Translating Sor Juana

Abstract

Translating Sor Juana Glenna Luschei (bio) Who was this Sor Juana, whose name appears everywhere in Mexican and in world literature? In her book Mujer que sabe latín, Rosario Castellanos points out that in an era of uneducated women, the extraordinary Sor Juana emerged as un monstruo because there was no way to classify her. Rosario adds that many small stars sparkled in the firmament before this supernova appeared. In order to know Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648?–1695), I undertook a translation of her Enigmas, guided by the preeminent Sor Juana scholar, Dr. Sara Poot-Herrera. I also had the leadership of Dr. Suzanne Jill Levine, in her translation workshop at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Dr. Enrique Martínez-López, who rediscovered Sor Juana's Enigmas after they had been lost for almost three centuries. Understanding that this endeavor could be a lifetime's work, I promised myself to publish and then abandon it. The history of the Enigmas is a puzzle in itself. Their author and her writings came in and out of favor throughout the centuries. While researching in Portugal in 1966, Enrique Martínez-López found two copies of the Enigmas hidden within manuscripts dated 1716 and 1726–1748. In the handwritten text there was the following Portuguese inscription: Ignimas varios de Soror Joana Ignés da Crus Freira de Míxico, feitos em Redondilhas. These are the first English translations of the twenty riddles. Sor Juana's beginnings were inauspicious. She was born Juana Ramírez Asuaje (alternately Asvaje, Asbaje), to a Criollo mother in San Miguel Nepantla, at the foot of Popocatepetl. She became Mexico's famous seventeenth-century feminist poet and writer, whose craving to learn led her to take religious vows, the only way a woman could acquire an education at that time. Sor Juana's passion for knowledge began as a child reading in her grandfather's library. Later she dressed as a boy in hopes of [End Page 21] attending the university. Every experience contributed to her studies. She found chemistry in cooking, and geometry in observing the crossbeams of her cell. Because Sor Juana lived in confined society, it can be inferred that she was accustomed to speaking in a secret language and may have developed a code with her friends. I believe it was this secret language that impelled her naturally in the Enigmas. Since coded language is often used by the oppressed, the cryptic language of the Enigmas may be the result of her precarious relationship with religious authorities in Mexico. The Enigmas, composed in her last years, are stark, reduced to the simplest thought. While they are poems of disenchantment, they are also playful and witty. From what we speculate, the Countess of Paredes, at the request of the Casa del Placer Portuguese nuns, brought the Enigmas to Lisboa in 1693. Sor Juana's cryptic riddles provided entertainment for the nuns, who tried to solve their mystery. These occult redondillas have enticed many readers and critics to decipher their meanings. In working them, we think back to the predictions of the I Ching and to the voice of the Oracle of ancient Greece. The Delphic Oracle, the highest religious authority in the world—and also a woman—went underground to inhale laurel leaves before offering her predictions. From her earliest years, Sor Juana enjoyed the protection of royalty, such as the Señora Condesa de Paredes. The most famous story about her youth tells that the Viceroy Mancera invited forty learned scholars to question Sor Juana, his wife's protégé. The self-educated Sor Juana defeated them like a Spanish galleon. This test was to aid her in entering the severe order of the Carmelites. Her confessor, Padre Núñez, although having concerns about her "pride," helped her to enter San Jerónimo Convent, where she took her final vows and spent the rest of her life. Because of the challenges she continued to face, Sor Juana cultivated a diplomatic relationship with the viceroys. From her quarters, she invited them for musical and literary evenings. Sor Juana's sensitivity to the royal position is revealed...