Wonder and Exile in the New World

Chapter 3: The Hidden God of the Baroque: Baroque Wonders, Baroque Tragedies

If this poem by the great Portuguese poet begins as a personal lament, it suddenly becomes something broader in scope, a lament for an entire epoch. The anguish of this poet is let loose on his age to become a dark prophecy of things to come. The poet summons wonders and fears like a biblical prophet of doom or an apocalyptic seer. As both prophecy and curse, the three the hidden god of the baroque Baroque Wonders, Baroque Tragedies Wipe away, with death, the day of my birth; may it be forgotten forever, and never come back in the sweep of time. And if it ever returns, eclipse the sun and blacken the earth. Let all light fade and disappear. Let wild omens reveal everything must die. Let monsters be born. Let blood rain from the sky. Let every mother not recognize her child. Let all the stunned and terrified people, with tears streaking down their faces, pale and worn, believe their world is doomed and overthrown. You, frightened people, accept these wonders and fears, for this was the wretched day on which was born the most miserable life that ever was known. —Luís de Camões, “Curse” poet chants these gloomy lines as he notices misery and darkness gathering strength to overthrow all traces of light. Camões’s lines have a sad and ominous beauty to them and they augur a new, post-Renaissance age, the age of the Baroque. The allure of wonder continues in the age of the Baroque— an age that is both a disruption and expansion of the Renaissance—but it also undergoes significant transformations. Wonder metamorphoses, changing forms to become more ominous, more frightening, monster-like. Wonder is now loaded with the sentiments of dread, anxiety, and anguish, and the burden of it is so severe that wonder is gravely wounded.1 The narrative that I want to follow in this chapter concerns the changes that the experience of wonder undergoes in the Baroque as it relates to the tragic sensibilities of the age, including its anguished theology that felt distant from God, exiled from God in fact. Indeed, the sentiment of exile intensified in the Baroque and disrupted everything it touched. Neither wonder nor conceptions of God would be the same. In both the European and the New World Baroque, the language of wonder would be increasingly marked by the sign of the cross, and the hidden God was a key symbol of this, as was the tone of fear and trembling, the preoccupation with monsters, and the pervasive feelings of loss and death in the age. In exploring this claim, we will see how crucial the Baroque has been in the histories and cultures of Latin America. Though the Baroque clearly had European origins, it was soon changed as a result of its new home in the Americas, like a man in exile who soon learns to adapt to his new environment . The Baroque’s ability to acclimatize and negotiate with its new location left an indelible mark on the New World, and this influence extended to everything, including the themes of wonder and exile. To appreciate the distinct qualities of the American Baroque, however, we need to familiarize ourselves with the Baroque in the Old World. In fact, it strikes me as profoundly shortsighted to ignore the European context. As I suggested in the introduction, we cannot divorce the study of the New World from the history of Spain and Europe, which is why in this chapter we will examine the Spaniard Calderón vis-à-vis the great Peruvian scholar Juan Espinosa de Medrano (and in the next chapter, Cervantes in light of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz). To be sure, the Baroque that is born on the shores of the New World is a unique and original creature (especially in light of the Conquest and the cultures of Amerindians), but it also has the same genes as its parental figure. To understand one, we need to know the other. So, as we make our way tracing the history of wonder and exile, we will cross the ocean, to and fro, numerous times, all in the hope of understanding the hidden god K  the dark age of the Baroque and the image of the hidden God that flourished in these difficult times. The Renaissance and Baroque The age of the...