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Ironic Reprise in Galdós' Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Monroe Z. Hafter
Monroe Z. Hafter*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Extract

A recent article of Leon Livingstone rightly calls attention to the importance of Pérez Galdós' assimilation of Cervantine irony as a forerunner of the concern of modern Spanish novelists about the autonomy of their characters. The unreality of rationalism, which Livingstone holds to be the germ of El amigo Manso, the imagination's capacity to create reality at the heart of Misericordia, lead to the even bolder experiments in the artistic representation of reality undertaken by Unamuno, Azorín, Valle-Inclán, and Pérez de Ayala. Anomalous for his time yet so pervasive in his work is Galdós' employment of “interior duplication” that a separate study would contribute to our fuller understanding of his art as well as to our measure of the advances in the Spanish novel of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The present essay focuses on Galdós' developing skill with internal repetitions from La Fontana de Oro (publ. 1870), through the rich complexities of the novels written between 1886–89, to their almost stylized simplicity in El abuelo (1897). Always related to Cervantine irony, the variety of verbal echoes, the mirroring of one character in another, the unconscious illumination each may offer the other, underscore the increasingly intimate wedding of form and matter with which Galdós came to unfold his narratives.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 3 , June 1961 , pp. 233 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 233 “Interior Duplication and the Problem of Form in the Modern Spanish Novel,” PMLA, lxxiii (1958), 393–406; see esp. 398–400.

Note 2 in page 233 Stephen Gilman, “Realism and Epic in Galdós' Zaragoza,” Esludios hispdnicos en homenaje a Archer M. Huntington (Wellesley, Mass., 1952), p. 187.

Note 3 in page 233 The former writes, “Fortunata y Jacinta se odian y se aman al mismo tiempo. Necesitan la una de la otra; se completan mutuamente, encontràndose en el hombre” (Vida y obra de Gaódós, Madrid, 1951, p. 108). Kirsner amplifies the observation, “They complete one another in as much as they seek to absorb each other's experience. In brief, they complement each other immanently, not transcendentally” (“Galdós' Attitude towards Spain as Seen in the Characters of Fortunata y Jacinta,” PMLA, lxvi [1951], 129).

Note 4 in page 233 William H. Shoemaker, “Galdós' Literary Creativity: D. José Ido del Sagrario,” HR, xix (1951), 223.

Note 5 in page 233 Angel del Rio, Esludios galdosianos (Zaragoza, 1953), p. 47.

Note 6 in page 233 He writes, “Los sucesos tienen así doble resonancia en el alma del viejo y en el alma del niño, tan curiosamente gemelas en la impotencia y contrastadas en la esperanza” (“Estudio preliminar” to Miau, Madrid, 1957, pp. 87–88).

Note 7 in page 234 Support for this interpretation of the novel, that is, Galdós' lampooning of the immaturity of the would-be leader, I have set out in “The Hero in Galdós' La Fontana de Oro,” MP, lvii (1959), 37–43. For a different approach, cf. Sherman H. Eoff, “The Formative Period of Galdós' Social-Psychological Perspective,” RR, xli (1950), 33–41.

Note 8 in page 234 All texts from Galdós are cited from his Obras complétas, ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles (6 vols.; Madrid, 1950).

Note 9 in page 234 Casalduero (Vida, p. 66) notes the reappearance of the Lazarus theme in Doña Perfecta (iv, 456). The reprise tends to show Pepe Rey as another version of the unheroic liberal hero in the early political novels. The theme is seen again in Gloria, iv, 567.

Note 10 in page 234 Walter T. Pattison's painstaking account of the elements going into the composition of Gloria turns up the fascinating fact that Galdós appears to separate the characteristics of one of his sources, L'abbé Renaud, Octave Feuillet's priest in the Histoire de Sibylle. Making a simplistic opposition in religious attitudes, Galdós incorporates Renaud's best qualities in D. Angel Lantigua, and assigns his weaknesses to D. Silvestre Romero; see Benito Pérez Galdós and the Creative Process (Minneapolis, 1954), p. 62.

Note 11 in page 234 For the pairings of characters on which this novel was constructed, see Gustavo Correa, “Configuraciones religiosas en La familia de Lean Roch de Pérez Galdós,” RHM, xxvi (1960), 85–95.

Note 12 in page 234 The contrast, however, between Galdós' nineteenth-century efforts to synthesize antithetical elements and Unamuno's twentieth-century portrait of existential agony is deftly exposed by Angel del Rio, Estudios, pp. 74–81.

Note 13 in page 234 See Robert Kirsner, “Sobre ‘El amigo Manso’ de Galdós,” Cuadernos de Literatura, viii (1950), 189–199; Ricardo Gullón, “La invención del personaje en ‘El amigo Manso’,” Insula, xiv, núm. 148 (1959), 1–2.

