The Syntax and Versification of a Dream

T H E S Y N T A X A N D V E R S I F I C A T I O N O F A D R E A M Elias L. Rivers State University of N e w York at Stony Brook Why is it so difficult for uninitiated readers to find their way through Sor Juana's Primero Sueno? And why is it almost impossible for even the most skillful editor to punctuate the text? The answer to both these questions is one and the same: in this baroque poem of intellectual vision the nun in her cell pushes against the limits of syntactic coherence by subordinating multiple phrases, clauses and parentheses into an all-embracing sentence, a single over-arching thought that strains to take as much as possible into account simultaneously. Sor Juana's attempt to see the world as a whole is reflected in her extreme hypotaxis. We may take as an example the first sentence of the poem, followed by an attempt to rewrite it in prose: Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra nacida sombra al cielo encaminaba de vanos obeliscos punta altiva, escalar pretendiendo las estrellas, si bien sus luces bellas (exentas siempre, siempre rutilantes) la tenebrosa guerra que con negros vapores le intimaba la pavorosa sombra fugitiva burlaban tan distantes 10 que su atezado ceno al superior convexo aun no Uegaba del orbe de la diosa que tres veces hermosa con tres hermosos rostros ser ostenta, quedando solo dueno del aire que empanaba con el aliento denso que exhalaba; y en la quietud contenta de imperio silencioso, 20 sumisas solo voces consentia de las nodurnas aves, tan obscuras, tan graves, que aun el silendo no se interrumpia. THE SYNTAX AND VERSIFICATION OF A DREAM ft) 209 [Approximation in English prose: A pyramidal, funereal shadow born of the earth was aiming toward the sky its lofty point of vain obelisks, attempting to reach the stars, but the stars' lovely lights, always free and sparkling, so distantly evaded the dark war which with black vaporswasbeing declared againsttheskybythe fearsome, fleeing shadow that the latter's dark frown did not even reach the upper convex surface of the sphere of that goddess who shows herself to be thrice beautiful with three beautiful faces, and the shadow was left to dominate only the air which it besmirched with the dense breath that it exhaled, and, satisfied with the quietness of its silent empire, it permitted only the submissive cries of nocturnal birds, so dark and heavy that the silence was not broken.] For educated readers of modern Spanish prose, who can take in at a glance the front page of a newspaper, it is a disappointment to discover that it is hard to make sense of this first sentence, the first 24 lines, of Sor Juana's Sueno. The difficulty is not primarily a matter of vocabulary: educated readers easily recognize almost all of the words.1 And there is only one mythological allusion that might give any modern reader pause: "la diosa / que tres veces hermosa / con tres hermosos rostros ser ostenta" is recognized as the Moon only by those who know that Hecate has three faces as Luna / Diana / Proserpina. But aside from this three-line periphrastic riddle, why is the sentence as a whole so difficult, even for a reader who quickly realizes that it involves a description of nightfall? Once again I would suggest that the key is syntax: it is not easy to put the elaborate clauses of the sentence together and to make sense of a world filled with darkness, both in space and on earth. In the poem, generally, there are a few other, and lesser, obstacles to readability. Some of the Latinate words, like those of Gongora, are used in an unusual etymological sense, and others in a technical or scientific sense. The reader of the Sueno is expected to have some knowledge of such sciences as astronomy and biology, physiology and psychology; in the poem's opening lines, to look again at the same example, one is led in a single sentence to see how at night the dark hemisphere of the earth, hidden in silence...