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Abstract
The tensions between Pardo Bazán's Catholicism and her condition as even a mitigated‘naturalist’ writer have been the focus of commentary within literary and intellectual circles for over a hundred years. Such commentaries have tended to fall into three categories: those which claim that, if there are naturalistic elements in the writings of the Spaniard, these are—due to the author's ‘spiritualist’ stance—necessarily limited to the stylistic; those, which, while denying that what the author is doing in her works is Naturalism to the letter, concede that there is more going on than stylistic imitation; finally, those which, signal the thoroughly naturalist elements (formal and philosophical) of her work. This study argues that Pardo Bazán forges a synthesis between naturalist and religious views. However, whereas several readings have proposed Augustine as the figure who best illustrates this synthesis, this study suggests an alternative candidate: Henri Bergson. While convinced of the validity of the materialist/cause-effect view of the cosmos, Bergson, like Pardo Bazán, none the less carves out a space for human freedom from within this system by recourse to indeterminate and intuitive phenomena.
Notes
1 García Guerra writes with respect to critical focus on the tension between the naturalist stress on determinism, the Catholic insistence on free will and the literary productions of the author: ‘se suelen señalar aparentes contradicciones entre los criterios expuestos por la escritora y el modo de construir sus personajes. En las novelas de su primera época, en especial Los Pazos de Ulloa, La Madre Naturaleza, Insolación y Morriña se han pretendido identificar protagonistas cuya conducta se muestra claramente determinada por influencias constitucionales o ambientales’ (Delfín García Guerra, La condición humana en Emilia Pardo Bazán [La Coruña: Xuntaza Editorial, 1990], 334). And Diego remarks, in her introduction to La cuestión palpitante: ‘Emilia Pardo Bazán denuncia y combate […] en La cuestión palpitante algunos aspectos del naturalismo francés, como el determinismo, y señala que no hay una moral para ella que no sea la católica. Sin embargo, sí declara su admisión y su adhesión hacia la estética naturalista. Pero las críticas de la época van a ser implacables […] y se le calificará […] de Zola femenino’ (Emilia Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante [1883], ed. & intro. Rosa de Diego [Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1998], ‘Introducción’, 9–70 [p. 29]).
2 Certainly, we do not mean to oversimplify and suggest that the religious and the scientific perspectives are (or were unanimously viewed to be) mutually exclusive. To be sure, Isaac Newton—that saint of Science, in the eyes of Comte—was just as religious as the next person. What is being stressed here, though, is that, unlike the religious tendency, the naturalistic limits its ‘truth claims’ to the realm which humans inhabit—that is, the physical world.
3 For example, see Karl Popper's notion of ‘falsifiability’, spelled out in his Logic of Scientific Discovery (Logik der Forschung [1934]) (London: Hutchinson, 1959).
4 Profoundly influencing the naturalist position are such discoveries as Newton's laws of motion, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, as well as Comte's positivistic philosophy and Durkheim's sociological studies.
5 Diego, ‘Introducción’, in Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 21.
6 Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 120.
7 Sherman H. Eoff, The Modern Spanish Novel (New York: New York U. P., 1961), 109–10.
8 Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 116.
9 Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 117. Undoubtedly, in stressing the importance of Augustine to Pardo Bazán, Savine is referring to authorial comments such as these: ‘San Agustín acertó a realizar la conciliación del albedrío y la gracia […] Para esta conciliación hay un dogma […]: el del pecado original. Sólo la caída de una naturaleza originalmente pura y libre puede dar la clave de esta mezcla de nobles aspiraciones y bajos instintos […] Tiene la explicación agustiniana la ventaja inapreciable de estar de acuerdo con lo que nos enseñan la experiencia y sentido íntimo’; ‘El mérito singular de la teología católica consiste en romper las cadenas del antiguo fatalismo, sin negar la parte importantísima que toma en nuestros actos la necesidad’ (Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 144–45). However, this position, as will be explained, is problematic.
