Spanish Realist literature

Juan Valera

Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano (Cabra, Córdoba, October 1824 – Madrid, April 1905) belonged to an aristocratic family. He carried out diplomatic missions in several countries and held important political positions. His career as a novelist began when he was around fifty years old. In his last years he was victim of progressive blindness.

From his beginnings, Valera was opposed to Romanticism, because of its extremism, as much as he was to Realism, because they prevented him from totally realizing his vision. He only adopted a realist position when he chose real settings (like his native Andalusia) and lifelike characters, although he rejected the less attractive aspects of reality, which ran contrary to the credo of the naturalists and some realists.

His importance is due to his novels; the first of them is Pepita Jiménez (1874), mostly written in epistolary form. In this work, the story of a widow is told. The widow agrees with a father that his son should be taken away from town to keep him away from her and to allow him to pursue his aspiration to the priesthood. Other important works are Doña Luz (which deals with questions of religious vocation) and Juanita la Larga. This third novel recounts the idyll of Don Paco, a fiftyish man, with the protagonist, who wishes to redeem herself through an honest marriage.

Juan Valera was a liberal politician and a religious skeptic. He used a simple, although non-vulgar, literary language. When he died, the writers of the Generation of the 98 retained a deep respect for him. Today he is considered by many critics as the best Spanish prose writer of the 19th century, while recognizing the creative superiority of Galdós.

José María de Pereda

José María de Pereda was born in Polanco (province of Santander, present-day Cantabria) in 1833. He belonged to an Hidalgo family, he traveled widely abroad, and he was a Carlist deputy, although later he dedicated himself to the cultivation of his lands and to literature. He maintained a friendship with Galdós, despite their opposing political ideologies. He died in 1906 in his home town.

He began his literary production as a costumbrista: inclined to realism with aspects of impressionism, he published Escenas montañosas ("Mountainous scenes"). Later, he would find his ideal formula for the novel, imbuing that costumbrism with a vision which conveyed his love for the landscape and the people of the mountains, with their passions and their characteristic language. In his first novels of this type ("idyllic novel"), he depicted the peacefulness and ignorance of rustic people confronting the political machinations of modern life (Don Gonzalo de la Gonzalera and De tal palo tal astilla). He defended a thesis that nowadays few would accept: like father, like son. The novel ends as Pereda decides to abandon the explicit defense of any argument. Stories like Sotileza (epic of Cantabrian fishermen) and La puchera belong to this second period. The one that is considered his masterpiece is Peñas arriba (1895), whose descriptive bucolic style and casticismo seem antiquated today. In spite of that, José María de Pereda is considered a great narrator, possessed of great descriptive and epic capacity.

Pedro Antonio de Alarcón

Pedro Antonio de Alarcón was born in Guadix (Granada) in 1833. He was one of the authors principally responsible for the domination of realism over romantic prose at that time. He was a politician as well as a writer, and his ideology evolved from liberal positions to more traditional ones.

He participated in the Spanish–Moroccan War as a volunteer and he left written testimony of his experience inDiario de un testigo de la Guerra de África (Diary of a Witness to the African War). For a time he was a travel writer, relating several of his trips in his articles. His religious novels stood out among his other writings, the most popular of all being El escándalo (The Scandal), written in 1875; in this novel he defended the Jesuits, which was very controversial. His most popular work, and the one by which he is remembered, is El sombrero de tres picos, published in 1874, that would inspire Manuel de Falla to write his famous ballet of the same name.

Portrait of Benito Pérez Galdós, by Joaquín Sorolla

Galdós is considered to be the most representative writer of the movement. He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1843. He studied law in Madrid. He later lived in Paris, where he was intrigued by the novels of Honoré de Balzac, a strong influence on his later work. He declared himself to be progressive and anticlerical, but this did not prevent him from forging close friendships with Menéndez y Pelayo and José María de Pereda, of opposite ideologies. Although he defined himself as a republican, little by little his radicalism tempered, and he maintained a personal friendship with Alfonso XIII. In 1910 he began to lose his eyesight, and the expenses of his numerous paramours brought him to near-ruin. The Spanish government sought the Nobel Prize for him, but was opposed by a significant portion of the Spanish populace, including the Real Academia and the leadership of the Catholic Church. He died, blind, in 1920.

