{"id":1078,"date":"2015-08-11T12:11:04","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T10:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2015-08-11T12:11:04","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T10:11:04","slug":"charles-and-benito-a-celebration-of-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2015\/08\/11\/charles-and-benito-a-celebration-of-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"CHARLES AND BENITO: A CELEBRATION OF INFLUENCE <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

My title throws a barb at Harold Bloom\u2019s famous \u2018anxiety of influence\u2019 theory from his 1973 book. Bloom argued in it that poets are prompted to write in awe and admiration of particular predecessors. They, however, always struggle to find their own voice, fearing that they can only produce imitations of their chosen masters; hence, they labour under a constant \u2018anxiety of influence\u2019. In contrast, the attitude that Spanish novelist Benito P\u00e9rez Gald\u00f3s (1843-1920), showed towards his much admired Charles Dickens (1812-1870) seems to have been always celebratory\u2013perhaps because from the very beginning Gald\u00f3s had a clear voice of his own and also because there was no way 19th century Spain could be depicted exactly as Dickens depicts his native England.<\/p>\n

I wrote a post back in 2012 (4th November) on the similarities between the young Charles Dickens and our own Romantic genius Mariano Jos\u00e9 de Larra, based on their showing a similar \u2018zest for city life\u2019 as journalist fl\u00e2neurs<\/em>. I did not know then about the literary connections between Gald\u00f3s and Dickens, though having read half a dozen novels by Gald\u00f3s and almost the full dozen by Dickens this should have been obvious to me. Possibly, Gald\u00f3s\u2019 \u2018castizo\u2019 characters threw me off the path. <\/p>\n

What has brought me back to it is my very enjoyable reading of Gald\u00f3s\u2019 quirky first novel, La Fontana de Oro<\/em>, published in 1870, the same year Dickens died\u2013yes, a peculiar coincidence, or yet another proof of Spain\u2019s cultural belatedness. It might well be that this is Gald\u00f3s\u2019 closest imitation of Dickens. Suddenly, it was crystal clear to me that the Spanish novelist was applying literary strategies learned from the English master to his first attempt at narrating chaotic Spain. The colourful character descriptions, the fine attention to the grotesqueries of life, the droll authorial stance, the intense hatred for those who live to oppress others\u2026 all sounded familiar. Dickens would have loved it.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, there is proof of Gald\u00f3s\u2019 admiration for Dickens: he translated into Spanish his first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club<\/em> (a.k.a. The Pickwick Papers<\/em>, 1836). Gald\u00f3s was just 24, he cheekily claimed to know English and found a gullible editor in a Spanish newspaper who believed him. As diverse academics have proved, though, he actually translated Dickens from the French (see for instance http:\/\/mdc.ulpgc.es\/cdm\/ref\/collection\/galdosianos\/id\/1210<\/a>). The result, Ricardo Bada laments (http:\/\/www.elespectador.com\/noticias\/cultura\/cuando-galdos-tradujo-dickens-articulo-324923<\/a>), is appalling\u2026: \u201ces una cat\u00e1strofe literariamente homologable con la mar\u00edtima del infeliz Titanic\u201d. Gald\u00f3s never translated a work again, though he seems to have been able to read in English and was no doubt well-acquainted with the work of other English writers beyond Dickens.<\/p>\n

In his Memorias de un desmemoriado<\/em> (1915-6), Gald\u00f3s recalls his trip to England in 1889 to visit Shakespeare\u2019s house. In an often quoted passage he recalls visiting as well Dickens\u2019 grave in the Poets\u2019 Corner of Westminster Abbey: \u201cConsideraba yo a Carlos (sic) Dickens como mi maestro m\u00e1s amado. En mi aprendizaje literario, cuando a\u00fan no hab\u00eda salido yo de mi mocedad petulante, apenas devorada La comedia humana<\/em>, de Balzac, me apliqu\u00e9 con loco af\u00e1n a la copiosa obra de Dickens. Para un peri\u00f3dico de Madrid traduje el Pickwick<\/em>, donosa s\u00e1tira, inspirada, sin duda, en la lectura de El Quijote<\/em>. (\u2026) Depositando la flor de mi adoraci\u00f3n sobre esta gloriosa tumba me retiro del pante\u00f3n de Westminster\u201d. The literary loop is thus nicely closed: Dickens learned from Cervantes and Gald\u00f3s learned from him.<\/p>\n

