=I. The Background.=--The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw a
curious state of affairs in the drama of Spain. They were years when
dogmatic naturalism, with its systematically crude presentation of life,
was at its height in France, and France, during the nineteenth century,
had more often than not set the fashion for Spain in literary matters.
The baldness of Zola and the pessimism of de Maupassant were quickly
taken up on the French stage, and Henri Becque and the _Théâtre libre_
served slices of raw life to audiences fascinated by a tickling horror.
The same naturalism had, indeed, crossed the Pyrenees and found a few
half-hearted disciples among Spanish novelists, but, on the whole,
Spanish writers resolutely refused to follow this particular French
current.
During the years from 1874 to 1892, when Europe was permeated with the
new doctrine, the stage of Spain was dominated by one man, who gave no
sign that he had ever heard the name of Zola. José Echegaray held the
audiences of Madrid for twenty years with his hectic and rhetorical
plays. The great dramatic talent of this mathematician and politician
drew upon the cheap tricks of Scribe and the appalling situations of
Sardou, and combined them with a few dashes of Ibsenian thesis and the
historical _pundonor_, to form a dose which would harrow the vitals of
the most hardened playgoer. Only a gift of sonorous, rather hollow
lyrism and a sincere intention to emphasize psychology saved the work of
this belated Romanticist from being the cheapest melodrama.
Romanticism is never wholly out of season in Spain, and that is
doubtless why the art of Echegaray held its own so long, for it was
neither novel nor especially perfect. In spite of the solitary and
unrewarded efforts of Enrique Gaspar, a Spanish John the Baptist of
realism in the drama, the reaction was slow in coming, and the year 1892
may be said to mark its arrival. That was the date of _Realidad_, Pérez
Galdós' first drama. Two years later Jacinto Benavente made his début
with _El nido ajeno_. In 1897 the brothers Quintero produced their first
characteristic work. It will be seen that although the contemporary era
of literature in Spain is generally considered to date from the
Spanish-American war, the remarkable efflorescence of her drama was well
under way before that event. The new school, of which Pérez Galdós is
admitted to be the father, is a school of literary and social progress,
vitally interested in a new Spain, where the conditions of life may be
more just.
=II. Galdós Turns from Novel to Drama.=--When _Realidad_ was performed,
Galdós was the most popular novelist in Spain, the peer of any in his
own generation, and the master of the younger men of letters. He was
known as a radical, an anti-clerical, who exercised a powerful influence
upon the thought of his nation, but, above all, as a marvelous creator
of fictional characters. He had revealed Spain to herself in nineteen
novels of manners, and evoked her recent past in twenty historical
novels. He had proved, in short, that in his own sphere he was one of
the great vital forces of modern times.
What persuaded this giant of the novel to depart from the field of his
mastery and attempt the drama, in which he was a novice? Was it because
he desired a more direct method of influencing public opinion in
Spain?[1] Was it, as Sra. Pardo Bazán suggests, with the hope of
infusing new life into the Spanish national drama, which had been too
long in a rut? Both these motives may have been present, but I do not
doubt that the chief was the pure creative urge, the eagerness of an
explorer to conquer an unknown region. The example of certain French
novelists, his contemporaries, was not such as to encourage him. Zola,
Daudet, de Maupassant, the de Goncourts, had all tried the drama with
indifferent success or failure. But Galdós held the theory[2] that novel
and drama are not essentially different arts, that the rules of one are
not notably divergent from the rules of the other. Few or no dramatic
critics will subscribe to this opinion, which explains most of the
weaknesses of Galdós' plays.
[Note 1: As reported by "El bachiller Corchuelo," Galdós once said,
"quizás [yo] tenga mayor afición [al teatro] que a la novela, porque lo
considero un medio más rápido para llegar al alma del pueblo." _Por esos
mundos_, vol. 20, p. 796.]
[Note 2: See the Prefaces to _El abuelo, novela_, and _Casandra,
novela_.]
Again, Galdós had been working toward a dramatic form in his novels, by
the increasing use of pure dialog and the exclusion of narrative and
description. This tendency culminated in the _novelas dialogadas_, _El
abuelo_ and _Realidad_, and, later, in _Casandra_ and _La razón de la
sinrazón_. The inner reason for the gradual shift toward dialog was
increasing interest in human motives and character, and a corresponding
distaste for colorful description. Galdós had never, like Pereda, taken
great delight in word pictures _per se_, though his early novels contain
some admirable ones, and as he grew older his genius was more and more
absorbed in the study of man.
