



Produced by Dagny; John Bickers





DONA PERFECTA

by B. PEREZ GALDOS


Translated from the Spanish by Mary J. Serrano




INTRODUCTION

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;