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Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings
A bilingual edition of writings by Latin America's finest baroque poet
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) wrote her most famous prose work, La Respuesta a Sor Filotea, in 1691 in response to her bishop's injunction against her intellectual pursuits. A passionate and subversive defense of the rights of women to study, to teach, and to write, it predates by almost a century and a half serious writings on any continent about the position and education of women.
Also included in this wide-ranging selection is a new translation of Sor Juana's masterpiece, the epistemological poem "Primero Sueno, " as well as revealing autobiographical sonnets, reverential religious poetry, secular love poems (which have excited speculation through three centuries), playful verses, and lyrical tributes to New World culture that are among the earliest writings celebrating the people and the customs of this hemisphere.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) wrote her most famous prose work, La Respuesta a Sor Filotea, in 1691 in response to her bishop's injunction against her intellectual pursuits. A passionate and subversive defense of the rights of women to study, to teach, and to write, it predates by almost a century and a half serious writings on any continent about the position and education of women.
Also included in this wide-ranging selection is a new translation of Sor Juana's masterpiece, the epistemological poem "Primero Sueno, " as well as revealing autobiographical sonnets, reverential religious poetry, secular love poems (which have excited speculation through three centuries), playful verses, and lyrical tributes to New World culture that are among the earliest writings celebrating the people and the customs of this hemisphere.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
304 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1997
33 people are currently reading
1796 people want to read
About the author
Juana Inés de la Cruz
264 books322 followersJuana Inés de la Cruz was born in a town in the Valley of Mexico to a Creole mother Isabel Ramírez and a Spanish military father, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje. As a child, she learned Nahuatl (Uto-Aztec language spoken in Mexico and Central America) and read and write Spanish in the middle of three years. Thanks to her grandfather's lush library, Juana Inés de la Cruz read the Greek and Roman classics and the theology of the time, she learned Latin in a self-taught way. In 1665, admired for her talent and precocity, she was lady-in-waiting to Leonor Carreto, wife of Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. Sponsored by the Marquises of Mancera, she shone in the viceregal court of New Spain for her erudition and versifying ability. In 1667, Juana Inés de la Cruz entered a convent of the Discalced Carmelites of Mexico but soon had to leave due to health problems. Two years later she entered the Order of St. Jerome, remaining there for the rest of her life and being visited by the most illustrious personalities of the time. She had several drawbacks to her activity as a writer, a fact that was frowned upon at the time and that Juana Inés de la Cruz always defended, claiming the right of women to learn. Shortly before her death, she was forced by her confessor to get rid of her library and her collection of musical and scientific instruments so as not to have problems with the Holy Inquisition, very active at that time. She died of a cholera epidemic at the age of forty-three, while helping her sick companions. The emergence of Sor Juana De La Cruz in the late seventeenth century was a cultural miracle and her whole life was a constant effort of stubborn personal and intellectual improvement.
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September 2, 2016
Juana Inés de la Cruz, born in Mexico in 1648, was a scholar, poet, musician, courtier-turned-nun and defender of reason and women’s rights, which things she did quite exceptionally well, in spite of humongous obstacles like her illegitimacy and ecclesiastical impediments to secular study particularly by a woman…and all this before dying at 47 while nursing other nuns through a plague. Pretty intriguing woman, no?
Well, want to know what’s embarrassing? This is embarrassing: I lived within a two-hour drive of Mexico for 22 years, and I had never even heard of Sor Juana until reading The Savage Detectives this January, much less read any of her work.
Clearly a problem I needed to fix.
Since I can’t read Spanish, I decided to start with Poems, Protest, and a Dream, as it contains English translations of one long poem, a bunch of short poems, some plays, and her blockbuster essay on her intellectual journey and why other women should be able to do the same – a sort of Sor Juana sampler platter, if you will. And wow. She kind of blew me away with her diverse treatments of reason and faith; intellect, beauty and gender; the human and the divine.
Here are some highlights:
Long poem: ”Primero Sueño” (“First Dream”)
This is a pretty spectacular poem: far-reaching and personal at the same time. In it, a Soul goes on an epistemological quest that actually reminded me of Dante’s Divine Comedy. But this Soul has no Beatrice or Virgil to guide it. It’s questing alone, with tellingly ambiguous results.