His transition to the drama was not, then, so abrupt as might appear.
But two things were against his success. First, few writers have
approached the stage with so poor a practical equipment. His friends
assure us that, cut off as Galdós was from social diversions by his
continuous writing, he had hardly attended the theater once from his
university days till the performance of _Realidad_, although it is true
that his lack of practical experience was compensated at first by the
personal advice of a trained impresario, don Emilio Mario. Second, the
drama is above all the genre of condensation, and Galdós, even as a
novelist, never condensed. His art was not that of the lapidary, nor
even that of the short story writer. He has few _novelas cortas_ to his
credit, and he required pages and pages to develop a situation or a
character.
=III. His Dramatic Technique.--His Success.=--It is not to be wondered at,
then, that Galdós found himself hampered by the time limit of the play.
He uttered now and then rather querulous protests against the
conventions (artificial, as he regarded them) which prevented him from
developing his ideas with the richness of detail to which he was
accustomed.[3] Such complaints are only confessions of weakness on the
part of an author. One has only to study the first five pages of any
comedy of the brothers Quintero to see how a genuine theatrical talent
can make each character define itself perfectly with its first few
speeches. To such an art as this Galdós brought a fertile imagination,
the habit of the broad canvas, a love of multiplying secondary figures,
and of studying the minutiae of their psychology. Only by sheer genius
and power of ideas could he have succeeded in becoming, as he did, a
truly great dramatist. Naturally enough, he never attained the technical
skill of infinitely lesser playwrights. His usual defects are, as one
would suppose, clumsy exposition, superfluous minor characters and
scenes, mistakes in counting upon a dramatic effect where the audience
found none, and tedious dilution of a situation. Bad motivation and
unsustained characters are rarer. The unity of time is observed in
_Pedro Minio_ and _Alceste_; the unity of place, in _Voluntad_ and _El
tacaño Salomón_.
[Note 3: Foreword to _La loca de la casa_, long form; _Prólogo_ to
_Alma y vida_, p. xiv.]
Galdós was not an imitator of specific foreign models. His first play,
_Realidad_, was a pure expression of his own genius. But it placed him
at once in the modern school which aims to discard the factitious
devices of the "well-made" play, and to present upon the stage a picture
of life approximately as it is. If he frequently deviated from this
ideal (the farthest in _La de San Quintín_), it was due more to his
innate romanticism, of which we shall speak later, than to a straining
for effect. Never, except in the play just named, did he restore to the
stock coincidences of Scribe and Pinero.
In the modern drama the conduct of the plot is of secondary importance,
and character, ideas and dialog become the primary elements. In the
first two Galdós needed no lessons. In naturalness and intensity of
dialog he never reached the skill which distinguishes the pure dramatic
talents of contemporary Spain: Benavente, the Quintero brothers, Linares
Rivas. Galdós' dialog varies considerably in vitality, and it may happen
that it is spirited and nervous in some plays otherwise weak (_Electra_,
_Celia en los infiernos_), while in others, intrinsically more important
(_Amor y ciencia_, _Mariucha_), it inclines toward rhetoric. _Realidad_
and _El abuelo_, however, are strong plays strongly written. Galdós
never succeeded in forging an instrument perfectly adapted to his needs,
like the Quinteros' imitation of the speech of real life, or Benavente's
conventional literary language. It took him long to get rid of the
old-fashioned soliloquy and aside. In his very last works, however, in
_Sor Simona_ and _Santa Juana de Castilla_, as in the novels _El
caballero encantado_ and _La razón de la sinrazón_, Galdós, through
severe self-discipline, attained a fluidity and chastity of style which
place him among the most distinguished masters of pure Castilian.
But at the same time signs of flagging constructive energy began to
appear. _Pedro Minio_ and the plays after it reveal a certain
slothfulness of working out. The writer shrinks from the labor required
to extract their full value from certain situations and characters, and
he is prone to find the solution of the plot in a _deus ex machina_.
Fortunately, the last drama, _Santa Juana de Castilla_, does not suffer
from such weaknesses, and is, in its way, as perfect a structure as _El
abuelo_.
