Book Review. Sor Juana by Octavio Paz.
Octavio Paz, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden,
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988.
547 pp. ISBN o-674-82105-X (alk. paper)
Sor Juana or The Traps of Faith is the comprehensive research on the life and work of Sor Juana, a prominent Mexican poet of the seventeenth century, as well as it is a historical, sociological and cultural account of New Spain and the evolution of the mentality of Mexican people in the times the viceroyalty. This book is an attempt to depict the realities of the seventeenth century and its intellectual scene through the life and work of one gifted individual, a woman and a poet who was, due to the gender affiliation and the Catholic rigidity of social boundaries, unable to fully realize her intellectual potential, leaving, however, a considerable literary heritage that is being explored by many authors to this day. Sor Juana is portrayed as a genius whose work reached beyond her times.
The text consists of six parts and 29 chapters. The first part is dedicated to the peculiarities of the Mexican society, the mentality of its many constituent races and the historical preconditions thereof. Staring with Part II, Sor Juana is introduced and gradually she and her work start to take up more and more space as Octavio Paz delves into her poetics.
The topics of the book revolve around Sor Juana alternating from the historical environment to personal life to the literary work of the poet. By the end literary analysis takes up most of the text, and in the last part Octavio Paz describes her attempt to take part in the theological agenda and the results of her inopportune theorizing, which was a daring enterprise at the times of the Holy Office. An epilogue and an appendix follow the main body of texts. The author takes the facts from the primary sources that he indicates in the text, which make the work look scholarly. At the same time most of the thoughts in the book belong to Octavio Paz and he does not resort to footnotes or references because of his intellectual authority. He provides logical explanations to his opinions that often differ from the prevailing ones. For example, he discusses the opinions about why Sor Juana chose for the secluded life of a nun and comes up with his own conclusion – it was a compromise between her creative ambitions and a rational decision to settle down and provide for her financially safe future.
The three principal themes of the book are: the history of the Mexican people, the life and work of Sor Juana, and literature and poetry in general as an instrument of coming to terms with and understanding the world.
The discussion of the Mexican society from a historical perspective starts in the first chapter “A Unique Society”. Paz philosophizes on the topic of a nation being determined by its past and its attitude to the future. Modern Mexican society, according to Paz, is obsessed with the past and is constantly rewriting the history of Spanish viceroyalty. There are two major versions. The first one states that the interim of New Spain was of no consequence to Mexico. The true Mexican spirit lies with the traditions and the faith of the ancestors. The second one goes that the three centuries of viceroyalty were a period of gestation that gave birth to the existing nation that is still developing. The rest of the book is dedicated to unraveling of the circumstances of this contentious period, the issue he addresses till the last pages of the book, as he believes that an understanding of the history is crucial to the mental state of the nation. The subtitle, “The Traps of Faith”, refers both to the protagonist’s situation and to the blind faith of people in the imaginary idealized past.
In the second chapter Octavio Paz gives the account of the life of Juana Ramirez and her family. In the scholarly manner the author provides the primary sources of the autobiographical facts: Juana’s letter to Bishop of Puebla, written in the tone aimed at achieving a certain effect, and her brief biography written by a priest from the words of several of her friends. These sources, according to Paz, cannot be trusted completely because of the above circumstances. After listing the available facts about her relatives, it is pointed out that her father, probably a Basque, was an enigmatic figure. As very little was known about him, the family of Sor Juana seemed to do everything to keep him in the shadows. Probably it was due to criminal past or he was of non-honorable plebian descent. What is important is that her father was not an American Indian. Her family on the mother’s side was purely criollo. After entering the convent Juana changed her lay name to Ines.
Following is the detailed account of her family members. We learn about the occupation and the number of children of her every sister. Octavio Paz gives his usual comment on the mores of the times. The Baroque epoch combined seamlessly religiosity and dissoluteness (Paz, 1988, p. 70). Then comes the section dedicated to her childhood. The author constructs it from fragmentary data available in the primary sources mentioned above. Octavio Paz goes implements psychoanalytical techniques popular at that time to show the possible influence of absence the father on her character. The certain masculinity of temperament Juana noticed herself may have been accounted for by this fact. The father figure was compensated by the presence of a stepfather and grandfather in her life. The man’s world, as compensation, was drawn from the books in her grandfather’s library. Her inner conflict was temporarily subdued by, as Octavio Paz put it, “sublimation through culture” (Paz, 1988, p. 82). The library in the covenant provided her with classical literary corpus. Describing her reading experience, Octavio Paz goes into his poetic mode and uses metaphors such “star milk” to describe the life-giving quality of literature within the context of Sor Juana’s poetics. He then tries to connect the imagery and symbolism present in the books that were available to her at the time with the future poems of Juana.
