Primero sueño

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Primero sueño (English: The First Dream) is a poem in Spanish written by Juana Inés de la Cruz (often referred to as "Sor Juana") and it is the only work that she wrote for her own enjoyment. Primero sueño was published in 1692 as a part of the second volume of the nun's works with the cover page proclaiming: "Second volume of the works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, professed nun in the Monastery of Saint Jerome in the imperial city of Mexico" (Sevilla, Tomás López de Haro, 1692).

The poem appeared in print with the title Primero sueño, as the title was not Sor Juana's work, the poem's critics have expressed doubt about whether the title was appropriate for the work, but the author herself could have expressed her disagreement, which she never did. In her letter La Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, Sor Juana only references the poem as Sueño (English: A Dream). Regardless, and as the poet herself affirms, the title of the poem is an homage to Luis de Góngora and his Soledades.[1]

About the poem

Primero sueño is the longest of Sor Juana's poems at 976 verses. It is in the silva style and uses assonant rhythm with a simple theme, although presented in a highly complex manner. The poem addresses, among other important subjects (like human transcendence, knowledge, and the meaning of the universe), a recurring theme: the intellectual potential of human beings. To transform said theme into poetry, she employs a rhetorical device: in the guise of the dream itself, the soul abandons the body, which grants a poetic structure sometimes referred to as oneiric.[2]

Primero sueño draws inspiration from various literary sources:

The complexity of the poem itself comes in part from the intertextuality with authors of archetypal and mythic literature, like the Italians Pierio Valeriano, Natalis Comes, and Vincenzo Cartari—as well as the Spaniard Baltazar de Victoria—who provide Primero sueño with an important symbolic and iconographic framework, without which, any interpretation of its meaning would be lacking.[4]

The poem begins with the twilight of human beings and the dreams of nature and humanity. Later, the poem describes physiological functions and the failure of the soul to attempt a universal intuition. Before this failure, the soul turns to deductive reasoning and alludes excessively to the knowledge that humanity possess. The longing for knowledge is maintained, although humanity's scarce capacity to comprehend creation is acknowledged. The last part of the poem relates the awakening of the senses and the triumph of day over night.[5]

Analysis

Primero sueño is the work that best reflects Sor Juana's personality with her passion for the sciences and humanities, an unorthodox trait that could hint at the coming Enlightenment.[6] The end of the poem, in which the Sun defeats the night, could be interpreted as the triumph of reason in the face of intolerance and prejudice.[6] However, in light of a deeper and more thorough reading, the specter of this interpretation is amplified and considerably enriched, exceeding the heurmenutic plane of being merely functional or moral to enter the anagogic plane, typical in dreams of anabasis, like Sor Juana's poem.[7]

The poem contains a wide variety of symbols. Shadow, in addition to representing the course of the dream, does not represent evil, as one might immediately assume, but rather responds to the important tradition of the Orphean night present in the works of spiritual christian authors: it is the night that inspires the conscious approach of the divine as a complete explanation of the universe itself. Throughout the poem, the abundant mythological allusions are woven into a web of feelings deftly calculated by the author.[8] Additionally, there are autobiographical details in the poem, given that verses 704–780 take on "intellectual austerity", a recurring theme in Sor Juana's works.[6]

Octavio Paz offers an unequivocal opinion about Primero sueño: "One must emphasize the absolute originality of Sor Juana, regarding what reaches the subject at the heart of her poem: There is not, in all of Spanish literature and poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries, anything like Primero sueño."[9]

The poem is the most celebrated of Sor Juana's philosophical compositions in which one observes the use of well-known topics like Carpe diem or allusions to Catullus' poems.[10] It is not improbable that the nun, in her zeal to emulate Góngora, might have wanted to compose a second "sueño", which would necessitate this poem be known as the "first dream", or Primero sueño. It is not known why Sor Juana never undertook this project, although the majority of scholars assume that she had originally planned to do so.[11]

Her imitation of Góngora's style is evident in the language throughout the entire poem; although, while Góngora expresses meaning through eminently aesthetic and descriptive text, Sor Juana does this in the form of an abstract discourse. Contrary to what one might expect, the poem does not have anything in common with the poems of the same title by Francisco de Quevedo or Pedro Calderón de la Barca; it is absolutely original in both its subject and development, although it draws upon a thousand years' worth of literary inspiration.[12]

There is a scholarly consensus among those who study Sor Juana that the poem is divided into three parts: "Slumber", "Journey", and "Awakening" (in Spanish, el dormir, el viaje, and el despertar, respectively).[13] This, according to Pascual Buxó, is due to Sor Juana's interest in perpetuating medieval tradition—continued among Renaissance authors—of the tripartite division of the universe, which also corresponds to the parts of the human body.[14]

One of the best-known interpretations of Primero sueño comes from Octavio Paz who maintains that:[15]

Primero sueño is not a poem about knowledge like a vain dream, but rather the poem is about the act of knowing. This act adopts the form of a dream, not in the common sense of the word dream, nor in that of the impractical illusion, but in the spiritual journey ... The journey—a lucid dream—does not end in a revelation as dreams do in the Hermetic and Neoplatonic tradition, in truth the poem does not end: the soul hesitates, seeing itself in Phaethon and, in this, the body awakens. An epic of the act of knowing, the poem is also a confession of the doubts and the battles of Understanding. It is a confession that ends in an act of faith: not in knowledge but rather in the zeal for knowing.

— Octavio Paz. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, or the Traps of Fate, 1982

References

  1. 1.González Boixo 1992, p. 56–57.
  2. 2.González Boixo 1992, p. 58.
  3. 3.González Boixo 1992, p. 59–62.
  4. 4.Olivares Zorrilla 2014, p. 107–125.
  5. 5.González Boixo 1992, p. 61.
  6. 6.[6.2][6.3]Beaupied 1996.
  7. 7.Olivares Zorrilla 2018, p. 45–85.
  8. 8.Olivares Zorrilla 2008, p. 251–282.
  9. 9.Garza Cuarón 1996, p. 650.
  10. 10.García Valdés 2010, p. 30–31.
  11. 11.García Valdés 2010, p. 32.
  12. 12.García Valdés 2010, p. 33.
  13. 13.Paz 1982.
  14. 14.García Valdés 2010, p. 34.
  15. 15.Paz 1982, p. 498–499.