Posted by Miguel Angel Balsa on May 08, 192003 at 09:03:52:
In Reply to: Final paper posted by Miguel A. Balsa on May 07, 192003 at 08:56:44:
: Spring Semester, 2003
: Miguel A. Balsa
: IN THE CHAMBER OF MIRRORS. A COMMENTARY ON THE LOA FOR THE DIVINE NARCISSUS
: “Only the glancing mirror/Of reflections filled his eyes, a body/
: That had no being of its own, a shade/That came, stayed, left him--if he could leave it.”
:
: --Ovid, The Metamorphoses, Book III.
: “For men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands; everybody is fitted to see, few to understand. Everybody sees what you appear to be; few make out what you really are.”
: --Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XVIII.
: “La lectura del reverso del texto, la búsqueda de lo oculto y camuflado, la interpretación, en fin, de ambigüedades, reticencias, ironías y subterfugios es, en efecto, imprescindible en toda aproximación al discurso barroco.”
: --Mabel Moraña, Viaje al silencio. Exploraciones del discurso barroco.
: In The Metamorphosis, Ovid tells us the story of Narcissus, a boy of divine beauty born to a lovely half-woman-half-flower nymph called Liriope, as a result of her rape by the river Cephissus. From the time he was born, Narcissus’ charm was such that it troubled Liriope, whose worries finally led her to Tiresias, the famous diviner. Asked if the child would live to be a old man, Tiresias’ uncanny answer was: “Only if he never comes to know himself.” As Narcissus grew up, whoever set eyes on him, human or nymph, male or female, immediately fell in love with him. In contrast, the boy was immune to the fiery passions that his beauty arose in the hearts of others. He even turned down Echo, the gorgeous nymph doomed to utter no other words but the very last she would hear: Narcissus’ disdain caused Echo such sorrow that her body vanished in the forest, and only her voice remained, forever roaming and repeating others’ words in the mountains and forests.
: Tiresias’ prophecy seemed vain until the day when a young man, one of the innumerable admirers whom Narcissus had scornfully dismissed, prayed to the heavens that the ephebe would one day “love himself alone” and yet “fail in that great love.” The prayer moved the goddess of retribution Nemesis, who decided that she would avenge the boy’s wounded heart. On a warm day, Narcissus went hunting, and the deer he was chasing led him deep into the forest. And there, among the tall green grass, and the leafy trees, the clearest, purest pool appeared before the boy’s eyes. He bent over the water to quench his thirst, and right before his eyes emerged the most beautiful image he had ever seen. He could not take his eyes off the beautiful stranger, who returned all of Narcissus’ love-struck looks. And yet, he could not touch him: the water surface kept them apart--as thin as a veil, as impervious as a stone wall. The ephebe grew so desperate that he burst into tears, which fell into the pool and rippled the surface. He thus realized not only that the object of his desire was nothing more than his own reflection, but also--and this was even more unbearable--that his loved one could vanish, that he could cease to exist. Narcissus, unable to bear his realization, killed himself, and his body was transformed into a flower which ever since bends over and forever looks at its own reflection on the water.
: Ovid’s rendition of Echo and Narcissus’ myth, undoubtedly familiar to Sor Juana, inspired her to write The Divine Narcissus, an auto sacramental whose loa is the subject of this essay. Cetainly, Sor Juana’s was not an innocent choice. The concept of self-reflection on the mirroring waters of the pool that informs Ovid’s poems constitutes, as it were, the backbone of Sor Juana’s loa. Like Echo’s voice, her own poems reflect those of Ovid, and in such echoing, new meanings are born. A multitude of interpretations continuously emerge in it in such a way that all the characters and utterances are transformed into reflective images which only achieve their whole sense in relation to one other. In the play, everything occupies a relative position. The loa becomes a chamber of mirrors in which no image appears, no word is uttered, no action takes place, without generating its own counterpart.
