In The Works of the Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque take up the labour of the house: they go out to open a field, and their hoe and their axe work alone while they hunt with the blowgun and let the Wood-Pigeon watch for their grandmother's coming. By night the wild animals undo the clearing, setting the trees and vines upright again; lying in wait, the brothers catch the Deer and the Rabbit by the tail — and leave them the short tails they wear to this day — and take the Rat, who buys his life with a secret: the ball, the rings and the gloves of their fathers, dead in Xibalba, hang hidden in the roof of the house, and by a trick with a pierced pitcher the gear is cut down and theirs. In The Call to the Ballgame, the twins sweep their fathers' court and play, and the noise rises once more above the heads of Xibalba. The summons comes a second time, and the message travels down the road in the bellies of the Louse, the Toad, the Serpent and the Falcon — whose wounded eye the twins heal with the gum of the ball — until the Louse himself delivers it: in seven days they are to come. The brothers plant two canes in the dry earth at the middle of their grandmother's house, the sign by which she shall know whether they live or have died, and set out. These are the K'iche' people's own book, written down by K'iche' authors in the 1550s and preserved in Fr. Ximénez's copy, read here with respect as the sacred and historical book it is.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Chapters:
0:00 Opening
0:04 The Works of the Twins
10:33 The Call to the Ballgame
From the Popol Vuh in the French translation of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg (Paris, 1861), from the K'iche' text preserved in the copy of Francisco Ximénez — a fresh in-house English rendering.
Popol Vuh.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
