Rosalía de Castro (1837-85) was born at Santiago de Compostela, the daughter of María Teresa de Cruz de Castro e Abadía, a descendant of an old and noble Galician family; her father was unknown but is believed to have been a seminarian, José Martínez Viojo. Rosalía was brought up by her godmother, María Francisca Martínez, a relative of her presumed father, but later rejoined her mother in Santiago. She probably learned the songs and acquired her love of the Galician people from her childhood nurse, a peasant girl called ‘La Choina’. She attended school at the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País where she learned guitar music, drawing and French. Her interest in the literary and cultural activities of Santiago led to her frequenting the Liceo de la Juventud where she met other regional writers: Aurelio Aguirre, Eduardo Pondal, Rodriguez Seoane and her future husband Manuel Murguía. Her first poems were said to have been written at the age of eleven or twelve, possibly earlier; and she is known to have taken part in dramatic productions at the Liceo de la Juventud. In 1856-7 she went to Madrid to stay with an aunt, Doña María Carmen Lugín y Castro, where she continued to be active in literary circles and published her first collection of poems, La Flor, in 1857. Manuel Murguía was in Madrid at the same time and reviewed the book in El Museo Universal. Rosalía may also have known Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer personally during this time, for he had been in Madrid since 1854 and was a friend of Murguía's.

Rosalía and Manuel Murguía were married in October 1858. After her marriage Rosalía ceased to participate further in social or literary activities and showed neither inclination nor ambition to win fame or fortune as a writer. She did not, however, cease to cultivate poetry and prose, or to follow the literary life of her day. Her husband was a writer of poetry and novels as well as a critic of history and literature. His excellence as a historian and literary critic obtained for him a government post as archivist which required him to travel about the country a great deal. Rosalía's works appear to have been written principally to unburden her soul or as aesthetic relief to humdrum domesticity and were published at her husband's insistence. Murguía, recognizing his wife's genius, readily relinquished his own dreams of becoming a poet and novelist in favour of her superior talent and thereafter concentrated on history and criticism. The marriage was one of literary collaboration with Murguía encouraging Rosalía and arranging her publications and she helping in his historic and literary investigations, such as the collection of popular romances.

Rosalía bore seven children, two of whom, Adriano and Valentina, died in infancy. Rosalía was a devoted mother dedicating herself assiduously to her home and family. Her mother lived with them until her death in 1863.

Owing to the nature of Murguía's occupation, the family moved constantly. At times Rosalía followed; at other times she remained with the children and her mother at Santiago or Padrón. Long periods of separation from her husband could only be avoided by equally long sojourns in strange cities and every moment away from Galicia was torture for her. Consequently, some of her most beautiful poetry was occasioned by nostalgia and reverie while in ‘foreign lands’, though all her travels were merely to other parts of Spain.

Rosalía's health was never robust, and she appears to have suffered constantly with excruciating headaches but uncomplainingly. She died at the age of forty-eight from cancer, enduring the pain stoically right to the end. At her death she passed on to the ages as a legend and a myth to her countrymen and as a great poet to the Spanish-speaking world.

Rosalía wrote verse and prose in both Spanish and Galician. La Flor (1857) was followed by her first novel, La hija del mar, in 1859. A second novel, Flavio, whose hero is identified with Aurelio Aguirre, a lost love from her adolescence, followed in 1861. Two collections of verse, Cantares gallegos and A mi madre appeared in 1863 to be followed in 1866 by El cadiceño, a delineation of Galician manners, and Ruinas, a short serialised novel. In 1867 she published another novel, El caballero de las botas azules, whose Señor de la Albuéringa critics have identified with her husband, preceded by a literary-philosophical dialogue, Un hombre y una musa. Her second collection of Galician poems, Follas novas, written during 1870-71, was published in 1880. Her last novel, El primer loco, together with another delineation of Galician manners, El Domingo de Ramos, appeared in the same volume in 1881. Her last verse collection in Spanish, En las orillas del Sar, appeared in 1884. Her Canto gallego was published posthumously in 1923.

