Customer Reviews

2000 Years of Mayan Literature

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Bringing together years of research and reflection about the Maya, both ancient and contemporary, Dennis Tedlock, translator, anthropologist, and poet, has produced a visually stunning survey of an entire culture. Starting from some of the oldest texts in the Maya culture, Tedlock explores Maya monumental writing, writing on ceramics, writing in screen-fold books, and even Maya graffiti. He does not stop at the ancient Maya, and continues into the alphabetic tradition, moving steadily to contemporary productions of the Rabinal Achi, a drama still performed today. An award winning translator of The Popol Vuh and the Rabinal Achi, Tedlock demonstrates the contemporary's link to the past, and provides insight into a vibrant and continuous culture that reaches, as the title suggest, 2000 years into the past. It is a stalwart defense against the notion of a Maya "collapse," and a spectacular monument to the creative production of a people. That alone is worth buying this book.

Beyond that, Dr. Tedlock has produced a visual masterpiece. Not only does he translate the glyphs, he demonstrates how glyphs are read by breaking the glyphs down into their syllables. Instead of merely talking about the creative capabilities of the Maya glyphs as a written language, he shows it by displaying the creativity in translations of work we would recognize as concrete poetry. In this way, the reader begins to understand the real creativity inherent in the writing system, something that is not translatable except by allowing the reader's eyes to roam across the Maya glyphs themselves, to see how the reading activity of the Mayans would have been. Dr. Tedlock allows us to imagine the Mayan reader, and that is remarkable. Besides the glyphs, the amount of design work in this book is extraordinary: from astronomical charts to reproductions of manuscripts, from ceramics to stele, the visual component of this book is both striking and powerful, bringing into discussion both word and image, and illuminating Maya culture in the process. At times, the book resembles art history, at times, literary history; the end result is that the two are intermingled and necessary to one another. The book is more than a history, either literary or artistic; it is an experience. And one that anyone interested in the Maya and their fascinating history should have on their shelves.

If all you know about the Mayans are a couple of crazy references in the disaster movie, "2012," then you've got a vast and wondrous civilization to discover! The prediction of a global ending date in 2012 is, quite simply, a crazy claim attributed by the scriptwriters of "2012" to an amazing civilization in the Americas thousands of years before Columbus showed up.

In fact, translator and anthropologist Dr. Dennis Tedlock, points out that Mayans were writing down continuous historical records as early as 397 BCE. They were particularly adept at language, math, spirituality and, yes, they did work out calendars that played a key role in that culture. (But, come to think of it--don't our calendars play crucial roles today, as well?)

The Mayans also spun their lore around intriguing figures, who you'll meet in this book, with names like "Sun-Eyed Snake Jaguar." That figure still is visible on inscriptions today. Of course, there was that cataclysmic confrontation with European culture that nearly destroyed Mayan literary forms--but did not, in the end, thanks to courageous and secretive Mayans who preserved remnants of their literary arts.

Tedlock's book is not a page-turning adventure story. It's a university-press book that took years to produce. It's a detailed, illustrated guidebook introducing Mayan forms of illustrative writing to modern readers. Tedlock translates ancient inscriptions and a few important texts from more recent centuries as well. If you're drawn to global cultures, languages and mythology, this is a cool book to explore.

This is not only absolutely essential for anyone interested in the Maya but extremely artistically done. I wish I'd had it years ago when I started writing about the Maya, but now that it's out I'm going back and rethinking things I've done on the basis of translations and interpretations in this book. Bravo.

Anything by Dennis Tedlock is going to create excitement, as well it should from someone of his skill and erudition, but I would take his latest offering with a grain of salt. In this wide-ranging work Doctor Tedlock takes on, well, 2000 Years of Mayan Literature, examining various ancient Mayan writings and exploring their meanings, symbolism, style and intended audience, among other factors. Like all Dr. Tedlock's books this one is very, very well written and smart, but Mayan literature is a subject I know a little about myself, and I thought he was reaching quite a few times to find or even create unusual takes on familiar subjects (the Popul Vuh, some of the old Mayan inscriptions from the ancient cities, etc.). It's as though he wanted to find odd takes for the sake of finding odd takes, and I thought his interpretations were a bit strained, at times. For example, he does one little examination of a repeated refrain from a vase that he bends over backwards to come up with an odd take for, when all I saw was an artist playing around with a repeated theme, not trying to do something breathtaking or novel.

That said, I was with him every inch of the way on his exploration of Mayan literature. His writing is lively and engaging, and because he is a bright and interesting writer I was willing to follow wherever he lead even if I didn't agree with him all the time. This review of Mayan writing is not exhaustive by any means--there are literally thousands of inscriptions and vase writings to consider--but hits highlights from many types of Mayan writing. He explores about a dozen of these writings at some depth and compares them to each other and other writings, giving you a nice survey of the field of Mayan literature as it exists right now. This book read fast and easy for me, so smooth it was a shock when it came to an end and I had to put it down. At this point, having read just about all this man's books and having been quite impressed by all of them, I'd buy whatever he came out with just to see what he was up to. Highly recommended book if you're into the Maya and especially Maya written sources.