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“Heaven and Earth Conspire”: Grace and Nature in Sor Juana's The Divine Narcissus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2019

Michael Anthony Abril
Michael Anthony Abril*
Affiliation:
Aquinas Institute of Theology
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Abstract

This essay highlights the dynamic theology of nature and grace expressed within The Divine Narcissus by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95). Inspired by thinkers such as Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux and, later in her life, an emphasis on the Immaculate Conception, she details an aesthetic relationship between grace and nature: human nature is created to reflect, in grace, the perfect beauty of the incarnate Son of God. Moreover, by securing positive roles for the contributions of women and for indigenous Mexican religious devotion, she highlights the way in which this dynamic between nature and grace recovers the authentic voice of the least in society—those whose voices have been unjustly suppressed by violent domination.

Keywords

gracenatureChristologytheological anthropologyImmaculate Conceptiontheological aestheticsLatin@ theology
Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 296 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2019

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References

1 de la Cruz, Juana Inés, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Writings (hereafter SW), trans. Kirk, Pamela Rappaport (New York: Paulist, 2005), 170Google Scholar. Citations from Juana Inés de la Cruz, The Divine Narcissus, originally published in 1689 (69–170) will also be referenced by act, scene, and line number as follows: DN 5.16.2226–38.

2 See for example Rappaport, Pamela Kirk, “Christ as Divine Narcissus: A Theological Analysis of El Divino Narciso by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” Word & World 12, no. 2 (1992): 149Google Scholar.

3 Kennett, Frances, “The Theology of The Divine Narcissus,” Feminist Theology 25 (2000): 74, 78Google Scholar; Arenal, Electa, “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Speaking the Mother Tongue,” University of Dayton Review 16 (1983): 96Google Scholar; Egan, Linda, “Donde Dios es todavía mujer: Sor Juana y la teología feminista,” in Y diversa de mí misma entre vuestras plumas ando: Homenaje internacional a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, ed. Herrera, Sara Poot (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1993), 327CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. de la Cruz, Juana Inés, Obras completas (hereafter OC), ed. Plancarte, Alfonso Méndez, 1st ed. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951), 2:211Google Scholar; de la Cruz, SW, 205. For critique and clarification, see Gonzalez, Michelle A., Sor Juana: Beauty and Justice in the Americas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 62, 93Google Scholar; Cortés-Vélez, Dinorah, “Marian Devotion and Religious Paradox in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” Renascence 62, no. 3 (2010): 181–82, 189CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Bénassy-Berling, Marie-Cécile, Humanisme et religion chez Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: la femme et la culture au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Editions hispaniques, 1982), 256–58Google Scholar; Kennett, “The Theology of The Divine Narcissus,” 76–77. Against this minimization of Sor Juana's devotion to the Immaculate Conception, see Cortés-Vélez, “Marian Devotion and Religious Paradox in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 181–82; Tavard, George H., Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 93–94Google Scholar.

5 Paz, Octavio, Sor Juana, or, The Traps of Faith, trans. Peden, Margaret Sayers (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1988), 5Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 3–4.

7 Ibid., 343.

8 Merrim, Stephanie, Early Modern Women's Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999), xiGoogle Scholar. See also Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 67; Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 184.

9 Paz, Sor Juana, or, The Traps of Faith, 53.

10 Rappaport, Pamela Kirk, “Introduction,” in Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz: Selected Writings, by de la Cruz, Juana Inés (New York: Paulist, 2005), 15Google Scholar; Parker, Alexander A., “The Calderonian Sources of El divino Narciso by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 19 (1968): 258–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Ellis, Jonathan, “How Is a Narcissistic Christ Possible? The Theological Tradition Behind Sor Juana's El Divino Narciso,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 59, no. 1 (2007): 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Ellis, “How Is a Narcissistic Christ Possible?,”; Urbán, Ivelisse, “Ontología de la metáfora en El Divino Narciso de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” Romance Notes 49, no. 3 (2009): 259CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the cultural significance of this myth, see Folger, Robert, “Narcisos: La economía de los géneros en Calderón y Sor Juana,” in Variaciones e innovación de un modelo teatral: XV Coloquio Anglogermano sobre Calderón, Wroclaw, 14–18 de julio de 2008 (Göttingen: Steiner, 2011), 171Google Scholar.

