University of Texas Bulletin No. 2625: July 1, 1926 TWO MODERN SPANISH NOVEUSTS: EMILIA PARDO BAZAN and I ARMANDO PALACIO VALDES C. C. GLASCOCK Associate Professor of Romance Languages in the University of Texas PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AUSTIN University of Texas Bulletin No. 2625: July 1, 1926 TWO MODERN SPANISH NOVELISTS: EMILIA PARDO BAzAN and ' ARMANDO PALACIO VALOES C. C. GLASCOCK Associate Profeuor of Romance Languages in the University of Texas PUBLISHED BY THB UNIVERSITY FOUR TIMES A MONTH, AND ENTERED AS SECOND·CLASS MATTER A.T THE POSTOFFICE AT AUSTIN, TEXAS, UNDER THB ACT OF AUGUST 24, 1912 The benefit& of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free govern• ment. Sam Houston Cultivated mind is the guardiaa genius of democracy. . . • It is the only dictator that freemen acknowl• edge and the only security that free• men desire. Mirabeau B. Lamar , EMILIA PARDO BAZAN EMILIA PARDO BAZAN I Spanish women are famed the world over for their vivac­ity and for their beauty. No others can surpass them in fiery animation, dash and passion. This has been true for long centuries. The dancing girls from Gades (Roman for Cadiz) were favorites in Rome in the early days of the Empire, 2,000 years ago. And a famous statue of Venus (Callipyge) is, according to Havelock Ellis (The Soul of Spain, N. Y ., 1909, p. 17 4), "the image of a Cadiz dancing girl in a characteristic movement of a Spanish dance." But there are few foreigners who know or reflect on the fact that Spain has given to the world three women at least who were unequaled or unsurpassed in higher spheres. Santa Teresa, "the most sympathetic figure in the Spanish sainthood, co-patroness of Spain along with Saint James, is not only a glorious figure in the annals of religious thought; she is a veritable miracle of genius, one of the greatest women that ever held a pen, taking rank immediately after the most perfect masters." Queen Isabel, from whose en­couragement more than from any other source Columbus drew support for undertaking the voyage that resulted in the discovery of America, was a great leader and a great queen who with her husband, Ferdinand, wrested all Spain from Moorish rule. Countess Emilia Pardo Bazan, an essayist, critic and novelist, blazed her name high in the annals of literature, not merely of Spain but of the world. Her greatest claim to fame is based on her large array of novels and short stories. Her versatility and fertility place her in Spain next to Perez Gald6s, as her published works number about fifty volumes; in natural gifts second to none, in lightness of touch, spontaneity, swiftness, grace of style and in tenderness of soul she is unsurpassed in modern Spain. She must be given a place among the four or five most distinguished modern Spanish novelists (Valera, Pereda, Perez Gald6s, Pardo Bazan, Palacio Valdes, in the order of seniority) . Each one of them has superlative qualities, and it is not surprising that some critics have given the preference to Emilia Pardo Bazan. This remarkable woman, at the time of her death (1921) perhaps the world's leading authoress, was a native of La Coruiia in Galicia, the beautiful northwestern province of Spain. This her lovely homeland and its people with their marked characteristics, reserve and deep sensitiveness of soul, have been well portrayed in many of her works. When 16 years of age (1868) she married Seiior de Quiroga and moved to Madrid, and, with the exception of extended periods of travel and of protracted visits in Paris, she re­sided there for the remainder of her long life, devoting her­self to literature, to which she was irresistibly drawn even in early childhood. Travel in foreign lands helped to bring her in touch with foreign literature, especially with that of France. She recognized clearly the importance and signifi­cance of the naturalistic movement in French literature. With very important and emphatic additions and correc­tions she proclaimed herself its advocate, and in introducing it into Spain she did more than any one else. But Pardo Bazan was a lady in the true sense of the word, a noble­hearted woman, professing Roman Catholic faith, so that she wholly rejected the determinism, the utilitarianism in art, the extremes, the obscenity of Zola and his train. Nevertheless her fondness for some features of the foreign literary movement, her advocacy of it in part, was derisively if not maliciously censured by orthodox conservatives in Spain who deliberately misunderstood or misrepresented her and mistook her genuine, well-grounded motive for a feminine fad, and heaped upon her criticism that at times took an abusive turn, as one may see for oneself by con­sulting Cejador y Frauca's history of Spanish literature (Vol. IX, pp. 270-286). Emilia Pardo Bazan was, I think, too strong, too vigorous and sane, too masculine in mind, if one will have it so, to yield to the mere impulse of modish­ness, as many women do. When only 17 years of age she entered the literary lists with three essays, one on the Galician sage, Father Feij6o; Emilia Pardo Bazan one on Dante, Milton and Tasso ; and one on Darwinism, dealing with material in part beyond the ken of a girl of 17; for criticism of Darwinism implies extensive knowledge of science and seasoned judgment as well. Her daring venture at so early an age is indicative of temerity almost masculine, that was characteristic of her. Dona Emilia's first novel, Pascual Lopez, the Autobiog­raphy of a Medical Student (1879), disclosed a surprising degree of excellence, but it was a firstling, as far inferior to her later novels as it was remote from them in style. It is in keeping with Spanish literary tradition of the years pre­ceding. There is no need to linger over its weaknesses, somewhat the result of inexperience, its mannerisms, archa­isms, etc., and