Short poems
These were a real grab bag: some secular, some sacred, some even saucy. It’s pretty tough to know how much Sor Juana I was getting in these short gems, though, since she uses elaborate word play in the Baroque style, and a lot of the poetry of poetry gets lost in translation. In the note for one poem, the translator flat-out says, "This is admittedly an imitation, not a translation."
Theater
I loved the deceptively simple The Divine Narcissus, an allegorical meeting between the religions of native peoples and the encroaching Spanish. Sor Juana approaches her subject with humanity, a lack of dogmatism, and more complexity than initially meets the eye. Plus, this play has what may be the first concern with environmental degradation due to Spanish activities in the continent’s recorded history. A lot there.
Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea De la Cruz
This one’s crazy fascinating. It’s Sor Juana’s response to a letter from the nun, "Sor Filotea De la Cruz," who lovingly enjoined Sor Juana to abandon reason and apply herself to the spiritual. It gets especially weird, because the letter was actually from a male bishop who’d previously published one of Sor Juana's works (which she knew he knew she knew), who just signed himself a nun, and both parties, apparently, had every expectation their letters could be made public. So much intrigue.
Sor Juana’s response opens with her personal history as a girl thirsty for knowledge, so thirsty that she’d hack her hair off short if she hadn’t learned something by a time she set, "for there seemed to me no cause for a head to be adorned with hair and naked of learning." In spite of admonishments (girls shouldn’t learn, learning should be confined to spiritual matters, etc.), teacherless Juana read widely in humanist arts and sciences. And wrote. To close the essay, she marshals various religious and historical arguments why women should be free to learn and to teach.
It’s all brilliant and not a little heartbreaking. I don’t know quite how to take it. Is this essay a reasoned clarion call? A cry for help? Apologetic? Defiant? Could be all of the above.
But throughout this anthology, what struck me again and again is the discontinuity between seventeenth-century Mexico, which was a rather hostile environment for her, and other times and places in which her talents may have been valued more. As she described how her studies in the convent environment were inhibited by:
“all the attendant details of living in a community: how I might be reading, and those in the adjoining cell would wish to play their instruments, and sing: how I might be studying, and two servants who had quarreled would select me to judge their dispute; or how I might be writing, and a friend come to visit me…”
I thought of nothing so much as college dorms, where Sor Juana would have thrived. And where her most pressing obstacle might have been whether the R.A. had addressed those noise complaints yet.
June 4, 2017
There aren't many obscure classics like this one that I willingly give 4 stars to, but there were SO many times when I was pumping my fist and going YEAH and GO SOR JUANA and OOOOOOH SHE WENT THERE that I can't help myself!
As someone who somewhat uncomfortably rejects the feminist label yet still remains a firm, immovable supporter of gender equality, I have a hard time with more modern iterations of feminist writings. It's impossible not to root for a 17th century nun-poetess, though, because, as evidenced by her Respuesta (spelling?) and much of her poetry, women then had a hard time! A really fricking hard time! And yet Sor Juana is outspoken, intelligent, fervent, humble (I mean, humble for the 17th century), pointed, witty - all the good stuff. It's obviously stuff that can and did get her into a lot of trouble, but she SAID it, and she was GOOD at saying it. At least she was from the perspective of someone who can only just read translations of her work.
I want to say Sor Juana Inés was born in the wrong century but she was born in exactly the right one, even if she maybe didn't make enough of a splash to carry her to fame in the 21st century. I'm really interested in getting my hands of more of her work.
As someone who somewhat uncomfortably rejects the feminist label yet still remains a firm, immovable supporter of gender equality, I have a hard time with more modern iterations of feminist writings. It's impossible not to root for a 17th century nun-poetess, though, because, as evidenced by her Respuesta (spelling?) and much of her poetry, women then had a hard time! A really fricking hard time! And yet Sor Juana is outspoken, intelligent, fervent, humble (I mean, humble for the 17th century), pointed, witty - all the good stuff. It's obviously stuff that can and did get her into a lot of trouble, but she SAID it, and she was GOOD at saying it. At least she was from the perspective of someone who can only just read translations of her work.
