David Damrosch - The Aesthetics of Conquest - Aztec Poetry Before and After Cortés

The Aesthetics of Conquest: Aztec Poetry before and after Corts
Author(s): David Damrosch

Source: Representations, No. 33, Special Issue: The New World (Winter, 1991), pp. 101-120
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928759
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DAVID
DAMROSCH
The Aestheticsof Conquest:

Aztec PoetryBefore
and AfterCortes
Weliftoursongs,ourflowers,
thesesongsoftheOnlySpirit.
Thenfriendsembrace,
arms.
in eachother's
thecompanions
So ithas beensaid byTochihuitzin,
so ithas beensaid byCoyolchiuhqui:
Wecomehereonlytosleep,
wecomehereonlytodream;
itis nottrue,itis nottrue
thatwecometoliveon earth.
18.39
-Cantares mexicanos,
and sixteenthcenturiescreof the fifteenth

THE AZTEC NOBILITY
ated the mostextensive,and in manywaysthemostexquisite,body of poetryever
known to have existed in Mesoamerica. The gentle melancholyand the delicate
aestheticismfound in so manyof the older songs stands in sharp contrastto the
violence thatwas endemic in Aztec politicaland religiouslife,during the entire
period of imperial expansion thatbegan under Itzcoatlin 1428 and ended only
withthe triumphof Cortes in 1521. Studentsof Mesoamericanculturehave long
recognized the importanceof the several hundred survivingAztec lyricsas providinginsightsinto Aztec thoughtand culture.1And yet,the beautyand delicacy
of these texts has almost always been used to provide a respitefrom the harsh
realitiesof Aztec politicallife.For manyMesoamericanists,the poetryprovidesa
way to salvage the culturefromitsown history:
thanthatwhichis generally
knownfromthepresentations
It revealsa farfullermentality
in sum,tocompleteourimageofthepastin orderto
in thehistory
books.It contributes,
enableus to makea morejust evaluationofancientMexico .... The traditional
imageof
theAztecs,often
sacrifice,
practices
involving
judgedas cruelandbloodyfortheirreligious
can be modified.We can see thatthispeople ... was at thesametimecapableof great
and a profoundspirituality.2
ofan intenseartistic
creativity
delicacyand refinement,
My object here is to explore these hauntinglyricsin such a way as to complicate
thisview.I wish to show thatAztec aestheticismwas in factdeeply implicatedin
the carryingthroughof Aztec imperialpolicy,and indeed thatiteven contributed
directlyto the brutalitywithwhichthatpolicywas pursued.
REPRESENTATIONS
33
* Winter 1991 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
101
The political"impurity"of these poems is seconded by a further,historical

complexity,forthe lyrics,in the formwe have them,are intimatelybound to two
verydifferentperiods: the decades before the Conquest, and the decades thereafter.We cannotsimplywipe awaya fewChristianaccretionsand marginalglosses
and recover a transparentwindow into "the ancient Nahuatl mind"; rather,we
have to deal witha continualuncertaintyas to whethera givenpoem responds to
eventsof 1460 or eventsof 1560-if not to both at once.
Aztec poetry,then,is rarelypure and never simple,but I wish to argue that
we should neitherbe embarrassednor annoyedbyitsimpurityand itscomplexity.
The historicalrootednessof the songs should be seen as part of theirveryfabric,
and an importantsource of theircompellingpower as we read them today.By
attendingto the shiftinghistoricalcontextswithinwhichthe poems functioned,
we can both recover a fullerappreciationof the poems in themselves,and also
use the studyof these poems towarda more dynamicsense of Aztec cultureas a
whole, which even now is all too oftentreatedin a static,essentializingfashion.3
Finally,these poems give a strikinginstanceof a verygeneral problem: How do
we read textsin an awareness of the waysin whichtheirmeaning can be altered
bychanges in the circumstancesof theirproductionand of theirreception?
"I am a Quetzal Plume, I am a Song":
Pre-Conquest Aestheticism
Somethingthat can fairlybe called aestheticismis widespread in the
major bodies of survivingAztec poetry,the codices known as the Cantaresmexicanos and the Romancesde los seforesde la Nueva Espana, both collectionsdating
fromthe mid to late 1500s, and both incorporatingmuch earlieras well as much
more recent material. Many of the evidentlypre-Conquest poems discuss the
nature and role of poetryitself.Often identifiedwiththe paired terms"flower"
(xochitl)and "birdsong"(cuicatl),poetryencapsulatesall thatis both precious and
transitoryin earthlylife, a combinationfound in the often mentioned quetzal
plume-with which the poet may actuallyidentifyhimself,as in myheading for
this section (from Cantares,50.8).4 Often, the singer stressesthe importanceof
beauty,and especiallyof beautifulworksof art,in preservingsome permanence
in an ephemeral world:
Paintedare theToltecs,completedare thepictures:all Yourheartsare
Here,throughart,I'll live....
arriving.
In songI cutgreatstones,paintmassivebeams,thatthis,in future
thismysong-sign
timewhenI'm gone,shallbe uttered,
[orsongthatI leavebehindon earth.Myhearts
emblem,nocuicamachio]
ofme.And
havecome,a remembrance
willbe alivehere:they'll
myfamewilllive.
(Cantares,44.15-17)
102
REPRESENTATIONS
Songs can preserve the individual'smemory,and equally theycan fostersocial

bonds:
and mutualacquaintance
Lettherebe friendship
throughflowers.
Songsshallbe raised,thenwe'reoffto His home....
Myhearthearssongs,and I weep,I grieve,on accountofthese
flowers.
We'reto go awayand leavethemhereon earth.We
merelyborrowthem,and we'reoffto His home.
as mynecklace.Let mehave
offlowers
Let me takethismultitude
crown.We'reto go
themin myhand.Letthembe myflower
awayand leavethemhereon earth.Wemerelyborrowthem,
and we'reoffto His home.
(82.17-19)
The individual shares primarilythe flower'stransience-"Listen, I say! On earth
we're known only briefly,like the magnolia. We only wither,O friends"(18.29).
and can bring the
The song, on the other hand, possesses the flower'sfertility,
The
of
its
life
to
back
composition of
regeneration.
powers
through
singer
I
"It
seems
that
harvest:
to
and
is
often
myselfam culcompared planting
songs
the
soil"
those
who
work
with
(17.45). In partictivatingsongs,keeping company
ular,thereare manyreferencesto mistand rain,the attributesof Tlaloc, the god
of fertility:
"My songs are ripening,myword-fruitsprouts; our flowersarise in
this place of rain. Well! Cacao flowers,fragrantones, come scatteringdown,
spreading perfume: fragrantpoyomatlidrizzlesdown" (44.19-20).
In many poems, such evocationsof delicate beautyand of social and natural
a renunciationof
harmonydo indeed show a modesty,an awarenessof mortality,
hedonism,which contrastsharplywiththe
ambition,and a friendship-oriented
starkimage of the rapacious imperialistssacrificingever more captives to their
equally rapacious gods.
I'm to passawaylikea ruinedflower.

