Archived translations from Galician to English of poems by Rosalía de Castro

A Few Words About Rosalía de Castro

The poetry of De Castro's Galician volumes—"Cantares Gallegos" (1863) and "Follas Novas" (1880)—at times poignant, others assertive, affirms the fullness of the feminine personality and champions the overlooked plight of the disadvantaged, the emigrant, the widow and the orphan. Her 1884 volume of Spanish poetry entitled, "En las orillas del Sar," is a brooding reflection on the immanent tragedy of living, a discourse reminiscent of existential pessimism.

In the year 1947 the Fundación Rosalía de Castro (Rosalía de Castro Foundation) was born with the express goal of purchasing De Castro's last residence and of perpetuating her memory and literary legacy. The arduous task of acquiring the house where she last dwelled dragged on until 1971, but at length, on July 15, 1972, the rehabilitated house opened to the public refurbished as a house-museum.

In July 1951 the Rosalía de Castro Foundation organized a "literary pilgrimage" in her honour. An amateur enthusiast recorded the singular event and his film is reproduced below (min. 8:38-27:34). The extraordinary footage recorded the presence of Gala Murguía de Castro between min. 20:52 and 21:16, and from min. 24:31 to 25:02, and it also recorded the aspect of several places mentioned in her mother's poetry.

By organizing that literary pilgrimage and other events of a similar nature the Rosalía de Castro Foundation helped to preserve Galicia's cultural and national identity in what was socially and politically a hostile environment, for it was not until July 25, 1965, that Franco's regime condoned the sole use of the Galician language in a public ceremony. This was the votive Catholic mass for De Castro,

The city of Santiago de Compostela quintessence of the Galician territory is an administrative, cultural and religious capital; in days of yore it was usual to dub her, "Santiago de Galicia." The city's patron saint is also Spain's and as a result the holiday combines the sacred with the profane. The date of the official state offering to St. James [July 25] coincides with the date of the most important country fair in the Autonomous Community and with the celebration of its Day of the Emigrant. Furthermore July 25 is also "Galicia Day," festivity established in 1920 by Galician nationalists, many of whom were devout Catholics who made this date their rallying banner; and it was at Santiago de Compostela on July 25, 1965, that Jesuit father Xaime Seixas officiated the first Catholic mass spoken exclusively in the Galician language in memory of Rosalía de Castro.

(Ramón Blanco. "'Gaudeamus, Exultemus' y 'Ultreia.'" ABC D Las Artes y Las Letras, 913, 25 July 2009)

Although the bitter division persists that De Castro triggered in Galician society by her rebellious, loving use of the native language, the resilience of her reputation together with the affection lavished on her memory by many at home and abroad portends that in a not too distant future she will cease to be a "foreigner in her homeland" (the title of a recent book about De Castro written by Francisco Rodríguez Sánchez).

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Portugal and Rosalía de Castro

On Wednesday August 4, 1954, Porto the capital of Northern Portugal unveiled a marble statue of De Castro in this public square.

The podium in Porto's Praça da Galiza on August 4, 1954

Source: Arquivo Municipal do Porto: Homenagem a Rosália de Castro

In attendance were among other distinguished authorities José Machado Vaz the president of Porto's City Hall, the commander of Portugal's 1st Military Region, the prelate of Porto bishopric, the dean of Porto University and three Galician mayors. Gala, then 82 years old, unveiled the statue. Portuguese lawyer, writer and alderman Manuel de Figueiredo addressed the gathering and said that De Castro was one of the most beautiful and lyrical figures of Spanish literature. After him the Portuguese writers Aurora Jardim, Ludovica Frías de Matos and the Brazilian-born Zita Leão each laid a wreath at the foot of the monument.

José Machado Vaz places a bouquet at the foot of the statue

Source: Arquivo Municipal do Porto: Homenagem a Rosália de Castro

Spanish writer Eugenio Montes lectured to a packed house later that day in the Literature/Music Room of Porto's Municipal Public Library. His dissertation entitled, "Rosalía de Castro, Star In the West," raised an enthusiastic round of applause. He said later that this had been the most moving conference of his entire life.

The audience in the Literature/Music Room

Source: Arquivo Municipal do Porto: Homenagem a Rosália de Castro

The day of celebration finished with a gala dinner hosted by City Hall.

