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Abstract
The scant attention given to Spain in studies on European realism cannot be attributed to issues of literary quality, because Spanish realism has been widely acknowledged to possess works and authors of extraordinary importance. Rather, it ought to be ascribed to the country's marginal position in Europe in the last two centuries and to the failure of criticism to underscore the movement's uniqueness. An analysis of Spanish realism, as it was defined in contemporary debates and in the writings of some of its most representative authors, shows the movement's determination to distance itself from its French counterpart, as well as its desire to connect with the Golden Age tradition of Miguel de Cervantes and the picaresque novel. This dual impulse shapes its distinctiveness not only thematically, but at the structural and stylistic levels as well. Spanish realism exhibits a unique idiosyncrasy that must be taken into account to understand the protean nature of a richer and far more complex movement than is generally acknowledged.
Acknowledgments
This article has been translated from Spanish by Margarita Pillado.
Notes
1. James Mandrell considers that “the lack of interest in and information about Spanish literature in general and realism in Spain in particular tends to distort the nature of our understanding of literary trends and traditions in Europe” (85). George Becker's Master European Realists of the Nineteenth Century (Citation1982) represents an exception. The author warns that any “conception of literary realism that cannot accommodate Galdós should be abandoned as incomplete” (239).
2. According to Luc Herman, French polemics of the 1850s “provided later critics not only with a program that defined the main features of realism but, after a short while, with a body of texts” (3). However, even if we accept this as true, critics should not accept French realism as the norm for the rest of the countries to follow.
3. Juan Oleza puts forth the question correctly when he asks: “¿Hay, pues, o no, auténtico naturalismo en España? Si por naturalismo entendemos el movimiento francés, desde luego en España no lo hay” (35).
4. For a detailed comparison of literary debates in both countries, see Daniel Brown's doctoral dissertation, “A Redefinition of Spanish Realism.”
5. Pam Morris, backed by the authority of Ian Watt, Erich Auerbach, and Lukács, proposes as fundamental principles of realism the Lockean belief that the most effective way to attain Truth is by way of the senses, as well as “the perception that individual lives are the location of historical forces and contradictions and ‥ . the serious artistic treatment of ordinary people and their experience” (77–79). See also Peter Brooks (3). Obviously, I am not interested here in defining the concept of realism, but in analyzing the historical manifestations of the movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. For an intelligent theoretical reflection on the concept of realism, see Darío Villanueva.
6. Before going further, I must clarify that in this article, and for practical purposes, I will use the concepts of realism and naturalism as if they were synonyms. Not only because these terms were used indistinctly in the Spanish debates of the time, but also because this distinction is not fundamental to my analysis. Also in France, the terms realism and naturalism “eran considerados como equivalentes por muchos críticos de la época” (Pattison 11).
7. Accusations of servile imitation made against Spanish writers are a product of mental inertia and prove false upon detailed analyses of their works. For instance, Maurice Hemingway studies the work of Pardo Bazán and shows that far from being an imitator of Zola, she “is one of the French novelist's slyest and subtlest critics. She dresses up in the clothes of science, only to cast doubt on its ability to fully explain and predict human behavior” (150).
8. According to Elisa Martí-López, authors from those decades tried to modify “the foreign models of the novel and to adapt them to Spain's historical conditions and cultural traditions” (57).
9. French influence was felt in all European countries. F. W. J. Hemmings points out that if at that time a novelist did not write in French, he or she “suffered from a grave initial handicap in the struggle to attain an international reputation. Even the greatest had to content themselves with a purely local celebrity while they watched their compatriots greedily devouring the products of lesser writers from France‥ ‥ The reasons for this imbalance are partly historical. The hegemony of French culture on the continent of Europe, established the previous century, had still scarcely been challenged” (356).
10. Franco Moretti studies the rivalry that took place in nineteenth-century Europe between what he calls the two literary “superpowers”: France and England. Novels from these two countries are involved in “a struggle for cultural hegemony, in which France seems to have clearly prevailed” (184).
11. I do not think that Galdós's position should be condemned as superficial or “poco matizada” (Lissorgues 58). His analyses may not be “objective,” but they are meaningful.
12. Stephen Miller wonders why Spanish realist writers preferred to cultivate “the psychologically oriented novel of the inner person” (434) instead of following the orthodox model provided by naturalism. According to the critic, loss of faith in Spanish society was responsible for this development, because the artistic realm “left to the Realist/Naturalist writer who has lost faith in his society is the individual per se” (434). My belief, on the contrary, is that the anti-French, nationalistic reaction is responsible for this attitude.
13. For a detailed analysis of the effect caused by Pardo Bazán's attitude in her work, see Jesús Torrecilla's “Un país poético y una polémica: las interioridades de Insolación.”
14. In doing so, Spanish writers did not behave any differently from the French. When Zola wrote “Le Naturalisme” (1881), his defense of the movement “consists almost entirely of a historical survey tracing a prestigious lineage of naturalist writers” (Baguley 12). As part of this lineage, Zola mentioned Denis Diderot, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. Spanish writers adapted the list to their own needs and thus went back to Spain's sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to trace their lineage.
15. Caudet studies this syncretism in El doctor Centeno, stating that Galdós's desire to interpret the French movement through the Spanish tradition inspired him to combine in this work a formal structure related to the picaresque novel and a thematic structure of a Bildungsroman, in line with Flaubert's L’éducation sentimentale (201).
16. According to Geoffrey Baker, this epistemological tension is a key element in realism as a whole. For “Balzac, Trollope, Fontane, and many others, anachronism, idealism (however false), and mystery were necessary counterweights to the insistent presence of the present and to technology that hustled society toward the future” (208).
17. Turner analyzes the use of images in this novel and concludes that “Galdós, maestro en el manejo de la imagen novelesca, deja claro que ciencia e imaginación no se excluyen la una a la otra y que sólo acopladas ‘en perfecto fiel de la balanza’ pueden servir al ideal humano de justicia y progreso” (“Ciencia e ilusión” 177).
18. Hazel Gold observes that the initial scene of the novel ridicules the exaggerated concentration of details associated with a certain style of realism (47).
19. It is not only a matter of using certain elements found in works from the Golden Age, as when Rosalía deceives her blind husband, inspired by a similar situation in La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes. Galdós is more interested in criticizing French influence and neutralizing it. Clearly, Galdós's intention “to reconstitute the Spanish novel as a national project” (Valis 175) affected the themes of his works, but also their style and structure.
20. See Torrecilla's “Halma oriental: identidad cultural y canon literario” (118–19).
21. The frontal rejection of French realism must also be understood as a form of influence. I disagree with Pattison's opinion that Pereda's work “representa lo que habría sido toda la novela española si se hubiese desarrollado en un ambiente completamente nacional, lejos de influencias transpirenaicas” (63). Reverse imitation is a form of imitation. Clarín saw it clearly when, in his review of De tal palo, tal astilla, he reproached Pereda for imitating the French “al revés” (Solos 319–20).