Sor Juana for Beginners I: Sátira filosófica en redondillas

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

I'm not a Sor Juana expert by any means, and I definitely don't enjoy the syllable-counting exercises that poetry freaks seem to live for.  However, I love, love, love the little I've read of Sor Juana's works over the years and am fascinated by her biography.  So who is Sor Juana, you ask?  The short answer is that she was a 17th-century Mexican poet (c. 1650-1694 or 1651-1695 depending on which of two books you choose to believe) who spent most of her life in a convent.  She was sometimes referred to as "the 10th muse" by her many admirers.  She closes out Elías L. Rivers' collection of Spanish Renaissance poetry, Poesía lírica del Siglo de Oro [Lyric Poetry of the Golden Age] (Cátedra, 1979 and 2004), an important distinction considering that she's the only New World writer to appear in that volume of Iberian peninsula greats.  By my math, that makes her the first great poet of the post-Conquest Americas and the last great poet of Spain's Siglo de Oro.  She might also have been the New World's first feminist--or at least a feminist avant la lettre.  In any event, you can decide that for yourself with the following poem, presented first in the original Spanish and then in translation (note: a redondilla is a poem written in stanzas of four octosyllabic verses with rhymes on the first and fourth lines and second and third lines; while the translation lacks some of the argumentative insistency to be enjoyed when you read the original out loud in Spanish--you can almost picture Sor Juana scoring points in a debate or in a court of law--I think it does a great job of capturing the spirit of the poem).

SÁTIRA FILOSÓFICA EN REDONDILLAS

     Hombres necios que acusáis

a la mujer sin razón,

sin ver que sois la ocasión

de lo mismo que culpáis:

     si con ansia sin igual

solicitáis su desdén,

¿por qué queréis que obren bien

si las incitáis al mal?

     Combatís su resistencia

y luego, con gravedad

decís que fue liviandad

lo que hizo la diligencia.

     Parecer quiere el denuedo

de vuestro parecer loco,

al niño que pone el coco

y luego le tiene miedo.

     Queréis, con presunción necia,

hallar a la que buscáis,

para pretendida, Thais,

y en la posesión, Lucrecia.

     ¿Qué humor puede ser más raro

que el que, falto de consejo,

él mismo empaña el espejo,

y siente que no esté claro?

     Con el favor y el desdén

tenéis condición igual,

quejándoos, si os tratan mal,

burlándoos, si os quieren bien.

     Opinión, ninguna gana;

pues la que más se recata,

si no os admite, es ingrata,

y si os admite, es liviana.

     Siempre tan necios andáis

que, con desigual nivel,

a una culpáis por crüel

y a otra por fácil culpáis.

     ¿Pues cómo ha de estar templada

la que vuestro amor pretende,

si la que es ingrata, ofende,

y la que es fácil, enfada?

     Mas, entre el enfado y pena

que vuestro gusto refiere,

bien haya la que no os quiere

y quejaos en hora buena.

     Dan vuestras amantes penas

a sus libertades alas,

y después de hacerlas malas

las queréis hallar muy buenas.

     ¿Cuál mayor culpa ha tenido

en una pasión errada:

la que cae de rogada,

o el que ruega de caído?

     ¿O cuál es más de culpar,

aunque cualquiera mal haga:

la que peca por la paga,

o el que paga por pecar?

     Pues ¿para qué os espantáis

de la culpa que tenéis?

Queredlas cual las hacéis

o hacedlas cual las buscáis.

     Dejad de solicitar,

y después, con más razón,

acusaréis la afición

de la que os fuere a rogar.

     Bien con muchas armas fundo

que lidia vuestra arrogancia,

pues en promesa e instancia

juntáis diablo, carne y mundo.

You Men [translator unknown]

     Silly, you men--so very adept

at wrongly faulting womankind,

not seeing you're alone to blame

for faults you plant in woman's mind.

     After you've won by urgent plea

the right to tarnish her good name,

you still expect her to behave--

you, that coaxed her into shame.

     You batter her resistance down

and then, all righteousness, proclaim

that feminine frivolity,

not your persistence, is to blame.

     When it comes to bravely posturing,

your witlessness must take the prize:

you're the child that makes a bogeyman,

and then recoils in fear and cries.

     Presumptuous beyond belief,

you'd have the woman you pursue

be Thais when you're courting her,

Lucretia once she falls to you.

     For plain default of common sense,

could any action be so queer

as oneself to cloud the mirror,

then complain that it's not clear?