10 Emilia Pardo Bazán, La Madre Naturaleza (1887), ed. & intro. Ignacio Javier López (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004), ‘Introducción’, 11–69 (p. 28).
11 Mariano López-Sanz, Naturalismo y espiritualismo en la novelística de Galdós y Pardo Bazán (Madrid: Editorial Pliegos, 1985), 85.
12 If Brown's use of ‘partial determinism’ is unclear, the following words of García Guerra might clarify his meaning: ‘Parece bastante claro […] que nuestra escritora rechaza el determinismo biológico como imperativo absoluto de la conducta humana, cediendo el protagonismo a la influencia del medio, tal como podemos comprobar en varios de sus relatos, en los que nos vamos a encontrar con la diferencia entre el “condicionamiento” y el “determinismo” de la conducta’ (García Guerra, La condición humana en Emilia Pardo Bazán, 353). That is to say, the former's ‘partial determinism’ might be construed as the latter's ‘condicionamiento’ of individual conduct.
13 López-Sanz, Naturalismo y espiritualismo, 88.
14 Mariano Baquero Goyanes, La novela naturalista española: Emilia Pardo Bazán (Murcia: Univ. de Murcia, 1986), 16.
15 Walter T. Pattison, El naturalismo español (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1965), 105.
16 Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘La mosca verde’ (1912), in Cuentos de verano y otoño, ed. & intro. Tonina Paba (Madrid: Editorial Bercimuel, 2002), 43–50 (p. 44).
17 Pardo Bazán, Cuentos de verano y otoño, ed. Paba, 50.
18 The same sort of stress upon biological and other such factors determining individuals is seen in La Tribuna. For example, as regards the family of the character, Guardiana, the narrator speaks of her ‘cuatro hermanitos […] marcados con la mano de hierro de la enfermedad hereditaria’; and, concerning the family of Baltasar Sobrado: ‘En esa familia todos son iguales […]; cortados por una tijera’ (Emilia Pardo Bazán, La Tribuna [1885] [Teddington: The Echo Library, 2006], 43–44).
19 With respect to this ‘undignified’ presentation, it is telling that Pardo Bazán has Pepona's husband refer to her (in a thoroughly Hobbesian manner) as ‘loba’ during the scene in which she is advocating stealing money from the local priest.
20 A tendency to which the author would repeatedly (if not coherently) express her opposition: ‘Tocamos con la mano el vicio capital de la estética naturalista. Someter el pensamiento y la pasión a las mismas leyes que determinan la caída de una piedra; considerar exclusivamente las influencias físico-químicas, prescindiendo hasta de la espontaneidad individual’ (Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 147).
21 Walter T. Pattison, Emilia Pardo Bazán (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971), 1.
22 Pattison, Emilia Pardo Bazán, 6.
23 Paba, ‘Introducción’, in Pardo Bazán, Cuentos de verano y otoño, ed. Paba, 9–15 (pp. 9–10).
24 As Pattison makes plain in his El naturalismo español, mitigated Naturalism—‘la nota dominante del justo medio […], del naturalismo moderado’ (107)—constitutes the rule rather than the exception for Spanish writers. This is also stressed by López who relates the following opinion of critic, Luis Alfonso (shared by contemporary, Leopoldo Alas) with respect to Benito Pérez Galdós’ 1881 naturalistic novel, La desheredada: ‘Esta idea, lo diré pronto y claro, es que el insigne novelista se aprovecha de Zola […] [H]a tomado cuánto hay de bueno […] De ninguna manera ha llegado por ello Pérez Galdós a las hediondeces de L'Assomoir ni a las obscenidades de Nana; de ninguna manera tampoco ha perdido de su originalidad, de su carácter ni de su estilo […]’ (Ignacio Javier López, ‘En torno a la recepción del naturalismo en España’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 39:2 [1991], 1005–23 [p. 1020]).
25 Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 113.
