, 28

Church, 118, 127, 176–­77; women’s voices regulated by, 5, 118, 152, 156–­ 57, 167, 208n12 Cicero, 68 circular temperament (well temperament), 5 civic order and authority: and concordia discors, 51, 55; and consonance, 17, 18–­21, 23, 25, 29–­31, 33, 34, 40, 42, 44, 48, 51, 55, 56; and harmony, 15–­ 16, 20–­21, 33, 44, 48, 57, 167–­68; and music, 22–­23, 38, 39, 40, 42–­43; and musica mundana, 17–­41; and music of the spheres, 23–­24; and political power, 9, 14, 16, 39, 41, 44, 57; and Sor Juana oeuvre, 13–­14 civitas, 15, 39, 56 Clamurro, William, 71 cognition, 132, 139, 140; Kircher on, 10, 137–­38. See also affective properties; perception Coifman, David, 112 Colonna, Francesco Maria Pompeo, 59, 92 commissura, 200n26 Compendium Musicae (Descartes), 112–­13 concordia discors, 50, 121; and civic authority, 51, 55; civitas relationship to, 39; doctrine explained, 21; and harmony, 36, 47, 53, 190; Loa 374 on, 25; Loa 377 on, 30, 33, 34, 35, 51, 53, 55; Loa 380 on, 25, 30; Loa 381 on, 35–­36, 37, 38, 39, 40; Loa 384 on, 42–­ 43, 45, 47, 48 consonance, 36–­37, 190; civic, 17, 18–­21, 23, 25, 29–­31, 33, 34, 40, 42, 44, 48, 51, 55, 56; and dissonance, 97–­98, 100, 112; divine, 48, 99, 120, 188, 192; and governance, 16; and Marian image, Index  225

consonance (continued) 97–­104, 120, 121, 192; musical, 55, 193n6; as Pythagorean principle, 86, 122, 136, 141. See also harmony Convento de San Jerónimo, 2 convent rule books, 156–­57 Correa, Juan, 107 Cortesano (Castiglione), 41 cosmic resonances, 186; in beauty, 74–­ 84; in harmony, 16, 17, 45, 47, 74–­76, 82, 86, 95, 121, 142; in order, 72, 97, 98, 99, 121, 136, 187, 189–­90, 191 courtly love, 129, 130, 132 Cupid’s arrow, 129, 130–­31, 133, 134, 135, 190 Curcio-­Nagy, Linda, 117 dance, 114–­15, 116–­17, 118–­19 d’Arezzo, Guido, 81–­82, 91 Davies, Drew Edward, 102–­3 De amore (Ficino), 129, 130 de la Cerda, José, 30, 33, 51, 55 de la Cerda, Tomás, 14, 35 de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés. See Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz De la grammatologie (Derrida), 7 del Río Parra, Elena, 2, 6 De rerum natura (Lucretius), 129, 130 Derrida, Jacques, 7, 194n17 Descartes, René, 7, 112–­13 desire, 59, 129–­30, 132, 133 Devil, 70, 111–­12; and silence, 158–­59 De vita coelitus comparanda (Ficino), 194n14, 204n51, 207n25 Diálogos de Amor (Ebreo), 41 diatonic scale, 41, 42, 44, 98 Dino del Garbo, 132 dissonance, 74, 101, 141; and consonance, 97–­98, 100, 112; and female 226 Index

voice, 180, 181; in music, 200n26; and silence, 162, 187; tempering influences on, 21–­22, 44–­45 divine breath, 147, 164, 165 divine harmony, 20, 84, 88, 103, 120, 122, 128, 145, 185, 188 divine voice, 165–­66, 171 El divino Narciso (Sor Juana), 9, 128, 137, 138–­39, 143, 192; paradigms of female voice in, 145–­49 Dolar, Mladen, 8 Donà, Mariangela, 142 Dorian mode, 15 Dressler, Gallus, 200n26 drums, 37–­38, 112 dysphonia, 11, 154, 183; as response to authority, 160–­68 eagle, 177–­78 ear, 85, 129, 130–­31; and acoustics, 137–­ 38, 139, 141; eye’s alignment with, 128, 135–­36; and soul, 112 Ebreo, León, 41 echo, 66, 67, 147; El divino Narciso personification of, 128–­29, 143–­44, 145–­49 Egan, Linda, 147 Elvira de Toledo (Countess of Galve), 41, 43–­47 emotions: and music, 69–­70, 71, 81, 138 Erlmann, Veit, 7, 18, 142 eye, 85, 86, 130, 133; ear’s alignment with, 128, 135–­36 Fabián y Fuero, Francisco, 157, 160 Fama y obras póstumas (Sor Juana), 2 Fame and History (Goltzius), 26, 27 Favián, Alejandro, 63–­64, 65