: The essential and ceaseless duplicity that informs the loa is evident not only when one contemplates the dramatis parsonae but also in the dialectical struggle that takes place between them. With respect to the characters, they appear to be divided in two opposing and complementary groups: the Indians and the Spaniards, or the Heathen and the Catholic. In this setting, America, an Aztec woman, is confronted with Religion, a Spanish lady; Occident, a crowned Indian, faces Zeal, a Spanish captain; and in the background, the Musicians, a group of Aztec men and women, are confronted with the Spanish Soldiers. Therefore, at first sight there seems to be a clear division between Spaniards and Aztecs. However, the mirroring structure gets more complicated on closer examination. Each of these two sets of dramatis personae is divided into a new set of twin images, with an array of internal tensions going on between them. Thus, within each group there is a female character and her male counterpart, and, simultaneously, a collective chorus in the background mirrors the actions of the two individual personae in the foreground. And yet, giving us a sense of the conceptual complexity of her loa, Sor Juana presents us with a new set of duplicities. The group of characters physically present on the stage are confronted with a different group who are physically absent from it, but whose presence is undeniable: the Royal Court in Madrid.
: The various symmetrical sets of characters illustrate very effectively the inextricable relation between form and content which characterizes the loa. By means of the dialogues that take place between different sets of dramatis personae, the play introduces some of the fundamental conflicts which informed the intellectual, religious, political, and social debates that concerned Sor Juana’s--and New Spain’s--intellectual activity during the Baroque period. Thus, for example, the dialogue between the Aztecs and the Spaniards produces a plot that looks quite simple at first sight: an allegorical account of the christianization of the Indians in the very early stages of the Conquest. The scheme, however, takes on a more complex dimension when one considers, as Octavio Paz points out, the profound theological controversy that the Conquest of the Americas and the spiritual status of their populations had arisen within the Catholic Church:
: “The discovery of America[...]precipitated a crisis in Catholic theology and the conscience of its missionaries[...]The new lands and their inhabitants seemed to contradict the verse of the Gospel in which the resurrected Christ appeared unto the apostles and bade them to go into all the world and preach to every creature[...]The solutions to this enigma were many and ingenious[...][T]he Jesuits maintained that the Indians’ ancient beliefs--either by natural grace or because the Gospel had been preached in America prior to the arrival of the Spaniards--contained a glimmering of the true faith, even though only confused memories of the doctrine survived. In the seventeenth century this belief was extended and affirmed. It was a viewpoint[...]that implicitly undermined the basic principle of Spanish domination of America, evangelization.” (37)
: As Paz’ words indicate, the loa implicitly intervened in a crucial theological debate with deep political implications. However, the issue (and this is one among many examples of the play’s perpetual double entendres) is presented in an extremely ambiguous way. On the one hand, the striking resemblance between the “great God of the Seeds” and the Catholic God, as well as the likeness of their respective liturgies, could be interpreted as supporting the Jesuits’ viewpoint. Therefore, the loa would be implying a “dangerous” attack against the basic principle of the Spanish Crown’s domination of the Americas. On the other hand, the play clearly proclaims the Indies’s firm loyalty to the King--which is especially obvious in the final part, by means of the customary rethorical figure of "captatio benevolentiae" :
: "Celo:
: Siendo así, a los Reales Pies,
: en quien dos mundos se cifran,
: pidamos perdón postrados ;
: y a su reina esclarecida,
: cuyas soberanas plantas
: besan humildes las Indias."
: "Zeal:
: Then, postrate at his royal feet,
: beneath whose strength
: two worlds are joined
: we beg for pardon of the King;
: and from her eminence,
: the Queen;
: whose sovereign and annointed feet
: the humble Indies bow to kiss."
: Thus, it is impossible to determine what position the loa takes in the debate. The Jesuits’ conclusions, the Crown’s rightful sovereignty over the Indies, or even a parodical account of any of the former--all of these readings are plausible, among many others. But an array of different tensions inform the play, all of them surreptitiusly inserted within the general frame of the conflict between the Catholics and the Heathens. These anxieties are brought up--or rather, insinuated--by dialogues between different sets of characters. Let us take, for example, the Religion-Zeal coupling. Their conversations expose, among other issues, the intricate mechanisms that linked the military and religious logics, and their crucial role in the consolidation of the imperial system. The marriage between both characters clearly signifies the oppressive interlocking of both systems of control:
:"Celo:
: Religión: no tan aprisa 80
: de mi omisión te querelles,
: te quejes de mis caricias;
: pues ya levantado el brazo,
: ya blandida la cuchilla
: traigo, para tus venganzas.
: Tú a este lado te retira
: mientras vengo tus agravios."
"Zeal:
: Religion, trouble not your mind
: or grieve my failure to attack,
: complaining that my love is slack,
: for now the sword I wear is bared,
: its hilt in hand, clasped ready and
: my arm raised high to take revenge.
