Spanish Podcast Dime de qué se trata (Tell me what it’s about)
(ENGLISH BELOW)
El propósito de este podcast es informar, entretener y ayudarnos a comprender mejor el mundo en el que vivimos. Año tras año se publican un gran número de libros importantes que no llegamos a leer, porque no nos enteramos de su existencia, porque no nos atraen los ensayos o la no ficción, porque no están disponibles en nuestro idioma de preferencia o porque, simplemente, no hay tiempo suficiente para leerlo todo. Pero, aun así, sentimos curiosidad por saber DE QUÉ SE TRATAN.
Rita Wirkala, fundadora de All Bilingual Press, escritora y ávida lectora, ha querido compartir con el público hispanohablante las ideas fundamentales contenidas en algunos de los libros más destacados de nuestros tiempos. Muchas de ellas les resultarán sorprendentes.
The purpose of this podcast is to inform, entertain, and help us better understand the world we live in. Every year, a large number of important books are published that we never get around to reading, either because we don’t know they exist, because we’re not drawn to essays or non-fiction, because they aren’t available in our preferred language, or simply because there isn’t enough time to read everything. But even so, we’re curious to know what they’re about.
Rita Wirkala, a writer and avid reader, wanted to share with Spanish-speaking audiences the fundamental ideas contained in some of the most outstanding books of our time. Many of these ideas will surprise you.
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The purpose of this podcast is to inform, entertain, and help us better understand the world we live in. Every year, a large number of important books are published that we never get around to reading, either because we don’t know they exist, because we’re not drawn to essays or non-fiction, because they aren’t available in our preferred language, or simply because there isn’t enough time to read everything. But even so, we’re curious to know what they’re about.
Rita Wirkala, a writer and avid reader, wanted to share with Spanish-speaking audiences the fundamental ideas contained in some of the most outstanding books of our time. Many of these ideas will surprise you.
Episodios 1, 2 y 3: “La gente más rara del mundo.”
Episodios 4, 5, 6: “El error de Galileo”
Episodios 7, 8: “Cómo Jesus se volvio Dios”
Episodio 9: “El Sueño de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz”
The Dream of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Spanish Original, New English Translation.
Background. Meaning, Significance, by Elwin Wirkala
Hello friends. After a long summer hiatus, here we are again to talk to you about “Dime de qué se trata.” In this episode I am going to comment on a recently published book by All Bilingual Press, written by one of our founders, Elwin Wirkala.
Its title in English is: The Dream of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Spanish Original, New English Translation. Background, Meaning, Significance.
As you can see, it is an ambitious title, because both the task of translating Sor Juana and of unraveling the profound meaning of her magnificent poem Primero sueño, no less than 974 lines long, is no simple undertaking. To begin with, in order to translate poetry while preserving not only its meaning but also its rhythm and musicality, the translator must also be a poet. And this is indeed the case with Elwin.
In the first section, Elwin introduces the poet Sor Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, which was her name before taking the conventual name of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
He also speaks to us about the Inquisitorial period still prevalent in seventeenth-century Mexico, where the poet lived, and he introduces us to her friends and enemies, her defenders and her detractors.
Elwin then presents the poem in its entirety, in two columns, with the original and its English translation. This translation has received praise from the Sor Juana specialist Dr. Rocío Olivares Zorrilla of UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who stated: “This will honestly be the translation.” Frederick Turner, poet, critic, and professor of English literature at the University of Texas, also said upon reading the translation: “I was moved and impressed by the noble simplicity of this translation. They get us right into the world of their originals, and carry over their music.”
The author then proceeds to describe the poem section by section, and finally offers his own reading and interpretation of this nocturnal flight, which is the vehicle Sor Juana chose to transmit her message.
This is what I am going to speak to you about now, insofar as I can summarize this profound work within the short time of this podcast.
Primero sueño is universally considered one of the best—if not the best—poems in the Spanish language, and at the same time one of the most difficult to understand on a first reading. The difficulty does not lie solely in its baroque syntax, its mythological references, or its marvelous metaphors, but in its frequent transpositions.
To begin with, Primero sueño is a highly metaphysical poem, and it represents nothing less than the search for a higher knowledge longed for by the human soul.
The theme unfolds through the nocturnal flight of the soul of the dreamer—in this case, the female dreamer.
At first glance, it might seem that the poet narrates a series of events that take place And yes, they are events—but the motive is the same in each one of them: the soul of the dreaming being attempts to reach that knowledge, that vision of the Whole. But invariably, it falls from its nocturnal flight. This event is narrated again and again from different perspectives and through different metaphors. Why does it fall?
