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language: Classical K’iche’ (English tr. Allen J. Christenson)
country: Guatemala (ish)
year: it’s complicated but likely either 16th or 18th century
form: poetry
dates read: 30.4.25-26.6.25
it took almost two full months but I have finished Allen J. Christenson’s literal translation of the Popol Vuh. I should start by saying that I don’t know if I would recommend reading just the literal translation if you’re not interested in getting a really granular understanding of Classical K’iche’ poetics and syntax. here, as an example, is the opening:
This its root ancient word
Here Quiché its name.
Here we shall write,
We shall plant ancient word,Its planting,
Its root-beginning as well,Everything done in
Citadel Quiché,
Its nation Quiché people.
This therefore we shall gatherIts being manifested,
Its being declared,
Its being expressed as well,Means of sowing,
Means of dawning,By Framer,
Shaper;She Who Has Borne Children,
He Who Has Begotten Sons, their names.
(also just an exhilarating start — I love premodern texts that perform their own literariness!)
Christenson has also done a less literal prose translation, which I suspect is probably also good but by virtue of being prose misses the poetic aspects of the text. the literal translation is arranged to make the parallelisms and chiasms of the original text clear, and if you are interested in Classical K’iche’ poetics and syntax that really pays off! my biggest complaint about Christenson’s text is simply that for some reason he castilianizes all the names in the English text, which is obvious because the Classical K’iche’ text is right next to it. I know their name isn’t “Hunahpu”; it’s “Junajpu”. this was annoying but, because the K’iche’ text is right there, not as annoying as it otherwise could have been.
this is a weird but very cool text. it’s not really a cohesive narrative, but rather several related narratives with some character overlap, and these narratives are not necessarily presented in chronological order. I was particularly struck by the long episode following the creation of the world, where One Junajpu and Seven Junajpu travel to the underworld, Xib’alb’a, whose lords arrange their deaths. with a bit of magic and a bit of trickery, One Junajpu manages to arrange to have two posthumous sons, Junajpu and Xb’alanke, who eventually tavel to Xib’alb’a themselves to avenge their father and uncle’s deaths and humiliate the lords of Xib’alb’a. only after this long narrative, however, do we get an extended account of Junajpu and Xb’alanke’s births and ancestry. deeds come first — as Unamuno puts it, “sólo existe lo que obra y existir es obrar”.
some of these stories are etiological, sometimes for things I’ve never encountered etiological narratives for before. notably (to me), the text explains cramps as originating when the lords of Xib’alb’a laugh so hard their insides hurt while watching One Junajpu and Seven Junajpu burn “their means of sitting” trying to sit on a hot stone bench. sure, I’ll take it!
one of my favorite things about the text is its structure. I especially loved the handling of dialogue, where communication is often effectively “nested”, sometimes several layers deep:
“Summon them hither,”
They said therefore
To their messengers.“Say, ‘arrive,
They must come, say lords.Here we would play ball with them.
In seven days we play, say the lords.’You tell them when you arrive,”
They were told thereforeThe messengers
Then they came therefore.[...]
“‘Truly they come,’ say the lords,”
They said therefore the its messengers Xibalba.
or in one particularly dramatic example:
“Came messengers with your grandmother,
They say you are to come.
‘In seven days therefore they are to come,’Say its messengers Xibalba, she says,
Your grandmother she says,” was told the louse.
I love this because it feels simultaneously realistic to spoken communication — paraphrase followed by quotation followed by paraphrase — but also simultaneously so obviously and self-consciously literary. nobody talks like this in real life, but also we often kind of talk like this in real life. it’s neat! there’s a certain cinematic quality to the narration that in some places felt really modern, as in this passage:
Then they entered again therefore in Jaguar House.
Crowded with jaguars Jaguar’s Home.“Not you eat us.
There is yours will become,” they were told jaguars.Then therefore they scattered bones before beats,
Then therefore they crunch over bones.“They were therefore finished,
They ate their hearts.Then they gave themselves.
These their skeletons that are being gnawed on,”Said the night watchmen.
All of them sweet their hearts to it.
the jump from feeding the jaguars to the night watchmen offering an outside perspective on Junajpu and Xb’alanke feels like a camera cut. (also, shoutout to “Crowded with jaguars Jaguar’s House”.)
one striking element of the early sections is the extent to which the divine world Junajpu and Xb’alanke are intervening in already basically resembles the Classic or Postclassic world in its social and economic organization, from agricultural practice to religion and the importance of bloodletting and sacrifice. this strikes me as another common feature of medieval (or in this case early early modern, as the K’iche’ text likely-possibly dates from the 16th century) literature: the past is imagined as an extension of the present (see, for example, the medieval Welsh Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig imagining Roman emperors as overkings with underking vassals).
there’s other interesting stuff in terms of the portrayal of K’iche’ religion and cosmology — the creators not as parents but grandparents, for example, and the fact that while “He Who Has Begotten Sons”/K’ajolom is glossed as “Shaper” it’s “She Who Has Borne Children”/Alom who’s glossed as “Framer”. she has the ideas; he just builds the beings who will, after several false starts, become humans. (also note that despite these gendered translations the text explicitly rejects the idea that these beings, Xpiyakok and Xmuqane, have a material existence that could be gendered, and a later passage identifies both of them as “Grandmother”.)
while I enjoyed the whole text, I was definitely most compelled by the later sections on the origins of the K’iche’ and of Q’umarkaj. part of this is for plot elements — while the human characters recognize Tojil, Awilix, and Jaq’awitz as gods they also do very much literally go to war with them, for example, which governs; I also was intrigued by the description of the move to Q’umarkaj, which the text implies existed — its citadel, at least — before K’iche’ settlement. part of this is because I like lists, and much of the end of the poem is a list of the titles and lineages of the twenty-four great houses of Q’umarkaj (nine Kaweq, nine Nijaib’, four Ajaw K’iche’; the two Ajaw Saqik houses are omitted from the genealogies, which is also fascinating to me). part of this is because of its historical context. while it doesn’t deal directly with the Spanish conquest, it’s clear that there is some concern about the loss of this knowledge and perhaps especially one of the signs of lordship that the first lords of Q’umarkaj received, namely: “Its writings Tulan, / Its writings they called to it. // Many had entered within, / Within their word” — the words themselves, whether they were originally written or spoken, that make up the Popol Vuh.
all of which is to say: I had a lot of fun with this and would recommend it!
moods: adventurous, informative (I generally eschew this mood but it’s accurate and intentional in this case), reflective, tense