I want to say Sor Juana Inés was born in the wrong century but she was born in exactly the right one, even if she maybe didn't make enough of a splash to carry her to fame in the 21st century. I'm really interested in getting my hands of more of her work.
February 25, 2022
"viste y tocaste
mi corazón deshecho entre tus manos."
- "The Tenth Muse" or "The Phoenix of America", Mexico 1691.
Sor Juana at the age of 6 or 7 asked her mother to send her to the university dressed as a boy (‘mudándome el traje’) but mother said no. The child started to work through her grandfather’s library. She measured her learning by reference to her hair. She cut her hair, and set herself the target of mastering a certain subject by the time her hair grew back. But ‘my hair grew fast and my understanding was slow.'
Sor Juana has been found wanting as a nun by many male critics such as Ermilo Abreu Gomez, editor of the first critical editions of her works, who wrote in 1934 in a long prologue that hers was a fake vocation by which she deceived others to satisfy her own intellectual needs. Thirty years later, she was posthumously analysed by Ludwig Pfandl, who saw her devotion to books as a sexual aberration and accused her of penis envy and menopausal neurosis. In 1953, the poet Robert Graves wrote of her "oddness" with more sympathy, but concluded that she lacked "sufficient resolution either to stick it out as a muse or make a complete [religious] abnegation" . Most recently, her biographer Octavio Paz, after claiming her as one of Mexico's greatest poets, found her guilty of narcissism, devoid of a religious calling, and in the habit of unhealthy sexual sublimation: "Convent and library are compensation for the stepfather and substitute for the father. And they fill the same emotional need, since cell and library are rooted in the same soil as infantile desire".
Funny little men passing judgement on a nun. Not even on a priest. A nun.
These men's implied definitions of vocation resonate wit centuries of cultural overlay, defining "the call from God" for a woman as a mysterious disembodied voice, courting her into a self-abnegating life-style based on the erotic image of a young bride whose ego-boundaries are blurred into identity with her spouse. Since a strong ego is essential for a woman scholar-artist, such self-abnegation would not permit Sor Juana to use her abilities in the manner she believed we all are obligated to make use "of the talents He bestowed on us, and of the gifts He lent us, for which we must one day render Him a most detailed account". (The Answer/La Respuesta).
Another penis-owner, father Antonio Nunez, Sor Juana's confessor, naturally did not agree and said that the nun should "cut the adornments of talent with the knife of mortification".
For Sor Juana, talent was not an adornment but part of her call. Despite popular contemporary male fantasies about a nun's vocation, she saw her calling as faithfully following the rule of her order and using her talents to the best of her ability, despite the inconveniences of community life.
The Divine Narcissus shows us her familiarity with Scripture, not simply as a scholar, but as a Sister whose liturgical life in chapel and understanding of doctrine are carried to her writing desk and transformed into a lovely pastoral drama of redemption, framed by a remarkable reflection on the plight of the Aztecs under Spanish colonization.
Esta tarde, mi bien, cuando te hablaba
Esta tarde, mi bien, cuando te hablaba,
como en tu rostro y en tus acciones vía
que con palabras no te persuadía,
que el corazón me vieses deseaba;
y Amor, que mis intentos ayudaba,
venció lo que imposible parecía,
pues entre el llanto que el dolor vertía,
el corazón deshecho destilaba.
Baste ya de rigores, mi bien, baste,
no te atormenten más celos tiranos,
ni el vil recelo tu quietud contraste
con sombras necias, con indicios vanos:
pues ya en líquido humor viste y tocaste
mi corazón deshecho entre tus manos.
Semi-decent translation here
mi corazón deshecho entre tus manos."
- "The Tenth Muse" or "The Phoenix of America", Mexico 1691.
Sor Juana at the age of 6 or 7 asked her mother to send her to the university dressed as a boy (‘mudándome el traje’) but mother said no. The child started to work through her grandfather’s library. She measured her learning by reference to her hair. She cut her hair, and set herself the target of mastering a certain subject by the time her hair grew back. But ‘my hair grew fast and my understanding was slow.'
