A Note on the Prologue to Sor Juana’s Sueño

Abstract

The prologue to Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz s Primero Sueno is a clearly delimited unit of 150 lines, entitled “Noche y sueno del cosmos” in the Sabat-Rivers edition (pp. 435-39). It begins with a baroque scientific evocation of night as the shadow, shaped like an Egyptian pyramid or group of obelisks, that is cast by the dark side of the Earth upon the Moon and into stellar space by a revolving Ptolomaic Sun. The narrative focus quickly shifts from astronomy to the sub-lunar world of our Earth, where nocturnal birds and bats still flit in growing silence as fish and animals and birds everywhere go to sleep. The 146 hendecasyllables and heptasyllables in silva form, with their complex syntax and run-on lines, lead up to these four simple lines, without enjambment, that serve as a remate or coda: