Aboriginal Resistance: An Analysis of the Popol Vuh - Essay Example

Aboriginal Resistance: An Analysis of the Popol Vuh Introduction It is generally argued that American Indian literary analysis started as a discipline in the 1960s during the flourishing of the ‘Native American literary renaissance’ (Womack 2008: 200). However, the beginnings of American Indian critical writing have a more distant history. Although a great deal of discussion centers on what is regarded ‘writing’, it is believed that the Mayans of Izapan had already a writing system since the first century B.C. (Womack 2008: 200). There are definitely older varieties of critical writing, but the Popol Vuh of Quiche Maya is considered as one of the most ancient and most important pieces of critical writing created in the Americas. Besides being one of the most complicated written works in the history of humanity, a text that presents a completely structured and unified religious, agricultural, and cosmological narrative, the Popol Vuh is a postcolonial work that establishes itself as an account of a colonized civilization and a basis of their struggle. In 1558 it was translated into Spanish by scholars whose work reflects their resistance to Spanish colonists (Spence 2010: 14-16). This essay analyzes the Popol Vuh in relation to the efforts of aborigines to express their resistances and struggles against conquest and imperialism. Overview The Popol Vuh is basically a manuscript about a book, a written work that was “the potential and source of everything done in the citadel of Quiche, the national of the Quiche people” (Womack 2008: 200). It seems that the Quiche writers, writing down from “the original book and ancient writing,” (Womack et al. 2008: 200) could envision where the colonists would guide their people. With the wiping out of their written works and their civilization, and with their values, beliefs, and culture besieged, they drew on language as a weapon to fulfill the future demands of their people so as to preserve their status as a community. Almost five centuries after it was inscribed in Quiche, the Popol Vuh remains alive within the Mayan culture as the people’s critical writing that represents a Maya critical approach. The discipline of Native American literary analysis has just started to reconstruct what may comprise sources and critical approaches, like the Popol Vuh, which such approaches may stem from. There is no text of more significance to the reading of America’s pre-Columbian mythology than the Popol Vuh. It is the most important source of knowledge of the folklore of the Quiche people, and it is of further importance when analyzed alongside the folklore of the Nahuatlaca, or the peoples of Mexico (Spence 2010: 7). This fascinating document, the restoration of which creates one of the most idealistic, Quixotic events in the history of American literature, was produced by a Christianized Guatemalan local during the 17th century, and was translated into Quiche language. The title ‘Popol Vuh’ denotes ‘Record of the Community,’ and its actual meaning is ‘Book of the Mat’, from the Quiche term ‘popol’, a carpet on which the whole family assemble, and ‘vuh’, a manuscript (Spence 2010: 7). The Popol Vuh represents a global genre—a kind of archives of which the preliminary section is mythology, which slowly shifts into history, progressing from the hero epic to the reading of the exploits of real figures. The Popol Vuh’s language, the Quiche, has been considered a vernacular of the legendary Maya-Quiche dialect spoken during the invasion from Mexico’s northern borders to those of the current nation of Nicaragua. The Quiche people during their discovery, which was soon after the downfall of Mexico, had partly lost that cultural system which was distinctive of the Mayan people, the vestiges of which have stimulated worldwide interest in the remains of the massive desert metropolises of Central America (Joseph & Henderson 2002: 84). At a time not that remote from the conquest the previously consolidated Mayan government had been divided into small confederacies and states. It is believed that the civilization owned by this population had been introduced to them by the Toltecs, a Mexican race, who trained them in the craft of stone building and hieroglyphics, and who perhaps inspired their folklore most intensely. Nevertheless, the Toltecs were not related to the Mayan people in any way, and were perhaps quickly assimilated by them (Joseph & Henderson 2002: 86-88). The Mayan people were an agricultural civilization, and it is possible that in their kingdom the maize-plant was originally farmed with the intention of attaining a stable supply of cereal (Woodruff 2011: 97). Such, therefore, was the civilizations whose folklore created the myth-history of the Popol Vuh. The Popol Vuh, in its existing version, is viewed as the Quiche peoples’ creation myth, narrating the origins of celestial bodies, animals, and human beings. It is believed to have been written by three ancestral heads in their own vernacular roughly between 1554 and 1558 (Tedlock 1996: 56). Even though it refers to Christianity, the text is obviously a native Mayan manuscript, and new findings connect it to the Mayan people of the lowland areas. Dennis Tedlock (1996) argues that Quiche forebears obtained a