Romance Notes

When Sor Juana died of the plague in 1695, the Archbishop of Mexico, Francisco Aguiar y Seijas–if Octavio Paz is to be believed–presided at her funeral for which her fellow Baroque intellectual and friend Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora had written a eulogy entitled Oración fúnebre. While it seems fitting that such an important ecclesiastical figure should officiate at the great poet and Hieronymite nun's funeral, it is worth remembering that he, famously misogynist, had constantly attempted to undermine Sor Juana's intellectual activities and bring her in line with his view of how nuns should conduct themselves. Also worthy of note, Sigüenza y Góngora seemingly later refused to part with the Oración fúnebre and to allow Juan de Castorena y Ursúa to publish it in the homage section of the third and final volume of Sor Juana's works, published in Spain in 1700 as I will delve into a little later in this essay.

This masculine appropriation of Sor Juana's death echoes the constant struggle she faced in life in establishing her authority as woman, a nun, and a poet. Indeed, the concepts of authority, gender and the written word were deeply entwined in the early modern period. In New Spain, Sor Juana's anomalous condition as a nun who wrote secular works without the supervision of her confessor rendered her vulnerable to critiques of impropriety and exposed to claims that she trespassed on a territory designated only for men. It is the latter point I would like to examine here through an analysis of a sonnet dedicated to Sigüenza y Góngora along with the circumstances within which Sor Juana produced it. In this seemingly trifling poem of praise, Sor Juana lays down her authority as a creole poet, rejecting the challenges of those who sought to undermine her.¹ [End Page 231]

As with so many aspects of Sor Juana's life there is little extant evidence that describes the relationship between her and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, the two towering figures of the Barroco de Indias. Sor Juana the great poet and philosopher, Sigüenza y Góngora, the historian and antiquarian (also a poet, but less talented),² figured greatly in the intellectual milieu of late seventeenth-century Mexico City. Many scholars have described the friendship as possessing varying degrees of intimacy, their chief piece of evidence being the Oración fúnebre. The mention of the eulogy comes in the slightly eccentric prologue to the third volume of Sor Juana's works, the Fama y obras póstumas, compiled by her supporter, the cleric Juan de Castorena y Ursúa. In the "Prólogo a quien leyere," Castorena makes a series of defensive remarks about his disappointment in not being able to transport from Mexico texts both written by Sor Juana and about her. These include the aforementioned Oración fúnebre,³ along with some of Sor Juana's own manuscripts which, Castorena explains, somehow landed in Sigüenza's possession and which he was unable to secure before leaving for Spain. It seems that Castorena feels most begrudging about his inability to include the seductively titled "El equilibrio moral" whose "borradores" he locates with Sigüenza whom he describes as the "curioso tesorero de los más exquisitos originales de la América":⁴

quando me transporté de Nueva España a estos Reynos no los pude aver a las manos (pero sí con certidumbre a la memoria): retirómelos lo uraño, con noble ambición de atesorarlos, o recatólos la discreción de mesurada prudencia, que malogré obligar con mis instancias, por la precisión de mi viage.

Castorena paints a not too flattering picture here of the Mexican intelligentsia–among them Sigüenza–who refused to release their grip on Sor Juana's unpublished writings. Owing to Sigüenza's refusal to hand them over to Castorena [End Page 232] and to guaranteed publication in Spain, these writings would be lost forever. Perhaps...