The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl by Jongsoo Lee;

Author:Jongsoo Lee;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2008-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Authorship and Preconquest and Postconquest Context

There is another good reason to challenge the notion of individual authorship in Nahua poetry from the pre-Hispanic period. The European concept of “individual authorship” did not exist in the process of artistic performance or book production before the conquest. The artistic performances that involved songs, dances, and music were collective, and the state strictly supervised them through the control of the performers. In the process of book production, the closest Nahuatl equivalent to “author” would be “tlacuilo,” which literally means “one who paints something.” The tlacuilo painted books with precise ideograms, but these books needed a specialist, a tlamatini (sage), who could read and interpret them by memory (León-Portilla 1992a:39–81; Boone 2000:24–27). The authorship in this process is ambiguous because the painted books could not be considered books until the tlamatini interpreted them, just as songs could not function as songs until they were sung. In this pre-Hispanic society, the notion of authorship is meaningless, which explains why most Nahua alphabetic and pictorial texts published in the sixteenth century were anonymous. The pre-Hispanic song tradition was a collective endeavor, and if any song identifies its singer or composer, then the identification must be a postconquest invention.

In Cantares (1985), there appear several glossator’s notes and titles that provide reliable information on the authorship of some songs. Surprisingly, these notes explicitly identify a composer or singer of the songs, but most of them also record the postconquest date on which they were composed and sung:

Here begins songs known as plain Huexotzincan pieces, in which the lords of Huexotzinco who were “hands” used to be spoken of as braves. They were divided into three kinds: lord songs or eagle songs, flower songs, and bereavement songs. And the drum is beaten thus: when a stanza ends and another stanza is to follow, it’s three beat. And when it actually begins, it’s one-beat. But as it comes back in, then the drum falls beneath it, and the hand just keeps on going. But when it is in the middle, again the voice of the drum emerges. This, however, must be seen from the hand of the singer who knows how it is beaten. And newly, again, this music was in the home of Don Diego de León, gobernador of Azcapotzalco. Don Francisco Plácido beat it out in the year 1551. (Cantares 1985:14)

Here begins a jewel song concerning the nativity of our lord Jesucristo. Don Francisco Plácido put it together in the year 1553. (Cantares 1985:55)

Female apparition song, in which the holy word is set in order. It was sung at the feast of Espíritu Santo. The singer Cristóbal de Rosario Xiuhtlamin put it together in August of the year 1550. (Cantares 1985:56)

Here begins what is called a cradle song, with which in olden times the Tepanecs lauded the Mexican ruler Ahuitzotl. It’s a composition of Nonohuiantzin of Nextenco, who was a singer and a lord. (Cantares 1985:57)

Here begins a bringing-out song, in which the holy word is translated. Thus

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