Octavio Paz - Diane Marting. Juana Ramírez.

Juana Ramrez Author(s): Octavio Paz and Diane Marting Source: Signs, Vol. 5, No.
1, Women in Latin America (Autumn, 1979), pp. 80-97 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173536 . Accessed: 29/03/2013 23:41
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Juana Ramirez
Octavio Paz
Translated by Diane Marting
Juana Ines lived at the side of the viceroyand vicereinebetweenthe ages of sixteenand twenty. Those are the decisiveyearsin the livesof women, women of this was greaterthen.The courtof especially period: precocity the Manceras was brilliantand in the palace there were many balls, and ceremonies.Althoughwe do not know ifher obligationsnear feasts, the vicereinegave her the freedomto meet youngmen of quality,Calleja tellsus thattheysurrounded her "withthe flattery of the selected few."1 He does not allude to any love,but itwould be absurd to entirely discard the idea of flirtations and love affairs.SorJuana's personality, herjovialher delightin the world,the pleasure she gave and receivedin social ity, her narcissism, intercourse, and, in short,the coquetrythatnever abanIf the nun was worldly, doned her completelyall suggestthispossibility. would she be less so when she was not bound why yet by religiousvows? In manypoems she advertsto the partiesand dances of the palace witha degree of understandingthatdid not come by hearsaybut fromher own experience. In his prologue to volume 4 of Sor Juana's Obrascompletas [Complete works], where he examines her profane theater, Albert G. Salceda was performed pointedly stops at one of the farcesthat,almostcertainly, on the opening nightof Los empenos de una casa [The trialsof a noble house].2 The subtitleof the farceis El palacio [The palace] and in it the characters,called the Entesde Palacio [palace characters],contend with each other fora ratherstrangeprize: not the favorof the ladies but their
1. Diego Calleja, Vida de Sor Juana, ed. E. Abreu G6mez (Mexico, D.F.: Antigua libreriaRobredo, 1936). 2. Comedias, de SorJuana Inis de la Cruz,ed. Alfonso sainetes, yprosa,in Obrascompletas Mendez Plancarte,4 vols. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1957), 4:xxiii-xxvi.
in Culture and Society 1979, vol. 5, no. 1] [Signs: Journalof Women ? 1979 by The University of Chicago. 0097-9740/80/0501-0007$01.51
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contempt.3 Salceda thinks El palacio forms a sort of appendix to a "Treatise on Love" scatteredthroughoutSorJuana's works. hypothetical The farce,adds this critic,"is not concerned withlove itselfbut rather her own image of it, a curious one that was verycharacteristic of her and which was known the of de Palacio time, by designation galanteos [palace gallantries]."The farce is not an exception: related themes and motifsappear in many other poems. To give an idea of whatgalanteos de Palacio were, Salceda quotes a of the Duke of Maura.4 Almosteverything the Spanish long description historiansays about Madrid's royal court is applicable to Mexico's viceroyalcourt,since itwas a copy of the former.Since the timeof Felipe IV, when at last the Royal See was definitely established in Madrid, the became the of sending the practice generalized,among Spanish nobility, of the to the families court to serve as daughters great ladies-in-waiting to the queen. The young women lived in the upper storiesof the palace, in courtlife,and were presentin all the processions, participatedactively receptions, dances, feasts, and ceremonies. There was nothing more natural than that the ladies-in-waitingand the courtiers should be brought together.Only "since single young men, who normallyserved the Court fromafar or had not yetacquired importantenough rank to frequentit,were scarce in the male crowd the stable or shifting couples that were forming,divorcing,interweaving, or interchanging partners withoutceasing, were usually composed of a married man and a single woman...." Those courtshipswere "kept togetherby mutual consent," and it is clear thattheywere destroyedthe momentthe ladies-in-waiting changed theircondition and married. The Duke of Maura's descriptionis worthy of some consideration. The galanteos de Palacio were an exception to the general rule. The latter prescribedthat marriagesbe agreed upon by the familiesof the lovers; social and economic considerations,not the will or affectionof the betrothedcouple, were predominant.Eroticrelations-the domain of suband even contraryto jectivityand of possibilitiesthat are indifferent business affairsand social hierarchies-could not manifestthemselves except outside marriage and as a rupture in the social order. Consent operated only in the free lives of single men and, with noble young de Palacio. This custom is a new example of the women, in the galanteos naturalness of love in the West, that extraordinaryinventionof our civilization.From itsbirth,the idea of love in the West was tied to transthe Duke of Maura describes is nothing but a gression; the institution
of Our 3. There is a revealingrelationbetweenthisidea and thatof "the negativegifts Lord," expounded in the final part of Father Vieyra's Serm6ndel mandato[Sermon on (ideas). Christ].They are two examples of thatcentury'slove of paradox and el concetto 4. Gabriel Maura y Gamazo, el duque de Maura, Vida y reinadode CarlosII, 2d ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1954).
