The love poems of Sor Juana a la Virreina María Luisa Manrique

April 17, 2019 at 14:42 a.m.


The love poems of Sor Juana a la Virreina María Luisa Manrique


This April 17 commemorates the 324 anniversary of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. La woman who dressed as a man to have access to education and letters.

That one that became the maximum exponent of the Hispano-American Literature of century XVII.

In addition, the last great poet of the Golden Age in Spanish

Scholars and inveterate of Sor Juana, as Octavio Paz, they assure that many of their poems are letters of love towards the viceroy.

It is estimated that he was born between 1648 and 1651, in San Miguel Nepantla, a small town in the Valley of Mexico.

She was the daughter of Isabel Ramírez de Santillana and Pedro Manuel de Asbaje and Vargas Machuca. Sor Juana learned to read and write from an early age.

Early letters

 

As a child she frequented classical theological and Greco-Latin texts. At eight, he wrote a Eucharist. Later he entered the order of the Carmelites, but could not tolerate his rigid and hermetic ideology.

For this reason, she changed to the order of the Jerónimas, where she served as administrator of the convent.

During her life as a religious she wrote literary texts. In addition, carols and religious works, even epistles and sonnets.

While several of his texts were by commission, he also made several for his own pleasure. Such was the case of his poems.

Poems to Lysi

 

Octavio Paz, said that the love letters and poems that Sor Juana wrote, were directed to the vice-chancellor María Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga.

The relationship between Sor Juana and Lysi, as the writer called the viceroy, coincided with the most prolific time of the poet.

María Luisa arrived in New Spain at 1680, accompanied by her husband, the then designated viceroy Antonio de la Cerda.

At that time, Sor Juana was known and recognized for her literary talent. María Luisa knew her work and admired it.

Those who have studied the work of Sor Juana believe that their romance was never consummated.

Between the vows of chastity of the nun and the hierarchy of Maria Luisa Gonzaga, a romantic relationship seemed complicated.
However, Sor Juana was inspired and wrote for her and for her. A homosexual relationship between them would have been a big scandal.

Curious to be aware that Juana de Asbaje became a nun to avoid being married and spend his life attending to a husband and children.

Although it was consecrated to God and to learning, the arrival of the viceroy to the life of Sor Juana supposed a change in her beliefs. Also, it could represent a way to love.

Although the relationship between the two was cut abruptly in 1686. This happened because the King of Spain ordered the return of Antonio de la Cerda.

Lysi he took with her and kept until his death a portrait of Sor Juana and a ring that the nun gave him.

The life of Juana Inés de Asbaje and Ramírez de Santillana ended due to a typhoid 17 April of 1695 in the Convent of San Jerónimo.

Here, a fragment of poems written for Lysi:

Well since the happy day

That your beauty saw,

I totally gave up,

That I did not have any action of mine.

With which, ma'am, I show,

And to say my love dares,

That no one should pay you,

That you honor what is yours.

I love Lisi, but I do not pretend

That Lisi corresponds my finesse,

Well, if I judge its beauty possible,

To his decorum and my apprehension I offend.