The perspectives of the Spanish conquerors certainly dominate the literary legacy of the 1521 conquest of New Spain, but that is not say detailed Indian accounts were not also recorded. The most significant of these was The Florentine Codex, a narrative compiled by the Spanish monk and missionary Bernardino de Sahagun, a man who argued that simply annihilating Aztec culture was not a viable means of converting the population to Christianity, as the Indians began to syncretically encode their religion into the Christian faith preached by the missonaries.
Sahagun recognized the importance of striving to understand the complexities of Indian culture and society as a means of discouraging the Indians identifing their own pantheon of Gods with those of Spanish Catholicism. He later wrote, 'the physician cannot advisedly administer medicines to the patient without first knowing from which source the ailment derives.'i After learning the language Nahuatl, he set about interviewing principal eye witnesses of the conquest, transcribing oral tales and poems, and gathering up all indigenous literature to have survived.
The result of his endeavors were the twelve volumes of Aztec history and religion contained within the pages of The Florentine Codex, the most detailed native account to have survived from the New World. It offers a unique perspective of events from the side of the conquered Indians, the controversial nature of which is demonstrated by the fact it was not released in its fully completed and unedited facsimile form until 1979.
Textual Style
The Codex is a narrative which engages it's readership by assuming a very unique textual style, and this is something well illustrated by Jean Jacques Rousseau when he stated in his 'Origins of Language' that 'What the ancients said most vividly they expressed not with words but by signs; they did not tell, they showed'. ii Rousseau’s insight illustrates the image-intensive narrative form which the Indian visions of the Codex are offered to the reader. It is a text which is highly accomplished stylistically, and a history – as Rousseau’s comment suggests - which engages the reader not so much through stating what happened, but rather, by revealing events and actions through graphic imagery.
This can be seen by the way the Codex describes the appearance of the Spanish: how 'their iron swords moved in a wavy line like a water [course]', (12,30) and how from their horses 'flecks of foam fell in drops upon the ground.. like soap [suds]', (12,38) It is as though the authors are painting a word- picture for the reader with language so vivid 'it seems to invite the artist to interpret with pen or brush.' iii This textual style could be attributed to the fact that before the arrival of the Spanish, the Aztecs had used a hieroglyphic method of writing which was based upon pictures, and although Bernardino de Sahagun worked out a method in which the Indians could apply alphabetic literacy to the language they spoke, the Codex still retains this element of the pictorial.
A Collective Perspective
It is also a text of great ambiguity, and one where it is impossible to know who is specifically behind the memories expressed. The reader is given a collective perspective as though all individual experience and memory been has condensed down into a singular voice. It has a lamenting and nostalgic tone which certainly does not share any sense of awe at the discovery of a New World like many Spanish accounts, but rather mourns the loss of an old one.
The authors express with pride the artistic accomplishments of their lost civilization - such as the array of God Quetzalcoatl: '[ He had] the curved staff of the wind God hooked at the top, and white precious stone stars spread over it; and his foam sandals.'(12,13) -as though the writers are inviting the reader to marvel at these artistically perfect ornaments and share in a sense of nostalgia for the lost culture which produced them. Again, it is by describing these objects in such exquisite detail that a poignant sense of loss is evoked. There is no personal level of address here, and the authors use idioms derived from their picto- glyphic language interspersed with pictures, giving it a quality similar to classical fables, and the text itself has been compared to Aesop.iv
Sources
Sahagun, Bernardino de : Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Books 1 – 12 ; The School of American Research and the University of Utah, New Mexico 1950 - 1982
Sahagun, Bernardino de: Primeros Memoriales: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation by Thelma D Sullivan,
Wright, Ronald : Stolen Continents: The Indian Story, John Murray,London,1992
Leon-Portilla, : Broken Spears, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006
i Quoted in Wright,p.15
ii Sahagun/Sullivan,p.15
iii Leon-Portilla,p.xxvii
iv Brotherston,pp.315-20
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