Boldness saves us from cowardice

Abstract

This contribution provides an assessment of Xela Arias from my own personal point of view as a result of our friendship. It focuses on the decisions she took throughout her life in a bold rather than cautious manner. I have therefore chosen as the title of this article one of the poems from her final work, Intempériome [Out in the Open]: “Boldness saves us from cowardice”. Indeed, her life choices shaped a person who did not allow herself to be dragged down by the status quo and who was able to go against the grain, even if this sometimes led to loneliness and individualism. She was a “generationless poet” who, in her desire for independence, did not like to belong to groups. However, she was also woman with a great social conscience, who actively fought against injustice. She was always on the side of the weakest, with an infinite ability to put herself in the other person’s shoes, a “black woman by choice.” Refusing to be a mere spectator, she faced one challenge after another without settling for the shortest and straightest path, in an ambitious search for the “equilibrium of extremes”. She gave herself passionately to each of her many facets: daughter, sister, mother, friend, teacher, lover, translator, poet, Galician speaker…