Note 14 in page 235 The expansion and adaptation of a theme to give form to a novel is a technique, “Pattern and Rhythm,” which E. M. Forster studies in Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1927); also E. K. Brown, Rhythm in the Novel (Toronto, 1950).

Note 15 in page 236 “The Treatment of Individual Personality in Fortunata y Jacinta,” HR, xvii (1949), 269–289.

Note 16 in page 236 Professor Eoff's sensitive analysis of these characters also deals with this aspect of imitation and duplication with the effect of revealing the clarity of Galdós' psychological understanding. One of his conclusions states, “while constantly trying to advance the ‘I’ of his personality, the individual unconsciously assumes the roles and attitudes of others, and while asserting himself to be superior and in opposition to others, necessarily submits to the organized whole and sacrifices a part of his impulsive self” (p. 280).

Note 17 in page 236 This scene is paralleled later in the novel when Fortunata attacks Aurora for having treacherously stolen Juan's affections.

Note 18 in page 236 Cf. Mauricia's outburst when the Micaelas try to restrain her in one of her drunken fits. “Ěcerrarme a mí! A donde voy es a mi casa, de donde me sacaron engañada estas indecentonas, sí, señor, engafiada, porque yo era honrada como un sol, y aqui no nos enseñan más que peines y peinetas ja, ja, ja!… Vaya con las sefioras virtuosas y santifiquísimas.ja, ja, ja!… Pues me gusta la santidad de estas traviatonas de iglesia…. Se encierran aquí por retozar a sus anchas con los curanganos de babero…” (v, 237).

Note 19 in page 237 Renée Schimmel, who also took note of this confusion in her dream, relates it to a dualism in Fortunata, “el insoluble conflicto entre pasión y moralidad” (“Algunos aspectos de la técnica de Galdós en la creación de Fortunata,” AO, vii [1957], 88).

Note 20 in page 237 “Estudio preliminar,” p. 229.

Note 21 in page 237 For the possible bases of this poetic vision in the philosophies of Hegel and Krause, see Eoff, “The Treatment…,” p. 287 (and the references given in n. 16), a discussion which he amplified in ch. vii of his The Novels of Pérez Galdós (St. Louis, 1954); cf. Juan López Morillas, El krausismo español (Mexico, 1956), pp. 135–141.

Note 22 in page 237 Leopoldo Alas, “Realidad,” Galdós (Madrid, 1912), p. 199; italics his.

Note 23 in page 238 Carlos Clavería studies Manso and Realidad, the latter in connection with La sombra, all as part of the novelist's fantastic vein; see “Sobre la veta fantástica en la obra de Galdós,” Allante, i (1953), 78–86, 136–143; esp. 136–137.

Note 24 in page 238 Leopoldo Alas called attention to the calculated ambiguity surrounding Tomás' possible madness; see pp. 198–200, 224–229 in his vol. already cited.

Note 25 in page 239 Professor del Rfo's conclusions about La loco, de la casa seem especially apposite here: “Pero a poco que analicemos el sentido de las palabras y de los personajes, veremos inmediatamente que bien y mal no se nos presentan como formas de lo absoluto. A Galdós no le interesa su esencia meta-ffsica. El mal no es para él lo que es para el teólogo, es decir, la negación o ausencia del bien. No, mal y bien son principios activos, formas de la vida que en su oposición radical se complementan. Son, en suma, valores relativos. Si para Victoria el mal es Cruz; para éste el mal sera la compasión y el ideal de Victoria” (Estudios, p. 59).

Note 26 in page 239 Robert Ricard has recently addressed himself to the synthesis of Jewish and Moslem traits in Almudena; he takes this purposeful erasing of religious and ethnic differences as Galdós' answer to the religious divisiveness of Gloria (“Sur le personnage d'Almudena dans ‘Misericordia’,” BE, lxi [1959], 12–25). It is interesting to compare the synthesis in this late character of our author with the analytic creation of the two priests in Gloria (see n. 10 above).

Note 27 in page 239 A similar paradox, a possible good in evil, is an important element in the murky dialogue of Galdós' last novel, La razón de la sinrazón (1915). The basic story narrates the efforts of the virtuous and wise Atenaida to save herself and the man she loves, Alejandro, from the powers of Unreason; to do so, she finally leads him from Ursaria, a kind of Sodom of base human ambitions, to the Campo de la Vera. But first, feigning allegiance to Sinrazón, she proposes outlandish things for Alejandro to do in Ursaria. To his question, the astute woman replies, “Crees que me he pasado al bando de la Sinrazón para proponerte cosas lógicas y razonables? Yo inspiro tus actos, que han de ser incongruentes, disparatados… para que saigas del gobierno ignominiosamente, en situación tal que yo pueda redimirte y traerte a mi reino” (vi, 380). To gain his liberty, she has made use of a stratagem to beat the Devils at their own game.