ராஜபார்வை - RAJAPAARVAI

Julia de Burgos 

In many Latin American and Spanish-speaking countries, it is traditional for a woman to take her husband’s last name with the added designation “de,” which literally translates as “of” but idiomatically means “belonging to.” This practice reinforces the patriarchal nature of many of these cultures. But, Julia Constancia Burgos García (Julia de Burgos) started  signing as  Julia de Burgos - “a defiant announcement” indicating  that “she will henceforth be of herself, and belongs to herself”. “I am life, strength, and woman” is one of her memorable phrases. 

She was an outspoken activist on civil rights issues relating to women, and is also an ardent advocate for the independence of Puerto Rico. Her poems mainly addressed issues relating to the social struggles faced by the oppressed, particularly women. 

The poem:  “To Julia de Burgos” is her most renowned poem. The reader could easily perceive the spirit of the revolution and resistance that emerges at the end of this poem. The poem  denounce oppression, incite revolution and even function as sites of rebellion and transformation. 

In real life, women are tied to men, families and tradition which handicaps  their understanding of her clean, pure womanhood. The poem is a movingly truthful auto critique that celebrates the inner strength of woman as embodied in her mind and her determination to keep that mind unattached, singular, and uninfluenced by the voice the public thinks she is.  

TO JULIA DE BURGOS

- Julia de Burgos

Already the people murmur that I am your enemy
because they say that in verse I give the world your me.

They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos.
Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice
because you are the dressing and the essence is me;
and the most profound abyss is spread between us.

You are the cold doll of social lies,
and me, the virile starburst of the human truth.

You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me;
in all my poems I undress my heart.

You are like your world, selfish; not me
who gambles everything betting on what I am.

You are only the ponderous lady very lady;
not me; I am life, strength, woman.

You belong to your husband, your master; not me;
I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all
I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought.

You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me;
the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me.

You are a housewife, resigned, submissive,
tied to the prejudices of men; not me;
unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante
snorting horizons of God's justice.

You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you;
your husband, your parents, your family,
the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall,
the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne,
heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say."

Not in me, in me only my heart governs,
only my thought; who governs in me is me.
You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people.
You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone,
while me, my nothing I owe to nobody.

You nailed to the static ancestral dividend,
and me, a one in the numerical social divider,
we are the duel to death who fatally approaches.

When the multitudes run rioting
leaving behind ashes of burned injustices,
and with the torch of the seven virtues,
the multitudes run after the seven sins,
against you and against everything unjust and inhuman,
I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.

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[ Julia Constancia Burgos García (Julia de Burgos), was born in Barrio Santa Cruz, Carolina, in extreme poverty, on 17 February 1914. She had 12 siblings after her. At the age of 19, she started as a teacher  after graduation from the university of Puerto Rico with a degree in teaching. Sooner, to devote more time for writing, she left her teaching job; became the elected Secretary General of the Daughters of Freedom, a non-partisan organization attached to the Nationalist Party. 

Her first marriage at 20  with Ruben Rodrigues Beauchamp failed within three years. Besides the failure of her first marriage, her two subsequent marriages also failed leading to the poet slipping into depression. At the time of her death she was 39 residing in New York. 

Ironically, as she had no identification on her when she collapsed, she was given a pauper’s burial on Hart Island. Later, a group of her friends and family claimed her body, and Julia was reburied, this time with the dignity and respect she deserved, in the Municipal Cemetery of Carolina, Puerto Rico, where a monument was built in her honor. 

Though she died much too young, she left an enduring literary heritage that continues to be much appreciated. Scholars have examined her poetry in terms of her early feminist perspective and quest for self-identity. She was seen as the pioneer of feminist writers and poets. She is considered by many as the greatest Puerto Rican poet and counted among the great poets of Latin America.

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