la peor de todas

A su retrato
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Éste que ves, engaño colorido,
que del arte ostentando los primores,
con falsos silogismos de colores
es cauteloso engaño del sentido;

éste, en quien la lisonja ha pretendido
excusar de los años los horrores,
y venciendo del tiempo los rigores
triunfar de la vejez y del olvido,

es un vano artificio del cuidado,
es una flor al viento dedicada,
es un resguardo inútil para el hado:

es una necia diligencia errada,
es un afán caduco, y bien mirado,
es cadáver, es polvo, es sombra, es nada.

Always, in previous encounters with this poem, I admired Sor Juana's criticism of the role of women in art, principally their reduction to the state of muse.

Here, her sonnet echoes Luis de Góngora's plea to celebrate youthful beauty before it yields inexorably to the skull beneath the skin. Rather than write about the ephemeral nature of female beauty, however, Sor Juana addresses the artist who would preserve that elusive glory by way of paint on canvas. This "vain artifice" fools the senses temporarily, yet results only in an untrustworthy imitation of life itself. Unlike the final tercet of Góngora's sonnet, in which it is female beauty that becomes "tierra, [...] humo, [...] polvo, [...] sombra, [...] nada," in Sor Juana's poem, it is the representation itself that is but a cadaver, a shadow, nothing.

Part of the appeal of Sor Juana as a historical figure is the literary quality of her life: a woman so talented and intelligent, so beyond all expectations for her gender in that time and place, forced to submit to patriarchy and renounce all intellectual activity. It galls, even now.

In the context of her life, neither art nor science could save her, and maybe the unflinching observation of reality offered a cruel sort of solace. And yet, upon re-reading the poem, I want to believe that art does indeed offer a brief respite from the horrors of time. For a poet of Sor Juana's talent to describe art as nothing is disingenuous, to say the least. Perhaps, then, it is the nature of representation that we should take issue with. Religious orthodoxy is one sort of representation, as is an artistic tradition that relegates women to passive observers. At its best, though, art can do so much more than that.

looking north

A view from Sumas Mountain, the pronunciation of which marks how long you've been in Whatcom County. This isn't the iconic image of the lush, dense forests of the Pacific Northwest, but it is in many ways a more honest representation of recent human history here. Lowland farms in the distance, clear cuts in the foreground. Abandoned mines tucked away in stands of old-growth Douglas Fir on slopes too steep to log; shotgun shells, beer cans, and the detritus of target practice. Expansive views of the Canadian peaks, of the San Juans, of Mt. Baker, of the patchwork of logging and regrowth rolling over the distant hills.

Unlike the Chuckanuts or the trails of the Baker wilderness areas, Sumas isn't on the radar of most hikers here. It is a lonelier and perhaps wilder place, lacking the signed trails and clear land-use ethos of those areas taken out of intensive production and given over to recreational uses. For better or for worse, this is a working landscape, one that shows the price our living extracts from the land.