Festival patronage was a sure way of guaranteeing self-promotion, but poetry also allowed for other, more subtle ways of celebrating the Peruvian subjects and furthering their interests. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the panegyrics were not just descriptive, they were also prescriptive. Extolling the virtues of a monarch or a viceroy in the poems fulfilled a performative function; they were a reminder of what was expected of the object of praise. This was true not only of the poetry praising living dignitaries during their rite of institution –the proclamation of the king or the welcome of the viceroy at San Marcos; it also applied to those poems whose subject was the deceased king. The central topos of the poetry written for all royal exequies was the gratitude of the subjects for the monarch’s beneficiencia, that is the beneficial effect of his government on Lima’s residents, such as, for instance, spreading the Catholic faith by supporting religious orders, or helping the poor through the establishment of hospitals. During the royal exequies, the illocutionary force of praise was not directed at the dead king, but at his successor, who was one of the implied and real readers of the account. The poems expressed gratitude for favors and graces received and, by doing so, hinted at favors expected. In this sense, the praise bestowed on the dead king was a message designed to ensure that his successor knew what the needs of his subjects were and what he would have to live up to even though he was not explicitly mentioned in the poem. As Lisa Voigt has pointed out in her splendid analysis of festivals in colonial Potosí and Minas Gerais, the transcription of the poems that were recited and exhibited during the festivities in the festival accounts served also another broader purpose: it was a means to showcase the literary and cultural wealth of the region (Spectacular Wealth 78-83). Indeed, together with the relación de fiestas, the cartel del certamen poético, and the oración panegírica, the poetry was a testament to the intellectual and artistic prowess of the viceroyalty. The poetic competition in honor of the viceroy at the University of San Marcos, and the royal proclamations and exequies were an ideal opportunity to showcase the artistic virtuosity of Lima’s citizens. The poems produced for these occasions display all mannerisms characteristic of high baroque poetry and comprise a truly impressive array of meters. Sonnets, décimas, octaves, ballads, redondillas (quatrains), quintillas and endechas (dirges), to name just a few, were rendered in more extravagant and complicated forms by using, for example, the pie forzado (a verse with an obligated foot or ending) or quebrados (alternating four-syllable lines with longer ones), by emphasizing chronology through the use of acrostics or by composing poemas retrógrados, that is to say, poems whose lines could be equally read from left to right and viceversa. And, interspersed, of course, were plenty of intricate laberintos (Figures 1.3 and 1.4). Terralla y Landa boasts in his preface to Lamento Métrico General of having employed no fewer than thirty-two different meters in his poems for Charles III’s funeral (fol. (7r)), and all of the poetic competitions at San Marcos required the poets to show their command of twelve different types of verse. Moreover, poetry was not just written in Spanish, but frequently also in Latin and, sometimes, even in Italian (see, for instance, Valdivieso y Torrejón, Parentación real fols. 74v-76r) and in Portuguese (see Luxán 154), thus providing additional proof of the erudition, talent, and ingenuity of Lima’s poets. However, whether Voigt’s assertion that showing off this artistic splendor was one of many manifestations of the emergence of a Creole pride and responded to “the debate about the moral, spiritual, and cultural inferiority of New World inhabitants, even those of European descent” (Spectacular Wealth 83) also applies to Lima’s festivities is an altogether different matter. To begin with, none of the Limean poems –nor the relaciones de fiestas or oraciones panegíricas— make any allusion whatsoever to the denigration of Creoles by Spaniards (as is the case in some of the examples cited by Voigt for Potosí) or to the contemporaneous debates about the supposed degeneration and intellectual inferiority of the New World inhabitants. The relaciones give no indication that festivals responded directly or indirectly to the claim that Lima was culturally backward and that they were used to disprove such reputation. The authors of the poems were both Spaniards and Creoles, and the content of the compositions does not reveal a Creole-Spaniard divide. What is more, in some cases we can even see a tight collaboration between these two and other groups, particularly when it comes to commissioned works. Again, Terralla y Landa provides a good example. Not only did he –a native of Seville— write El Sol en el Medio Día on behalf of the Amerindian Bartolomé de Mesa, but his Lamento Métrico General was likewise sponsored by Mesa. And in that volume the poetic voice gives voice to the grief, not of Mesa’s fellow Amerindians, but to that of a host of different local Creole and Spanish dignitaries, administrative institutions, and professional groups, such as the viceroy, the audiencia, the tribunal of accounts, the university, the cabildo, the inquisition as well as lawyers and scribes, to name just a few. Hence the title of Terralla’s volume: it was a general lamentation. The poems were a welcome opportunity to bring oneself to the king’s attention. They did not represent the interests of a homogeneous Creole group, but rather those of different individuals and institutions. (excerpted from chapter 1)
