Galicia, A Sentimental Nation. Helena Miguélez-Carballeira
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see, then, how a curious evolutionary logic informs the historical transformation of Galician as a literary language. Early Galician-language poetry displayed the irritating roughness typical of country women, while its nineteenth-century counterpart has gained, in mother-like gentleness, a kind of soft-heartedness that avoids making any loud claims for itself. As this image makes clear, the transition is not one of progressive development, but one of implicit stagnation, and the specifically female body that serves as a thread between one and the other historical stage helps strengthen the point that the language’s state (and status) invariably falls out of favour with the established taste.
The identification of Galician poetry with femininity played an instrumental role in the ideological casting of Galician identity, first as naturally sensitive to lyricism and, ultimately, also as feminine. For this metaphoric assemblage to work, the historian sets out to settle the controversy over the feminine origins of popular poetry in Galicia, first of all by conceding in his Historia crítica that ‘las mujeres – ya de antiguo listas y poetisas – son según sabios autores cuentan, las inventoras de la poesía popular’ (women – from the earliest times smart, and poetesses – are, as wise authors tell us, the inventors of popular poetry) (1887: 86). In order not to run counter to the propositions of those learned men before him – to whom he will reverently refer as ‘el ilustre Sarmiento’ (the illustrious Sarmiento) and the ‘no menos ilustre marqués de Santillana’ (no less illustrious Marquis of Santillana) (86) – González Besada chooses to bypass this philological question by invoking the metaphoric equation between women and sentiment: ‘Siendo la mujer encarnación del sentimiento, es lógico y natural suponer que sea verdad la noble invención que se le atribuye’ (Seeing as women are the embodiment of sentiment, it is only logical and natural to suppose that the noble invention attributed to them is true) (1887: 87). Galician women’s momentous merit of bringing Galician popular poetry into being is gladly offered here as a historical concession. It will become apparent, however, that, whenever the metaphoric triad ‘women–sentiment–poetry’ is brought to bear on descriptions of Galician literature, it will act as a politically functional form of ingratiation. In other words, while Galician is portrayed as a tender and melodious language, perfectly moulded for the expression of sweet sentiments in all manner of nuance, the region and people that the language represents are simultaneously transformed into a feminine, sentimental entity, innately disinclined to violent action. The correlation between femininity and sentimentality is therefore historically significant, and was particularly aimed at dismantling alternative discourses of Galician sentimentality as a positive national narrative in circulation during the second half of the nineteenth century. By contrast, the link between sentimentality, femininity and Galician poetry acts as a channel for a less felicitous legacy for Galician identity:
Todas las mujeres tienen sus cualidades buenas ó malas, pero al fin y al cabo características y hasta me atreveré á decir originales; además de éstas que bien pueden llamarse anímicas porque radican en el alma, hay otras que más que tales, son rasgos distintivos, perfiles fisonómicos. Pues bien: la poesía no en vano pertenece al sexo y por eso no es de admirar que esté adornada de esas cualidades y aquellos rasgos … La espontaneidad, la sencillez y la ternura son los perfiles fisonómicos, los rasgos distintivos, las cualidades que afectan á la forma de esas composiciones. (1887: 104, emphasis in the original)
(All women have their good and bad qualities, but after all they are specific to them and even, dare I say, original; apart from these, which can well be called qualities of the soul, because this is where they are rooted, there are others that rather than qualities are distinctive features, physiognomic traits. Well then: it is not in vain that poetry belongs to the fair sex, and so it is not surprising that it is embellished by those qualities and those features … Spontaneity, simplicity and tenderness are the physiognomic traits, the distinctive features that affect the form of those compositions.)
While the features of spontaneity, simplicity and tenderness are presented as the desirable, natural adornments of a language that has been described as feminine, these traits are quickly assigned to Galician-language poetry with a variety of debilitating effects. Spontaneity, for example, is defined as ‘algo parecido á la irreflexión en las personas’ (something similar to a lack of reflective thinking in people) (1887: 110, emphasis in original): the historian is quick to dwell again on the correlation between Galicians, their natural poetic streak and, ultimately, their inability for measured thought and their irresponsibility (111). The quality of simplicity is also endowed with negative connotations, as Galician-language poetry is further described as unfit to don the luxurious garbs of historical or romantic poetry. Here the link with images of the female body and its associated wavering between the pull of vanity and the duty of self-effacement is clear:
No andan los versos de Galicia cargados de cruces, que en poesía son palabras, como cualquier empleado público ó benemérito militar, ni andan tampoco revestidos de polisón, como dama presumida, ni gastan diges ni alfileres como polluela presuntuosa. Viste simplemente el severo y sencillo traje que el pudor le impone, y pienso que no está exenta esta virtud de cierta y disculpable vanidad, si es que tan plebeya dama puede compaginarse con tan aristocrática señora. (1887: 111, emphasis in original)
(Galician poetry is not laden with crosses, which in poetry are words, like any civil servant or distinguished soldier, nor is it dressed up in the bustle skirts of a vain lady, nor does it wear trinkets and brooches like a presumptuous girl. It is dressed straightforwardly in the austere and simple outfit that her modesty dictates, and I think that this virtue is not without a certain excusable vanity, if such a plebeian woman can be associated with such an aristocratic lady.)
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