Among the prolific works of Galdós are the Episodios Nacionales (National Episodes), a sprawling opus of 46 volumes in five distinct series. They depict a broad representation of contemporary Spanish history between the War of Independence and the Restoration, which serve as a backdrop for his stories.

The first series, written between 1873 and 1875, includes the episodes of Trafalgar, Bailén, Zaragoza and Gerona. In almost all of them, the protagonist is Gabriel Araceli, a young man who lives during the climax of the War of Independence. Later series include volumes such as Equipaje del Rey José (The Luggage of King José); Los cien mil hijos de San Luis (The One Hundred Thousand Children of San Luis); Zumalacárregui, about the First Carlist War; and Prim (The One of the Sad Destinies), a book about Isabel II. The last series depicted events experienced by Galdós himself, but the work was unfinished and it is seldom a topic of study or discussion.

In his first epoch (1867–1878), Galdós vigorously wrote against intolerance and hypocrisy. His novels feature young male protagonists who confront the hostile atmosphere of provincial cities. Ironically, his writing at this time demonstrates the same narrow-mindedness that he condemns, from the opposite ideological perspective. (Doña Perfecta, Gloria, La Familia de León Roch). Marianela, one of his more prominent novels of the first epoch, is the story of a tragic relationship between a blind man and an ignorant, ugly girl. The girl flees when her loved one recovers his sight, afraid to show her face to him; she dies, heartbroken, when he marries another woman.

Later, between 1881 and 1915, he published 24 novels, which represent a "human comedy" of the daily life of Madrid. They maintained progressive, but less provocative, themes. These books focus on the Spanish middle class, portrayed with precision and a certain melancholy. Significant works of this group include La de Bringas (The Bringas Woman), about social climbing; Fortunata y Jacinta, his most important work; Miau, a dramatic vision of the bureaucracy of the time; Torquemada en la Hoguera (Torquemada in the Inferno), a study of greed and avarice; Misericordia (Compassion), with people of less-refined upbringing.

Late in life, Pérez Galdós began a career as a dramatic playwright. His most notable plays include La Loca de la Casa (The Crazy Woman of the House), Hija de San Quintin (The Daughter of San Quintín), Electra (whose opening sparked a riot) and El Abuelo (The Grandfather), which was adapted into a 1998 film by José Luis Garci. Galdós's theater works are characterized by sincerity and non-conformism; although contemporary at the time they were written, some of his theater works sound dated by current standards.

The impact of the National Episodes and many of his novels and plays was significant. Critics and writers of his time considered him to be a genius, although his outspoken views on religion, social policies and politics stimulated strong opposition from political and religious authority figures. The Generation of '98 were strongly influenced by his writing, although they rebelled against his "chabacanería" or perceived vulgarity; Ramón del Valle-Inclán, for example, nicknamed him "Don Benito el garbancero" or the chick-pea man. However, it can be argued that the only vulgarity was found in the lives that he described.

Emilia Pardo Bazán was born in A Coruña in 1851. Only child of the Count and Countess of Pardo Bazán, she got married at age seventeen and she settled in Madrid. She was a woman of great culture, she took many trips abroad, and an endowed chair in the Department of Literature at the University of Madrid was created for her. She died in Madrid in 1921.

Among her studies on contemporary literature, La cuestión palpitante (The Burning Question) stands out, and although she does not accept naturalism in this work, she defends a realist point of view and confronts those who maintain that the only purpose of evil in literature is to defeat it.