II

Cantares gallegos, from which “Nasín Cand' …” is taken, is a collection of glosses and paraphrases of popular Galician songs, refrains and sayings, in no apparent order, composed in the local dialect of the Sar, the Amabia and Ulla river regions, and of Santiago de Compostela. There is, however, a loosely containing framework consisting of the introductory poem in which the menina gaiteira, or ‘bagpipe girl’, is asked to sing, and a concluding poem where she reappears, apologizing for her efforts. Two other poems were added later outside this framework. The general pattern is freely varied, as is the manner of placing and incorporation of the motifs. A few of the poems are not based on a popular motif at all but are the result of Rosalía's own inspiration.

The reason for the popularity of Cantares gallegos is not far to seek. Not only do they purport to deal with the cultural inheritance of the people of this region of Spain, but they are also inscribed in a form basically no different from the oral tradition in which they survive. This, to some extent, accounts for the inconsistency in Rosalía's spelling (she continually attempts a phonetic reproduction of the sounds of the words) and her vocabulary and verb forms. A single noun, for example, can appear with various spellings, such as saudade, soida, suidade (‘solitude deriving from nostalgia’) and the Galician-Portuguese and Castilian forms of the verb ser can appear concurrently, as in the use of ês and eres for the second person singular in the same poem. Rosalía exploits this confusion to artistic advantage, utilizing either form to better suit the line or rhyme and producing an overall effect of fluctuation and vagueness consonant with her themes. This mixture of forms and the unfamiliar appearance of words will often become meaningful when the poems are recited aloud, as indeed they are meant to be.

Linguistically, Galician is closer to Portuguese than to Castilian. A considerable proportion of its vocabulary, for instance, is derived from archaic forms retained in Portuguese but replaced by other forms in modern Castilian, as is the manner of attaching pronouns to the end of the conjugated verb forms. The articles o, a, os, as and their contractions with prepositions, the frequency of the -iño diminutive, and many other aspects, relate it to Portuguese.

The sounds of Galician correspond roughly to those of Castilian, except for x which is pronounced like French ch or English sh and replaces Castilian ge, gi and j. The vowel system is like Portuguese, differentiating between open and closed e and o. Contraction is frequent, producing a diphthong from two single vowels, thus prolonging the vowel sound. Diphthongization of o to ue and e to ie in stressed syllables does not take place but the diphthongs ou and ie occur where Castilian has simply o or e, as in outra for otra and veiga for vega. The seseo is used by Rosalía, who often interchanges b and v, indicating that, for her, both have the same pronunciation /b/ as in Castilian.

Cantares gallegos is a blend of variety and contrast, gaiety and melancholy, realism and fantasy, vivid sensory impressions and vague, emotionally-charged suggestions. All Rosalía's basic themes are present, although some appear but briefly. Mood and tempo shift and alternate; neither predominates.

Follas novas, from which “Negra Sombra” is taken, is a heterogeneous collection of verse, remarkable for its extension, variety, and lack of fixed organization—hastily, we are told unwillingly—assembled for the press and not written primarily for publication. The collection is prefaced by one of Rosalía's most complete statements on her art and works: ‘Duas palabras d'a autora’, admittedly a turbulent and inconsistent document but nevertheless one that contains some of her most revealing ideas and opinions on the subject.

The poems are predominantly subjective: Galicia is represented here not so much by the land and its customs but by its collective human suffering often interpreted in terms of the poet's own.

The Follas novas were intended to be read and reflected upon. Consequently, the language is literary and elevated. It is still the regional tongue but the audience it is aimed at is the literate, cultured, refined, who perceive more of the national character than the people themselves, the theorists of the language, the patriotic fomentors of Rosalía's husband's literary circles, the dilettante readers, the literatos. A transitional marker between Cantares gallegos, with its popular inspiration and collective values, and En las orillas del Sar, Rosalía's last, purely subjective book, Follas novas is also her most extensive and complex, a book of agony and torment of searching and questioning, so that the language which is compelled to express the inner torments of mind and soul is developed to great heights of flexibility and suggestion.

