4. Shiver (1/2)

It was later afternoon and Rosalía was sitting at her desk in the small apartment where she lived in Santiago de Compostela. She was content to have a room of her own long before a well-known British writer would make it a household phrase, so to speak. Writing required thinking, and being with family members more often required actions or at least speaking. On this occasion the dialogue between woman and page was obviously silent. La soledad sonora, as years later a lesser-known member of the Spanish Generation of 1927 would call it. Thundering silence or, to a lesser extent, a silence that vibrated, like music when someone plays it.

It was November, around 1860, but could just as easily have been a fews years before or after that date, and it could have been December, January, February, or even March. Winter was winter in Galicia, which didn’t mean snow: cold rain, dripping, sliding, pounding people and worn granite pavements, was usually the weather during long weeks. 

Dreary, somber, even ghostly, the medieval mist sketched vague outlines of hooded and shawled figures rushing beneath sturdy stone arches to the market square or other places demanding their presence: doctors, cooking utensils made by local potters, bitter chocolate made from what the colonies produced, perhaps writing tools like pens, ink, paper. Even books could be a reason to brave a deluge for some people. They might be acquired in a bookstore or used in a library. Funny how things haven’t changed much in the past century and a half.

However, on this occasion the young writer did not plan to go out. She was working on a poem that would not see the light - not the fault of the weather - until years later. Because Rosalía had always understood what Galician winters were like and they were in fact the only ones she knew, she had a different way of understanding her homeland. To her, the icy rain wasn’t hostile, even though it was more disagreeable inside the walls of the city. Fortunately, she had her memories of the village of Padrón and nearby areas. They included one of the Ponte de Santiago, the bridge that had to be replaced in 1852 after the Sar River raged up from its bed and destroyed a good part of the populated areas, not to mention fields and roads. She would even write about the propensity to flood, with devastating results, in years to come.

Not a stranger to the effects of deluges and the accompanying lightning, winds, and dark days, Rosalía found something that meant something far more than damp, too-fragrant wool stockings, and drenched headscarves. She knew the water was the bringer of life to farms, even those of minimal size, and that most Galicians - except a few elites - survived using primitive cultivation methods. They were an intelligent people who knew how to make a living, albeit a meager one, from their land. The Castilians to the south and east had their ways as well, but they often imported diligent Galicians with strong backs to carry out harder labor. Rosalía knew this, and perhaps this practice of exploitation led her to link Castile’s arid scenery with the arid souls of the bosses who saw the immigrant workers as slaves, as beasts of burden.

Yet even a poetic affection for the inevitable winter weather did not blind the writer to the inconveniences of day after day of a cold that seeped into body and spirit. One poem showed this resilience and, long before it would see the light in a book to be called Follas Novas [New Leaves] in 1880, she had reflected on winter in a poem:

Meses do inverno

Meses do inverno fríos,

Que eu amo a todo amar;

Meses dos fartos ríos

I o dóce amor do lar.

Meses das tempestades,

Imaxen da delor

Que afrixe as mocedades

I as vidas crota en frol.

Chegade e, tras o outono

Que as follas fai caer,

Nelas deixá que o sono

Eu durma do non ser.

E cando o sol fermoso

De abril torne a sorrir,

Que alume o meu reposo,

Xa non o meu sofrir.

Rosalía had sought out readers from other regions because she was convinced that life in her land was of interest to others. Just as she wanted to learn about other cultures, she believed that hers too had something of value, was deserving of respect.

One aspect of intercultural communication was language, and people like Rosalía knew translation was part of understanding other groups. That was why she had hoped to reach speakers of languages other than Galician and, if possible, beyond the Iberian Peninsula, which was comprised of Spain and Portugal. It wasn’t so much a desire for personal fame as it was the hope of showing others what Galician was, with its land and its people. The Romanticists had thought in a similar manner perhaps, but there was something more intimate and sincere in the attitude of the young literata of the so-called provinces.