Galdós experienced almost every variety of reception from audiences. It
is not recorded that any play of his was ever hissed off the stage, but
_Gerona_ ended in absolute silence, and was not given after the first
night. _Los condenados_ was nearly as unsuccessful. His greatest triumph
was at the first performance of _Electra_, when the author was carried
home on the shoulders of his admirers. _La de San Quintín_ and _El
abuelo_ were not far behind. But neither success nor failure made the
dramatist swerve a hair's breadth in his methods. Firmly serene in his
consciousness of artistic right, he kept on his way with characteristic
stubbornness and impassivity. Only on two occasions did he allow the
criticisms of the press to goad him into a reply. In the prefaces to
_Los condenados_ and _Alma y vida_ he defended those plays and explained
his aims and methods with entire self-control and urbanity.[4] But he
never deigned to cater to applause. The attack upon _Los condenados_ did
not deter him from employing a similar symbolism and similar motifs
again; and, after the tremendous hit of _Electra_, he deliberately
chose, for _Alma y vida_, his next effort, a subject and style which
should discourage popular applause.[5] Such was the modesty,
unconsciousness and intellectual probity of this man.
[Note 4: The other plays having short prefaces are: _La loca de la
casa_, long form; _Alceste_; _El abuelo, novela_; _Casandra, novela_.]
[Note 5: See _Alma y vida, Prólogo_, p. viii.]
=IV. The Development of Galdós.=--M. E. Martinenche, writing in 1906,
classified the dramatic work of Galdós into three periods, and as his
classification has sometimes been quoted, it may be worth while to
repeat it. In the first period, according to him, which extends from
_Realidad_ to _Los condenados_, Galdós presented broad moral theses, and
accustomed his countrymen to witness on the stage the clash of ideas
instead of that of swords. Then (_Voluntad_ to _Alma y vida_) he
narrowed his subjects so as to present matters of purely national
interest. In the succeeding works (_Mariucha_ to _Amor y ciencia_), he
strove to unite Spanish color with philosophic breadth, and to lay aside
even the appearance of polemic. Such a classification is ingenious, but,
we feel, untenable. Aside from the fact that M. Martinenche was not
acquainted with Galdós' third play, _Gerona_, which does not fit into
his scheme, it seems apparent that there is no essential difference in
localization between _La de San Quintín_ of the first period and
_Mariucha_ of the third; and that the former has no more general thesis
than _Voluntad_, of the second. And later plays, such as _Casandra_ of
1910, so closely allied to _Electra_, have come to disturb the
arrangement.
The only division by time which it is safe to attempt must be very
general. No one will dispute that in his last years Galdós rose to a
less particular, a more broad and poetic vision, to describe which we
cannot do better than to quote some words of Gómez de Baquero.[6] "The
last works of Galdós, which belong to his allegorical manner, offer a
sharp contrast to the intense realism, so plastic and so picturesque,"
of earlier writings. First he mastered inner motivation and minute
description of external detail, and from that mastery he passed to "the
art, rather vague and diffuse, though lofty and noble, of allegories, of
personifications of ideas, of symbols." This tendency appeared even as
early as _Miau_ (1888), then in _Electra_, and more strongly in _Alma y
vida_, in _Bárbara_, and in most of the later plays. "Tired of imitating
the concrete figures of life, Galdós rose to the region of ideas. His
spirit passed from the contemplation of the external to the
representation of the inward life of individuals, and took delight in
wandering in that serene circle where particular accidents are only
shadows projected by the inner light of each person and of each theme.
His style became poetic, a Pythagorean harmony, a distant music of
ideas." These words apply especially to _Alma y vida_, _Bárbara_, _Sor
Simona_, and _Santa Juana de Castilla_, but they indicate in general
Galdós' growing simplicity of manner and his increasing interest in
purely moral qualities.
[Note 6: "Andrenio," _Novelas y novelistas_, p. 111.]
=V. The Subject-matter of His Plays.=--Rather than by time, it is better
to classify Galdós' plays by their subject-matter, although the
different threads are often tangled. Galdós had three central interests
in all his work, novels and dramas alike: the study of characters for
their own sake; the national problems of Spain; the philosophy of life.
1. _Character Study._--"Del misterio de las conciencias se alimentan las
almas superiores," said Victoria in _La loca de la casa_ (IV, 7), and
that phrase may serve as a guide to all his writings that are not purely
historical. The study of the human conscience, not propaganda, was the
central interest of the early novel, _Doña Perfecta_, just as it was in
_Electra_, and to a far greater degree in works of broader scope.
