1. A Writer is Born

From Muse to Bluestocking

Birth of a Writer: Introduction

Lieders

(1858)

Oh, I refuse to be bound by the rules of art! My thoughts run free, my imagination wanders, and my soul only finds satisfaction in ideas.

My soul has never been ruled by the hope of glory, and never have I dreamed of having laurels grace my brow. My lips have only uttered songs of independence and freedom, even though while still in the cradle I might have been aware of the sound of the chains that would forever imprison me, because the shackles of slavery are the patrimony of women.

Nevertheless, I am free, free as the birds, free as the breeze, like trees growing in the desert and the pirate who sails the sea.

My heart is free, my soul is free, and my mind soars heavenward then descends once more to the earth, as haughty as Lucifer and as gentle as hope.

When the rulers of the world threaten me with a glance or try to brand my countenance with the taint of disgrace, I laugh the same way they laugh and – it would certainly seem – create an iniquity of my own which is greater than their iniquity. Yet my heart is essentially kind, although I do not obey the orders of my peers and I must believe they are made of the same stuff as I, that their flesh is the same as my flesh.

I am free. Nothing can detain the forward march of my thoughts, and they are the law that determines my destiny.

*

Oh woman! Why, when you are so pure, must the hideous shadows of the world’s evils come forth, casting a pall over the pure light that shines from your eyes? Why do men defile you, dirtying you with the filth of their excesses, scorning and later despising their own horrible disarray and feverish delirium while you lie exhausted, near death?

All the thick, dark matter that settles in your eyes after the first spark of your innocent youth, all of this stains the garments of purity in which the earliest moments of your childhood clad you and it all extinguishes your fragrant scent and erases the images of virtue from your thoughts, all these are what infected you with this, all of this… and still they would condemn you.

*

Remorse is the inheritance of weak women. It corrupts their existence with the remembrance of pleasures that were bought today at the expense of happiness and tomorrow will weigh upon their souls like molten lead.

Sleeping specters that lie limply in a lap prepared to receive an object that is not the one they offer us, and embraces that receive other embraces – ones we have sworn never to accept.

Sharp, wrenching pains caused by what is no more, fleeting changes, eternal affirmations of guilt, useless repenting, and a desire to be virtuous in the future, to have an honorable, unsullied name that can be surrendered to the man who makes us a sincere offer of a life bereft of wealth, yet rich in kindness and new sensations.

These are the struggles, always provoked by the remorse that keeps vigil over our sleep, our hopes, our ambitions.

 And all of this is caused by just one weakness!

Lieders. Rosalía de Castro. El Álbum de El Miño, Vigo 

[Translation rev. 7.2022. Kathleen March] 

Chapter I: How it all Began

Rosalía was at her small desk in the tiny apartment in the casco vello, the old part of Santiago de Compostela. Santiago was the city of the Saint, they all said, but the Church wasn’t her main concern at that moment. In fact, her focus was on something that was the complete opposite in that medieval city, which had been built on faith or myth, depending on your perspective. The centuries-old walls were the visible and tangible aspect of the religion that controlled most of the lives of the residents, even ten centuries after the discovery of the Apostle’s burial site nearby. This is not to condemn the customs, but rather to simply acknowledge them. 

This was Rosalía’s focus. Her young brow - she was about twenty, give or take a few months - was creased and the rest of her face looked very serious as well. Cheeks drawn tight, lips flattened, head not moving as she looked at the dark-stained wooden surface and what lay atop it. She was pondering the lines on the papers before her and her emotions were clearly mixed, judging from her facial expression which, after closer observation, was moving between uncertainty and conviction. The movement of her thoughts was present only in the slight change in the angle of her eyes at their outward corners.

The young woman wanted to get this right, she longed for her words to find readers, and above all she needed to express what she was thinking. It had been welling up inside her for awhile now, but the old walls of the city where she resided were under the shadow of the cathedral, which symbolized…

But no, she had to do it. She was two decades old and was determined to be a writer, but she was on an almost untrodden path. The walls were too confining for so many, and were almost suffocating for most women. Rosalía knew she was going to have to be cautious and must use the techniques at her disposal to present her arguments. By that she meant she would have to predict the opposition to her ideas in order to defuse or disguise them, even apologize for them if need be.

What was on her mind on this occasion? It was the revision and submitting for publication of Lieders, her brief piece. She had longed to publish the little treatise for a long time, it seemed. At age twenty she had her heart set on that, but she was also aware that it would fall like lead on the ears of many, including the Church Fathers.

Lieders: was it too ‘loud’ (meaning bold)? Too direct? Or worse: Was it too ‘encoded’ for any sympathetic readers to get the point? Encoded meant having used the words free and freedom repeatedly, albeit not specifying what she was declaring herself free from or free to do. She’d tried to keep it vague; getting censored when she was trying to be heard would be counterproductive.

Now she was wondering about another decision for the text. Should she have written it in Galician or had Spanish been the right choice? She felt guilty at not using her first language, but her father’s closest family (he was a priest) had been conservative and of some social ranking. Logically, Spanish had been favored inside the walls. Yet outside, in the fields, on romarías and similar popular celebrations, the people who laughed, danced, made merry were Galician speakers. Yet, she thought sadly, they were unlikely to have either the inclination or the knowledge to read anything.

