FIVE LETTERS OF CORTES TO THE EMPEROR,...

FIVE LETTERS OF CORTES TO THE EMPEROR, translated and introduced by J. Baynard Morris (W. W. Norton: $10.95). Between 1519 and 1526, Hernando Cortes wrote five voluminous letters to the Emperor Charles V, describing the conquest of Mexico and a subsequent expedition to Honduras. Morris’ translation captures the prolix style of Cortes’ 16th- Century prose: Virtually every action offers the conquistador a chance to cite the intervention of Divine grace--and toady to his distant overlord. The fulsome descriptions of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan hold a morbid fascination for modern readers, who know Cortes would quickly reduce the gardens, palaces and lofty temples (“The workmanship both in wood and stone could not be bettered anywhere, for all the stonework within the actual temples where they keep their idols is cut into ornamental borders of flowers, birds, fishes and the like . . . “) to so much rubble. Curiously, Morris seems to admire the thuggish leader who destroyed and killed so smugly, arguing that many of his actions were undertaken out of fear of the Aztecs’ superior numbers. He concludes that Cortes stands “not as the last of the Crusaders (as some have wished to present him) but as one of the earliest and greatest of the Elizabethans”--in the dubious tradition of Marlowe’s Tamerlane.