in particular its fantastic inventions, the heritage of romantic tradition. On the other hand some of her excellent qualities were foreshadowed: descriptive power, grace of style, swiftness of movement. It held the promise of better things to come. One misses the author's marvelous feeling for reality and truth, developed later through her study of naturalism. More than that, Pascual Lopez, who tells his own story, is so weak in character, so abysmally stupid, that the moral beauty in the heroine's character is inadequate compensation. Diverted for a time from the realm of pure fiction and attracted by the figure of the great mystic, Saint Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan order, she wrote a historical work, San Francisco de Asis (1882), the fruit of a period during which she felt the calming influence of mysticism. This influence, though apparent early and late in her career, was not her prevailing nor her more charac­teristic mood; she was too sane, too well-balanced, to be lost for long in mystic dreams. The second novel, Un vtaje de novios (A Wedding Jour­ney). appeared in 1881. To this was prefixed her celebrated prologue on naturalism, some of whose methods of pro­cedure she deliberately recommended and employed in the story itself, so that the book and the prologue came to be a milestone on the way, leading to the introduction of natural­ism into Spain. Her practice was as yet not quite abreast of her theory. But the book revealed a naturalistic bent on the author's part from which she never afterwards swerved. In her prologue to this work she laid down her literary creed, and declared herself an advocate of sound and liberal natur­alism. Now realism had been no new thing in Spain since the days of La Celestina, Cervantes, the picaresque novel, and the early drama, in all of which the lowest classes of the people had been depicted in lively colors; and plebeians had also spoken in their own language. Nevertheless Pardo Bazan believed that there were some desirable new features and stimuli to be derived from the French naturalistic movement: closer observation, deeper study of the problems of life and of society, greater objectivity. Moreover, she felt that greater freedom and liberty were needed in Spain in treating daring subjects, and so she aroused the ire of some of her straight-laced, puritanical countrymen who may have forgotten that she had been surpassed in daring by Maria de Zayas in the seventeenth century; but times were different now, and it was distasteful to some puritanical Spaniards for so noble a lady as Countess Emilia to draw the veil from the more intimate phases of life. Strange as it may seem, they discovered scandalous features in some of her works: La madre naturaleza, Insolaci6n, Morriiia, La quimera, but the truth is the author never went to the excesses and extremes of crudest naturalism with all its pathology, determinism, social ugliness, malodorous filth and darkening pessimism. Her innate refinement, her sound common sense, her good Spanish qualities of heart and mind saved her, as many others, from the exaggerations, extravagances and monstrosities of Zola and his natural­istic school. Besides, as she herself believed, and others too in Spain, however far one might descend in Spanish social spheres, however low down one might go among the common people, one never could find lees so foul-smelling nor people so vulgar and so beastly as the French naturalists thought they discovered in their own land. She believed that the sane joyousness and the bright good humor encouraged by the sunlit Castillian sky are incompatible with the monoto­nous mournfulness, the drear sadness, the decadence, the gloom pervading some French naturalistic books. Emilia Pm·do Bazan In order to make her idea clearer, she explained: "I do not censure the patient, minute, exact observation which dis­tinguishes the modern French school--on the contrary, I praise it; but I disapprove, as erroneous in art, of systematic selection by preference of repugnant and shameful subjects, excessive prolixity, at times wearisome, in descriptions, and more than everything else, a defect that may have been overlooked by critics, the perennial solemnity and sadness, the scowl ever fierce, the lack of gay, graceful and easy notes in style and in ideas. For me Zola with all his im­mense talent is the most hypochondriacal of writers.... And as the novel is par excellence a copy of human life, it is fitting that in it, as in our existence, tears and laughter should come in turn, the essentials of the eternal tragicom­edy in the world. These recent realists have left the poison and the dagger of the romantic school behind the scenes, but they bring out on the stage sad faces, a thousand times more ill-natured and fumy."1 Later she herself came to recognize that her observations needed some modifications, notwithstanding the ease, ele­gance and beauty with which she had expressed herself. Though rarely wearisome, her fine descriptions became more prolix; and while she never came to preaching like Ferml.n Caballero, yet she held the mean "between the cold, affected shamelessness of some naturalistic writers and the senti­mental homilies of authors who take a pulpit on each finger and go preaching through the wheat." She said of herself: "I for my part can say that in art I love indirect teaching which emanates from beauty, but I abhor moral pills dis­guised in a coating of literary gold." At the very beginning she formed a harmonious and elegant conception of the art of novel writing; some of its accessories and details she subsequently changed, but not its essentials. She recognized the need of basing fiction on thorough study, social, psychological, historical, etc., but on thorough studies; and she saw the necessity of observation and analysis no less than of the