my
Myfamewillbe nothing,
renownhereon earthwillbe nothing....
Friends,takepleasure!Letus putourarmsaroundeachother's
here.No one
shouldershere.We'relivingin a worldofflowers
thesongs,thatlie
whenhe'sgonecan enjoytheflowers,
outspreadin thishomeoftheGiverofLife.
Earthis buta moment.Is thePlaceUnknownthesame?Is there
Is itnothereon earththat
happinessand friendship?
are made?
acquaintances
(17.14-16)
There are dozens of stanzas,and even whole poems, thatcan supportsuch claims
as this:"Even at the momentof theirascendancy,no people were more conscious
of the transientnature of life,of life as vibrantyetas frailas the flowerstheyso
loved."5
There are, however,two problems with this view of the poetry.In general
terms,it leaves us withan almost schizophrenicsense of a people of violentand
The Aesthetics
ofConquest
103
unmediated dualities-vibrant and frailone day, ruthlessand bloodthirstythe

next. Indeed, unable to constructany clear relationbetweensuch opposed terms
in Aztec culture,writershave oftenfalleninto such, let us say,paratacticcharaca harmoniousviewof Aztec aestheticismcan only
terizations.6More particularly,
be maintainedbya highlyselectivereadingof thepoems themselves.Many poems
very closely associate themes of ephemeralityand the beauty of flowerswith
themes of warfare,bloodshed, and human sacrifice.Indeed, many of the most
perfectexpressionsof the love of beauty and friendshipserve to introduce the
parallel beauties of battle.What are we to make of thislinkage?
To begin with,I should say somethingabout the cirumstancesunder which
the poems were composed. The creationof poetrywas closelytied to the religious
and politicalneeds of the empire. The great body of the survivingpoetrystems
fromsingerstrainedin thecourt(or court-and-temple)circlesof the Aztec ruling
class. The poems, some actuallyattributedto Aztec lords, were in general the
work of professional poets employed by the Aztec rulers in the capital city,
Tenochtitlan,and in some of the major centersof theirallies,notablyTezcoco on
the eastern shores of the Lake of Mexico. Many poems commemorateor otherwise reflectspecifichistoricaloccasions from the mid 1400s through the early
1500s, as well as the empire'spoliticalgeographyand itstradingpatterns.
From the late 1420s onward, the Aztec emperorstook greatcare in the ideological organizationof society.Itzcoatlwentso faras to burn theexistinghistorical
texts,and to have new ones painted,in order to givedue prominenceto theAztecs
and theirfavoreddeities,notablyHuitzilopochtli,god of war. Religious festivals
were increasinglyused as political theater; their allies-and eventuallyeven
rulers of hostile territories-were invitedto witnessmajor festivals,with their
pageants of song, dance, and human sacrifice.As Inga Clendinnen says, "The
significanceof the performanceswent well beyond a conventional politics of
terror.... The problem was to persuade not only Aztecs but other tribesthat
Aztec dominationwas no mere freakof fortune,an incidentin the affairsof men,
but part of the design of the cosmos."7
Several kinds of professionalswere involved in the creation,preservation,

and performanceof songs. "Houses of song" (cuicacalli)were attachedto the palaces in Tenochtitlan,Tezcoco, and elsewhere,and employeda varietyof specialinformants:the
ists, according to Bernardino de Sahagun's sixteenth-century
music
text
and
of
the
(cuicano),and
composer
developer of themes (cuicapiqui),
directorsof music and of choreography.8Further,greatcare was takento ensure
boththeappropriatenessof thecompositionsand theircarefulmemorizationand
delReal Palacio,
exact transmission.Accordingto the C6diceMatritense
had chargeof songscomposedin honorof thegods,all
The conservator
[tlapizcatzitzin]
care
he tookthegreatest
thedivinehymns.In orderthatno one shouldmakea mistake,
A
would
crier
the
town.
of
in
all
to
divine
the
in teaching
public
parts
songs people
announcea meetingofthepeopleso theycouldlearnthesongswell.. . The dutyofthe
104
REPRESENTATIONS
wasthefollowing:
he decidedaboutthesongs.When
shavedpriestofEpcohuaTepictoton
so thatthesongcouldbe presented;he gave
someonecomposeda song,he wasinformed
ordersto thesingers,and theywentto singat hishouse.Whenanyonecomposeda song,
he gavehisopinionaboutit.9
While songs were disseminatedgenerallyamong the people, theyalso formedan
importantpartof theeducation of youngwarriors.Songs and dances were taught
in the calmecac,houses where adolescent boys lived as theytrained to become
warriors,and the boys spent the eveningssingingthesewitholder warriors.10
With this new creation of an elaborate professionalsystemof composition,
instruction,and performance,and withAztec societyincreasinglydependent on,
and organized around, a stateof ongoing warfare,it seems plausible to suppose
that it was in this period (and in these circles)thatAztec poetrydeveloped into
the fulland elaborate formsthatare found in the survivingcodices. It appears to
have been in thisperiod as wellthatAztecaestheticismdeveloped itsclose linkage
to imperial expansionism.Certainly,the poems' elaborate diction,philosophical
and aestheticreflection,and pervasive militarismare all absent from the occasional survivingexamples of folkpoetryfromoutsidecourtcircles,as wellas from
such old hymnsas maybe said to stemfrompre-imperialtimes."1
The songs' themesand verbaltechniquesdirectlyreflectthe militarizationof
or "song flower"
culturein the imperialperiod. Next to theaestheticistcuicaxochitl
"shield flower."The political
we must place the militaristchimallixochitl-the
dimensionsof warfareare rarelyalluded to in the poetry;instead,warfareis seen
as an artisticact, and the warriorbecomes a poet. There are, in fact,twowaysto
be rebornon earth: in poetry,and in warfare.It is in battlethatnobles can achieve
theirtrue stature,and theirgreatestfame,bybecoming"eagles and jaguars," the
names fororders of seasoned warriors:
as eagles,ripeningasjaguars,in
Noblesand kingsare sprouting
is singingarrows,singingshields.
Mexico:LordAhuitzotl
notbe gathered!. . .
GiverofLife,letyourflowers
shieldflowers.
You'veadornedtheminblazeflowers,
(31.3-4)
In these lines, as in many of the war poems, images of natural fertility

