Sor Juana and her library world

Abstract

There has been numerous documents about Sor Juana since Juan Camacho published his first volume in Madrid in 1689, and more so during 1995, her anniversary. There is no certainty about the date of her birth, it is placed between 1651 and 1653, she died in 1695. The magazines A BSIDE. REVISTA DE CULTURA MEXICANA during the period 1941-1973 published 25 articles, and CONTEMPORÂNEOS eight articles from 1929 to 1931; the BOLETIN DE LA BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL published five articles in 1951 and I960, but none of these deal with her library. The following authors have discussed her library: the writer, Ermilo Abreu Gómezf1934); Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (1944); the art historian and critic, Francisco de la Maza (1952); the poet Octavio Paz (1982); the ex-director of the Mexican National Library, Ignacio Osorio (1986). I think that the 4000 volumes of this library played an important part in her writings, and much more than companions: objects of her world. This library unfortunately, disintegrated by her at the end of her life, is an example of library collections and libraries of the New World, together with the first academic library built in Mexico City: "La Biblioteca del Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco " (1536). To know about the titles of some of these books, whose existence can only be seen in two of the paintings of Sor Juana, one by the Mexican artist Juan de Miranda, active from 1697 to 1711, owned by the "Universidad Nacional Autônoma de México", and the other by the Mexican painter, Miguel Cabrera at the "Museo Nacional de Historia del Castillo de Chapultepec" in Mexico City, gives us an idea not only of her library, but of her world. The XVIIc in Mexico City is a baroque century with its four social entities: the Court, the Church, the City and the Convent in which Sor Juana lived. If we take into consideration her writings, there was a fifth entity, the Hispanic literary world. Sor Juana with her beauty, charm, intelligence and ability to deal with the most important personalities of her time was considered a string between the New and the Old Worlds because of her literary contributions as a woman, more so as an American woman of the XVIIc. She is pondered by Alatorref1995) as the spiritual gold similar to the gold extracted from the New World mines. In a metaphorical way her writings are the result of her intellect and of the contents extracted from the books which represented the world of knowledge contained in her library.