: Please stand aside and deign to wait
: till I requite your grievances.
:
:Similarly, the loa takes part in the controversy about the role of women within the Catholic Church, as well as in the intellectual world at large, in a male-dominated society that constituted one of Sor Juana’s major concerns, a feature that reaches its utmost expression in her Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz. Thus, Religion--a female character--publishes her ability , as it were, to wield “reason’s light” in public:
:"Religión:
: Sí, porque haberla vencido
: le tocó a tu valentía,
: pero a mi piedad le toca
: el conservarle la vida:
: porque vencerla por fuerza
: te tocó; mas el rendirla
: con razón, me toca a mí,
: con suavidad persuasiva"
"Religion:
: America has been subdued
: because your valor won the strife,
: but now my mercy intervenes
: in order to preserve her life.
: It was your part to conquer her
: by force with military might;
: mine is to gently make her yield,
: persuading her by reason’s light."
: The mere fact that some thorny issues are woven within the play’s seemingly simple and orthodox discourse is, undoubtedly, a significant stance in itself--especially given the circumstance that Sor Juana’s participation in public intellectual debates caused deep misgivings in her superiors . And precisely for this reason, the only way in which the text could possibly address certain issues while dodging censorship (in its manyfold configurations) was by originating a dialogue in which the appropriate positions and characters would always be privileged. All of the play’s conflicts, in short, are “properly” resolved in the end. The Crown’s supreme authority is affirmed, the political domination is validated for rightful religious reasons, the subordinate role of women in the intellectual realm persists--Religion and her mastery of “reason’s light” is formally incarnated in a woman, but the loa consistently shows the centrality of men both in the Church’s theological and liturgical activity (Saint Paul, the priests).
: And yet, the play’s apparent orhodoxy can also be read from a different perspective: unorthodox ideas and characters must appear as marginal, subordinate, and faulty because only in such a form could they become present. Only in such a way can the “mistaken” and the subordinated be provided with a voice--that is, exist on the public stage. Thus, the loa exposes ambiguity as a basic feature of power relations: the subordinated simultaneously accepts and subverts their status. On the one hand, the Aztecs, the women, and the Indies accept what is granted to them--a voice in a dialogue meant to enhance the powerful’s values and ideas. On the other hand, they suceed in inserting their own discourse in such a dialogue, and in exposing the fissures in the system that is imposed upon them. This is one of the artifices that Josefina Ludmer identifies in the Respuesta a Sor Filotea, one of the “tricks of the weak” by virtue of which Sor Juana tried to elude the intellectual constraint that her superiors wished to force upon her:
: “Nos interesa especialmente el gesto del superior que consiste en dar la palabra al subalterno[...]Ese gesto proviene de la cultura superior[...]para proponer al débil y al subalterno una alianza contra el enemigo común[...]Pero el dar la palabra y el identificarse con el otro para constituir una alianza implican una exigencia simultánea: el débil debe aceptar el proyecto del superior[...]Y allí es donde ella erige su cadena de negaciones: no decir, decir que no se sabe, no publicar, no dedicarse a lo sagrado.En este doble gesto se combinan la aceptación de su lugar subalterno (cerrar el pico las mujeres) y su treta: no decir pero saber, o decir que no se sabe y saber, o decir lo contrario de lo que sabe. Esta treta del débil[...]combina, como todas las tácticas de resistencia, sumisión y aceptación del lugar asignado por el otro, con antagonismo y enfrentamiento, retiro de colaboración .” (51)
: Ludmer’s words emphasize the notion that “the weak” necessarily have to encrypt their presence and their discourse in order to survive in a system in which they are considered to be alien, or, in Michel De Certeau’s words, “other”:
: “The space of a tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power[...]It is a maneuver ‘within the enemy’s field of vision’[...],and within enemy territory[...]In short, a tactic is an art of the weak[...]Power is bound by its very visibility. In contrast, trickery is possible for the weak, and often it is his only possibility, ‘as a last resort’: ‘The weaker the forces at the disposition of the strategist, the more the strategist will be able to use deception.’ I translate: the more the strategy is transformed into tactics.” (37)
: In his book "Welcome to the Desert of the Real!" Slavoj Zizek aptly illustrates one of those tactics. In circumstances in which censorship threatens to thwart and punish any attempt of getting through messages that might question the established system and its dogmas, it is still possible to get the rebel message through by resorting to the traditional artifice of “inscribing the very reference to the code into the encoded language, as one of its elements” (Zizek, 1-3). In other words, the implicit or explicit affirmation of the impossibility to declare one’s dissent always implies the possibility that one might actually disagree with what she appears to be asserting. From the very moment that one suggests that one cannot state the contrary of what one is saying--even if s/he wanted to--one creates, as it were, the possibility of an imaginary question mark looming over the entirety of his/her words. This insight enables us to carry out an interesting reading of Occident’s affirmation that
: "Yo ya dije que me obliga
: a rendirme a ti la fuerza;
: y en esto, claro se explica
: que no hay fuerza ni violencia
: que a la voluntad impida
: sus libres operaciones;
: y así, aunque cautivo gima,
: ¡no me podrás impedir
: que acá, en mi corazón, diga
: que venero al gran Dios de las Semillas!"
