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xv A Note on the Translations I n 1977 I arrived in Madrid and began searching card catalogs and archives at the Biblioteca Nacional, convinced I would find what I had not seen and no one could point to: the works of other convent writers, prior and contemporaneous to the “Athena-like” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Santa Teresa de Ávila. I believed that renowned women writers in Spanish, as in English, would not spring full grown and armored from the head of Zeus but from fertile and various, if unknown, traditions of writing women. I was gratified and amazed by the wealth of sources awaiting discovery. These researches, initial efforts at translation, and my subsequent meeting with Professor Electa Arenal—already at work on the present book—led to my collaboration with this project. A text “cannot be told”; this translator adds, “yet it must be.” The aim of these translations has been to convey the varied voices, concerns, and skills of the authors in a modern U.S.-English idiom that preserves that gustatory commonplace , the “flavor” of the originals. As far as possible while still maintaining sense, I have avoided English-language anachronisms, in both modern and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century phrasing. Otherwise, I hope each translation has been led by the particularities of its original. Inherent to the purpose and vision of Untold Sisters is the presentation of authors of diverse abilities; some works are manifestly “literary” while others engage us more simply or urgently. A word about the verse: I have attempted to work within a suitable (if sometimes shifting) meter and to create a sound-relationship suggestive of rhyme. Verse forms follow the original as closely as the poetic powers of this translator allowed; where no congruent form exists in English prosody, as for instance the lira, I have invented the parallel. The Spanish texts move from doggerel to beauty, sometimes within a single poem. If the translations suggest this range, they have succeeded. Many pairs of eyes have scrutinized the translations in manuscript; I cannot adequately thank all who helped. My gratitude goes to Rosanna Warren and Rodolfo Cardona of the University Professors Program at Boston University and to Emilie Bergmann of the University of California at Berkeley, for their assistance “A text is unique, and cannot be told.” —Nelly Furman, “Textual Criticism,” 1980 xvi a nOTe On THe TranslaTiOns with the poetry of Marcela de San Félix. Joe Chadwick and Valerie Wayne of the University of Hawaii at Manoa offered sensitive comments on poems by María de San José, Cecilia del Nacimiento, and María de San Alberto. Mary Luti of the Andover Newton School of Theology most kindly provided a first-draft version of the Mexican nuns’ writings and has extended Teresian wit and scholarship at many critical moments. Magda Bogin has been generous at every phase; her own scrupulous and graceful work is an example. Not least, Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau have read every word, and pondered and debated most of them. Finally, Margaret Hackman has been an unfailing biblical, conventual, emotional, and grammatical resource. Amanda Powell ...

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