Translating The Maya Popol Wuj - ReVista

Translating the Maya Popol Wuj | ReVista 13/04/2021, 09:35
Religion and Spirituality - Indigenous Religions in the Contact Zone

Translating the
Maya Popol Wuj
Winter
2021, Volume
XX, Number 2
by Vincent Stanzione | Mar 9, 2021
It’s the 20th of December and we are in

Chichicastenango for its Fiesta Patronal. Just a>er 3:33
a.m., we are woken up by powerful explosions right
above the Hotel Pop Wuj where we are staying. The
photographer, Joey the Juice, is wide awake, pounding
on my door, screaming over the bombs, “Get up Vin
Man, come on, you gotta see this!” The Qreworks go on
for an entire hour until leaving the world silent again,
except for the sound of roosters and corn mills that
announce the coming of another day in the western
highlands of Guatemala. We make our way over to the
Cofradía Santo Tomás to drink as many gourds as
possible of the sweet and salty q’or, maatz’ or atole, a
kind of corn gruel that doesn’t sound nearly as good as
this hearty ancient libation tastes. A>er the festivities,
I head back to my home of more than thirty years in
the forest high above Lake Atitlán to put the Qnishing
touches on my new English translation of the famous
Popol (or Pop) Wuj, the K’iche’ Maya Book of Council.
https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/translating-the-maya-popol-wuj/ Страница 1 из 23
The Popol Wuj is a true masterpiece of Native

American literature; there is nothing else quite like it.
The surviving text at the Newberry Library in Chicago
is thought to be a copy of a much older document
found in Santo Tomás Chichicastenango late in the
17th century but now lost. According to the gi>ed
Dutch anthropologist, Mesoamericanist and Popol
Wuj scholar, Rudd van Akkeren, between 1554 and
1558, scribes calling themselves Nim Ch’okoj wrote
down the sacred history and myths of their ancestors
in their native K’iche’ Mayan language using the
Roman alphabet taught to them by Dominican
missionaries. They took their time and great care to
bequeath to their descendants a record of their
ancestors’ most signiQcant stories, gleaned from
hieroglyphic writings, images, and oral tradition
passed down from generation to generation, and
intended, in part, to form and shape young Maya
women and men into perfect replicas, that is, spitting
images of the First Mother and First Father, Tz’aqol
and B’itol, Alom and K’ajolom, Modeler and Maker,
Bearer and Begetter of their precious human
replacements who would follow.
The K’iche’ people of western highland and lowland

Guatemala belong to a much larger Maya cultural
sphere that holds many beliefs and practices in
common. The Popol Wuj, in fact, is a collection of
Maya myths and stories developed over the course of
millennia and presented continuously in a set order

that is not necessarily chronological. The text can be
divided into several distinct parts, beginning with the
formation of the Sky-Earth by the Creators in their
various incarnations followed by three failed attempts
at peopling Uwach Ulew, the Face of the Earth. The
narrative continues with the story of the father and
uncle of the Hero Twins—Junajpu and Xb’alanke’—
whose ingenious mother manages to escape from
Xib’alb’a, the Maya underworld from whence she came.
She gives birth to the twin boys who are later
summoned, like their father before them, to engage in
a match of the Mesoamerican ballgame against the
Lords of Death and Disease in Xib’alb’a, the Place of
Intimidation and Fear, and Trials, Tests and Ordeals.
A>er overcoming many tribulations during an
initiatory journey through the underworld, the Hero
Twins play the Lords of Xib’alb’a to a draw, sacriQce
themselves and become the sun and the moon. But
before doing so, the boy-tricksters give order to the
present world through sacriQce and prepare it for the
coming of the Ixim Winaq, that is, the Maize People—
their mesh and bones formed and shaped from yellow
and white corn—who give rise to the Maya in general
and the K’iche’ in particular. The rest of the text
recounts the history of these people’s emergence and
migration, and their conquest and settlement of the
land known as K’iche’. My love and knowledge of Maya
culture led me to delve deeper into this dynamic world
of divine ancestors, which I felt had not been

