Philosophy
1402 to 1472, Texcoco (Acolhuacan), Mexico
The poet-king of Texcoco, whose tradition made flower and song the only truth on a fleeting earth, reached toward an unknowable Giver of Life, and answered death with friendship.
Start learning Nezahualcoyotl →The Nahua idea of in xochitl in cuicatl - ‘flower and song’ - the paired metaphor for poetry and art, held by the sages of Texcoco to be the one way a human being can say true words and touch the divine on a fleeting ea…
The impermanence that runs through the songs attributed to Nezahualcoyotl: ‘Not forever on earth, only a little while here.’ Even jade shatters, even gold breaks, even quetzal plumes are torn - and so must every human b…
The Texcocan tradition’s reach toward a single, invisible, unknowable Giver of Life - Tloque Nahuaque , ‘the Lord of the Near and the Close’ - and the temple to ‘the unknown god’ reported by the colonial chronicler Ixtl…
Nezahualcoyotl as ruler: the exile who became tlatoani, the lawgiver of some eighty statutes, the engineer of the great dike and the aqueducts, the maker of the gardens of Tetzcotzinco, and the patron of a court of sage…
The songs’ open questioning of the afterlife - ‘Do we live again? Does anyone return?’ - set against the confident cosmology of official Aztec religion, and the tradition’s tender, this-worldly answer: enjoy the flowers…
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