Thus, Rosalía had distributed a very small number of her poems to an even smaller number of readers; one had spontaneously and anonymously sent along an English translation of one poem. The author of the original in Galician was more agile in French than in English, but she wanted to give serious consideration to the generosity of the translator, whom she would never know personally. This was one of the items on her desk that afternoon that could have been November, but was more likely January or February. The English version of Meses do inverno, which adds a title that the original didn’t possess:

Cold Months of Winter

Cold months of winter

That I love with all my love;

Months of rivers that run full

And the sweet love of home.

Months of wild storms,

Image of the pain

That besets the young

And severs lives in bloom.

Come, after the autumn

That makes the leaves fall,

And let me sleep among them

The slumber of dissolution.

And when the lovely sun

Of April returns smiling

Let it shine upon my repose,

No longer upon my suffering.

The translation wasn’t bad at all, but Rosalía somehow was hoping for something closer to her original poem as far as the emotion she’d endeavored to express. Fortunately, she had encountered a young British woman in a café and, hearing her speaking English to a companion, had approached the traveler to ask if she would look at either the English version or the Galician, and offer suggestions. The young woman was a bit surprised, but also was interested in seeing the original, something most didn’t care to do. After all, in the city of Santiago de Compostela, closely monitored by the Church, there were few who spoke what too many thought of as a dialect, the vernacular, or lower class language, q.v., galego. Nobody published anything in the local idiom, which people felt belonged in a rural environment. 

Nobody knew what ground Rosalía de Castro would break a few years later, in 1863, with Cantares Gallegos. Nobody had realized the way galego bound them to their homeland. Anyway, nobody had dared to admit it, let alone use it to publish a book. A culture with a complex found itself with the perfect mirror in her verses. There was no prejudice like Castilian, Spanish-speaking writers had shown. She wrote from inside Galicia and inside her heart. As sentimental as that might sound, it is a position that remains firm for all generations of readers.

The second translation sounded different to the author, and she felt it was closer to the original. She had met the British woman two days later, in the same café, and had been given the version she was now looking at. It had been wrapped in a leather folder, waterproof to prevent the ink from blurring. Rosalía had appreciated the effect to protect the poem.

Now she was at her desk comparing the two versions:

Cold winter months

I love you with all my heart;

Months of full-flowing rivers

And the tender feeling of home.

Months set upon by storms,

Symbol of suffering

The plague of the young

That cuts flowering lives short.

Months that arrive, after the autumn

That causes the leaves to fall, 

Please let me sleep the sleep of unbeing

As I lay myself upon them.

And when the lovely April

Sun smiles once again,

May it brighten my repose,

And no longer shine on my suffering.

Then, with more than a little feeling of guilt, of sensing her own arrogance, Rosalía felt she might request translations into American English, not knowing if the continental separation would alter anything linguistically. She also was intrigued by the transatlantic groups that had early on fought against slavery. Often religious organizations, but not Catholic, they spoke out boldly against such a practice. One result had been the London anti slavery conference of 1840, just a few years before Rosalía was born.

Overcoming her guilt, Rosalía recalled two names of women who had been successful writers and had overcome serious challenges to achieve their goals. Both had been born in 1811, a few scant years after her mother. She determined to write a polite but convincing letter to each, introducing herself, explaining the motive for her request, and offering to correspond in any manner as they saw fit to require . The account of what transpired after the letters were sent will have to be for a subsequent account, as they deserve attention. However, the writers’ names can certainly be shared:

Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Litchfield, Connecticut. Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published 1851. It had rapidly become a bestseller and the author was very well known. Her works had been translated without a problem owing to her popularity. The theme of slavery and its evils was a major factor leading to the letter from Rosalía.

Fanny Fern, pseudonym of Sarah Payson Willis, born in Portland, Maine. By 1855, she was the highest-paid journalist in the country. Fern had two unsuccessful marriages and fought family opposition to her independence before settling into a better relationship. Author of novels and woman-oriented essays, she was tremendously popular. She wasn’t adverse to the term bluestocking, which Rosalía knew well from French literary women.

How Rosalía de Castro discovered where to write to both of these women might be left to speculation, but since both American writers have ties to Maine and both lived less than thirty miles apart, careful research may manage to unearth the documentation needed.

To be continued.