I have not read Pickwick Papers<\/em> yet, which will complete my pet project of reading all the novels Dickens published\u2013then, the short fiction. Reading Gald\u00f3s\u2019 novel about the \u2018trieno liberal\u2019 of 1820-3 and the simply nauseating figure of King Fernando VII, I realized I know very little about the complicated Spanish 19th century. A perfect solution to this shameful blank is, of course, reading Gald\u00f3s\u2019 series Episodios nacionales<\/em>. Now, here\u2019s the rub: the series, which famously begins with Trafalgar<\/em>, runs to 46 novels, published between 1872 and 1912. Don Benito\u2019s complete list of publications runs to more than 100 titles, not including a long list of essays, plays and short stories… Someone should do research on why and how certain writers are so prolific. Is it a mutation in the brain? I also wonder about the kind of readership and book market capable of absorbing so much from the same pen.<\/p>\n

The acerbic Valle Incl\u00e1n dubbed Gald\u00f3s \u2018Don Benito el Garbancero\u2019 as I learned back in secondary school when my wonderful teacher Ana Oltra made us read Gald\u00f3s\u2019 Tormento<\/em>. I read Valle Incl\u00e1n\u2019s play Luces de Bohemia<\/em> the following year, 1984, and saw it in the theatre with some classmates\u2013we were very different from today\u2019s teens, I guess… this was no school outing but our own idea. \u2018Garbancero\u2019 has no apt English translation beyond \u2018chickpea dealer\u2019 though Valle Incl\u00e1n used its second sense: \u2018vulgar\u2019. Although my teacher was quite a Galdosian fan, and I loved Tormento<\/em> much better than Luces de Bohemia<\/em>, the prejudiced sobriquet somehow stayed with me. It was nevertheless dispelled by TVE\u2019s excellent 1980 adaptation of Gald\u00f3s\u2019 masterpiece Fortunata y Jacinta<\/em> (see the series here http:\/\/www.rtve.es\/television\/fortunata-jacinta\/<\/a>), a product of a now defunct time when TV did offer highly cultured entertainment. This was our Brideshead Revisited<\/em> (1981) and I count myself fortunate that these smashing series are part of my literary biography. I doubt even BBC would be up to the task of adapting the Episodios nacionales<\/em> but I certainly do not see RTVE attempting even to adapt any other of Gald\u00f3s\u2019 novels. Instead, we are being offered the crude period soap operas that dominate afternoon TV (Amar es para siempre<\/em>, El secreto de Puente Viejo<\/em> and so on…). That is<\/em> \u2018garbancero\u2019.<\/p>\n

Charles Dickens, by the way, was also labelled \u2018garbancero\u2019, though in this case by an illustrious academic. The Modernists regarded him mostly as an example of the ills that the commercialization of the novel inflicted on highbrow Literature throughout the 19th century. As the Modernist-inspired leading academic F.R. Leavis sentenced in The Great Tradition<\/em> (1948), his reason \u201cfor not including Dickens in the line of great novelists\u201d was that, though great, his was the genius \u201cof a great entertainer, and he had for the most part no profounder responsibility as a creative artist than this description suggests\u201d (1950: 18)\u2013he was, in short, a \u2018garbancero\u2019. Leavis only concluded as late as 1970 that Dickens was also a great \u2018creative artist\u2019 in Dickens the Novelist<\/em>. Luckily, the BBC never doubted that and has so done much to undo Prof. Leavis\u2019 unfortunate early judgements.<\/p>\n

So, back to the beginning, Gald\u00f3s\u2019 love for his master Dickens can be called a \u2018celebration\u2019 of influence, rather than anxiety. I am not denying the widespread existence of this \u2018anxiety\u2019\u2013think of Martin Amis comparing himself to his novelist father Kingsley if you need an example. I am just claiming that literary anxiety has a potent counterpart in avowed, gleeful admiration\u2013though I would grant that only a genius like Gald\u00f3s can turn his awe for a master into unrestrained inspiration and, ultimately, an equally potent voice of his own. <\/p>\n

When 2043 arrives and Spain gets the chance to celebrate Gald\u00f3s\u2019 bicentenary as joyfully as the British celebrated Dickens\u2019 own back in 2012, we can discuss how the two cultures compare when it comes to celebrating the literary best they have produced…<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. See my publications and activities on my personal web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/
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My title throws a barb at Harold Bloom\u2019s famous \u2018anxiety of influence\u2019 theory from his 1973 book. Bloom argued in it that poets are prompted to write in awe and admiration of particular predecessors. They, however, always struggle to find their own voice, fearing that they can only produce imitations of their chosen masters; hence, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,36,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-tv-series","category-victorian-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}