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variationof thisuniversalrule. Transgressionin the seventeenth century flowedwithintwo strict channels. One was social: eroticgames were the dominion of the courtiers.The other relates to the sex of the main characters:there was a basic difference between what was permittedto men and what was permittedto women. That differencewas fixed by physiology:there was a danger that the young women mighthave children by premaritalunions. The freedomof the single men was almost hence the abundance of illegitimate children.On the other unrestricted, hand, the courtshipsof the noble women almost never had as a consequence the procreationof children,perhaps because the sexual union was not consummatedcompletelyor because it was assistedby practices like coitusinterruptus and, in secret, abortion. The galanteosde Palacio and contradictorily, stimulated were an institution that,simultaneously erotic freedom and limited its realization. But the contradictionwas more profound: on the one hand, infractions were encouraged; on the other,an insuperableobstaclewas raised to theirlegalization.The ladies' in the case of procreation,no gallantswere married men and therefore, one could require of them the usual reparationin these cases, marriage. There was a dual nature to this curious custom: it did not legalize the consecrated it. and, nevertheless, transgression The galanteos of the erotic de Palacio are one momentin the history in the West. The code of laws pertainingto mannersis intimately tied to the code of laws of gallantry;both are attemptsto regulate,in the close space of the palace, the playof thepassionswithout drowningthemand to limit,as far as possible, the damages of their violence. The origin of is to be found in Provence: there the first courtlymannersand gallantry of the West flourished. Provence, influencedby Arabic courtlysociety with a philosophy and a physicsof eroticism,perfected,concurrently love, an erotic code of laws: courtlylove. The galanteosde Palacio remanner,the relationbetweenthe produce, although in a more frivolous centuries.The ladies and the troubadors of the twelfth and thirteenth in is of the an inversion however, original: Provence the reproduction, ladies were married and the gallantswere single. This differenceis revealing: Provence exalted women, it returnedto them a certainamount of libertyand placed them in a situationof relative autonomy before men and masculine institutions. The fall of Provence and of the of courtlylove. In the flameslit Catharistheresywas also the destruction and Simon de Montfort the Dominican inquisitors,the Catholic by Church burned, at the same time,the Albigensian hereticsand female between thegalanteos This difference de Palacio and courtlylove liberty. in both societiesthe twoessendoes not wipe out the essentialsimilarity: thatdistinguish tial characteristics westerneroticismfromall others are and idealization. Western eroticism present,the ideas of transgression involved relations outside of marriage and unconsummated sexual unions,or those liaisonswhich,at least,did not produce children.There
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is an intense "eroticization"of social life-the ceremonies and parties whirlaround the central axis of the illicitrelationsbetween ladies and gallants-and, at the same time,a sublimationof erotic passion. intothissocial context:love lifts Platonismintroducesitself naturally the body to the soul-and souls, as Sor Juana does not tireof repeating, have no sex. In itsorigins,westernlove was predominantly homosexual. I am thinking, of course, of Athensand of Plato,who was the first to give love philosophical and spiritualdignityby convertingit into a scale of knowledge and a formof contemplation.Among the Alexandrian and Roman poets, creators to no less a degree than Plato and the philosoand of the concept of love,eroticpassion is fundamenphersof the myth tally heterosexual-although they were also acquainted with is tied to bisexuality-and jealousy, thatis,to the willof the loved person. The poets discovered somethingPlato was not aware of: the freedomof the loved person. The reason is probably of a historical nature: in Alexandria, and even more in Rome, the women of the upper classes witha freedomand an autonomy-legal, economic,social, were familiar and erotic-which was unthinkablein Athens. For Plato, the loved one, is an object,whetheritbe of pleasure or of even in his mostexalted form, for Catullus and Propertius, the loved person is, spiritualcontemplation; beforeanything else, a freedom,a human being withwhom we initiatea difficult also is engaged and comrelationshipand in whom our liberty mitsitself.For Plato, love is knowledge; for the poets, recognition. Antiquitybequeathed to us the two central notions which distinguish our idea of love: we love, in the body of a person, also and above all, his or her soul; and this person, being a unique soul, is a free being and not an object. The root of the idea of unique love is located in this idea of the individual soul residingin each body. The history of love is tied the of to the soul. the soulindissolubly history Upon discovering "thatdrop of foreignblood in Greek culture,"as Rhodes says-the philosophers discovered love: human beings are unique because their bodies are the houses (or prisons) of the soul, the immortalspark. For the ancient world, woman was an object and a function: courtesan, mother,witch.Platonismand, above all, the eroticpoetryof Catullus and Propertius transformeddecisivelythe amorous relation by converting the eroticobject into a subjectwitha soul, thatis, intoa person who is the owner of a free will. In addition,the poetic imaginationformulatedforthe first timeone of the enigmas that has fascinatedthe West and been the theme of our poems, novels,comedies, and tragedies:love is a strangecombinationof and liberty. Under the power of a love potion or any other kind fatality of magic that paralyzes or changes our will,we can fall in love withan unworthy being or even a perverse one, as Catullus says several times. Thus the problem of the existence of evil and its terrible attraction appears also in love, however scandalous thismay seem to Plato and his
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of evil disciples.If love as a fatality places us face to facewiththe mystery the idea of love as and suffering do we love our own perdition?), (why that is no less terrible:the freedom confrontsus withanother mystery of the subject into an object and object into subject. In transmutation other words, in love we do not search for understanding, as Plato wanted, as much as for recognition:upon choosing the object of our love, we want him or her to choose us also. The dialectic of the erotic relation makes the object a subject, and vice versa. Love proposes an is the conditionof love: the impossiblething,but thatveryimpossibility "I" wants to make of the "other" an "I," and of the "I" an "other." The Arabs received the Platonic heritage, reinserted it into Sufi it to Provence. Through the inheritorsof and transmitted mysticism, Provence-Calvalcanti, Dante, Petrarch-this conception arrivesat the Neoplatonic Florence of the Medicis where, reformulated,it is transof all the greatmodern poets and formedinto the spiritualnourishment novelists.Love is a spiritualexperience forus, westernhumanity;and in of essences or of addition it is a road thatguides