Yet the statement, often made, that Galdós was a realist, as if he were
primarily an observer, a transcriber of life, requires to be modified
where the dramas are concerned. Pure realism is present in his dramatic
work, but it does not occupy anything like the predominant place which
some suppose. A "keen, minute, subtle study of the manners of humble
folk" (_Azorín_) formed, indeed, the backbone of certain novels, but in
the later period, to which the plays belong, it was already overshadowed
by other interests. In the dramas, realism is usually abandoned to the
secondary characters and the minor scenes. For genre studies of a purely
observed type one may turn to the picture of a dry-goods store in
_Voluntad_, to the parasites and the children in _El abuelo_, to the
peasants in _Doña Perfecta_ and _Santa Juana de Castilla_, and to other
details, but hardly to any crucial scene or front-rank personage. So
too, Galdós' humor, the almost unfailing accompaniment of his realism,
is reserved for the background. Only in _Pedro Minio_, the sole true
comedy, is the chief figure a comic type. Not a single play of Galdós,
not even _Realidad_, can be called a genuine realistic drama.
To demonstrate was Galdós' aim, not to entertain or to reproduce life.
Hence, in the studies of unusual or mystical types, in which he grew
steadily more interested, one always feels the presence of a _cerebral_
element; that is, one feels that these persons are not so much plastic,
living beings as creations of a superior imagination. In this respect
also Galdós resembles Balzac. The plays having the largest proportion of
realism are the most convincing. That is why _Realidad_, with its
immortal three, _La loca de la casa_, with the splendidly-conceived
Pepet, _Bárbara_, which contains extraordinarily successful studies of
complex characters, and especially _El abuelo_, with the lion of Albrit
and the fine group of cleanly visualized secondary characters, are the
ones which seem destined to live upon the stage.
We should like to emphasize the cerebral or intellectual quality of
Galdós' work, because it has been often overlooked. It contrasts sharply
with the naturalness of Palacio Valdés, the most human of Spain's recent
novelists. Nothing shows this characteristic of Galdós more clearly than
his weakness in rendering the passion of love. The Quinteros, in their
slightest comedy, will give you a love-scene warm, living, straight from
the heart. But the Galdós of middle age seemed to have lost the
freshness of his youthful passions, and _Doña Perfecta_, precisely
because its story dated from his youth, is the only play which contains
a really affecting love interest. Read the passional scenes of
_Mariucha_, as of _La fiera_, _Voluntad_, or of any other, and you will
see that the intellectual interest is always to the fore. Examine the
scene in _Voluntad_ (II, 9) where Isidora, who has been living with a
lover and who has plucked up strength to break away from him, is sought
out by him and urged to return. The motif is precisely the same as that
used by the Quinteros in the third act of _Las flores_ (Gabriel and Rosa
María), but a comparison of the handling will show that all the
emotional advantage is in favor of the Quinteros. Galdós depicts a
purely intellectual battle between two wills; while the creations of the
Andalusian brothers vibrate with the intense passion of the human heart.
For the same reason, Galdós, in remodeling Euripides' Alceste, was
unable to clothe the queen with the tenderness of the original, and
substituted a rational motive, the desire to preserve Admetus for the
good of his kingdom, in the place of personal affection. The neglect of
the sex problem in the dramas is indeed striking: in _Amor y ciencia_,
_Voluntad_ and _Bárbara_ it enters as a secondary interest, but
_Realidad_ is the only play based upon it.
This may be the place to advert to Galdós' romantic tendencies, which
French critics have duly noted. In his plays Galdós, when imaginative,
was incurably romantic, almost as romantic as Echegaray, and proof of it
lies on every side. Sra. Pardo Bazán coined his formula exactly when she
christened his dramatic genre "el realismo romántico-filosófico"
(_Obras_, VI, 233). Many of the leading characters are pure romantic
types: the poor hero of unknown parentage, Víctor of _La de San
Quintín_; the outlaw beloved of a noble lady, José León, of _Los
condenados_; the redeemed courtesan, Paulina, of _Amor y ciencia_. In
his fondness for the reapparition of departed spirits (_Realidad_,
_Electra_, _Casandra_, _novela_), a device decidedly out of place in the
modern drama,[7] the same tendency crops out. Some of the speeches in
_Gerona_ (II, 12) might have been written in 1835; and the plot of _La
fiera_ dates from the same era.
[Note 7: Cf. George P. Baker, _Dramatic Technique_, 1919, p. 513.]
All this shows that Galdós was not, in the direction of pure realism, an
original creator. The Quintero brothers and Benavente excel him in
presenting a clear-cut profile of life, informed by a vivifying human
spirit.