26 One of the ‘flaws’ of French Naturalism (besides its determinism), according to writers such as Pardo Bazán and Luis Alfonso, was its adherence to what the latter termed a ‘religión de lo feo’ (Pattison, El naturalismo español, 107). Interestingly, in the prologue to her La Tribuna, Pardo Bazán pre-emptively responds to what she imagines will be the ‘perceived crudity’ of her representation of the Galician ‘pueblo’, being careful to distinguish her (Spanish) brand of Naturalism from the sort practised by Zola and his compatriots: ‘Tal vez no falte quien me acuse de haber pintado al pueblo con crudeza naturalista. Responderé que si nuestro pueblo fuese igual al que describiesen Goncourt y Zola, yo podría meditar profundamente en la conveniencia o inconveniencia de retratarlo […] Afortunadamente, el pueblo que copiamos los que vivimos al lado acá del Pirineo no se parece todavía al del lado allá’ (La Tribuna, 3). Going on the assumption that Pardo Bazán was not overly prey to theories of racial/ethnic superiority, it would stand to reason that what constitutes (for her) the difference between the two regions—Spain and France—is not the human subject as biological entity, but the culture to which this subject belongs. That is, for Pardo Bazán, it is Spain's societal ethos which enables its members to resist the sorts of degradation depicted by Zola et al. in the French context. Of course, among these values and practices, the religious component is key: ‘No, los tipos del pueblo español, en general […] no son aún—salvas fenomenales excepciones—los que describen con terrible verdad en L’ Assomoir […] y otras obras donde parece que el novelista nos descubre las abominaciones monstruosas de la Roma pagana […]’ (La Tribuna, 4); ‘El método de análisis implacable que nos impone el arte moderno me ayudó a comprobar el calor de corazón, la caridad inagotable y fácil, la religiosidad sincera, el recto sentir que abunda en nuestro pueblo, mezclado con mil flaquezas […] que a primera vista lo oscurecen’ (La Tribuna, 4). Such comments would seem to lend support to the case for the author's ‘Catholic Naturalism,’ referenced both above and below.
27 Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 113.
28 Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 151.
29 For this last quote, see the following: Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘Prefacio’ to Un viaje de novios (1881), in Obras completas, ed. Darío Villanueva & J. M. González Herrán, 5 vols (Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 2003), I, 191–404 (p. 197). Clearly, Pardo Bazán is not here using the term ‘Realism’ in the orthodox sense here, but rather, is attempting to co-opt the label to refer to her own broader tendency which—as Savine and others suggest—would better be referred to as ‘Catholic Naturalism’.
30 Such as the author herself, in her Cuestión palpitante.
31 As regards the problematic relation between the author's works and the thought of Augustine, it is telling to note, as does Gifford Davis, the manner in which the Augustinian Fray Conrado Muiños, editor of the publication Ciudad de Dios, ‘tried to lure [the author] into polemic with the accusation [made in April of 1891] that she had shown [in her Nuevo Teatro Crítico] a badly dissimulated disdain toward Catholic literature […]’ (Gifford Davis, ‘Catholicism and Naturalism: Pardo Bazán's Reply to Zola’, Hispanic Review, 90:2 [1975], 282–87 [p. 286])—an accusation which would seem odd considering the author's supposedly coherent use of Augustine himself to combat the deterministic tendency in literature.
32 He does, however, speak at length of the transitory nature of the physical world and of the pain that results from becoming too attached to the material/corporeal (see Book IV of Confessions).
33 As Wolfson writes: ‘Augustine maintains that as a result of the corruption produced by the fall of Adam and inherited by his descendants that freedom consisting of the ability to sin or not to sin which was possessed by Adam before his fall is no longer possessed by his descendants. Whatever man does today he does it not by his own free choice but by necessity’ (Harry Wolfson, ‘Philosophical Implications of the Pelagian Controversy’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103:4 [1959], 554–62 [p. 556]). This view is seconded by Donald Burt: ‘In their state of innocence they [Adam and Eve] were “able not to sin” […] Humans now are “not able not to sin” […] if left on their own’ (Donald X. Burt, Augustine's World: An Introduction to His Speculative Philosophy [Lanham: Univ. Press of America, 1996], 145).To put it another way, as Wolfson relates, both ‘concupiscence’—‘[the] necessity by which one sins’— and ‘divine grace’—‘the necessity by which man can refrain from sin and act righteously’— are irresistible states to which the individual is tied prior to his/her even being born. Given such views, it is easy to understand why some—such as Augustine's fifth-century theological sparring partner, Pelagius—label him a ‘fatalist’ (Wolfson, ‘Philosophical Implications’, 556–59).