us to the contemplation with theirunion withtruereality.For thatreason love is not synonymous order the social a sublimation-of it is a transgression-also procreation: as it is expressed in marriage and family.Although it originatedin the attached to it,the essence of love is spiritual. body and was indissolubly All these concepts, as they were reelaborated by Renaissance Neoplatonismand by the Spanish poetryand theaterof the sixteenthand of Sor Juana. For examseventeenth centuries,reappear in the writings a idea of love as the spiritual passion transcendingthe sexes is ple, in Ficino's epistlesto his friends.From this found Marsilio to be already Sor Juana's passionate poems to Maria Luisa de Gonzaga, perspective, Countess of Paredes, will seem less strangeto modern readers. de Palacio were inspired by a philosophyof Although the galanteos love harkingback to Provence, theywere designed less to illustratethe idea of love than to introducesome order into a closed societyin which individuals of both sexes were obliged to live togetherwith a certain More than an ideologyof love, it was a code of laws degree of intimacy. de Palacio is The functionof the galanteos for livingtogethererotically. In a way, for "emotional be called an of what could society. hygiene" part institutions of this ilk were (and are) the counterpartand the compleAll eroticritualsare socialized sexuality;thegalanmentof prostitution. into theater:an emotionalballet, transformed teos de Palacio are sexuality a sexual ceremonyevoking the peacocks' ritualdances in the same way that tournamentswere a metaphor for the fightsbetween male deer. de Tournaments belong to feudal societyin itsfinalepoch: thegalanteos and in the seventeenth Palacio represent the world of courtlysociety instance,it was an allegoryof the erotic eighteenthcenturies.In the first of male and female stars and planets in a dance second the combat, around the sun-king. to the vicereine, Juana During all the timeshe was a lady-in-waiting
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Ines participated in those worldlyrites; before convertingthem into experiences forher. Here it is concepts in her poems, theywere real-life undo of the errors into which many of her biogto one appropriate of to the vicereinecould have rank fallen: her lady-in-waiting raphers of marrying. The Matas placed her in the not offerher any possibility viceroyalcourt perhaps because they wanted to rid themselvesof the of having her in their home or so thatJuana Ines might responsibility become culturedat court,in neithercase so thatshe mightmarry.Marriage was excluded because the gallantsalmost alwayswere married. In addition, and above all, marriageswere arranged between the heads of families,and the crux of the negotiationswere somethingthatJuana Ines did not have: a dowry. When her knowledgeand her talenthad conquered the admiration of the learned and of the court,adulated as prettyand as prudent but unable to marry,at the age of nineteen,she entered as a novice in the Convent of St.Joseph of the Discalced Carmelites.The Order was strict and Juana Ines, frightened, returnedsoon afterwardto the world. Her Catholic biographersassertthat she leftthe conventforhealth reasons, but there is not a single text or document proving this supposition, except a rather vague allusion by Father Oviedo, the biographer of Nufiez de Miranda. Once again we are concerned witha pious legend. The truthisJuana Ines did not wantand could not stand the austerity of the Order. Calleja omits this episode and if it had not been for Luis Gonzalez Obregon-another of the investigators who has advanced our of her life-we would still not know she knowledge spent three months withthe Carmelite nuns. If the rigor of the Carmelitesdaunted her, it did not make her change her mind. A yearand a halflater,not without a lot of doubting and thinking, she took religiousvows definitely, but this time in an order well known for its laxityand the softnessof its discipline. On February 24, 1669, she took the veil in the Convent of St. Jerome. She was almost twenty-one years old. who has the characterof Sor Juana has asked Everyone approached themselvesthe same question: Why,when nothingin her life gave an indication of a religious vocation and she was surrounded by general admiration,whydid she abandon the courtand close herselfup inside a convent?The answers are as varied as those who give them. One of the the decision to an unfortunate answers,the mostpopular one, attributes love. The hypothesisof disillusionment includes a rich gamut of interwhetherit pretations:the loved one died; the loved one was inaccessible, was due to Juana Ines's poverty,her illegitimacy, or another similar reason: the loved one was unworthy of her; the loved one lefther. All these suppositionsand others of the same ilk are variationsof the old romanticthemeof the obstacle. It is one of the ingredients-actuallyit is the ingredient-in the traditional image of love. The idea of love as as itscomplement,to the idea of transgression corresponds necessarily, love as obstacle. This interpretation of Sor Juana's decision was a senti-
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mental error that immediatelybecame a criticalerror, reading with romantic eyes a baroque text. None of her contemporariesread her poems as biographical documents. It is impossible,manycritics allege, thatJuana Ines could have lived in the whirlwindof the court for five years-the most impressionable ones in a woman's life,when her entirebeing is open to the senses and her senses are open to the exteriorworld-and thatshe could have left unhurt.I already have said it would be absurd to discountthe possibility of straying and having love affairs.It is probable that she had fallen in love-or thatshe may have believed she had, as oftenoccurs at thatage. But it is impossible that those loves, unfortunateor not, profound or frivolous,caused her to enter the convent. Marriages were arranged between familiesand in these unions social and materialconsiderations, not the will of the betrothedcouple, were the determiningfactors.In love or not,Juana Ines did not have a dowryor scarcelyeven a family. Who and where was her father? And the galanteos de Palacio? Those eroticgames, as has been seen, not onlydid not have marriageas theirgoal, but rather,strictly speaking, excluded it. The idiosyncratic natureof those games, trueceremoniesof in the sense of "ritesof passage," was not veryfavorable eroticinitiation of one of the auto what today we call romanticlove. The testimony will in Los de una casa perhaps spare me a tobiographicalpassages empenos her Ines describes dofa Leonor, indirectly Juana long proof. Through situationat the court: Entre estos aplausos yo, con la atenci6n zozobrando entre tanta muchedumbre, sin hallar seguro blanco, no acertaba a amar a alguno, viendome amada de tantos. Sin temor en los concursos defendia mi recato con peligros del peligro y con el dafio del daiio. Con una afable modestia igualando el agasajo. quitaba lo general, lo sospechoso al agrado. [Between rounds of applause, unable to fix my attentionamong such a multitude on any certain target,I did not aim at loving loved byso many.Withoutfearin thecrowds anyone,seeing myself I defended my modestywiththe dangers of danger and withthe prejudice of prejudice. With an affable modesty matching their regard, I strippedaway the common, all that was suspicious from the pleasant.]