The evening banquet

Source: Arquivo Municipal do Porto: Homenagem a Rosália de Castro

The following year the Gabinete De História Da Cidade Do Porto published a 48-page booklet entitled, "Homenagem a Rosália de Castro, agosto de 1954," with the text of the various speeches given and with the photographs taken during the 1954 event. According to the newspaper La Voz de Galicia of Sunday February 27, 1955, a simple but "impressive" ceremony was held in Porto to mark the occasion. Under a steady drizzle the Galician chorale Follas Novas sang De Castro's archetypal poem, "Negra Sombra" (see poem 10).

On Saturday June 4, 1955, illustrious writer Maria da Graça Freire pronounced a conference entitled, "Evocação de Rosalia de Castro," in the Noble Room of Porto's Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis. A massive audience of men of letters, artists and dignitaries heard her eulogize De Castro with these moving words: "The spirit of Rosalía and the spirit of her people are inseparable." The lecture was interrupted several times by hearty applause. María M. Couto Viana recited some of De Castro's verses and she like the main speaker enjoyed a great success at the event.

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Joaquín Rodrigo and Rosalía de Castro

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) the Valencian composer and virtuoso pianist whose most famous pieces are Concierto De Aranjuez and Fantasía Para Un Gentilhombre composed a classical score for soprano and orchestra entitled, "Rosaliana," which sets to music four excerpts of De Castro's poetry. One is presented next.

Cantarte Hei, Galicia.

Federico García Lorca and Rosalía de Castro

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) travelled to Galicia at least three times: in 1916 to Santiago de Compostela with fellow undergraduates and twice in 1932 when he with other members of an "Intellectual Cooperation Committee" laid a bouquet at the foot of the monument to De Castro in that city.^1,2

The visits inspired him to write "Salutación elegíaca a Rosalía de Castro" in 1919,

Elegiac Greeting for Rosalía de Castro

Amancio Prada

He also wrote six Galician poems between 1932 and 1933, which he acceded to publish in 1935 at the insistence of a friend.

Their translated titles ³ are:

1.   Madrigal to the City of Santiago
2.   Festive Pilgrimage in Honour of Our Lady of the Barge (see poem 7)
3.   Song of the Shopkeeper Boy
4.   Nocturne of the Dead Adolescent
5.   Lullaby for Dead Rosalía Castro (this full poem is translated next)
6.   Dance of the Moon in Santiago

Lullaby for Dead Rosalía Castro

(Canzón de cuna pra Rosalía Castro, morta)

Rafa Lorenzo from the 2007 album Primos Hermanos.

Ramón Cabanillas and Rosalía de Castro

Ramón Cabanillas Enríquez (1876-1959) was born in Cambados (Pontevedra). Poet, playwright, journalist, clerk, secretary, accountant, he managed the Centro Gallego De La Habana during his stay in the Caribbean island between 1910 and 1915.

A moderate Galician-nationalist, he wrote the anthem of Acción Gallega, spearhead of the Galician agrarian movement which proclaimed the right of peasants to own the land they tilled.

He ran for but failed to win a seat in the Constituent Assembly of the Second Spanish Republic (1931).

In April 1958 his many admirers crowned him "Poet of the Race" in Padrón (radio recording of the event). Cabanillas broadcast his epitaph, "I wish to have inscribed on the sepulchre that grants me rest this one word that has light: Galician; and another that owns wings: Poet."

Three of his poems became popular songs; their translated titles are: Rise Up!, Brother Daniel, and Poor Madwoman.

To Rosalía de Castro

(A Rosalía de Castro. Da Terra Asoballada, 1917)

Juan Pardo from the 1976 album Galicia, Miña Nai dos Dous Mares.

José Martínez Ruíz alias Azorín and Rosalía de Castro

José Martínez Ruíz alias Azorín (1873-1967) the Alicantine journalist, playwright, poet and writer was the prime example of that group of Spanish authors nicknamed "the generation of 1898." His style was terse, concise, full of short sentences, far removed from the traditional grandiloquence of Spanish prose. His contemporaries tagged him a master of the language. He entered politics and was appointed Undersecretary of Public Education twice. The Royal Spanish Academy inducted him on October 26, 1924.

Azorín paid homage to De Castro in an article written for the conservative newspaper ABC,

Rosalía has a lively, clear bearing and an expression of indefinite, sweet sorrow. She has sung of her country's scenery—so beautiful—and has seen pass by her door, "when the north wind blows hard and the fire burns in the hearth," the unending caravan of farmers who abandon their native land and go looking for the sea to travel to faraway places; the "gaunt, naked and hungry" farmers who leave the poet "distressed and saddened, as comfortless as they" ("How much they must suffer here, O homeland! If presently your sons depart without sorrow!"). Rosalía has crossed in swift journey the desolate and scorched Mancha; she has toured plentiful Extremadura; she has stared at the fine and clear landscapes of Alicante; she has let her eyes rove through the orchards of Murcia. All this has its beauty and charm but the poet glances backward—with so much love!—to her beloved Galicia. "The ground covered with dear grasses and flowers all year long, the hills full of pines, oaks and willows, the brisk winds that blow, the fountains and cascades pouring forth frothing and crystalline summer and winter over smiling fields or in deep, shaded hollows...Galicia is a garden always where one inhales pure aromas, cool air and poetry."