     Whether you're favored or disdained,

nothing can leave you satisfied.

You whimper if you're turned away,

you sneer if you've been gratified.

     With you, no woman can hope to score;

whichever way, she's bound to lose;

spurning you, she's ungrateful--

succumbing, you call her lewd.

     Your folly is always the same:

you apply a single rule

to the one you accuse of looseness

and the one you brand as cruel.

     What happy mean could there be

for the woman who catches your eye,

if, unresponsive, she offends,

yet whose complaisance you decry?

     Still, whether it's torment or anger--

and both ways you've yourselves to blame--

God bless the woman who won't have you,

no matter how loud you complain.

     It's your persistent entreaties

that change her from timid to bold.

Having made her thereby naughty,

you would have her good as gold.

     So where does the greater guilt lie

for a passion that should not be:

with the man who pleads out of baseness

or the woman debased by his plea?

     Or which is more to be blamed--

though both will have cause for chagrin:

the woman who sins for money

or the man who pays money to sin?

     So why are you men all so stunned

at the thought you're all guilty alike?

Either like them for what you've made them

or make of them what you can like.

     If you'd give up pursuing them,

you'd discover, without a doubt,

you've a stronger case to make

against those who seek you out.

I well know what powerful arms

you wield in pressing for evil:

your arrogance is allied

with the world, the flesh, and the devil!

    

This poem appears here in honor of the México 2010 Reading Challenge hosted by Sylvia of Classical Bookworm.  More Sor Juana stuff, both in prose and verse, coming soon.

Orlando: A Biography

Orlando: A Biography (Harcourt, 2006)
by Virginia Woolf
England, 1928

I'm sure that people who liked Orlando will have all sorts of interesting things to say about its playfulness, its liberating send-up of gender roles, and the way Woolf thumbed her nose at genre conventions in creating a novel that pairs the literature of the fantastic with feminist pseudobiography in such a creative way.  For my part, I haven't taken such a visceral disliking to a book since the second installment of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy a few months back.  How could a tale about a 16th-century character who ages over three hundred years and undergoes a gender change in the course of the story be such a complete bore?  While I'm not entirely sure, I think a huge part of it for me has to do with Woolf's smug contempt for the non-white/non-aristocratic "others" in her fictional fantasy land.  If you can imagine a gentle Calvino fable as rewritten by unsavory pro-Empire types like Margaret Thatcher or Bush Republicans, you'll be well on your way to understanding why all the freewheeling references to "blackamoors," barbarous gypsies, and "niggers" in Orlando sometimes make it tough to enjoy some of the more exotic elements in its otherwise frothy, fabulistic mix.  Lest any readers of this post rightly point out that it's not really fair to judge Woolf's apparent racism by the standards of a later generation, I should note that I also didn't connect with her stylistic elements this time out either.  For all the heady fast-forwarding in time that takes place in the narrative (for me, practically the novel's only saving grace), I felt virtually bored into submission by the overkill I'm-so-clever-watch-me-make-fun-of-the-biographer's-role asides from the narrator, the silly stories about dropping toads down potential suitors' shirts, and the "whimsical" use of an invented language for entertainment purposes ("Rattigan Glumphoboo," described as a substitute for "a very complicated spiritual state" on pages 208-209, might have been the low point EVER for humor lost in translation).  With any luck, Woolf will be depressed and/or cynical again when I get around to reading The Waves in a couple of weeks since this "fun" side of hers definitely rubbed me the wrong way.  A total disappointment.  (http://www.harcourtbooks.com/)

Woolf

Thanks to Frances for hosting the Orlando: A Biography round of Woolf in Winter.  See you on or around the 26th for a discussion of Woolf's The Waves being organized by Claire of kiss a cloud.  In the meantime, I await your petulant comments and/or e-mails.

Muchacha punk

Fogwill, versión 2006 (foto: Clarín)

