Thursday, December 23, 2010

Benito Pérez Galdós

Have you heard the name of Benito Pérez Galdós, a great Spanish writer? Have you read any of his outstanding novels? Unless you are a fellow Hispanist, I suspect you never even heard Galdós's name. Most educated people have at least heard the names of Tolstoy, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, and Zola. Still, Galdós, who, to put it very mildly,  is in no way weaker as a writer remains unknown. It is extremely unfair that Tolstoy's vastly inferior War and Peace (Oxford World's Classics) should go on the New York Times bestseller list, while Galdós's amazing Fortunata and Jacinta: Two Stories of Married Women (Classics) or his heartbreakingly beautiful Misericordia (Dedalus European Classics) languish unknown outside of the Spanish-speaking world. You can't even find English translations for most of his beautiful novels, while Tolstoy's  Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club), a mind-numbingly inept rewriting of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, keeps getting translated.

Galdós's lack of fame outside of the Spanish-speaking world is often attributed to a nasty smear campaign launched by his compatriots when rumors began that the writer was going to be nominated for the Nobel Prize. I find this explanation to be quite silly. It would have made sense to talk about the smear campaign as the main cause of Galdós's relative obscurity if it weren't for the fact that every single Spanish writer (with the exception of Cervantes, Lope de Vega and, marginally, Calderón) has suffered the same fate. Take, for example, Clarin's La Regenta (Penguin Classics). (And I mean it literally as well as figuratively: do absolutely give yourself the joy of reading this fantastic novel. If you haven't read La Regenta (Penguin Classics), it is my opinion that you are pretty much wasting your time reading anything else.) Nobody has written a better novel since Cervantes, yet Clarin, its genius author, is as unknown (or more) as Galdós.

I hope that by now I have been able to awaken your curiosity as to the reasons behind this obstinate refusal by the entire world to notice achievements by great writers from Spain. Literature, though, is far from being the only area where Spain has been marginalized. Take any book on European history, art, politics, economy, demographic trends, whatever. In the absolute majority of cases, there won't be a chapter on Spain. I've been tracking such books for over a decade now, and, for the most part, Spain is noticeable by its absence.

So what happened to Spain? Why is this country being constantly snubbed, perennially left behind, eternally marginalized?

Between 1492 and 1898, Spain was an empire. In the XVIth and the first half of the XVIIth centuries it was the greatest, the most powerful and the most feared empire in the world. Spain's hegemony in terms of politics, economy, culture, art was undisputable. The Spanish Empire didn't rest there, of course. It used all of its vast resources to invade everybody around in order to impose its own religion. Eventually, Spain's endless religious wars destroyed its economy and led to a gradual crumbling down of the imperial edifice. By the end of the XVIIth century, Spain became very familiar with what it meant to be an empire in decline. By the 1820ies, Spain lost most of its colonies. In 1898, the sad, pathetic remnants of the Spanish Empire lost the last small colonies to an emerging imperial power: the United States.

People remember, though. The atrocities perpetrated by Spain in the New World were retold and exaggerated by those who resented Spain's religious wars and constant attempts to mess with its neighbors. This horrible reputation that keeps following Spain around like a bad smell is called "The Black Legend of Spain." Of course, there hasn't been any Spanish Empire for a long time. And only historians and Hispanists remember Spain's hegemony. Still, a bad rep is impossible to live down. And Benito Pérez Galdós - as well as everybody who could have enjoyed his books if they knew of their existence - keeps paying for the Empire's sins.

So you see how this works? Messing with other people's business, starting "holy" wars, exploiting others for the sake of the Empire is a lot of fun while it lasts. But you always get to pay for it. And pay for it some more. Is it really worth it?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazon links contain your personal email address.

BTW, I was reading your twitter and it seems like you're a big fan of Laura Lippman. An interesting factoid: she is married to David Simon, the creator of The Wire.

Happy Holidays,

Stringer

Denny said...

I'm not familiar with Spanish literature, as can be expected, given your analysis. Thanks for the recommendations! I purchased the .99 cent Kindle version of "La Regenta." If it's my cup of tea, then I'll shell out money for a hard copy of "Fortunata and Jacinta."

Clarissa said...

I think the Kindle version is in Spanish, though.

Tell me if it isn't.

Clarissa said...

Stringer: you are right again. And I have no idea why this keeps happening. Maybe I should forget the links altogether.

Clarissa said...

Stringer: I think I finally figured it out. Would ypu mind checking the links once again to see if the same problem persists? I'll be very grateful.

Anonymous said...

Links look good now.

Stringer

Clarissa said...

Thank you SO MUCH, Stringer!!!

Rimi said...

The British seemed to have lived past their colonial image (which really means theiving + religious santicmonusness + cultural destruction + mass murder + constant exploitation) very well. Perhaps this is because their colonies, settler and otherwise, were far broader than Spain's, and consequently English the language has unparalelled global reach today. Hence the perpetration of British authors (we study Shakespeare and Dickens and Wordsworth and Keats and so on at school) and European authors in their English translations.

The only non-British authors on sale in Indian chainstore bookshops right now are Garcia Marquez, Murakami, Pamuk and Eco. Plus the usual Greek-Latin 'classics'. Maybe some Neruda, if you look for it. See the pattern?

Clarissa said...

The British abstained from waging endless religious wars in Europe, so there wasn't anybody to create and propagate a black legend about them.

So now we have this ridiculous situation where Harold Bloom (the most famous literary critic in the world, as unfair as that is) keeps proclaiming that Shakespeare is "the best" writer of all times anywhere in the world. I have nothing against Shakespeare, but come on, what sense does it make? This is precisely what cutural hegemony looks like.

"The only non-British authors on sale in Indian chainstore bookshops right now are Garcia Marquez, Murakami, Pamuk and Eco. Plus the usual Greek-Latin 'classics'. Maybe some Neruda, if you look for it."

-Thanks for sharing this. I'm sure that this information is as fascinating to my readers as it is to me.

Denny said...

The Kindle version is in Spanish, unfortunately. I wasn't paying very much attention, and didn't notice that a different publisher was listed for the Kindle version. I did call Amazon to make a complaint because I don't believe they ought to link foreign language editions on Kindle to English paperback editions without an obvious warning, e.g. in this case the addition of "(Spanish)" next to the Kindle version would have been sufficient to prevent my error.

Clarissa said...

I'm so sorry that this happened! Amazon is often very misleading in such cases. This is too annoying!!

Anonymous said...

I am Hispanic and I am glad that you discovered Benito Perez Galdos. Gloria, Fortunata and Jacinta, La de Bringas are my favourite novels.
For the Spanish readers: Biblioteca Cervantes has digital books available for free downloading.