Feast of the Assumption cycle (1677), 10, 95, 109, 111–­14, 118–­24. See also villancico cycles female aurality and sonorities. See women’s voice and agency feminine beauty, 72, 192 Fernández, Gaspar, 93 Fernández de Santa Cruz, Manuel, 156, 160–­61, 166–­67, 168 Ficino, Marsilio: De amore, 129, 130; De vita coelitus comparanda, 194n14, 204n51, 207n25 Findlen, Paula, 61, 62, 63 Florentine Camerata, 69, 199n25 Fludd, Robert, 46, 47 Fogo Russell, Jean, 116 Franco, Jean, 161 fugue, 115, 116 Gaffurius, Franchinus, 47, 84 Galen, 84, 132 Galilei, Vincenzo, 69, 199n25 Garza, Héctor, 185, 186 Gassendi, Pierre, 170 gender discourse and themes: and ceremonial language, 14, 124–­26; El divino Narciso on, 9, 137, 138–­39, 142, 143, 145–­49, 192; and music, 4, 127–­ 28, 136; in New Spain, 11, 94–­95, 146, 192; in painting, 72; Primero sueño on, 11, 175–­82; Redondilla 87 on, 78–­ 80; Romance 8 on, 128, 130, 135–­36, 141, 143–­45, 149, 192; villancicos on, 94–­95, 98, 103. See also women; women’s intellect; women’s voice and agency geometric acoustics, 129–­35; Kircher view of, 66–­68, 128, 129, 133

Gesualdo, Carlo, 195n16 Glantz, Margo, 147 God, 50, 133, 164; breath of, 147, 164, 165; and music, 24, 88 Goltzius, Hendrick, 26, 27 Góngora, Luis de, 72, 74 Gonzalez, Sara, 14, 16, 17, 23, 37, 44, 101 good and evil, 111–­12 Gouk, Penelope, 7, 198n6 governance, 48; balanced, 16, 20, 43; harmony and concord in, 16, 20, 30, 31, 32–­33, 40, 41–­42 graduation ceremonies, 124–­25, 205n78 Grant, Roger Mathew, 83, 84 Guastella, Gianni, 27 Guidonian hand, 81–­82 Guidonian hexachord, 41, 77, 79, 90, 201n40 Guidonian solmization, 81, 90, 91 Guillot, François. See Ximénez, Francisco Harmonie universelle (Mersenne), 84, 98 harmony, 13–­57; affective properties of, 29–­30, 70–­71, 114; and agency, 122; and authority, 15–­16, 30, 35, 41, 42, 44, 55, 57, 167–­68; and beauty, 80, 82–­83, 84–­88, 123; celestial, 100, 102, 116, 126, 127; and civic authority, 15–­ 16, 20–­21, 33, 44, 48, 57, 167–­68; and concordia discors, 36, 47, 53, 190; cosmic, 16, 17, 45, 47, 74–­76, 82, 86, 95, 121, 142; and disharmony, 37, 180–­ 81; divine, 20, 24, 84, 88, 103, 120, 122–­23, 128, 145, 185, 188; feminization of, 98, 127; and governance, 31, 32–­33, 41–­42; between heaven and earth, 96, 97–­98, 99, 100, 103, 121; Index  227

harmony (continued) Kircher on, 70–­71, 115; between love and war, 36–­37; Marian imagery of, 95–­106, 121; and mathematics, 20, 73, 89, 123, 136; and military bands, 111–­12; musical, 81–­83, 88, 136, 142, 188; and musical instruments, 75, 125; and music of the spheres, 13, 15, 55, 136; music’s links to, 20–­21, 24, 39, 74–­76, 141, 189–­90; and painting, 71–­74, 122; Plato on, 15, 67–­68; Pythagoreanism on, 20, 41–­42, 86, 138, 141; and soul, 76, 141, 189–­90; and temperament, 45; and time, 83, 119–­20; universal, 41, 57, 98, 99, 136, 142, 145, 149; and writing, 89. See also consonance Harpocrates, 155, 173–­74, 179, 181, 209n56 hearing: and desire, 129–­30; and intellect, 163; Kircher on, 137–­38; and musica pathetica, 137–­43; and seeing, 84–­85, 131, 170, 172–­73. See also aurality heart: beating of, 84, 188–­89; and soul, 139 heaven-­earth relationship, 95, 96, 98, 99, 107, 121 hexachord, 41, 77, 79, 90, 201n40 Hill, Ruth, 98, 170 Homer, 144, 145 horror vacui, 154–­56 humors, body, 70, 89, 132 “Hymn to St. John,” 45 Ibn al-­Jazzar, 132 Immaculate Conception, 158, 159 immortality, 95, 107, 138 Inquisition, 167 228 Index

