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  • The Enigmas of Sor Juana
  • Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (bio)
    Translated by Glenna Luschei (bio)

1. What deity murders in living, dies giving life?

2. What suffering with equal tyranny silences cowardice, flaunts disrespect?

3. What succeeds like the pleasant sin that cures another sin?

4. What siren holds back danger in her voice and leads to safe harbor with sweet echoes?

5. What God with blind ambition captures reason, lets all else go free?

6. What obsession makes itself happy and at the same time unhappy? [End Page 18]

7. What passion does not deserve pity, stubborn ever, seeking danger?

8. What contentment walks through paths of pleasure toward pain?

9. What worship of high authority debases prayer, makes hope vulgar?

10. What is it, provoked by pain pounds in the heart before a sound is uttered?

11. What remains after defiance, the hell in one's chest, relief in one's eyes?

12. What offering of secret virtue is peril if possessed a fear if expected?

13. Why should we fear arrogance? Something wise only hopes to be foolish. [End Page 19]

14. What pain in repeated weeping blinds us to the cure and the sickness?

15. What attention to obedient courage defended in fear forces reason?

16. What is that red blush upon a beautiful horizon that falling like a star lights up the sun?

17. Who is that one shamelessly bold, quietly respectful, uttering insults?

18. What noble genius with blind vision understands without sight?

19. What cowardly repose does not shield virtue without protection of evil?

20. What is the deceit that relieves us, born in snow, dying in fire?

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a seventeenth-century Mexican nun and arguably the greatest poet of the Baroque period in the Americas. Highly educated and charming, she composed poetry and music for the elite of Mexican society and was the author of several books. Her convent cell became the intellectual center of Mexico City until 1690, when she was publicly condemned for criticizing a sermon by Father Antonio Vieira, a renowned Portuguese Jesuit. A year later, Sor Juana defended herself in her best-known work, Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz, and then gave up writing almost entirely. The Enigmas is one of a very few pieces written during this time of her life.

Glenna Luschei

Glenna Luschei is a rancher, medical interpreter, and translator. She holds the Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She has served as the Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo City and County and was honored as a “Master of Life” during Master’s Week at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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