A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture. Группа авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ idea of this project was to recover precolonial phonetics and to decolonize the native language contaminated by Castilian sounds. He adds that the negative impact of Latin orthography on the K’iche’ language resulted in transmitting “feelings and ideas which are of a completely different nature than the Mayan cultural essence” (Matul Morales, 1997: xii; emphasis added). Antonio Pop Caal also maintains that those who wrote about natives while ignoring the basic characteristics of their culture represented them in a completely mistaken way (1988).

      Daniel Matul Morales did not limit the task of recovering the Popol Wuj to speculative activity. For him, as for many other Mayan activists, this intellectual work is a part of a plan to construct a “Multilingual and multicultural nation in its fundamental structures” (1997: xiv). It is a new political plan constructed during the insurgency against exploitation and segregation, in resisting genocide, and in building a process to achieve peace in the face of difficulties that persist until today. Matul Morales trusts that, with the “secrets” contained in the contents of the Popol Wuj tzijs, “the Maya are contributing to the construction of a new society wherein our philosophers, in a context revindicated after four hundred and seventy-three years of struggle, will continue in search of the latest truths” (ibid.).

Perhaps today it might be said that the concrete results of Chávez’s translation are not its greatest contribution. The originality of this K’iche’ was to revindicate the value and dignity of the Mayan population and its culture, recovering the language and the text of the Popol Wuj in its precolonial integrity as living cultural artifact – a language and text that belongs to a community that is not primitive, and of course not backward. As Guzmán Böckler states, they belong to a community that despite the “multisecular aggression which it has been a victim of, has known how to maintain its vitality and historical continuity” (1997: xx). From Chávez’s reading, this is the contribution which has survived, despite the fact that his Catholic credo notoriously interfered with the terms in which the translation was rendered.

      In 1971 Munro Edmonson published The Book of Counsel: The Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya of Guatemala. This translation, the second into English (in 1950 Delia Goetz and Sylvanus Morley had translated the Recinos version), made some changes in the reading of the Popol Wuj. Situated in academia and with an ethnographic, rather than a linguistic, religious, philosophical, or literary focus (xi), he abandons the traditional form of translation into prose and instead presents paired verses. His idea was that “The Popol Vuh is in poetry and cannot be accurately understood in prose” (xi). And he insists that “Words matter, and formal discourse matters even more” (xii). Because of this Edmondson proposed capturing the essence of the text through the nature and “style” of language.

      With the assistance of a spiritual guide (daykeeper and seer) Andrés Xiloj, in 1986 Dennis Tedlock published his translation entitled Popol Vuh. The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. On the cover it also says: “commentary based on the ancient knowledge of the Modern Quiché Maya.” Tedlock’s focus was to read the original from a perspective of the “divinatory art” of seers and spiritual guides: “Diviners are, by profession, interpreters of difficult texts” (15). Tedlock states that when Andrés Xiloj began to read the Popol Wuj almost without difficulty, he understood that something special was occurring. Tedlock told Xiloj the meanings of archaic terms, and in turn the reader rendered an interpretation full of meaning (15). Tedlock concludes that his work is the result of a three-way dialogue between the wisdom of Xiloj’s profession, the manuscript, and his academic knowledge (16). The central theme is religious spirituality. Because of this the format of his translation alternates paragraphs in prose with others having the structure and tone of prayer – which is something he perceived as evident in the original text – in order to restore its ritual content.

      Tedlock’s translation was an inspired reading, based in mysticism and religion that interpreted the text from an astronomical and calendaric perspective (15). This is the way the translator found to link the text written in 1555 with the tumultuous present of the K’iche’. In this sense it is a subversive mysticism because it opposes the doctrine of the majority of the dominant Western religions in Guatemala. It subverts the inspiration in the biblical creed and in a God in Heaven, and centers its religiosity in the Earth – where it is assumed that life sprang, according to the Popol Wuj. This reading by Tedlock and Xiloj links the precolonial past with the present, erasing the gap opened by European civilization. Nevertheless, it admits that the two timelines will have to run in parallel in the future (13).

Recently, Allen Christenson published his new translation of the Popol Wuj (2003–4). Taking up Edmonson’s point of view, Christenson saw the text as a “sublime work of literature” and he placed it on the same plane as classical works such as the epic poems of cultures having prestige in the West (42). The conceptual emphasis of this interpretation is to recover a word whose nature was to have always been written, and that as writing it suffered the trauma of the Spanish conquest and Catholic missionaries. Christenson focuses on the destructive effect of colonization exclusively in this historic period and on the modality particular to these forms of colonialism. The K’iche’ text is meant as a relic that in itself encompasses a sacred truth (17). Thus the task of the reading is to give it life by way of being faithful to the old Word, which later becomes wisdom through the ritual of uttering the Word. The accurate reproduction of the perfection of antiquity is the ultimate goal of the reading, and its authority is established by adhering to a text that was set down in writing during distant times. Therefore the work of the translator is to recover the desire to set down the story in writing; that is, through a system similar to that of the West but that had already existed for many centuries before the arrival of the Spanish. In this way the meaning of the text comes from linking poetic and literary value with archaic forms.

      Finally, the last version we will mention is that by Enrique Sam Colop, published in 1999 under the title Popol Wuj. Versión Poética K’iche’. Sam Colop, of K’iche’ origin, emphasizes the “multiple authorship” of the text, and indicates that the Ximénez version gathered elements from different systems of register and transmission of the text, just as it did differences in dialects, all of which originate before colonization (13). He also notes that owing to the astronomical correlation of many of the passages, the narrative of the Popol Wuj is distinct from that of other cultures, both in its nature and in its form of articulation (13).

      But the core of his reading lies in “attempting an interpretation of the text in the original language in which it was written” (14). In this recovery recognizing the differences in the style of the K’iche’ language plays an important role, but most importantly the tradition and language before the burst of Spanish invasion. This value does not lie in that, to us, the language seems archaic, but rather it was the form of expression and feeling of the people of these pre-Columbian communities, and it is through the recovery of its forms that the original meaning can be accessed. Just as for the majority of present-day Maya, one of the concerns of Sam Colop is education and literacy. His presentation of the Popol Wuj intends, without separating itself too much from Ximénez manuscript, to be within reach of contemporary K’iche’ (19).

      In addition to previous readings of the Popol Wuj in translation, other summaries of critical interpretations could be presented. Because it is beyond the scope of this chapter, we will simply say that in this area there is also a large variety of tendencies, intentions, critical frameworks, and projects. We find readings ranging from parabiblical exegeses to the esoteric; from the most orthodox philology to ethnohistory and ethnolinguistics; from cultural anthropology to structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalytical, Marxist theories; and also those derived from cosmo-archeology.

Translations as well as critical studies have always had theoretical frameworks and ideologies strongly tied to very diverse political, epistemological, and religious projects. If this can occur with any text, in the particular case of the Popol Wuj these perspectives have been sharpened by the sociopolitical-cultural contexts СКАЧАТЬ