A Valentine For You
SOME LOVE POEMS FOR YOUR VALENTINES CARD
“When I call you mine/ I only hope you’ll think of me/My dreams are knocking at your heart/ To sing of these love flames/ who needs to worry about causes?”—There’s a good line for you to copy in your valentine’s card. It wasn’t written by Hallmark either, but by a 17th century nun in New Spain (what today is Mexico City). If you want juicy love poems, pick up the love sonnets of Sor Juana Inez, or read a wonderful book by Octavio Paz, Sor Juana. Juana Inez entered a monastery in Mexico City in 1669. There she wrote hundreds of plays, poems, and other works of art. She formed a musical ensemble and became a favorite in the royal court. Listen to some of her romantic lines:
“Hands tightly intertwined/ palm against palm laid/ With what movements they can say/ What lips must leave unsaid/” If you’ve got a tape of the Catalan romance singer Andrea Bocelli just put it on while you read some Juana Inez love poems and stand back! You’ll fall in love with the very next being you meet, maybe even your cat! Of course our Valentine’s Day hadn’t been invented in the 17th century, but love surely had. Juana celebrates romantic love as few others have with lines like: “Turn your eyes toward yourself, my beloved/ and you’ll find/ occasion for love, compulsion to surrender/. Meanwhile my tender care/ bears witness I only live/ to gaze at you spellbound and sigh/ to prove that for you I die/ Imagine her singing those lines accompanied by her lute with her sisterly friends on harp background while the fountain plashed and the water gently flowed into the lilies in the convent courtyard!
JUANA LOOKS AT MEN AND SIGHS
Juana wrote her best lines of love about other women, but she knew all about men. She was a favorite at the colonial court and watched the games of love there with compassion and amusement. The men of New Spain may not have liked what she said about them in some of her poems. Perhaps her most quoted poem is Hombres Necios “Nasty Men”. In it are some great lines: “Bad men who accuse/ the woman with no reason/ without seeing that you are the occasion/ for that which you yourselves cause!/ She goes on in this vein: Why do you love us to be good/ if you incite us to be bad?/ It seems you love the bravery/ of our lusty craziness/ But, like the kid who sticks in his “coco” and runs/ you run! /What you need to do/ in promise, and in deed/ is get together Devil, Flesh, and World!/ The more things change the more they stay the same.
LOVE ON EARTH LEADS TO LOVE IN HEAVEN
Juana learned that earthly love is wonderful and to be celebrated. She also came to believe that earthly love blends into spiritual love, and spiritual love helps us remember we’re on the way to Heaven. She wrote about trusting the spiritual river which carries us down to the sea of God. In that lovely place there is only love and all the striving of the ego is left behind. Rivers, often the Nile river (which she’d never seen) become her metaphor for this journey home. “Pure waters of the Nile, stay a moment, do not carry now your tribute to the sea/ Do not ask for more now/ Be calm/ O sensuous Nile, soothe us with your song/ pause a moment to rejoice/ seeing what you make fertile my beauty / of the land, the rose, the star!/ Sor Juana absolutely knew that any time love is made then fear goes away, and the river flowing out to the sea of heaven is glimpsed.
A BAD ENDING FOR A GREAT POET?
Octavio Paz, one of the greatest writers of our century, hates the crime that was done by Francisco de Aguiar y Sieps, Archbishop of Mexico, and his henchman Father Vieyra. They ended an entire poetic, musical, and philosophical movement in 17th century New Spain. It’s a sad fact, that just as Juana was writing her finest works The Inquisition got busy doing what religious censors love to do best. Many authors were banned, writers were arrested and tortured, Sor Juana among them. The Spanish custom of allowing nuns to receive their “admirers” in their private locutorios was banned. Father Vieyra published “Christian” pamphlets against the arts and against love, particularly the notion that sex could be a good thing. Juana had to give up her musical instruments and concerts at the monastery ended. Such things happen, and not only in 17th Century New Spain. We’ve seen plenty of that kind of censorship and witch hunting in Colorado and the USA recently. At any rate, Juana spoke up! She published her “Letter Worthy of Athena” defending love and pointing out how the whole “Christian moral crusade” was nothing but a mask for fear. At last, in 1694, she was forced to give up and signed a confession of error. Sor Juana Inez ended her life quietly, but still wrote in private. Even as she was banned by the “Christians” of New Spain her “First Dream” was being read in old Spain and her place in the literary world was secure.
JUANA’S FIRST DREAM
Even today her Silva of 975 verses is read as a voyage of the soul to the place where the soul can contemplate the wonder of the earth, the movements of the stars, the celestial sphere, and the hermetic meaning of the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico. It’s a fantastic voyage taking place in one single night. Her epic poem is an act of knowing such as few have ever achieved. Octavio Paz thinks the images she used there have been copied by most poets since. What a Valentine’s present this epic poem would make!
HERE’S TO DREAMS!
Juana thought love ought to be fun. She’d be sending Valentines by the arm full if she were alive today. She assures us that love is sent in dreams as well as in cards, a good way to send them. “I send you my love in a dream/ Follow love and you need no other guide!/ She’d be writing fun lines for Valentine’s day too like one she wrote in 1671: /God bless you my little beauty/ off on your way to see God/ I’ll tell you, you’re just as pretty, as those paintings from Michoacan!/ Like the lovely ripe palm tree you tower/ and those guys from Uruapan couldn’t catch you/ not if they ran for an hour! Happy Valentine’s Day from Sor Juana Inez!