The most widespread interpretation of the poem claims that the successive defeats of the aspiring soul demonstrate the impossibility of total comprehension, of cosmic vision, of grasping Reality. However, the author offers another interpretation. The vision the human soul aspires to becomes impossible when arrogance, allied with rational thought, interferes with the search. Therefore, Elwin tells us, the poem itself is not a negation of the possibility of what Sor Juana calls Unión Amorosa (in the style of Saint John of the Cross), but rather a warning about that which opposes the seeking soul in its adventure.
Already in the opening lines, Elwin tells us, we see the opposing figures that will be a constant theme throughout the poem: humility versus arrogance, spontaneity versus authoritarianism, intuition versus logic, the “arrogant baseness of the human being.”
Thus read the opening stanzas:
| Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra nacida sombre, al Cielo encaminaba de vanos obeliscos punta altiva, escalar pretendiendo las estrellas; | Pyramidal, funest, an earth- born shade to Heaven went forth, of vain obelisks the aspiring point, to reach, intent, the Stars. |
Almost all critics assert that the pyramid is the conical shadow the Earth projects into space on its nocturnal side. But this is a literal reading. Later on, Sor Juana makes it clear that the pyramid is essentially human aspiration, as she tells us unequivocally in the central verses of the poem:
It is absolutely clear that the pyramid is a metaphor for human aspiration. But why “funest”? Because aspiration, Elwin tells us, must struggle against the disastrous effects of the lack of humility required for such an effort, which undermines the intention of the soul.
And note that the pyramid is from the very beginning mounted upon a “vain” obelisk, which will be the cause of its constant fall.
| de vanos obeliscos punta altiva, escalar pretendiendo las estrellas; | of vain obelisks the aspiring point, to reach, intent, the Stars. |
The author reminds us that Egyptian obelisks end in a pyramidal point, and if the pyramid is aspiration—“the ardent flame” that “always aspires to the first cause”—the vain obelisk would be its disastrous opposite element, frustrating every pure attempt to reach Unity, the goal that, Sor Juana says, “infinitely contains all essence.”
Thus, the spirit whose first metaphor is a shadow—that shadow that rises from the sleeper, still so closely tied to the body—ascends toward the stars carrying within itself its own contradiction. This shadow attempts to climb the stars and reach cosmic knowledge, but this is naturally denied to it, and the poem says that the beautiful lights mock its attempt, since it could not even reach the orbit of the Moon in its heavy flight.
Poor seeker of Knowledge! It wants to reach the stars and cannot even reach the Moon!
The poem continues with the flight of the mythological birds that compose the “fearful” throng of Sor Juana’s night. But that fearful throng is a joke, because these hardly celestial sounds bear no resemblance to the music of the spheres. This is one of the first images that reveal Sor Juana’s humor, which, Elwin points out, will pervade the entire poem.
When the soul has already become its most immaterial self, participating in the fullness of the universe, we have the premonition of the first catastrophe, which will produce its inevitable fall.
Sor Juana says:
| y juzgándose casi dividida de aquella que impedida siempre la tiene, corporal cadena … | and judging quasi-separate her soul from the impediment of corporal chain, that which detains … |
The traveling soul is committing a grave error, and the cosmic-Solomonic law (“pride goes before the fall”) intervenes inexorably. This is, of course, the sin of Lucifer, the fallen angel. And also, that of poor Icarus, who melted his wings when he tried to approach the sun.
The poetic voice immediately returns to the same theme, creating another image, not without a certain humor: that of an eagle combing the air with its talons:
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) … | the swift could not, the Eagle’s fast and rising flight (tracks to the Sky, and drinking of the Sun’s bright rays, among its lights would make his nest) … |
These verses do not refer only to the eagle’s arrogance, which “pretends” to place its nest among the rays of the sun. The magnificent image of an eagle attempting to climb the air atom by atom represents the futile effort to reach, step by step, the summit of total knowledge. Elwin explains that this is a reference to the logical and linear style of rational thought, which is useless in the realm of metaphysical visions. This image will later echo in the verses Sor Juana dedicates to the Aristotelian method, especially to the ridiculous pedantry of those who employ it for a vision of this metaphysical nature—a higher understanding.
Well, the soul plummets and then recovers from its winged visual audacity, as the poem says. Of course, the winged audacity of the soul turned eagle.
In the following verses, Sor Juana compares the artificial pyramids of Memphis—an imitation or material manifestation and therefore a “corrupted” one of the world of forms—with the interior pyramids.
