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nio); Luna de miel, luna de hiel (Honeymoon,
Bittermoon); Los trabajos de Urbano y Simona
(The labors of Urbano and Simona);
Tigre
Juan (Tiger Juan);
and
El curandero de su
honra
(The healer of his honor). In the last
years of his life, Pérez de Ayala published
only a single collection of short fiction, in
addition to a few essays and pieces of liter-
ary criticism.
Pérez Galdós, Benito
(1845-1920)
Spanish novelist
Pérez Galdós (ordinarily referred to as
“Galdós”) was born in the C
ANARY
I
SLANDS
and settled in M
ADRID
to study law, which
he soon abandoned in favor of journalism.
He discovered his true vocation in 1870
when he published the novel
La fontana de
oro
(The fountain of gold). Fascinated by
the tumultuous and complex experience of
his nation in the 19th century, Galdós
undertook to trace the years from 1805 to
1875 in a series of historical novels, ulti-
mately totaling 46 titles (the first of them
was
Trafalgar,
published in 1873). Divided
into groups or series, these
“Episodios nacio-
nales”
were based upon contemporary
newspaper accounts, memoirs, and letters
used to provide authenticity to the fictional
experiences of protagonists who lived
through often traumatic events and who in
some cases reappeared in more than one
novel. Some gaps in the chronological
sequence were later filled in by the author,
who did not hesitate to focus upon “great
men” as the pivotal figures in his stories, as
in
Narváez
and
O'Donnell.
Galdós also wrote a number of novels
whose themes were social issues, religious
conflicts and class struggle, such as
Doña
Perfecta, Nazarín, Misericordia, La familia de
Benito Pérez Galdós
(Library of Congress)
León Roch,
and
Gloria,
among many others.
These
“Novelas contemporáneas”
he distin-
guished from his
Episodios nacionales.
Not as
overtly “political” as his earlier novels, they
are not “historical novels,” but in their por-
trayal of Spanish life as he lived it in the
late 19th century, they provide a continuity
of observation and understanding that
moves through what is virtually 100 years
of Spanish life. Galdós, in the sweep of his
conception and execution, has been com-
pared to such contemporary foreign novel-
ists as Balzac and Dickens, and in sheer
output, to Spain's L
OPE
DE
V
EGA
. Certain
commentators have detected a falling off of
both energy and skill in the author's later
works, which they attribute not only to the
aging process but to financial reverses that
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