"Muchacha punk"

por Fogwill

Argentina, 1979

Había querido leer este "famosísimo" cuento argentino, un objeto de culto escrito en el año punk de 1978 y publicado en el año punk de 1979, desde hace algún tiempo, y no me decepcionó.  Un relato que tiene que ver con la historia del encuentro entre un viajero argentino y una muchacha punk británica en Londres a finales de la década de los setenta, la obra ofrece una visión bastante cómica de una aventura amorosa que empieza en una pizzería española.  Aunque el narrador es sumamente chistoso (compara la semblanza del "mozo español de pizzería inglesa" con "cualquier otro mozo español de pizzería de París o Rosario" antes de añadir, con un guiño al lector, "he elegido Rosario para no citar tanto a Buenos Aires" [59]), también me gustó su manera de narrar los eventos porque me pareció ser un personaje con actitudes y opiniones fidedignas.  De hecho, me reí mucho con sus detalles cuentísticos tan personales: la mezcla de Chianti y Coke bebida por la muchacha punk y sus amigas, la escena donde una amiga de la muchacha punk se despide de él con un sarcástico "Bye, Borges" y un ademán irrespetuoso, su "decepción" al descubrir que la muchacha punk Coreen "era tan limpia como cualquier chitrula de Flores o Belgrano R.  Nada previsible en una inglesa y en todo discordante con mis expectativas hacia lo punk" (74), etcétera.  Aunque no voy a decir nada sobre la manera en cual el enamoramiento del narrador con la muchacha punk se puede leer como un comentario sobre el choque de culturas (basta invocar la escena anterior en la pizzería con la amiga fea:  "--Bye, Borges --me gritó cara de sapo desde la vereda, amagando sacar de cu cintura una inexistente espadita o puñal; yo me alegré de ver tanta fealdad hundiéndose en el frío, y me alegré aún más pensando que asistía a otra prueba de que el prestigio deportivo de mi patria había franqueado las peores fronteras sociales de Londres" [65]), está claro que el tono pícaro del relato también esconde algo más siniestro.  ¿Qué hace el viajero en Londres de verdad?  ¿Y por qué, en estos años de la dictadura militar, quiere comprar un catálago de armas para su "gente" en Argentina antes de regresar al país?  Por supuesto, ustedes tendrán que leer el cuento para proponer sus propias respuestas a estas preguntas.  Mientras tanto, yo buscaré a los Cuentos completos de Fogwill en cuanto posible porque éste fue un knockout.  Fuente: Juan Forn (selección y prólogo).  Buenos Aires: Una antología de nueva ficción argentina.  Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1992, 53-78.

* "Muchacha punk" en línea *

The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the "Decameron"

Professor Almansi

The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the Decameron (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975)

by Guido Almansi

England, 1975

While fruitlessly searching for a cover image for this book, I had a nice but totally unexpected laugh when I stumbled across a review of another Almansi title online which referred to the author's "ironia e gusto della provocazione" (irony and taste for provocation).  It seems that Almansi, a professor of Comp Lit at the University of East Anglia who died in 2001, must have been very consistent in that regard, since a great deal of my own enjoyment of his The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the Decameron came from watching him take potshots at rival critics who failed to sufficiently establish their critical positions to the satisfaction of the good doctor's tastes.  A collection of five essays on various elements of Boccaccio's craft, The Writer as Liar is really just a fine introduction to the technical side of The Decameron.  In staking out both an anti-realist and an anti-psychological interpretation of the work (see the extended quote at the end of this post, which mirrors my explanation for why most U.S. bloggers are unreasonably leery of any modern experimentation in the novel as well), Almansi is quite persuasive at positing a reading of The Decameron that emphasizes "how the literary game of falsehood is being exaggerated to a point of no return" (46).  The first three chapters on "Narrative Screens," in which Almansi discusses The Decameron's cornice or storytelling frame, on "Literature and Falsehood," and on "Bawdry and Ars Combinatoria" are more topical for the most part, but the concluding chapters on "The Meaning of a Storm" and "Passion and Metaphor" shift the focus onto close readings of major tales like the story of Alatiel and her serial lovers (Decameron II, 7) and the grisly one about Tancredi and Ghismonda (Decameron IV, I).  While a lone but unfortunate reference to one of Boccaccio's characters as "a nasty old queer" (49) tends to date this book even more than the rapidly yellowing pages in the library copy I borrowed, I'd still strongly recommend it to any lit crit geeks out there interested in an idiosyncratic companion to their Decameron studies.  I realize that might mean...none of you.  (Routledge & Kegan Paul, out of print)

**********

"This [i.e. what Almansi sees as the primacy of the individual episode in The Decameron and the subsequent subordination of "any demands of historical accuracy, psychological consistency or behavioral plausibility"] is the puzzling factor which sets up an aesthetic gulf between the modern reader and the Decameron.  We are all of us constructed out of bits and pieces of nineteenth-century fictional characters: these are our inescapabale cultural heritage, even if our actual reading went no further than Enid Blyton.  Inevitably we run our lives on parallel co-ordinates to those of the Dickens or Balzac hero, in terms of behaviour, reasoning, motivation, instinctive needs and mental constructs.  It all turns out to be a kind of second-class copy of a nineteenth-century novel, i.e. the literary genre which was most obsessively concerned with the psychological credibility of the character.  We can veer between consistency and inconsistency, we can follow a direct or a more tortuous psychological line (Julian Sorel and Raskolnikov need by no means be considered self-consistent), but ultimately we are still accustomed to picturing ourselves and the world, art and politics, all in an uncompromisingly diachronic line, that is to say, in terms of psychological feasibility.