She was born on February 21, 1837; she died on July 15, 1885. Her last sigh was reserved for the open sea; the vision of the unceasing surf and of the infinite horizon was her last vision. "When I saw her confined between the four boards which await us all," her companion has written, "I exclaimed: Rest at last, poor tormented spirit, you who have suffered so much in this world!"

Rosalía: You have not died; your image lives on in our hearts, we who love the pure, delicate lyric and detest the bombast of officialdom and the evils that cause the good to leave the Motherland. Rosalía: One can read on your kind, sad face, as you have said in one of your poems, the vague promptings, the secret endearments...

(Azorín. "Rosalía de Castro." ABC 8 Jan 1914: 3-4, Leyendo a los poetas)

Miguel de Unamuno and Rosalía de Castro

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) the Basque poet, novelist and playwright was an ardent Spanish-nationalist intellectual who did not admit of a better vehicle for the loftier poetic expression than the Castilian language (September 18, 1931, address to the Spanish Congress). Nevertheless he contributed to the dissemination of De Castro's literary stature. The main criticism he levelled against hers and Galician poetry in general was its proclivity to lament, sentiment for which he saw no justification.

The following excerpt is from his essay, "Spanish wanderings and perceptions,"

That very sea which takes refuge there, in the southern firths of Galicia, between green arms of the country, is it not inspecting them for something it lost, or possibly as a means of forgetting its nagging woes? There, cuddled beside its eternal spouse, it slumbers and perchance it dreams. And perhaps it longs to be a river once more, a humble stream, a secluded creek. Who knows! Maybe the broad Bay of Arousa dreams about the [river] Ulla that renders its waters, or about the unfortunate [river] Sar sung by Rosalía. And all that is thirst—the sea is thirsty, it thirsts for the fresh water of the streams which flows down from the summits—an unquenchable thirst, a thirst that made Rosalía say: "O land, fertile and beautiful yesteryear, today and forever! / Seeing how sadly there shines our ill-fated star / From the banks of the Sar, / As I near the end I feel the consuming thirst, / Never allayed, that drowns all feeling, / And the hunger for justice that fells and crushes / When our complaints are snapped away / By the wind of a mad tempest."

(Miguel de Unamuno. "Junto a las Rías Bajas de Galicia." Andanzas y Visiones Españolas)

Manuel Curros Enríquez and Rosalía de Castro

Manuel Curros Enríquez (1851-1908) was born in Celanova (Ourense). Runaway teenager, Madrid City Hall clerk, journalist, war correspondent (wounded), failed student of Law, bohemian, Mason, Republican, scourge of the Roman Catholic Church (excommunicated), director of a failed newspaper in Cuba—his was an eventful life.

A renowned writer and poet, sometimes satirical, others sentimental, he like De Castro wrote in Galician and in Spanish.

Some of his poems became popular songs. Their translated titles are: Once Upon a Night in the Wheat Fields, The Month of May, How Did It Happen? and Those Eyes of Yours.

On May 25, 1891, the mortal remains of Rosalía de Castro were exhumed and carried in solemn procession from Padrón to Santiago de Compostela. The funereal train arrived in Santiago at 6:00 PM sharp. Two long rows of candle-bearing children and the orphéons of Galicia with their ensigns preceded the hearse which was adorned with ribbons, flanked by City Hall officials and by representatives of the Galician community in Cuba. There followed the hearse business organizations, political associations, writers, professors and teachers, a second car and the city's fire truck trailed by a multitude of students, newspapermen, bureaucrats, presidents of financial, legal, educational and business institutions, the dean of the university, construction workers and ordinary citizens.¹

Manuel Curros Enríquez delivered an eloquent eulogy while the cortege paused at the entrance to the university.

There he recited his poem, A Rosalía.

To Rosalía

(A Rosalía)

1.   Adriano Correia de Oliveira from the 1971 album Gente de Aqui e de Agora.
2.   Luis Emilio Batallán from the 1975 album Ahí Ven o Maio.
3.   Chingla from the 2023 album Cantarche ei Galicia.
4.   2NaFronteira
5.   Camerata Vivace