Her style was energetic and she profoundly explored difficult social problems. Her most important works were novels such as Un viaje de novios (A Honeymoon), which narrates the story of a marriage between a mature man and a young, uncultured, but wealthy woman; or The tribune, the most naturalist of her novels, where she describes the hard proletarian life in a tobacco factory. Of greatest importance to her reputation are Los pazos de Ulloa (The House of Ulloa) and its sequelLa madre naturaleza(Mother Nature), with Galician characters and landscapes, with fast-moving and sometimes violent plots.

Luis Coloma (Jerez de la Frontera, January 1851 - Madrid, 1914) was the son of a famous doctor. At twelve years old he entered the preparatory Naval academy of San Fernando (1863), but later left and received a master's degree in Law from the University of Seville, although he never got to practice law. He became a member of the Real Academia in 1908 and he died in 1914.

He promoted literature and had a popular following. He wrote two important novels: Pequeñeces (Trivialities) and Boy. In the first he pens a critique of the high Madrid society in the years previous to the Bourbon Restoration) in the figure of Alfonso XII, son of the overthrown Isabel II. Later in life he only published writings of a historical nature, like Jeromín, on Don Juan de Austria.

Leopoldo Alas "Clarín"

Leopoldo Alas was born in Zamora in 1852, although he always felt deeply Asturian. He completed his study of law in Oviedo. He then obtained his doctorate in Madrid, where he lost faith in God. From then on he would live in permanent spiritual conflict, which is evident in his work. At the age of twenty-three, he began to use the pseudonym Clarín in his work. As a professor at the University of Oviedo in 1883, he defended republican ideas, but soon tired of politics. In 1892, a crisis of conscience renewed his faith in God, although he would not adhere to the extremes of Catholic orthodoxy. He died in Oviedo in 1901.

Clarín had great prestige as a literary critic. His articles demonstrate his great knowledge and sound judgment (expressed on many occasions through scathing sarcasm). His articles, which made him a feared authority in the Spanish literary panorama, were compiled in volumes such as Solos de Clarín and Paliques.

He also wrote short stories and novellas; he published more than seventy short works. Among the first short stories that he composed, Pipá (1879), which tells of the misfortunes of a picaresque figure from Oviedo, stands out. Also notable is Adiós, Cordera, a classic dramatic idyll.

But his reputation as a novelist is exemplified by the only two novels he wrote, La Regenta and Su único hijo; the former is more significant. With clear influences from Madame Bovary by Flaubert, it physically and morally depicts Vetusta (which was modeled on his hometown of Oviedo) as a prototypical Spanish city steeped in tradition. Alas employed naturalistic techniques, but he did not paint squalid environs as did Zola; instead, what predominates is a sense of pessimism, tempered by touches of tenderness and irony. In La Regenta individuals find themselves in conflict with their own consciences (particularly its protagonist Ana Ozores, whose character is similar to Emma Bovary, except that she comes across as more sympathetic and less conniving). Characters find themselves conflicted by duty and desire. Clarín's portrayal of the city was considered insulting by many. The novel was quickly condemned by the Church, although with the passage of time, Clarín and the bishop of Oviedo established a firm friendship. Today La Regenta is considered to be an exemplar of Spanish Realism, in the same class as Fortunata y Jacinta by Galdós.

Armando Palacio Valdés (Entralgo, Asturias, 1853 – Madrid, 1938) was educated in Avilés and finished his baccalaureate in Oviedo; he pursued a career as an attorney in Madrid. He was editor of Revista Europea, where he published articles which he soon after compiled in Semblanzas literarias (1871). In 1885 he published the novel José, a realistic picture of the customs and manners of seafaring folk. After the death of José María de Pereda in 1905, Palacio Valdés assumed Pereda's position in the Real Academia Española.

Palacio Valdés was a good friend of Clarín. He wrote several important novels, among them Marta y María, in which the two Biblical sisters are transported to a contemporary setting and fight against the false mysticism of the time. The most popular of his works is La monja de San Sulpicio (The Nun from San Sulpicio), in which he narrates the adventures that precede the marriage of a Galician doctor with the protagonist, a nun without vocation who does not renew her vows. Also notable is El pueblo perdido (The Lost Village), a dramatic history of a town ruined by mining.

