Aztecs
Two books:
(1) Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (1991), reviewed by the Psmiths;
and
(2) Pablo of Texcoco, How to Be Grateful: An Aztec Guide to the Art of Gratitude (2025), reviewed at NDPR.
It was jarring to come across both reviews this week. It was like reading about Nazis and then learning that a collection of mid-20th-century Germanic homespun “wisdom” had just been issued by a major university press.
The “Nazi” remark isn’t a cheap exaggeration. Clendinnen’s work unavoidably brings the Holocaust to mind.
Still, the analogy isn’t perfect, especially when it’s applied to the other book. Pablo’s “wisdom” was written down quite a few years after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. Would we demand that every postwar Germanic writer address the sorrowful legacy of the Nazi period? If not, then perhaps we shouldn’t mind when Pablo and his 21st-century expositors choose not to dwell on the same Aztec qualities that Clendinnen emphasizes.
Perhaps the introduction of Christianity into Nahua culture accounts for the surprising gentleness of the “Pablo” book.
Or perhaps not. It’s not unheard of for the same people to manifest brutality and exquisite etiquettical sensitivity.
How does Clendinnen’s work go down these days? Her scholarship is impossible to ignore. I fear that she is becoming unfashionable, however. I see that in the second (2022) edition of The Mexico Reader, the selection from Clendinnen has been considerably shortened.
(The article it is taken from is here.)
(1) Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (1991), reviewed by the Psmiths;
and
(2) Pablo of Texcoco, How to Be Grateful: An Aztec Guide to the Art of Gratitude (2025), reviewed at NDPR.
It was jarring to come across both reviews this week. It was like reading about Nazis and then learning that a collection of mid-20th-century Germanic homespun “wisdom” had just been issued by a major university press.
The “Nazi” remark isn’t a cheap exaggeration. Clendinnen’s work unavoidably brings the Holocaust to mind.
Still, the analogy isn’t perfect, especially when it’s applied to the other book. Pablo’s “wisdom” was written down quite a few years after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. Would we demand that every postwar Germanic writer address the sorrowful legacy of the Nazi period? If not, then perhaps we shouldn’t mind when Pablo and his 21st-century expositors choose not to dwell on the same Aztec qualities that Clendinnen emphasizes.
Perhaps the introduction of Christianity into Nahua culture accounts for the surprising gentleness of the “Pablo” book.
Or perhaps not. It’s not unheard of for the same people to manifest brutality and exquisite etiquettical sensitivity.
How does Clendinnen’s work go down these days? Her scholarship is impossible to ignore. I fear that she is becoming unfashionable, however. I see that in the second (2022) edition of The Mexico Reader, the selection from Clendinnen has been considerably shortened.
(The article it is taken from is here.)