were words breathed from her very soul, and we English can translate them by our own equivalent—
“Home, sweet, sweet home.”
Thierry said of the Ancient Britons that they lived upon poetry, and their poets had but one theme, the destiny of their country, its sorrows and its hopes. The Gallegans come of the same Celtic stock, and their love of poetry and their passion for home are quite as intense. “A Gallegan sticks to his native land,” says Failde, “like meat to the bone.”
Rosalia’s poetry, though full of majestic sadness, is by no means pessimistic; she is full of Christian resignation, but she is not devoid of Christian hope. “Rosalia,” wrote Emilio Castelar, “by her Gallegan lyrics has become a star of the first magnitude in the vast horizon of Spanish art.” There is nothing more tender or more full of feeling to be found in Spanish poetry than her lyric, “Padron, Padron.” One of the most striking characteristics of this poetess was her insight into the relationship between the exterior and the interior world. To her the earthly horizon was an emblem of the horizon that spreads before the human mind, the light of the stars spoke to her of the light of the eyes; a shower of rain reminded her of human tears, electricity in the clouds brought to her poetic mind the electric current of human sympathy. Nature spoke to her, and she listened. There is no effort about her verses; they are the outpourings of a poetic soul, candid and pure and simple and sparkling as the limpid waters of her native streams. “I have only had a village education,” she says naïvely in one of her prefaces, and in another she says, “We women are like a harp with only two strings, imagination and sentiment”;[200] and she adds that if a woman touches science she impregnates it with her innate debility.(!!) Rosalia writes because she cannot help writing; she is like a musical instrument that sounds because the strings are touched.
“Aimer, prier, chanter, voilá’ toute sa vie ...”
As de Voguë said of the Russian poets, “Les poetes Russes no sont et ne seront jamais traduits,” so it is with the poetry of Galicia. Both the Russian and the Gallegan are full of sweet and tender and untranslatable diminutives infinitely musical and vividly expressive.[201] When we try to interpret them into a foreign tongue their music dies and their soul evaporates, leaving nothing behind but a dry husk of words.
Here is one of Rosalia’s shorter lyrics:
“Un-ha vez tiven un cravo
Cravande ne corazon
Y eu non m’acordo ẍa s’era aquel cravo,
D’ouro, de ferro, ou d’amor
Soyo sei que me fiẍo un mal tan fondo,
Que tanto m’atormentou
Qu’ eu dia e noite sin cesar choraba
Cal chorou Madanela n’a pasion.
—Señor, que todo o’ podedes,
Pedinele un-ha vez á Dios,
Daime valor par’ arrincar d’ un golpe
Cravo de tal condicion
E doumo Dios e arrinqueino,
Mais ... quen pensara?... Despois
Ẍ non sentin mais tormentos
Nis soupen soupen qu’ era dolor
Soupen sô, que non sei que me faltaba
En donde o cravo faltou,
E seica, seica tivan soidades
D’aquela pena.... Bon Dios!
Este barro mortal qu envolve o esprito
Que-o entendera, Señor?”
I have translated it as literally as possible for those of my readers who may not be able to read the original—