Though the book was hastily assembled, some attempt was made at coherent organization. It is composed of five parts: ‘Vanguedás’, ‘¡Do ínimo!’, ‘Varia’, ‘Da terra’ and ‘As viudas d'os vivos e as viudas d'os mortos’. The titles give some clue to the contents of these parts, but even then there is considerable overlapping. The first two are primarily subjective, the third contains personal and popular poetry, the last two are more objective, the dramatization of sentiment of the others, as in Cantares gallegos.

III

Both “Nasín Cand' …” and “Negra Sombra” are available in an English prose translation by John F. Nims (The Poem Itself), and have also been translated at least once into Spanish verse: the former, by Juan Barja de Quiroga, and the latter, by Mauro Armiño. As far as I am aware neither of the two has been rendered previously into Catalan.

Following are the English and Catalan verse translations of both poems [preceded by the Galician original text and a Spanish translation], together with an analysis of and commentary on the Spanish translations, a discussion of such technicalities as metre, rhyme, imagery, lexis and syntax, insofar as they are found to affect the end-product in each case, with a concluding review of pertinent aspects of poetry in translation—its theory and practice—in the final section.

“NASíN CAND' AS PRANTAS NASEN”

Nasín cand' as prantas nasen,
No mes das froles nasín,
Nunha alborada mainiña,
Nunha alborada d'abril.
Por eso me chaman Rosa,
Mais á do triste sorrir,
Con espiñas para todos,
Sin ningunha para ti.
Dés que te quixen, ingrato,
Todo acabou para min,
Que eras ti para min todo,
Miña groria e meu vivir.
¿De qué, pois, te queixas, Mauro?
¿De qué, pois, te queixas, di,
Cando sabes que morrera
Por te contemplar felís?
Duro cravo me encravaches
Con ese teu maldesir,
Con ese teu pedir tolo
Que non sei qué quer de min,
Pois dinche canto dar puden
Avariciosa de ti.
O meu coraçón che mando
C'unha chave para ó abrir;
Nin eu teño máis que darche,
Nin ti máis que me pedir.
Nací en el mes de las flores,
cuando las plantas nací
en una suave alborada
una alborada de abril.
Por eso me llaman Rosa,
la del triste sonreír
con espinas para todos
sin ninguna para ti.
Desde que te quise, ingrato,
todo acabó para mí,
que tu eras para mí todo,
mi gloria y aún mi vivir.
¿De qué pues te quejas, Mauro?
¿De qué pues te quejas, di,
si sabes que moriría
por contemplarte feliz?
Duro clave me clavaste
con ese tu maldecir,
con ese tu pedir loco.
¡No sé qué quiere de mí!
Pues ya te di cuanto pude,
avariciosa de ti,
mi corazón con su llave
te mando. Así lo has de abrir.
Ni yo tengo más que darte
ni tú ya más que pedir.
I was born when the plants were born;
in the month of the flowers I was born;
in the gentle dawn,
on an April dawn.
And so, they call me Rose,
she of the rueful smile,
with thorns for everyone—
though not a single thorn for you.
Ingrate, since I spoke my love,
everything for me has ended,
you who were my all in all,
my glory and my life.
Of what, then, do you moan, Mauro?
Say, of what, then, do you moan?
when you know that I would die
just to see you satisfied?
You wound me with a cruel knife,
cursing as you do,
making mad demands.
What is it you want of me,
since I gave you what I could,
hungering for you?
Now, I send my heart to you
with a key to open it;
I have no more to give to you,
you no more to ask of me.
Naixí quan les plantes neixen,
al mes de les flors naixí,
en una tendra albada,
en una albada d'abril.
Per això em diuen Rosa,
però la del somriure trist,
amb espines per a tothom,
sense cap per a tu.
Des que jo et volguí, ingrat,
tot acabà per a mi,
que tu eres la meva glòria,
el meu viure, tot per a mi.
¿De què doncs et queixes, Mauro?
¿De què doncs et queixes, digues,
quan saps que jo moriria
per contemplar-te feliç?
Un punyent clau em clavares
amb aquell teu maleir,
amb aquell teu demanar foll
que no sé què vol de mi.
Et vaig donar el que poguí
avariciosa de tu.
Doncs el meu cor jo t'envio
amb la clau per obrir-lo.
No tinc més que donar-te, ni
més que demanar-me.