12 See note 64.

13 Ellis, “How Is a Narcissistic Christ Possible?,” 174.

14 Parker, “The Calderonian Sources of El divino Narciso by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 262–63.

15 Ibid., 263.

16 Patterson, Charles, “Jesuit Neo-Scholasticism and Criollo Consciousness in Sor Juana's El mártir del sacramento, San Hermenegildo,” Hispania 96, no. 3 (2013): 461CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rappaport, “Introduction,” 17.

17 Nahuatl was the language of the Nahua peoples who lived in the region of New Spain just prior to the Spanish conquest. These peoples included the Mexica, the then-dominant tribe, who are more commonly spoken of somewhat improperly as the Aztecs.

18 Cf. Checa, Jorge, “El divino Narciso y la redención del lenguaje,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 38, no. 1 (1990): 212Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 200.

20 de la Cruz, SW, 94 (de la Cruz, DN 1.1.127–31). See Urbán, “Ontología de la metáfora en El Divino Narciso de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 259–60.

21 Checa, “El divino Narciso y la redención del lenguaje,” 198, 208.

22 See for example Sor Juana's Devotional Exercises in de la Cruz, SW, 212–13. Cf. Kirk Rappaport, “Christ as Divine Narcissus,” 153; Rappaport, Kirk, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism (New York: Continuum, 1998), 51–52Google Scholar; Kennett, “The Theology of The Divine Narcissus,” 81; Gasta, Chad M., Imperial Stagings: Empire and Ideology in Transatlantic Theater of Early Modern Spain and the New World (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 203, 219Google Scholar.

23 Folger, “Narcisos,” 187. See also Bokser, Julie A., “Sor Juana's Divine Narcissus: A New World Rhetoric of Listening,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40, no. 3 (2010): 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 de la Cruz, SW, 73, 79 (Loa 2.108, 4.261–62); Checa, “El divino Narciso y la redención del lenguaje,” 200.

25 Hahn, Miriam, “‘As If There Were No Damages’: Representing Native American Spirituality in the Dramas of Lope de Vega and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” Ecumenica 8, no. 1 (2015): 10, 12–13Google Scholar.

26 Cf. Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 83.

27 de la Cruz, OC, 2:14–17, 39–42, 71–74, 94–98, 314–16. Two are translated in de la Cruz, Juana Inés, A Sor Juana Anthology (hereafter Ant.), trans. Trueblood, Alan S. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 124–29Google Scholar. See also Bokser, “Sor Juana's Divine Narcissus,” 233.

28 See de la Cruz, OC, 2:82; Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 43; Rappaport, Kirk, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism (New York: Continuum, 1998), 74Google Scholar.

29 See de la Cruz, SW, 80–83 (Loa 4.276–79, 321–29, 348–53, 368–73).

30 Ibid., 89–95 (de la Cruz, DN 1.1.1–155).

31 Ibid., 94 (de la Cruz, DN 1.1.141–45).

32 de la Cruz, OC, 297 (no. 183). See also de González, Ester Gimbernat, “Speaking through the Voice of Love: Interpretation as Emancipation,” in Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz, ed. Merrim, Stephanie (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 170–72Google Scholar.

33 de la Cruz, SW, 92 (de la Cruz, DN 1.1.70–78).

34 de la Cruz, Ant., 188.

35 See for example de la Cruz, SW, 98 (de la Cruz, DN, 1.2.241–44).

36 See de Lubac, Henri, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Sheed, Rosemary (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 314Google Scholar.

37 Ellis, “How Is a Narcissistic Christ Possible?,” 174. Sor Juana also includes the intellectual meaning of the image. See de la Cruz, OC, 2:6–14 (nos. 219–23).

38 de la Cruz, SW, 104–106 (de la Cruz, DN 1.3.417–32, 439–41, 500–06). Cf. de la Cruz, Ant., 181–82.

