Bread & Roses

Hearts starve as well as bodies: give us bread but give us roses

Hi everyone, my name is Porzia in Italian, Portia in English.

This is my first post on Substack, and with it I want to welcome all the kind people who are here, either by invitation, or by stumbling upon it.

I work as a freelance translator, therefore words – and the contexts in which words get their meanings – are my bread. There’s no fields of human endeavour where translation is not needed, in that language is what makes us human.

In turn, language informs stories, poetry, literature, the very structure of thought – all the things I’ve loved since I was a little girl, my roses. Hence the title I chose for my Substack, Bread and Roses.

I’m also aware of the wider meaning of this expression, in the context of the fight for workers’ rights and women’s rights. Here, I’m not going to talk about politics or social issues, even though I’m interested in both, simply because I’m not an expert on those matters. Having been a glottophile – a lover of languages – since forever, words are what I’m going to talk about, once a week, or maybe twice per month, probably on a Saturday afternoon, Central European Time. More details will follow, I promise.

I hope you’ll join me in this new adventure, let’s walk together!

Here’s Bread and Roses, a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim, sung by Judy Collins’ beautiful voice:

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,

For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses."

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—

For they are women's children and we mother them again.

Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—

Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead

Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;

Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—

Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—

The rising of the women means the rising of the race.

No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—

But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

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