Spanish Poetry #39: Fragment of ‘Dicen que no hablan las plantas, ni las fuentes, ni los pájaros' by Rosalía de Castro
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by druida
Rosalía de Castro (1837-1885) was a Spanish poet and novelist who wrote in both Galician and Spanish and is considered one of the great poets of 19th century Spanish literature. She possesses a heartbreaking sensitivity, describing the Galician landscape in a unique way, which she depicts as a mysterious nature surrounded by a halo of indefinable sadness and melancholy.
They say that neither the plants speak, nor the fountains, nor the birds,
nor the wave with its rumours, nor the stars with their brightness,
they say it, but it is not true, for always when I pass by
they murmur and exclaim:
There goes the madwoman dreaming
With the eternal springtime of life and of the fields,
And soon, very soon, she will have her hair grey,
And shivering, frozen solid, that the frost covers the meadow.
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Header Image:
Portrait of Rosalía de Castro. Source: BNE
If I could understand the voice of nature like she does, what words would I hear? Her poem is very interesting. Thank you for sharing.
@yumiyumayume, natural elements and their voices in Rosalía de Castro's poetry often carry great symbolic weight. For example, rivers can represent the passing of time or the ceaseless flow of life, while forests and mountains can symbolise loneliness and isolation.
In an attempt to compare his style to Japanese poetry, we might say that it looks like Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉) in his attempt to capture ephemeral moments in the natural environment.
Thank you for reading my posts.
Thank you so much for educating me. To be honest with you, I'm not good at reading Western poets because we don't study them at schools. So, your information is really useful to me.
A beautiful poem!