An examination of the original poem makes it immediately obvious that the simple lyricism of Galician is translatable, more or less exactly, into Spanish, Catalan, and English. Strict adherence to the metre, rhythm and general patterning of the Galician, however, can be limiting whereas a rendering of the sense only with merely the vaguest hint of correspondence between Source and Target Language versions of the text would be the best alternative. The problems, if any, are of course fewer in the Romance languages (since this is a Romance text) than in a Germanic one (such as English is). Neither Spanish, nor Catalan, however, permit the sort of contractions that are possible in Galician, but English does, and although I have not availed of that possibility here, I do so in the next poem. But before I proceed to a more detailed analysis of these aspects of the various translations, I must outline the principal characteristics of the poem.

This poem, like all the others that Rosalía wrote, does not have a title. Moreover, it forms one of a series of cantares and there is, therefore, no reason to give it one since popular songs are generally known by their opening lines. The poem consists of 26 lines, divided roughly into a principal section with 22 lines and a concluding quatrain -the divisions roughly representing (i) a statement: an initial mood of happiness destroyed by ingratitude, unjustified complaint, malicious slander, and an insane request, and (ii) a proffered reconciliation. The sense of reality of the situation is conveyed by means of a direct address to the offending lover, Mauro, and takes the form of a monologue. This technique has the merit of eliminating description and explanation, for the suggestion of the setting and circumstances are given in the course of the monologue.

For extended narrative or dramatic compositions, Rosalía prefers the Spanish eight-syllable metre characteristic of the lyrical-narrative Romances. Here, she uses alternating lines of eight- and seven-syllables throughout.

All the compositions of the Cantares are based on rhyme of some sort; however, in Rosalía's case, the rhyme is not her master, but her servant. Never forced, vowels and consonants coincide easily, without the effect of having been deliberately striven after. The musical qualities of Galician offer many possibilities of assonance and rhyme which Rosalía exploits to the fullest. In Cantares there is usually assonance of one vowel throughout the composition but there is sometimes the assonance of mixed vowels varying from stanza to stanza. In “Nasín Cand' …” the assonance of the vowel i where it occurs in acute syllables gives to the poem a shrill plaintive tone whereas that of a in acute syllables though not so intense as i nevertheless produces an insistent, mournful effect.

Consonant rhyme, which is almost as frequent in Cantares, is usually reserved for compositions based on a fixed, literary form. Rosalía often rhymes a word with itself or a singular with a plural. In “Nasín Cand' …” where this type does occur—as in sorrir (‘smile’), vivir (‘life’), maldesir (‘curse’), obrir (‘open’) and pedir (‘ask’), the first three are infinitive-based substantives whereas the other two are pure infinitives; and nasen (‘born’), puden (‘give’)—the words do not occur in close proximity to one another.

Another characteristic feature of Cantares, inspired as they are by popular songs and hence deriving their poetic techniques from them, is that of ‘repetition’ which occurs in numerous patterns. Apart from the repetition of sounds and stresses in regular patterns (‘rhyme’ and ‘metre’), there are other types of reiteration, such as ‘parallelism’: the repetition of a line verbatim or the repetition of a similar phrase or structure. In “Nasín Cand' …” it is not accidental that we have the following instances: nasín 1/2; nunha alborada 1/2; todo … para min 10, para min todo 11; De qué, pois, te queixas 13/14; cravo … encravaches 17; con ese teu 18/19; nin … mais que 25/26. This particular aspect of repetition known better as ‘anáfora’, the repetition of the same word at the beginning of a series of successive lines, is partly exemplified in lines 3 and 4, 13 and 14, 18 and 19, 25 and 26.