fanciful adornments of the ICf. the prologue to Un viaje de novioe. imagination; for if a novel were reduced merely to the fruit of luxuriant invention the literary goal would be like that of the Arabian Nights and works of a similar kind. "Today," she said, "we cannot doubt it, the novel is a copy of life, and the only thing that an author puts into it is his own peculiar way of seeing real things ; very much as two persons on relating a certain event do so in different words and style. Thanks to this recognition of the rights of truth, realism may enter, head erect, the field of literature." Few pages more correct and final were written in Spain at the time of the introduction of naturalism, and if they had been read and studied with sufficient care by critics they would not have charged Emilia Padro Bazan over and over again with being French and with despising national traditions. The fact is she often protested against Zola's extremes, his coarseness and his philosophical principles although admit­ting a part of his procedure as correct.2 In spite of all criticism and abuse that was heaped upon her and of violent asseverations to the contrary, she did not advocate natural­ism of Zola's kind; but she did feel the need of a new rule of guidance in Spanish fiction to renovate, rejuvenate and reanimate it, for she saw clearly and felt with keen sorrow and distress that, with few exceptions (Perez Gald6s, Valera, Pereda), the Spanish novelist was a poor imitator, fallen into a rut. True it is that Spain had a native realism of its own, but its significance and scope was not fully understood or appreciated and there was need of reviving, reanimating and modernizing it with a new infusion, and this she did. Some critics thought that realism had gone far enough in Spanish literature in the effort to reproduce real life, that there was no need of the extremes and extravagances, of the determinism, pessimism and pornography observed in French naturalism as practiced by Zola; and Dona Emilia heartily agreed with them in some respects. Adverse critics thought, erroneously, that she wanted ~cf. GonzaJez-Blanco, Historia de la novela en Espana desde el ro­manticismo a nuestros dias, Madrid, Saenz de Jubera, Hermanos, 1909, p. 474. ff. Liberal use has been made of the chapter, pp. 461-494. Emilia Pardo Bazan French naturalism, or else to show that she was abreast of the times and of literary fashion. But an injustice was done her in the heat of argumentation pro and con, set going by her subsequent book on naturalism, La cuesti6n palpita.nte (The Important Question, 1883). She states very plainly in this work her objections to naturalism as practiced by Zola, to its determinism, its pessimism, its utilitarianism, its obscenity and its one-sided view of life, excluding what is lovely and ideal ; but she recommended closer observation of real life, and a more profound study of its problems, of psychology, etc., as the proper basis and foundation for fiction. In her opinion a novel should be a picture of real life, and in addition to that it should offer the fruit of profound study of vital, interesting problems, but a study nevertheless, rather than the vagaries of un­bridled imagination and of untrammeled fancy. Two defects were charged against her: that on the one hand she wrote like a man, and from the standpoint of a man, and that she was like a woman only in her vanity. But it must be borne in mind that vanity is not exclusively monopolized by woman, and in many of her creations the deftness and the delicacy of a woman's hand and touch are distinctly felt. "No one but a woman could have written Doiia Milagros, Una cristiana," and much that is in her other productions. True it is she might have given us more revelation if she had written only from a woman's stand­point, she might have made a greater amount of admirable disclosure of feminine psychology, and it may be unfortu­nate that she did not do so, for one may learn better from a woman what a woman's soul is, and much of man's knowl­edge of woman is, so to speak, second-hand, or at least of a different sort. The protagonist in her novels is usually a man who tells the story in the first person. Hence it is said that she usually seems to be writing from the stand­point of a man. Sufficient grass has grown over her grave for us to ignore some idle charges brought against her by contemporary critics, some of whom were envious, viz., that it was her desir~ just to be in style that prompted her to advocate the latest French naturalism, and that she scandalized her good orthodox countrymen by so doing, and by discussing Zola's naturalism in a series of articles in El lmparcial, subse­ quently put in book-form under the title of La cuestion palpi­ tante, one of the most delightful works in the Spanish field of literary criticism. Aside from its great charm we are deeply indebted to it for inciting Valera to write another book that is no less delightful in opposition to the natural­ istic school. Pardo Bazan was not actuated by silly motives in advo­cating naturalism; she did not merely want to be a leader in literary style nor was she advocating all of Zola's method­far from it. She saw and understood perfectly well that determinism and the systematic exaltation of the human beast (i.e., making man a mere animal), the hinges of Zola's art, are entirely contrary to the exercise of free will and to the control of reason which Christianity proclaims as funda­mental doctrines. An answer to her book was given by Francisco Diaz Carmona in La ciencia cristiana (1884-5) and by others, chiefly by Valera, and the controversy was continued by critics and religious scholars and masters in literature who came out strongly for Christian morality and purity in art, for they believed that the very citadels of religion and of art were assailed. But