and harin the
are
linked
to
the
of
with
shields
the
warrior
art,
beauty
mony
adorning
same way that poems adorn the poet. By thismeans, the battlefielditself,seeminglya place of death and destruction,is representedas a place of beauty,growth,
and fertility.
War becomes a kind of girls'picnic:"Get up sisters,and let'sgo! Let's
for
flowers.
look
... Here theyare! Here! Blaze flowers,shield flowers!Desirgo
war
flowers!"(84.1). Singersin theimperialperiod seem to have
able, pleasurable
vied witheach otherto createever more strikingimagesto linkbeautyand terror:
"Jaguar flowersare opening, knife-deathflowersare becoming delicious upon
the field"(39.6).
The Aesthetics
ofConquest
105
The poets engage in virtuosicwordplayas theygo about the project of aestheticizingwar. In the twoexamplesjust quoted, we findseveralexamples of the
wittychoice of flowers,and of neologismsthatplay on names of existingflowers.
comes readilyintouse, as 'jaguars" are an order
The "jaguar flower"(oceloxochitl)
of warrior.Similarly,the veryoftenused "shield flower"(chimallixochitl,
probably
a sunflower),has obvious metaphoricvalue. Furthermore,actual shields were
made of flowersfor ritual use, and so the image of maidens gatheringshield
flowerslinksthebattlefieldbothto thenaturalworldand to the"floweredshields"
used in the world of temple ritual.
At a furtherlevel of punningreference,thedouble compound "knife-deathis a neologism (fromitztli,"obsidian knife,"+ miquiztli,
flower"(itzimiquilxochitl)
botanicalterms.
"death," + xochitl,
"flower"),but one whichplayson twodifferent
and
The underlyingpun is betweenmiquiztli,
"death,"
quilitl,"plant"-verbal roots
that can resemble each other closelyin differentcombinations.In thisinstance,
a kind of portulaca.
the itzimiquilxochitl
suggestsan actual flower,the itzmiquilitl,
Further afield are mesquite bushes, suggested through the resemblance of
"death,"and mizquitl,
"mesquite."The mesquitegrowsfarfromthe field
miquiztli,
of battleenvisionedin the poem, but itis foundin thenortherndeserts,the home
of the Aztecs before theysettledin the Valleyof Mexico; various poems referto
warriorsas mesquiteplants.The spinyflowerof themesquite,moreover,is called
both plays upon the local
Thus the "knife-death-flower"
the itzimizquixochitl.
the
and
envisions
warrioras embodying the
of
a
blossoming portulaca
image
of
the
the
distant
ancestral
homeland.
of
Finally,the neolplants
hardytoughness
termsof "knifethe
second
and
third
as
as
reference
involves
a
ritual
well,
ogism
death-flower"invertthe ritual term"flowerdeath,"xochimiquiztli,
signifyingthe
stone
the
sacrificial
of
a
warrior
death
(or,
failingthat,in battle
upon
glorious
itself).
Using such verbal techniques,the imperial poets adapt the "gentle"themes
of fellowshipand ephemeralityto serve as an impetus for excelling in battle:
"They that scatterare war flowers:many open, all wither.Yet as many eagles,
jaguars as have gone away willcome to lifeagain near you and in your presence,
O God. There beyond!" (21.7). The love of fellowshipis directedaway fromlife
and towarddeath:
Let
And we?Wewon'tbe givingpleasuretotheGiverofLifeforever.
and withthese
us giveourselvespleasurewithYourflowers,
ofHis,merelyborrow
songs!Wemerelyborrowtheseflowers
theseyellowflowers.
in thedust.Princes
spinningin thefield,whirling
They'rewarflowers,
maketheseblazeflowers,
desiringthem,seekingthem.Butis
therepleasure?There'sonlydeath.
crave
and seekthesewarmdeliciousones.Butis therepleasure?
They
There'sonlydeath.
(74.4-6)
106
REPRESENTATIONS
of the warrioras a "war flower"(yaoIn both of these passages, the identification

or "flowerwar," a
xochitl)punninglyinvertsan existingterm: the xochiyaoyotl
but
to
take captivesfor
was
not
to
kill
the
whose
tournament,
enemy
goal
staged
sacrifice.As Clendinnen has acutelyobserved of the "flowerwar,""It was on that
field of battle that the Aztec aestheticof war could be most perfectlydisplayed
and most profoundlyexperienced; and here 'aesthetic'must be understood to
comprehend moral and emotionalsensibilities."'2
Aztec aestheticism,then,both could and oftendid directlyservethe interests
of Aztec imperialism.The expansion of the empire, and when necessary the
was clothed in all the delbrutal suppression of revoltswithinimperialterritory,
icatebeauty,and all the moral urgency,thatthe poets could provide.The warrior,
indeed, became thepoet of empirepar excellence,as in thissong commemorating
the emperor Axayacatl'sMatlatzincancampaign in the 1470s:
A song!Letitbe carriedfromwhereHe dwellsin thePlaceUnknown.
Lettherebe dancing.
It'shere!And hereare Yourflowers.
You've
Yourprizeis a Matlatzincan!
O Blade Companion,O Axayacatl!
cometo tearapartthetownofTlacotepec!...
These eagleshieldshe laysin Someone'shandsarewonin dangeron
theblazingfield.
Justlikeour songs,justlikeourflowers,
you,youShavenHead, are
pleasingtheGiverofLife.
Witheagleflowers
lyingin yourhands,O Axayacatl-flood-and-blaze
flowers,
sprouting-ourcomrades,allofthem,are drunk.
(65.2-8)
Poetics Across History

The politicalcast of Aztec aestheticism,then,does not allow us to view
it in isolation fromhistory.At the same time,however,the poems must be seen
in relation to several very differentsets of historicalcircumstances,which can
broadly be described as pre-imperial,imperial,and post-imperial.Pre-imperial
poetryis almostentirelylostto us, and onlygeneralinferencescan be made about
it,such as myinferencethatwar poetry,and especiallytheaestheticizationof war,
was greatlydeveloped during the ninetyyearsof the empire and its cult of war.
Mattersare verydifferentforpost-imperial
poetry,as the major collectionsof
made
several
decades
after
the
were
lyricpoetry
Conquest, and reflecttheirsituation in three ways: through new composition; through reworkingof older
materialin lightof new events;and throughthe shiftingof old meanings under
new circumstances,quite apart fromany visiblerewriting.In whatfollows,I wish
to explore what became of Aztec aestheticismonce it was no longer servingthe
greatestand most violentempire ever seen in the New World,and was instead
confrontedwith the most crushingand inexorable defeatimaginable-Tzvetan
The Aesthetics
ofConquest
107
Todorov goes so far as to speak of genocide 3-inflicted on the empire and,

