Ballads of the Lords of New Spain: The Codex “Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España.” (review)

John Bierhorst’s Ballads of the Lords of New Spain is an impressive work, offering an informative guide to a text that has long been unavailable to scholars interested in the early Americas. At the center is the transcription and translation of a sixteenth-century Nahuatl manuscript of Aztec songs. Although, as Bierhorst notes, these songs “cannot, or should not, be characterized in a word,” the broad focus is their celebration of important leaders and battles of pre-Conquest city states (2). In commemorating these events, the ballads offer new insights into Aztec history and culture and a unique perspective on the Nahuatl language: “The thirty-six songs of the Romances … are not only in Nahuatl but in oral Nahuatl, as distinguished from the written Nahuatl of missionaries and acculturated native speakers” (2). In contrast to traditional written Nahuatl, which shows the influence of Spanish syntax, these transcriptions of oral Nahuatl provide a valuable lens for examining Aztec culture and modes of expression prior to the arrival of the Spanish.

While Bierhorst’s goal is to make this early manuscript more accessible “for the sake of history and the sake of art,” Ballads of the Lords of New Spain is clearly intended for readers who are well-versed in Aztec historiography and Nahuatl language and culture (vii). The book begins with an introduction intended to provide historical and cultural background for the songs, but this discussion is primarily focused on situating the Ballads in relation to two other sixteenth-century manuscripts, Juan Bautista de Pomar’s Relación and the Cantares Méxicos, a focus which assumes readers are familiar with the history of the period and, moreover, the current critical conversations surrounding Nahuatl texts. The introduction is followed by a section titled “On the Translation of Aztec Poetry,” which offers an annotated list of twenty-four significant images, tropes, and cultural references featured in the songs. This section, which focuses on subjects such as “Flowers as Weapons,” “Verbs of Rotation,” “The War Ethic,” and “Techniques of Ritual,” is more accessible to the general reader, offering useful discussions of cultural and rhetorical references that can help readers better contend with the symbols, allusions, and aesthetic features of the text.

As for the ballads themselves, they are printed on facing pages in English and Nahuatl, with numbered notes linking specific lines to the list of twenty-four tropes and allusions, as well as additional footnotes that comment on some of the choices made in translation. This book was published in conjunction with an online edition ( www.utdigital.org ) that allows readers to engage interactively with Ballads through the aid of “popup” commentaries, searchable maps that illustrate the geography of the period, and even audio clips that provide drum cadences for two of the songs. Through the two editions, readers are provided with a richly dense text that offers multiple directions for studying these Nahuatl works. While scholars who are already specialists in the field will gain the most from this highly detailed translation, this book has much to offer all scholars with an interest in pre-Conquest literature and culture. Furthermore, in a period so often dominated by the work of Spanish colonials and conquistadors, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain reminds us of the presence of other indigenous voices who, likewise, had an important literary presence in the early Americas.