the good and brilliant lady went on boldly proclaiming and practicing her aesthetic principles, insisting in the face of all the hide-bound fundamentalists that she could be an advocate of a broader naturalism-i.e., of true naturalism-and at the same time be a Christian and a Roman Catholic. But in taking a just, a sane, a middle course she got between hostile lines and was fired on from all sides, by theologians and by critics alike. But she stood her ground firmly, and remained consistent in her advocacy and in her practice of what she thought truer, broader, saner naturalism. Later, in a prologue to some of her short stories,3 Pardo Bazan reviewed in 1884 her conception of naturalism which 3£a dama joven. Emilia Pardo Bazan she considered an intermediary sort of naturalism, a natur­alism that accepted some elements that might seem to partake of idealistic if not of romantic character, for she wrote: "I know beforehand what critics and readers will say of this book, that there are in it pages accentuatedly naturalistic, along with others saturated with romantic idealism. I know that all that is contained herein is truth, whether in the practical sphere of facts or in another no less real, that of the soul. Life is organic and it is also psychic, and the impression produced upon me by a Naza­rene or a Virgin is as real as the crude details in La Tribuna (one of her early naturalistic novels) . . . I claim every­thing for art, I ask that its vast realm be not dismembered, that its sacred body be not mutilated, that it be permitted to depict the material and the spiritual, heaven and earth." As indicated above, the distinguished novelist, Juan Valera, her contemporary and friend, published in 1887 his charm­ing book, Apuntes sobre el neuvo m·te de escribir novelas (Notes on the New Art of Writing Novels), written in oppo­sition to naturalism and inspired by Emilia Pardo Bazan's advocacy of naturalism and her book on it. If the contro­versy over naturalism had produced no other fruit than Dofia Emilia's work (La cuesti6n palpitante) and Valera's at­tempted refutation of it, our indebtedness to the literary movement would be great. Among many other things Valera said, "The most ex­travagant and absurd fashion that in my opinion can be imagined is this of naturalism. I was distressed, I was in consternation when I saw that Dofia Emilia Pardo Bazan, a woman of so great talent, had become a naturalist. . . . In reality I cannot· and ought not to combat Dofia Emilia. Ladies must go attired according to style. Why should I take it amiss that Dofia Emilia should dress as a naturalist? Almost all her naturalism seems to me so sensible, so ortho­dox in all respects and so reasonable that I have to accept it without hesitation. Even a certain indulgence on her part, a certain excessive literary kindness ( panfilismo) re­splendent in Dofia Emilia is perfectly adjusted to my mode . . . . Dofia Emilia and I differ in that she understands by naturalism one thing, and I understand another. . . The quotations that I am going to make from Doiia Emilia I ac­cept as my own : 'We demand', she says, 'that art should rest on the firm basis of truth; but as its principal end is not to discover truth, for that is the aim of science, the artist who proposes to himself an end that is not the realization of beauty will see, soon or late, with infallible certainty, the monument which he erects tumble down.'" Valera remarks on this: "It is inferred from this that the pretension of naturalism to become an experimental science and to ad­vance physiology, pathology, sociology, and other logies is either a jest or a bait to lure simpletons and cause certain books, often ;salacious, to be read, in the belief that readers, on perusing them, become pathologists, physiologists or so­ciologists, or else it is one of the greatest stupidities that could ever have been fixed in any human brain. . . . Doiia Emilia discreetly calls those books that aspire to reform while they divert hybrids, and she considers it less evil not to pay attention to morals than to falsify morals, and she regards as deadly and pernicious almost all novels that sustain theses or theories, granted that they are taken se­riously. . . . After affirming such things ..., for this lady to persist in telling us that she is a naturalist is as if, after expounding the Christian doctrine in as Catholic a fashion as Father Ripalda, she should say to us that she is a Quaker or an Anabaptist.... When Zola learned that there was in Spain a militant Catholic woman who defended his system he hardly believed it; he was astonished. 'Imag­ine my amazement,' he said to Albert Sabine. 'Undoubtedly the naturalism of this lady is mere literary naturalism.' " So "it is evident," Valera continues, "that Spanish natural­ism is of another sort and not Zola's from Zola's own decla­ration. Doiia Emilia strives to reform naturalism in order that she and other Spanish authors may be comfortably em­braced in the movement." . . . Valera added that Zola assumed that "man is a machine; that there is no longer any soul nor free will; that metaphysics affords irrational expla-· nations from which it is essential to flee as from a plague, and that we must cast aside all religious and philosophic::tl Emilia Pardo Bazan belief, be inspired by modern science and be initiated in its tendencies and notions." So far Valera. It is only fair to say that he did Pardo Bazan injustice in ignoring in a large part of his argumentation the fact that she con­demned in no uncertain terms Zola's determinism, utili­tarian viewpoint in art, bad taste, and obscenity; that she advocated closer observation of truth and recommended that fiction be based on profound studies rather than on the vagaries of the imagination and that one must not ignore the ideal, the beautiful and the humorous things