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia in 1867. He harbored radical republican ideas for which he was repeatedly arrested and finally exiled. He was a deputy during seven sessions of the national legislature. In 1909 he left for Argentina in search of fortune, but his attempt failed. He supported the Allies during World War I (1914–1918); with the war as backdrop, he wrote Los cuatro jinetes del apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), a novel of great worldwide success. He led the life of a cosmopolitan millionaire and many of his stories were adapted for Hollywood. He died in 1928 in Menton, Côte d'Azur, France. His remains were transferred to Valencia in 1933, where they were received triumphantly.

Blasco produced an enormous number of novels. Works set in Valencia, so intensely loved by the writer, stand out. Among these are Arroz y tartana (Rice and Carriage), La barraca (The Farmhouse), Entre naranjos (Among Orange Trees), Cañas y barro (Canes and Clay). He reflected his political, social and anti-religious ideas in La catedral) (The Cathedral) or La bodega (The Warehouse), although his fame is due to a great extent to Los cuatro jinetes del apocalipsis, a work which deals with family dramas during the Great War.

Valencian works of Blasco are preferred by critics. He has been compared with Émile Zola because he shares with the French novelist a subversive attitude, a predilection for squalid environs, and a preoccupation with biological inheritance. He writes intensely and his style can be described as coarse, although it does not lack images of purity. Although a contemporary of the Generation of '98, his worldly spirit differs from the asceticism and the culture of those writers.

Ramón de Campoamor was born in Navia, Asturias, in 1817, and died in 1901. He belonged to the Moderate Party, and was an employee of the Treasury, governor of three Spanish provinces and a deputy in Parliament. He wrote treatises on philosophical subjects (El absoluto), dramatic plays, and poems of epic and philosophical pretensions (Colón, El drama universal and El licenciado Torralba).

Nevertheless, his most personal creations are his small poems, like Humoradas, Doloras and Small poems. With them he tried to break with Romanticism, creating a poetry in accordance with the moment: prosaic, simple, skeptical and in some cases ironic, with a moral that is usually trivial. Today it is considered to be simple by scholars. Campoamor explained his innovative ideas in Poética, where he says:

Poetry is the rhythmic representation of a thought by means of an image, and expressed in a language that can be said in prose neither with more naturalness nor with fewer words... Only rhythm should separate the language of verse from the typical one of prose... Given my antipathy toward art for art's sake and the special language of Classicism, it has been my consistent effort to arrive at art by idea and to express this in the common language, revolutionizing the basis for and the look of poetry.

Gaspar Núñez de Arce (1834–1903) was born in Valladolid. He was governor of Logroño, parliamentary deputy, senator of the Cortes, and foreign minister.

He wrote dramas, such as El haz de leña (The bundle of firewood), that deals with the theme of the prince Don Carlos, son of Philip II, a subject already treated by Schiller. He excelled in the field of poetry, where he was a prolific writer.

Núñez de Arce was a careful poet, yet his poems are loaded with political artifice (as in Gritos del cobate (Combat Cries), where he endeavored to create a civic and patriotic poetry) in exalted speeches of philosophical musings (La duda, English: Doubt). He is also often accused of using rhetoric that is too facile. He also wrote stories or legends in verse, like Un idilio (An iIdyll), La pesca (Fishing) and El vértigo (Vertigo).

Although less important, there were also other poets who followed realism, among them:

• Ventura Ruiz Aguilera (1820–1881): Born in Salamanca and author of Ecos nacionales (National Echoes), patriotic legends, and Elegías (Elegies).
• Vicente Wenceslao Querol (1836–1889): Native of Valencia, author of Rimas (Rhymes).
• Federico Balart (1831–1905): wrote Dolores , a collection of elegies written about the death of his wife.
• Emilio Ferrari (1850–1907): from Valladolid, imitated Núñez de Arce.
• José Velarde (1849–1892): as Emilio Ferrari, also followed in the footsteps of Núñez de Arce.
• Manuel Reina (1856–1905): imbued his poems with the color of his native Andalusia.
• Joaquín Bartrina (1850–1880): Born in Barcelona, he took the humor and the ordinariness of Ramón de Campoamor to the extreme, to which he added a materialistic pessimism, in his work Algo (Something).