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Juana Ines's description could not be more frank,and confirms what I have said about themoeurs of the viceroyalpalace. At no timedoes she speak of marriage or suggest at all that possibility; her game was reduced to "defendingher modesty."A dangerous game because it consistsof not refusingcompletely, but ratherin refusingto stirup the fire. If the nature of thegalanteos de Palacio makes doubtfulthe existenceof a naturalnessgoes on recgrand unhappy love,Juana Ines's psychological ord as being in opposition to that hypothesiswitheven greaterclarity. On top of all this,it scarcelyis worththe troubleto rememberher lack of her attitude inclinationtoward marriage, her extreme intellectualism, towardmen and about women. The formerare phantoms,shades without a body; the latter are presences, bodies more than ideas. I have already said, in my 1950 essay, thatif "it would be excessive to speak of it is not so to observe that she herselfdid not hide the homosexuality, of her ambiguity feelings."5Again, we should not forgetthe historical conditionsand woman's situationin her centuryand her surroundings. In the opinion of the societyof her time,woman was a passive being and it was only withdifficulty thatthe personal expressionof her sentiments toward the other sex was tolerated,except as a reply to a man's summons. On the other hand, an amorous friendshipwas permittedbetweenpeople of the femalesex, especiallyiftheywere of a highrank and theirsentiments were idealized. In order to achieve moral legitimacy and dignity, love and friendshould have received the double of the social and ship blessing hierarchy of the literary and philosophicaltradition.Love was a noble passion not but because the onlybecause itsprotagonists belonged to the aristocracy lovers formedpart of a true order, like the orders of chivalry. The titles of the lovers were not those of blood, but of the spirit:poetic titles.Sor Juana was a nun and a poet: there is nothingmore natural than forher to findin her friendsand protectors a themeforher songs. On the other hand, it is possible that no one has ever completelyrealized, except confusedly,the complexityof her temperament.The process of inhibitionand of continualsublimation and transformation of the libido began in her infancyand adapted the shape of her longing for knowledge. of her Well, thatlove forlearning-the sublimationand transformation conflicts-is but the of her "total psychological nothing expression rejection of marriage." The argument based on the profound tendencies of Sor Juana's charactermay seem gratuitousand even fantastic. It hardlyis, however, I need to that the of existence although repeat repressedand sublimated tendencies,whethershe herselfknew of them or not, does not exclude the possibility of loves or love affairswitha man or even withseveral. I and viriletenperceiveJuana Ines to be a person of strongnarcissistic dencies, but these inclinationsare synonymousnot withlesbianismbut
5. "Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz," in Las perasdel olmo(Mexico: Seix Barral, Biblioteca Breve de Bolsillo, 1974), pp. 34-48.
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with intersexuality. Gide said: "Only a simple-mindedway of considerthe emotions could make one believethereare simpleemotions."But ing neitherwould the existenceof a grand heterosexual passion, either unfortunateor impossible,explain completelyher decision to become a nun. Sor Juana belongs to a group of women who, iftheycan, flee from marriage. Antiquityleft us two female archetypes,Venus and Diana. The personalityof Sor Juana is closer to the second than to the first: Diana is not the patronof marriage,but ratherof the chaste and solitary life of hunters. All this confirmswhat I indicated earlier: the real or supposed existence of one love or several could not have been the decause of her decision. termining In addition, there is another reason, and it is a decisive one: What documents do we have? There are no lettersor any other indication whichmay be valid proof. None of Sor Juana's contemporarieshas even hintedat the existenceof an unknownlove. On thistopic,as one would expect, the poet is totallysilent. Although one would not expect it, Calleja is also. It is truethatthereare the love poems. There are manyof them and some are veryprofound. All reveal a perfectfamiliarity with what could be called the dialectics of love: jealousy, coldness, separations, neglect,the correspondence. Two reasons prevent me fromacWe do not know the dates ceptingthe evidence of the poems. The first: of those romances, endechas,and sonnets. Second, the poetry of that period was not confessional poetry. Sinceritywas important to the romanticsand to the moderns; itwas not to the poets of the seventeenth century.Baroque poetrypresentsto the reader archetypical diagramsof love and the passions, but the reader should not and cannot inferthat the poems possess validityas confessions. The erotic understanding that Sor Juana's poems and comedies than the resultof actual reveal is more a knowledgecodifiedby tradition For a even a thisreason, rhetoric, experience-a casuistry, logic. precisely one could make a treatiseon love from Sor Juana's poems: they are not confessions.It is truethatin several poems conceptsand archetypes, thereare certaininflections thatseem to touch on theconfession.Generare the these not of love, but of solitude,and the ones where ally poems, the theme of desengano(disillusionment)predominates. The sensual tone, passionate and direct,is not in the love poems but rather,almost dedicated to Lysis,Laura, and other always,in those of lovingfriendship women friends. No, Sor Juana's erotic poems are illustrationsof a metaphysicsof love, an aesthetic and a rhetoric,not a confession of personal feelings.
