Primero Sueño
The Primero Sueño (Spanish for “first dream”) is a poem by the Mexican nun and poet Juana Inés de la Cruz . The poem has 975 verses and was written between 1685 and 1690. The original title was probably just Sueño. The Primero would then be a supplement by the publisher in order to emphasize the parallels with Gongoras' famous cycle of poems Soledades . The poem has the form of a Silva , a Spanish nonstrophic poem form of any length, often of considerable length, consisting of eleven and seven syllable lines in an irregular sequence, which are connected by cross rhymes. The text follows the old pattern of the teaching dream and deals with the upswing and failure of the soul thirsting for knowledge. The structure corresponds to the shape of a baroque winged altar and can be divided into three parts.
content
1st part: El dormir (verses 1–146)
The poem begins with the person falling asleep and a dream of the triumph of night over nature. The darkness stands here for the materiality of the earth and in contrast to the divine light and can thus be understood as a metaphor for the impossibility of perfect knowledge.
2nd part: El viaje (verses 147-826)
During sleep the soul separates from the body, whose functions are compared with those of a machine and described in detail. The liberated soul now rises into the air and observes life below from the highest mountain peak; she sees the pyramids as a symbol of man's thirst for knowledge, because their shadows also try to reach the sky. The soul tries to vibrate even higher, because the human desire for knowledge is infinite, but fails due to the heat of the sun and the excessive demands on the mind. Even the attempt to categorize the world fails, because the individual thing is just as opposed to understanding as the whole. The dream ends with a parable of the story of Phaethon, whom the divine lightning has braked in his arrogance and whose example, despite the bitter end, lures imitators. The consciousness now comes back into the body and it reunites with the soul, although sleep still clouds the senses.
3rd part: El despertar (verses 827-975)
The sun rises and breaks the power of darkness, nature and the protagonist, who reveals herself as a woman in the last verse, awaken: y yo despierta (v. 975).
The Sueño describes the search for knowledge, as well as the answer later, as a hopeless and yet alternative act of the person who, despite the already evoked failure of this task, repeatedly confronts himself because it is part of his nature. Theological questions only play a subordinate role in the poem; instead, mythological knowledge is primarily used. Rather, God appears here as a higher authority than the one who is the only one able to understand creation, so that every bit of more education brings the believer closer to the divine.
Interpretative approach
The "Sueño" is a philosophical work which, in the tradition of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, describes a nocturnal dream journey of the soul in search of knowledge. Berthold Volberg sums up the effect as follows: “Two hundred years before Freud and CG Jung, it thematizes the various dream phases and, in bizarre images, the visualization of the invisible and the wishes of the subconscious. There is an attractive contrast between her rational analysis of scientific phenomena and her language, which she piled up into baroque mountains of metaphors. At the end of this not mystical, but intellectual wandering of the soul through the night, there is the disappointing insight that complete knowledge remains unattainable - a nightly dream from which it wakes up with the sunrise. Yet she passionately stirs up the impossible desire to understand everything. "
The metaphor of the fall of Phaethon here seems to reflect the cramped intellectual situation of the dreaming and not only acts like "a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the inquisitors", but seems almost prophetically to indicate the tragic end of the author's life:
Otras –más esforzado–
demasiada acusaba cobardía
el lauro antes ceder, que en la lid dura
haber siquiera entrado,
y al specimen osado
del claro joven la atención volvía,
–auriga altivo del ardiente carro–,
y el, si infeliz, bizarro
alto impulso , el espíritu encendía:
donde el ánimo halla
–más que el temor ejemplos de escarmiento–
abiertas sendas al atrevimiento,
que una ya vez trilladas, no hay castigo
que intento baste a remover segundo,
(segunda ambición, digo).
Another time, however, more boldly minded,
my mind reproached itself that it was too much of an anxiety
to forego laurels before the quarrel to
be fought out even begins;
and with
my inner gaze directed
towards the example of the figure of light
- the youth, proudly
driving the chariot - I feel how his arrogant misfortune,
firing the spirit, giving hot momentum,
does not destroy my courage, does not frighten me so much as a temple of punishment,
rather, it arouses daring daring, points
to paths that, once already taken,
lure, despite punishment,
to dare such an undertaking again
(newly infected by ambition).
literature
Text output
- Alberto Pérez-Amador Adam: El precipicio de Faetón. Nueva edición, estudio filológico y comento de Primero Sueño de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz . Frankfurt, Madrid: Vervuert 1996
- Alberto Pérez-Amador Adam: El precipicio de Faetón. Edición y comento de Primero sueño de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Nueva edición) . Frankfurt, Madrid: Vervuert 2015 (greatly expanded version of the volume published in 1996)
The following German translations are available:
- Your eye can hear me : poetry, theater, prose; Spanish German. Translation by E. Dorer. Edited by Alberto Perez Amador Adam. Frankfurt am Main: Verl. New Critique 1996 ( ISBN 3-8015-0296-1 ).
- First dream with the answer to Sor Filotea de la Cruz . Translation by Fritz Vogelgsang. Frankfurt am Main: Insel 1993 ( ISBN 3-458-16326-3 ).
- The dream ; Spanish German. Edited and translated by Alberto Pérez-Amador Adam and Stephan Nowotnick. Frankfurt: New Critique Verlag 1992 ( ISBN 3-8015-0264-3 ).
Secondary literature
- Octavio Paz: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe. 3. Edition. Barcelona: Seix Barral 1989. (German: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz or Die Fallstricke des Glaubens. Suhrkamp, 1994. ISBN 3-518-38794-4 )
- Karl Vossler (ed.): The world in a dream. Paraphrase from the first dream. A seal of the Tenth Muse of Mexico. 1946.
- Heinrich Merkl: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. A research report 1951–1981. Heidelberg, Winter 1986. ISBN 3-533-03789-4 .
- Alberto Pérez-Amador Adam: La ascendente estrella. Bibliografía de los estudios dedi-cados a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz en el siglo XX. Frankfurt / M., Madrid: Vervuert / Iberoamericana 2007 (Ediciones de Iberoamericana: D, Bibliografias; 7).
- Christopher F. Laferl: Nun and Scholar. In: Birgit Wagner und ders .: Claim to the word: Gender, knowledge and writing in the 17th century. Sor Juana Celeste and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Vienna: Facultas 2002, pp. 71–126.
- Berthold Volberg: Mexico: For the birthday of America's greatest poet - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In: caiman.de 11/2004 ( online at caiman.de)
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Alberto Pérez Amador Adam: El precipicio de Faetón. Nueva Edición. Frankfurt / M., Madrid: Vervuert 1996, p. 14f.
- ↑ cf. Ludwig Pfandl: The tenth muse of Mexico. Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her life, her poetry, her psyche. Munich: Rinn 1946, p. 76.
- ↑ Berthold Volberg: Mexico: For the birthday of America's greatest poet - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In: caiman.de 11/2004 ( Online ( Memento of the original September 23, 2015 Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested Please review the original and archive link under. Instructions and then remove this notice. At caiman.de)
- ^ Translation quoted from Vogelsang 1993, pp. 81/83.
