The Road Less Traveled...

"I see my path, but I don't know where it leads.  

Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it."

                                                                                                     

                                                                                                     Rosalia de Castro

Rosalia de Castro was a poet in Spain in the mid 1800's.  She was a native of Santiago de Compostela in the Galician region of Northwest Spain.  She was the illegitimate daughter of a priest and a bourgeois woman at a time when the disgrace of being illegitimate was second only to being the "sacrilegious" child of a priest.  She was highly educated, yet chose to write most in her native  Galician.  At the time, her writing was discredited in Castilian society as the Galician dialect was considered  a dialect "fit only for the illiterate and the churlish".   Outside of Castilian society she was celebrated for reviving Galician literature and the day that she published Cantares Gallegos (Galician Songs) is celebrated in Spain as Dia das Letras Galegas...Galician Literature Day.  Her renown came after her life as it often does with great artists who "push the envelope" and she lived in relative poverty and sadness.  She was a staunch supporter of women's rights and opposed the abuse of authority.  She was a contemporary of Emily Dickinson. 

If you would like to read more about Rosalia, click here, here or here.  

Now, while I would like to take credit for knowing about her before I found her quote in ThinkExist.com, I'd never heard of her before.  So, of course, I googled her.  I rather liked what I read about her and thought it made the quote fit that much more.  Can't say I'll ever read her works, as (dare I say it?)...I'm not much of a poetry reader...