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Doña Perfecta
by Benito Pérez Galdós
The very acute and lively
Spanish critic who signs himself
Clarin, and is known personally
as Don Leopoldo Alas, says the
present Spanish novel has no
yesterday, but only a
day-before-yesterday. It does
not derive from the romantic
novel which immediately preceded
that: the novel, large or
little, as it was with
Cervantes, Hurtado de Mendoza,
Quevedo, and the masters of
picaresque fiction.
Clarin dates its renascence from
the political revolution of
1868, which gave Spanish
literature the freedom necessary
to the fiction that studies to
reflect modern life, actual
ideas, and current aspirations;
and though its authors were few
at first, "they have never been
adventurous spirits, friends of
Utopia, revolutionists, or
impatient progressists and
reformers." He thinks that the
most daring, the most advanced,
of the new Spanish novelists,
and the best by far, is Don
Benito Perez Galdos.
I should myself have made my
little exception in favor of Don
Armando Palacio Valdes, but
Clarin speaks with infinitely
more authority, and I am
certainly ready to submit when
he goes on to say that Galdos is
not a social or literary
insurgent; that he has no
political or religious
prejudices; that he shuns
extremes, and is charmed with
prudence; that his novels do not
attack the Catholic
dogmas--though they deal so
severely with Catholic
bigotry--but the customs and
ideas cherished by secular
fanaticism to the injury of the
Church. Because this is so
evident, our critic holds, his
novels are "found in the bosom
of families in every corner of
Spain." Their popularity among
all classes in Catholic and
prejudiced Spain, and not among
free-thinking students merely,
bears testimony to the fact that
his aim and motive are
understood and appreciated,
although his stories are
apparently so often
anti-Catholic.
I
Dona Perfecta is, first of all,
a story, and a great story, but
it is certainly also a story
that must appear at times
potently, and even bitterly,
anti-Catholic. Yet it would be a
pity and an error to read it
with the preoccupation that it
was an anti-Catholic tract, for
really it is not that. If the
persons were changed in name and
place, and modified in passion
to fit a cooler air, it might
equally seem an
anti-Presbyterian or
anti-Baptist tract; for what it
shows in the light of their own
hatefulness and cruelty are
perversions of any religion, any
creed. It is not, however, a
tract at all; it deals in
artistic largeness with the
passion of bigotry, as it deals
with the passion of love, the
passion of ambition, the passion
of revenge. But Galdos is
Spanish and Catholic, and for
him the bigotry wears a Spanish
and Catholic face. That is all.
Up to a certain time, I believe,
Galdos wrote romantic or
idealistic novels, and one of
these I have read, and it tired
me very much. It was called
"Marianela," and it surprised me
the more because I was already
acquainted with his later work,
which is all realistic. But one
does not turn realist in a
single night, and although the
change in Galdos was rapid it
was not quite a lightning
change; perhaps because it was
not merely an outward change,
but artistically a change of
heart. His acceptance in his
quality of realist was much more
instant than his conversion, and
vastly wider; for we are told by
the critic whom I have been
quoting that Galdos's earlier
efforts, which he called
Episodios Nacionales, never had
the vogue which his realistic
novels have enjoyed.
These were, indeed, tendencious,
if I may Anglicize a very
necessary word from the Spanish
tendencioso. That is, they dealt
with very obvious problems, and
had very distinct and poignant
significations, at least in the
case of "Dona Perfecta," "Leon
Roch," and "Gloria." In still
later novels, Emilia Pardo-Bazan
thinks, he has comprehended that
"the novel of to-day must take
note of the ambient truth, and
realize the beautiful with
freedom and independence." This
valiant lady, in the campaign
for realism which she made under
the title of "La Cuestion
Palpitante"--one of the best and
strongest books on the
subject--counts him first among
Spanish realists, as Clarin
counts him first among Spanish
novelists. "With a certain
fundamental humanity," she says,
"a certain magisterial
simplicity in his creations,
with the natural tendency of his
clear intelligence toward the
truth, and with the frankness of
his observation, the great
novelist was always disposed to
pass over to realism with arms
and munitions; but his aesthetic
inclinations were idealistic,
and only in his latest works has
he adopted the method of the
modern novel, fathomed more and
more the human heart, and broken
once for all with the
picturesque and with the typical
personages, to embrace the earth
we tread."
For her, as I confess for me,
"Dona Perfecta" is not realistic
enough --realistic as it is; for
realism at its best is not
tendencious. It does not seek to
grapple with human problems, but
is richly content with
portraying human experiences;
and I think Senora Pardo-Bazan
is right in regarding "Dona
Perfecta" as transitional, and
of a period when the author had
not yet assimilated in its
fullest meaning the faith he had
imbibed.
II
Yet it is a great novel, as I
said; and perhaps because it is
transitional it will please the
greater number who never really
arrive anywhere, and who like to
find themselves in good company
en route. It is so far like life
that it is full of
significations which pass beyond
the persons and actions
involved, and envelop the
reader, as if he too were a
character of the book, or rather
as if its persons were men and
women of this thinking, feeling,
and breathing world, and he must
recognize their experiences as
veritable facts. From the first
moment to the last it is like
some passage of actual events in
which you cannot withhold your
compassion, your abhorrence,
your admiration, any more than
if they took place within your
personal knowledge. Where they
transcend all facts of your
personal knowledge, you do not
accuse them of improbability,
for you feel their potentiality
in yourself, and easily account
for them in the alien
circumstance. I am not saying
that the story has no faults; it
has several. There are tags of
romanticism fluttering about it
here and there; and at times the
author permits himself certain
old-fashioned literary airs and
poses and artifices, which you
simply wonder at. It is in spite
of these, and with all these
defects, that it is so great and
beautiful a book.
