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DAVID
DAMROSCH
33
OF CALIFORNIA
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101
102
REPRESENTATIONS
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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
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103
104
REPRESENTATIONS
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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)
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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)
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107
REPRESENTATIONS
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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
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109
110
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The Aesthetics
ofConquest
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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
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,
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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)
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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
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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)
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
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115
REPRESENTATIONS
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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.
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
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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
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7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
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119
120
REPRESENTATIONS
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