2. _National Problems._--Galdós is not the most skilled technician among
the Spaniards who discuss, through the drama, the burning problems of
the day. Linares Rivas excels him in this rather ephemeral branch of
dramaturgy. But Galdós has the great advantage of breadth. He is never
didactic in the narrow sense. He sometimes hints at a moral in the last
words of a play, but he is never so lacking in artistic feeling as to
expound his thesis in set terms, like Echegaray and Brieux. The
intention speaks from the action.
Galdós has said that the three great evils which afflict Spain to-day
are the power of the Church, _caciquismo_ or political bossism, and _la
frescura nacional_ or brazen indifference to need of improvement. All
three he tried to combat. In spite of the common belief, however, his
plays--thesis plays as they nearly all are in one way or another--seldom
attack these evils directly. _Caciquismo_ is an issue only in _Mariucha_
and _Alma y vida_, and in them occupies no more than a niche in the
background. Sloth and degeneracy are a more frequent butt, and
_Voluntad_, _Mariucha_, _La de San Quintín_, and, in less degree, _La
loca de la casa_, hold up to scorn the indolent members of the
bourgeoisie or aristocracy, and spur them into action. From this motive,
perhaps, Galdós devoted so much space to domestic finance. The often
made comparison with Balzac holds good also in the fluency with which he
handled complicated money transactions on paper, and in the business
embarrassment which overtook him in real life. He had a lurking
affection for a spendthrift: witness _Pedro Minio_ and _El tacaño
Salomón_.
Against the organization of the Catholic Church Galdós harbored intense
feeling, yet he never displayed the bitterness which clericals are wont
to impute to him. In view of his flaming zeal to remedy the backwardness
of Spain, a zeal so great as to force him into politics, which he
detested, Galdós' moderation is noteworthy. The dramas in which the
clerical question appears are _Electra_, and _Casandra_. _Doña Perfecta_
attacks, not the Church, but religious fanaticism, just as _La fiera_
and _Sor Simona_ attack political fanaticism; and the dramatist is so
far from showing bias that he allows each side to appear in its own
favorable light. Thus, in _Casandra_, Doña Juana, the bigot, is a more
attractive figure personally than the greedy heirs. _Doña Perfecta_
gives the impression of an inevitable tragic conflict between two stages
of culture, rather than of a murder instigated by the malice of any one
person. One can even detect a growing feeling of kindliness toward the
clergy themselves: there was a time when Galdós would not have chosen a
priest to be the good angel of his lovers, as he did in _Mariucha_.
For Galdós was not only by nature impartial, but he was fundamentally
religious. It may be necessary to stress this fact, but only for those
who are not well acquainted with his work. If the direct testimony of
his friend Clarín be needed, it is there (_Obras completas_, I, 34); but
careful attention to his writings could leave no doubt of it. Máximo in
_Electra_ repeats, "I trust in God"; _Los condenados_ and _Sor Simona_
are full of Christian spirit, and the last play, _Santa Juana de
Castilla_, is practically a confession of faith.
The problems which concern Galdós the dramatist are, then, not so often
the purely local ones of the Peninsula as broader social questions. The
political tolerance which it is the aim of _La fiera_ to induce, is not
needed by Spain alone, though perhaps there more urgent; the comity of
social classes eulogized in _La de San Quintín_, the courage and energy
of _Voluntad_, the charity of _Celia en los infiernos_, the thrift of
_El tacaño Salomón_, and the divine love of _Sor Simona_, would profit
any nation. The loftier moral studies which we shall approach in the
next section are, of course, still more universal.
One point should be made clear at once, however, and that is that
Galdós, with regard to social questions, was neither a radical nor an
original thinker. When one considers the sort of ideas which had been
bandied about Europe under the impulse of Ibsen, Tolstoy and
others,--the Nietzschean doctrine of self-expression at any cost, the
right of woman to live her own life regardless of convention, the new
theories of governmental organization or lack of organization--one
cannot regard Galdós as other than a social conservative, who could be
considered a radical nowhere outside of Spain. In how many plays does a
conventional marriage furnish the facile cure for all varieties of
social affliction (_Voluntad_, _La de San Quintín_, _La fiera_,
_Mariucha_, etc.)! The only socialist whom he brings upon the
stage--Víctor of _La de San Quintín_--has received an expensive
education from his father, and, though compelled to do manual labor, it
is apparent that he is not concerned with any far-reaching rational
reorganization of society, but only with the betterment of his own
position. In _Celia en los infiernos_, a mere broadcasting of coin by
the wealthy will relieve all suffering; in _El tacaño Salomón_, the
death of a rich relative lifts the spendthrift out of straits before he
has reformed. It is clear that in this order of ideas Galdós is strictly
conventional.