in life, nor be one-Sided. Valera's error consisted in assuming that naturalism must be of the sort proclaimed by Zola. This is precisely what Pardo Bazan denied! Cejador y Frauca is still more unjust in his representation of her attitude, for he remarks: "It is strange that a lady so perspicacious as Dofia Emilia . . . has not discovered that naturalism is the fruit of all the evolution of disbelief, of positivism and of naturalism hatched since the eighteenth century. Zola said that naturalism is not a novel; that it is a science ; that is, an exact representation of the determin­ism in nature extended to man.... The truth is that in the most of her work Dona Emilia hasn't anything of the natur­alist about her; but when she wished to be so really, verily she rooted in it (verdaderamente que hocic6)" as indicated by the fact that "in Elhnparcial (1893), during Holy Week too, she published a scene representing Mary Magdalene as carnally in love with Jesus. This was a proof that she gave of her naturalism. It was really falsification of history and it would have been shameless daring and ugly heresy in a Christian writer if we did not attribute it in a kindly way to the longing and vanity with which she boasted of being a naturalist."• This will suffice to show how bitter, how inac­curate and how unjust some of the criticism aimed at Pardo Bazan was. In this last case professional jealousy may have played a part; for she too was a professor in the Central University of Madrid, and she was still living when Cejador y Frauca wrote those words. •Cf. Cejador y Frauca, Historia de la lengua y literatura espanola, Madrid, 1915--22, Vol. IX, p. 272. She did a lot of very entertaining and interesting work in the field of literary criticism, notwithstanding assertions by Cejador y Frauca that her criticism was not profound, impartial or illuminating. No more delightful and stimu­lating book can be found in this realm in the Spanish lan­guage than La cuesti6n palpitante, written in defense of her own idea of naturalism. The one book in Spanish that for interest, charm, and grace may be compared with La cuesti6n palpitante, singularly enough, was written for the express purposee of refuting, of combating Doiia Emilia's advocacy of naturalism. I refer again to Juan Valera's Apuntes sobre el nuevo arte de escribir novelas, a severe arraignment of Zola's naturalism and Pardo Bazan's sup­posed advocacy of it. Before the coming of her message in La cuesti6n palpi­tante naturalism in Spain had been for the most part casual, sporadic, unpremeditated, natural. Henceforth it was to a greater degree premeditated, deliberate, more conscious on the part of certain novelists, at least in a portion of their work. Readers may be familiar with some of its manifesta­tions in works by Perez Galdos, Pereda, Pardo Bazan, Pa­lacio Valdes, Blasco Ibaiiez and others. Its influence and ramifications have been enormous during the last fifty years. To follow it out in detail would be an undertaking beyond the present scope. Pardo Bazan was one of the world's most gifted story­tellers; her talent lay first of all in the art of narration, to a greater degree than in description or in the delineation of character. She was not so much bent on portraying feeling and the dramatic conflicts of passion. That she had a pro­found insight into human character and its motives, and that her powers of description were also great, can be read­ily discerned on reading La madre naturaleza alone. She devoted increased attention to the grace, lightness, beauty, color and strength of her style; for its finer qualities she attained a commanding position in the range of Spanish fiction. As she did not draw so liberally as some other Spanish writers from classic, traditional and popular Spanish sources, and as French influence is detected in her Emilia Pm·do Bazan language, she does not make so strong an appeal as Valera and Pereda to Spanish purists here and there. But Dona Emilia certainly has had a part in rejuvenating, enriching, and revivifying Spanish literature and the Spanish language as well.5 Her learned works in the realm of literary history are not the outcome of patient, delving investigation done in li­braries and archives. She was rather an elegant divulger and popularizer of faithful and laborious investigation already made by others. She wrote a great deal about foreign literature, with which it was a matter of good form to be familiar in Spain. It has already been said that in 1882-3 she wrote a series of charming essays about natural­ism, its origin and growth in France and particularly its development and use in the hands of its great herald and prophet :Emile Zola, and that she finally published these essays in book form and bestowed on them the title La cues­ti6n palpitante. She also published essays (Polemicas y estudios literarios) on Spanish writers of fame (Pereda, Perez Gald6s, etc.) she wrote biographies and studies of Padre Coloma, Campoamor and Alarc6n, twenty-nine num­bers of the Nuevo teatro critico (1891-3), a series of liter­ary essays, two volumes on Modern French Lite1·ature (1910), and three on the Revolution and the Novel in Russia (1887). Envious or ill-natured critics spoke of her feminine incli­nation to foreign literary fashions because she wrote about them, and lectured about them in Paris and elsewhere; and true it is that she was an advocate of a more liberal and refined naturalism. Her knowledge of foreign litera­ture was extensive and varied, and the ease with which she handled everything was amazing. No doubt she did enjoy vying with eminent French and Spanish literati; and her eagerness to inform herself about foreign literatures and to learn from them was narrowly taken by some as a defect and as an explanation of her ease and freedom in dealing with delicate matters usually passed