34 For example: ‘Pardo Bazán, en cambio, propone una formula cargada de posibilidades para el arte, “más ancha, completa y perfecta” […] que “comprende y abarca lo natural y lo espiritual, el cuerpo y el alma” […] manipulando como supuestos de su filosofía los dogmas católicos sobre la gracia, el pecado original y la concupiscencia, en los que tanto la libertad como la necesidad han de entenderse relativas’ (López-Sanz, Naturalismo, 93).
35 Besides Bergson, there is another who provides important insights into the nature of Pardo Bazán's complex relation to Naturalism: fourth-century atomistic philosopher, Epicurus of Samos (341–270 BCE). Of particular interest is the thinker's use of the ‘swerve’ (conceived of either as a ‘random occurrence’ or as a ‘reordering of the internal/soul state’) to preserve the freedom of the will within the materialistic/deterministic context. Such a connection, however—due to constraints of both space and time—will have to await detailed treatment in a future study.
36 Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1994), 42. Bertrand Russell describes Bergsonian philosophy thus: ‘The classification of philosophies is effected […] either by their methods or by their results: “empirical” and “a priori” is a classification of methods, “realist” and “idealist” is a classification by results. An attempt to classify Bergson's philosophy in either of these ways is hardly likely to be successful, since it cuts across all the recognized divisions [in some ways, like the writings of Pardo Bazán]’; and, with respect to the relation to the concept of evolution: ‘Mechanism and teleology suffer from the same defect: both suppose that there is no essential novelty in the world […] As against both these views […] Bergson maintains that evolution is truly creative, like the work of an artist. An impulse to action, an undefined want, exists beforehand, but until the want is satisfied it is impossible to know the nature of what will satisfy it. For example, we may suppose some vague desire in sightless animals to be able to be aware of objects before they were in contact with them. This led to efforts which finally resulted in the creation of eyes. Sight satisfied the desire, but could not have been imagined beforehand. For this reason, evolution is unpredictable, and determinism cannot refute the advocates of free will’ (Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972 (1st ed. 1945)], 791–93).
37 Leonard Lawler & Valentine Moulard, ‘Henri Bergson’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011), <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/> (accessed 1 December 2011).
38 Benjamin Fraser, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2010), 11.
39 Fraser, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain, 29.
40 Fraser, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain, 21.
41 See author's note in Fraser, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain, 21.
42 Adolfo Sotelo Vázquez, ‘Clarín en torno a “Realidad” (1889)’, Revista Hispánica Moderna, 44:1 (1991), 35–47 (p. 46).
43 Fraser, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain, 21–22.
44 See Diego's comments (Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 94). See also Pattison, Emilia Pardo Bazán, iv.
45 Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson (New York: Dover Publications, 2001 [lst ed. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1910]), 140.
46 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 140.
47 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 144.
48 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 146.
49 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 155. Such questions are also seen in Pardo Bazán's Cuestión palpitante: ‘¿[C]ómo dudar que si la psicología […] tiene sus leyes ineludibles y su proceso causal y lógico, no posee la exactitud demostrable que encontramos, por ejemplo, en la física? En física el efecto corresponde estrictamente a la causa: poseyendo el dato anterior tenemos el posterior; mientras en los dominios del espíritu no existe la ecuación entre la intensidad de la causa y del efecto, y el observador y el científico tienen que confesar […] que lo psíquico es irreductible a lo físico’ (La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 148).