adequately captured or conveyed in past translations of
the Popol Wuj.
The history of the manuscript and its transmission is

admirably treated in Akkeren’s authoritative Xib’alb’a y
el nacimiento del nuevo sol (2012). Although we don’t
know its original title, or whether it even had one, the
Nim Ch’okoj text was copied by Francisco Ximénez
(1666–c. 1729/30), a Dominican friar who studied it
from 1701 to 1703 in Chichicastenango, before
spending many more years on the arduous scholarly
task of rendering it into Spanish in the town of
Rabinal, where the good father also produced local
dynastic histories, dictionaries and catechisms in the
K’iche’, Kaqchikel and Tz’utujil languages. Ximenez’s
translation would not be published until 1857, by
Austrian naturalist Carl Scherzer (1821–1903) a>er
returning from his New World travels, on the advice of
Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–
1859). In 1861, missionary-ethnographer Charles
Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814–74) published a
French version of the Spanish text in Paris, along with
Ximénez’s original K’iche’ transcription, based on the
actual document in his possession that eventually
ended up at the Newberry by 1911, which he called the
Popol Vuh.
K’iche Maya Rubber Ball Court at Ruins of Q’umaraq Aaj or Ruins of

Broken Down Canes Santa Cruz del Quiche’, Departamento del Quiche’ The
story of the Popol Wuj is the story of two older boys who wish to become
young men. They sweep up their grandmother’s ball-court and take down
their father’s sacred rubber ball. They play ball, this is who they are; this is
who their father’s were. This is the game from where their mother, IxKik’,
comes; and, this in a world where Kik’ means blood and rubber, rubber sap
and rubber ball. Photo by Joseph Schultz.
In the Popol Wuj each of the K’iche’ Tribes-Amaq K’iche’-were given a

special deity to care just for them; and, this deity of theirs; this deity known
as Kab’awil took good care of them. Photo by Joseph Schultz
Many, maybe most, Dominicans and Franciscans believed Santo Tomas

traveled on his mule among the Maya and Nahua People preaching the
word of Jesukristo. Photo by Joseph Schultz.
Scholarly interest in the text gradually increased in the

mid-20th century a>er a German translation, Popol
Vuh: Das heilige Buch der Quiche-Indianer von
Guatemala, by anthropologist Leonhard Schultze-Jena
(1872–1955), appeared in 1944. This osering was soon
followed by a new Spanish edition by Guatemalan
Mayanist and ambassador to the United States Adrián
Recinos (1886–1962), entitled Popol Vuh: Las antiguas
historias del Quiché (1947), which, in turn, was

translated into English by author-educator Delia Goetz
(1896–1996) and archaeologist-epigrapher Sylvanus
Griswold Morley (1883–1948), as Popol Vuh: The Sacred
Book of the Quiche Maya (1950).
Far more signiQcant progress, however, was initiated

by a Tulane University linguistic anthropologist and
student of Harvard’s Clyde Kluckhohn (1905–60) by the
name of Monro Edmonson (1924–2002), whose seminal
Quiche-English Dictionary (1965) and The Book of
Council: The Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya (1971)—with
its facing K’iche’ and English text in verse—would
forever change the course of Popol Wuj translation.
Edmonson’s student, Dennis Tedlock (1939–2016), soon
followed with his popular Popol Vuh: The DePnitive
Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the
Glories of Gods and Kings (1985, 1996), while Tedlock’s
student, Guatemalan linguist and poet Luis Enrique
Sam Colop (1955–2011), published an exceptional
modern K’iche’ version and meticulous corresponding
Spanish translation in 1999. Since then, a few less
linguistically rigorous English oserings have appeared
from Brigham Young University art historian Allen
Christenson (2000, 2004, 2007) and Amherst College
literary critic Ilan Stavans (2020), in addition to the
monumental bilingual K’iche’-Spanish Popol Wuj:
Nueva traducción y comentarios produced by linguist
James Mondloch and anthropologist Robert Carmack
in 2018, which includes a color facsimile of Ximénez’s

