The following is an excerpt from “The Poet’s Answer to the Most Illustrious Sor Filotea de la Cruz,” in which Sor Juana remembers her early desire for learning and the way in which she educated herself with her grandfather’s library. I find it fascinating that she uses this memory in order to articulate her point about being curious about knowledge at such a young age. What is also noteworthy is that Sor Juana states that people in Mexico City were amazed by the amount of information she could remember, thus making her a young prodigy, which coincides with the idea that, during Greek and Roman antiquity, people with an impeccable memory were held in high esteem, as noted in Plato’s "Phaedrus," specifically when Phaedrus tells Socrates that he, a "measly" person cannot possibly learn a speech from memory. Doing anything else would very much be easier to do for Phaedrus. I like the way in which Sor Juana distinguishes intelligence with having a flawless memory. It is as if she is referring to the art of memory being different from “natural" intelligence.
You would figure that mastering the art of memory would make you intelligent, right? In this case, memory refers to recalling and storing information while intelligence refers to the something innate which lies outside of book learning and absorbing facts and, in general, information. Intelligence is almost God-given here. But isn't memory also God-given? Hmm....you decide.
“I declare I was not yet three years old when my mother sent off one of my sisters, older than I, to learn to read in one of those girls’ schools that they call Amigas. Affection and mischief carried me after her; and when I saw that they were giving her lessons, I so caught fire with the desire to learn that, deceiving the teacher (or so I thought), I told her that my mother wanted her to teach me also. She did not believe this, for it was not to be believed; but to humor my whim she gave me lessons. I continued to go and she continued to teach me, though no longer in make-believe, for the experience undeceived her. I learned to read in such a short time that I already knew how by the time my mother heard of it. My teacher kept it from my mother to give delight with a thing all done and to receive a prize for a thing done well. And I had kept still, thinking I would be whipped for having done this without permission. The woman who taught me (may God keep her) is still loving, and she can vouch for what I say.
I remember that in those days, though I was as greedy for treats as children usually are at that age, I would abstain from eating cheese, because I heard tell that it made people stupid, and the desire to learn was stronger for me than the desire to eat—powerful as this is in children. Later, when I was six or seven years old and already knew how to read and write, along with all the other skills like embroidery and sewing that women learn, I heard that in Mexico City there were a University and Schools where they studied the sciences. As soon as I heard this I began to slay my poor mother with insistent and annoying pleas, begging to her dress me in men’s clothes and send me to the capital, to the home of some relatives she had there, so that I could enter the University and study. She refused, and was right in doing so; but I quenched my desire by reading a great variety of books that belonged to my grandfather, and neither punishments nor scolding could prevent me. And so when I did go to Mexico City, people marveled not so much at my intelligence as to my memory and the facts I knew at an age when it seemed I had scarcely had time to learn to speak” (pp. 49 & 51).
From “The Answer/La Respuesta” trans. Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell
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