THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE NOVELS OF JUAN VALLERA: A STUDY IN TECHNIQUES

300 Pages·017.103 MB·English

by  DECOSTER, CYRUS C

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE NOVELS OF
JUAN VALERA: A STUDY IN TECHNIQUES
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES
AND LITERATURES
BY
CYRUS C. DeCOSTER
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
AUGUST, 1951
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TABLE OP CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................
II. VALERA'S CHARACTER ..................................................................................
A. Valera’s Classicism
B. Valera’s Heritage from the EIghteeni»n Century
C. Valera, the Aristocrat
D. Valera, the Optimist
III. VALERA’S ESTHETIC IDEAS ..................................................................
A. Admiration for C lassical Literature
B. Inspiration
C. Art for A rt’s Sake
D. Valera's Theory of Im itation
E. Art Must Please
IV. VALERA AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVEL..........................
A. The Spanish Novel
B. The Foreign Novel
V. THE TECHNIQUE OP THE NOVEL..............................................................
A. Subject of the Novel
B. Plot
C. Characterization
D. Background
E. Tone
P. Style and Language
G. The H istorical Novel
VI. THE NOVELS ......................................................................................................
A. Mariquita y Antonio
B. Pepita Jimenez
C. Las ilu sion es del doctor Faustino
D. El Comendador Mendoza
E. Pasarse de lis to
F. Doha Luz
G. Juanita la larga
H. Genio y figura
I. Morsamor and the H istorical Novel
i i
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TABLE OF CONTENTS—Continued
Chapter Page
VII. CONCLUSIONS 250
A. Sources
B. Plot
C. Characterization
D. Technique
E. Style and Language
F. C lassification of Valera
BIBLIOGRAPHY 281
i i i
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Juan Valera—poet, c r itic , dram atist, n o v elist, diplomat,
statesman, and man of the world—is a figure unique in nineteenth
century Spain. . He stands apart from the literary movements of his
day, choosing his own path, upholding his id eals. He has been
likened to various great and d istin ctiv e figu res—to Goethe, for
his Classicism and Olympian outlook, to Stendhal for his in terest
and s k ill in character an alysis, to Flaubert, the a rtist and s ty l­
is t , and to Renan, the sc e p tic .1 These sim ila rities are obvious
enough; but a ll such comparisons are b asically su p erficial and
esp ecially so in th is case, for Valera was always an individual­
is t who never ceased cu ltivatin g his own personality. He belonged
to no school. As a n ovelist he has l i t t le in common with his con­
tem poraries, Galdos, Clarfn, and Pardo Bazan.
It is not strange that an isolated figure such as Valera
should be something of an enigma to the general public, and, in
fa ct, he never did receive widespread popular acclaim .2 He with-
■^Cesar Barja, Libros y autores modernos (Los Angeles,
1935), p. 256. As early as 1900 Clarm pointed out Valera’s a f­
fin ity to another French scep tic, Anatole France. (Leopoldo Alas,
nDafnis y Cloe, ” hi im parclal, March 26, 1900.)
g
Conde ae las Ravas, Gentenario de Valera (Madrid, 1925),
p. 28.
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2
drew his fir s t volume of poetry, Ensayos p oeticos, from circu la­
tion shortly after its publication, as not a sin gle copy had been
sold.^ Two years after w riting Pepita Jimenez he bemoaned that
the novel had not brought him the eight thousand reales which a
dress for his wife would cost at Worth’s. Later numerous Spanish
editions were published, and it was translated into French, Portu­
guese, English, P olish , German, Bohemian, and Ita lia n .- Valera’3
subsequent novels met with some success, but at best his circle
of admirers was lim ited. Whereas every school boy in Spain had
read Perez Galdos’ Episodios nacionales, only a few thousand were
able to appreciate Valera’s d elicate and subtle a r t.5
^Juan Valera, "NotIda autobiografica de Don Juan V alera,”
BRAE, I (1914), 132.
^0.C., IV, 5 (Prologue to the 31st ed ition of Pepita
Jimenez). In this d issertation I have used O.C. as an abbrevia­
tio n for Juan Valera, Obras completas, 53 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta
Alemana and Ocaha, 1905-35)'. Dates follow ing 0.0. citation s are
original publication dates of the m aterial referred to.
