At break during the Sor Juana seminar I'm auditing, I called my dad.Me: Hey, Dad...I saw I missed 2 calls from you. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just extremely busy today.
Dad: It's good that you're busy.
He was right, of course, as he tends to be more and more as I get older. I was busy doing things I like and unlike last week, those things didn't overwhelm me. Today it did hit me, though, that for the first time since student teaching, I'm not enrolled in a literature class. So I've added insult to injury and asked Profe Linda if I may audit and show up late to her Sor Juana class that I had to drop so I could take the small group study (by the way, I'm never speaking in that class again!). Today the Sor Juana class divided up the chapters of Octavio Paz's study of his paisana and summarized them, since the actual textbook is not available. I'm not stressed about this, I'm just auditing and I've got my hook-up anyway.
My favorite chapter summary was E.'s - of that in which Paz outlines the differences between Góngora's "Soledad" y "Primero sueño" de la poetisa. The prologue (or whatever the introductory lines of a poem are) to Sor Juana's poem reads, "que así intituló y compuso la madre Juana Inés de la Cruz, imitando a Góngora". And así begins the poem, which I haven't read yet, already presenting intriguing contrasts of darkness/light. And sky/earth with a pyramidal image that perhaps is meant to connect the two.
Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra
nacida sombra, al cielo encaminaba
de vanos obeliscos punto altiva,
escalar pretendiendo las Estrellas
si bien sus luces bellas
-exemptas siempre, siempre rutilantes -
la tenebrosa guerra....
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