39 Checa, “El divino Narciso y la redención del lenguaje,” 202–03. He quotes Freccero, John, “The Fig Tree and the Laurel: Patrarch's Poetics,” in Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts, eds. Parker, Patricia A. and Quint, David (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 27Google Scholar.

40 de la Cruz, SW, 105 (DN 1.3.455–66).

41 Ibid., 98 (de la Cruz, DN 1.2.215–18, 232–40).

42 Ibid., 63–64; de la Cruz, OC, 2:221–22 (no. 358); Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 1189–1219; Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 79–80. Cf. Kennett, “The Theology of The Divine Narcissus,” 76. On Scotus and Suárez, see Boss, Sarah Jane, “Union with God: The Mother of God as the Sign of Creation's Destiny,” Maria: A Journal of Marian Studies 2, no. 1 (2001): 61–62, 66Google Scholar.

43 See Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 189–90.

44 de la Cruz, OC, 3:463, 468–70; de la Cruz, Ant., 82–85. See Augustine, De ordine and De musica; Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 186. Augustine, De musica, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 102, ed. Martin Jacobsson (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017). De ordine: Augustine, Contra academicos libri tres, De beata vita liber unus, De ordine libri duo, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 63, ed. Knoll, Pius (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1922)Google Scholar.

45 Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 59.

46 de la Cruz, SW, 97 (de la Cruz, DN 1.2.197–98); see also 93 (de la Cruz, DN 1.1.108–11).

47 Ibid., 166 (de la Cruz, DN 5.16.2054–98). See Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 75.

48 de la Cruz, SW, 123–27 (de la Cruz, DN 3.7.1105–12, 1133–48, 1214–17).

49 What Sarah Boss says about Suárez seems also to hold true for Sor Juana: his “optimism about the human condition corresponds to his high Mariology.” Boss, “Union with God,” 66.

50 Merrim, Stephanie, “Narciso desdoblado: Narcissistic Strategems in El Divino Narciso and the Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 64, no. 2 (1987): 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Ibid., 114. See also Stephanie Merrim, “Mores Geometricae: The ‘Womanscript’ in the Theater of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” in Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana, 112–16.

52 Merrim, “Narciso desdoblado,” 113; Parker, “The Calderonian Sources of El divino Narciso by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 269.

53 de la Cruz, SW, 141–51 (de la Cruz, DN 4.12); see also 154 (de la Cruz, DN 4.13.1781–85).

54 Ibid., 166 (de la Cruz, DN 5.16.2111–14).

55 Bokser, “Sor Juana's Divine Narcissus,” 243.

56 See her Devotional Exercises and Athenagoric Letter: de la Cruz, SW, 191–92, 233–34, 237, 239.

57 Ibid., 166–67 (de la Cruz, DN 5.16.2132–34); cf. 131, 151 (de la Cruz, DN 3.8.1316–25; 4.12.1700).

58 Gertrude of Helfta, The Herald of Divine Love, trans. Winkworth, Margaret (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 106 (2.8.3)Google Scholar modified slightly. Cf. Siena, Catherine of, The Dialogue, trans. Noffke, Suzanne (New York: Paulist, 1980), 325Google Scholar.

59 Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 80.

60 de la Cruz, SW, 133, 145 (de la Cruz, DN 4.9.1377,79; 4.12.1604–09). Cf. John 19:28.

61 Ibid., 141 (de la Cruz, DN 4.12.1538–39); 239 (de la Cruz, The Athenagoric Letter).

62 Ibid., 123–24 (de la Cruz, DN 3.7.1104–1112). See also de la Cruz, Ant., 188.

63 de la Cruz, SW, 154 (de la Cruz, DN 5.13.1786–96).

64 Ibid., 167 (de la Cruz, DN 5.16.2139–54); de la Cruz, OC, 2:211 (no. 349); Ellis, “How Is a Narcissistic Christ Possible?,” 177–79. See also de la Cruz, OC, 213–14 (no. 351).

65 de la Cruz, SW, 224–25, 237–39; de la Cruz, OC, 2:207–08. See also Patterson, “Jesuit Neo-Scholasticism and Criollo Consciousness in Sor Juana's El mártir del sacramento, San Hermenegildo,” 463.

66 Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 196.