* * *
think The majority of Catholic critics Juana Ines chose her religious lifeout of authenticvocation,that is, because she heard God's call. It is evident thatJuana Ines was a sincere Catholic. Her orthodoxyis not in
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doubt. But to forgetthat in her era religiouslifewas an occupation like a lot. The conventswere full of women any other would be forgetting the divine call, but rather who had taken theirvows,not fromfollowing considerationsand needs; theirsituation was not different out of worldly fromthatof the young women todaywho are searchingfora career that In the will give them both economic support and social respectability. seventeenthcentury,a religious life was a profession. This does not of the clergyand the implyeitherlack of faithor irreligion:the majority nuns were sincere Catholics and modest functionaries of the Church. Women took theirvows because of familyarrangementsor lack of fortune, or because for some reason they could not marry: so did those women who were alone in the world and withoutthe support of a man. The convent was employment,an occupation. But not all women could profess; in order to embrace the monasticlife one had to have a The ceremonyof the takingof dowryand belong to a well-known family. the veil possessed solemnity:godparents, guests, music, flowers.Poor women-widows, orphans, the abandoned-took refuge in the "retreats"founded in the principalcitiesby the Church and by some of the charitable rich. In Puebla, Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz founded two houses for"many poor women who wanted to save intactthe flower of their purity. .. but who were timid and afraid of losing it through being poor or beautiful. ..."6 In the biographyof another benefactor one can read thiseulogy: "one can not deny the heroismand greatness of placing inside the retreats,women who, . . . unable to enter the Monasteries,bewailed in thatcenturytheirclear danger."7Taking vows was a common solutionat the time. Sor Juana's situationwas not excepin addition to her niece Isabel de San Jose,two tional: in her own family, of the daughtersof her half-sister Ines also joined the Hieronymites, the Order of St. Jerome. Nothing in Juana Ines's earlier life reveals a particular religious to the predisposition. During the yearsin whichshe was a lady-in-waiting vicereine she distinguished herself not for her devotion but for her beauty,her talent,and her knowledge.Nor, it mustbe repeated, did she show excessive zeal during the twenty-seven years she spent in the Conventof St. Jerome. In thissense, the ratherlightaccusationsof Fernandez de Santa Cruz and the much more severe reproaches of Niufiez de Miranda were perfectly no to himself has recourse but justified.Calleja "for Sor lukewarmness: Juana's recognize, although grumblingly, twenty-seven years she lived as a nun, withoutthe retreatswhich are required forthose who desire theirgood name to resound forfulfilling, in an ecstaticmore than merelya satisfactory way, the requirementsof the religiousstate." Father Oviedo goes further and statesthat her con6. Miguel de Torres, Dechadode principes eclesidsticos (Puebla, 1716). 7. Quoted in DorothySchons, "Some Obscure Pointsin the Life of SorJuana In6s de la 24 (November 1926): 141-62. Cruz," ModernPhilology
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advised her to dedicate less time fessor,Nufiez de Miranda, constantly the continuouscorrespondencesof words,and in writ"to her publicity, ing to those fromthe outside. ..."8 The "Respuesta de Sor Filotea de la Cruz" corroboratesthe words of Calleja and Oviedo. I havejust explained, forreasons more easy to In spiteof everything understandthan tojustify, the majority of Catholiccritics considerJuana Ines's decision to take the veil an expressionof a psychological conflict of a spiritualnature which resolved itselfin an authenticrenunciationof the world. The question is central because it is intimately tied to the otherenigma of her life:the crisisof her finalyears.RobertRicard is the critic who with the greatest rigor and coherence has sustained the of a religiousvocation.9For thisFrenchhistorian, SorJuana's hypothesis situationis the same as that of Pascal: in the same way that,in his first conversion, Pascal abandoned a worldly occupation to ascend to the "spiritualorder," Sor Juana left the viceroyalcourt because of her eagerness to know; in his second conversion,Pascal renounced science in order tojoin the "order of charity" and SorJuana renounced knowledge forthe love of God. Ricard,by thisreasoning,bringsupon himself what is called "begging the question": in order to prove there had been a first conversionhe takes for granted the existence of the second. In reality, the renunciationof learning at the end of her life was not a voluntary act; rather,it was a humiliationimposed upon her by the ecclesiastical authoritiesafter a fightof over two years. With respect to the "first conversion": Juana Ines, unlike Pascal, could not renounce a worldly career she did not have. She was a young woman, alone and unprotected. It is impossibleto knowJuana Ines's stateof mind during the years however, immediately precedingher takingof the veil. It is not difficult, to attemptto reconstruct thatmomentand to conjecturethe reasons that de una casa can, once again, shed a precipitatedher decision.Los empenos littlelightforus. The situationof dofia Leonor, as it appears in the first discreet, act, is a transpositionof Juana Ines's at court: she is pretty, cultured, and the admirable target of all attention.Juana Ines and Leonor are both poor, and both are half-orphans.Here the symmetry is broken: Leonor lacks a mother,while Juana Ines has no father.This difference marksthe opposite directionstheirliveswilltake.Juana Ines lives withoutthe protectionof a man; Leonor's fathersheltersher and when her honor is in danger, he does not hesitateto demand reparation eitherby marriageor by blood. Faithfulto theirsymmetrically opposite destinies,Leonor marriesand Juana Ines goes to the convent.Was the
de el V. P. heroicas ministerios 8. Juan de Oviedo, Vida exemplar, virtudes, y apost6licos ... (Mexico: los herederos de la viuda de Antonio Nuiez de Mirandade la CompaniadeJesus, Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, 1702). du XVIIesiecle, mexicaine 9. Robert Ricard,Unepoetesse SorJuana Ines de la Cruz (Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1954).
