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Poems of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Ballad #1

Poems of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Ballad #1
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table of contents
  1. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works
  2. Ballad #1
  3. Ballad #2
  4. Redondilla #87

Ballad 1 [1] [2]

Prologue to the reader from the author, who composed and sent it with the same haste used for those already copied, obeying the supreme command of her extraordinary patron, Her Excellency the Countless of Paredes,[3] that they be made public: this Sor Juana had denied her verses, which, like the poet herself, were in the safekeeping of the countless, for the poet barely had a single draft in her possession.

These verses, my dearest reader,

dedicated to your delight,

have but one virtue in them:

I know how imperfect they are,

I do not wish to discuss them

or even commend them to you,

for that would mean wishing to pay

them attention unmerited.

I do not seek your gratitude

for, if truth be told, you should not

esteem something I never deemed

worthy of being in your hands.

I grant and cede you liberty

if you should wish to censure them;

after all, to conclude, you are

free, and I have concluded too.

Nothing enjoys greater freedom

than the human understanding;

if God does not violate mind

then why would I even try?

Say all that you wish about them,

for the more merciless you are

in finding fault, the greater your

obligation will be to me,

for then you will owe me my Muse

that most flavorsome of dishes [4]

—speaking ill of another—as

an old adage of the court says.

I am always at your service,

whether I please you or do not:

if I please you, you are amused;

if not, you can speak ill of me.

I could easily say to you

as an excuse, that I did not

have the time to revise them,

they were copied so rapidly;

they are written by diverse hands,

and some, being the hands of boys,

kill the sense in such a way that

the word is no more than a corpse;

when I have written them myself,

it has been in the brief space

of leisure that can be bought from

the exigencies of my state;

for my health is poor and I am

so often interrupted that

even as I say this my pen

races along at breakneck speed.

But none of this is to the point,

for you will think I am boasting

that perhaps they might have been good

if I had composed them slowly;

I do not wish you to think that,

no, but only that I brought them

to light in order to comply,

to obey another’s command.

True, believe it or not, this is

not a question of life or death

to me, and to conclude, you will

do whatever occurs to you.

And farewell, for this merely shows

you a small sample of the cloth:

but if the piece does not please you,

then do not unroll the whole bolt.

  1. Ballads, called romances in Spanish, are composed of an indefinite number of stanzas of generally octosyllabic lines, the odd lines unrhymed, the even lines using assonant rhyme.   Back
  2. First published in the revised edition of the first volume of Sor Juana’s poems: Poemas de la única poetisa americana (Poems of the singular American poetress)(Madrid, 1690) [Editor].   Back
  3. Maria Luisa, Countess of Paredes, was the wife of Tomás de la Cerda, third Marquis de la Laguna, Viceroy of New Spain from 1680 to 1686.   Back
  4. The metaphor plays on the idea of finding fault, in the previous stanza, which is to “bite” in Spanish.   Back

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Ballad #2
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ENGL 152W: Readings in American Literature
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