Sor Juana has been found wanting as a nun by many male critics such as Ermilo Abreu Gomez, editor of the first critical editions of her works, who wrote in 1934 in a long prologue that hers was a fake vocation by which she deceived others to satisfy her own intellectual needs. Thirty years later, she was posthumously analysed by Ludwig Pfandl, who saw her devotion to books as a sexual aberration and accused her of penis envy and menopausal neurosis. In 1953, the poet Robert Graves wrote of her "oddness" with more sympathy, but concluded that she lacked "sufficient resolution either to stick it out as a muse or make a complete [religious] abnegation" . Most recently, her biographer Octavio Paz, after claiming her as one of Mexico's greatest poets, found her guilty of narcissism, devoid of a religious calling, and in the habit of unhealthy sexual sublimation: "Convent and library are compensation for the stepfather and substitute for the father. And they fill the same emotional need, since cell and library are rooted in the same soil as infantile desire".
Funny little men passing judgement on a nun. Not even on a priest. A nun.
These men's implied definitions of vocation resonate wit centuries of cultural overlay, defining "the call from God" for a woman as a mysterious disembodied voice, courting her into a self-abnegating life-style based on the erotic image of a young bride whose ego-boundaries are blurred into identity with her spouse. Since a strong ego is essential for a woman scholar-artist, such self-abnegation would not permit Sor Juana to use her abilities in the manner she believed we all are obligated to make use "of the talents He bestowed on us, and of the gifts He lent us, for which we must one day render Him a most detailed account". (The Answer/La Respuesta).
Another penis-owner, father Antonio Nunez, Sor Juana's confessor, naturally did not agree and said that the nun should "cut the adornments of talent with the knife of mortification".
For Sor Juana, talent was not an adornment but part of her call. Despite popular contemporary male fantasies about a nun's vocation, she saw her calling as faithfully following the rule of her order and using her talents to the best of her ability, despite the inconveniences of community life.
The Divine Narcissus shows us her familiarity with Scripture, not simply as a scholar, but as a Sister whose liturgical life in chapel and understanding of doctrine are carried to her writing desk and transformed into a lovely pastoral drama of redemption, framed by a remarkable reflection on the plight of the Aztecs under Spanish colonization.
Esta tarde, mi bien, cuando te hablaba
Esta tarde, mi bien, cuando te hablaba,
como en tu rostro y en tus acciones vía
que con palabras no te persuadía,
que el corazón me vieses deseaba;
y Amor, que mis intentos ayudaba,
venció lo que imposible parecía,
pues entre el llanto que el dolor vertía,
el corazón deshecho destilaba.
Baste ya de rigores, mi bien, baste,
no te atormenten más celos tiranos,
ni el vil recelo tu quietud contraste
con sombras necias, con indicios vanos:
pues ya en líquido humor viste y tocaste
mi corazón deshecho entre tus manos.
Semi-decent translation here
June 11, 2016
My favorite part of this selected writing book of Sor Juana was not her poems and her dream but rather her protest at the very beginning. Her letter to Sor Filotea is what struck me the most, what made the biggest statement. To me, it wasn't her poems - though I enjoyed most of them - but the disguised protest in itself. A widely intelligent and humble woman that has made a statement about woman's right to educate and be educated.
December 22, 2013
Sor Juana proved to be one of the most outspoken feminists of her century. That she emboldened herself to speak out from the walls of a convent, challenging even the misinterpretations of the scriptures (her comments on the Apostle Paul's words are priceless, as these have been taken out of context for centuries to silence women in the Church), makes her a woman to uphold as an example.
Her poetry is amazing, and her response letter (the first full chapter of the book) is inspiring, at the very least. This isn't a fast read, and it requires time to mull over and reflect upon the meaning behind the words. I can't recommend it for everyone, but if you're a woman who doubts her value in society, or if you've any streak of feminism in your bones, this book is for you.
Her poetry is amazing, and her response letter (the first full chapter of the book) is inspiring, at the very least. This isn't a fast read, and it requires time to mull over and reflect upon the meaning behind the words. I can't recommend it for everyone, but if you're a woman who doubts her value in society, or if you've any streak of feminism in your bones, this book is for you.
November 22, 2024
I would like to say that I learned of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's life and writings through an ongoing quest for knowledge, but truth be told, the spark was a crossword puzzle clue. Nevertheless, as they say, wisdom clumsily encountered surpasses foolishness born of deep reflection. At least I had enough sense to be intrigued by this extraordinary nun and her writings once I was made aware of her existence.