Various possible attitudes may be adopted by one who sees political and
social evils, and desires to abolish them. The natural conservative
dreams of a benevolent despotism as the surest path to improvement. This
attitude Galdós never held, for he was born an optimist, and believed in
the regenerative power of human nature. The natural liberal believes in
a reform obtainable through radical propaganda in writing and at the
polls. Such a man was the Galdós of the early novels and of some of the
dramas,--the Galdós of _La de San Quintín_, of _Voluntad_, of
_Mariucha_, full of exhortations to labor and change as the hope of
redemption. Then, there is a third attitude, likely to be that of older
persons, whom sad experience has led to despair of political action, and
to believe that society can be improved only through a conversion of the
race to loyalty and brotherly love; in short, through practical
application of the Christian virtues. This change in Galdós' point of
view was foreshadowed in _Alma y vida_, where one tyranny (absolutism)
is replaced by another (parliamentarism); without soul, "wickedness,
corruption, injustice continue to reign among men." In his old age the
reformer appeared to renounce his faith in vote or revolution, and to
place himself by the side of Tolstoy. The note which rings with
increasing clearness is that of charity, of the healing power of love.
There is something pathetic in the spectacle of this powerful genius
who, as the shadow of death drew near him, became more and more absorbed
in spiritual problems, and less in practical ones. _Amor y ciencia_,
_Celia en los infiernos_, _Sor Simona_, _Santa Juana de Castilla_,
reiterate that love is the only force which can relieve the suffering
and injustice of the world. And, in harmony with the gentle theme of the
last plays, their form becomes simple and even naïve, while the
characters are enveloped in a vaporous softness which suffuses them with
a halo of humane divinity.
3. _Galdós' Philosophy._--Before passing to a consideration of Galdós'
ideas, we should examine for a moment his manner of conveying them. He
was able to express himself in forceful, direct language when he chose,
but he came to prefer the indirect suggestion of symbolism.
Symbolism, of course, is nothing but a device by which a person or idea
is made to do double duty; it possesses, besides its obvious, external
meaning, another meaning parallel to that, but hidden, and which must be
supplied by the intelligence of the reader or spectator.
The interpretation of a symbol may be more or less obvious, and the
esoteric meaning may be conveyed in a variety of ways. Galdós has
expressed his opinion about the legitimate uses of symbolism in his
prefaces to _Los condenados_ and _Alma y vida_, in passages capital for
the understanding of his methods. In the earlier work he said, "To my
mind, the only symbolism admissible in the drama is that which consists
in representing an idea with material forms and acts." This he did
himself in the famous kneading scene of _La de San Quintín_, in the
fusion of metal in the third act of _Electra_, etc. "That the figures of
a dramatic work should be personifications of abstract ideas, has never
pleased me." Personified abstractions Galdós never did, we believe,
employ in his plays, though critics have sometimes credited him with
such a use.[8] Nevertheless we should remember that precisely this kind
of symbolism was very popular in Spain in the seventeenth century, and
gave rise to the splendid literary art of the _autos sacramentales_.
Galdós then goes on to refute the allegation of certain critics that he
was influenced by Ibsen.
[Note 8: Thus R. D. Perés (_Cultura española_, 1906, pp. 135-37),
interprets doña Juana of _Casandra_ as the _ancien régime_, Casandra as
liberty working through the revolution of '68, Rosaura as truth. It is
true that he is writing of the novel, not the play, but the characters
are the same. In the novel _El caballero encantado_ the spirit of Spain
is personified in one of the chief characters.]
"I admire and enjoy," he says, "those of Ibsen's dramas which are sane
and clear, but those generally termed symbolic have been unintelligible
to me, and I have never found the pleasure in them which those may who
can disentangle their intricate meaning." What a curious statement, in
the light of the other preface, written eight years later! "Symbolism,"
he there wrote, "would not be beautiful if it were clear, with a
solution which can be arrived at mechanically, like a charade. Leave it
its dream-vagueness, and do not look for a logical explanation, or a
moral like that of a child's tale. If the figures and acts were arranged
to fit a key, those who observe them would be deprived of the joy of a
personal interpretation.... Clearness is not a condition of art." Did
Galdós change his mind in the interval between writing these two
prefaces? I think not. The change merely illustrates the difference in
viewpoint between an author and a reader. For very, very many persons in
his audiences have regarded the symbolism of _Los condenados_ (if it be
there), of _Electra_, of _Casandra_, of _Pedro Minio_, of _Santa Juana
de Castilla_, and especially of _Alma y vida_ and _Bárbara_, with the
same feeling of hopeless bewilderment which Galdós experienced when he
read _The Wild Duck_, _The Master-builder_ and _The Lady from the Sea_.