Rosalía's fondness for the use of the diminutive, itself a frequent occurrence in Galician speech, is to be found only in mainiña (from maina, ‘soft’, ‘gentle’ + iña). The effects of the use of the diminutive can be various, and rather than ‘small’, which is its basic meaning, it denotes affection, surrounding the noun with an aura of fondness and possessiveness as it does in this word. In Galician, the diminutive can also serve as a device making for economy and condensation in the language, sometimes with the overtone of ‘pretty’ or ‘nice’ and applied to something especially pleasing. With the diminutive, Rosalía maintains the familiar, intimate tone of domestic speech, revelatory of the naturally soft-spoken, warm-hearted sensuality of her people.

And a last word, concerning imagery. In Rosalía's poetry, certain metaphors recur so frequently and consistently that they begin to acquire the force of symbols, gradually losing their ties with the physical world and assuming purely spiritual significance. These recurrent images can be associated with each of the principal themes to which they correspond. Some still possess their obvious or traditional correlations and are readily comprehensible as universal poetic images, while others become more and more removed from the established system of values and take on an intensely personal significance for the poet. In this poem it is the ‘thorn’ and the ‘nail’, the espiña and the cravo which symbolize the pain of her existence but give her contact with reality and the dignity and divinity of human suffering. Whereas in both Spanish and Catalan the words may be used as such without seriously affecting their metaphorical significance, the ‘nail’ is quite inappropriate in English and must be replaced by ‘knife’.

In order not to cause a serious distortion of meaning or rhythm, my English translation does not strictly follow Rosalía's patterning of alternate lines of eight and seven syllables each. Instead it opts for a variation of between five and ten syllables, representing a total of 178 syllables as against 195 in the original. The advantage of such fluidity is that syntactically, too, the English can follow the Galician with relatively few inversions, or changes of word-order. I have also avoided using obsolete forms such as those of the second person singular pronoun and corresponding verb, since they would have sounded stilted. The sole exception to obsolete usage is ‘ingrate’ 9, although it is more natural now to employ ‘ungrateful (one)’. I had originally favoured ‘with your malison’ 18, altered now to ‘cursing as you do’, since I felt that the word, common in Middle English, and derived from Latin via Anglo-French, not only echoed maldesir (Galician), maldecir (Spanish), and maleir (Catalan), but also emphasized the initial sound of ‘mad’ in the following line.

The almost colloquial language of the original also remains unaffected in my English translation with few exceptions. So, it is impossible to render the diminutive—iña in English without sounding ludicrous. I have not intentionally striven after ‘equivalent effect’ in preferring the more ornate ‘give to you’ 25, to the simpler ‘give you’; I have resisted sounding prosaic. My English translation has not been able to recapture the fine alliteration of line 17, Duro cravo me encravaches, although it is partly retained in the Catalan, and, of course, wholly in the Spanish, where the Galician r in cravo and encravaches really represents the letter l in both these languages.

Syllabically, the Catalan translation does not correspond with the Galician at lines 3, 9 and 12, being one syllable short in the first two cases and one syllable longer in the third. In line 3, the Galician diminutive cannot be reproduced adequately and in line 9, the liaison of jo and et in the Catalan is responsible. My inversion of the order of lines 11 and 12 of the original to prevent the occurrence of lines of six and nine syllables respectively in the Catalan has had the effect of producing instead lines of eight syllables each in the translation. With the exception of these minor differences of rhythm it has been possible otherwise to retain the lexis and syntax of the Galician for the reasons adduced earlier.

Barja's Spanish translation, in the main, follows the original. Exigencies of rhythm, however, lead to the following differences or modifications: the inversion of lines 1 and 2 and later lines 23 and 24; omission altogether of the preposition en (‘on’) 3, and the important adversative conjunction mais (‘but’) 6; insertion of the adverb aun (‘even’) 12; the adverb ya (‘already’) 21, (‘now’) 26; and the substitution of the conjunction si (‘when’) for cuando (‘when’, Galician cando) 15. Spanish and Galician not being too dissimilar in lexis in this poem, the translation is able to reproduce the felicities of the original with little difficulty.