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or is Sor Juana's comedy, absence of a fathersuch a determining factor, more than a transposition of her life,a projectionof her desires and her obsessions? In Juana Ines's situationduring those years, I perceive three basic and permanentcircumstances, lyingside by side withthe other circumafterall is said and done, were no less stanceswhich,althoughtransitory, and the absence crucial. The basic circumstances are bastardy,poverty, of her father.None of them could be the sole cause of her takingof the to thatresolution.There is, in addiveil,but all contributedpowerfully in The least important the causes. a certain was, perhaps, tion, hierarchy it did not because bastardy, preventany of her sistersfrom marrying. was a greaterobstacle,itwas not insuperableeither,as Althoughpoverty showsonce again. Nevertheless, the example of her sisters thereis a clear contrastbetween the luck of the daughters of Diego Ruiz Lozano, a well-to-do man, and the luck of those of the phantom,Pedro Manuel de Ruiz Lozano married a doctor of the University, and her Ines Asbaje: sisterAntonia,a landowner; Maria and Josefade Asbaje, abandoned by theirhusbands, lived irregularlives and had childrenby different men. Pedro Manuel de Asbaje was a name; Diego Ruiz Lozano, a real presence. His will shows him to be a patriarch,loving of his children and jealous of his hacienda. When his daughters approached puberty,he distancedthem fromtheirmotherand deposited themin the conventof St. Jerome,under the care of theirhalf-sister Juana Ines. Later he married them to people of rank. The differencebetween the condition of the daughters of Ruiz Lozano and the daughters of Asbaje must have made an impressionon Juana Ines. It is understandablethatthe examher: is thiswhat ples of her motherand of her twosisterswould frighten was waitingfor a woman alone in the world? With greaterrealism than her modern biographers, Father Calleja expounds succinctlyon her predicament: "the prettyface of a poor woman is a white wall upon which some idiot alwayswants to heave his gob of paint." In Sor Juana's testament(February 23, 1669), there is a moving passage. In those documents, the novices renounce their property. Juana Ines says: "I declare that I own, in the keeping of dofia Isabel Ramirez, my mother, two hundred and fortypesos in common gold reals, whose entireamount Captain don Juan Sentis de Chavarria gave to me and bestowed upon me. I declare them to be my property."That was all of her fortune.And who was that captain who gave her those pesos as a present,and what relationdid he have to Juana Ines or to the other women in her family?While she lived in the palace, Juana Ines must have had this thoughtmany times: I have no fortune,I have no to the vicereine,whose name, I have no father.She was a lady-in-waiting position, along with her husband's, was only temporary.They would leave, never to return.Afterthe Marquis and Marchionessof Mancera, who and whatwould itbe? Would she returnto the Matas' house and live
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protectedby that rich family?But would they accept her back again? Also, how can one forgetthat it had been Juan Mata himselfwho had placed her in the palace, ifnot in order to be freedfromher care, at least withthe intention that,supportedbyher own means, a road throughthe world would be opened for her? Now that road was ending in a wall. When Juana Ines, after spending three months in the austere Carmelite Order, changed her mind and abandoned the convent,she returnedneitherto her house nor to the Matas, but to the palace, to the Marchionessof Mancera's side. This impliesthather only home was the palace, a provisionalhome which she would have to leave the day the Manceras did. Time and timeagain her objectionsmusthave led her to the same place: the door of the monastery.Her protector, Leonor Carretto,the Marchionessof Mancera, must have encouraged her to make the resolution.The factthat she and her husband attended the famous ceremony of the taking of the veil is an indication they favored the project and, probably,expedited it. To the influenceof the Manceras, one mustadd thatof the other people who surrounded her: who, in this context,could have found it illogical or cruel that a twenty-year-old woman, beautifuland unprotected,should close herselfup inside of a itwas not convent?There is anothercircumstance ignoredby her critics: to in a convent and the Ines court, easy join viceroyal ifJuana spentyears she had not find who would been able to a maybe godfather pay her that the without much One could even affirm, dowry. exaggeration, the convent. her relatives was the ladder to Perhaps palace reaching placed her withthe vicereinewiththe idea that,throughher protection and her connections,Juana Inez would find a godfatherand a benefactor. The person withthe greatest and authority, determination, sagacity, her and her was Father fears, her, doubts, urging quieting dissipating Antonio Nufiez de Miranda. A man of vast culture,professorof philosyears, ophy and Censor of the Tribunal of the Inquisitionforover thirty the JesuitNufiez de Miranda was the confessorof the viceroyand vicereine and thus,Oviedo writes, "going oftento the Palace ... he offered to help her as much as he could." Nuniezde Miranda had been the rector of the famousCollege of St. Peterand St. Paul and had the reputationof being a great preacher. These meritsand the post as Censor of the Holy Inquisition had given him great notoriety.His specialtywas nuns. He visitedthe conventsfrequently, was the spiritualdirectorof manysisters, and had writtena primer for them. It was certainlyowing to his influencethatthe wealthyPedro Velazquez de la Cadena paid Juana Ines's dowry(3,000 pesos, a considerable sum thatwas greaterthan what her half-sisters brought to their husbands in marriage). Father Oviedo advertswithenthusiasmto this skillof Nfiez de Miranda: "The dowries were innumerablethathe negotiatedand thatwere adjusted as a result of his industryand diligence, so that the poor young maids could be
