(1837-1885) poet, novelist
Rosalia de Castro was born in Santiago de Com-postela, a region in the northwest of Spain where Galician, similar to Portuguese, was the dominant dialect. She was illegitimate, the child of Teresa de Castro y Abadia, a Galician from a well-off family, and Jose Martinez Viojo, a seminarian who eventually rose to become the chaplain of Iria. Castro was raised in the countryside with a peasant family and then “reclaimed” by her mother when she was 13. Thus, her early years gave her the opportunity to learn the folklore and songs of Galicia, while her adolescence introduced her to a more traditional education typical for women of her time: learning how to play music, draw, and speak a foreign language.
At the age of 21, Castro married another Galician, Manuel Murgma, a dwarf who had favorably reviewed her first book of poems, The Flower (1857). After returning with her husband to her native Santiago in 1859, she bore six children and lived to bury three of them. Her life was difficult, characterized by illness, poverty, and the frustrations associated with being a woman writer in a male-dominated society.
Although her early work is written in the more widely read Castilian, the Spanish language, Castro later chose to write in her beloved Galician, the musical language in which Spanish medieval poetry was written. However, by the 19th century, Galicia was a poor region that provided many of the servants employed by wealthy Castilians, so her work was not appreciated or read by the majority of people. Critics now believe that writing in Gali-cian most likely limited Castro’s audience and postponed her current recognition as one of Spain’s major 19th-century poets.
Rosalia de Castro was the author of four novels. The first, Daughter of the Sea, was published in 1859, and the last, The First Madman, was published in 1881, both touching on the pain experienced by children. During this period she published two volumes of poetry written in Gali-cian, Galician Songs (1863) and New Leaves (1880), with themes of nature, solitude, and the plight of women and the poor. Her final volume of poems, On the Shores of the Saar (1884), expressing the disillusionment of adulthood, was written in Spanish and appeared shortly before she died of cancer.
Although Castro’s novels contributed to her fame, her poetry established her talent and success. As noted by Salvador de Madariaga, quoted in The Defiant Muse: Hispanic Feminist Poets from the Middle Ages to the Present, Castro’s poetry can be considered “the best written in Spain in the nineteenth century.”
Another Work by Rosalfa de Castro
Poems. Translated by Anna- Aldaz and Barbara N. Gantt. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
Works about Rosalfa de Castro
Dever, Aileen. Radical Insufficiency of Human Life: The Poetry of R. de Castro and J. A. Silva. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2000.
Stevens, Shelley. RosaHa de Castro and the Galician Revival. London: Tamesis Books Ltd., 1986.