Popol Vuh in hieroglyphics during a long journey to the Yucatan peninsula’s east coast, and that Copan is mentioned in the manuscript. If factual, this makes the Popol Vuh a very important tool for studying the Classic calendrics, iconography, ritual, and history of lowland Mayan people (Tedlock 1996: 211). In a similar vein, Allen Christenson claims that the existing Popol Vuh had its roots as a hieroglyphic text from the lowland areas and that the components and the characters’ names all came from Yukateko Mayan and lowland Mayan (Rice 2007: 88). The Popol Vuh may be read or interpreted from the perspective of narrative, poetry, and divination. Indeed, Michael Coe has suggested that these narratives were the Maya counterpart of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey of Greece (Rice 2007: 2). The creation myth narrated in the Popol Vuh is multifaceted, starting from a prehistoric period when the cosmos was blanketed in darkness. The gods teamed up to bring in light and make life, an action referred to as “the sowing and the dawning” (Tedlock 1996: 31). It is especially important that the first episodes of creation started with a dialogue, contemplations, and spoken words: Heart of Sky, which was mentioned in the Popol Vuh, “is the name of the god, as it is spoken. And then came his word, he came here to the Sovereign Plumed Serpent, and they talked, then they thought, then they worried. They agreed with each other, they joined their words, their thoughts. Then it was clear” (Tedlock 1996: 65). In concert they formed the animals, which were bestowed tasks with regard to the calendar: “speak, pray to us, keep our days” (Rice 2007: 3), but because the animals failed to do so they were wiped out. The subsequent attempt of the gods to form human beings from dirt also failed, hence they conversed again: “What is there for us to make that would turn out well, that would succeed in keeping our days and praying to us?” (Joseph & Henderson 2002: 81). They talked with a couple of daykeepers, Xmucane and Xpiyacoc, prophets who reckon the days and who recommend using wood to create speaking beings. This was also unsuccessful (Joseph & Henderson 2002: 81). At this instant, the story begins to recount the journey of the children and grandchildren of the prophets in settings that seem to rotate between the Underworld and the human world. The Impossibility of Understanding the Popol Vuh: A Form of Aboriginal Resistance Translation is the solution to the complexity of the Popol Vuh because its contemporary written renditions are derived from a single existing text, a duplicate written at the beginning of the 18th century by the Spanish cleric Francisco Ximenez of a manuscript he stumbled upon. The manuscript that Ximenez saw has disappeared. Only his copy of it still exists, alongside his rendition of it in Spanish (Woodruff 2011: 97). This bilingual rendition was transported from Guatemala to France in the 19th century. The difficulties of reading the Popol Vuh are varied. The difficulties comprise the linguistic challenge of understanding a written work hundreds of years old that is inscribed in a vernacular with hardly any existing texts of the same period against which to cross-reference specific terms. Spanish colonists wiped out almost all indigenous works they stumbled upon (Woodruff 2011: 97). Another difficulty is the complex imagery and general intricacy of the story itself. Until the 16th century the Quiche created an epistemological system that was completely isolated from or unrelated to Western translators, like Ximenez, who eventually would attempt to impart the Popol Vuh to foreigners. And just like in any manuscript, known or not, a particular meaning cannot be rigidly established (Goetz, Morley, & Recinos 1950: 10). Nevertheless, none of these aspects has discouraged several translators from trying to provide a decisive interpretation. Dennis Tedlock, writer of the widely known renditions of the Popol Vuh in English, names his modified and original versions The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Time and the Glories of Gods and Kings. The disagreement of two different ‘Definitive’ renditions, each presented by the same author, indicates both a need to understand completely the manuscript and the absolute unlikelihood of doing so (Lifshey 2010: 44). The disappearance of indigenous peoples from particular areas is a frequent allegory in American literature, as is the formulaic connection of aborigines to various forms of silence. But although forced by the invasion of conquerors, progress into communicative silence can occur on the conditions of those compelled to vanish. Even though created in the midst of oppression, spirits normally have the final word. And they usually speak it in absence (Tedlock 1996: 49). Stories like the Popol Vuh carry out native struggles through unexpressed textualities which are incomprehensible to foreign entities. Intentional aboriginal silences, which are inherently antithetical, indicate instead what could be considered as a dialogue of textuality. This discourse is openly structured and infused with what does not exist. A translator explicitly acknowledges their own absence in the process. Their detachment to an unarticulated but genuine textuality is distressing because it is clearly unreadable