To the creator his creation is clear and lovely.
Leaving aside the question of influence, it cannot be denied that the
symbolism of Galdós has much in common with that of Ibsen. Both have the
delightful vagueness which permits of diverse interpretations,--in _Alma
y vida_ the author was obliged to come to the rescue with his own
version; in neither is the identification of person and idea carried so
far that the character loses its definite human contour; and both are
employed to convey a profound philosophy.
What is Galdós' philosophy? First and foremost, he believed that nothing
in life is too insignificant or too wicked to be entirely despised.
Sympathy with everything human stands out even above his keen
indignation against those who oppress the unfortunate. A search through
his works will reveal few figures wholly bad, too wicked to receive some
touch of pity. César of _La de San Quintín_ and Monegro of _Alma y vida_
are probably the closest to stage villains, and this precisely because
they are a part of the melodramatic elements of those plays, not of the
central thought.
A corollary of his universal sympathy is the doctrine, not very
profound or novel, that opposite qualities complement one another, and
must be joined in order to give life a happy completeness. This thread
runs through many plays, sometimes unobtrusively, as in _La fiera_,
_Amor y ciencia_, _La de San Quintín_, sometimes erected into the dogma
of primary concern, as in _Alma y vida_ (the union of spirit and
physical vigor), _La loca de la casa_ (evil and good, selfishness and
sacrifice), and _Voluntad_ (practical sense and dreamy imagination).
This is one manifestation of that splendid impartiality, that
impassiveness which enabled Galdós to retain his balance and serenity in
the trials of a stormy and disastrous era. Another evidence of his
desire to present both sides of each question is found in those dramas
which appear to contradict one another. _Pedro Minio_ supports
literally, in a way to dishearten earnest toilers, the Biblical
injunction to take no thought for the morrow, and to give away all that
one has; but _El tacaño Salomón_ teaches thrift. Most of Galdós' writing
advocates change, advancement, rebellion against old forms; but
_Bárbara_ drives home the strange burden that all things must return to
their primitive state. I do not add _El abuelo_, with its
anti-determinist lesson, because Galdós never was a determinist; he
never believed, as did Zola, that the secrets of heredity can be laid
bare by a set of rules worked out by the human mind.
These citations prove, at least, that Galdós was careful not to be
caught enslaved by any dogma, and they show, too, that he set no store
by the letter of the law, and prized only the spirit. That is the secret
of his fondness for the dangerous situation of the beneficent lie, or
justifiable false oath, which brought him severe criticism when he first
used it in _Los condenados_ (II, 16), and which nevertheless he repeated
in an equally conspicuous climax in _Sor Simona_ (II, 10). Galdós
defended the lie through which good may come, in the preface to _Los
condenados_, with reasoning like that of a trained casuist; and such a
lie appears hypocritical upon the lips of Pantoja (_Electra_, IV, 8),
though it is not so intended. As a dramatic theme the idea is not
entirely novel, for Ibsen, in the _Wild Duck_, had said that happiness
may be based upon a lie. As usual, Galdós provided his own antidote,
for, with what appeared a strange inconsistency, and was really a desire
for balance, the lesson of the very drama, _Los condenados_, is that
"man lives surrounded by lies, and can find salvation only by embracing
the truth, and accepting expiation." This idea also can be paralleled in
Ibsen and Tolstoy, but it was overbold to exhibit both sides of the
shield in the same play.
There still remain the major threads in the broad and varied fabric of
Galdós' ideology. Stoicism, that characteristic Spanish attitude of
mind, allured him often, and he succeeded in giving dramatic interest to
the least emotional of philosophies. In _Realidad_ and _Mariucha_ is
found the most explicit setting forth of that theory of life which
enables an oppressed spirit to rise above its conditioning
circumstances.[9] At times Galdós appeared to dally with Buddhism: at
least some critics have so explained the reincarnation of doña Juana in
_Casandra, novela_. Another tenet of Buddhism, or, as some would have
it, of Krausism, was often in Galdós' thought, and is emphasized
particularly in _Los condenados_ and _Bárbara_. Every sin of man must be
at some time expiated; and not alone sins actually committed against the
statutes, but sins of thought, sins against ideal justice, which is far
more exacting than any human laws.[10]
[Note 9: See note below, to Act V, line 314.]
