9. What’s in a Poem?

Rosalía was writing in her journal about the previous April afternoon. She was unable to get what had happened out of her mind, and yet she had only gone out as she often did, on an errand, as well as to walk and think. They say she was mourning the loss of her mother, yes, but that doesn’t seem to be why she had gone out. She also couldn’t explain why she had taken that route through the old city, nor why she felt afraid, even now.

Rosalía’s journal:

It was like the entire city was watching me. I felt as if I were being followed, but for some reason the streets were almost completely deserted. Maybe it was the odd weather. April can be damp, but it’s hardly ever humid and sticky. The heat felt like it was rising up from some infernal place, and that I was in danger. 

I hurried, yet did not know exactly where to go. In Santiago, though, most streets lead to the cathedral and nearby is the Pazo de Fonseca, the palace built in the 1500s for educational purposes. The university used to be located there. I can never go there because women aren’t allowed to learn much of anything. Lovely building, but it’s useless to me and others like me.

The Hospital, built to treat the thousands of ailing pilgrims who come to pray in person to The Saint, to Santiago, is testimony to the faith of many and their willingness to travel from afar to keep their promise or to be cured. The Catholic Kings had it built, maybe because the thought that so many filthy pilgrims’ rags were being washed free of dirt and disease and hung from the bell tower. It was around 1500, people say. I can’t imagine what it must have been like with all the sick, maimed, struggling bodies around the city.

I wonder how many of those who came were made whole by coming here to pray to the Saint who was supposed to have saved Spain in so many battles against the invaders?

If so many come from such distances, shouldn’t I seek solace in the huge building? But I was terrified. I saw huge buildings. I see them every day here, but there was something more this time. The Pórtico da Gloria, the grandiose portal to the temple, beckoned, but the statue of Santiago, patron saint of Spain, riding a white horse and brandishing a sword he used to cut off the heads of the invading infidels, was no comfort.

Something was wrong, something made me think the silence of the cathedral, like that of the streets, wasn’t anything good. I sensed, if not danger, then something close to it. 

I can’t get the uneasy feeling out of my mind. 

I need to write something to send to my correspondents in America. This time I’ll write in Spanish, which might be easier for them to understand.

Santa Escolástica

      I

Una tarde de abril, en que la tenue

llovizna triste humedecía en silencio

de las desiertas calles las baldosas,

mientras en los espacios resonaban

las campanas con lentas vibraciones,

dime a marchar, huyendo de mi sombra.

[On an April afternoon, when the tenuous,

mournful drizzle silently dampened

the stones of the deserted streets,

while the bells’ slow vibrations 

echoed in the emptiness,

I left, fleeing my very shadow.]

Bochornoso calor que enerva y rinde,

si se cierne en la altura la tormenta,

tornara el aire irrespirable y denso.

Y el alma ansiosa y anhelante el pecho

a impulsos del instinto iban buscando

puro aliento en la tierra y en el cielo.

[Muggy heat that creates weariness and defeat,

if the storm stirs in the sky above.

And the anxious soul and the heaving heart,

following their instinct, were seeking

to breathe pure air on earth and in heaven.]

Soplo mortal creyérase que había

dejado el mundo sin piedad desierto,

convirtiendo en sepulcro a Compostela.

Que en la santa ciudad, grave y vetusta,

no hay rumores que turben importunos

la paz ansiada en la apacible siesta.

[It was as if a mortal blow had 

left the world deserted, showing no pity,

turning Compostela into a sepulchre.

For in the holy city, grave and ancient,

no murmurs are there to disturb

the peace that all need for their quiet naps.]

(Journal continues)

I’m worried that what I’m describing won’t make sense to people who have never been here, never seen the streets, the buildings, and most of all the cathedral. Maybe they’ve never heard of it. Would it be a good idea to send some notes concerning the invaders, how they stole the bell and took it to the south? Would people from such a young country and from other religions - many of the people I correspond with are Quakers - understand the significance of the battles fought long before the idea of a New World existed? 

The problem is, I don’t know why I haven’t used ‘Santiago’ as the title. I need to think about that. Perhaps I ought to write more. It might help me understand why I feel so weighed down by what happened.

      II

—¡Cementerio de vivos! —murmuraba

yo al cruzar por las plazas silenciosas

que otros días de glorias nos recuerdan.

¿Es verdad que hubo aquí nombres famosos,

guerreros indomables, grandes almas?

¿Dónde hoy su raza varonil alienta?

[Cemetery of the living! - I whispered

as I crossed the silent squares 

that remind us of olden days of glory.

Is it true that here there were famous names,

indomitable warriors, great souls?

Where does its virile race reside now?]

La airosa puerta de Fonseca, muda,

me mostró sus estatuas y relieves

primorosos, encanto del artista;

y del gran Hospital, la incomparable

obra del genio, ante mis tristes ojos

en el espacio dibujóse altiva.

[The elegant doorway to Fonseca, mute,

showed me its statues and elegant reliefs,

charming accomplishment of the artist;

and the great Hospital, the incomparable

work of genius, appeared proudly

before my unconsolable eyes.]

Después la catedral, palacio místico

de atrevidas románicas arcadas,

y con su Gloria de bellezas llena,

me pareció al mirarla que quería

sobre mi frente desplomar, ya en ruinas,

de sus torres la mole gigantesca.

