SOR JUANA AND HER LIBRARY WORLD

Abstract

There has beennumerous documents about Sor luana since luan Camacho published hisfirst volume in Madrid in1689, and more so during 1995, her anniversary. There is no certainty about the date of her birth, it is placed between 1651 and 1653, she died in 1695. The magazines ABSIDE. REVISTA DE CULTURA MEXICANA during the period 1941-1973 published 25 articles, and CONTEMPORANEOS eight articles from 1929 to 1931; the BOLETIN DE LA BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL published five articles in 1951 and 1960, but none of these deal with her library. The following authors have discussed her library: the writer, Ermilo Abrell Gómez( 1934); Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (1944); the art historian and critic, Francisco de IaMaza (1952); the poet Octavio Paz (1982); the ex-director of the Mexican National Library, Ignacio Osorio (1986). I think that the 4000 volumes ofthis library played an important part in her writings, and mllch more than companions: objects of her world. This library unfortunately, disintegrated by her at the end of her life, is an example of library collections and libraries of the New World, together with the first academic library built in Mexico City: "La Biblioteca dei Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tiatelolco" ( I 536). To know about the titles of some of these books, whose existence can only be seen in two of the paintings of Sor luana, one by the Mexican artist luan de Miranda, active from 1697 to 171I, owned by the "Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México", and the other by the Mexican painter, Miguel Cabrera at the "Mllseo Nacional de Historia dei Castil/o de Chapultepec" in Mexico City, gives us an idea not only of her library, bllt of her world. The XVI/c in Mexico City is a baroque century with itsfour social entities: the Cow.t, the Church, the City and the Convent in which Sor luana lived.
Ifwe take into consideration her writings, there was afifth entity, the Hispanic literary world. Sor luana with her beauty, charm, intelligence and ability to deal with the most important personalities of her time was considered a string between the New and the
Old Worlds because of herlite rary contriblltions as a woman, more so as an Ame rican woman ofthe XVI/c. She is pondered by Alatorre( 1995) as the spiritual gold similar to the gold extracted from the New World mines. In a metaphorical way her writings
are the reslllt of her intellect and of the contents extracted from the books which represented the world of knowledge contained in her library.