: "Forced to surrender to your power,
: I have admitted my defeat,
: but it still must be clearly said
: that violence cannot devour
: my will, nor force constrain its right.
: Although in grief, I now lament,
: a prisoner, your cruel might
: has limits. You cannot prevent
: my saying here within my heart
: I worship the great God of Seeds!"
:
: Thus, Occident openly declares that his submission to an external “power” is exclusively external and apparent; the implication is that submission to an external power can be purely external, and the only way to achieve certainty about the frankness of any declarations is an open declaration from its utterer. Therefore, when any given circumstances prevent the possibility of such open declaration, certainty about the utterer’s frankness becomes impossible. From this point of view, Occident’s words could be interepreted as a critique of censorhip as a system that tends to perpetuate itsef. Coercion and the system of fear that it consecrates eliminates the possibility of certainty about the utterer’s sincerity, and therefore censorship, rather than fostering mutual trust, fuels the state of mutual suspicion which justifies its own existence. Put simply, coercion undermines frankness, and the lack of frankness generates distrust. This argument could be taken a little further: given that frankness in public would be a risky stance rather than a virtue, then the possibility of honesty would be confined to the individual’s interior world as the only space in which it would have a chance to exist. Therefore, insincerity in its many forms (double meaning, deceit) would be not only justifiable as a means of surviving in a repressive system, but also would emerge as the only way to appear or speak in public.
: A different example of how Sor Juana’s loa might be “inscribing the very reference to the code into the encoded language, as one of its elements” can be found in one of Religion’s phrases, in which she lays out her plans to make the Aztecs “see” the “true faith”:
: "¿Hasta dónde tu malicia
: quiere remedar de Dios
: las sagradas Maravillas?
: Pero con tu mismo engaño,
: si Dios mi lengua habilita,
: te tengo de convencer."
: "To what extent, with this façade
: do you intend maliciously
: to mock the mysteries of God?
: Mock on! for with your own deceit,
: if God empowers my mind and tongue,
: I’ll argue and impose defeat."
: In this case, the artifice takes on a different form: the explicit affirmation of the possibility of deceitful intentions in one’s words implies that words do not always mean what the utterer seems to be saying, or, in other words, one’s apparent intentions neither always, nor necessarily match one’s actual purposes. It would be a different formulation of “things are not what they seems to be at first sight.” At least, not necessarily: the text’s ambiguity works precisely because no enunciation is actually followed by an interrogation mark, but because there always looms the suspicion that any statement might be a disguised question. In fact, neither Occident nor Religion conceal their true intentions: the former openly declares that his surrender is forced upon him by force, and that no violence can devour his will; the latter candidly affirms that she plans to be deceitful. And yet, this observation deserves further consideration: Occident declares his resolve to be sincere in order to achieve his spurious aspirations (to blatantly maintain his loyalty to “blind Idolatry” despite coercion), while Religion affirms her decision to be insincere in order to achieve her rightful purposes (that is, to trick America and Occident away from their “false gods”). Put simply, the implication would be that one can achieve “good” or “truth” through “evil” or “deceit,” and viceversa--one can achieve “evil” or “deceit” through “good” or “truth.” By showing each character’s double coding, Sor Juana’s loa inscribes an essential sense of ambiguity in its very core: every character and every utterance are imbued with a multiplicity of plausible interpretations, each of them simultaneously cause and effect of one another. The structure of the loa, in short, is such that a multitude of interpretations are not only possible but, rather, inevitable: no character, no declaration is complete without its own reflection or counterpart.