Juana’s renunciation of the worldly pleasures was unexpected. She was popular and successful, but still opted for the nunnery. One of the broad range explanations is a failed relationship or the death of the beloved one. This was a rather typical situation for the court ladies at the time. Sor Juana was rather beautiful according to multiple accounts and she realized this as we learn, according to Octavio Paz, indirectly from her poems. Spending most of her time in the viceregal court, surrounded by the nobility, she was playing a dangerous game. Many men courted her and it was easy to loose face and honor in such circumstances. On the other side, she could not reject all men all the time, so she had to employ her wit and charms to balance safely and retain good reputation. It was only natural to assume she would want to flee such an aggressive environment and live a simple life of devotion. Having patrons in the court she could count on them paying her entrance to the covenant. Octavio Paz argues that was not the case. She was immensely successful in court and was expressing herself artistically and in literature. The reasons for her departing to the convent may have been pragmatic and straightforward. It was a respectable career and a definite future. As Juana was poor, her father was missing and her descent could be doubtful (Octavio Paz uses the word bastardy), it was a wise and logical move as the youth fades and a woman had to settle down. As strange as it may seem, retreating to a covenant was a choice for more personal and intellectual freedom. The church was one of the centers of intellectual life at the time in New Spain. A nun in the convent she went to could afford a library and was relatively free in choosing what to do all the time except he hours allocate to prayer and religious studies. Octavio Paz describes in detain the situation with various religious institutions in New Spain and focuses on lives behind the church walls.
The life in the convent was “private” for Juana but communication between nuns existed. Juana remembers how the gatherings in the neighboring cells were an obstacle to her reading that was her primary occupation in the nunnery, although, according to Octavio Paz, she did not “transgress against the rule” (Paz, 1988, p. 127). The liberty of Juana and her connection with the outer world is demonstrated by the fact that she was commissioned to design one of the arks for the new viceroy’s inauguration ritual. It was a grandiose project called “Allegorical Neptune” created in Baroque style. The structure had two-part literary explication, one in prose and one in the poems. The texts are composed in a way to protect her from the attacks of doctrinaires. Octavio Paz continues to describe Juana’s life and as the story progresses, more and more attention is dedicated to her writing per se and Chapter V is dedicated entirely to the analysis of her poems and other compositions she authored. It also deals with the publishing situation of the time and provides the accounts of her contemporaries involved in the literary activities. A separate section is dedicated to her most famous personal poem called “First Dream” that at the same times touches upon deep philosophical issues.
The last chapter is dedicated to Juana’s philosophical endeavor. She wrote her famous letter criticizing a sermon of Vieyra, a popular cleric and preacher, and propounding her views upon certain aspects of faith. Juana introduces a difficult concept of “negative favors” which was met with indignation by many clerics. The letter was subsequently published and triggered a response. Most responses were negative while some defended her. She was accused of being unable to penetrate the fine point of theology as a woman. This made her start the campaign in defense of women’s right to education. The idea of women’s inferiority was repugnant to her. She is considered by some “the first feminist in America” (Paz, 1988, p. 486). Of course, in the world of men she had no chance. And she had to go along and be humble in the face of clergy she was corresponding with. She felt she was capable of theological debates, but there were no conditions for her to seriously engage in them. The Holy Office was the institution that was feared by all and she was reasonable enough not to confront it.
Octavio Paz wrote a comprehensive work on the life of Sor Juana and on the history of New Spain. The background knowledge the author must have had to accomplish such an oeuvre is immense. Octavio Paz does not confine himself to a rigid methodology or the strict requirements of a scholarly research. This book resembles a collection of essays on the history and sociology of New Spain, its culture, mythology and other aspects, all of which are neatly tied to provide a framework of the life of an outstanding Mexican poet. There is an opinion that an epoch can be understood from the work of one great poet. That is definitely the case with Paz’s book. Only he chooses a distant and complicated time and gives the reader all the necessary knowledge to grasp the time and the poems in question. This is a book to be reread, and it is certain one will keep learning new things with every reading. There are some aspects that make it difficult. It has way too many details and a very loose structure. The reader is flung about between history and personality of Sor Juana and literary regressions to the philosophy or theory of literature. Such abrupt change of subject and the factual information he operates makes the book too complex. At the same time I see no way to enhance the book as it is written as an essay and any modifications or omissions could make it inadequate to its purpose. However, the only requirement to the reader, as I see it, is the genuine interest in poetry and the history of Mexico.
References
Paz, O. (1988). Sor Juana or The Traps of Faith. Cambridge, Massachusets:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