67 See note 73.

68 See Kirkpatrick, Judith A., “The Word and the Woman: Creative Echoing in Sor Juana's El divino Narciso,” Hispanófila 122 (1998): 57–58Google Scholar; Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 107–08.

69 See Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 261–69, 287Google Scholar.

70 Ellis, “How Is a Narcissistic Christ Possible?,” 179.

71 Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 69, 77.

72 Cf. Kennett, “The Theology of The Divine Narcissus,” 72.

73 de la Cruz, SW, 124–27 (de la Cruz, DN 3.7); de la Cruz, OC, 2:209–10, 214–15; Boss, “Union with God,” 62–64. Fernando Suárez, Commentariorum ac disputationum in tertium parten Divi Tomae (n.p., 1614), II, disp. 1, sec. 1, 3. See Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 67–68; Paz, Sor Juana, or, The Traps of Faith, 461–62. 3. For a brief overview of Suárez's theology of grace, see Camacho, Ramón Kuri, “Francisco Suárez, teólogo y filósofo de la imaginación y la libertad,” Revista de Filosofía 58, no. 1 (2008): 79–101Google Scholar.

74 Cortés-Vélez, “Marian Devotion and Religious Paradox in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 183–97; de la Cruz, OC, 2:6–14.

75 de la Cruz, SW, 125–26, 134–35 (de la Cruz, DN 3.7.1133–48, 4.10.1410–12); Parker, “The Calderonian Sources of El divino Narciso by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 270; Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 121. See also de la Cruz, OC, 2:99–110, 211–12; Ellis, “How Is a Narcissistic Christ Possible?,” 177–79. She also links the Immaculate Conception with water in other works, such as de la Cruz, SW, 177; de la Cruz, OC, 2:105. The water also points to baptism and the crucifixion. Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 79; Checa, “El divino Narciso y la redención del lenguaje,” 209.

76 de la Cruz, Ant., 132–35. She revisits this theme in de la Cruz, SW, 121 (de la Cruz, DN 2.6.1037–40). Interestingly, Sor Juana also points to this beautiful blackness in an earlier villancico, where an African voice praises Mary as “una Nenglita beya,” a beautiful black girl. de la Cruz, OC, 2:315; cf. 16.

77 de la Cruz, SW, 47–48; de la Cruz, OC, 2:10–12. See also Cortés-Vélez, “Marian Devotion and Religious Paradox in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 197; de la Cruz, SW, 121, 181.

78 See Glantz, Margo, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Hagiografía o autobiografía? (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1995), 105Google Scholar; Kennett, “The Theology of The Divine Narcissus,” 70–71; Kirkpatrick, “The Word and the Woman,” 65; Finley, Sarah, “Embodied Sound and Female Voice in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Canon: Romance 8 and El divino Narciso,” Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 50, no. 1 (2016): 209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 78, 103–04. Cf. Merrim, “Narciso desdoblado,” 114; Early Modern, 191–94.

79 Kirkpatrick, “The Word and the Woman,” 60–66; Folger, “Narcisos,” 190.

80 de la Cruz, SW, 169 (de la Cruz, DN 5.16.2196–98). Cf. Kirkpatrick, 62. See also Checa, “El divino Narciso y la redención del lenguaje,” 218.

81 Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 92.

82 de la Cruz, SW, 88 (Loa 5.495–96).

83 Hahn, “‘As If There Were No Damages’: Representing Native American Spirituality in the Dramas of Lope de Vega and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” 10, 12–13.

84 Ibid., 14, 17.

85 See the Devotional Exercises: de la Cruz, SW, 183–86.

86 Ibid., 255 (Response). See also Bokser, Julie A., “Sor Juana's Rhetoric of Silence,” Rhetoric Review 25, no. 1 (2006): 5–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Gonzalez, Sor Juana, 95.

88 Ibid., 105.

89 de la Cruz, SW, 277 (Response).

90 Ibid., 278 (Response).

91 Tavard, Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theology, 192, 195.

92 de la Cruz, OC, 1:167, rendered into English rhyme in order to preserve something of its effect. A more literal translation can be found in de la Cruz, SW, 59.