This book presents a bilingual selection of Sor Juana's works (Spanish on the left-hand pages, English on the right). As such, it suffers from a common problem of anthologies, as I often felt shaken out of my reverie just as I was beginning to sink into it, only to be thrown into a completely different mood and moment. Even with such impediments to immersion, it is abundantly clear that these are the creations of a formidable writer, with a dazzling intellect, a waggish streak longer than any convent could contain, and deeply held passions and convictions. Though the book literally trails off at the end (the last entry being an incomplete work), I closed it filled with gratitude and wonder.
And fortunately, two of the sister's most important writings, Primero Sueño and Response to the Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz, are presented in their entirety. The first, a vaulting poem of wonder and defiant brilliance, more than deserves its reputation as a masterpiece. The second is Sor Juana's response to a public letter advising her to give up her studies and her writing pursuits in favor of, we gather, more nunly activities.
Knowing well that said letter was written not by a fellow nun and poet as its byline claimed, but rather by a misogynistic bishop, Sor Juana plays the game to perfection, repeatedly addressing the bishop as "Dear Lady." Her defense of the education of women is, to use the technical term, kickassery of the first order, and the knowledge base she displays throughout the letter, all while portraying herself as slow and ignorant, puts this college graduate, and I've no doubt many others, to shame. An absolute masterstroke of resistance to authoritarianism on par with the famed Apology of Socrates, the sister's Response should not only be far more widely read, but shouted from the rooftops.
In short, a great read for all who get inspired by genius and an unyielding commitment to justice. But pro tip: If you read this particular edition, consider skipping the anachronistically patriarchal Introduction, and gathering your background and biographical information about Sor Juana and her writings elsewhere.
This book presents a bilingual selection of Sor Juana's works (Spanish on the left-hand pages, English on the right). As such, it suffers from a common problem of anthologies, as I often felt shaken out of my reverie just as I was beginning to sink into it, only to be thrown into a completely different mood and moment. Even with such impediments to immersion, it is abundantly clear that these are the creations of a formidable writer, with a dazzling intellect, a waggish streak longer than any convent could contain, and deeply held passions and convictions. Though the book literally trails off at the end (the last entry being an incomplete work), I closed it filled with gratitude and wonder.
And fortunately, two of the sister's most important writings, Primero Sueño and Response to the Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz, are presented in their entirety. The first, a vaulting poem of wonder and defiant brilliance, more than deserves its reputation as a masterpiece. The second is Sor Juana's response to a public letter advising her to give up her studies and her writing pursuits in favor of, we gather, more nunly activities.
Knowing well that said letter was written not by a fellow nun and poet as its byline claimed, but rather by a misogynistic bishop, Sor Juana plays the game to perfection, repeatedly addressing the bishop as "Dear Lady." Her defense of the education of women is, to use the technical term, kickassery of the first order, and the knowledge base she displays throughout the letter, all while portraying herself as slow and ignorant, puts this college graduate, and I've no doubt many others, to shame. An absolute masterstroke of resistance to authoritarianism on par with the famed Apology of Socrates, the sister's Response should not only be far more widely read, but shouted from the rooftops.
In short, a great read for all who get inspired by genius and an unyielding commitment to justice. But pro tip: If you read this particular edition, consider skipping the anachronistically patriarchal Introduction, and gathering your background and biographical information about Sor Juana and her writings elsewhere.
September 18, 2024
I had a hard time getting through the introduction and Sor Juana’s letter at the beginning of the book. The introduction was made for people who really care about Sor Juana from a literary point of view which is not exactly my angle. In Sor Juana’s letter she says that she really likes poetry and boy does that show! She’s a beautiful poet even reading the translation- I can’t imagine how it would be in her language! I especially enjoyed her responses to men being assholes, her song praising the smarts of Saint Catherine, and her short play dealing with the religious colonization of the Americas.
May 5, 2024
Gob-smacked that I've never heard of this extraordinary poet before.
May 1, 2024
Always interesting to read translated poetry that maintains the rhyme and meter. But the 40-page letter that opened this was impossible to follow.