“NEGRA SOMBRA”

Cando penso que te fuche,
Negra sombra que me asombras,
Ao pê dos meus cavezales
Tornas facéndome mofa.
Cando maximo que ês ida
No mesmo sol te me amostras,
I-eres a estrela que brila,
I-eres a vento que zoa.
Si cantan, ês ti que cantas;
Si choran, ês ti que choras,
I-ês o marmurio d'o río,
I-ês a noit ei-ês a aurora.
En todo estás e ti ês todo,
Pra min i-en min mesma moras;
Nin me abandonarás nunca,
Sombra que sempre me asombras.
Cuando pienso que te huyes,
negra sombra que me asombras,
al pie de mis cabezales,
tornas haciéndome mofa.
Si imagino que te has ido,
en el mismo sol te asomas,
y eres la estrella que brilla
y eres el viento que sopla.
Si cantan, tu eres quien cantas;
si lloran, tu eres quien llora,
y eres murmullo del río
y eres la noche y la aurora.
En todo estás y eres todo,
para mí en mí misma moras,
nunca me abandonarás,
sombra que siempre me ensombras.
When I imagine that you've fled,
gloomy shade that frightens me,
to my bedside yet again
you return to mock at me.
When I'm certain that you've gone
in the sunlight you appear,
and, you're the star that shines,
and, you're the wind that sighs.
If they sing, it's you who sings,
if they weep, it's you who weeps,
you're the murmur of the rill,
you're the night and you're the dawn.
You're everything and in everything;
for me, and in my self, you live;
and you'll never abandon me,
shade that ever saddens me.
Quan penso que te n'anares,
ombra fosca que m'espantes,
al peu dels meus capçals
tornes fent-me mofa.
Quan penso que te n'has anat,
en el mateix sol te'm mostres,
i ets l'estel que brilla,
i ets el vent que bufa.
Si canten, ets tu que cantes;
si ploren, ets tu qui plores;
i ets murmuri del riu,
i ets nit, i ets aurora.
tu estàs a tot arreu, i ets tot,
per a mi i en mi mateixa
vius; mai no em deixaràs,
ombra que m'ombreges.

My earlier remarks concerning “Nasín Cand' …” also apply here. This untitled poem, assigned to the second section of Follas novas, ‘¡Do intimo!’ is simple enough in its lyricism not to cause any headaches in its translation into Spanish and Catalan. The English translation is altogether a different matter—Rosalía's subtle handling of the language offering viable alternatives and multiple interpretations as I intend to show later.

Technically, the particular form this poem takes is the copla—a brief strophe of four lines of eight syllables each. Coplas generally occur in pairs, though they can also, and perhaps more frequently, stand alone. They can be amorous, satirical, philosophical, humorous, plaintive or religious in nature and contain one thought or emotion in brief, condensed form.

The mood is that of the Galician morriña—the passionate dark longing for something loved or absent. It has no sharply focused imagery; sound and rhythm constitute its physical being and most claim the attention. The black shadow, or gloom, of inescapable melancholy clings to the very words—negra sombra—with their identical length and accent—with which the poem also begins.

The rhythm itself is dependent upon a subtle handling of the eight-syllable line, in the patterning of its stresses. So, for example, in stanza one, the stresses fall on the first, third, and seventh syllables in the first two lines; they are hardly defined in the third; and are a bit off-beat in the fourth, falling on the first, fourth and seventh syllables.

Sound is dependent upon ‘repetition’, either in the form of vocalic or consonantal alliteration, rhyme, or, as is to be particularly noticed here, in ‘parallelism’. The construction of the poem is, in fact, parallelistic, sometimes reinforcing, as in the first lines of stanzas one and two; sometimes opposing, as in the first two lines of stanza three. ‘Anáfora’ occurs in the second and third stanzas with the repetition of i in the i-eres, i-ês sequences which accumulate a series of statements characterizing the sombra. Repetition by derivation is seen in the use of various forms of the same basic word such as cantan, cantas; choran, choras; sombra, asombras. Almost every element occurs twice, in slightly different form. The overall effect is like that of a spell, or incantation, melodious and vague, which is understood more by intuition than by reason.

An interesting feature of the poem is the concurrent use of estás and ês (eres) in the first line of stanza four. They are the forms of estar and ser respectively, the two verbs rendered in English by ‘to be’; the first indicates location or accidental quality, the second existence, so that here the meaning deepens.

