Aires españoles, represents the vivid colouring and resonant
emphasis of Andalusia; Ramon Domingo Peres (b. 1863), a
Cuban by birth but domiciled at Barcelona, strikes a Catalan
note in Musgo (1902), and substitutes restraint and simplicity
for the Castilian sonority and pomp; Vicente Medina (b. 1866)
in Aires murcianos and La Canción de la huerta reproduces with
vivid intensity the atmosphere of the Murcian orchard-country;
Juan Alcover and Miguel Costa, both natives of Majorca, celebrate
their island scenery with luminous picturesqueness of
phrase. The roll of Spanish poets may close with the name of
Jose Maria Gabriel y Galan (d. 1905), whose reputation depends
chiefly on the verses entitled “El Ama” in Castellanas; Gabriel y
Galan was extremely unequal, and his range of subjects was
limited, but in El Ama he produced a poem which is unsurpassed
in modern Spanish poetry. The facility with which verses of a
kind can be written in Spanish has made Spain a nest of singing-birds;
but the chief names have been already mentioned, and
no others need be recorded here.
Since 1850 there has been a notable renaissance of the Spanish novel. Fernan Caballero is entitled to an honourable place in literary history as perhaps the first to revive the native realism which was temporarily checked by the romantic movement. In all that concerns truth and art she is superior Fiction. to the once popular Manuel Fernández y González (d. 1888), of whom it has been said that Spain should erect a statue to him and should burn his novels at the foot of it. A Spanish Dumas, he equals the French author in fecundity, invention and resource, and some of his tales—such as El Cocinero de su majestad, Los Minfies de las Alpujarras and Martín Gil—are written with an irresistible brio; but he was the victim of his own facility, grew more and more reckless in his methods of composition, and at last sank to the level of his imitators. Antonio de Trueba followed Fernan Caballero in observing local customs and in poetizing them with a sentimental grace of his own, which attracted local patriots and uncritical readers generally. He had no gift of delineating character, and his plots are feeble; but he was not wanting in literary charm, and went his road of incorrigible optimism amid the applause of the crowd. His contemporary, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, is remembered chiefly as the author of El Sombrero de tres picos, a peculiarly Spanish tale of picaresque malice. Neither Trueba nor Alarcon could have developed into great artists; the first is too falsetto, the second is too rhetorical, and both are too haphazard in execution. Idealizing country life into a pale arcadian idyll, Trueba frowned upon one of his neighbours whose methods were eminently realistic. Jose Maria de Pereda is the founder of the modern school of realistic fiction in Spain, and the boldness of his experiment startled a generation of readers accustomed to Fernan Caballero’s feminine reticence and Trueba’s deliberate conventionality. Moreover, Pereda’s reactionary political views—too frequently obtruded in his imaginative work—alienated from him the sympathies of the growing Liberal element in the country; but the power which stamps his Escenas montañesas was at once appreciated in the northern provinces, and by slow degrees he imposed himself upon the academic critics of Madrid. So long as Pereda deals with Country folk, sailors, fishermen, aspects of sea and land, he deserves the highest praise, for he understands the poor, hits upon the mean between conventional portraiture and caricature, and had the keenest appreciation of natural beauty. His hand was far less certain in describing townsmen; yet it is a mistake to class him as merely a successful landscape painter, for he created character, and continually revealed points of novelty in his descriptions of the common things of life. Pereda is realistic, and he is real. His rival, Juan Valera, is not, in the restricted sense of the word, realistic, but he is no less real in his own wider province; he has neither Pereda’s energy nor austerity of purpose, but has a more infallible tact, a larger experience of men and women, and his sceptical raillery is as effective a moral commentary as Pereda’s Christian pessimism. In Valera’s Pepita Jiménez and Doña Luz, and in Pereda’s Sotileza, we have a trio of Spanish heroines who deserve their fame: Pereda’s is the more vigorous, full-blooded