Mexicacuicatl XLIII: “I Make His Heart Ache”

The codex known as Cantares Mexicanos (Songs of Mexico or “Mexihcacuicatl” in Nahuatl) is the larger of the two surviving collections of Aztec cuicatl (songs). It consists of 85 folios on which 91 cuicatl were compiled in Nahuatl using Roman script somewhere around 1585. These cuicatl range widely in genre, from ecstatic hymns celebrating humanity’s reciprocal relationship with heaven to historical ballads, bawdy satire, and philosophical musings. Some are meant to accompany nehtotiliztli or ritual dances; others were sung by soldiers just before or while marching to battle.

This piece, which also appears as the twenty-third cuicatl in the poetry codex Romances de los señores de la Nueva España (Songs of the Lords of Anahuac), where a transcriber’s note attributes its authorship to “Cuahcuahtzin, Lord of Tepechpan.”

My jade drum, my motmot ocarina¹ — I, Cuahcuauhtzin², go playing them! A singer, I have arrived. I come to present myself.

Take delight! It is the right time. Let him come present himself. But I make his³ heart ache as I intone these hymns. The singer, I have arrived, I come to present myself⁴.

May your soul expand, May your soul reach its destination. You wish me harm, you wish me dead. Once I have left, once I have perished, perhaps for a while you will cry for me, you will grieve for me, my friend. I am already leaving, I am already leaving⁵!

My soul declares — “Never again will I come. Never again will I emerge in this good place, this Earth, I am already leaving, I am already leaving for his home!”

My heart just lusts⁶ for flowers. I sing out my anguish. I practice my song on Earth. I am Cuahcuauhtzin. I yearn for the flowers— let them stretch out in my hands⁷. I pour my anguish out.

Where, then, could we go and never die? Whether I am jade or gold, I will be either drilled or melted down in the crucible. I am brought to life⁸. I am Cuahcuauhtzin. I pour my anguish out.

Do nothing but take delight — take delight, you friends of ours! Perhaps you will take delight. Perhaps you will find joy there, O friends of ours. For I will pick⁹ the lovely¹⁰ blooms, the lovely hymns.

Never in spring do they do that here. So I, Cuahcuauhtzin, suffer. Perhaps you will take delight. Perhaps you will find joy there, O friends of ours. For I will pick the lovely blooms, the lovely hymns.