5O.C., XXXI, 108 (1902): "Sin duda que yo tengo mi publi­
co, pero mi publico es limitadxsim o. Del gran publico soy yo casi
completamente ignorado. iQue importa, ni que vale el que la mas
aplaudida y mas popular de mis novelas, pongamos por caso, haya s i-
do leida por unos cuantos m iles de personas, cuando hay mas de
sesenta m illones que hablan y entienden la lengua en que yo escrib i
y en que yo escribo, y que no me han leid o , ni me leen, ni saben
siquiera mi nombre, ni de mis escritos y pensamientos les importa
un ardite?"
Cf. O.C., XVI, 5 (1879). Unpublished le tte r to Jose Alca­
la Galiano; B russels, March 11, 1887: "En Espaha hay pesimo gusto,
y algo como sordera o ceguera in telectu al para las cosas que se
eleven un poco por cima de cierto n ivel muy bajo. Solo en ese
n ivel muy bajo, veo yo que el buen gusto y la inspiracion sana de
los autores estan de acuerdo con las entendederas y el sen tir del
publico. Asi es que para m£, dicho sea inter nos, Ricardo Vega,
con sus sain etes, es casi e l unico autor espahol popular y ie g i-
timamente bueno a la vez. Pero como ni tu , ni yo, tocamos la
cuerda que toca Ricardo Vega, ni no somos falsos y amanerados como
Campoamor, por ejemplo, jamas seremos populares, a no ser en a l-
guna ob rilla aislad a, y como por yerro de cuenta.”
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3
Valera fared b etter at the hands of the c r itic s , who v ir­
tu a lly a ll agree in praising his talen ts as a n o v elist, but even
here we find d iversity of opinion as to the place he occupies in
Spanish fic tio n . He has been labeled a H ealist, a psychologist,
a C la ssicist, an id e a list, and even a combination of these tags.
Since Valera often has been called a R ealist, we may won­
der what he has in common with the movement. Realism, springing
from Balzac in the 1830’s , grew rapidly and dominated western
European literatu re during the second half of the century. Al­
though early m anifestations of it are seen in Spain in the works
of F'ernan Caballero, it did not rea lly catch hold u n til the la st
quarter of the century with the renascence of the n ov el.5 Once
it did appear, Realism soon was flou rish in g, at lea st in a form
suited to the in d ivid u alistic Spanish character, as the novels of
Pereda, Galdos, and Pardo Bazan w ell te stify .
Undoubtedly there are r e a listic elements in V alera’s
novels, but there is a world of difference between his art and
that of Balzac, Flaubert, or even Galdos. Havelock E llis , in a
perceptive essay in The Soul of Spain affirm s that Valera is es­
sen tia lly a R ealist. According to this B ritish c r itic , in Juanita
la large Valera presented the liv es of simple and uncultivated
people with no crudity, "but yet with a realism which proves th at,
whatever his d islik e of the French N aturalistic novel, he was
s t i l l true to the traditions of the Spanish novel. For in the
^Except for Fernan Caballero the fir s t non-romantic Spanish
novels were Galdos’ La Fontana de Pro, which, although w ritten in
1867-68, was not- published u n til two years la te r , and Pepita Jime­
nez and El sombrero de tres p icos,both of which appeared in 1874.
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fundamental sense the Spanish n o v elists, with Cervantes at their
head, have always been r e a lis ts , in the same way in which in
England Fielding and Defoe were r e a lis t s . Here E llis is using
"realism ” in the broad sense of true to l i f e , as we might speak
of the realism of Marivaux’s novels or of B oileau’3 Le repas r id i­
cule . The authorT3 descriptions of the external world are real
and accurate, but he is not obsessed with describing everything
in great d eta il lik e the nineteenth century R ealists.
Azana, the la st president of the Spanish Republic, who
wrote a series of we11-documented a rticles on Valera, c la ssifie s
him as a psychological n o v elist. According to Azana, Valera is a
r e a list, again not in the Balzacian sense that he emphasizes the
m aterial and external, but that his characters are real and true
to l i f e . 3
The Classical-hum anist tradition was very strong in Valera,
and many c r itic s , including Pardo Bazan, have picked it as the
outstanding feature of his litera ry p erson ality.9 Gomez de Ba-
quero (Andrenio) discusses th is aspect of Valera’s work in some
d eta il in the essay "Valera, humanista," while Thompson in his
"^Havelock E llis , The Soul of Spain (Boston, 1909), p. 266.