increasingly,on the entirecultureas well.
In the firstpart of thisarticle,I have used the historicaland politicalcontext
to Aztec aestheticism.In thisway,
of the empire to give a grounding,a specificity,
I hope to pointthe waytowarda betterunderstandingof the poetry,as itappears
to have functionedin the imperial era. But thisquest for "the" meaning of the
poetryworksonly up to a point,withinthe contextof whatis in facta somewhat
artificiallocating of the poems withina single historicalperiod. We can indeed
learn much about the pre-ConquestAztec world fromthese poems, but theydo
not speak of that period alone. For a fullunderstandingof the poetry,it is necessary to take seriously its transmission,and its re-creation,during the first
decades of the colonial period. We should attemptto read most of these poems
as if they were products both of 1450-1520 and of 1521-1570-as,
bivalently,
given the nature of the oral tradition,manyof themprobablywere.
To date, students of the poetry have almost invariablydone their best to
resolve thisbivalence by wishingit away.The majorityof scholarshave used the
poems to tryto recovera sense of the "pure" Aztec cultureof the timebeforethe
Conquest. Scholars fromDaniel Brintonin the 1890s to Angel Maria Garibay K.
in the middle of thiscenturyand Miguel Leon-Portillain the presenthave proceeded bybracketingsuch poems as are clearlypost-Conquestcompositions,and
bysupposing thatmostappearances of thenames of God the Father,JesusChrist,
and Santa Maria are editorial emendations to otherwise"pure" pre-Conquest
poetry.They have stressedthe passages in earlychroniclesthatdescribe memorizationof old songs as indicatingthe faithfultransmissionof the poetryin postConquest times.Further,theyhave rightlynoted thatfewpoems in classicalstyle
are known to have been composed after 1570, and none after 1590, suggesting
that the entire traditiondied out along with the last generation trained in the
imperial schools.
With these facts in mind, these scholars have taken historicalreferences
withinthe poems as evidence of the date (or at least the period) of composition,
and have oftenidentifiedfiguresnamed in thepoems as theactual authors;LeonPortillahas gone so far as to offerbiographiesand analyses of the oeuvres of a
numberof such figures.14Whole volumeshave been devoted to the poetryattributed to Nezahualcoyotl (1402-72), a king of Tezcoco often mentioned in the
historianFerpoems, and credited as a great poet by the seventeenth-century
nando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl.'5
By contrast,John Bierhorstgoes to the opposite extremein his new edition
of the Cantares.He argues thatall of the poems in the codex are post-Conquest
compositions,and indeed thatall are representativesof a single genre, a "ghost
song" used in ritualsdesigned to bringabout the returnof deceased warriorsto
aid in the revitalizationof Mexican cultureand the militarydefeat of the Spaniards. He argues persuasivelythat figureslike Nezahualcoyotlare only alluded
108
REPRESENTATIONS
to, and at times portrayedby,the singersof the poems, but in no case can preConquest rulersbe shown to have been the actual authors. Ixtlilxochitlin particular is essentiallyonly glorifyingan ancestor (he claimed Nezahualcoyotlas his
withno factualbasis forhis claims.
great-great-great-great-grandfather),
the
in
Bierhorst's
view,
Further,
many referencesto figureslike Dios, Jesucristo,EspirituSanto, and Santa Maria are not editorialemendations,or ruses to
escape monastic censorship,but valid reflectionsof the supplantingof the old
deities in the early colonial period. Bierhorstadmits that a number of poems
appear to have pre-Conquestorigins,but he insiststhatmosthistoricalreferences
are vague, manyare muddled, and all can be understoodas part of the "revitalization movement"of the 1550s and 1560s thathe sees the poems as reflecting.16
The problemwithBierhorst'srevisionistic
understandingof the poems is that
the ambiguitiesof the poems can no betterbe resolved by disconnectingthe
poems fromthe decades beforethe Conquest thantheycan be bydetachingthem
from the decades afterward.For his part, Bierhorstdownplaysthe often quite
detailed historicalreferences in many poems, and ignores the evidence that
Christianreligiousnames oftenhavebeen insertedin place of older names. Further,he homogenizes the interpretationof the codices, whichmost readers very
reasonablysee as ratherheterogeneouscollectionsof differentsortsof songs, in
hiswishto see themas reflectinghis putativerevitalizationmovement-for which,
as he admits,thereis no directevidence at all.
Both views of the dating of the poetry,then, achieve a desired univocality
onlyat the cost of enormous extrapolationsfromslenderevidence,or even from
silence, togetherwith the widespread suppression of contradictoryevidence. I
agree fullywith Bierhorst that there are no good reasons for supposing that
Nezahualcoyotl actually composed any more of the songs associated with his
name than King David composed the Psalms credited to him; indeed, it seems
ironicallyappropriate thatIxtlilxochitlopenly regarded his ancestoras the Mexican King David.17 The majorityof the survivingpoems reflectthe post-Conquest
period in variousways,implicitor explicit,and giventheiroral transmissionthere
is no way to be confidentthatanypoem has come down to us withoutany modificationover the course of sixtyor a hundred years.
At the same time,however,thereis ample evidence thatthe basic image repertoire of the poetry was developed before the Conquest, together with the
themesthatI have been discussingso far.Apart frominternalevidence (the presence of thesethemesin poems thateven Bierhorstallowsto be particularlyclosely
tied to the pre-Conquest period), there is ample attestationin early chronicles
fromthe yearsjust afterthe Conquest of the traditionalimportanceof the theme
of ephemerality,for example, and there is confirmingpictorialand archaeological evidence for the role of the "flowerwars,""flowerydeath," "flowershields,"
and otherculturalanalogs forthe aestheticistthemesin the poetry.
The question I would like to pursue here is how thisold image repertoire
The Aesthetics
ofConquest
109
functionedin,and was affectedby,thenewcircumstancesof theSpanish presence

in Mexico. I will take as an area forexaminationwhat may be the most striking,
and the most readily visible,change in the poetry: the displacementof the old
gods by the new. As noted above, mostof the songs were composed by,or under
the watchfulguidance of, the Aztec priests,and theywere performedon public
occasions, ordinarilyas part of religiouscelebrationsand rituals.In the codices
of the Cantaresand the Romances,however,actual names of Aztec divinitiesare
almost never found. What we do findare a varietyof epithetsthatSahagun and
other chroniclerslistas names forthe gods, such as Ipalnemoani,"Giverof Life,"
a traditionalappellation of Tezcatlipoca. It is impossibleto say,in manyinstances,
whethera poem addressed to Ipalnemoani representsa veiled appeal to Tezcatlipoca, or whetherthe term now refersto the ChristianGod-as seems more
"Sole God," a term occasionally used for
certainlyto be the case withIcelteotl,
major deitiesbeforethe Conquest but now veryexplicitlyassociated withGod the
Fatherin post-Conquestpoetry.
Veryoften,the names of God (Dios,or Tios,or Tiox)and other Christianfigures appear in the manuscripts,and here too it is hard to say how often these
names reflectthe poet's own beliefs,or a deliberate ruse on the poet's part to
escape censorship,'8or a pious emendation by the native informantswho collected the songs for Sahagun or other early Spanish ethnographers.The two
poetic codices appear to take somewhat differentformal approaches to the
problem of emendation. In the Romances,the scribeoftengives a marginalgloss
to a traditionalepithet.For example, nextto the line AcanhuelichanMoyocoyatzin,
"In no place is found the home of The One Who Creates Himself"-an epithet
of Tezcatlipoca-the scribenotes in the margin:yehuanya diosglosa,"thisis to be
read as 'God.' "'9 At othertimes,thismarginalemendationappears wherea divine
name has simplybeen omitted,or else replaced withthe generictermteotl,"god."
By contrast,the Cantaresmanuscriptpairs termswithinthe line itself,so thatwe
whichcan
oftenencounterlines such as this:titeotl
yehuanDios an tinechmiquitlani,
be translatedeitheras an "original"apostrophe-"O Spirit,O God, you want me
dead"-or as an emendation: "O Spirit [i.e., God], you want me dead" (18.21).
As ambiguous as these namingsoftenare, it is stillmore difficultto say how
far,or in what ways,a cultural shifthas taken place when Christiannames are
evidentlybeing used by the poet. There are some poems in which we may feel
thatthe old gods have simplydisappeared, but thereare othersin whichitseems
more as thoughtheold pantheonis simplybeing enlargedbythearrivalof figures
like Tiox, spilituxanto (Espiritu Santo), and Santa Malia. The poems make no
mentionof Ometeotl, the "Dual God" or "God of Duality,"simultaneouslymale
and female,who had created all the other gods; but now,in some poems, Tiox
and Santa Malia seem to rule togetheras king and queen of heaven, at timesin
quite un-Catholicsettings:
110
REPRESENTATIONS
Ho! I've cometooffersongs.There's