to the reader (Tedlock 1985: 70). The non-existent writing with its unspoken ciphers or symbols is present and absent at the same time; it is an intangible work. It is illusive and intentionally anti-colonial. Absence distinguishes openly the opening and final statements of the Popol Vuh, both of which proclaim that the story resting between them of the history of the Quiche and the world represents a presentation expressed within an imperial stage (Lifshey 2010: 43). As argued by Tedlock, the united or shared narrative expression of the Popol Vuh surfaces by proclaiming (Tedlock 1985: 71): Here we shall inscribe, we shall implant the Ancient Word, the potential and source for everything done in the citadel of Quiche, in the nation of Quiche people. And here we shall take up the demonstration, revelation, and account of how things were put in shadow and brought to light… We shall write about this now amid the preaching of God, in Christendon now. We shall bring it out because there is no longer a place to see it, a Council Book, a place to see “The Light That Came Across the Sea,” / the account of “Our Place in the Shadows,” / a place to see “The Dawn of Life,” / as it is called. There is the original book and ancient writing, but he who reads and ponders it hides his face. It takes a long performance and account to complete the emergency of all the sky-earth. This excerpt exposes itself to diverse interpretation. Primarily, the narrative expression proclaims that the passage that comes after will “inscribe… implant… the potential and source for everything” (Lifshey 2010: 43) that involves the Quiche. And that same expression stresses that these words are but a rendition of an earlier passage whose main feature is its textuality. The “original book and ancient writing” (Lifshey 2010: 43), on the contrary, is still unexpressed and perhaps incapable of being expressed within the perspective of conquest. The absence of expression appears intention, because “he who reads and ponders it hides his face” (Tedlock 1985: 33). For that reason, existing here is a nonexistent Popol Vuh and its anonymous actor, a text and performer that are successfully invisible in their completely plain disappearance. The process of proclaiming this process of disappearing embodies a challenge to any audience or reader wanting to understand the entirety of the Quiche narrative. Reading and understanding the version of Ximenez of the Popol Vuh in Guatemala is confounded by several aspects, such as the illiteracy in Quiche of numerous, possibly majority, of its speakers. This inability to read and write is largely due to the vicious repression of the language and its people by the government of Guatemala throughout the civil conflict of the latter part of the 20th century (Lifshey 2010: 45). Another matter is the inherent semiotic unreliability of the single existing copy of the Popol Vuh. Majority of Quiche experts presume that Ximenez deliberately and unintentionally brought in many components, ideological and linguistic, into his translation of the manuscript that he stumbled upon. As a result, these native scholars exert efforts to provide renditions of the Popol Vuh that they believe are needed amendments to the faulty duplicate passed on by Ximenez (Woodruff 2011: 98). The instability of the Ximenez text is a tale of how even an actual manuscript is filled with the ethereal, how even the apparently impartial concreteness of a text can be personal in its discernible representations. Conclusions The writers of the Popol Vuh refuse to give their indigenous names. Absence is the natural rule of this anonymity. But even though such names cannot be materialized by colonizers, they are not absent. Theirs is an eternally suspended textual expression, one where in drifting symbolisms crosses space and time and persistently returning signifying injustices committed. The absences of the writers of the Popol Vuh are aboriginal memories that represent America as a mirage. The absences in Popol Vuh are not essentially the outcome of imperial longing. They are native resistances. However banished and annihilated, the aborigines’ absent existence suggests that, as implied by the Popol Vuh, the Quiche will untiringly haunt those who did them injustice. Works Cited Goetz, Delia, Sylvanus Morley, & Adrian Recinos. Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950. Print. Joseph, Gilbert & Timothy Henderson. The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics. New York: Duke University Press, 2002. Print. Lifshey, Adam. Specters of Conquest: Indigenous Absence in Transatlantic Literatures. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Print. Rice, Prudence. Maya calendar origins: monuments, mythistory, and the materialization of time. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007. Print. Spence, Lewis. The Popol Vuh: The Mythic and Heroic Sagas of the Kiches of Central America. New York: Cosimo, Inc., 2010. Print. Tedlock, Dennis. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985. Print. Tedlock, Dennis. Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Print. Womack, Craig, Daniel Justice, & Christopher Teuton. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. Print. Woodruff, John. “Ma(r)king Popol Vuh,” Romance Notes 51.1 (2011): 97+ Print. Read More