Portuguese literature
smaller country, it is Galicia seen from without,[741] or sung from
memory. The ‘vintage songs and the gay din of chestnut gatherings’ are
no longer, as with Losada and Lamas, a part of life, but ‘a dream in
the ideal realm of thought’,[742] a subject of disillusion and regret.
_Folerpas_[743] (1894) by D. ELADIO RODRÍGUEZ GONZÁLEZ (born in 1864)
is also essentially not of the people. In its less elaborate poems it
often describes, attractively and with much colour, popular customs
and dances, the night of St. John, _as festas d’a miña terra_. Yet
after recording the pleasant superstition that on St. John’s Day the
sun rises dancing, the author must needs pause to say ‘away with these
fanatical beliefs, unworthy of a civilized region’, to which the answer
is that such reflections may be sincere but are unworthy of poetry,
and should be expressed in prose. But the author of these verses
can, when he wishes, identify himself with the peasants whose life
he depicts,[744] and is capable of writing poems of great delicacy.
The general impression is that he has not grown up among these scenes
but is observing them keenly as might a stranger. The edict of the
Archbishop of Santiago (June 26, 1909), which made it a deadly sin to
read _Fume de Palla_ (1909), by ‘ALFREDO NUN DE ALLARIZ’, as containing
impious, blasphemous, and heretical propositions, gave these poems
a wider publicity than they might otherwise have attained, and they
received a second edition in the same year. It certainly savours of
blasphemy and is bad criticism to call Curros Enriquez the Galician
Christ, but it is to be feared that the excommunication of the author
will only encourage him to abandon ‘simple verses written without
art’, as in his preface he describes these, for more studied poems
with a thesis to prove. It is perhaps disquieting to find that three
poets in most respects so different, agree in this, that between them
and popular poetry a gulf is fixed, owing to the sensitive aloofness
of a true poet (for Núñez González was undoubtedly the most talented
of the younger Galicians), or owing to the adoption of the superior
standpoint of the rationalist or the anticlerical. Younger poets of
remarkable promise and achievement are D. GONZALO LÓPEZ ABENTE (born
in 1878), a relative of Eduardo Pondal, whom he sometimes recalls in
the original inspiration of _Escumas da Ribeira_ (1914) and _Alento
da Raza_ (1917); D. ANTONIO NORIEGA VARELA (born in 1869), whose deep
love for his native moors and mountains gives an eternal magic to
_Montañesas_ (1904) and _D’O Ermo_ (1920); D. RAMÓN CABANILLAS, who
voices the sorrows and aspirations of Galicia in _Vento Mareiro_ and
_Da Terra Asoballada_ (1917); and D. ANTONIO REY SOTO, who, however,
writes chiefly in Castilian. D. XAVIER PRADO expresses the very soul
of the peasantry in _A Caron do Lume_ (1918). The poets of the last
half-century have unquestionably justified the literary revival of
the Galician language, and even if in the future no poetry of the
highest order be written in Galicia, it is unthinkable that so musical
an instrument should be allowed to perish. Galician poetry may be a
thin, an elfin music, a scrannel voice, as of a wind blowing through
tamarisks, but it has a natural charm, a raciness, a native atmosphere
which give it a peculiar flavour and attraction. Literary contests,
_veladas_, _certames_, _xogos froraes_, keep the flame of poetry alive
in Galicia, but in its anonymous form it is a very vigorous growth
which needs no fostering, and flourishes now as it flourished in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as it flourished in the time of
the Romans. Hundreds of anonymous _quadras_ (_cantiga_, _cantar_,
_cantariño_, _cantilena_, _cantiguela_, _cantiguiña_, _copra_, or
_canció_) have been collected in the _Cancionero Popular Gallego_
(Madrid, 3 vols., 1886) by JOSÉ PÉREZ BALLESTEROS (†1918). The peasant
women compose and sing their songs to-day[745] as when Fray Martín
Sarmiento (1695-1772) noticed that _en Galicia las mujeres no solo
son poetisas sino tambien músicas naturales_,[746] or the Marqués
de Montebello listened to _los tonos que a coros cantan con fugas y
repeticiones las mozuelas_, or the Archpriest of Hita watched the
cantaderas dancing (as well as singing) in neighbouring Asturias.[747]
The ancient _muiñeira_ rhythm continues, and the parallel-strophed
songs of the early _Cancioneiros_ have their echoes in the anonymous
poetry of to-day. It is, indeed, of interest to note how the poets of
the revival fall quite naturally into the same parallelism and the same
repetition.[748] Besides these _muiñeiras_ the popular poetry consists
principally of _quadras_.[749] Traditional _romances_ are nearly
non-existent. This popular poetry (soft, musical, malicious, satirical)
connects by a thread of anonymous song the Galicia of to-day with the
whole of its past life, and the revivalists are likely to prosper in
proportion as they seek their inspiration in popular sources, as did
Rosalía de Castro. For the Galician peasants, living in a land of
mists and streams, inlet arms of sea, dark pinewoods, deep-valleyed
mountains, green maize-fields, and grey mysterious rocks, a land of
spirits and fairies and witches, of legends and ruins, have the Celt’s
instinct and love of poetry. Poetry is their natural expression.