intellect: female, 48, 79, 80–­90, 124–­25, 127, 147–­48, 175–­76; and hearing, 162–­63 Inundación castálida (Sor Juana), 3 Le istitutioni harmoniche (Zarlino), 22, 90 Iter extaticum coeleste (Kircher), 185–­ 86, 210n1 James I, 27–­28 Jardón, José, 157–­58 Jerusalem, Ignacio, 93 Josquin des Prez, 90 Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor. See Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Julius II, 120 Kircher, Athanasius: Ars magna lucis et umbrae, 66–­67, 71; background of, 66; circulation of books authored by, 63–­65; geometric acoustics of, 66–­68, 128, 129, 133; on hearing, 128, 137–­38; influence on Sor Juana of, 61–­ 63, 71, 92, 114, 115, 128, 185–­86, 197n74; Iter extaticum coeleste, 185–­86, 210n1; Magnes, sive De Arte Magnetica, 63, 115, 141–­42; Magneticum Naturae Regnum, 63; on magnetism, 141–­42; Mundus Subterraneus, 63; on musical composition, 200n26; on musical perception, 66, 140, 141; and musica mundana, 187; on music’s influence, 59–­60, 69–­71, 138; Musurgia universalis, 3, 8, 10–­11, 59–­60, 61, 62, 63, 64–­67, 69–­71, 90, 115, 128, 137–­38, 140–­42, 147, 149, 187, 199–­200n26; Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 62; Phonurgia nova, 8, 10–­11, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67–­68, 128, 129, 133, 141–­42, 149; scholarship on, 62, 198n6; on sound amplification

and transmission, 52, 66–­68, 104, 155–­ 56; and tarantella, 115, 117 Kirk, Pamela, 152, 166, 183 knowledge: and aurality, 162, 177, 178–­ 79, 187, 192; female, 145, 149, 165, 175, 176, 178, 181, 183, 191; and silence, 153, 169, 173, 174; and song, 127, 145; and sound, 127, 192; and speech, 153; and voice, 153, 161, 162, 187 language, 14, 42, 79, 202n1; echo’s effects on, 147, 148; Kircher on, 80–­81, 148; and music, 66, 69, 81, 90; musicopoetic, 30, 39, 195n10; and phonos, 162; political, 42; semantic properties of, 148, 149, 164; and silence, 153, 154, 161, 173, 175; visual, 134–­35; and voice, 163–­64 Lauds, 121 Lavista, Mario, 1, 41, 91, 201n40 Lavrín, Asunción, 125, 205n81 Leiris, Michel, 1 Lengua, ojos y oídos de una mujer panegirista, 158, 177 “Letras sagradas en la solemnidad de la profesión de una religiosa” (Sor Juana), 10, 125–­26 lexical ambiguity, 78, 79, 81, 85, 88, 89 Libro de la vida (Santa Teresa), 161 light-­darkness dialectic, 176 listening, 96, 97, 99, 172, 202n12 Lledías, Luis, 125–­26 Loa 374 (Sor Juana), 17–­23 Loa 377 (Loa a los años del rey 377) (Sor Juana), 30–­35, 51–­56 Loa 380 (Loa a los años de la Reina Madre, Doña Mariana de Austria, Nuestra Señora) (Sor Juana), 25–­30

Loa 381 (Sor Juana), 35–­41 Loa 384 (Sor Juana), 1, 41–­48, 72, 73, 197n74; harmonic portraiture in, 84–­89; and musical writing, 89–­92 Loaysa, José de, 94 Long, Pamela, 1, 3, 5–­6, 94, 95–­96, 98, 99 López de Herrera, Alonso, 107, 108 Loreto López, Rosalva, 120 love, 37–­38, 147; and beauty, 59, 133; courtly, 129, 130, 132; and Cupid’s arrow, 129, 130–­31, 133, 134, 135, 190; medical discourse on, 132–­33; poetry on, 132, 145, 190 lovesickness, 128, 129, 133, 148, 149; as concept, 131–­32 Luciani, Frederick, 71, 169 Lucretius, 129, 130 Ludmer, Josefina, 137, 152, 153 lyre, 23, 64, 98, 131; Apollonic, 30, 37, 72, 121, 189 Machiavellianism, 23, 44, 48 Macrobius, 210n3 Maes, Nicolaes, 172, 177, 179 magic, 7, 115, 204n52 Magnes, sive De Arte Magnetica (Kircher), 63, 115, 141–­42 magnetism, 141–­42, 189 Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga, María Luisa, 3, 14 Marcela (slave woman), 158–­59 Mariana de la Encarnación, Madre, 159–­60 Mariana of Austria, 25, 28–­30 Márquez González, José Antonio, 124, 205n78 Marquise de la Laguna, 35–­40 Martínez-­San Miguel, Yolanda, 113–­14 Index  229

