Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World [Paperback]

Miguel Leon-Portilla (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2000

Who were the poets of Mexico in the days of Aztec splendor? What were the poems of a culture so different from our own?

In this first English-language translation of a significant corpus of Nahuatl poetry into English, an expansion of his classic Trece poetas del mundo azteca, Miguel León-Portilla was assisted in his rethinking, augmenting, and rewriting in English by Grace Lobanov. Biographies of fifteen composers of Nahuatl verse and analyses of their work are followed by their extant poems in Nahuatl and in English.

The poets - fourteen men and one woman - lived in the central highlands of Mexico and spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, Texcocans, Tlaxcalans, and several other chiefdoms. These authors of "flower and song" (a Nahuatl metaphor for poetry, art, and symbolism) lived during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Sources for the poems included indigenous "codices," books of songs" now unfortunately lost, and renditions of them preserved by the Nahuatl oral tradition, which survived the Spanish Conquest and were recorded by several young natives in two manuscripts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These selections from two great manuscript collections of Nahautl verse from the 100-year period surrounding the Spanish conquest of Mexico indicate the high intellectual achievement of the Meso-American culture. Imagery is vivid and sophisticated: in one work, a foaming vortex of chocolate being stirred suggests a flower, and this composite image leads to an effusive paean to eroticism. The poets, we learn, were frequently kings or military captains of satellite principalities to the Aztec capital; the survival of many (and often lengthy) odes or elegies in oral folk traditions for more than a generation after the Conquest gives evidence of the integrity of that hierarchical society. However, a more than superficial sense of the rhythm and rhetoric of the poets is denied the reader who does not know Nahuatal, for though Leon-Portilla ( Endangered Cultures ) provides full Nahuatl transcriptions of all poems, along with the English translations, his profuse introductory material touches only briefly and none too skillfully on textual analysis, preferring the surer--and, indeed, fascinating--approach of dwelling on historical and biographical context.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In the centuries immediately prior to the Spanish conquest, an exquisite poetic tradition flourished among the Nahuatl speakers of the central Mexican highlands. The fragmentary remnants of this essentially oral tradition survived through a few alphabetic transcriptions of the early colonial period. Leon-Portilla's text contains a tantalizing anthology of the Nahuatl texts and their English translations as well as providing a serviceable introduction to some of the key historical, intellectual, and thematic problems associated with this poetry. The organization of the material in terms of geographic regions and individual poets is, however, problematic. Too much of the author's effort is given over to a reconstruction of the lives of the putative authors and not enough to an analysis and appraisal of the works, deflecting the reader from the complex inner lives of the poems themselves. It is ultimately the poetry itself that most urgently recommends this acquisition.
- Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (October 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806132914
• ISBN-13: 978-0806132914
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #98,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > History > Ancient > Aztec
  • #73 in Books > History > Americas > Mexico

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book for students, September 15, 1999

By 

Francisco Portillo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World (Hardcover)

This book is very neat and understable. It is very helpful for people who are interested in both literature and Aztec life. It was very useful for me, and help me to apreciate and understand the aztec meanings and ways of thinking. I learned a little about Netzahualcoytl and others on elementary school, but this selection was much much broader than all the official selections we get on the text books in Mexico. The main ideas, topics are there: cult of the death, temporarity of life, war, and canto, duality, and of course a strong humanism. I wish there were more aztec original text traslations to read. But, the difficulty to find original nahualt texts acccesible to the general public gives even more importance to works like this. So, I recomend the reading of this book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book that adds depth to the history of the Aztecs., July 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World (Hardcover)

Miguel Leon-Portilla once more brings the ancient Mexica past to life. First he paints the scenery that was Aztec life. He then goes on to illuminate each distinctive poet. The most prominent of the poets was of course the poet king Nezahualcoyotl. From his flight into the wilderness to escape his enemies, to his murder of a rival strangely recreating the story of Bathsheba, and David, many of this poet-king's trials are recreated in the poetry. Mr. Leon-Portilla places all of the prince's poems in the proper context. Nezahualpilli was another interesting poet. Only one work is attributed to him by Mr. Leon-Portilla but it is a gem. This poem deals with the horrors of war. Reading it one can almost step back into the battle line of the Aztecs as darts fly back and forth. Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World is a fine addition to the ever increasing corpus of Nahuatl writings. It is accessible to novice, student, and scholar alike and without hesitation I recommend it to anyone wishing to add depth to the unfortunatelly shallow image that the Aztec Empire has acquired.