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preserved,blessingthem as Brides of Christin the sacred retreatof the cloisters."10 Oviedo himself relates that, from the time he met Juana Ines, Father Nuniez had shown zeal for her cause. That zeal was so extreme, nun and theJesuitpriestwere and the relationsbetweenthe Hieronymite so prolonged and complex, thatOviedo devotes an entirechapter of his biographyof Nufiezto describingthem.In those pages, Oviedo attempts to wash Niufiezof the faults many attributeto him, among them the excessive rigorwithwhich he treated her later and which he carried to the point of forbiddingher poetic activity and the cultivation of letters. On the other hand, Oviedo accuses Sor Juana of being ungrateful, conceited, and unruly.The polemic tone of these passages is revealingand shows that already people were speaking of the persecutionsthatdarkened Sor Juana's last years. The theme of the unfortunaterelationsof the Hieronymitenun withthe ecclesiasticalhierarchy and withthe Sociis of not an invention of modern as Mendez "anti-clericalism," ety Jesus Plancarteand othershave said; it is a themethatcomes fromSorJuana's own time.The rupturebetween the nun and her spiritualdirectorwas bitterand the reconciliation was even more bitter, since she achieved it in But in submission. the which only by period Juana Ines, before she took the veil, vacillatedand asked herselfif her intellectualtasteswere compatible with religious obligations,Niuniez quieted her scruples and He her. was not strict but encouraged paternal,condescending,and not inflexible.Fishers of souls are frightening because they can also be seductive.Oviedo tellsthe storythatwhen Juana Ines finally decided to the of Nunfiez was such that he for the party, profess, happiness paid invitedthe most notable and illustrious of the Ecclesiasticaland Municiof Mexico. pal Councils, the Inquisitors,and the nobility The passages in the "Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz" relatingto the takingof the veil are memorable fortheirelusive and reticent qualwitha gesture obscures ity.Sor Juana speaks withoutsaying anything, whatshe wasjust said, and afterobscuringit,saysitagain. It is worththe troubleto reproduce thislong and sinuous paragraph: "I became a nun, because even though I knew that being a nun had many things(I am speaking now of the accessories, not of the formalqualities) that are repugnant to my disposition,all in all, because of my total rejectionof and the most marriage,the religiousstatewas the least disproportionate decent I could have chosen, in terms of the securityof my salvation, whichI wanted; to itsfirst place (as the mostimportant goal), all the little of my temperamentyielded and bowed down. That is, I impertinences had wanted to livealone; I had wanted not to have an obligatory occupationthatwould be an obstacleto myfreedomof study,nor any murmurs fromthe community that may impede the calm silence of my books."
10. Juan de Oviedo, Vida del Padre Antonio ;ifnez de Miranda.
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For a complete understandingof this declaration one should keep in mind twocircumstances: thewriter is a nun who is writing to a bishop, her superior, in order to defend herself from certain attacks and to justifyher love for secular letters.On the other hand, one should consider the quoted passage in the general contextof the Carta: her desire for knowledge frombirth.Sor Juana's declaration has two parts: in the first she refersto the principalreason thatbroughther to profess;in the of her intellectual vocationand second, she mentionsthe incompatability life in a religious community.With regards to the former: Sor Juana affirmsthat, with respect to her most important goal-that is, her salvation-the religious state was the "least disproportionateand most decent I could have chosen." Thus she proclaims the primacy,with perfectorthodoxy,of spiritualends over temporal ones: we are in the world in order to save our souls and win paradise. But her decision to choose the convent is subordinated to a clause that governs the whole This declarationis the total ofmy ofmarriage." paragraph: "because rejection crux of the Carta, and not only of this piece of writing but of her whole life. Sor Juana knew other means to salvation and, among them, for women, the most frequentand normal was marriage.Not forher. Thus the decision to profess was subordinated to and was a consequence of another, previous decision: the denial of the maritalstate.There is not the least allusion to God's call or to the spiritualvocation;withextraorSor Juana expounds a rationaldecision: giventhatshe dinaryfrankness and the does not wantto marry, the conventis the least disproportionate most decent way to insure her salvation.The proportionatestatewould have been marriage;the indecent,livingalone in the world,whichwould have exposed her, as Calleja said, to being a white wall for men to scribbleupon withtheirpaint.Juana Ines's choice was not the resultof a spiritualcrisisor of a sentimentaldisillusionment.It was a reasonable withthe moralsof the age and withthe practicesand decision,consistent of her class. The conventwas not a ladder to God, but rather convictions the refuge of a woman who was alone in the world. Until now I have examined the negative reasons, in a manner of speaking,that perhaps moved Juana Ines to take her vows. These conof thisworld, siderationswere, according to what has been seen, strictly social and moral ones. of as much as worries a material order inspiredby but decency. The word thatdefinesthose preoccupationsis notsaintliness But itis impossibleto reduce her decision to thosereasons. We knowthat she doubted greatly and that,even aftershe had decided, she was frightened by the harshnessof the CarmeliteOrder and abandoned the convent. Nufiez's arguments and advice, as much as the softnessof the finally persuaded her. But all thisedifice regimenof the Hieronymites, of rational reasons was supported by somethingbeyond reason: her rejection of marriage. That was the vital foundation upon which she built her attitude.Was she sincere when she wrote that phrase? Or did
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she onlywish to hide the factthatthe prospectsfora good marriage,for any young woman in her situation,were rather doubtful and that the cloisterwas betterthan to followin the footstepsof her two sisters?Sor Juana did not always tell the truth-once in a while, for example, she claimed to be a legitimatechild-but in this case we do not have any reason to doubt her sincerity.Her interestsand her tastes coincided. she tells us corroborates we know about her and everything Everything It is easy to imagineher at forthe stateof matrimony. her slightaffection court and in the cloister,dancing in a room or singing in a chorus, havinga conversationin a garden or in the parlorof a convent;we know thatshe was familiar with,enjoyed, and sufferedthe passions of literary of and perhaps, of love itself.. Can we imagglory, loving friendship, ine her in a house witha husband and children? Why this rejectionof marriage?It is almost certainJuana Ines was not clearlyconscious of the true nature of her inclinations,at least in in some uncommon those yearsof extremeyouth.Later, in her maturity, the other half of her permoments,perhaps, she indistinctly perceived unand the must have caused her an revelation sonality, extraordinary