offlowers.
I scattera multitude
And I'm a leeringribald....
flower-drunkenness.
You'vecometo givehimpleasure,and itwouldseemthathe is Tiox,
thathe is theGiverofLife,thatsheis SantaMalia,thatsheis our
ah!
are stirring,
The flowers
mother.
(80.5-9)
The Christiandeitiesnow become the patronsof song: "Santa Maria the ever
virgincomes loosening, comes unfolding,song marvels,flowerpaintings.Hear
them! In ButterflyHouse, House of Pictures,God's home, in Roseate House she
sings,she arrives,she, Santa Maria" (32.5-6). "To the whitewillows,where white
rushes grow, to Mexico, you, Blue Egret Bird, come flying,you, O spirit,O
Espiritu Santo! . . . You're here singingin Mexico" (35.3-4). In another poem,
EspirituSanto takes on a formsuspiciouslylike thatof a disguised Quetzalcoatl,
the traditionalpatron of Aztec culture: "You come created,O Quetzal [quetzaltototl,a term notablyclose to Quetzalcoatl],0 spilituxanto. You arrive! You come
bringingyour quechols, these angels [ageloti],these flowergarlands,thatloosen
theirsongs and give you pleasure, O Giver of Life!" (71.5). It is no wonder that
Sahagun complained that "theypersistin singingtheirold songs ... a practice
thatarouses much suspicion as to theirChristianfaith."20
The linkageof poetryand warfarecontinuesin the late poems, and the same
Tiox and Jesucristowho are the new patronsof song are also the new patronsof
war, in those poems that do fitwell with Bierhorst'sstresson resistanceto the
Spaniards in the poetry.
Goldis shiningin yoursapodillahouseoftrogons.Yourhomeabounds
You'resingingin
injade waterwhorls,O prince,O Jesucristo.
Anahuac....
You'rehiddenawayat SevenCaves,wherethemesquitegrows.The
eaglecries,thejaguarwhines;you,in themidstofthefield-a
roseatequechol-flyonward,in thePlaceUnknown.
(33.3-8)
Here the militaryreferenceis covert,encoded in the terms"mesquite,""eagle,"

and "jaguar,"all suggestingwarriors,as in severalpoems discussed above; the cry
of the eagle, further,is a battle cry.Jesucristois "hidden away at Seven Caves,
where the mesquite grows,"as though he is trainingwarriorsin the northern
homeland in preparationfora returnin force.In other poems, these references
are more overt: "This jaguar earth is shaking,and the screamingskies begin to
rip. Spilitu Xanto, Giver of Life, descends. Chalked shieldsare strewnawaywith
love. And theythatcome to stand on earth are spines of His fromFlower-Tassel
Land" (71.1).
God himself,it seems, is spurringthe Mexicans on to fightagainst the Spaniards who broughthim:
The Aesthetics
ofConquest
111
Montezuma,
youcreatureofheaven,yousingin Mexico,in
Tenochtitlan.
wereruined,yourbracelethousestands
Here whereeaglemultitudes
shining-therein thehomeofTiox ourfather....
Onward,friends!We'lldareto go wherefame,whereglory's,
gotten,
deathis won.
whereflower
is gotten,
wherenobility
Yournameand honorlive,O princes.PrinceTlacahuepan!
You'vegoneand wonwardeath.
Ixtlilcuechahuac!
(76.1-2,5-6)
The old ideas are stillhere-but nothingis the same. In fact,the "old" ideas and
images themselvesare transformed.Not only is warfarea differentproposition
fora defeated people thanforseeminglyunconquerable armies,but the relations
of beauty,the divine,and the ephemeral mortallifeare all altered. Thus, in the
lines just quoted, the bracelet house (a warrior'shouse) stillstands shining,an
enduring human artifact-but it survivesamid the ruins of the warriorsthemselveswho used to inhabitthe house.
The flowerdeath of heroic individualsused to take place against the backdrop of the ever-expandingempire, with its unshakable center,Tenochtitlan;
now, the heroic death of the warriorachieves itselfalone, withno certainresult
for the culture. The ephemeralityof human culture, newly observed on an
unprecedented scale, extends to the gods as well. Even as Dios is enlistedin the
remainapparent to the poets, and
struggle,his foreignness,his unpredictability,
One
this
fickleness.
to
seek
poem beginswithtworingingverses
comprehend
they
comes
but
then
in
warriors
battle,
up short:
celebrating
are carried
I grieve,I weep.Whatgoodis this?The shieldflowers
away,they'resent aloft.Ah, where can I findwhat myheart

desires?
Incomparable war death! Incomparable flowerdeath! The Giverof
Life has blessed it.
I seek the good songs whence theycome-and I am poor. Let me not
sing.
(31.5-7)
The poet then confronts the possibility that the same Giver of Life who has
blessed both warfare and poetry may not, after all, reward either:
Perhaps these gloriousjades and braceletsare yourheartsand loved
ones, O father,O Dios, Giverof Life. So manydo I utternear
you and in your presence-I, Totoquihuaztli.How could you run
weary?How could you run slack?
Easily,in a momentmightyou slacken,O father,O Dios.
(31.13-14)
The poem ends with the knowledge that the poet can become intoxicatednot
with any actual victoriesin battle but only withdreams of war, with his songs,
112
REPRESENTATIONS
while instead of celebratinggreat featsin battleand splendid flowerdeaths, the

people mustbe contentthatanyone is stillleftalive:
me hereon
theyintoxicate
Theymakemyheartdrunk:theyflower,
earth:I am drunkwithwarflowers.
Thus peopleare aliveon earth.Heaven
He showsmercytoeveryone.
comeshere!And I am drunkwithwarflowers.
(31.15-16)
If songs cannot continue to reflectthe enduring gloryof the empire and the
the singer
ageless fameof itsvictoriouswarriors,theystillretainpower,fortifying
in
an
existence
of
for
the
awareness
a
possibilities beauty
through newlydeepened
sad
sad
had
than
far more ephemeral
flowers,
anyone
songs,
imagined. "Only
lie here in Mexico, in Tlatelolco. Beyond is the Place Where Recognition Is
Achieved. O Giverof Life,it'sgood to knowthatyou willfavorus, and we underlings will die" (13.1-2). In this poem, a raining mistcomes down not from the
beneficentTlaloc but fromthe tearsof the vanquished:
Tearsare pouring,teardropsare rainingtherein Tlatelolco.The
Mexicanwomenhavegoneintothelagoon.It'strulythus.So all
are going.Andwhereto,comrades?
Trueitis. TheyforsakethecityofMexico.The smokeis rising,the
hazeis spreading.Thisis yourdoing,O GiverofLife.
thathe whosendsdownon us hisagony,hisfear,
Mexicans,remember
is nonebutDios,alas,therein Coyonazco.
(5-7)
the powerof song even in such devastatingcircumThe poem closes byaffirming