Mary, Virgin, 118, 120, 158; Assumption of, 103, 106–­9, 119, 123–­24; death of, 101–­2; and feminine intellect, 127–­ 28; harmonic imagery of, 95–­106, 121; as mediator between heaven and earth, 96, 97–­98, 103, 121; as shield, 111–­12; and song, 95, 96, 97, 102, 103, 124, 127–­28, 136 mathematics, 42, 70, 73, 122, 193; and beauty, 43, 56, 82, 86, 87–­88, 123, 136; and harmony, 20, 73, 89, 123, 136; and music, 8, 86–­87. See also Pythagoreanism Matins, 121 Mattheson, Johann, 199n24 Maurice of Nassau, 112 Mayers, Kathryn M., 71, 72–­73 McGrattan, Alexander, 17 McKay, John, 62, 198n6 McKenna, Susan M., 172, 187 medicine, 132 melody, 115, 136 El melopeo y maestro (Cerone), 4, 41, 96 Méndez Plancarte, Alfonso, 83, 95–­96 Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino, 14 Menke, Bettine, 147 Merrim, Stephanie, 3, 137, 144, 147, 175 Mersenne, Marin, 84, 98 mestizaje, 94 metaphor: acoustical, 74, 97, 113, 150; resonant and reasoned types of, 142 meter, 33, 83–­84, 117–­18. See also rhythm military bands, 111–­12, 113, 203–­4n45 Minerva, 124–­25, 176, 178, 179–­80 Minyades sisters, 169, 175, 179–­81, 188 Miranda, Juan de, 62 Miranda, Ricardo, 1, 5, 24, 41, 186, 195n10; on Marian theme, 95, 96; 230 Index

on Sor Juana’s musical metaphors, 74–­75 Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie ( Josquin des Prez), 90 Monson, Craig, 205n81 Monteverdi, Claudio, 195n16 Morales Abril, Omar, 202n1 Moraña, Mabel, 95, 152, 153 More, Anna, 57 Moreno, Jairo, 22 Moreno, Salvador, 3 Moses, 163–­64 motion, 19, 70, 116, 140; and sound, 188–­89 motus, 83–­84 mourning and grief, 104, 105–­6 mouth, 175, 176, 177, 180 La mujer del Apocalipsis (Villalpando), 107, 109 Muriel, Josefina, 125–­26 La musa y la melopea (Ortiz), 5 music: affective properties of, 15, 20, 42, 68, 73, 89, 100, 138–­40; and body, 84, 89, 92, 113, 116; in ceremonies, 124–­26; and civic order, 22–­23, 38, 39, 40, 42–­43; consonance and dissonance in, 55, 200n26; and emotion, 69–­70, 71, 81, 138; female and gendered, 4, 127–­28, 136; Florentine Camerata on, 69, 199n25; harmony’s links to, 20–­21, 24, 39, 74–­76, 141, 189–­90; iconography of, 106–­13; Kircher on, 59–­60, 66, 68, 69–­71, 138, 140, 141, 187, 200n26; and language, 66, 69, 81, 90; made by women, 4, 118, 125; and magic and occult, 7, 41, 115; and Marian representations, 96, 97, 102, 123–­25; martial, 113, 203–­4n45; and mathematics, 8, 86–­87; New Spain

culture of, 6, 94; and painting, 73, 92; perception of, 60, 66, 140, 141; Plato on, 15; and poetry, 75, 78, 81, 88–­89, 140; popular, 113; psychophysiological effects of, 20, 117, 137, 207n25; and Pythagorean school, 188; and race, 114; Renaissance theories on, 4–­5, 16; representations of beauty in, 74, 76, 136; representations of God and heaven in, 88, 95, 109; representative capacity of, 80, 84; and rhetoric, 8, 73, 79, 92, 200n26; Sor Juana relationship to, 2–­6, 89–­92; and soul, 70–­71, 88–­89, 112–­13, 138, 141, 186–­87; tripartite division of, 13, 194n1; and writing, 68, 71, 81–­82, 92. See also song musica humana, 13, 42, 45, 73, 77, 82, 194n1; and divine consonance, 99; and Kircher, 137, 138, 142; in Loa 384, 41–­48; in Primero sueño, 83, 186, 187, 188, 189; and Pythagorean tradition, 82, 87, 88, 138, 141 musica instrumentalis, 13, 73, 104, 137, 194n1 musical instruments, 66, 82–­83, 111, 203n45; bells and chimes, 120; drum and percussion, 37–­38, 112, 117–­18; and harmony, 75, 125; string, 109, 121; trumpet and bugle, 17, 27, 68, 102–­3, 195n10; voice compared to, 18, 131 musical scale, 41, 42, 44, 45, 55, 98, 190 musical time, 83 musica mundana, 13, 42, 73, 77, 141, 194n1; and civic authority, 17–­41; and Kircher, 137, 142, 187; and musica practica, 99–­100; in Primero sueño, 186, 187, 188, 189; in Sor Juana loas, 17, 30–­31, 86–­87; in Sor Juana villancicos, 100, 101, 104