Notes

1. In Nahuatl, the phrase is “noxiuhquecholinquiquiz,” consisting of no- (my) xiuhquecholin (a bird we call Lesson’s motmot: Momotus lessonii or the blue-diademed motmot), and quiquiz[tli]. Many translators have treated quiquiztli as a synonym for tecciztli, conch trumpet. But that appears to be incorrect. The word must be related to one or both of two others: the verb quiquici, which means “to whistle,” and/or the adjective quiquiztic, which means perforated or pierced with multiple holes (making it by extension a noun for skin pores). The most common whistling instrument in Mesoamerica with multiple holes was the ocarina. Anderson and Dibble, in their translation of the Florentine Codex, render the word “clay pipes.”
2. In 1431, Cuahcuauhtzin was crowned king of Tepechpan, a city in Acolhuacan, the eastern region of the Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire) under the dominion of the king of Tetzcohco and Acolhuateuctli (Overlord of Acolhuacan), Nezahualcoyotl. In 1440, he was married to Azcalxochitzin, daughter of Lord Temictzin, a member of the House of Acamapichtli (the royal house of Tenochtitlan and therefore imperial dynasty of Anahuac). She was not quite an adolescent (though we can see from the rest of the poem that the king’s sexual interests lay elsewhere). Three years after the marriage, Cuahcuahtzin died in battle, and Nezahualcoyotl then married his widow. Some sources claim that Nezahualcoyotl had been smitten by the girl and had deliberately ordered Cuahcuauhtzin into battle in hopes that he would be killed.
3. There are two possible readings of this person’s identity. 1) He is Cuahcuahtzin’s “friend,” arriving for a rendezvous, whom the king will be addressing in the next stanza. The song is, after all, about seizing the moment and sharing sexual intimacy with fellow warriors before going off to battle. 2) The alternate version of this song in Romances suggests that the man is Nezahualcoyotl, sending Cuahcuahtzin off to battle while knowing the king will die. (A third reading might be that 1 and 2 are the same person. Given Nezahualcoyotl’s reputed sexual prowess and broad proclivities, such an interpretation isn’t unfeasible.)
4. The verb quetza in its reflexive form can mean “present oneself” or “mate/couple.” So this line can be read “I have come to have sex.” (And the second line of this stanza can be read “Let him come have sex [with me].”
5. The verb yauh (go/leave) can mean “commit adultery” when paired with a -pan or -tlan “prepositional” construction (“on X person”).
6. Nehnequi is a reduplicative form of the verb nequi (to want). In this doubled form, it means “to desire something or someone capriciously, to have an unhealthy need for them.”
7. Do I need to explain this metaphor to anyone?
8. The verb yoli can mean “come to life, come alive, hatch” and also “revive, resurrect.” Metaphorically, however, it means “to get an erection.”
9. The verb used here is cui, which means to take something, but not by force. With the indefinite object prefix “tla-,” it is used metaphorically to mean “to have sex.” When used with people as the object, it can more specifically mean “to perform a sexual act upon another willing party” sometimes “for a man to have intercourse with a woman.” But the most common use in colonial literature is the passive, cuilo “to be taken” or “to have a sexual act performed on one,” what we might phrase in modern English parlance “to be a bottom.” From this passive form comes the noun cuiloni, which the Florentine Codex and other sources tell us was “the [male] receiver of sexual attentions; the bottom [in a gay encounter].” (The Spaniards were cruder, defining cuiloni as “el pto que padece” or “the fggot who gets screwed.”) And from that word also derives cuilonyotl or “sexual relations between men.” So when the singer here says “niccui in yectli xochitl,” there is a serious homoerotic undercurrent.
10. Yectli can mean “good” or “pure,” but also “beautiful,” which seems the likeliest intended description here, as the “yectli xochitl” appear to be attractive warriors on the night before battle. After smoking tobacco and intoxicating flowers in a pipe and then singing and dancing together, faced with the possibility of death, is it so strange that these soldiers would seek some last pleasure with one another?

The Nahuatl text.

Nochalchiuhteponaz noxiuhquecholinquiquiz noconpitza ca ye nicuahcuauhtzin onihualacic ononiquetzaco nicuicanitl.

Cualcan xonahuiyacan! Ma ya hualmoquetza. A! iyolloh niconcocoa zan niquehua cuicatl. onihualacic ononiquetzaco nicuicanitl.

Ma ya moyollo motoma ma ya moyollo hualahcitinemi. Tinechcocolia tinechmiquitlani. In ononyah ye ichan in ononpoliuh anca zan yoquic noca tihualichocaz, noca tihualicnotlamatiz, zan tinocniuh. Ca ye niyauh, ca ye niyauh!

Zan quihtoa noyollo — “Ayoc ceppa ye nihuitz. Ayoc ceppa niquizaquiuh in huel yeccan in tlalticpac. Zan ye niyauh, Zan ye niyauh ye ichan!”

Quinehnequi xochitl zan noyollo. Zan nicuicanentlamati Zan noncuicayehyecoa in tlalticpac. Nicuahcuauhtzin noconnequi xochitl ma nomac ommaniqui. Ninentlamatia.

Cannelpan tonyazqueh in aic timiquizqueh? Ma zan nichalchihuitl, niteocuitlatl o zan ye o nipitzaloz nimamalihuaz in tlatillan o zan nonyoli zan ye nicuahcuauhtzin zan ninotlamatia.

Zan nen tequitl in xonahuiyacan — xonahuiyacan, antocnihuan! At amonahuiyazqueh. At anhuellamatizqueh, tocnihuané. Ca niccuiz in yectli xochitl in yectli cuicatl.

Aiquin in o xopan in quichihua ye nican. Ninotolinia, zan ye nicuahcuauhtzin. At amonahuiyazqueh. At anhuellamatizqueh, tocnihuané. Ca niccuiz in yectli xochitl in yectli cuicatl.

The glyph for the city of Tepechpan