February 4, 2022
3.5*
I do have to respect the alleged lesbian turned nun so that she could avoid getting married who ALSO is owning bishops in the marketplace of theology. thank you for your service señorita.
I do have to respect the alleged lesbian turned nun so that she could avoid getting married who ALSO is owning bishops in the marketplace of theology. thank you for your service señorita.
March 27, 2016
"The impeded stream sings." - Wendell Berry
I know people who think that biography shouldn't matter when reading an individual piece of work. I think these people must never have encountered Sor Juana's writing.
I'm not saying that our society is untroubled by racism and sexism these days. It certainly is. But for a great talent such as Sor Juana to meet such oppressive circumstances and navigate them with such humor, skill, and political nuance is unprecedented, and will probably never be duplicated.
Her canon is a masterpiece of subversion, with an exceptional mind and lively personality insinuating themselves with extreme restraint as she navigated the patriarchal, hierarchical world into which she was born to make her Latin America's first great writer.
Her "Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz" is the most striking example. But to me her poem "First I Dream" was the highlight of this collection. It's a piece of surrealism before such a thing existed. It's prophetic, multifaceted, and difficult.
Some of the other pieces in this collection are minor, and her drama about the religious conquest of America seems to argue for military force as an instrument of conversion. But even there, she lodges several historically novel complaints as well, and although it seems to serve the mentality of the age, it also contains a weird syncretism and subtle environmental complaints.
To say her greatness is unimpeded by her world would be a confusion. It's perhaps better to say that every impediment she faced gave her work an opportunity to sparkle, shimmer, and turn in remarkable ways.
I know people who think that biography shouldn't matter when reading an individual piece of work. I think these people must never have encountered Sor Juana's writing.
I'm not saying that our society is untroubled by racism and sexism these days. It certainly is. But for a great talent such as Sor Juana to meet such oppressive circumstances and navigate them with such humor, skill, and political nuance is unprecedented, and will probably never be duplicated.
Her canon is a masterpiece of subversion, with an exceptional mind and lively personality insinuating themselves with extreme restraint as she navigated the patriarchal, hierarchical world into which she was born to make her Latin America's first great writer.
Her "Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz" is the most striking example. But to me her poem "First I Dream" was the highlight of this collection. It's a piece of surrealism before such a thing existed. It's prophetic, multifaceted, and difficult.
Some of the other pieces in this collection are minor, and her drama about the religious conquest of America seems to argue for military force as an instrument of conversion. But even there, she lodges several historically novel complaints as well, and although it seems to serve the mentality of the age, it also contains a weird syncretism and subtle environmental complaints.
To say her greatness is unimpeded by her world would be a confusion. It's perhaps better to say that every impediment she faced gave her work an opportunity to sparkle, shimmer, and turn in remarkable ways.
November 11, 2011
This collection of Sor Juana's writings is masterful, and upon reading it, one emerges incredibly impressed by the forceful intelligence of this 17th century nun, and the rebuke against her age that should be, but is not, a well-known classic of feminist literature. Her letter, La Respuesta a Sor Filotea, is a masterful, sarcastic, learned defense against the authority of her time in defense of the education of women. It should be a part of the standard curriculum, as should be her poem, Primero Sueno, probably the finest poem written in the western hemisphere until the age of Whitman. What makes her great was her truly devout nature and precise mind. Her arguments are laid out as finely and as well-read as the finest of legal arguments, but with an emotional wit approaching Shakespeare, and referenced in her arguments by the writings of scripture and the saints. The poems are highly symbolic, but in a way that survives the translation. This is a must read, and I am embarrassed to say that I only found it because of the Penguin Classics series. That it is not more widely known to American readers is a shame.
October 12, 2008
This book gives us the perspective of Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana who lived in the 17th century in Nueva Espana/New Spain (Now Mexico) in which this book would present her writings such as Hombres Necios in which it criticized the patriarchal colonial society and the subservient role of women especially Criollas (White Spanish) and La Respuesta a Sor Filotea calling the education of women and her poem El Sueno.
I liked it, but my friend Melo has the book in which the forbidden works of Sor Juana along with popular works these forbidden works caused a lot of controversy back in colonial times in which challenged the power of the Catholic Church who had a stranglehold on Mexican society with it's Holy office of the Inquisition which imprisoned and tortured many people who were suspected heretics, and women.