: Therefore, the dialectic structure which is so substantial a feature in all classic theater plays, takes on an especially intriguing dimension in the loa. All dialogues implicitly situate all interlocutors at a level of equality or, more accurately, denote the speakers’ parity as “subjects.” Emile Benveniste illustrates this idea in the following lines:
: "What then is the reality to which I or you refers? It is solely a “reality of discourse”[...]I is “the individual who utters the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance I.” Consequently, by introducing the situation of “address,” we obtain a symmetrical definition for you as “the individual spoken to in the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance you.” [...][I and you]are always available and become “full” as soon as a speaker introduces them into each instance of his discourse. Since they lack material reference, they cannot be misused; since they do not assert anything, they are not subject of the condition of truth and escape all denial. Their role is to provide the instrument of a conversion that one could call the conversion of language into discourse. It is by identifying himself as a unique person pronouncing I that each speaker sets himself up in turn as the “subject.” "(218-220)
: According to this view, from the very moment that they subsequently speak in the first person and are spoken to in the second person, all of the loa’s dramatis personae would be presented as equals--at least in terms of their “irreducible subjectivity” (Benveniste, 220). The impression of inherent equality between the different sets of characters is also emphasized by the formal structure (first, because of the symmetrical configuration of the characters, and second, due to the conceptual connection between symmetry and reflection--which suggests that every symmetrical set of characters is merely a two-fold image of the same figure). However, there is a sharp contrast between the sense of balance conveyed by the dialectic structure and the formal symmetry of the characters, on the one hand, and, on the other, the uneven ideological struggle that goes on between the Spaniards and the Aztecs--to take one of the various conflicts that coexist in the loa. As the plot develops, the Catholic group--Religion, Zeal, and the Spanish Soldiers--gradually dominates the situation until it finally prevails, and the Aztecs proclaim their surrender:
: Occidente:
: ¡Vamos, que ya mi agonía
: quiere ver cómo es el Dios
: que me han de dar en comida,
: (Cantan la América, el Occidente y el Celo:)
: diciendo que ya
: conocen las Indias
: al que es el verdadero
: Dios de las Semillas!
: Occident:
: Let’s go, for anxiously I long to see
: exactly how this god of yours
: will give Himself as food to me.
: (America, Occident, and Zeal sing:)
: The Indies know
: and do concede
: who is the true
: God of the Seeds.
: The question arises about the meaning of such blatant contradiction between the formal/structural equilibrium and the unbalaced outcome of the plot. Once again, the loa’s essential ambiguity allows for innumerable readings, one of them being--probably the most obvious one--that the Spaniards owe their final victory to their moral excellence and to the spiritual superiority of the “true faith.” However, it is also possible to interpret the play in a completely different way: the symmetry that informs the dramatis personae as well as the sense of equality inherent in the dialectical structure of the play would be meant to counteract the overwhelming privileging of the “normative” at the level of the plot. The tension between the form/structure and the content would be intended, in other words, to disrupt, if surreptitiusly, the loa’s apparent “correctness,” and, accordingly, to stress the lack of--and maybe the need for--a balanced, rational dialogue between the Heathen and the Catholic, the women and the men, Mexico and Madrid. This claim becomes quite explicit in the final part of the loa, right before the captatio benevolentiae that precedes the auto:
: "Celo:
: Pero díme, Religión, ya
: que a esto le diste salida,
: ¿cómo salvas la objeción
: de que introduces las Indias,
: y a Madrid quieres llevarlas?
: Religión:
: Como aquesto sólo mira
: a celebrar el Misterio,
: y aquestas introducidas
: personas no son más que
: unos abstractos, que pintan
: lo que se intenta decir,
: no habrá cosa que desdiga,
: aunque las lleve a Madrid:
: que a especies intelectivas ni habrá distancias que estorben
: ni mares que les impidan.
: Zeal:
: Then answer me, Religion, how
: (before you leave the matter now),
: will you respond when you are chid
: for loading the whole Indies on a stage to transport to Madrid?
: Religion:
: The purpose of my play can be
: none other than glorify
: the Eucharistic Mystery;
: and since the cast of characters
: are no more than abstractions which
: depict the theme with clarity,
: then surely no one should object
: if they are taken to Madrid;
: distance can never hinder thought
: with persons of intelligence,
: nor seas impede exchange of sense."