What had she just written? She asked herself that because Why had she done it? She had been excited enough to talk with both an English- and a French-speaking friend about immediately producing translations. This felt rather bold, but as a reader of literature and history in both the originals as well as in translated versions, she was well aware of the value of international communication and collaboration. There was also the fact that the Woman Question was gaining ground in circles beyond Galicia and that the bas bleus, the admirable ladies of literary tertulias in other (cultured) countries were beginning to claim the right or freedom to write, to be artistic. Bluestockings, they called them, which had a historical basis because actual blue stockings were worn at the gatherings, and Rosalía thought that was a much more creative designator than the English ‘Literary Women’.

Above all, Rosalía de Castro was concerned because aside from being more visible in society as a published writer, she would be a woman who dared to write, meaning to think think, develop her intellectual ability, and also read a great deal. Women of the time usually just ‘dabbled’ in handicrafts like embroidery, lace-making, weaving - making ‘pretty things’ for the home or adorning the body. They didn’t need any more freedom than they already had.

She didn’t ask herself if being politically progressive might be another deterrent to her desired success as an author along with being female. It was already hard enough for the men to do that. However, as she’d written in Lieders, its title chosen to suggest a song of romantic love, nature, of dreams or myths as opposed to a battle cry (‘I demand my freedom!) Maybe the exclamation points needed further thought. Did they make her words sound like a joyous (nonthreatening) call to the world or did they make them sound too aggressive?

Lavinia had discovered one of the journals of the beloved Galician writer Rosalía de Castro. How that happened and where is not clear. Maybe it was while she was helping a friend clean out the faiado when her father passed away and the family residence was about to be sold. The attic surprisingly had contained generations of handwritten papers, well organized because there had been at least three librarians in the family. Some of these, admittedly, had been better at cataloguing than reading or understanding.

The family that was in the process of selling the home had some distant relation to Rosalía, although that didn’t explain how the journal had come to be in this specific place, the faiado of some shirttail relatives, so far apart from the rest of her journals, which were in Padròn. 

Nobody seemed to give it any importance or value; they were in business, law, or architecture. The only speculation was that the journal had been given to the distant relatives for safekeeping. After all, some of Rosalía’s writing had been burned, ostensibly by her husband, Manuel Murguía, who would have been ordered to do that or would have wanted to do it.

Lavinia had to tell her friend about her discovery, as much as she wanted to conceal the material and leave with it in her bag, certain she would do it justice. However, when she described her find, it seemed her friend didn’t even care to see it. Just take it! She must have said. One less thing for us to pack up and lug out of here, she must have thought, since moving is never easy.

Excerpt from journal:

“My soul has never been ruled by the hope of glory, and never have I dreamed of having laurels grace my brow. My lips have only uttered songs of independence and freedom, even though while still in the cradle I might have been aware of the sound of the chains that would forever imprison me, because the shackles of slavery are the patrimony of women.”

Does this sound contradictory? Never dreaming, yet singing songs of independence? 

Is the reference to chains too harsh, too accusatory? Or is my deliberate vagueness successful here?

Item

Loose sheet of paper folded and stuck in between pages: a few poems by Emily Dickinson, in her writing, with what looks like a draft of a translation into Galician. Dickinson is hard to understand in English, let alone to translate.

Excerpt from journal

“Oh woman! Why, when you are so pure, must the hideous shadows of the world’s evils come forth, casting a pall over the pure light that shines from your eyes? Why do men defile you, dirtying you with the filth of their excesses, scorning and later despising their own horrible disarray and feverish delirium while you lie exhausted, near death?”

I might have to cite some of the sources I consulted for this part, because it may offend some readers. I’ll need proof in wring that men act in such a vile way toward women. The question is: can I find those sources in written form or are they just old wives’ tales?

Excerpt from journal

“Sharp, wrenching pains caused by what is no more, fleeting changes, eternal affirmations of guilt, useless repenting, and a desire to be virtuous in the future, to have an honorable, unsullied name that can be surrendered to the man who makes us a sincere offer of a life bereft of wealth, yet rich in kindness and new sensations.

These are the struggles, always provoked by the remorse that keeps vigil over our sleep, our hopes, our ambitions.

 And all of this is caused by just one weakness!”

Am I straying too far from artistic creation by writing about things I’ve called remorse and struggle? Have I painted too dark a picture? Does this sound too hopeless? I wonder if future readers will understand the reference I’m making with the term weakness. Will they think it’s a weakness that comes from within or is imposed on women? Will they bother to ask themselves, as readers, what I think? Am I asking too much?

From the Journal as well:

Item

Smallish envelope addressed to A with brief note. “Could this have been Aguirre? The one who drowned? Who is linked to Rosalía sentimentally by some sources, reliable or not?

Item

[Description: a number of references, some in form of lists, others of articles or mentions in local printed media, of women writers and artists from beyond Galicia. Each reference will need to be researched and data provided before it can be included in the catalogue of the journal’s contents.]

Epilogue to Introduction:

I am the one telling Lavinia’s story of Rosalía as young writer and thus I am the author of the above, where my name is also listed. Let me make this very clear: I am not Lavinia. Although I can’t provide any details at this time, I want you to know that I found notes by Dr. Lavinia Rivers - oddly enough - in one of the drawers of my desk. It was a real surprise.

Now you might be wondering, if you’ve read any of her previous stories: Lavinia is a fictional character, right? And you might wonder who has the journal kept by Rosalía that Lavinia spent so much time reading and rereading, researching? Shouldn’t it be with Lavinia’s notes? Who would want it if I can’t locate the journal? Since it seems I’m being asked to help, I need to be asking a lot of questions. I, more than anybody else, want to find the journal now that has been found.

Note: Is this an Epilogue or a Prologue? 

Note: The nineteenth century or the twenty-first?