Document Type
Postprint
Publication Date
Summer 7-2022
Journal / Book Title
Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl
Abstract
The 10 page Náhuatl manuscript included at the end of the so-called Codice Chimalpopoca and commonly referred to since 1903 as Leyenda de los soles, “Legend of the Suns,” or the “Manuscript of 1558,” is a fundamental witness to indigenous Nahua- Mexica memories of their own cosmogony and earliest history as they recalled these things some twenty-five-plus years into the colonial era. As supplement to the later Anales de Cuauhtitlan manuscript (ca. 1570-73) which accompanies it in the Chimalpopoca, the 1558 manuscript provides a privileged view of Nahua-Aztec genesis myths, from a Mexica informant. The narrative frame of this retelling makes it clear that by 1558 these memories had become “fables,” tales, fictions--a mythology--but fables of still haunting power and beauty, unforgettable and irrepressible for all their putative demonic origins. I have chosen to call this witness record by the name it gives itself: Tlamachiliztlahtolçaçanilli, “Wisdom Discourse Fables.”
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Gingerich, Willard, "TLAMACHILIZTLAHTOLÇAÇANILLI: A Performance Translation of the Náhuatl "Wisdom-Discourse Fables" from the Manuscript of 1558" (2022). Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 119.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/english-facpubs/119
Included in
English Language and Literature Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons
Comments
Author's note:
A published version of this article/translation appeared in Estudios de Cultural Náhuatl 28, 1998: 159-96. Due to uncorrected printers’ errors, however, in addition to multiple misspellings the theory of poetic structure put forward in this introduction and illustrated on p. 6 was hopelessly distorted by the failure to reproduce faithfully the illustration in print. Original spellings and the original illustration are reproduced here. Any errors of translation from the Náhuatl remain my responsibility.