José Echegaray (1832–1916) was born in Madrid and occupied high political positions. He was a civil engineer, as well as a director of a civil engineering school. He alternated the study of mathematical and scientific problems (on which he published two books: Ciencia popular (Popular Science) and Vulgarización científico (Scientific Vulgarization) with his production of dramatic poetry, which, according to Lázaro Carreter, "gives him a certain systematic bluntness that shows poetic effort more than poetic instinct". In 1904 the Nobel Prize was granted to him, along with Frédéric Mistral of Provence.

Echegaray tried to combine two incompatible elements: an exaggerated romanticism with the latent positivism and realism of his time. This results in a theater of contemporary custom, using the Romantic method, in which, according to critics, he goes too far in his use of tragic and pathetic situations. Crises of conscience and ideological problems predominate as themes in his work. Un conflicto entre los deberes (Conflict of Interest) exemplifies these themes. Among his most outstanding works are: El loco dios (The Crazy God), La mancha que limpia (The Stain That Cleans), El gran Galeoto (The Great Galeoto), and O locura, o santidad (Either Madness or Sanctity).

Manuel Tamayo y Baus (1829–1898) was born in Madrid. He was the son of actors and he married the daughter of the famous actor Isidoro Máiquez. He was in permanent contact with the theater and he covered a great variety of subjects in his works. He wrote classic tragedies (Virginia), romantic dramas (La locura del amor, in English The Madness of Love, about Juana la Loca), Costumbrista theater (La bola de nieve, in English The Snowball and Lo positivo, in English The Positive) and social theater (Incidentes de honor, in English Incidents of Honor and Los hombres buenos, in English The Good Men). His most important work is Un drama nuevo (A New Drama), in which he showcases the theater company of Shakespeare, which is to represent a drama that unintentionally mirrors the reality of the actors' lives. Yorick discovers through jealous fellow actor Walton that Alicia, who plays the role of unfaithful wife in the work, is unfaithful to him in reality as well. In his quest for revenge, Walton is determined to let Yorick know that Alicia loves Edmundo and, when he opportunely gets the evidence he needs, he substitutes Edmundo's letter to Alicia for the prop letter and presents it to Yorick during the performance. At this point Yorick is enmeshed in both the play he is presenting and the drama of his own discovery and kills Edmundo on stage before the audience. Finally Shakespeare explains to the audience what has happened: the play cannot go on because Yorick got so involved in his stage role that he killed his rival. Shakespeare also reveals, without implicating himself, that Walton is dead as well, having been found stabbed outside on the street.

In addition to the mentioned ones, also the following stand out:

• Adelardo López de Ayala (1828–1865): He occupied high political positions (Minister and President of the Congress). He developed high comedy with works like El tanto por ciento (The Percentage), El tejado de vidrio (The Glass Tile Roof), Consolación (Consolation) and El nuevo Don Juan (The New Don Juan), in which he explored moral themes.
• Eugenio Sellés (1844–1926): wrote The Gordian Knot, in which he showed the problems of marriage.
• Enrique Gaspar (1842–1902): Author of comedies like La levita (The Frock Coat), Las personas decentes (Decent People) and Las circunstancias (The Circumstances), which reflect the bourgeois atmosphere of his time.
• José Feliú y Codina (1845–1897): wrote the rural drama La Dolores (Dolores) and theater of regional customs.
• Leopoldo Cano (1844–1934): His most outstanding works are La Pasionaria (The Passion Flower) and La mariposa, (The Butterfly).

Among the librettists of zarzuelas, Marcos Zapata, Ricardo de la Vega, José López Silva and Miguel Ramos Carrión stand out; and among the authors of sainetes, Tomás Luceño and Vital Aza stand out.