For prose in Galician literature there is less genius, and perhaps
less incentive, since the country has been described with intimate
knowledge and charm in the Castilian novels of Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán
(1851-1921) and Don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (born in 1870), and
more recently by Don Jaime Solá (born in 1877). But the value and
possibilities of Galician prose have been shown by D. AURELIO RIBALTA
(born in 1864) in _Ferruxe_ (1894) and by D. MANUEL LUGRIS Y FREIRE
(born in 1863) in _Contos de Asieumedre_ (1909). It is, indeed, in the
_conto_ that especial success has been won, and HERACLIO PÉREZ PLACER,
whose novel _Predicción_ appeared in 1887, is widely known for his
_Contos, Leendas e Tradiciós de Galicia_ (1891), _Contos da Terriña_
(1895), and _Veira do Lar_ (1901). _Contos da Terriña_, thirty-four
stories in some two hundred brief pages, are various and unequal in
value. Most of them are sad, even the harmless St. Martin _magosto_
ends in a death. They contain many intimate descriptions of Galicia
and the life of the villages about Orense. There is much pathos in
_Velliña, miña velliña!_, in _Rapañota de Xasmís_, and especially in
_Follas Secas_, an exquisite picture of an old peasant dying alone in
a dark room--its walls are black with smoke, yellow maize-cobs hang
from the ceiling--while through the open door come all the gay sounds
and colours of a Galician vintage. The poetess FRANCISCA HERRERA,
author of _Almas de Muller_ (1915) and _Sorrisas e Bágoas_ (1918), has
recently turned to prose with remarkable success in _Néveda_ (1920).
Few Galician poets have published volumes of prose, although many
have contributed as journalists to the local press, but it would be
difficult to find a prose-writer who is not also a poet.[750] And it
is by its poetry that Galicia has won for itself a notable place in
modern literature and added another leaf to the literary laurels of the
Peninsula.
FOOTNOTES:
[726] See Antolín López Peláez, _Poesías Inéditas del P. Feijoo ...
seguidas de las poesías gallegas ‘Dialogo de 24 Rusticos’ y ‘O Tio
Marcos da Portela’ por el P. Sarmiento_, Tuy, 1901.
[727] Cf. A. Ribeiro dos Santos, _Obras_ (MS.), vol. xix, f. 21:
_Galicia ... muito affeita desde alta antiguidade ao exercicio de
trovas e cantares._
[728] Or Rosalía Castro de (or y) Murguía. Her husband, DON MANUEL
DE MURGUÍA (born in 1833), author of _Los Precursores_ (1886),
_Diccionario de Escritores Gallegos_ (1862), and other works devoted to
the study of Galicia, its ethnology and history, is still alive.
[729] O winds of my country blowing softly together, Winds, winds,
gentle winds, O carry me thither! (1909 ed., pp. 95-8).
[730] _Follas Novas: Duas palabras d’a autora_, 1910 ed., p. 31.
[731] _Follas Novas_ (1910 ed.), p. 254.
[732] A sixth edition appeared in 1909, whereas most books of Galician
verse cling to the obscurity of their first edition or at best obtain a
second in the hospitable _Biblioteca Gallega_.
[733] _Esfolhada_ or _desfolla_: gathering to husk the maize.