50 ‘So experience is appealed to, with the object of showing that the transition from one psychic state to another can always be explained by some simple reason, the second obeying as it were the call of the first. Experience really does show this: and […] we shall willingly admit that there always is some relation between the existing state of consciousness and any new state to which consciousness passes. But is this relation, which explains the transition, the cause of it?’ (Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 156).
51 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 157–58.
52 Bergson, cited in Fraser, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain, 307.
53 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 166. See also: ‘It is the whole soul, in fact, which gives rise to the free decision: and the act will be so much the freer the more the dynamic series with which it is connected tends to be the fundamental self’ (167).
54 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 167–68.
55 Meaning ‘the whole heart’ or ‘the whole soul’. Thanks are due to Professor Darryl Phillips for this translation.
56 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 168.
57 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 169.
58 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 169–70.
59 Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. Pogson, 170.
60 Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (New York: Kensington Publishing, 2002 [1st ed. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946]), 159.
61 Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Andison, 160.
62 Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Andison, 160–61.
63 Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Andison, 162.
64 Indeed, in his May 1916 lecture—with Pardo Bazán in attendance—Bergson speaks in depth of ‘[p]hilosophy thus conceived, as an intuitive study of the soul […]’ (Bergson, cited in Fraser, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain, 306). This connection is drawn out in Russell's analysis: ‘The division between intellect and instinct is fundamental in his philosophy […] Instinct at its best is called intuition […]’; ‘ “The intellect”, Bergson says, “always behaves as if it were fascinated by the contemplation of inert matter. It is life looking outward, putting itself outside itself, adopting the ways of unorganized nature in principle, in order to direct them in fact”. If we may be allowed to add another image to the many by which Bergson's philosophy is illustrated, we may say that the universe is a vast funicular railway, in which life is the train that goes up, and matter is the train that goes down. The intellect consists in watching the descending train as it passes the ascending train in which we are. The obviously nobler faculty which concentrates its attention on our own train [life] is instinct or intuition’ (Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 793–95).
65 Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Andison, 109.
66 The eternal nature of the self or soul becomes evident, in part, through Bergson's concept of ‘pure duration’: ‘ “Pure duration”, we are told, “is the form which our conscious states assume when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states”. It forms the past and the present into one organic whole, where there is mutual penetration, succession without distinction’ (Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 796). Of course, the union of past and present—the joining of both ends of the temporal cord—is the essence of the eternal.
67 See editor's ‘Notes on Editions’, in Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘El encaje roto’, in ‘El encaje roto’ y otros cuentos, ed. & intro. Joyce Tolliver (New York: MLA Press, 1996), xxxiii–xxxiv (p. xxxiv). Further references to this work are given in the text.
68 This idea is voiced by Micaelita, who, after experiencing her moment of intuition/imagination, remarks: ‘[…] en aquel instante fugaz se alzó un telón y detrás apareció desnuda un alma’ (‘El encaje roto’, 64). As for Bergson, he is insistent on the matter of the intuition's/instinct's ability to put us—imaginatively—into contact with the ‘other’. Russell explains both the intuition's abilities and the manner in which these contrast with those of the intellect: ‘Intellect […] will not give knowledge of things at a distance; indeed the function of science is said to be to explain all perceptions in terms of touch. “Instinct alone”, [Bergson] says, “is knowledge at a distance. It has the same relation to intelligence as vision has to touch” […] The essential characteristic of intuition is that it does not divide the world into separate things, as the intellect does […] It apprehends a multiplicity’ (Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 798).
69 See the editorial commentary on ‘La boda’ in Pardo Bazán, ‘El encaje roto’ y otros cuentos, ed. Tolliver, 86. Further references to this work are given in the text.
70 Upon giving up on Damián (the French teacher), Regina reflects that ‘[s]u consuelo era que nadie conociese la malhadada y defraudada ilusión … Había acertado a disimularla; su humillación era como si no hubiese existido, puesto que no la sospechaba ni doña Andrea, después de espiar a su hija continuamente. Sería el tesoro que guardase: su amor muerto, su desengaño, paloma de blancas alas, rotas y sangrientas …’ (‘La boda’, 88–89).
