Content area
Full Text
ANCIENT NAHUA (AZTEC) POETRY
INTRODUCTION
THE FLOWER SONGS OF HUNGRY COYOTE
THE LIFE OF HUNGRY COYOTE
INTRODUCTION
Nezahualcoyotl (Hungry Coyote) was considered by his peers to be the greatest poet of ancient Mexico. His compositions had vast influence, stylistically and in content. Filled with thought, symbol, and myth, his poetry moved his people's culture so deeply that after his death generations of poets to follow would stand by the huehuetl drum and cry, "I am Nezahualcoyotl, I am Hungry Coyote," and sing his poems and keep them alive.
Nezahualcoyotl was not only a great lyric poet, but was famed as an architect, engineer, city planner, reluctant warrior, lawgiver, and philosopher. The cultural institutions he established included a library of hieroglyphic books, a zoological garden-arboretum, and a self-governing academy of scholars and poets. He led his city-state out of foreign domination and transformed it into a wellspring of art and culture. As the seventh ruler (tlacatecuhtli) of Texcoco, a large city on the north shore of Lake Texcoco, ten miles across the water from the capital of die Aztecs, Hungry Coyote promoted a renewal of Toltec learning based on the peaceful religion of Quetzalcoatl at the very moment when the Aztec cult of sacrifice was coming into ascendancy. All the Nahuatl-speaking citystates in the Valley of Mexico looked to Hungry Coyote's Texcoco as the cultural center of their world.
The story is not a simple one and the chronicles of his life themselves are contradictory. However, the spirit of paradox is embedded in the soul of ancient Mexico.
The complex surfaces of many flower songs (xochicuicame) often make them difficult to understand for many people in our culture. We do not have ready categories for them and they require effort. Yet they contain many gems of universal lasting value and offer great rewards to those willing to make that effort.
NAHUA POETS, POETRY, AND CEREMONIAL FLOWERS
Most of the flower songs that have come down to us are in two collections from the second half of the sixteenth century. Although transcribed as they were sung at that time, they clearly contain many songs and parts of songs that are much older.
The form of the flower song as it has come down to us seems to...