musica pathetica: and hearing of sound, 67, 137–­43; and Kircher, 10, 61, 66, 68–­71, 73, 74, 139–­40; musica poetica’s intersection with, 66, 92, 99; in Sor Juana, 81, 89, 97, 99, 100, 106, 148, 149 musica poetica: about tradition of, 68; and Kircher, 61, 66, 68–­71, 73, 74; musica pathetica’s intersection with, 66, 92, 99; in Sor Juana, 78, 81, 89, 92, 97, 99, 123 musica practica, 5–­6, 8, 19, 42; and musica mundana, 99–­100; and Primero sueño, 187, 188, 189 musica theorica, 5–­6, 8 music of the spheres, 60, 82, 149, 195n10; and civic authority, 23–­24; as distinct from music making, 6; as harmony-­based worldview, 13, 15, 55, 136; and Kircher, 140, 141–­42; and Primero sueño, 186–­87, 188; Romance 8 resonances of, 137, 141; in Sor Juana loas, 23–­24, 43, 55; in Sor Juana villancicos, 99, 128; and visuality, 72 musicopoetic portraits, 9–­10, 38, 41, 51–­ 52, 80, 83–­84, 93, 96, 99; encryption in, 90–­91; Kircher’s influence in, 73. See also acousticopoetic portrait Musurgia universalis (Kircher), 3, 8, 10–­11, 90, 115, 128, 141–­42, 187, 199–­200n26; diagrams in, 71, 147, 148; on hearing, 137–­38; on musical perception, 66, 140; on music’s influence, 59–­60, 69–­71; Sor Juana engagement with, 61, 62, 63, 149; on sound amplification, 66–­67 Myers, Kathleen, 161 Index  231

Narcissus, 128; El divino Narciso depiction of, 138, 145–­49; Romance 8 depiction of, 129–­31, 133, 135–­36, 137, 138, 141–­45, 148–­49, 192 Navarro Carranza, Francisco, 131 Neoplatonism, 86, 104, 112–­13, 185 New Spain, 166; gender politics in, 146; Inquisition in, 167; Kircher influence in, 63–­65; racial divisions in, 94, 114, 117, 118; sound culture and music of, 9–­10, 93, 94–­95, 109, 126; women’s marginalization in, 166, 192 Nicholas of Cusa, 173–­74 Nicomachus, 193n6 nothingness, 155, 156, 166 Nyctimene, 175, 176–­77, 179–­80 Obeliscus Pamphilius, 47–­48, 49 occult, 7, 41, 60 Ochoa Gautier, Ana María, 153 Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Kircher), 62 Olivares Zorrilla, Rocío, 173–­74 On Music (Quintilianus), 15 Opera kirkeriano, 62 order, 113, 117–­18, 194n1; cosmic resonances in, 72, 97, 98, 99, 121, 136, 187, 189–­90, 191; divine, 72, 73, 121, 122–­ 23, 189; and harmony, 73, 122–­23, 191. See also civic order and authority Ortí, Marco Antonio, 27–­28 Ortiz, Mario, 1–­2, 86, 118, 122; on Sor Juana’s musical inheritance, 4, 5; on Sor Juana’s Pythagoreanism, 9, 43, 136 Ovid, 132, 149 painting, 77–­78, 92, 122; Sor Juana’s engagement with, 72–­74 Palisca, Claude V., 140 232 Index

paragone, 73–­74 Parker, Margaret, 109 Paz, Octavio, 3–­4, 41, 96, 136, 161, 185; on Kircher’s influence, 9, 41, 61, 63; on silence, 151; on Sor Juana’s patrons, 13–­14 perception: audience, 116; auditory, 68, 97, 137, 154, 162, 179; musical, 60, 66, 140, 141; sensory, 60, 66, 106, 128, 139–­40, 149 percussion instruments, 117–­18 Perelmuter, Rosa, 162 Pérez de la Rúa, Antonio, 23 Peri, Jacopo, 195n16, 199n25 Peter of Spain, 132 Petrarch, 72–­73, 74 phonophobism, 7, 194n17 phonos, 129, 164, 192; and language, 162 Phonurgia nova (Kircher), 8, 10–­11, 66, 128, 141–­42, 149; acoustical diagram from, 129, 133, 134; circulation of, in New Spain, 63, 64; Sor Juana engagement with, 61, 62, 63; on sound amplification, 67–­68 Phrygian mode, 15 Pius IX: Ineffabilis Deus, 158 Plato, 15–­16, 141, 167–­68. See also Neoplatonism poetry, 20, 59; love, 132, 145, 190; and music, 75, 78, 81, 88–­89, 140; and song, 89, 139, 140, 142; Sor Juana’s, 9, 14, 16, 35, 56, 57, 71, 72, 73, 74–­84, 136, 175, 192; sound’s links to, 6; visual nature of, 72–­73. See also musica poetica polyphony, 113, 140, 187, 199n25 polysemy, 140, 162, 189–­90; in loas, 52–­ 53, 85, 89; in Redondilla 87, 74, 83, 89;