III
What seems to be so very
admirable in the management of
the story is the author's
success in keeping his own
counsel. This may seem a very
easy thing; but, if the reader
will think over the novelists of
his acquaintance, he will find
that it is at least very
uncommon. They mostly give
themselves away almost from the
beginning, either by their
anxiety to hide what is coming,
or their vanity in hinting what
great things they have in store
for the reader. Galdos does
neither the one nor the other.
He makes it his business to tell
the story as it grows; to let
the characters unfold themselves
in speech and action; to permit
the events to happen unheralded.
He does not prophesy their
course, he does not forecast the
weather even for twenty-four
hours; the atmosphere becomes
slowly, slowly, but with
occasional lifts and reliefs, of
such a brooding breathlessness,
of such a deepening density,
that you feel the wild
passion-storm nearer and nearer
at hand, till it bursts at last;
and then you are astonished that
you had not foreseen it yourself
from the first moment.
Next to this excellent method,
which I count the supreme
characteristic of the book
merely because it represents the
whole, and the other facts are
in the nature of parts, is the
masterly conception of the
characters. They are each
typical of a certain side of
human nature, as most of our
personal friends and enemies
are; but not exclusively of this
side or that. They are each of
mixed motives, mixed qualities;
none of them is quite a monster;
though those who are badly mixed
do such monstrous things.
Pepe Rey, who is such a good
fellow--so kind, and brave, and
upright, and generous, so fine a
mind, and so high a soul--is
tactless and imprudent; he even
condescends to the thought of
intrigue; and though he rejects
his plots at last, his nature
has once harbored deceit. Don
Inocencio, the priest, whose
control of Dona Perfecta's
conscience has vitiated the very
springs of goodness in her, is
by no means bad, aside from his
purposes. He loves his sister
and her son tenderly, and wishes
to provide for them by the
marriage which Pepe's presence
threatens to prevent. The
nephew, though selfish and
little, has moments of almost
being a good fellow; the sister,
though she is really such a lamb
of meekness, becomes a cat, and
scratches Don Inocencio
dreadfully when he weakens in
his design against Pepe.
Rosario, one of the sweetest and
purest images of girlhood that I
know in fiction, abandons
herself with equal passion to
the love she feels for her
cousin Pepe, and to the love she
feels for her mother, Dona
Perfecta. She is ready to fly
with him, and yet she betrays
him to her mother's pitiless
hate.
But it is Dona Perfecta herself
who is the transcendent figure,
the most powerful creation of
the book. In her, bigotry and
its fellow-vice, hypocrisy, have
done their perfect work, until
she comes near to being a devil,
and really does some devil's
deeds. Yet even she is not
without some extenuating traits.
Her bigotry springs from her
conscience, and she is truly
devoted to her daughter's
eternal welfare; she is of such
a native frankness that at a
certain point she tears aside
her mask of dissimulation and
lets Pepe see all the ugliness
of her perverted soul. She is
wonderfully managed. At what
moment does she begin to hate
him, and to wish to undo her own
work in making a match between
him and her daughter? I could
defy anyone to say. All one
knows is that at one moment she
adores her brother's son, and at
another she abhors him, and has
already subtly entered upon her
efforts to thwart the affection
she has invited in him for her
daughter.
Caballuco, what shall I say of
Caballuco? He seems altogether
bad, but the author lets one
imagine that this cruel, this
ruthless brute must have
somewhere about him traits of
lovableness, of leniency, though
he never lets one see them. His
gratitude to Dona Perfecta, even
his murderous devotion, is not
altogether bad; and he is
certainly worse than nature made
him, when wrought upon by her
fury and the suggestion of Don
Inocencio. The scene where they
work him up to rebellion and
assassination is a compendium of
the history of intolerance; as
the mean little conceited city
of Orbajosas is the microcosm of
bigoted and reactionary Spain.
IV
I have called, or half-called,
this book tendencious; but in a
certain larger view it is not
so. It is the eternal interest
of passion working upon passion,
not the temporary interest of
condition antagonizing
condition, which renders "Dona
Perfecta" so poignantly
interesting, and which makes its
tragedy immense. But there is
hope as well as despair in such
a tragedy. There is the strange
support of a bereavement in it,
the consolation of feeling that
for those who have suffered unto
death, nothing can harm them
more; that even for those who
have inflicted their suffering
this peace will soon come.
"Is Perez Galdos a pessimist?"
asks the critic Clarin. "No,
certainly; but if he is not, why
does he paint us sorrows that
seem inconsolable? Is it from
love of paradox? Is it to show
that his genius, which can do so
much, can paint the shadow
lovelier than the light? Nothing
of this. Nothing that is not
serious, honest, and noble, is
to be found in this novelist.
Are they pessimistic, those
ballads of the North, that
always end with vague resonances
of woe? Are they pessimists,
those singers of our own land,
who surprise us with tears in
the midst of laughter? Is Nature
pessimistic, who is so sad at
nightfall that it seems as if
day were dying forever? . . .
The sadness of art, like that of
nature, is a form of hope. Why
is Christianity so artistic?
Because it is the religion of
sadness."
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