talent, as Valera’s is the more seductive and patrician; yet, much as they differ, both are essentially native in the quality of their genius, system and phrasing. Benito Perez Galdos gave a new life to the historical novel in his huge series entitled Episodios nacionales, a name perhaps suggested by the Romans nationaux of Erckmann-Chatrian; but the subjects and sentiment of these forty volumes are intensely local. The colouring of the Episodios nacionales is so brilliant, their incident is so varied and so full of interest, their spirit so stirring and patriotic, that the born Spaniard easily forgives their frequent prolixity, their insistence on minute details, their loose construction and their uneven style. Their appeal is irresistible; there is no such unanimous approbation of the politico-religious novels such as Doña Perfecta, Gloria and Leon Rock, each of which may be regarded as a roman à thèse. The quick response of Perez Galdos to any external stimulus, his sensitiveness to every change in the literary atmosphere, made it inevitable that he should come under the influence of French naturalism, as he does in Lo Prohibido and in Realidad; but his conversion was temporary, and two forcible novels dealing with contemporary life—Fortunata y Jacinta and Angel Guerra—mark the third place in the development of a susceptible talent. The true leader of the naturalistic school in Spain is Armando Palacio Valdes, whose faculty of artistic selection was first displayed in El Senorito Octavio. Two subsequent works—Marta y Maria and La Hermana San Sulpicio—raised hopes that Spain had, in Palacio Valdés, a novelist of the first order to succeed Pereda and Valera; but in La Espnma and La Fe, two social studies which caused all the more sensation because they contained caricatures of well-known personages, the author followed the French current, ceased to be national and did not become cosmopolitan. His latest books are more original and interesting, though they scarcely fulfil his early promise. Another novelist who for a time divided honours with Palacio Valdes was the lady who publishes under her maiden name of Emilia Pardo Bazan. The powerful, repellent pictures of peasant life and the ethical daring of Los Pazos dc Ulloa and La Madre Naturaleza are set off by graphic passages of description; in later works the author chose less questionable subjects, and the local patriotism which inspires Insolación and De mi tierra is expressed in a style which secures Emilia Pardo Bazan a high place among her contemporaries. Leopoldo Alas (1851–1901), who used the pseudonym of “Clarin,” was better known as a ruthless critic than as a novelist; the interest of his shorter stories has evaporated, but his ambitious novel, La Regenta, lives as an original study of the relation between mysticism and passion. Jacinto Octavio Picón (b. 1852), who has deserted novel writing for criticism, displayed much insight in Lāzaro, the story of a priest who finds himself forced to lay down his orders ; this work was naturally denounced by the clerical party, and orthodoxy declared equally against El Enemigo and Dulce y sabrosa; more impartial critics agree in admiring Picón’s power of awakening sympathy and interest, his gift of minute psychological analysis and his exquisite diction. No suspicion of heterodoxy attaches to Manuel Polo y Peyrolón, the author of that charming story La Tia Levitico, nor to the Jesuit-Luis Coloma (b. 1851), who obtained a fleeting triumph with Pequeñeces, in which the writer satirized the fashionable society of which he had been an ornament before his conversion. Juan Ochoa (d. 1899) showed promise of the highest order in his two short stories, El Amado discípulo and Un alma de Dios and Angel Ganivet (d. 1898) produced in Los Trabajos del infatigable creador Pio Cid, a singular philosophical romance, rich in ideas and felicitous in expression, though lacking in narrative interest. With him may be mentioned Ricardo Macias Picavea (d. 1899), author of La Tierra de campos, who died prematurely before his undoubted talent had reached maturity. Of the younger novelists the most notable in reputation and achievement is Vicente Blasco Ibanez (b. 1866) who began with pictures of Valencian provincial life in Flor de mayo, made romance the vehicle of revolutionary propaganda in La Catedral and La Horda, and shows the influence of Zola in one of his latest books, La Maja desnuda. Blasco Ibáñez lacks taste and