71 Bergson, The Creative Mind, 160.
72 ‘[N]o proceden como Balzac, ni como Zola, quienes crearon personajes lógicos que obran conforme a los antecedentes sentados por el novelista, y van por donde los lleva la fatalidad de su complexión y la tiranía de las circunstancias. Los personajes de los Goncourt no son tan automáticos; parecen más caprichosos, más inexplicables […]; proceden con independencia relativa, y sin embargo, no se nos figuran maniquíes […] sino personas de carne y hueso, semejantes a muchos individuos que a cada paso encontramos en la vida real, y cuya conducta no podemos predecir con certeza, aun conociéndolos a fondo y sabiendo de antemano los móviles que en ellos pueden influir. La contradicción, irregularidad e inconsecuencia, el enigma que existe en el hombre, lo manifiestan los Goncourt mejor quizá que sus ilustres émulos.’ (Pardo Bazán, La cuestión palpitante, ed. Diego, 227–28).
73 Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘La cana’, in Antología de autores españoles, antiguos y modernos, ed. Fernando Ibarra & Alberto Machado Da Rosa, 2 vols (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1972), II, 233–38 (p. 235). Further references to ‘La cana’ are given in parentheses in the text.
74 Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘Un destripador de antaño’, in Milenio: mil años de literatura española, ed. Bárbara Mujica (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002), 270–80 (p. 278). Further references to this work are given in the text.
75 As in ‘La cana’, Pardo Bazán underlines the ‘unnaturalistic’ nature of the scene through the interjection of romantic elements—specifically, the seeming reflection of the character's interior state in the exterior world, via the violent, nocturnal thunderstorm. Note, however, that if she seems to support such a consonance between the natural world and the human consciousness here, she will later undermine this in another scene (see below).
76 In this depiction, the reader finds a counterpoint to the storm scene. That is, while in the latter the natural world seemingly reflects the human emotional reality, in the former it utterly belies it. Such dissonance, along with the strange feeling of oppression and anxiety experienced by the character while riding in the bright sunshine, might suggest that the connection of the previous night was not between the pharmacist and the impersonal natural world, but rather between the character's soul and that of another.
77 Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘La gota de sangre’, in Cuentos policíacos, ed. & prol. Danilo Manera (Madrid: Editorial Bercimuel, 2001) 25–82. Further references are given in the text.
78 For example: ‘¡Y todo lo había yo descubierto solo con la fuerza de mi instinto, con el romanticismo de mi fantasía, combinando los sucesos reales visibles para encontrar la clave de los recónditos!’ (‘La gota de sangre’, 61). Note the Bergsonian use of ‘instinto’ here, which surely functions within the text as a synonym for ‘intuition’.
79 The name ‘Cordelero’ suggests a connection with the ‘cordero’—an animal known more for its being led than for its leading. Such an image fits well with the depiction of the character as one who is led about by his senses, as opposed to the protagonist, who is able to fly upon the wings of imagination.
80 ‘[S]us ojos eran sagaces, buscones. Después supe que entre los de su profesión pasa por ser quizá el más entendido y de más fino olfato. Lo sensacional del crimen, el revuelo que estaba iniciándose en Madrid, indujeron a que, desde los primeros pasos, se acudiese al renombrado Cordelero, poniéndose en sus manos el asunto’ (‘La gota de sangre’, 42). Note the stress placed on the sensual experience of reality. Of course, it is not Cordelero who cracks the case.
81 As remarked, in a further study, we shall proceed to a consideration of the figures of Epicurus and Lucretius, noting their connection to the thought of Bergson, as well as the manner in which the latter's postulated phenomenon of the ‘swerve’ (interpreted as weight—that is, the suitable redistribution of atoms through training or education) has an important analogue in selected works of Pardo Bazán (for example, La Madre Naturaleza); a state of affairs which provides firm grounding for the soul's resistance to the tyranny of causality and which suggests the possibility of its escape from the servitude to which some would relegate it.