[After that, the Cathedral, a mystical palace

with its daring Romanesque arches,

and full of the Glory of its beauty,

seemed to me that when I looked at it, the 

gigantic mass of its towers wanted to

collapse on my head, in ruins.]

Volví entonces el rostro, estremecida,

hacia donde atrevida se destaca

del Cebedeo la celeste imagen,

como el alma del mártir, blanca y bella,

y vencedora en su caballo airoso,

que galopando en triunfo rasga el aire.

[Then I turned my head, trembling,

toward where the celestial image of the Zebedean

stood its ground boldly,

like the soul of the martyr, white and beautiful,

victorious on a spirited stallion

that splits the air in triumphant gallop.]

I think Santiago’s second name, Cebedeo, came from his father. He was born in Galilee, supposedly. I am not sure about how the Saint made it here, but people believe it so it might be true. Some say he was beheaded and arrived in a stone boat. Others just shake their heads. All I know is the statue on the horse with dead Moors at the base is awful. bloody and really not very holy-looking. I wish it weren’t there. 

I don’t think I feel very comfortable praying near something like that.

I don’t like thinking about all the wars and all the killing in the name of one religion or another.

I was looking for something else yesterday, but it wasn’t what I thought it was. Maybe if I keep working on the poem it’ll be clearer. I have a suspicion it wasn’t about praying to Santiago. I’m almost afraid to guess, because I might never find it.

******************************************************************

I am the third voice of this story. Part of my task is to translate, as I explained earlier. I know there is more to the poem and that there are many studies of its meaning. They might be useful, and I want to add some literary analyses here, although not everybody likes reading them. However, because there is so much mystery around “Santa Escolástica” that it’s worth looking at a couple of explanations. One critic has suggested that Rosalía de Castro is an example of Julia Kristeva’s theory and that there is a search for the mother, that the cathedral serves as a womb, a feminine space.

 I don’t care to go into detail about this because I’m not an expert on philosophy and, to be honest, I’m not sure I understand everything Kristeva says. I have, however, seen all of Santiago de Compostela, the inside of the cathedral, the horrendously cruel and racist statue of a supposed saint on a white horse - as if white made what he’s doing all right - and I see nothing feminine anywhere. That’s just me and others are free to disagree. I know what I personally feel in that enormous space with the image of the Saint on the Portico and then another inside, looking out at the faithful from behind the altar. That one used to have real jewels on it until people started stealing them from their settings, because some people can’t help themselves, even in a sacred space.

Another critic has written that Rosalía de Castro has often been misread. The article I’m thinking of refers to En las orillas del Sar [Beside the Sar River], published in 1884. This book was her last, as she died the next year at only 48. It was a very painful death, but too many people seemed to interpret the writer according to that. They also have assumed many other things about her, which is why the journal found by Lavinia by sheer accident is so important. There has to be a reason why it was sent to another house, but at least that kept it from being burned like other papers were burned by Rosalía’s daughter as she was requested to do. I’m assuming Lavinia is looking more into this aspect. 

And yes, there were some incredibly inaccurate things written about this writer and repeated for years. In fact, it took almost a century for people to start waking up and, ironically, some of those new views came from the other side of the ocean.

I, on the other hand, am trying to look for more specific, documented clues as to Rosalía’s relationship with the Americans, now that we’ve figured out they corresponded for years. It’s important to understand what both she and the other writers she knew, don’t you think? Here we are in this 21st century trying to show the world what contemporary Galician writing is like, trying to make a place for it in global literature and culture, but Rosalía was already doing that, which is remarkable.That’s why I have another theory and, if I ever manage to do something with her work, it’ll be to show that she was making a case for women as agents or subjects. She had learned a lot from the letters shared across the Atlantic. She most likely knew about all the things written in favor of education for women in several countries. Why would anyone think she was a poor miña xoia as they say in Galician, incapable of thinking ‘high thoughts’?

I think Rosalía was consciously writing in code to avoid censorship. Make people think she’s expressing religious faith. I think she was laughing or cursing the Church Fathers and the society that followed their commands. The part of the journal that I’ve transcribed here is not excessively rebellious or revolutionary, but I am hopeful that will change.

Also, I haven’t given you an explanation of why Lavinia left the journal - or was it part of the journal? - in my house. She and I will be explaining that to you at a later date. First, however, I must continue the translation of Santa Escolástica [Saint Scholastica, if we must], along with the real theory I have about the poem that has her name as a title, yet she spends the first half bemoaning the inhospitable nature of Santiago’s cathedral. That’s why the really interesting feature of the four pages or so that the poem takes up is maybe Rosalía’s own declaration of women’s rights. You may think I’m radical, but I truly believe she was replying to the ideas the women of her time and in more than one country and language were saying all along and right out in the open.

I’m thinking that the next episode might be “All’s Well That Ends Well”, which will be number 10. In it you will find out why the poem has the title it has and why it ends as it does. I can speak to this in an autobiofictional way because I’ve also sat for many hours with the Saint (not the Zebedean, the other one, the woman) and have a lot of personal observations to share. A lot. Of course, I don’t want to take away from Rosalía’s story and will never do that, but if she had not written the poem, I don’t know who I would be. 

You should know that I am profoundly affected by Rosalía, and that includes my own relationship with “Santa Escolástica,” although up until now I haven’t told you about that. However, I have a good memory and I remember everything.