: It is also interesting to notice two other developments that arise specificaly in the loa’s "captatio benevolentiae." First, the text explicitly designates an interlocutor for the dialogue it demands--it adresses the Kings as the instance of highest authority. And second, such instance coincides with that of the rest of the spectators: the Queen, the Royal Council, the ladies, the poets, and by extension all those other spectators who are not mentioned, but are also “present,” although in ellipsis:
: "Celo:
: Siendo así, a los Reales Pies,
: en quien Dos Mundos se cifran,
: pidamos perdón postrados;
:
: Religión:
: y a su reina esclarecida,
:
: América:
: cuyas soberanas plantas
: besan humildes las Indias;
:
: Celo:
: a sus Supremos Consejos;
: Religión:
: a las Damas, que iluminan
: su Hemisferio;
: América:
: a sus Ingenios,
: a quien humilde suplica
: el mío, que le perdonen
: el querer con toscas líneas
: describir tanto Misterio.
: Zeal:
: Then, postrate at his royal feet,
: beneath whose strength two worlds are joined
: we beg for pardon of the King;
: Religion:
: and from her eminence ,the Queen;
: America:
: whose sovereign and annointed feet
: the humble Indies bow to kiss;
: Zeal:
: and from the Royal High Council;
: Religion:
: and from the ladies, who bring light
: into their hemisphere;
: America:
: and from
: their poets, I most humbly beg
: forgiveness for my crude attempt,
: desiring with these awkward lines
: to represent the Mystery."
: Therefore, the spectators are placed at the highest level of authority (they share the King’s perspective), and their presence is simultaneously inserted within the loa and otside it (by virtue of the explicit designation as the play’s audience). Moreover, the centrality of the spectator is enhanced even more when one considers that the play explicitly urges him/her to do something, to take an active role in relation to what they see. They must understand and not let thought be hindered; they must use their “intelligence,” and cultivate an “exchange of sense.” In other words, the King/the spectator is called upon to engage in a dialogue with the play, and to try her/his best to decipher its meaning. In fact, the crucial invitation to engage in an intellectual dialogue becomes obvious in verse 249, strategically situated in the center of the loa’s 500 verses:
: "Religión:
: ¿Qué Dios es ese que adoras?
: Religion:
: What god is this that you adore?"
: That question gives us, I think, the key to read the entire loa--or, rather, to “see” it . The call to the spectator--who, as I pointed out above, is situated at once inside and outside the play by Sor Juana--to participate is therefore proclaimed as the axis of the play. It is interesting to consider this view, I think, in relation to a masterpiece of the Baroque period--Velazquez’ painting “Las Meninas.” According to Leo Steinberg, Velázquez’ masterwork issues a similar invitation to the spectator and produces an intriguing phenomenon when s/he agrees to engage in the game that the work of art proposes:
: "Accept the summons, and the picture reduces the real world and the symbolic world to psychic equivalence, like the two pans of a scale, each acted on by the other[...][T]he picture conducts itself the way a vital presence behaves. It creates an encounter. And as in any living encounter, any vital exchange, the work of art becomes the alternate pole in a situation of reciprocal self-recognition. If the picture were speaking instead of flashing, it would be saying: I see you seeing me--I in you see myself seen--see you seeing yourself seen--and so on beyond the reaches of grammar. Confronted with mirrors we are, polarized selves, reflecting one another’s consciousness without end; partaking of an infinity that is not spatial, but psychological--an infinity not cast in the outer world, but in the mind that knows and knows itself known. The mirror within ‘Las Meninas’ is merely its central emblem, a sign of the whole. ‘Las Meninas’ in its entirety is a metaphor, a mirror of consciousness." (54)
: And thus, in the light of Steinberg’s words, the Loa of the Divine Narcissus returns us before Ovid’s mythical story of the boy who became perplexed at the sight of his own reflection on the water. Sor Juana, by virtue of her witty tactics, placed a mirror in front of her world. That was the paradox, she undersood: to make the world see itself, it needed to look at itself in the belief that it was looking at something else, at another. And by making her world see itself, she could see herself seen--she could exist. By virtue of the loa’s mirrors, she managed to have her voice seen, at once loud and silent, showed and concealed, saying without saying.