And a last word, concerning imagery. The sombra, shadow or phantom, is Rosalía's most all-pervasive symbol in Follas novas. It is intrinsically linked to the dark tone of the book, to the obscurity and mystery which prevail in it. The shadow is visible but has no substance. Sometimes it is related to the shades of the dead, sometimes to misfortune (Span. desgracia), to disillusionment (Span. desengaño) or it may assume the guise of a phantom (Span. fantasma) which relentlessly pursues and accompanies the poet. This phantom or presence, loved or hated, represents the indefinable inner torment of the poet which haunts her incessantly. It can be fear, guilt, sorrow, or the keen sensibility of the poet to suffering or memories of the dead—all the doubt and anguish she experiences in the ‘dark night of the soul’. The shadow is always formless and elusive. In this poem the sombra becomes a pure symbol, detached from any specific reference, vague, all-pervasive and all-inclusive.

Metrically, my English translation is a compromise between rhythm and sense, dependent upon my final choice of lexis to represent but one interpretation of the multi-layered significance of Rosalía's poem. I have also opted for the contractions of pronoun and verb common to informal English speech rather than the full forms, for two reasons: (i) the language of the original is intended to be the conversational, colloquial representation of rural speech peculiar to that of an interior monologue; and (ii) formal speech-forms would sound pedantic unless the archaic combination of second person singular pronoun and corresponding verbs were employed. The result of these two considerations is, as with “Nasín Cand' …,” the production of a translation that approximates in syllabic distribution over the entire poem to 115—thirteen short of the original- avoiding a forced ‘tum-tee-tum’ effect if the eight-syllable Galician line were to have been strictly followed. The diversity of meanings possible in this poem are as follows: cando: when, just when, even as; penso: think, consider, imagine; fuche: flee, depart, escape; negra: black, gloomy, sinister; abandonarás: abandon, leave, cease molesting.

It is a tribute to Rosalía's poetic genius that diversity need not mean ambiguity. I exploit the situation by utilizing the alternatives as I see fit. Lines 2 and 26 are a case in point.

The Catalan translation is coloured by my own preferences in the English version. But, whereas, in the English, it was more difficult to achieve an ‘equivalent effect’ without ‘padding’—the lines consequently turning out to be of unequal length in terms of stresses—I have been able here to organize the quatrains on a regular basis of alternate lines of eight- and six-syllables each. The sacrifice I have had to make, of course, is to forgo Rosalía's maximo (Catalan imagino) for penso, repeating the first line of stanza one. As both words basically mean the same, there is perhaps not much harm done.

Armiño's Spanish translation is an accurate rendering of the original Galician, right down to the exploitation of ‘frighten/gloom’ in his asombras (ensombras for Rosalía's asombras 2/26. His syllabic count is the same as Rosalía's—eight per line, which he achieves by treating the second eres in line 12 as redundant and therefore dropping it altogether.

IV

In A Textbook of Translation, Peter Newmark lists eight principal and five subsidiary forms of translation as follows:

• (a)
  1. word-for-word translation—often shown as interlinear, with the Target Language (TL) text immediately below the Source Language (SL) words. The SL word-order is preserved and the words are translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context;
  2. literal translation, in which the grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest TL equivalent but the lexical words are again, translated singly, out of context;
  3. faithful translation—an attempt to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original within the constraints of the TL grammatical structures;
  4. semantic translation, which differs from ‘faithful translation’ only insofar as it must take more account of the aesthetic value of the SL text, compromising on ‘meaning’ where appropriate so that no assonance, word-play or repetition jars in the finished version;
  5. adaptation—the ‘freest’ form of translation used only for plays (comedies) and poetry, in which the themes, characters, plots, are usually preserved, the SL culture is converted to the TL culture and the text is rewritten;
  6. free translation, which reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original;
  7. idiomatic translation, which reproduces the message of the original but tends to distort nuances of meaning by preferring colloqualisms and idioms where these do not exist in the original; and,
  8. communicative translation, which attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original in such a way that both content and language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the readership.
• (b)
  1. service translation—a translation from one's language of habitual use into another language;
  2. plain prose translation;
  3. informative translation (mainly concerned with non-literary texts);
  4. cognitive translation, which reproduces the information in the SL text, converting the SL grammar to its normal TL transpositions, and normally rendering any figurative to literal language; and,
  5. academic translation, which reduces an original SL text to an ‘elegant’ idiomatic educated TL version which follows a (non-existent) literary register.