stances. The poet recalls the captivityof the Mexican leaders Motelchiuh and
Tlacotzin, whom the Spaniards were said to have torturedwithfirein hopes of
learningthe locationof hidden gold:
friends.
You'veforsaKen
theMexicannation,alas.
Weepand be guilty,
and thefoodis bitteras well.Thisis the
The wateris bitter,
doingoftheGiverofLifein Tlatelolco.
wereMotelchiuh
and Tlacotzintakenaway.They
Yetpeacefully
withsongin Acachinanco
whentheywentto
fortified
themselves
be deliveredtothefirein Coyohuacan.
(9-10)
Strengthand beautycan shineout even in defeat.The poet's song can persisttoo,

perhaps no longer as the splendid embodimentof the ever-renewingflowersof
empire,but ratheras itselfa newlyephemeral,even broken,artifact.To give one
song in the CantaresdescribesCortes's
example of thisidea, the long sixty-eighth
arrivalin Tenochtitlanand subsequent events,includinga tripby several Aztecs
to Rome, where theymeet the Pope-"The pope [ipapa] is on Tiox's matand seat
and speaks forhim. Who is thisrecliningon a golden chair? Look! It's the pope.
He has his turquoise blowgun and he's shooting in the world" (68.65). Cortes
The Aesthetics
ofConquest
113
sends the Aztecs along witha shipmentof gold forthe Pope: "He's said: What do
I need? Gold! Everybodybow down! Call out to Tiox in excelsis!"(68.100).
If the Europeans wantall the gold, the Aztecsare lefttryingto preservetheir
water.The song is titledAtequilizcuicatl,
"Water-PouringSong," and in thispoem
"water"comes to stand for Mexico itself.One name forTenochtitlan,reflecting
"The Water's
its constructionon islands in the Lake of Mexico, was Atliyaitic,
Midst." Water and firewere the great giftsof the two gods worshipped on the
Templo Mayorin Tenochtitlan,thefertileTlaloc and thewar god Huitzilopochtli.
Now, in this poem, God has taken controlof both of these forces. Concerning
fire:"Tiox and Only Spirit,you and you alone laydown the mirrorand the flame
that stands here in the world" (68.36), with the power over mirrorand flame
implicitlytaken over fromTezcatlipoca, "Smoking Mirror."God's envoy Cortes
entersthe citywithsmokingguns: "Now woe! He givesoffsmoke! This is how he
enters,thisconquistador,thisCaptain" (68.9).
Those who control the fire,control the water as well. The Mexicans are
forced to pour out theirwaterforthe invaders,and here waterbecomes a metaphor forthe entireculture:
Wewho'vecometoWater'sMidstto marvelare Tlaxcalans:Mexican
hauling
princesare pouringouttheirwaters!LordMontezuma's
vatsofwater.Andthecitypasseson,ensconcedin water-whorl
Thus Mexicois handedover.Oh! The watersare His,
flowers.
and He drinksthem,it'strue.
Mariacomessaying,
"O
lye!The ladyMariacomesshouting.
Mexicans,yourwaterjars go here!Letall thelordscome
AndAcolhuacan's
arrives.And
Quetzalacxoyatl
carrying."
Cuauhpopoca.Oh! The watersare His,and He drinksthem,it's
true.
(68.10-11)
Once again, the poet findsan appropriate flowerto symbolizehis theme,as the
citypasses away "ensconced in water-whorlflowers."Perhaps thereis also a play
and "paper flowers,"amacaxochitl,
between "water-whorlflowers,"amalacoxochitl,
used in 60.55 to mean "poems"; the root,amatl,means "paper, book, songbook."
The poet has also chosen his nobles deliberately,in order to contrasttheirhumble
duties as water carrierswiththe glorious possibilitiessuggestedby theirnames.
Cuauhpopoca,"SmokingEagle," is a warrior'sname par excellence,while Quetzalacxoyatl,"Plumed Needle," refersto the acxoyatl,an instrumentused in ritual
bloodlettingand mock combats.
The poet sees only one refuge fromthe harsh labor being imposed on his
people: to break the carved and paintedjars thathave been pressed intothelowly
serviceof hauling water.In a shiftingof the initialmetaphor,thejars themselves
become the Mexicans: "O Giver of Life, these urgentlyrequired ones have been
broken, these, our water jars, and we are Mexicans. A cry goes up. They're
114
REPRESENTATIONS
pickingthem offat Eagle Gate, where recognitionis achieved. Oh! The waters
are His, and He drinksthem,it'strue" (12-13).
As his people dies, the poet sees his poem itselfas a waterjar, carryinghis
culture.And so his poem is to be broken along withthe people:
we'vecometodo our
O nephews,hail!And heara workassignment:
waterpouring.Nowwhowillgo and fetchthejadestonejars that
we mustcarry?...
We'retopassaway...
Oh noneofus shallworkfortribute.
and I sing:I've brokenthese,myturquoisegems,my
I weep,I sorrow,
pearls,thesewaterjars.
letme
And letitbe thusthatI returnthem.Chirpingfortheseflowers,
head forhome.AtFlowerWatersletmeweep,composingthem:
I've brokenthese,myturquoisegems,mypearls,thesewater
jars.
(25-28,31-33)
In these poems of the Conquest, theold imperiallinkageof beautyand death

in battlepersists,but in new termsbefittingsuch changed circumstances.Only a
minorityof the poems in the Cantaresand the Romancesreflectso openly upon
the resultsof the Spaniards' arrival,and only a few poems in the entire corpus
are so closelytied to pre-Conquestconditionsthattheyhave no visiblerelevance
to the later time of theirtransmission.Most poems fall into an ambiguous grey
area; theymaybe seen as comingfromeitherperiod,or,in a veryreal sense, from
both. Within theirown lifetimes,the Aztec poets were compelled to sing their
poems in lightof theoverturningof theworldin whichtheywere firstcomposed.
As the conquistador and historianBernal Diaz del Castillo put it,writingduring
the period in which the Cantareswere being collected, "Ahora todo esta por el
suelo, perdido, que no hay cosa" (Now all is in the dust, lost, there is nothing
left).21
The poems are a testimonyboth to the truthof Diaz's observationand to its
falsity.The conquistadorswere too quick to congratulatethemselves(and, more
rarely,to reproach themselves)forthe extirpationof the nativecultureswithina
few short years; even now, Mesoamericaniststoo readily speak of "ancient"
Nahuatl culture,consideringthe termas appropriate to, say, 1518 but opposed
to the "colonial" cultureof 1528. The Aztec poems are filledboth witha sense of
dramaticloss and witha sense of underlyingcontinuity.It is, indeed, thisdouble
fact,the oxymoronicpersistenceof a disappeared culture,thatenables and even
requires us to read so many of the poems against both pre- and post-Conquest
history.
In manycases stanzas,and even entirepoems, change theirvalences dramatically across the great divide of 1519-21. The theme of ephemeralityin the
poems, for example, has often been read in modern times as expressing a
detached, existential-even existentialist-philosophy.It is increasinglyclear,
The Aesthetics
ofConquest
115
however,thatthe poems were alwayscloselytied to urgentreligiousand political