in villancicos, 100, 102, 103, 109, 111, 113, 122–­23, 124 popular music, 113 Powell, Amanda, 161 Practica Musicae (Gaffurius), 47 Primero sueño (Sor Juana), 1; auditory imagery in, 84, 185, 186–­92; on aurality-­visuality relationship, 170, 171, 172–­73, 175, 187; centrality of sound in, 169–­70, 174–­75, 186, 190; consonance and dissonance in, 98; scholarship on, 169–­70; silence as theme in, 11, 151, 155, 169–­75, 192; and voice, 11, 175–­82 profession ceremonies, 125–­26, 205n81 Puccini, Dario, 94 punishment, 178, 179, 180, 182–­83 Pythagoras, 193n6 Pythagoreanism, 9, 13, 43, 100, 123; and architecture, 99; and beauty, 43, 56, 82, 86, 87–­88, 136; and cosmos, 16, 73; and harmony and consonance, 20, 41–­42, 86, 122, 136, 138, 141; mathematics doctrine of, 70, 193n6; and musica humana, 82, 87, 88, 138, 141; songs of, 188; Sor Juana’s, 79, 136, 137, 140, 147; tuning and harmonics in, 4, 22, 55, 193n6 Quevedo, Francisco, 74 Quintilianus, Aristides, 15 Rabin, Lisa, 73–­74 race, 94, 114, 117, 118 Ramos de Pareia, Bartolomeo, 84 Ramos-­Kittrell, Jesús A., 203–­4n45 Rappaport, Pamela Kirk, 152 reason, 1, 11, 127, 162, 177; and metaphors, 142–­43; and song, 79

Recopilación de Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias, 124 Redondilla 87 (Sor Juana), 72, 73, 192; cosmic beauty in, 74–­84 Reily, Suzel Ana, 203n45 Remedia amoris (Ovid), 132 Republic (Plato), 15–­16 resonance, 45, 86, 148–­49; and metaphors, 142–­43; and reflection, 7; sympathetic, 75, 131 Respuesta a sor Filotea (Sor Juana), 1, 2–­3, 63, 153; background of, 160–­61; silence as theme of, 11, 151, 160–­61, 162–­69, 183, 192; on women’s education, 205n75 Rhazes, 132 rhetoric, 123; and music, 8, 73, 79, 92, 200n26 rhythm, 15, 32, 116, 117–­19, 188; and beat, 83–­84, 112–­13 Rice, Tom, 202n12 Rivers, Elías, 169 Robles Cahero, José Antonio, 113 Romance 8 (Sor Juana), 133, 196; on aurality-­visuality relationship, 129–­ 31, 133, 135–­36, 149; Echo in, 128–­29, 143–­44, 145–­49; female voice and agency in, 137, 141, 143–­45, 149, 192; gender discourse reframing in, 144, 145, 192; and music of the spheres, 137, 141; on music’s affective impact, 138–­39; Narcisa in, 129–­31, 133, 135–­36, 137–­38, 141–­45, 148–­49, 192 Romance 13 (Sor Juana), 48–­50 Romance 21 (Sor Juana), 1, 3, 4 Romance 50 (Sor Juana), 62–­63 Romance descasílabo 61 (Sor Juana), 72 Index  233

Romancillo heptasílabo 57 (Sor Juana), 133–­34 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 131 Rothenburg, David, 107 Rudolph II, 27 Sabat-­Rivers, Georgina, 71, 94, 113–­14, 175, 209n58 Salazar, Antonio de, 94, 102 Santos, María Elena, 107, 109 Schlau, Stacey, 174, 175 Schott, Gaspar, 210n1 seconda prattica, 195n16 sensory perception, 106, 128, 139–­40, 149; of music, 60, 66 sensuality, 61, 73, 133 Shakespeare, William, 131 Shimek, Suzanne, 176, 177 sight. See visuality and sight Siglo quarto de la Conquista de Valencia (Ortí), 27–­28 Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de, 65 silence, 151–­83; and agency, 152, 163–­ 64; and aphonia, 11, 154, 162, 166, 168, 183; and authority, 157, 174–­75, 182; as disruptive and defiant, 168–­69, 175, 183; and dissonance, 162, 187; and dysphonia, 11, 154, 160–­68, 183; and female voice, 126, 137, 152, 156–­60, 174, 175, 182, 183; and knowledge, 153, 169, 173, 174; and language, 153, 154, 161, 173, 175; and nothingness, 155; Primero sueño on, 11, 151, 155, 169–­75, 192; Respuesta a sor Filotea on, 11, 151, 160–­61, 162–­ 69, 183, 192; and sight, 74, 84; in Sor Juana oeuvre, 152–­54; and sound, 87, 154–­56, 170; soundlessness as 234 Index

different from, 11, 153–­54; voice’s relationship to, 160, 161 Silva 215 (“Epinicio gratulatorio al Conde de Galve”) (Sor Juana), 164–­66 Siren motif, 143–­45 social hierarchies, 153, 166, 179 soggetto cavato, 90–­91 solmization, 81, 90, 91 song: affective capacity of, 137, 139, 142, 188; aural-­verbal duality of, 142–­43; and beauty, 76, 143, 144; by birds, 31–­32, 51, 100, 171, 176, 187, 189; and cantar, 75; and dance, 114–­15, 118–­19; and knowledge, 127, 145; lyrical and acoustical qualities of, 139, 140; of Minyades sisters, 169, 181, 188; Narcisa’s, 128–­29, 130–­31, 133, 137, 143–­45, 149, 192; and poetry, 89, 139, 140, 142; and reason, 79; by slaves, 114, 116, 117; Sor Juana manual of, 3, 10, 125–­26; and soul, 118–­19, 139, 194n14; and sympathy, 19, 195–­96n17; and Virgin Mary, 95, 96, 97, 102, 103, 124, 127–­28, 136; women’s, 128, 137, 145, 152, 156–­57. See also music Soria Gutiérrez, Alejandra, 158 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Church authorities’ dissonance with, 176; engagement with painting, 72–­74; musical talent, 159–­60; pedagogical vocation, 2–­3. See also Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (works) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (works): El caracol, 3–­4; El divino Narciso, 9, 128, 137, 138–­39, 143, 145–­49, 192; Fama y obras póstumas, 2; Inundación castálida, 3; “Letras sagradas en la solemnidad de la profesión de

