Xela Arias, to whom the 2021 Galician Literature Day is dedicated.REAL ACADEMIA GALEGA / Europa Press
Feminist.
Nationalist.
Breaker.
Galicia gives herself to commemorate her lyrics to a contemporary poet as forceful as she is apparently fragile.
A writer as resounding in her demands as she has been silenced for years: a “singular, transgressive and committed voice”, in the words of the Royal Galician Academy that has chosen her to dedicate this year the Día das Letras Galegas, which is celebrated today and commemorates the publication in 1863 of the first edition of
Cantares gallegos
, the collection of poems by Rosalía de Castro turned into the great symbol of the Galician Rexurdimento.
A woman of the generation that renewed Galician poetry in the 80s and was a pioneer in the translation of classics.
Xela Arias, born in Lugo in 1962 although she spent most of her life in Vigo until her sudden death in 2003, is still in force.
And it becomes fashionable.
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"They wanted to beatify her, as they wanted to do with Rosalía de Castro, that is why the patriarchy called her Xeliña, but she stirred and Galician feminism rose up," says writer Eli Ríos, a member of the Galician feminist literary critic platform A Sega. "She was very uncomfortable, she put on the table the real problems, the poetry of the moment that insisted on the metric was loaded and they have had it silenced, hidden, until now".
Ríos, who is also a teacher at a high school in Baiona (Pontevedra), is impressed by the reaction of the students who are now beginning to discover Arias's texts. "They live Xela's poetry, it hooks them," she enthuses. But she is even more impressed that Arias's books have reached school libraries, courtyards, and backpacks. "For years you couldn't find one."
The consecration of Día das Letras has swept away oblivion. Publishers have reprinted the author's works. This is corroborated by the poet Dores Tembrás. “There are going to be a lot of people who will discover Xela Arias now. Xerais has already published his
Poetry reunited
(1982-2004) and marked his recognition. Now we see the kids coming into contact with her work with ease, which she always had to connect with young people ”. Tembrás, founder together with the poet Antía Otero of the Apiario publishing house, highlights the “non-explicit feminism, of rebellion and permanent questioning that
Darío
is
daily
[poems dedicated to her son published in 1996] where motherhood is shown as a vital attitude and there are not many references that dealt with motherhood at that time.
It opens a very interesting path, which connects with the positions of American feminists of the 70s and 80s ″.
Xela Arias, in the foreground, the Xeráis publishing house in the 90s XERÁIS EDITIONS / Europa Press
The
poet's son, Darío Gil Arias, also constantly returns
to Darío every day
. He lost it very young, just nine years old, and he recognizes that immersing himself in this book is one way to still have it. "Naturally, it is my mother's work that excites me the most and every time I return to her I get some more experience, not only related to motherhood, but also some life lesson that she has not been able to give me in any other way", Explain. Darío Gil also extols committed feminism that, like nationalism, his mother openly claimed "as a fight against submission."
Arias published his first book,
Denuncia do equilibrium,
in 1986. But it would be in 1990 with his work
Tigres coma cabalos
(Tigers like horses), which had as one of his references the Lou Reed of Magic and Loss, with which he would achieve recognition .
The book, a kind of dialogue between her poems and the photographs of Xulio Gil, her husband of 10 years, which showed the author naked, shocked, with its rabid contemporaneity, the literary community of the moment.
“Many were then left alone with the message of his nude.
I remember a chronicle, when she died, in which they despised her as a 'poet of nudity'.
They could not devalue it more ”, recalls Eli Ríos.
Against this, he contrasts "strength and modernity" of this transgressive collection of poems.
Xulio Gil has just attended the inauguration of the exhibition at the Museo del Mar de Vigo, which compiles his large-format photographs accompanied by Arias's texts. He seems impressed. "She would be very proud, as I am, to see that this work is absolutely current." He recognizes that Arias opened the doors to many women of his generation, a select club of Galician poets who do not stop reaping national and international awards. “He led the way, willingly or unwillingly, but he did it naturally, just walking. She was a discreet and very tenacious person, always fulfilling her commitments and never haggling effort and time ”.
Discreet but risky. Committed to her work and her ideals. As the director of the Xerais publishing house, Manuel Bragado, has said in
Darío on a daily basis
"Xela shows herself more naked than when she was photographed naked for
Tigres eat cabalos".
And now he is back, again in the open, exposing his tremendous relevance.