easiness. From the beginning,ever since those years when she hid to read her grandfather's of books, the sublimationand the transformation her inclinationshad been at work in her: her love of knowledge is the positive formwhich her rejectionof marriage assumed. It is the other side of the coin: she does not want to marrybecause she wantsto learn. She is in love with learning. She is sparring over the motive for her but she dwells upon her longing for knowlrepugnance for matrimony in an effusive that does not exclude some coquetry.The proedge way cess of masculinizationis fused withthatof learning; in order to know, one must be a man or seem to be. Disguising herselfas a man, cutting her hair, and finally neutralizingher sexualitybeneath a nun's habitare sublimations,or rather, translationsof her desire: she wants to take possession of masculine values because she wantsto be likea man. That likeis the bridge and, simultaneously, the sign of an inevitabledistance. For that reason, in a second stage of the process, the bridge is broken, she turnsaround against men, defends women, and anticipatesmodern feminism.Even if, from the psychologicaland physiologicalpoints of were nothingbut a fantasyof some modview,Sor Juana's masculinity ern critics,it would not be a fantasyfroma social or historicalpoint of view. Her world's values were masculine values. As a girl,she wanted to dress herselfas a man to be able to possess them; as a woman,she carried the Platonic division between the soul and the body to an extreme in order to affirm that the formeris neutral. The religious state was the neutralizationof her libido. In her hierarchyof values, understanding was before sex, because only throughthe understandingcould she neutralizeand transcendher own sex. Whateverthe psychological and physiologicalcauses of her attitudemay have been, all her lifeshe was moved
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to penetratethe world of knowledge: a masculine by the determination world. Rejection of marriage, love of knowledge, masculinization,neutralization: all these resolve themselvesinto a word which is no less powerful: solitude. Imposed by the world, she transformedit into a destinyshe not only accepted but chose. First the girl, alone and lost confusion. among adults; later a solitary young woman in the century's She locked herselfup inside a conventnot in order to prayand singwith her sisters,but in order to live by herselfwith her own self. She was mistaken:she exchanged the bustleof the world forthatof the convent. But in 1669 the convent appeared to her to be the solution of her she could not be letteredeitheras a dilemma; if her destinywas letters, wife or alone. But she could be a letterednun. The contradictionbetween her intellectualvocation and her life in the bosom of a religious community, although she foresawit-as she rememberswithsome bitternessin the "Letter to Manuel Fernandez de Santa Crus"-appeared later. I should add that,ifshe wanted to be alone, she had not wanted to be isolated. She always loved intellectualcommunicationand this very thing-to live in continualcorrespondencewiththe exteriorworld-was what Nufiezreproached the most.Sor Juana lived in and withher world. The same thing happened with what I have called, I do not know if it lived togetherwithher even more accuratelyor not, her masculinity: in If thereis such a thingas a feminine intensefemininity. temperament, sense of the word,it was Sor Juana's. She fascinates the mostcaptivating ever totally us because in her,without blending,the mostextremeopporesides sitescross each other. Perhaps the secretof her strangevivacity here: few beings are as alive as she is aftercenturiesof burial. In 1667 she entered as a novice in the Discalced Carmelitesand in a Did she repentof her fewmonthsshe abandoned the convent,horrified. second, finalchoice, too? It is impossibleto know. Some of her poems reveal bitterness, anguish, and distaste;but do not we findthe same in the work of other poets who lived in the world? She complained of the intrusionsof her companions in the convents,but wouldn't she have if she had stayed been exposed to even more intolerableintermeddling the at court? The decision to become a nun was, in her circumstances, best,and perhaps the only,decision she could make. Nevertheless,she must have had momentsof doubt and dejection. More than once she must have lamented being tied to an irrevocabledecision. We, the moderns, accustomed to changing our occupation or our (marital or religious) condition,cannot completelyrealize what it means to have a decision bind us for the rest of our life. That is the point of an admirable The sonnet that scandalized those who had proposed her beatification. titledescribes verywell the terriblenature,because it is withoutappeal, that of decisions like hers: it praises"the lastsuntil tomake a decision courage the of in character The theme of death." glory defeat-symbolized by
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hero-combines withthe themeof unmanageable Faetonte,her tutelary for what life could have been but was not. Withlucidity her and nostalgia she to the that her refers made choose a state which melancholy, bravery never ends except with death; but it seems to her it would have been more noble and heroic, even at the riskof being struckby lightning, to reins the of the chariot of the Sun and to live unsheltered grab by anything: Si los riesgos del mar considerara, ninguna se embarcara; si antes viera bien su peligro, nadie se atreviera ni al bravo toro osado provocara. Si del fogoso bruto ponderara la furiadesbocada en la carrera el jinete prudente, nunca hubiera quien con discretamano lo enfrenara. Pero si hubiera alguno tan osado que, no obstante el peligro,al mismo Apolo quiesese gobernar con atrevida mano el rapido carro en luz baniado, todo lo hiciera,y no tomara solo estado que ha de ser toda la vida. (If the dangers of the sea were considered, no one would go to sea; if one saw well his or her danger beforehand,no one would dare to provoke the savage, high-spirited bull. If the prudentjockey would ponder in a race the runaway furyof the spiritedbrute, never would there be anyone who witha cautious hand would bridle it. But if there were anyone so daring, who, in spite of the danger, would like to govern Apollo himself,govern witha daring hand the rapid chariotbathed in light,she or he woulddo all that,and not merelyenter a state which must be endured all his or her life.) D. F. Mexico,

Octavio Paz - Diane Marting. Juana Ramírez.

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Juana Ramrez Author(s): Octavio Paz and Diane Marting Source: Signs, Vol. 5, No.

Translated by Diane Marting

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