una religiosa,” 10, 125–­26; Loa 377, 30–­35, 51–­56; Loa 380, 25–­30; Loa 381, 35–­41; Loa 384, 1, 41–­48, 72, 73, 84–­92, 197n74; Primero sueño, 1, 11, 84, 98, 151, 155, 169–­82, 185, 186–­ 92; Redondilla 87, 72, 74–­84, 192; Respuesta a sor Filotea, 1, 2–­3, 11, 63, 151, 153, 160–­69, 183, 192, 205n75; Romance 8, 96, 128, 129–­31, 133, 135–­ 36, 137, 138–­39, 141, 143–­45, 148, 149, 192; Romance 13, 48–­50; Romance 21, 1, 3, 4; Romance 50, 62–­63; Romance descasílabo 61, 72; Romancillo heptasílabo 57, 133–­34; Silva 215, 164–­66; Villancico 220, 95–­99, 121, 127–­28, 196n17; Villancico 251, 100–­103, 195n10; Villancico 273, 99–­ 100; Villancico IV, 109, 111, 112–­13; Villancico V, 123–­26; Villancico VI, 122; Villancico VII, 104–­6; Villancico IX, 113–­19. See also Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz soul: and body, 59, 83, 132–­33, 138, 181, 182–­83; and harmony, 76, 141, 189–­90; hearing’s impact on, 59, 88, 112–­13, 141; and heart, 139; and music, 70–­71, 88–­89, 112–­13, 138, 141, 186–­87; Primero sueño on, 177, 181, 182, 187–­88; and song, 118–­19, 139, 194n14 sound, 93–­126; affective properties of, 97, 139–­40, 147, 148; as air particles, 76, 137, 147; amplification of, 66–­68; centrality of in Primero sueño, 169–­70, 174–­75, 186, 190; and ceremony, 95, 123–­26; and civic order, 13; cosmic resonances of, 18, 35, 149, 164, 186; and female

intellect, 48; and gender, 11, 14, 94–­95, 128; impact on body of, 113–­19, 137; and knowledge, 127, 192; and light, 66–­67; and listening, 96, 202n12; and Marian harmonies, 95, 99, 100–­106; and motion, 188–­89; musical instruments’ production of, 75; in music of the spheres, 136; New Spanish culture on, 9–­10, 93, 95, 109, 126; and numbers, 87; poetry’s links to, 6; and presence, 7, 24, 53, 104; Pythagorean construction of, 147; restorative potential of, 115, 204n51, 207n25; and sight, 55, 71, 73, 134, 143, 170, 172–­73, 187; and silence, 87, 154–­ 56, 170; in Sor Juana’s oeuvre, 1–­2, 6–­8; and space, 67; and sympathy, 76–­77, 131, 135, 141, 149. See also aurality; music soundlessness, 151–­52; as challenge to dominant discourse, 154, 156–­61, 167–­69, 174, 175, 179, 181–­83; and noise, 173; silence as distinct from, 11, 153–­54. See also silence sound transmission, 30, 76, 105, 106, 139, 147, 164, 171; Kircher on, 52, 66–­67, 70, 104, 137, 140, 155–­56 Stevenson, Robert M., 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 102 Stewart, Garrett, 194n17 Storr, Matthäus, 67 string instruments, 109, 121 subject-­object relationship, 7, 72, 129, 142 Sumaya, Manuel de, 93 sun: and civic harmony, 18, 32, 33, 50, 55; and diatonic scale, 98 Sun Eidsheim, Nina, 105 Suscipeme, Domine, 126 Index  235

sympathy, 40, 141, 143, 149, 189; concepts of, 19, 51; Loa 374 personification of, 19; and song, 19, 195–­96n17; and sound, 76–­77, 131, 135, 141, 149; and voice, 19, 23, 96–­97, 142, 149 syntonic comma, 4–­5 tarantism, 114–­16, 204n52 Tello, Aurelio, 94 temperament, 5, 35, 41, 43, 89, 146; and harmony, 45; Kirchner on, 137, 139–­40 temporality, 119–­21 Teresa, Santa, 161 Thomas, George Anthony, 14, 125, 164–­ 65, 205n81 Thomas Aquinas, St., 162, 163 Thomson, Guy P. C., 203n45 Thuringus, Joachim, 200n26 time, 83–­84; and harmony, 83, 119–­20 Tomlinson, Gary, 7, 204n51 Toop, David, 172, 209n56 Toricelli, Evangelista, 155 Trabulse, Elías, 62, 63, 136, 185 transitus, 200n26 trumpet, 17, 27, 68, 195n10 tuning, 4, 5, 193n6 Ulysses, 144–­45 universal monochord, 46, 47 vacuum, 155–­56 van Orden, Kate, 112 Velasco, Don Luis de, 113 Veni Sponsa Christi, 126 Viaticum (Ibn al-­Jazzar), 132 Vieyra, Antonio de, 160 Villalpando, Cristóbal de, 107, 109, 203n36 236 Index