André Lefevre (Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint) cites seven different types:

1. phonetic translation, which attempts to reproduce the SL sound in the TL while at the same time producing an acceptable paraphrase of the sense;
2. literal translation, where the emphasis is on a word-for-word rendering of the original;
3. metrical translation, where the dominant criterion is the reproduction of the SL metre;
4. poetry into prose;
5. rhymed translation, where the translator ‘enters into a double bondage’ of metre and rhyme;
6. blank verse translation; and,
7. interpretation, either ‘versions’, where the substance of the SL text is retained but the form is changed, or ‘imitations’, where the translator produces a poem of his own which has ‘only title and point of departure, if those, in common with the source text’.

Together, these two writers alone produce a formidable list of possible approaches to translation—although what we have, in fact, is a considerable overlap of ideas. It is only the terminology that is different. How then should I define my own English and Catalan translations of Rosalía's poems and those of Juan Barja and Mauro Armiño?

Basically, all the translations seemed to have aimed at being faithful, with the Spanish and Catalan renderings inclining towards the literal. Insofar as the tendency in all of them is either to follow the metrical scheme of the originals closely, or, at least, to approximate to them, the translations can also be said to be metrical. My English versions tend more towards the semantic in their consciousness of the aesthetic value of the SL texts, compromising on ‘meaning’, especially in “Negra Sombra”, so that there should be no ‘jarring’ in the finished product.

As I have already indicated, both Spanish and Catalan lend themselves more easily than English to a reproduction of the felicities of the original poems—difficulties of exact correspondence being minimal and resulting either in syntactic transpositions or alteration of metrical patterns. Is there any serious harm in this procedure? I do not believe there is, as long as the translator neither misinterprets, nor misrepresents, nor misconstrues the meaning of his original. For, as Helen Rapp, observed: ‘No two languages match completely. Metaphors, similes and allusions are peculiar to the experience of the people who speak them, that is quite obvious; but even the grammar of a language, its architecture, its texture, in the same deep way expresses the culture of a nation and in turn forms it to some degree.’

Select Bibliography

(a) Galician texts and Spanish translations

Armiño, Mauro. Rosalía de Castro: Poesía. (Alianza Editorial: Madrid, 1979-80), pp. 142-5.

Barja de Quiroja, Juan. Rosalía de Castro: Cantares Gallego. (Ediciones Akal: Madrid, 1985), pp. 363-7.

Burnshaw, Stanley (ed). The Poem Itself. (Penguin Books: Middlesex, 1960), pp. 162-65.

(b) Biography and Criticism

Carballo Calero, Ricardo. Estudios Rosalianos. (Editorial Galaxia: Vigo, 1979).

Costa Clavell, Xavier. Rosalía de Castro. (Ediciós do Castro: Sada—A Coruña, 1985).

Kulp, Kathleen K. Manner and Mood in Rosalía de Castro: A Study of Themes and Style. (Ediciones José Porrua Turanzas: Madrid, 1968).

Mayoral, Marina. La Poesía de Rosalía de Castro. (Editorial Gredos: Madrid, 1974).

Montero, Eugenia. Rosalía de Castro: La luz de la negra sombra. (Silex, 1985).

(c) Translation Theory

Lefevre, André. Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint. (Van Gorcum: Assen and Amsterdam, 1975).

Newmark, Peter. A Textbook of Translation. (Prentice Hall: London, 1988).

(d) Language

Entwistle, William J. Las Lenguas de España: Castellano, Catalán, Vasco y Gallego-Portugués, Trad. Francisco Villar. (Ediciones Istmo: Madrid, 1973).

Fontanillo Merino, Enrique (Ed.). Diccionario de las lenguas de España. (Ediciones Generales Anaya: Madrid, 1985).