original manuscript at the Newberry. Although all of
these editions have their strengths and weaknesses, I
have found the translations and work of Edmonson,
and especially Sam Colop, to be the most useful, along
with Akkeren’s historical and anthropological
scholarship.
With such a rich legacy of scholarly lineages and

translations, you might ask, why on earth would a
student of distinguished University of Chicago
Divinity School graduates Charles Long (1926–2020)
and Davíd Carrasco want to produce a new English
edition of the Popol Wuj? The answer is quite simple.
None of the previous translators approached the
K’iche’ text from the hermeneutical perspective of the
history of religions tradition and the existential
experience of more than three decades of continuous
living, working and conversing among K’iche’ people.
None of them seemed to study myth as serio ludere
(serious play) and as an expression of the soul of a
people whose recitations of the story through words
and actions bring the ancestors spiritually and
physically into the present day. And none of them
seemed to understand what historian of religions
Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) knew and wrote about so
well—that myth records the divine actions and
creation episodes of deities and revered ancestors that
are repeatedly told, imitated and performed for the
renovation and renewal of the community. Similarly,

Eliade’s colleague Charles Long, in his Alpha: The
Myths of Creation (1963), revealed how the telling of
stories such as the Popol Wuj recite the experience of
the human soul as it is transformed through ordeals in
its journey on earth and through the underworld, while
Davíd Carrasco’s work on the Feathered Serpent
stories in Mexica and Maya traditions has shown how
creation myths aid in the revitalization of sacred
places and community identities. Along with Eliade’s
profound insights into humanity’s quest for the eternal
return through rites of initiation, as well as his work in
comparative religion regarding the vigorous powers
and archaic patterns in nature and the universe that
orient and shape human consciousness, these
contributions oser the best preparation for
interpreting the Popol Wuj and the “secret” sacred
language used throughout the K’iche’ Maya text.
Chichicastenango el 25 de 2020. Jesukristo enveloped and embraced by the

Maya as a son of the pueblo, rk’ajol tenement. Jesus and Santo Tomas came
together like the twin brothers from the Popol Wuj: Junajpu, Xb’alanke.
Photo by Joseph Schultz.
Dawn Ceremony of New Year Nine Deer, Maya Day-keepers maintain their
ancestral calendar while keeping a sharp eye on the future. Divination
continues to be the Maya path to Ynding human destiny. Photo by Joseph
Schultz
The milpa, or cornYeld, beside the path on the way to Saqilaq: Incense
Burner Mountain. Maya Day-Keepers, women and men known as Mother-
Fathers or ChuchQajaw greet the Sun at this Dawning Place: Saqrib’al.
As for my interpretive skills as a translator, they are

clearly rooted in what my teachers taught me long ago.
As historians of religions, they provided me with much
of what I needed to know in order to live out in the
“Qeld” that I would write about, a>er my physical—
though not intellectual or psychological—departure
from the academic world. They imparted an
intellectual inheritance that prepared me to observe,

listen, read and interpret myth as the still active sacred
history of the K’iche’. I learned how to interpret a text
by asking questions that sought to diminish the
distance between myself and the beloved and
respected other as a human soul. Although Eliade and
Long were gi>ed thinkers and interpreters of sacred
words and texts in their own right, it was Carrasco
who taught me how to interpret myth in order to
understand for myself why I was driven to do so. A
deep sense of compassion and respect for the other
and the world we inhabit with others goes a long way to
answering why I wanted to translate the Popol Wuj.
When interpretation involves moving between very

diserent languages, it is important that the translator
approach the text, not only as a linguist interested in
words as separate parts of a whole, but also as a
historian of religions who understands that sacred
words must be understood as dynamic entities that
animate relationships in the community held together
by a common language. I o>en ask myself how people
think they can translate the Popol Wuj without living
with the K’iche’ Maya, year a>er year, season a>er
season, maize cycle a>er maize cycle, day and night,
watching the movement of the celestial spheres above,
and working in the natural world of the milpa and the
forest. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve
turned to the realm of nature to correct past
translations that simply guessed or depended on a

