The Popol Vuh

Think about how a scarlet macaw, in flight, resembles the Big Dipper, and you will begin to understand what it is like to read the Popol Vuh, one of the greatest books ever written in our hemisphere. The author was a Quiché Mayan in the 16th century, living in what are now the highlands of Guatemala. The subject matter is the creation of the world and the emergence of humans. It was written several decades after the Spanish conquest in order to preserve traditional stories amid a new way of life. As such, it is one of the only novel-length books we have that provides direct access to Pre-Columbian America.

But a word of caution: Enjoying the Popol Vuh is not easy. It's essential to consult the translator's extensive footnotes to understand the language games and the symbolism. Fortunately, Dennis Tedlock's translation is a delight. Listen to the onomatopoeia in this early passage that depicts the sea and sky in the beginning, when no life yet existed:

Now it still ripples,
now it still murmurs,
ripples,
it still sighs,
it still hums,
and it is empty
under the sky.

Now compare the original:

K'a katz'ininoq [Now it still ripples],
k'a kachamamoq [now it still murmurs],
katz'inonik [ripples],
k'a kasilanik [it still sighs],
k'a kalolinik [it still hums],
katolona puch [and it is empty].

Even with these signposts, a difficulty remaining for English-speaking readers is that the book is, in one sense, a translation of a translation. The original Popol Vuh (which means "Council Book") was written in hieroglyphics before the conquest. Or, at least, there is an assumed hieroglyphic edition, but it no longer exists. Tedlock explains in his introduction that the ancient Mayans did not "write a book" in the sense that we understand it. They combined words and pictures, or included glyphs inside pictures, and used the symbols as guides for professional readers who already knew the story.

If the authors of the alphabetic Popol Vuh had transposed the ancient Popol Vuh directly, on a glyph-by-glyph basis, they might have produced a text that would have made little sense to anyone but a fully trained performer.  What they did instead was to quote what readers of the ancient book would say when they gave long performances, telling the full story that lay behind the charts, pictures and plot outlines of the ancient book.

This perhaps gives the Popol Vuh unique status as a bridge between two modes of expression, and its cultural importance does not end there. The Catholic church had been established in the region for a generation at the time of writing. The alphabetic version contains parallels to the Bible, both structural and thematic, that probably are not coincidental. The quoted passage above has a correspondence with the beginning of Genesis, for example, when Earth was "without form." It may have been intended as an alternative sacred text, a Quiché holy book, for people who were forced to live as Christians.

The central narrative in the book is the story of Hunahpu and Xbalanque ("x" is pronounced "sh"), two adolescent brothers who play tricks on their enemies. (Similar "tricksters" can be found in stories across many Native American cultures.) They are gods, I think; I don't have a perfect grasp on the Mayan understanding of a "god." One of their tasks is to defeat Seven Macaw, who rose into the sky as the big dipper and blocked the sun and the moon. On the instructions of the Hurricane god, the boys use blowguns to shoot the macaw out of a tree. "What is it but these two tricksters!" says Macaw. "They've shot me, they've dislocated my jaw." But Macaw escapes to his home, and a white-haired grandfather and grandmother (more gods) join the brothers to pursue him. Explaining they are doctors, they offer to heal Macaw's teeth. Instead they pull out his teeth, replacing them with white corn:

And when the eyes of Seven Macaw were cured, he was plucked around the eyes, the last of his metal came off. Still he felt no pain; he just looked on while the last of his greatness left him.

Like most of the stories in the Popol Vuh, it should be read on multiple levels: The zoological, the moral, the meteorological and the astronomical (to name only a few). It is the story of how the scarlet macaw got its white eye patches. It's also a warning against "self-magnification," the hubris of pretending to be greater than the sun. When the Big Dipper falls below the horizon in Mesoamerica, this is a sign that the hurricane season is beginning. In another part of the Popol Vuh, it is a hurricane that floods the earth in the early days of creation to make way for humans to appear. And it is Hunahpu and Xbalanque who will eventually descend to the underworld and rise up with the sun and the full moon, providing the light that humans need to grow.

I have just described about three pages of the book, and the rest of it is equally rich. I will not spoil the story of Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the underworld, which is as diverting as anything in Homer. There is the story of how the gods modeled the first people out of corn. There is a story about proto-humans, wooden manikins who populated the world until their tortilla griddles and grinding stones came to life and turned against them. We learn of the first wars between humans, and how human societies repeated the actions of the gods before them. It is a perfect read for Columbus Day.