Translating “An Otomi Song of Spring” from the Nahuatl Codex Songs of Mexico

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. 1. “Cantares mexicanos” (often left untranslated) can be parsed either as “Cantares de los mexicanos” (songs of the Mexica/Mexicans) or “Cantares de México” (songs of Mexico). I’ve opted for the latter, especially because songs are included from a host of Nahua tribes and other indigenous peoples.

2. 2. In so titling the piece, I follow Brinton and Léon-Portilla and Shorris (among others). Xōpan or xōpantlah, while literally meaning “green-time,” refers to the central Mexican rainy season (as opposed to tōnalco, “sunray-time,” which names the dry season). The closest seasonal equivalent in English would be “spring” or “summer.” John Bierhorst renders xōpancuīcatl “song of green places,” but in my view this is a bit of a mistranslation or overanalysis. The suffix -pan, while generally a locative, can refer to times as well as places.

3. 3. Otoncuīcatl can refer to songs of either the Otomi people or the Otomi military sodality, though Bierhorst cautions that given the tendency of Aztec warriors to identify with the fierce courage of the enemy, the attribution of these songs to the Otomi people may be naïve (Cantares Mexicanos, 29). However, I follow Brinton, Léon-Portilla, and Garibay Kintana in calling them “Otomi songs.” The lack of military overtones and the general bucolic subject matter lend credence to this poem’s belonging to that indigenous tribe. Furthermore, a note by the scribe on folio 6 classifies these initial pieces as “[c]antares antiguos de los naturales otomis,” and there seems little reason to dispute the claim.

4. 4. Bierhorst argues that “nepāpan” should be translated with a word that emphasizes quantity rather than variety (Cantares Mexicanos, 26). However, most instances of this adjective in the corpus clearly mean “varied,” “sundry,” or “diverse.” In de Sahagún we find, for example, “in quetzalli īhuān in nepāpan tlazohihhuitl” or “quetzal plumes and other sundry precious feathers.” Bierhorst himself translates the very line in question with the phrase “land of sundry flowers” (Cantares Mexicanos, 137), perhaps misapprehending that “sundry” literally means an unordered, happenstance collection of various items.

5. 5. León-Portilla and Shorris, In the Language of Kings, 136.

6. 6. Bierhorst, Cantares Mexicanos, 129.

7. 7. Ibid., 137.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Bowles

David Bowles has taught English and education courses at the University of Texas Pan American since 1997. Drawn to the culture and history of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, he focuses on the study of indigenous philosophy, mythology, and legend through primary sources. Among his publications are Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (2013), Mexican Bestiary (2012), and Border Lore: Folktales and Legends of South Texas (forthcoming from Lamar University Press).