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| omnipoetics:nahuatl_authorship [2025/02/12 21:20] – [Notion of Authorship in Nahuatl Poetry] adriana | omnipoetics:nahuatl_authorship [2025/02/19 01:05] (current) – [Connection to Nahuatl Authorship] adriana |
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| ====== León-Portilla ====== | ====== León-Portilla's Claims in Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World ====== |
| ==== Overview ==== | ==== Overview ==== |
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| === Genre in Nahuatl Poetry & "Ghost Songs" === | === Genre in Nahuatl Poetry & "Ghost Songs" === |
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| | "...a hypothesis has been presented that simply dismisses the possibility of establishing any author relationship in the ensemble of the Nahuatl songs and poems which are generally accepted as part of the ancient indigenous tradition. The author of the hypothesis claims that those compositions were done in the Colonial days with the specific purpose of being entones as 'Ghost Songs' in rituals similar to those performed by some contemporary North American Indian Groups... Such contributions would be extremely welcome, were it not for Bierhorst's unexpected assertion that all these songs are 'ghost songs,' |
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| | In contrast to the singular reading of //Cantares Mexicanos// soley through the lens of "Ghost Songs," León-Portilla offers other genres, "These are the genres that both the //Cantares// and the //Matritense// register: //xopancuicatl// (songs of springtime), //Xochicuicatl// (flowery songs), //totocuicatl// (songs of birds), //michcuicatl// (songs of fish), //icnocuicatl// (songs of orphanhood), //cozcacuicatl// (necklace songs), //teuccuicatl// (songs of the lords), //tlaocolcuicatl// (songs of suffering), //cuauhcuicatl// (songs of eagles), //yaocuicatl// (songs of war), //atequilizcuicatl// (songs of pouring water), //cihuacuicatl// (songs of women), //cococuicatl// (songs of doves), //cuecuechcuicatl// (provocative songs), and huehuehcuicatl (old songs, or songs of old people)..." (28). |
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| ====== Jongsoo Lee's "Nezahualcoyotl and the Notion of Individual Authorship in Nahuatl Poetry" ====== | ====== Jongsoo Lee's "Nezahualcoyotl and the Notion of Individual Authorship in Nahuatl Poetry" ====== |
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| ==== Notion of Authorship in Nahuatl Poetry ==== | ==== Notion of Authorship in Nahuatl Poetry ==== |
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| The notion of individual authorship, in Lee's opinion, is a construct of distorted Europeanized chroniclers. Lee begins by looking at the first attempts to assign individual authorship in Nahuatl poetry, which he identifies as the sixteenth century Texcocan chroniclers, like Juan Bautista Pomar, Alva Ixtlilxochitl, and Spanish priest Juan Torquemada, "They commonly include some fragmented poems in their chronicles that they attribute to Nezahualcoyotl. Pomar records that Nezahualcoyotl was a sage and philosopher king who was very skeptical about the indigenous religions that required human sacrifice... It was Angel María Garibay who reinforced and confirmed the idea of Nezahualcoyotl as a poet in the 1960's...Just like Ixtilxochitl, Garibay accepts Nezahualcoyotl's authorship by simply arguing that 'cuando leemos: Yo soy Tecayehuatzin, no tenemos motivo para negarlo. Y tampoco, acaso menos, cuando leemos: Yo soy Nezahualcoyotl, soy el poeta de gran cabeza de loro (5, 1)' (Poesía Nahuatl 1: XXXIX). In this way, he was able to identify many other poets before the conquest... Following Garibay's lead, Miguel León-Porfilla confirms the posited individual authorship by following three steps..." (74-5) He later specifically calls out León-Portilla and Garibay for their use of the Texocan chroniclers, "Garibay and León-Portilla seem to be successful in establishing the authorship of these Nahuatl poems, but they do so by basing their arguments on the chronicles of Pomar and Ixtlilxochitl, by faithfully following glossator's notes within the song texts, and by stuyding the lives of the poets" (75). Following their lead, there are many other scholars who have studied individual Nahuatl poets, and Nezahualcoyotl has been the most popular (75). Interestingly, a new book on Nezahualcoyotl's poetry, //Lamentations of Nezahualcóyotl: Nahuatl Poems// by Ilan Stavans will be published on May 8, 2025. | The notion of individual authorship, in Lee's opinion, is a construct of distorted Europeanized chroniclers. Lee begins by looking at the first attempts to assign individual authorship in Nahuatl poetry, which he identifies as the sixteenth century Texcocan chroniclers, like Juan Bautista Pomar, Alva Ixtlilxochitl, and Spanish priest Juan Torquemada, |