dictionary to Qnd something that “worked.”
The astonishing natural world is where the Popol Wuj

plays out; those who have not walked, seen, smelled,
heard, feared and marveled at that world have little
hope of Qnding answers to comprehend the complex
word-play and Maya poetics that illuminate the natural
powers of transformation, which this sacred narrative
talks about in magical ways. Translators are not free to
distort the meaning of the original text simply because
they do not speak the language well or have not
immersed themselves in the “Qeld” long enough to
grasp the metaphors running through the Popol Wuj.
But by living with the Maya in their world, one
eventually can develop a translation that is grounded
in the seasonal transformations in nature and among
humans.
A>er more than 30 years in that world, I believe that

my spoken K’iche’ is respectable. My accent is what
catches people’s attention. I make myself easily
understood by replicating K’iche’ speech like a
mocking bird. My ability to mimic sound is something
I was born with, and my capacity to imitate other
human beings is what opened the way to my lifelong
love of living language. Replicating the rhythm and
sound of words and phrases in the Popol Wuj enables
me to ask my K’iche’ neighbors about various aspects
of the text, and helps me to understand the creative

imagination of the people who speak and write K’iche’.
There is both terror and luck to be found in history,
and we should feel lucky that we can still speak with
the K’iche’ Maya of Guatemala in the same language of
their sacred history.
One of the most salient aspects of K’iche’ society

involves ritual, as the Fiesta Patronal in
Chichicastenango mentioned above certainly attests.
The Nim Ch’okoj who gathered long ago to produce
the Popol Wuj included ceremonial specialists and
spiritual guides who instructed Maya youth in the
singing of sacred cantos or songs and the performance
of lengthy dance dramas before attentive audiences, as
a form of communal storytelling and collective
mythmaking. In this regard, the Popol Wuj functions
as the script used by singer-dancers and participant-
observers to achieve a kind of ritual ecstasy that
transports them back to the Ancestral Time of the
Creators. The songs and dances must be performed in
the prescribed fashion to re-create the sacred world
and the animate beings living within it. Rather than a
chronological Qctional narrative, the Popol Wuj is
myth, and as such, must play out just as it was formed
and shaped by artists, scribes and performers long ago.
We see such ritual scenes carved in Maya sculpture,
depicted in elaborate murals and painted on exquisite
ceramics.
The K’iche’ Maya visitors come bearing giZs, arriving with confessions to
then, make a petition. Confession and petition, yes, yes; yet so much more:
where there is direct communication with the divinity through deep
connection with the Ancestors. Photo by Joseph Schultz.
Solsticio de 2021 ChuiWiLa Above the Nettles. Departamento del Quiché

The candle lit altar place; the warm embracing light of the Middle Place; of
the Center Place: Heart of Sky, Heart of the Earth-Uk’u’x Kaj, Uk’u’x Ulew.
The Maya, in turn, have taught me that one must know

their land and its light and darknesses, understand
nature and its ways, feel the words as thought from the
heart, and, perhaps, most of all, sense the beauty that
touches and stirs in one’s soul. These lessons have
shaped how I’ve translated and interpreted the Popol
Wuj, while knowing that it is not possible to create a
literal translation when every word, written or spoken,

is a metaphor whose meanings we must experience in
order to feel our way through the living pathways of a
world that is myth. By coming to know this creation
story as a manifestation of a Mayan language, with its
names of divine ancestors and sacred spaces that
transform us into actors moving through its timeless
landscapes, we can truly become a bit more American,
in the hemispheric sense of that word, invented more
than Qve centuries ago. So let us begin to transform
and enrich our transient sense of self through the
language and living story of the Popol Wuj.
I say this because this extraordinary text is