[734] _Fiada_, _fiandon_: a rustic _tertulia_ (evening party) of women
to spin.
[735] _Fuliada_, _afuliada_, _folion_.
[736] In Tras-os-Montes potatoes are called _castanholas_, i. e. large
chestnuts, which recalls the fact that Andrea Navagero, eating potatoes
for the first time at Seville in 1526, considered them to taste like
chestnuts. In parts of Galicia they are called _castañas d’a terra_.
[737] _Soaces_, p. 156. The _espadela_ is the task of braking flax.
[738] Perhaps the only poem that might have been written by Pondal is
that on p. 177 (the first verse) of Rosalía de Castro’s _Follas Novas_
(1910 ed.).
[739] _Queixumes dos Pinos_ (1886), p. 101.
[740] For an earlier example of the same kind of tercets (_abacdcefe_)
see R. de Castro, _Follas Novas_, 1910 ed., p. 158.
[741] The very word _morriña_ is more common (in the sense of
_saudade_) at Madrid than in Galicia.
[742] _Salayos_, p. 65.
[743] Also _flepa_, _folepa_, _folepiña_, Portuguese
_folheca_--_floco_, _froco_, _copo_ (= ‘flake’).
[744] The passage (_Folerpas_, p. 182) in which a peasant, refusing
alms to an old woman, bids her beg of the rich, is scarcely drawn from
life.
[745] Cf. _Cancionero_, i. 50: _Cantade, nenas, cantade_; G. Ferreiro,
_Chorimas_, p. 76, _as cantiguiñas das moças_; R. de Castro, _Cant.
Gall._, p. 102, _As meniñas cantan, cantan_. Cf. also E. Pardo Bazán,
_De mi tierra_ (1888), p. 122: _las_ [_coplas_] _gallegas de las cuales
buena parte debe ser obra de hembras_.
[746] _Memorias para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles_
(_Obras Postumas_, vol. i, Madrid, 1775, p. 238, § 538).
[747] See _C. da Ajuda_, ed. C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos (1904), ii.
902.
[748] Cf. R. de Castro, _Cantares Gallegos_ (1909 ed.), p. 18
(_mantelo_, _refaixo_), p. 19 (_mar_, _río_), pp. 20-1 (_e-a_), p. 27
(_terras_, _vilas_), p. 29 (_pousaban_, _vivían_), p. 85 (_vestira_,
_calzara_); _Follas Novas_ (1910 ed.), p. 229 (_a-e_); _Aires d’a miña
terra_ (ed. 1911). p. 35 (_quería_, _pensaba_), p. 139 (_i-a_), p. 249
(_á miles_, _á centos_); _Chorimas_, p. 36 (_estrevidos_, _ousados_);
A. Camino, _Poesías Gallegas_, p. 19: _Qué noite aquela en que eu a vin
gemindo!_ (_chorar!_).
[749] Quatrains of which lines 2 and 4 are in rhyme or assonance, e.g.
_Ruliña que vas volando Sin facer caso á ninguen, Vai e dille á aquela
nena Que sempre a quixen ben_. _Tercetos_ are rarer (_aba_). Sometimes
the _quadra_ is really a tercet with line 1 repeated (_aaba_).
[750] D. Aurelio Ribalta is author in verse of _Os meus votos_ (1903)
and _Libro de Konsagrazión_ (1910); D. Manuel Lugris of _Soidades_
(1894), _Noitebras_ (1910); Snr. Pérez Placer of _Cantares Gallegos_
(1891). D. FLORENCIO VAAMONDE (born in 1860), author of a _Resume
da Historia de Galicia_ (1898), also wrote, in verse, _Os Calaicos_
(1894). Recently Galician literature has found a keen historian in D.
EUGENIO CARRÉ ALDAO, whose _Literatura Gallega_ (2nd ed., 1911) also
contains an anthology.
INDEX
A
Aboim (D. Joan de), 46, 52.
Abranches, Conde de, 88.
Abreu Mousinho (Manuel de), 203.
Academia das Sciencias de Portugal, 284.
Academia dos Esquecidos, 261.
Academia dos Generosos, 261.
Academia dos Singulares, 261.
Academia Real da Historia, 270.
Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 14, 15, 284, 294.