[Note 10: See the criticism of _Bárbara_.]
All these phases of thought spring from one mother-idea, the
perfectioning of the human soul. For Galdós, in spite of the unfortunate
times in which his life fell, in spite of the clearness with which he
observed the character of those times, was an unconquerable optimist. He
believed that Spain could be remade, or he would not have worked to that
end. He believed that humanity is capable of better impulses than it
ordinarily exhibits, and his life was devoted to calling forth generous
and charitable sentiments in men. Whether through stoicism, which is the
beautifying of the individual soul, or through divine and all-embracing
love, which is the primal social virtue, Galdós worked in a spirit of
the purest self-sacrifice for the betterment of his nation and of
humanity. He had grasped a truth which Goethe knew, but which Ibsen and
his followers overlooked--that the price of advance, either in the
individual or in society, is self-control.
=VI. The Position of Galdós as a Dramatist.=--The enemies of Pérez Galdós
have often declared that he had no dramatic gifts, and should never have
gone outside his sphere as a novelist. Other distinguished writers,
among them Benavente, consider him one of the greatest dramatists of
modern times. The truth lies close to the second estimate, surely.
Galdós will always be thought of first as a novelist, since as a
novelist he labored during his most fertile years, and the novel best
suited his luxuriant genius. But he possessed a very definite theatrical
sense, and it would be possible to show, if space permitted, how it
enabled him to achieve success in the writing of difficult situations,
and how he never avoided the difficult. Had Galdós entered the dramatic
field earlier in life, he might have been a more skilled technician, but
as it is, _El abuelo_ and _Bárbara_ are there to prove him a creative
dramatist of the first order.
From what has been said in the preceding sections, it will be evident
that Pérez Galdós does not fit exactly into any single one of the
convenient classifications which dramatic criticism has formulated. His
genius was too exuberant, too varied. Of the three stages which mark the
progress of the modern drama, romanticism, naturalism, and symbolism,
the second, in its strict dogmatic form, affected Galdós not at all.
Realism, in the good old sense of the Spanish _costumbristas_, furnishes
a background for his plays, but only a background. A picture of Spanish
society does emerge from the dramas, indeed. It is a society in which
there are great extremes of wealth and poverty, in which the old titled
families are generally degenerate and slothful, and the middle classes
display admirable spiritual qualities, but are too often unthrifty and
inefficient. Of the laboring classes, Galdós has little to say. Bitter
religious and political intolerance creates an atmosphere of hatred
which a few exceptional characters strive to dissipate. Galdós, however,
was seldom willing to face these conditions frankly and tell us what he
saw and what must result from such conditions. In the later period of
his life, to which the plays belong, the sincere study of reality was
swept away by a combination of romanticism and symbolism which lifted
the author into the realm of pure speculation, giving his work a
universal philosophic value as it lost in the representation of life.
From the spectacle of his unfortunate land he fled willingly to the
contemplation of general truth. _El abuelo_, because it unites a
faithful picture of local society and well-observed figures with a
sublime thought, is beyond doubt Galdós' greatest drama.
Menéndez y Pelayo pointed out that Galdós lacks the lyric flame which
touches with poignant emotion the common things of life. He did not
entirely escape the rhetoric of his race. And he was curiously little
interested in the passions of sex--too little to be altogether human,
perhaps. But his work appears extraordinarily vast and many-sided when
one compares it with that of his French contemporaries of the
naturalistic drama, who observed little except sex. He was not an
exquisite artist; he was, judged by the standards of the day, naïve,
unsophisticated, old-fashioned. But he was a creative giant, a lofty
soul throbbing with sympathy for humanity, and with yearning for the
infinite.
Galdós wrote but five tragedies: _Realidad_, _Los condenados_, _Doña
Perfecta_, _Alma y vida_, _Santa Juana de Castilla_. Of them, _Doña
Perfecta_ creates the deepest, most realistic tragic emotion, the tragic
emotion of a thwarted prime of life; and after it, _Santa Juana de
Castilla_, the tragedy of lonely old age. _El abuelo_ and _Bárbara_,
also, in some way intimate the mysterious and crushing power of natural
conditions,--the conception which is at the heart of modern tragedy.
Galdós attained that serene vision of the inevitableness of sorrow too
seldom to be ranked with the foremost of genuine realists. Instead, he
reaches a very eminent position as an imaginative philosopher.