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| Lee following along with other Nahuatl scholars such as John Bierhorst, Richard haly, James Lockhard, Frances Karttunen, and Gordon Brotherston, he argues that searching for and detecting authorship is a European preoccupation, "Nahuatl song-poems are quite different from the European poetic tradition in terms of structure and performance: European poems were individual author- and reading- oriented, while Nahuatl poems were anonymous, collective, and performance-oriented. | <blockquote> |
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| | "They commonly include some fragmented poems in their chronicles that they attribute to Nezahualcoyotl. Pomar records that Nezahualcoyotl was a sage and philosopher king who was very skeptical about the indigenous religions that required human sacrifice... Later historians and literary critics such as William H. Prescott in the nineteenth century, and Francis Gilmor, Angel María Garibay, Miguel León-Portilla, and Birgitta Leander in the twentieth century emphasize this peaceful image of Nezahualcoyotl in contrast ot he dominant militaristic culture of the Aztecs... It was Angel María Garibay who reinforced and confirmed the idea of Nezahualcoyotl as a poet in the 1960's...Just like Ixtilxochitl, Garibay accepts Nezahualcoyotl's authorship by simply arguing that 'cuando leemos: Yo soy Tecayehuatzin, no tenemos motivo para negarlo. Y tampoco, acaso menos, cuando leemos: Yo soy Nezahualcoyotl, soy el poeta de gran cabeza de loro (5, 1)' (Poesía Nahuatl 1: XXXIX). In this way, he was able to identify many other poets before the conquest... Following Garibay's lead, Miguel León-Porfilla confirms the posited individual authorship by following three steps..." (Lee 73-5) |
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| | He later specifically calls out León-Portilla and Garibay for their use of the Texocan chroniclers, "Garibay and León-Portilla seem to be successful in establishing the authorship of these Nahuatl poems, but they do so by basing their arguments on the chronicles of Pomar and Ixtlilxochitl, by faithfully following glossator's notes within the song texts, and by stuyding the lives of the poets" (75). |
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| | Following their lead, there are many other scholars who have studied individual Nahuatl poets, and Nezahualcoyotl has been the most popular (75). Interestingly, a new book on Nezahualcoyotl's poetry, //Lamentations of Nezahualcóyotl: Nahuatl Poems// by Ilan Stavans will be published on May 8, 2025. |
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| | Along with other Nahuatl scholars such as John Bierhorst, Richard haly, James Lockhard, Frances Karttunen, and Gordon Brotherston, Lee argues that searching for and detecting authorship is a European preoccupation, "Nahuatl song-poems are quite different from the European poetic tradition in terms of structure and performance: European poems were individual author- and reading- oriented, while Nahuatl poems were anonymous, collective, and performance-oriented" (76). |
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| | Through exploration on the performative nature of Nahuatl poetry, often with multiple singers, and investigation into the glossator's notes, Lee concludes that the notion of Nahuatl poetry originated with the Europeanized colonizers, "...and its perpetuation by modern scholars has severely distorted the collective structure and performance of the Nahuatl artistic tradition along with many other aspects of indigenous civilization after the conquest" (84). |
| ===== Related Pages ===== | ===== Related Pages ===== |
| * [[omnipoetics:nahuatl_aztec_language_-_gods_and_symbols|Nahuatl/Aztec]] | * [[omnipoetics:nahuatl_aztec_language_-_gods_and_symbols|Nahuatl/Aztec]] |
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| | ===== Albert B. Lord's Songs and the Song ===== |