I liked it, but my friend Melo has the book in which the forbidden works of Sor Juana along with popular works these forbidden works caused a lot of controversy back in colonial times in which challenged the power of the Catholic Church who had a stranglehold on Mexican society with it's Holy office of the Inquisition which imprisoned and tortured many people who were suspected heretics, and women.
October 4, 2015
The last long comment I had about this book was supposed to be on the Anne Bradstreet collection I'm reading. I read a good lot of this text & hope to someday come back & read the rest of it, as it's wonderful & Sor Juana is memorable & wonderful. So not abandonned at all because of lack of wanting to read, but abandoned temporarily due to time!
December 19, 2017
Don’t bother. Although Ines appears to have been a wonderful, intelligent, saintly woman, she comes off through the introduction and editing as only an early, ardent feminist. I cannot believe someone so renowned could produce such mediocre prose and poetry. Her reputation cannot be by accident – yet the selection herein contained speaks otherwise.
July 5, 2019
This was a book from my political theory class that I hadn't bothered to finish until now. I really liked her poems, and her opening letter was more fun to read with the historical context behind it, but some of her writings were kinda rough (the play I'm vagueing about the play). Either way, it was fine, and I got something out of it.
April 14, 2015
2.5
I have, like, complex thoughts about Sor JIdlC? Idk. This was like, an interesting read and stuff, but also not as compelling as I was hoping! But it was good in a like school text kind of way.
I'm having difficulty not giving a shoutout to the oxcom in the title. :(
I have, like, complex thoughts about Sor JIdlC? Idk. This was like, an interesting read and stuff, but also not as compelling as I was hoping! But it was good in a like school text kind of way.
I'm having difficulty not giving a shoutout to the oxcom in the title. :(
May 6, 2019
Catholic Baroque isn't really my aesthetic, but colonial-era Mexican nun Juana Inés de la Cruz (d. 1695) telling off her bishop, at length, for his criticism of her doing intellectual stuff while female = fun.
Currently reading
December 16, 2019Nothing enjoys greater freedom
than the human understanding;
if God does not violate mind
then why would I even try?
Interesting fact: Sor Juana became a nun so she would have more access to books.
March 3, 2008
This is a very special book. Sor Juana was a seventeenth-century nun who wrote poetry and prose, and her secular love poems are sublime, and her philosophical writings exquisite.
January 17, 2010
the magic lantern throws
on a white wall
the contours of delineated figures
in thrall as much to shadow as to light
-Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, "First Dream"
on a white wall
the contours of delineated figures
in thrall as much to shadow as to light
-Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, "First Dream"
September 19, 2011
Review Coming SOON!
November 10, 2014
Totally recommended. One of the best poets in history. And she was a nun.
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January 4, 2015
Sooo this is pretty much my Bible now.
December 9, 2016
Inteligente y maravilloso
July 13, 2017
If you're a fan of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, then this book is a must to read: it contains her important writing pieces and peoms. This edition offers original text next to translation.
February 8, 2019
Peden's translation really does it for me. I love how she preserves end rhymes and formal integrity. This is now my go-to for the poems of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. I deeply enjoyed this volume.
May 26, 2022
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz--the "sor" part meaning that she was, later in life, a nun--was born Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, and was a poet of the late 1600s in Mexico. Her story is amazing; the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish officer, she managed to get an education that was usually denied young women in colonial Mexico, and after reading everything she could find, became fluent in Latin and mastered Greek rhetoric. As a young teen, she ended up a lady-in-waiting in the viceroy's court, and became famous both for her learning and her poetry, astonishing the learned men who came to test her. She turned down many marriage proposals and eventually retired to a monastery with her books where she continued to write. Throughout her life, she faced obstacles to her writing and study, especially from the church, and had to fight to be allowed what intellectual freedom she had. The more scrutiny she faced, the more concessions she had to make, until the archbishop of Mexico condemned her, forcing her to stop writing. Much of what she did write is now lost.