concerns,and by thisveryengagementtheirmeaning altered radicallywiththe
Conquest. The same images and versesthataided and even heightenedthe brutalityof the imperial regime were turned to new purposes some years later: to
strengthenthe resolveof a conquered people to resisttheirtotaldestruction.
Understandingthissortof shifthelps us to read these poems more fully,and
ithas largerimplicationsas well.The Aztec poems illustratein exemplaryfashion
some of the waysin whichany textaltersand renewsitsmeaningacross timeand
across cultures.In theirdouble historicalgrounding,thesepoems providea reallifeinstanceof the shiftingof meaning over timeexplored fictively
in Jorge Luis
Author
"Pierre
of
Don
in
"It
is
not
vain
that three
Menard,
Quixote":
Borges's
hundred yearshave passed, charged withthe mostcomplex happenings. ... The
text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verballyidentical,but the second is
In the case of Aztec poetry,though,thecrucialpassage
almostinfinitely
richer."22
of time was more like three years than three hundred, and in consequence the
Aztec poets of the sixteenthcenturywere perhaps among the firstto be forcedto
confrontthis problem directly-in waysthatbear comparisonwithpoets' struggles withtheirculturalheritageon the otherside of the Atlantic,though the vanishing past was not thatof a remote antiquitybut of the poets' own youth. In a
varietyof cases, indeed, theAztec poets seem to have shaped theirworkto include
this theme. The "water-pouring"poem discussed above is one such instance,as
the theme of water, water carriers,and water jars develops-or implodesduring the course of the poem, withthe poet finallyevokingthe breakingof his
own poem in response to the veryeventsthathave given rise to it.
The theme may also be seen in other poems less directlyconcerned withthe
poem in the Romancescodex
Conquest. To give one example, the forty-ninth
modulates the theme of the brevityof human life through a series of ironic
changes.23It begins witha standardevocationof thejoys of fellowship:
Makeyourbeginning,
youwhosing.
beat
drum,
Mayyou
againyourflowered
to
the
lords,
mayyougivejoy my
eagles,thejaguars.
here
we
are
Briefly
together.
This last line is then givena suprisingtwistin the next stanza:
The one heart'sdesireoftheGiverofLife
isjewels,is quetzalplumes:totearthemapart.
Thisis hisdesire:to scatteraparttheeagles,thejaguars.
we are heretogether.
Briefly
The brevityof existencehas moved froma neutral factof lifeto a directconsequence of a divine will to destruction.As the poem continues,the poet reverses
formortalheroes:
the traditionalimage of the song as the bearer of immortality
116
REPRESENTATIONS
Andtheseoursongs,theseourflowers,
theyare ourshrouds.So be happy:
wovenintothemis theeagle,thejaguar;
wewillgo withthem,therewhereitis all thesame.
Like the broken waterjar in the "Water-PouringSong," the poem now takes its
value bysharingin the destructionitis elsewhererepresentedas surviving.If the
militarismof imperial songs becomes transvaluedby the Conquest, so too does
the aestheticisttheme of ephemerality.This poem has no elementsthat mark it
clearlyeitheras a pre-Conquestor a post-Conquestcomposition;seen withinone
In bothcontexts,though,
settingor theother,itsmessage reads ratherdifferently.
the poem offersitsaudience a severe consolation,as in itsclosinglines,in which
the problemof the brevityof lifebecomes itsown ironicsolution,the verysource
of strength:
our hearts,
So letus nowrejoicewithin
all whoare on earth;
do we knowone another,
onlybriefly
here
are
we together.
only
So do notbe saddened,mylords:
no one,no one is leftbehindon earth.
The challenge these poems offerus is to read them in multiplesenses, a multiplicitycommonlytakenon bytextsover time,but in thiscase inscribedwithinthe
poems themselves,shaped as theyhave been bythe poets' own multipleperspectives on their past triumphs and their present struggles.As they sang, and
reworked, the old songs, perhaps some of the poets of the 1550s and 1560s
recalled the archaic "Legend of the Suns," the centralmythicdescriptionof the
world's fiveages, or suns, in which the Aztecs accounted themselvesas livingin
the fifthage, named Four-Movement,the age of earthquakes.Perhaps, too, they
thoughtthat thisfinalage of the world shared somethingof the violentsecond
age as well:
It wascalledtheJaguarSun.
Then ithappened
thatthe skywas crushed,
the Sun did not followitscourse.
WhentheSun arrivedat midday,
immediatelyitwas night;
and when it became dark,
jaguars ate the people.
In thisSun giantslived.
The old ones said
the giantsgreetedeach otherthus:
"Do not falldown,"forwhoeverfalls,
he fallsforever.24
The Aestheticsof Conquest
117
Notes
1. Most notably,the lyricsare centraltextsin Miguel Leon-Portilla'spathbreakingstudy
and Culture:A Study
LafilosofiaNdhuatl(1956), revisedand translatedas AztecThought
Mind
Nahuatl
Ancient
the
Okla.,
1963).
(Norman,
of
2. BirgittaLeander, In xochitlin cuicatl,flory canto:La poesiade losAztecas(Mexico City,
1972), 3, 15.
3. This observation applies, for example, to recent studies by two literarilyoriented
scholars,Rene Girardand TzvetanTodorov. Girarddevotesa chapterof his TheScapegoat,trans.Yvonne Freccero(Baltimore,1986), to a readingof an Azteccreationmyth,
and concludes thatthe religionas a whole was based on a centralityof brutalsacrifice;
he closes by urging scholars to abandon theirhumanisticpretenseto objectivityand
admit that Aztec religionwas morallyrepellentin itsveryessence. In TheConquestof
America:TheQuestionoftheOther,trans.Richard Howard (New York, 1984), Todorov,
witha far fullerand more sympatheticreading of sixteenth-century
Spanish sources,
an ancientand
were
that
illusion
the
encountering
they
Conquistadors'
largelyaccepts
staticsociety,ratherthan the veryrecentand unstable phenomenon thatthe empire
in factwas.
Among Mesoamericanists,while historicaldevelopmentis given full weight,we
rarelyfind an equally dynamic sense of ideology.As ArthurDemarest has recently
when itcomes to religiousbehavioror institutions,
noted, "Unfortunately,
anthropoland
archaeologistsinterestedin culturalevolutioninvariablyslip into a kind of
ogists
staticfunctionalismwhichassigns ideology a passive role, or no role at all, in culture
change"; "Overview:Mesoamerican Human Sacrificein EvolutionaryPerspective,"in
Elizabeth H. Boone, ed., Ritual Human Sacrificein Mesoamerica(Washington,D.C.,
1984), 227-43, 238.
fromJohn
are taken,withsome modifications,
4. Quotations fromthe Cantaresmexicanos
Bierhorst'ssplendid new edition, CantaresMexicanos:Songs of theAztecs(Stanford,
Calif., 1985). Bierhorst'spaleographic transcriptionof the Nahuatl manuscriptfar
surpasses previous editions, as do his literal prose renderings. An accompanying
tothe"CantaresMexicanos"(Stanand Concordance
volume,A Nahuatl-English
Dictionary
to
the
standarddictionariesof Remi
a
valuable
is
also
ford,Calif., 1985),
supplement
Simeon and Alonso de Molina. Citations are to song and stanza, in Bierhorst's
numbering.
5. Andrew O. Wiget,"AztecLyrics:Poetryin a Worldof ContinuallyPerishingFlowers,"
4 (1980): 1-11, 4.
IndianLiteratures
LatinAmerican
6. To give one example, Jacques Soustelle reads the Aztec calendrical systemas expressinga radicallydiscontinuoussense of timeand space:
In such a world, change is not conceived as a consequence of 'becoming'
whichgraduallydevelops, but as somethingabruptand total.Today the East
is dominant,tomorrowthe North; todaywe live in good times,and without
The
a gradual transition,we shall pass intothe unfavorabledays (nemontemi).
law of the universeis the alternationof distinctqualities,radicallyseparated,
whichdominate,vanish,and reappear eternally.
des anciens mexicains(1940); quoted in Leon-Portilla, Aztec
La Pensee cosmologique
Sufficeit to say here thatthischaracterizationis verybroadly
57.
and
Culture,
Thought
118
REPRESENTATIONS
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
overstated,and, further,passes silentlyover the manywaysin whichthe Aztec priests