The comparison between the interior and the exterior, echoing the hermetic and Neoplatonic conception of the universe, is clearly established in later verses, when the poet refers to the soul of the seeker who believed it had reached the summit, and says—having made a peak of its own flight—that the self-deceived soul believed it was emerging into a new region of itself.
Once again, vanity appears, which is not a good companion for cosmic vision.
In the next image, the soul, poorly prepared for such an endeavor, must retreat. It sought Unity, but finds itself confused before the intolerable multitude of objects of the cosmos and fails in its attempt, leaving its intellectual faculty dulled. And I quote: “understanding hindered by the excess of objects.” The dreaming being founders “in a sea of wonder.” Naturally—how could the human mind grasp everything without foundering in a sea of wonder?
Blinded by the impact of the immense vision’s light, the eyes of the dreaming being wished to recover “degree by degree” from the glare that had “calmed its discourse,” that is, had momentarily paralyzed its capacity for reasoning. But once again, a catastrophe!.
In subsequent verses, the soul appears as a little boat shattered upon the mental shore. Yet once again it tries to recover—but unfortunately, it uses the same strategy: the linear mode of consciousness that proceeds step by step, a method utterly inadequate for mystical vision. The key to this entire passage is the word usurpation. It refers to the usurpation by Aristotelian logic. Sor Juana calls it a “metaphysical reduction,” a “weak” method, “methodical yet soft,” dependent on ordered reflection. And these weaknesses, she says, must be compensated for with erudite teaching.
The crescendo of the glory of this scholastic method culminates in a bombastic ending in the following verses, which makes us suspicious of her enthusiasm:
siguientes versos, lo que nos hace sospechar de su entusiasmo: la poeta dice:
…
al palio glorioso it dons the glorious palio,
…
los altos escalones ascendiendo as to the higher rungs it rears.
…..
– en una ya, ya en otra cultivada facultad hasta que insensiblemente la honrosa cumbre mira término dulce de su afán pesado. … | – with one by one the faculties of cultivated qualities – insensibly the peak now shines, the sweetest end of effort reaped. |
There is no doubt, says the author, that the poet is mocking those who believe they have arrived through this scholastic method.
And she continues, in a mocking tone:
…y con planta valiente and, mounting, the valiant foot sole now
cima huella de su altiva frente. impresses the summit’s haughty brow.
The irony is unmistakable.
In the following passage, Sor Juana tells us that human beings have been endowed by Nature not only with the qualities of other beings but with something special: merced, grace, which allows them to overcome their arrogant baseness and rise to loving union with God. But this merced, the poet laments, is neither truly understood nor reciprocated, although much is said about it. It is definitely not intellectual capacity that will lead human beings to total knowledge, but merced—which is nothing other than the intuitive inspiration of the true seeker of total knowledge (or total Union, however one may call it), stripped of arrogance.
Discursive reasoning, says the poet—incapable of understanding the course of an underground spring or the beauty of a flower—how could it pretend to comprehend the secrets of the universe?
When the dreamer’s body begins to feel the lack of nourishment, the metaphysical poem ends, and the silva continues with a battle between darkness and the light of day.
Most critics see in these verses the triumph of reason—a reading that is too literal (“in the light of day”). Here the author completely disagrees with that interpretation.
The intuitive, non-linear side of the cerebral hemisphere is where poetic-mystical inspiration is born, and it is represented here by night; the other, linear and verbal, is where discursive reasoning is elaborated, represented by day. In Saint John of the Cross, Elwin reminds us, the “Dark Night of the Soul” is the mystical moment when the lover—the soul—meets the beloved. It is not in the light of day, not in the light of reason and logic.
In conclusion, the author tells us that Sor Juana has an important message to convey, a message at the psychological level—so important and so subversive for an age of religious authoritarianism that it must be camouflaged, as always happens with artists under repressive regimes. In the case of Juana de Asbaje, this begins with her desire to establish a direct bond with the Divine, transcending doctrine and hierarchy. This would have been an intolerable idea, because her vision of the universe is not strictly Christian, but hermetic or Neoplatonic. In Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, a document full of double meanings that Elwin transcribes in his book, the poet asks God to diminish “the light of reason,” wondering whether it is a gift or a punishment.
Well, time does not allow us to continue analyzing the book. I will only add that it was published in the format of a hardcover coffee-table book, with numerous illustrations that illuminate each of the important moments Sor Juana wished to convey in this poem.
You can find it on our website: www.allbilingual.com
Thank you for listening, and until next time.
Rita Wirkala 