Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: The Fourth Labyrinth

SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ: THE FOURTH LABYRINTH Mabgabet Sayers Peden, University of Missouri Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz's "El amor es más laberinto" has been largely disregarded by her critics. Among those who give it more than a simple mention , Alberto G. Salceda, in the introduction to the fourth volume of Sor Juana's Obras Completas, considers that this play, and "Los empeños de una casa," are important only as "dos capítulos más de este tratado" [el de su filosofía de amor].1 Gerard Flynn, in his Twayne biography of Sor Juana, criticizes the play by proposing how it should have been written: "Love the Greater Labyrinth should have been written in the fashion of Lope de Vega's Peribánez, Calderón's The Mayor of TMamea, or Rojas Zorrilla's None Except the King."2 And Karl Vossler, in "La décima musa de México, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," dismisses the play by calling it a "comedia mitológica, galante , antiguo-barroca . . . que no tiene ningún estilo."3 In his analysis of "Amor . . ." Flynn suggest that there are three labyrinths in the play: the first, "the one in the legend, namely, the maze where the Minotaur is confined"; the second, "the form of the play itself"; and the third, "the principal theme and title of the Í)lay" — Love.4 I would propose a ourth labyrinth that is central to every point examined in this paper, and that is the marvelous and confounding intellect of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Were we able to penetrate that labyrinth we would surely find there the solution to some of the questions I shall raise. I can only agree with the critics cited that "Amor es más laberinto"5 is not a great play, and it is not my purpose to attempt to establish it as a forgotten or undiscovered or misread classic. I do intend, however, to indicate points of interest that have not been previously noted, and it is my premise that even if one concedes that the play is a minor work, it merits a more thorough investigation than it has received to this date. As I perceive them, there are specifically four points of interest in the play which we will examine in order of their appearance below: 1)Elements of a very modern intrusion of reality into the fiction of the play, 2)Sor Juana's commentaries on the modes of her times, 3)Alterations of the prototypal myth upon which the play is based, and 4)The curious and ambiguous focus on the character of Ariadne. It has been noted in "Los empeños de una casa" — in the third jornada and in the accompanying saínete — that Sor Juana employs a pre-Pirandellian technique of interrupting the fiction of her play/reality with comments by the characters on their own roles.6 What has not been pointed out previously is that there are similar instances in "Amor es más laberinto." Twice when a gracioso has been on stage, and silent, for an inordinately long time, Sor Juana seems suddenly to recall his presence and assigns him lines that foreshadow the technique attributed in this century to Pirandello. As the character comments on his own role, we experience this momentary intrusion of reality into established dramatic fiction: Racimo: Yo me voy a desquitar 41 de lo mucho que he callado pues he salido al tablado a solamente callar.( p. 232) and Atún: Aquí entro yo ( ¡Gracias a Santa Lucía que tengo lugar de hablar! ) (p. 350) The question is whether in her haste Sor Juana merely wished to dispose of the character, or whether she was indeed quite conscious of what she was doing. We will discuss this later, in conjunction with other questions still to be raised. In an analysis of Sor Juanian themes, Don Juan Carlos Mera did not include "commentaries on her times" as one of his seven thematic classifications (although perhaps we might consider this theme within the category "la filosofía moral").7 Sor Juana's feelings towards the events...