When the modern reader has to come to grips with a work like the Decameron, which belongs to a narrative area with a completely different raison d'être, he feels disoriented and is tempted to look for something which cannot be found in the work, namely a familiar character fresh from the 500-plus pages of a tome written by the grandfather of his grandfathers.  This also leads to the occasional insensitivity of criticism, which complains about the absence of narrative modes which Boccaccio neither intended nor wanted in the fabric of the Decameron."  (The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the Decameron, 75-76)

The Decameron #4/10

Not having read all that much Decameron criticism before, one of the more interesting things to come out of my time spent with Guido Almansi's The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the "Decameron" (Routledge, 1975) so far is Almansi's assertion that earlier critics were prone to look for a faithful representation of "reality" in Boccaccio's magnum opus--as if the work were designed to replicate something historically accurate about 14th-century Florentine life.  Almansi, on the other hand, convincingly argues that the lie is the work's real star attraction--that The Decameron is more about Boccaccio drawing attention to his storytelling virtuosity than anything else.  Almost as if on cue, the Fourth Day's session begins with an unexpected interruption to the narrative flow in the form of a direct address from the author to his readers.  A snippet:

"Judicious ladies, there are those who have said, after reading these tales, that I am altogether too fond of you, that it is unseemly for me to take so much delight in entertaining and consoling you, and, what is apparently worse, in singing your praises as I do.  Others, laying claim to greater profundity, have said that it is not good for a man of my age to engage in such pursuits as discussing the ways of women and providing for their pleasure.  And others, showing deep concern for my renown, say that I would be better advised to remain with the Muses in Parnassus, than to fritter away my time in your company.

Moreover, there are those who, prompted more by spitefulness than common sense, have said that I would be better employed in earning myself a good meal than in going hungry for the sake of producing nonsense of this sort.  And finally there are those who, in order to belittle my efforts, endeavour to prove that my versions of the stories I have told are not consistent with the facts." (The Decameron, 284)

While I'll rather lazily avoid discussing this passage in any detail (time is a stern taskmaster today), translator G.H. McWilliam's footnotes inform me that there's no reason to believe that Boccaccio was responding to any real attacks here.  In any event, Boccaccio's arch and preemptive self-defense of what are probably only imagined potential critiques of his artistic creation soon evolves into an incomplete story intended to justify the Decameron's celebration of women and its rejection of poetry in favor of prose.  In other words, yes, a story about stories in the medium we all now take for granted!  Although our author goes out of his way to apologize for the incompleteness of said story ("for otherwise it might appear that I was attempting to equate my own tales with those of that select company I have been telling you about" he laments in a mega meta moment on page 285),  McWilliam notes that the tale "is in fact sufficiently complete for commentators to refer to it as the 101st story of the Decameron" (826).  For my part, reading this mini-story and the self-conscious arguments about form that precede it make it very difficult to argue with Almansi's basic premise.  Calling attention to the artifice of fiction does indeed seem to be Boccaccio's game.

In this light (and apologizing in advance for the lack of the customary amount of sleaze in this week's Decameron update), I probably shouldn't have been as surprised by the detour Boccaccio was about to make as I actually was.  But even if I haven't left myself enough time to do justice to the rest of the Fourth Day's stories, suffice it to say that they provide as clear a break from the 30 (or 31) previous ones as Boccaccio's own direct address to his readers.  To wit--and to show my paranormal romance reading friends that the lack of time for the Fourth Day's stories doesn't stem from any passive aggressiveness on my part--here's a road map to the romantic gore in store for you during the course of this particular session: one story in which a lady joins her lover in the afterlife by drinking poison served to her in a chalice with her ex-lover's heart; another story in which a woman disinters the body of her murdered lover, beheads it, and then stores the decomposing head in a pot full of basil, watering it with her tears; one story in which a jealous husband feeds his wife the heart of her ex-lover, an act she repays by jumping out an open window to her death on the ground below.  Although I lost count of how many beheadings and spectral visitations (real or imagined) were mentioned in the chapter, the theme for the day--"those whose love ended unhappily" (284)--unfolded with all the variety and gruesome artistry you might suspect: just not quite as much gleeful lubricity as previously.  Next up: an all-Almansi post or Decameron Day Five, who can tell?