surely Ancient America’s greatest masterpiece of
mythological writing. This is why I sought to translate
the original K’iche’ text in indigenous ways, without
recourse to Judeo-Christian or Greco-Roman
conventions, so that the rhythmic grace of the essential
Ancient Word (Ojer Tzij) of the Maya could shine.
Accordingly, my translation would have to convey the
rich sense of humor and imagination ingeniously
expressed through the multivalent metaphors and
word-play of Maya poetics that create the mythological
magic of incantation. In this way, the reader or listener
could get an idea of the way the text was intended to
be sung or performed. I would also have to bring to life
the “serious play” (serio ludere) of the imaginal world of
the divine ancestors who created the Sky-Earth and all
that exist within it, which I o>en felt was lacking in

many previous translations. In the serious play of
mythic poetry, beauty reveals a truth that vibrates in
the heart and resonates in the soul. I knew I had to try
and capture this playful yet serious imaginal world
embodied in the Ancient Word. Anything less playful
or less serious would not remect the inherent tension
of the epic K’iche’ Popol Wuj.
Solsticio de Invierno: Winter Solstice December 21, 2021 Chichicastenango

A woman Prayer-Maker, Healer-Diviner prays in the shady shadows of the
church wall. This powerful Chuch-Qajaw or Mother-Father guides and
protects her people. Photo by Joseph Schultz.
Solsticio de 2021 Chichicastenango, El Quiche’ Guatemala Fiesta del

Pueblo ChuiWiLa Above the Nettles. Maya women carry the greatest
burden of maintaining their people’s ancestral ways of speaking and acting.
Maya women carry the future within and upon them in a struggle to make
more out of this life. Photo by Joseph Schultz
Vincent Stanzione carries out research while living and

working in the western highlands of Guatemala. He is the
author of Rituals of SacriPce: Walking the Face of the Earth on the
Sacred Path of the Sun (2003), and has been translating language
and myths of the Maya for three decades.
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Translating the Maya Popol Wuj | ReVista 13/04/2021, 09:35

Religion and Spirituality - Indigenous Religions in the Contact Zone

It’s the 20th of December and we are in

The Popol Wuj is a true masterpiece of Native

The K’iche’ people of western highland and lowland

millennia and presented continuously in a set order

of divine ancestors, which I felt had not been

The history of the manuscript and its transmission is

K’iche Maya Rubber Ball Court at Ruins of Q’umaraq Aaj or Ruins of

In the Popol Wuj each of the K’iche’ Tribes-Amaq K’iche’-were given a

Many, maybe most, Dominicans and Franciscans believed Santo Tomas

Scholarly interest in the text gradually increased in the

historias del Quiché (1947), which, in turn, was

Far more signiQcant progress, however, was initiated

in 2018, which includes a color facsimile of Ximénez’s

With such a rich legacy of scholarly lineages and

renovation and renewal of the community. Similarly,

Chichicastenango el 25 de 2020. Jesukristo enveloped and embraced by the

As for my interpretive skills as a translator, they are

intellectual inheritance that prepared me to observe,

When interpretation involves moving between very

translations that simply guessed or depended on a

The astonishing natural world is where the Popol Wuj

A>er more than 30 years in that world, I believe that

of the text, and helps me to understand the creative

One of the most salient aspects of K’iche’ society

Solsticio de 2021 ChuiWiLa Above the Nettles. Departamento del Quiché

The Maya, in turn, have taught me that one must know

literal translation when every word, written or spoken,

I say this because this extraordinary text is

that exist within it, which I o>en felt was lacking in

Solsticio de Invierno: Winter Solstice December 21, 2021 Chichicastenango

Solsticio de 2021 Chichicastenango, El Quiche’ Guatemala Fiesta del

Vincent Stanzione carries out research while living and

Home Current Issue Arts and Humanities

About Spotlights Business and Economics

Contact Student Views Culture

Subscribe Book Reviews Film and TV

Past Issues Food

Public Health and Medicine

Public Policy and Governance

Science and the Environment

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