Santiago de Compostela, (EFE).- Verses engraved in stone to reach the soul of Olga Novo, Laura Pugno and Moon Chung-hee shine from this Friday in the Xardín das pedras que falan, located behind the rectory and the library of the University from Santiago de Compostela (USC), a few meters from the cathedral.
The Fonseca garden is a space that once housed the botanical garden linked to the Faculty of Pharmacy to cultivate medicinal plants with which to heal the body and that for a few years has been the location of a spiral of stones with a message that serve as “tools to heal the soul”, stressed the rector of the USC, Antonio López.
O Xardín da Pedras que Falan is an initiative of the Santiago City Council, devised by the writer Suso de Toro -who was unable to be present this Friday- and directed by the poet Claudio Rodríguez Fer, director of the José Ángel Valente Chair at USC .
Valente is precisely one of the fifteen authors -with the three additions made on this day- who already has his verses engraved on stone in this garden.
Diverse languages and authors
The project consists of a spiral of engraved stones -designed by Pepe Barro- with unpublished verses and literary fragments by authors of different origins and languages.
The inaugural stone corresponded to Rosalía de Castro, which was followed by another by Seamus Heaney, as well as others by Luz Pozo Garza, Adonis, Valle-Inclán, Kerstin Hensel, Marta Pesarrodona, Antonio Gamoneda or Bernardo Atxaga, among others.
It also has a stone in the garden Salvador García Bodaño, a poet who died on March 7, who left writing: “Compostela, dream of stone in time.”
Verses engraved in stone for eternity
And this is how the Italian author Laura Pugno (Rome, 1970) has also referred to her verse engraved in stone in the city of the apostle, since it will be “the most durable part” of her work, since “the stone lasts longer than the paper or pixel”.
“It emerges, word, like a piece of bone; a thought between the mind and the grass”, reads on the stone that is part of the spiral and that “perhaps, when everything has turned into a forest again, someone will find it and read a few words in a language that may not be in shop”.
“The verses, the images and the culture will be what is left of us once we are gone.”
Laura Fist
For the poet from Lugo Olga Novo (A Pobra de Brollón, 1975), winner of the 2020 National Poetry Award for Feliz Idade, having space in this garden alongside writers she admires and loves has a “very deep” meaning.
“The last avant-garde is love”, Novo has written for this stone that connects her with authors such as Eugenio Granell, whose foundation is in the Galician capital, and whose motto was “poetry, love and freedom”.
Novo has made a plea to culture, with a memory of the land, of his illiterate and subordinate ancestors, because culture “does not know barriers or borders; there is no high or low culture”, he said, “but culture comes from cultivating and cultivating refers directly to the land”.
The other author who since this Friday has her unpublished verses engraved in stone in her language is the South Korean Moon Chung-hee (Posong, 1947), who has not been present.
The Councilor for Culture of Santiago, Mercedes Rosón, explained that they have chosen March for the placement of the stones dedicated to the work of three women because it is the month in which Women’s Day is commemorated.
In addition to Rosón, other municipal representatives have attended, headed by the mayor, Xosé Sánchez Bugallo, and also the councilors Jorge Duarte and Branca Novoneyra.