490 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
to share qualities with gods and to communicate with them. In effect, beautifully ex-
ecuted speech and song are the only substances, with the possible exception of
blood, that the human body can produce that are accessible to and worthy before
divine beings.
Ancient and modern Nahuatl theory of language, song, and poetics was expressed
in the metaphor of plants and flowers. Flowers, according to this theory of “flower and
song,” are the most beautiful, perfect achievement of plants, and also their medium
for continuity through seed production. So also, song and poetry are the most beau-
tiful realization of the human spirit, making these “verbal essences” worthy before
the deities. If divine beings are pleased, human life is allowed to continue. A variant
of these ideas occurs among the Chamula Tzotzil Mayas, whose metatheory of lan-
guage links high poetic and musical forms of the language to the qualities of divine
heat, which are required for communication with, and about, the Sun-Christ deity.
Closely linked to Mesoamerican ideas about the sacred qualities of poetic lan-
guage are the stylistic conventions through which this elevated quality is achieved. As
in many parts of the world, Mesoamerican poetry, ritual speech, and sacred narrative
are highly redundant. Moreover, this redundancy is most typically expressed in vari-
ants of couplet poetry. Munro S. Edmonson has described this stylistic pattern for
K’iche’ Mayan narrative as follows:A close rendering of the Quiché will inevitably give rise to semantic couplets, whether they
are printed as poetry or prose. In no case, so far as I can determine, does the Quiché text
embellish this relatively simple poetic device with rhyme, syllabification or meter, not
even when it is quoting songs. The form itself, however, tends to produce a kind of “key-
ing,” in which two successive lines may be quite diverse but must share key words which
are closely linked in meaning (Edmonson 1971:xii).The couplet may be merely semantic in structure, as in this example from a Zi-
nacantec Tzotzil narrative:He was very sick now,
He wasn’t at all well now;or it may follow closely parallel syntax, as in these lines from a Zinacanteco court de-
claration:What do they say is my crime, Sir?
What do they say is my evil, Sir?or it may be expressed in fixed formulaic couplets, as in this typical introductory in-
vocation that is used in Chamula Tzotzil prayers:I have come before your feet,
I have come before your hands,
With my spouse,
With my companion.