over by women, and :;Cf. Gonzalez-Blanco, op. cit., p. 483 ff. it was held by these narrower critics that she did not possess enough of the traditional Spanish gravity; that she even displayed a sort of levity and ease in dealing with matters of a delicate or intimate character, a thing to which Spaniards had not been accustomed in the case of author­esses since the day of Maria de Zayas of the seventeenth century. Her detractors claimed that they could detect the deleterious influence of the foreign (i.e., French) language on her style; they pointed to French expressions, turns, metaphors, etc., that detracted, they claimed, from her ex­quisite taste and artistic style, preventing her reaching the elevated plane of beauty and purity maintained by Valera and Pereda who drew more deeply or more constantly from the Spanish classics and from Spanish popular sources. Doiia Emilia acquired a wide range of knowledge about the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, etc. She traveled extensively and recorded her vivid impressions and published an even greater number of works embodying such impressions6 than Juan Valera, though he had seen much more of the outer world in his wide and varied diplo­matic career. These works indicate her vivid impression­ability, her vast knowledge of the arts and of artists, and her unusual critical acumen. The masculine and feminine qualities of her work are well blended in them: "some of the best of her thoughts and of her feeling are here revealed."7 She may not have reached and held the very heights of loftiest mysticism in some of her novels, as Una cristiana, La prueba, Dulce dueno; for she was an aristocratic ·lady, accus­tomed to the atmosphere of the great and fashionable world where exaggerated religious fervor and mysticism are usually tempered. Her mysticism was of a saner sort, more in harmony with the facts of normal religious experience. Two broad tendencies are noticed throughout her works. On the one hand she inclines to follow the trend of H eimat­kunst, i.e., to be regional, to depict her native province of 6e.g•., Cuarenta dias en la exposici6n, Al pie de la torre Eiffel (1889), Por Francia y por Alemania (1890), Por la Europa cat6lica (1902). 7Cf. Cejador y Frauca, op. cit., p. 272. Emilia Pardo Bazan Galicia, the manners and the customs of its people, to find expression for their soul which is tender, sentimental, mys­terious, as observed in many of her novels8 and short stories. In another series of her books she was borne away from her native Galicia, she became national or else cosmopolitan ; she wrestled with the problems of modern society; she followed the trend of foreign literature, and vied with the great modern novelists; she was carried out of her native element, out of her native Galicia and its atmosphere and was swept into the European literary current where prob­lems of sociology, psychology, art, sex, the education of woman and her career, etc., were discussed at length.9 La piedra angular reflects the influence of the Italian juridico-anthropological school. Dofta Milagros and its sequel, Memorias de un solter6n, tackle the marriage prob­lem, the advanced education of woman, and her career in a profession. La quimera shows the study of art, of abnor­mal psychology and the influence of sexuality in woman, etc.' In her work on Saint Francis of Assisi that aroused so much criticism pro and con, there is much novelistic impres­ sion, more poetry, tradition and art than historic record. But for this very reason it pleased so many readers. It was, moreover, the product of a season of religious exalta­ tion, of mystic idealism on the author's part. Notwithstanding the extraordinary variety of her achievements, her aesthetic temperament was more pecul­iarly adapted to the novel and short story, in which alone her vast accomplishments, marked by exceeding brilliance and versatility, establish her as one of numerous immortals in the Spanish hall of fame. n Un viaje de novios showed a distinct improvement on Pascual L6pez in artistic workmanship and in realistic con­ SPa.scual LOpez, La. Tribuna, Los Pa.zos de UUoa, La. madre natu­roleza, De mi tiernl, Una cristiana, La. prueba, Historias y cuentos regw71alu, Dona Milagros, Memoria.s de un solter6n, etc. •La. Tribuna bas a large political ingredient. tent. The results of a "homeopathic dose of naturalism" are indicated by a slight tone of pessimism, heightened color in the final scenes, in the style and prolixity of certain descriptions, and in some characteristics of external form that constitute the charm, but also some of the imperfections of the novel, for the author was more concerned about writing well than about stirring deep emotion. Delineation of character is not the main object in view, but the motives, or moving or controlling causes, that direct, govern and de­termine human action. The rhythmic effect of semi-poetic melodies is calculated, and words are sought to convey color and sound. The action of the story is interrupted or re­sumed at will, and the denouement is not hard to forecast­the separation of the ill-mated pair, owing to a train of fatal and untoward circumstances.10 La Tribuna (The Tribune, 1883) is decidedly more natur­alistic, in its more popular language, in its material, milieu, and situations. But the author's good breeding and her good judgment prevented her selecting a heroine so low in the social and moral scale as might have been suggested by some of the Parisian naturalistic models. Amparo is not just a machine of flesh and blood without a conscience or free will, driven or impelled solely by ungovernable and external forces. But for all that, the work was intended to be regarded as naturalistic in some respects, as it is: the story is presented in an impersonal and objective manner; the subject matter is difficult or daring, or was thought to be so at that time; the speech of the common people, bits of rude dialect even, are introduced.11 The characters are as true to life, though they are not so bestial, as those found in France by French naturalistic novelists,12 for Pardo Bazan did not believe that her countrymen were so depravedY 10Cf. Blanco Garcia, La literatura espanola en el siglo XIX, 3a, Madrid, 1910, parte segunda, pp. 538-9. 