This book is a bilingual version of a part of what remains, and what it contains is terribly impressive. The poet was brilliant, with an amazing command of history, literature, and scripture. The first work translated here, a long letter to Sor Filotea, offering arguments for educating women, is just so smart, filled with examples of educated women from antiquity and church history, all presented with flawless rhetoric. Reading it now, one wants to shake the foolish men (always men) who worked so hard to shut her up and stifle her for no reason other than patriarchy. Her patience and composure alone are impressive.
Besides a short play at the end, the rest of this volume is poetry. Some of it is very accessible and some is damn near impenetrable. (Speaking for myself.) Here are the first few lines of the 25-or-so-page poem called either "First I Dream" or "First Dream," depending on how you translate it (copied from a public domain version):
It's lyrical and surprising and impressive and so far beyond me... The translation in this book is a little different than the above, and it's very nice, but I would have liked a couple things:
• A literal translation rather than a poetic one, to make the Spanish easier for those of us attempting it, and/or
• Extensive notes making sense of the deeply obscure references and difficult language.
I suppose some of that exists online, so I'll take a look.
Fortunately, the other poems--sonnets and satires--are more accessible. I still would have liked literal translations rather than poetic approximations, but I suppose translators can't please everyone no matter what they do.
I definitely recommend looking into Sor Juana's life and poetry, and this book in particular is a nice introduction.
This book is a bilingual version of a part of what remains, and what it contains is terribly impressive. The poet was brilliant, with an amazing command of history, literature, and scripture. The first work translated here, a long letter to Sor Filotea, offering arguments for educating women, is just so smart, filled with examples of educated women from antiquity and church history, all presented with flawless rhetoric. Reading it now, one wants to shake the foolish men (always men) who worked so hard to shut her up and stifle her for no reason other than patriarchy. Her patience and composure alone are impressive.
Besides a short play at the end, the rest of this volume is poetry. Some of it is very accessible and some is damn near impenetrable. (Speaking for myself.) Here are the first few lines of the 25-or-so-page poem called either "First I Dream" or "First Dream," depending on how you translate it (copied from a public domain version):
Pyramidal
death-born shadow of earth
aimed at Heaven
a proud point of vain obelisks pretending to scale the Stars;
but these lovely lights
–free always, always shining–
so easily evaded
the obscure war,
(whose black breath announced
the dreadful, unfettered shade)
the darkened brow
could not even reach the convex Orb of the thrice-blessed Goddess
who shows three shining faces,
but remained
in profound imperial silence,
lord only of the air
sullied with the dense breath
it exhaled
–admitting only
submissive cries of nocturnal birds, so deep and plangent,
the silence was not broken.
It's lyrical and surprising and impressive and so far beyond me... The translation in this book is a little different than the above, and it's very nice, but I would have liked a couple things:
• A literal translation rather than a poetic one, to make the Spanish easier for those of us attempting it, and/or
• Extensive notes making sense of the deeply obscure references and difficult language.
I suppose some of that exists online, so I'll take a look.
Fortunately, the other poems--sonnets and satires--are more accessible. I still would have liked literal translations rather than poetic approximations, but I suppose translators can't please everyone no matter what they do.
I definitely recommend looking into Sor Juana's life and poetry, and this book in particular is a nice introduction.
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January 30, 2020I don’t think I’ve ever identified so strongly with anything as with Sor Juana’s desperate, all-consuming love of learning, her “inclination toward letters,” “the mercy of loving truth above all else.” Her sixteenth century defense of the liberal arts is bumper-sticker worthy: “And thus it is no apology, nor do I offer it as such, to say that I have studied many subjects, seeing that each augments the other.” I enjoy the legendary sassiness of her short poems, but my favorite piece in this batch is the dream (here translated “First, I Dream”), which she claims is the only thing she ever wrote for herself rather than patrons. Well, the church gagged her in the end, but she didn’t make it easy for them.
April 12, 2020
I read this in an American Women's Lit class as an undergrad. I really enjoyed the intro about Sor Juana's life and her prose apologia of women as intellectual beings (she was a pretty brave badass in championing the equal intellectual capabilities of women and their God-given right to exercise them). I find her play about the conversion of the native people to be interesting; she highlights the similarities between their religion and Christianity. I also like some of her shorter poems, especially the ones in which she is being funny or poking fun. Her magnum opus, though, is a slog; it's an interminable poem that showcases her knowledge of science and classical literature, and it is extremely boring.
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