3Manuel Azana, Prologue to Pepita Jimenez, p. liv : "Mas,
don Juan Valera no es un n ovelista fa n ta stico, ni sonador. Es,
en el fondo, un rea lista : su realism o es in terior mas que externo;
es un realism o de los afectos del alma."
^Emilia Pardo Bazan, "Le mouvement litte r a ir e en Espagne,"
La revue des revues, XXV (1898), 379: "Valera passe pour id ea liste
a cause des campagnes qu’i l a fa ites contre le naturalism s sur le
terrain de la critiq u e, m ais, au fond, c ’est un classiq u e, autant
qu’i l est possible d ’etre classique aujourd’h u i."
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d issertation centers a whole study of Valera’3 novels around his
In one of three a rticles published in E'l sol in
C l a s s i c i s m . 1 *^
1925 Perez de Ayala contrasts Valera and Galdos, the former a
humanist interested only in the universal, the la tter human pre­
occupied with the s p e c ific .11 The Catalan d ’Ors in his usual im­
p ressio n istic and paradoxical manner labels Valera an a r tis t, the
only one of his generation.12
Other cr itic s have emphasized the id e a listic nature of
V alera’s novels—certainly a cla ssica l quality, and one seldom
found in the literatu re of the nineteenth century. To Cesar Barja,
who is a strong admirer of Valera, his novels, based as they are
on r e a lity but with Idealism as th eir guiding s p ir it, belong to
the trad ition of the Spanish novel— of Cervantes and C-aldos.15
Warren, although he places Valera among "the R ea lists,” says of
Doha Luz: "The work is Id e a listic , not r e a listic ." 1^ Audrey F. G.
B ell en titles the chapter on our n ovelist "Juan Valera and the
C lassical Id ealist Kovel" and states: "The v isib le world in his
work is only secondary. . . .- [Vis novels j are r e a listic to a
Gomez de Baquero, "Valera, humanista," De Gallardo
a Unamuno (Madrid, 1926), pp. 75-100. Frank Reginald Thompson,
"The Classicism of Don Juan Valera" (typewritten Ph.D. d isserta­
tio n , U niversity of W isconsin, 1941).
^Ramon Perez de Ayala, "Don Juan Valera o e l arte de la
d istra ccio n ,” El s o l, April 18, 1925.
^Eugenio d ’Ors, "Glosas," ABC, October 25, 1924.
■^Barja, Libros y autores modernos, p. 246.
-^L. A. Warren, Modern Spanish L iterature, I (London,
1929), 106.
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6
very lim ited degree."15 The Spanish c r itic Gonzalez Blanco, who
has a marked antipathy for Valera, goes even further, treats
Valera under the heading ’’Desviaciones de la novela id e a lista ,”
and pretends to find in his works an u tter disregard of lif e and
rea lity .
There are almost as many opinions about Valera and the
role he played in nineteenth century Spanish literatu re as there
are c r itic s. The two extremes of thought are those held by Have­
lock E llis and Gonzalez Blanco, the former praising the realism
of Juanita la larga, the la tte r denying Valera a ll semblance of
rea lity . This divergence of opinion about V alera’s art as a
n ovelist indicates that a further study of the problem would be
p rofitab le.
In th is d issertation by analyzing V alera’s c r itic a l and
esth etic works I propose fir s t to outline his remarks concerning
the technique of the novel. His esth etic p rin cip les, founded on
his cla ssica l taste and culture and m odified somewhat by his per­
son ality and in te lle c t, are at the basis of these c r itic a l sta te­
•^Audrey F. G. B ell, Contemporary Spanish Literature (New
York, 1925), pp. 44-45.
^®Andres Gonzalez Blanco, H istoria de la novela en Espaffa
desde el romanticismo a nuestros dias (Madrid, 1909), pp. 350-52::
"iiste desasim iento de toda observacion, esta incompenetrabilidad
con todos los recodos de la vida, fue lo primero que le perjudica
para hacer n ovela.”
”En resumen: Valera viene a ser e l continuador de la no­
vela de Alarcon, incolora, casi anodina, sin la fuerza impulsiva
y desbordante de la romantica ni la justeza de la r e a lista , sin
vision de vida y sin arrebato pasional. Toda es en e lla frialdad
y correccion."
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7
ments. By comparing what he had to say about the novel with v/hat
he actually wrote, we can not only determine how consistent Valera
was in composing his works, but we w ill also gain an insight into
his art.
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