would workto mitigatethe effectsassociated withan unfavorableday or direction.
Inga Clendinnen,"The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society,"PastandPresent107 (1985):
44-89, 53.
in cuicatl,29.
See Leander, In xochitl
Quoted in Miguel Leon-Portilla,Pre-ColumbianLiteratures
of Mexico,trans. Grace
Lobanov and the author (Norman, Okla., 1969), 78-79.
For a full descriptionof warriors'training,see Ross Hassig, AztecWarfare:Imperial
Expansionand PoliticalControl(Norman, Okla., 1988).
The most extensiveand strikingcollectionof traditionalfolkpoetry(albeit recorded
at a later date), is found in Hernando Ruiz de Alarc6n'sTratadode las supersticiones
y
costumbres
gentilicasque oy viuen entrelos Indios naturalesdestaNueua Espana (1629),
recently translated by Michael Coe and Gordon Whittakeras Aztec Sorcerersin
Mexico(Albany,N.Y., 1982). On the hymns,see Angel Maria GarSeventeenth-Century
himnos
sacrosde losNahuas (Mexico City,1958).
ibay K., Veinte
Clendinnen, "Cost of Courage," 62. It should be furthernoted that the important
religious goals of the "flowerwar" did not preclude its use in quite specificpractical
circumstances.Ross Hassig has recentlyargued persuasivelythat the "flowerwars"
were undertaken as much fortacticalas for religiouspurposes, to wear down opponents who were too strongto be taken by frontalattackwithoutlarge losses; Aztec
129ff.
Warfare,
Todorov,ConquestofAmerica,132-45.
See Miguel Leon-Portilla,Trecepoetasdelmundoazteca(Mexico City,1967).
in his Obrascompletas,
Historiachichimeca,
ed. Edmundo
Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl,
Vida y
O'Gorman, 2 vols. (Mexico City,1975-77); Jose Luis Martinez,Nezahualcoyotl:
Poesia y pensamiento
obra (Mexico City, 1972); Miguel Leon-Portilla,Nezahualcoyotl:
(Mexico City,1972).
Bierhorstargues his controversialthesisin his long introduction,CantaresMexicanos,
3-109.
As Gordon Brothertonsays,"Most of the timehe did his bestto make Nezahualcoyotl
the Psalm King, the Mexican David complete withUriah and Bathsheba and a good
singingvoice, whose verylamentsforthe vanityof earthlythings,whose predictions
of Mexican catastrophe and whose invitationsto the one (as yet) Unknown God,
become a surreptitiousinvitationto the Spaniards to come to Americaand bringtheir
bible withthem"; "Nezahualcoyotl's'Lamentaciones'and Their Nahuatl Origins: The
Estudiosde culturaNdhuatl10 (1972): 393-408, 406.
Westernizationof Ephemerality,"
This is the view taken by Leonhard SchultzeJena in his unfinishededition of the
Cantares;Alt-Aztekische
Gesdnge(Stuttgart,1957).
Romancesde lossenoresde la Nueva Espafa, fol. 4v, line 1; in Angel Maria Garibay K.,
ed., PoesiaNdhuatl,vol. 1 (Mexico City,1964), 12. Somethingof the complexityof the
circumstancesin which these poems were recorded may be seen from the scribe's
trilingualgloss,writtenas it is in a mixtureof Nahuatl, Spanish, and Latin-in which
nativeseminarianswere already being trainedsoon afterthe Conquest.
Fromthe prologue to Bernardinode Sahagfin,Psalmodiachristiana
(1583), a collection
of Nahuatl hymnshe had composed, hoping to supplant the indigenous songs used
in churches; quoted in ArthurJ.O. Anderson, "AztecHymnsof Life and Love," New
Scholar8 (1982): 1-74, 2.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo,Historiaverdadera
de la conquista
dela NuevaEspafa, ed. Joaquin
Ramirez Cabaias (Mexico City,1983), 159.
The Aestheticsof Conquest
119
22. Jorge Luis Borges,Ficciones,trans.AnthonyKerrigan(New York, 1962), 51-52.

23. Text in Garibay,PoesiaNdhuatl,1:76-77.
36.
24. Anales de Cuauhtitlan,fol. 2; quoted in Leon-Portilla,Pre-Columbian
Literatures,
the
has
of
of
the
variants
a
of
in
Suns,"
surviving
"Legend
study
twenty
Wayne Elzey,
argued thatthe fifthage was in factregarded as embodyingthe characteristicsof the
earlier ages; "The Nahua Mythof the Suns,"Numen23 (1976): 114-35. For an interesting discussion of the politicaluses of these and other myths,see David Carrasco,
in theAztecTradition
Quetzalcoatland theIronyofEmpire:Mythsand Prophecies
(Chicago,
1982).
120
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The Aesthetics of Conquest: Aztec Poetry before and after Corts

Author(s): David Damrosch

The Aestheticsof Conquest:

and sixteenthcenturiescreof the fifteenth

* Winter 1991 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY

The political"impurity"of these poems is seconded by a further,historical

Songs can preserve the individual'smemory,and equally theycan fostersocial

I'm to passawaylikea ruinedflower.

unmediated dualities-vibrant and frailone day, ruthlessand bloodthirstythe

Several kinds of professionalswere involved in the creation,preservation,

In these lines, as in many of the war poems, images of natural fertility

of the warrioras a "war flower"(yaoIn both of these passages, the identification

Poetics Across History

Todorov goes so far as to speak of genocide 3-inflicted on the empire and,

functionedin,and was affectedby,thenewcircumstancesof theSpanish presence

Ho! I've cometooffersongs.There's

Here the militaryreferenceis covert,encoded in the terms"mesquite,""eagle,"

away,they'resent aloft.Ah, where can I findwhat myheart

while instead of celebratinggreat featsin battleand splendid flowerdeaths, the

the powerof song even in such devastatingcircumThe poem closes byaffirming

Strengthand beautycan shineout even in defeat.The poet's song can persisttoo,

In these poems of the Conquest, theold imperiallinkageof beautyand death

however,thatthe poems were alwayscloselytied to urgentreligiousand political

WhentheSun arrivedat midday,

overstated,and, further,passes silentlyover the manywaysin whichthe Aztec priests

22. Jorge Luis Borges,Ficciones,trans.AnthonyKerrigan(New York, 1962), 51-52.

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