United States or Bangladesh ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They are both present passions of mine, and I may say of the 'Dona Perfecta' of Galdos that no book, if I except those of the greatest Russians, has given me a keener and deeper impression; it is infinitely pathetic, and is full of humor, which, if more caustic than that of Valdes, is not less delicious.
That is to say, his novels are his best-known and most widely read works. He has two distinct styles. His Sombrero de Tres Picos is a fascinating sketch of quaint old village life, full of quiet grace, while El Escándalo and La Pródiga are of the sensational order. He writes, like Galdós, in series, such as Historietas Nacionales, Narraciones Inverosímiles, and Viajes por España.
As the tendency and the sympathy of the writer is always Liberal, one fancies that Galdós has written with the determined intention to tempt a class of readers to become acquainted with the recent history of their country who would never do so under any less attractive form than that of the novel. His works must do good, since they are very widely read, and are extremely accurate as history.
In our American republic we should scarcely tolerate a party in favor of a monarchy, but in the Spanish monarchy a republican party is recognized and represented. It holds public meetings and counts among its members many able and distinguished men, such as the novelist Perez Galdos, one of the most brilliant novelists not only in Spain but in Europe.
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.
Galdos, for example, can make the common people talk; Azorin can portray the villages of Castile, set on their arid heights, against backgrounds of blue skies; Blasco Ibanez can paint the life of the Valencians in vivid colours with a prodigality that carries with it the taint of the cheap, but none of them has penetrated into the popular soul. That would require a great poet, and we have none.
Valera, Galdós, Pardo Bazan, and others depict individual clerics who are simple, straightforward, pious, and in every way worthy men, the friend of the young and the helper of the sorrowful.
There is probably no chair of literature in this country from which the principles now shaping the literary expression of every civilized people are not denounced and confounded with certain objectionable French novels, or which teaches young men anything of the universal impulse which has given us the work, not only of Zola, but of Tourguenief and Tolstoy in Russia, of Bjornson and Ibsen in Norway, of Valdes and Galdos in Spain, of Verga in Italy.
There is probably no chair of literature in this country from which the principles now shaping the literary expression of every civilized people are not denounced and confounded with certain objectionable French novels, or which teaches young men anything of the universal impulse which has given us the work, not only of Zola, but of Tourguenief and Tolstoy in Russia, of Bjornson and Ibsen in Norway, of Valdes and Galdos in Spain, of Verga in Italy.
Galdós, also, is fond of introducing the simple-minded and honest, if not very cultivated, priest. His style is pure, without any great pretention to brilliancy, or any of the straining after effect which so many of the English writers seem to think gives distinction. Pedro Alarcón is novelist first, and historian, poet, and critic afterwards.
Word Of The Day