villancico cycles, 106–­7, 192; background to, 93–­94, 202n1 Villancico 220 (Sor Juana), 95–­99, 121, 127–­28, 136, 196n17 Villancico 251 (Sor Juana), 100–­103, 195n10 Villancico 273 (Sor Juana), 99–­100 Villancico IV (Sor Juana), 109, 111, 112–­13 Villancico V (Sor Juana), 123–­26 Villancico VI (Sor Juana), 122 Villancico VII (Sor Juana), 104–­6 Villancico IX (Sor Juana), 113–­19 visuality and sight: and Cupid’s arrow, 129; and language, 134–­35; and lovesickness, 133; and music of the spheres, 72; and poetry, 72–­73; and reason, 11, 142–­43; and silence, 74, 84; and Sor Juana oeuvre, 71–­72; and sound, 55, 71, 73, 134, 143, 170, 172–­73, 187; and subject-­object link, 129 visuality-­aurality relationship: El divino Narciso on, 143, 149; erotic nature of, 131; harmonic-­mathematical connections in, 73; Kircher on, 68–­71; Loa 384 on, 84–­86, 89, 91–­92; and musical encoding, 91; Primero sueño on, 170, 171, 172–­73, 175, 187; Redondilla 87 on, 81–­82; Romance 8 on, 129–­31, 133, 135–­ 36, 149; in Sor Juana acousticopoetic portraits, 51, 59, 60, 68 Voces del cielo repetidas en la tierra (Navarro Carranza), 131 voice: affective properties of, 131, 142; and authority, 163; disordered, 11, 162, 164–­65, 166, 192; divine, 165–­66, 171; and eye, 130; and female intellect, 79–­80; feminine embodiment of, 166; interplay of masculine and feminine, 146; and

knowledge, 153, 161, 162, 187; and logocentric reasoning, 177; musical instruments compared to, 18, 131; performativity of, 164; and secrets, 179–­80; and silence, 160, 161; and sympathy, 19, 23, 96–­97, 142, 149; of Virgin Mary, 96–­97. See also women’s voice and agency von Guericke, Otto, 155 Voragine, Jacobus de, 107, 109 Vossler, Karl, 61, 185 vulnus caecum, 35, 129, 130, 133; aural, 37, 129–­35, 144, 190 Wack, Mary F., 132 Wallace, John, 17 water, 30, 56, 105 Wells, Marion, 129, 130–­31, 132 well temperament (circular temperament), 5 Wölfflin, Heinrich, 200n34 women: and education, 123, 127, 205n75; and female body, 165–­66, 183; music making by, 4, 118, 125; religious activities by, 120, 156–­57; writing by, 14, 161 women’s intellect, 80–­90, 175–­76; and aurality, 124–­25, 127, 144–­45; and cosmic harmony, 127, 191; and

female voice, 147–­48; Primero sueño portrayal of, 175–­76; and sound, 48; and voice, 79–­80 women’s voice and agency, 10–­11; Church regulation of, 5, 118, 152, 156–­57, 167, 208n12; disruptive and destabilizing potential of, 127, 157, 166, 168–­69, 175, 183; El divino Narciso on, 9, 137, 138–­39, 142, 143, 145–­49, 192; and intellect, 79–­80, 147–­48; links between, 143–­45; marginalization of, 127, 166, 192; Primero sueño on, 11, 175–­82; reimagining of, 136, 138, 141, 195n17; Romance 8 on, 128, 130, 135–­36, 141, 143–­45, 149, 192; and silence, 126, 137, 152, 156–­60, 174, 175, 182, 183; and Siren theme, 143–­ 45; and song’s affective capacity, 137; and Virgin Mary, 95–­106, 112, 113 writing: and divine voice, 171; and harmony, 89; music’s link to, 68, 71, 81–­82, 92; Sor Juana privileging of, 57; by women, 14, 161 Ximénez, Francisco (François Guillot), 63, 64 Zarlino, Gioseffo, 22, 92 Zeus, 177–­78

Index  237

In the New Hispanisms series

Hearing Voices: Aurality and New Spanish Sound Culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz By Sarah Finley

Hercules and the King of Portugal: Icons of Masculinity and Nation in Calderón’s Spain By Dian Fox Paradoxes of Stasis: Literature, Politics, and Thought in Francoist Spain By Tatjana Gajić

To order or obtain more information on these or other University of Nebraska Press titles, visit nebraskapress​.unl​.edu.