11Cf. Blanco Garcia, op. cit., p. 539; Gonzalez-Blanco, op. cit. pp. 489-90. 12As in Zola's L'Assommoir, or in Germinie Lacerteux by the Gon­courts, and in other works. 1 3Cf. Gonzalez-Blanco, op. cit., p. 492. Emilia Pardo Bazan The Tribune is a naturalistic story, then, of a young work­ing girl, Amparo, a cigarette maker in a tobacco factory in Marineda (i.e., La Corufia). She is given the name of The Tribune because she is a leading spirit among the revolu­tionary agitators for the federal republic in the revolution of 1868. She falls a victim to seductive wiles and prom­ises of marriage on the part of a young officer; ultimately she is deserted by him, and she gives birth to a child at the close, when the federal republic is being declared. As one illustration of the naturalistic character of the story, it may be pointed out that Amparo's suffering in difficult childbirth is related with as much completeness as bare decency permits. The life of this factory girl, this cigarette maker, is presented as it is, without embellish­ments, true to the homely as well as to the beautiful features of her environment and of her character. The book is replete with the humor and with the charm of actual life in this Galician town. It marks a long step forward in the author's artistic progress. The young officer, Baltasar, is needlessly weak and despicable in character, but Amparo is an excellent blend of frailty and of strength, of ordinary and of noble qualities, of ignoble and of heroic cast, with a predominance of what is good, usually under control of a will to act aright. This work is a distinct achievement, one worthy of study as an excellent illustration of the better methods of semi-naturalistic workmanship in Spain. In a collection of short stories entitled La dama joven ( 1885) we find some naturalistic features, the story with a thesis, scientific analysis of passion, and certain crudities (as in Buc6lica) alternating with tradional and idealistic characteristics (as in La borgofiona).14 El Cisne de Vilamorta (The Swan of Vilamorta, 1885) is an unpleasant story, "profoundly naturalistic in its ob­servation and analysis of life" and in the author's imper­sonal or objective attitude. But improbable features, and the monstrously unnatural relationship of the leading char­acters involved, impart a romantic coloring. HGonzalez-Blanco, op. cit., p. 493. Segundo, a sensitive, dreamy, misanthropic poet, an im­mature imitator of Becquer, does not requite the love lavished on him by Leocadia, a frightfully unfortunate and unattractive schoolmistress, and her suicide is a natural result. Segundo's book of feeble Becquerian poems is scathingly criticised and he emigrates to America after a romantic escapade with a young society matron (Nieves) who scornfully repels farther advances following a some­what scandalous incident, occasioned by his impetuous im­prudence. The poet's extravagances are more credible than his relations with the atrociously repugnant schoolmistress, who was violated in her early years and who lavishes now her substance and her caresses on a cold though courteous lover. Her life is full of suffering and disillusions, physical, moral and' financial disorder. Even if all this is faithfully and exactly portrayed, yet it is unsuited to artistic presen­tation; for some things are surely inadmissible though they are common in life. Emilia Pardo Bazan knew well enough that the artist, by methods of procedure, selection, etc., should or may distinguish himself from the photographer. The final act of suicide is one of the naturalistic motifs inherited from romanticism; and it tends to show that nat­uralism cannot forget its origin (in romanticism) though it would deny it. Extravagance and exaggeration are ordinarily thought to impart romantic coloring, but capricious subtraction (mu­tilation) or addition (as in The Swan of Vilamorta) may also cause romantic deviation from the realities of life.15 Itmust be admitted that The Swan of Vilamorta is neither artistic nor delightful. It is an unsuccessful attempt to harmonize and combine, as in life, naturalistic and romantic elements, that is, the ugly and the beautiful. Blasco Ibanez has perpetrated greater blunders in this way in Los enemi­gos de la mujer and La tierra de todos. El Cisne de Vilamorta certainly i.s not <~the most perfect expression, the most complete embodyment of her literary t5Cf. Blanco Garcia, op. cit., pp. 539-40. Emilia Pardo Bazan and artistic creed"16 in spite of "its conscientious sketches of disagreeable types of persons"; and in spite of accurate pictures of life in and around an old-fashioned Galician country town. The author in her prologue to this work expresses suc­cinctly her belief that a true picture of life contains ugly as well as beautiful things and may hence be considered ( er­roneously) the product of naturalism and of idealism; and one must praise this clear presentation of her artistic creed, though in practice .she may sometimes err, as here; for her art was immature. The French naturalistic novel in some of its aspects con­tinued to exert a strong attraction for her. But in the meantime her great ability to narrate was improving and undergoing a process of purification, and we see the fruit of it in her first really great and powerful naturalistic novel, Los Pazos de UUoa (The Palace of Ulloa, 1886). The gradual decay and decomposition of old social organisms, of an