| | When reading the excerpt from //The Singer of Tales// in //The Symposium of the Whole//, Lord provides an exploration into the way we think about songs and performance. There is the song and the singer, and each song is recreated by the singer, "In oral tradition the idea of an original is illogical" (161). When we think about the authors, such as the fifteen authors León-Portilla is using, the author in that sense would be the person performing the song. Further, "From that point of view a song has no 'author' but a multiplicity of authors, each singing being a creation, each singing having its own single 'author.'..." I would argue that the singers are poets performing their version of a collectively owned song. There is no authorship as it belongs to the cultural traditions and becomes a part of the community, the text living within singers, but never belonging, authored or owned by a single individual. |
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| | ==== Connection to Nahuatl Authorship ==== |
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| | In the introduction to //The Singer of Tales//, Lord highlights the exploration and realization of Homer's oral tradition, which is a good starting point for exploring the way we think about poetry and authorship, |
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| | <blockquote> |
| | "It is a strange phenomena in intellectual history as well as in scholarship that the great minds herein represented, minds which could formulate the most ingenious speculation, failed to realize that there might be some other way of composing a poem than that known to their experience....They always thought in terms of a fixed text or a fixed group of texts to which a poet did something for a reason within his own artistic or intellectual self. They could not conceive of a poet composing a line in a certain way because of necessity or because of the demands of his traditional art..." (11). |
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| | "...for he will find singers who have memorized songs from these collections. In spite of authentic manner of presentation, in spite of the fact that the songs themselves are often oral poems, we cannot consider such singers as oral poets. They are mere performers. Such experiences has deceived us and have robbed the real oral poet of credit as a creative composer; indeed to some extent they have taken from epic performance an element of vital interest... When we realize that the performance is a moment of creation for the singer, we cannot but be amazed at the circumstances under which he creates" (14). |
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| | </blockquote> |
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| | There are two ways to explore Nahuatl poetry through this lens. The poet was the singer and the composer, so if the //Cantares Mexicanos// uses a specific performance by a specific singer, than that is what is meant by authorship, as the quote above with Lord. The poet is creating the song and is authoring it anew with each performance. From León-Portilla's perspective in //Fifteen poets of the Aztec World//, there is enough information historically, in the text, and the glossary notes to say that the specific words captured were ones said during a specific performance, i.e. making that specific person the 'author'. The idea of authorship does not fit with the concept of oral tradition. Lord tries to bridge that gap by saying, "From that point of view a song has no 'author,' but a multiplicity of authors, each singing being a creation, each singing having its own single 'author'" (102). |
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| | //The following is opinion//: |
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| | This is further complicated by the fact that performances often had multiple singers. The idea of authorship seems to have implanted itself in a tradition that is far removed from the preoccupations of ownership. The singers were receiving the flowers and songs from heaven during collaborative ceremonies, and yet, the modern critic still attempts to introduce the individual into the mix. The individualistic perspective does not align with the circular view and the collectively made works. While Lord argues that each performance is an author, I would go further and say that there is no author and there does not need to be one. The beauty of the poetry, even as removed as it is, does not come from knowing which specific poet we are attributing the song to. In fact, I believe that placing the idea of authorship into the reader's head, sets them up from the beginning to misunderstand the culture, purpose, and tradition of oral poetry. To put authorship on Nahuatl poetry is like trying to explain the way we think of time to someone in Hopi. Just as there are no words for past, present, and future in Hopi, you can't fit a square peg into a round hole. |
| ===== Works Cited ===== | ===== Works Cited ===== |
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