El olvido que seremos

El olvido que seremos (Planeta, 2007)
por Héctor Abad Faciolince
Colombia, 2006

"Cuando me doy cuenta de lo limitado que es mi talento para escribir (casi nunca consigo que las palabras suenen tan nítidas como están las ideas en el pensamiento; lo que hago me parece un balbuceo pobre y torpe al lado de lo que hubieran podido decir mis hermanas), recuerdo la confianza que mi papá tenía en mí.  Entonces levanto los hombros y sigo adelante.  Si a él le gustaban hasta mis renglones de garabatos, qué importa si lo que escribo no acaba de satisfacerme a mí.  Creo que el único motivo por el que he sido capaz de seguir escribiendo todos estos años, y de entregar mis escritos a la imprenta, es porque sé que mi papá hubiera gozado más que nadie al leer todas estas páginas mías que no alcanzó a leer.  Que no leerá nunca.  Es una de las paradojas más tristes de mi vida: casi todo lo que he escrito lo he escrito para alguien que no puede leerme, y este mismo libro no es otra cosa que la carta a una sombra".  (El olvido que seremos, 22)

El martes 25 de agosto de 1987, el padre de Héctor Abad Faciolince fue asesinado en Medellín por un sicario de motocicleta.  Un amigo del padre, Leonardo Betancur, también fue matado durante el mismo ataque por otro matón.  El olvido que seremos, escrito casi 20 años más tarde de los asesinatos como un homenaje al valor de la vida humana frente a la violencia y a los males que nos rodean, es por consiguiente una especie de epitafio tanto como un libro de memorias.  Vale la pena de leerlo.  En prosa sencilla, directa, y llena de ternura, Abad Faciolince comparte un retrato de una familia colombiana "normal" (normal en el sentido de que no era ni rico ni pobre) que me impactó mucho.  Me gustaron las varias anécdotas familiales, por supuesto, pero también me gustó ver el cariño particular entre padre e hijo.  No estoy acostumbrado a hablar del tema en cuanto a los libros de ficción que leo, lo cual puede decir mucho sobre los defectos de las novelas que elijo o mucho sobre mis gustos en ficción, qué sé yo.  En todo caso, un éxito de la obra de Abad Faciolince es que el escritor nos presenta con una biografía mesurada de una persona completamente fuera de lo normal en cierto sentido: un doctor humanista que, en su trabajo como profesor y periodista y como el fundador de la Escuela Nacional de Salud Pública, se reveló ser un leal amigo de los pobres de su país.  Un hombre de sentimientos izquierdistas claro, pero un hombre de moderación cuya única revolución de verdad fue la de los derechos humanos.  Leyendo de todos los hombres que fueron matados a causa de su participación en la Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos de Antioquia en aquel entonces, quizá debe aclarar que "moderación" no es la palabra adecuada para hablar de los héroes que luchaban contra la injusticia en los '80.  En resumen, El olvido que seremos (el título viene de un trozo de un poema de Borges, encontrado en los bolsillos de Héctor Abad Gómez después de su muerte) es un libro tristísimo pero muy hermoso a la vez.  Recomendado.  (http://www.editorialplaneta.com.co/)

Héctor Abad Faciolince

"Han pasado casi veinte años desde que lo mataron, y durante estos veinte años, cada mes, cada semana, yo he sentido que tenía el deber ineludible, no digo de vengar su muerte, pero sí, al menos de contarla.  No puedo decir que su fantasma se me haya aparecido por las noches, como el fantasma del padre de Hamlet, a pedirme que vengue su monstruoso y terrible asesinato.  Mi papá siempre nos enseñó a evitar la venganza.  Las pocas veces que he soñado con él, en esas fantasmales imágenes de la memoria y de la fantasía que se nos aparecen mientras dormimos, nuestras conversaciones han sido más plácidas que angustiadas, y en todo caso llenas de ese cariño físico que siempre nos tuvimos.  No hemos soñado el uno con el otro para pedir venganza, sino para abrazarnos".  (El olvido que seremos, 254)

February Reading

1) Llamadas telefónicas, 1997

2) Mantra, 2001

3) Les caves du Vatican, 1914

4) Orlando: A Biography (1928) & 5) The Waves (1931)