old and illustrious family of country nobility in Galicia, is set before us in pictures that seem wonderfully true and striking, and we feel how disdainfully or how ironically time may smile at transitory human greatness. A degenerate marquis, the descendant of the once illus­ trious Moscosos, is permitting his Galician estate to fall into decay and ruin and to be sapped and wasted through his own slothfulness and neglect; and he is besmirching the honor of his name with ignoble vices. He is a rude farmer, physically strong and vigorous; his despotic in­ stinct is his only heritage from the lords of his feudal ancestry; gone are the combative spirit, superiority of soul, along with the intellectual culture derived from refined social intercourse. This. degenerate marquis, bound by depraved instinct to a servant woman in his house who is of low lineage and character and. who alienates him from his refined and legitimate wife (Nucha) ; impoverished and looted by savage dependents and tenants who maintain their 16Cf. M. Romero Navarra, El hispanismo en Norte-America, 1917, p. 389. hold even in his very mansion; disappointed in his political aspirations to a seat in the Cortes-this marquis personifies a "lugubrious decadence from which poetry is not absent, but it is the poetry of havoc and of desolation. We see and feel the eclipse of a race and we attend as it were the obsequies of a historic autocracy."17 What luminous panoramas of Galician landscape, what genre pictures, what torsos and busts of Galician charac­ters, what scenes of Galician country life, what a gallery of people begi_nning with Nucha the neglected wife; Julian his counsellor, the incarnation of priestly virtues, honorable as he is timid; Isabel, the handsome, strapping, lascivious maid who seduces her master and lord, Don Pedro Moscoso, and Perucho the demonic little offspring of their illicit inter­course; Primitivo, the dishonorable manager of the estate who exploits them; and then the charms of Galician land­scape and the interiors of village life-all painted with splendid exactness! "Among provincial and regional novels nothing superior in artistic excellence can be found, perhaps, outside of some of Pereda's best work." In addition there is marvel­ous beauty of diction that cannot be overlooked. Over against all these admirable qualities critics have pointed to some lack of order and balance in composition, to a certain boldness or daring in language and description.18 Similar qualities, beauties and defects, are observed in La madre naturaleza (Mother Nature, 1887) which is the second part or continuation of the preceding work. The dire consequences of conditions already portrayed in Los Pazos de Ulloa are drawn. "Pages of divine charm" may be conceded in this book in which vague symphonies and impalpable tones are conveyed in words. But beautiful as the garment and its artistic workmanship may be, the theme is too naturalistic to suit the general taste, even at a time when Zola was in vogue: incest is a disagreeable thing to consider, especially in a work of art. t7Blanco Garcia, op. cit., pp. 540-2. lSCf. Blanco Garcia, ibid. Emilia Pm·do Bazan The marquis has two children, the one a natural son, off­spring of the illicit relations with the strapping servant girl Isabel, and another child, a daughter born of his marriage with his refined cousin, Nucha. These playmates, uncon­scious of their blood relationship, on reaching the period of adolescence are driven by a train of fatal circumstances to a momentary union in incestuous love, that derives its over­powering force from strong physical and sexual impulse constrained by constant and unguarded association, con­summated in the arms of luxuriant and exuberant nature. This horrid plot is executed in language of exquisite beauty, it is true, but it is like a skeleton clothed in purple, or a piece of coarse material with embroidery of gold and pre­cious stones, an incongruous combination of repulsive ele­ments with incomparable beauty of form. This eclogue in exquisite prose is not only distasteful because of incest com­mitted by Perucho and Manolita, but the author, evidently carried too far by the momentum that she ltad acquired in her naturalistic fancy, imparts touches of a repulsive nature that are objectionable and unnatural, as shown by the fact that the adolescent girl, though seized with paroxysmal horror on learning that Perucho is her brother, yet is repre­sented as sighing still for the object of her reprehensible love.19 "It is an exquisite and disquieting idyl in which one breathes the intoxicating perfumes of springtime."198 Mother Nature is a glorification of nature in its outward and visible forms, and of the primitive and natural instincts in man as well.20 In both these novels naturalism flourishes in technique and methods of procedure, and there is an exuberant pantheism or deification of nature, so that its forces assume demonic, fatal power and influence over human conduct. This deification, as it were, of nature is of course one of the cardinal features of determinism in naturalistic fiction of that day, and it was conducive to lavish descriptions of t9Cf. Blanco Garcia, op. cit., pp. 542-3. naB. de Tannenberg, L'Espagne Litteraire, Paris, 1903, p. 306. 2ocf. Gonzalez-Blanco, op. cit., p. 474. vegetation and foliage as visualized in magnificent por­trayals in Mother Nature. Dofia Emilia had vigorously protested against Zola's ex­tremes and coarseness, against his deterministic philoso­phical principle of deriving man's conduct solely from out­ward and physical impulses, and now, behold! through fol­lowing his footsteps in part only she herself had reached the abysmal depths of determinism in Mother Nature, the conclusion of which recalls the operation of fate in old Greek myth and legend, in which the incestuous relations of son