Fortunata and Jacinta read-along update

When I posted the schedule for the read-along I forgot my wife was going to be traveling and the boys and I would be living the bachelor life for a few days. The only casualty so far is a post I made Saturday evening—I’m not sure what happened to it but it has vanished.

I plan on having the outline finished soon and will create a new posting for it. I should have a couple of posts on each week’s volume and I’ll set up a post linking to other bloggers participating in the read-along. Not that you need me to reinforce this but feel free to follow your own schedule in posting on the novel.

Here are my posts on the novel to date.

Forunata and Jacinta outline (out of date)

Please see the final outline post, replacing this placeholder for the work-in-process.

Forunata and Jacinta and Spanish history

Without beating around the bush, Don Balomero made a very sensible commentary, the product of his experience and observation: “I don’t know what will happen twenty or fifty years from now. You can’t see that far ahead in Spanish society. All we know is that our country alternates between two fevers, revolution and peace. At certain times we all want lots of authority. Pour it on! But then we get tired of it and we all want to step out of line. So the fun comes, but then we start sighing for it to be over. That’s how we are, and that’s how we’ll be, as far as I can see, till frogs start shaving.” (page 459: Volume III, The Victorious Restoration, subchapter 1)

What Don Baldomero had observed about Spain was also true of his son: he suffered alternate fevers of total liberty and absolute peace. (page 461: Volume III, The Victorious Restoration, subchapter 2)

I had trouble finding links that struck the right balance of providing an adequate amount of information to understand the historical references in Fortunata and Jacinta without being overly long. Action with the characters in the novel often mirrors and coincides with what is happening in Spain. In Volumes I and II, for example, the country swings from monarchy to republic at the same time Juan alternates between wife and mistress. The novel, subtitled Two Stories of Married Women, also weaves observation and commentary on differing social classes into the story. Galdós details the interaction of politics, money, and religion during this era of Spanish history, the instability of the nation mirrored in the families he illustrates. Another social aspect of the novel lies in the impact of progress, such as in industry and finance, on individuals and classes. Galdós’ blending of historical events, social observation, and fiction presented in a deeply nested structure provides a strong mimetic effect.

If you find anything that would be helpful, especially regarding historical events or social context, or if you have any questions or corrections please feel free to email me or leave a comment to this post. I plan on bumping this post to the top if significantly updated. Some of Galdós' history works its way into the novel, too.

The approximate timeline covered in the novel (although there are plenty of genealogies and histories throughout the volumes that stretch outside this timeline):

• Volume I: September 1869 – February 1874
• Volume II: February – Fall 1874
• Volume III: End of 1874 – June 1875
• Volume IV: June 1875 – Spring 1876

Wikipedia’s page on the History of Spain (1814 – 1873) provides great detail leading up to and referenced in Fortunta and Jacinta. You can find many of the names and actions mentioned in the first few chapters (Olózag a, Prim, González Bravo, sale of church property, etc.) on this page. The First Spanish Republic and Spain under the Restoration also cover plenty of action occurring during the novel.

A shorter history can be found at Classic Spanish Books. A briefer summary can be found here (scroll down to “19th Century Spain”).

General reference links

The General Roman Calendar, which includes saints’ days, since there are many references to them.

Notes on Galdós

A few tie-ins between the author and book, from Turner, H. S. (1992). Benito Pérez Galdós, Fortunata and Jacinta. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press:

Costumbrismo [a literary genre] as practiced by the observant, genial Mesonero Romanos consisted of cuadros—picturesque sketches of social types and customs of Old Madrid. Galdós saw the novelistic possibilities of such cuardros, and in Fortunata and Jacinta he pays homage to his old master by inventing the colorful figure of Plácido Estupiñá, born, the narrator tells us, in the same year as Mesonero (1803). (page 3)

[From “Remembrances of an Unremembering Writer”(1916)] He [Galdós] tells how, upon returning to Madrid, his friend and fellow novelist, don José Ido del Sagrario [a character in Fortunata and Jacinta], appears at the door. Ido tells of the characters abandoned by their author over the summer. This account move Galdós to action: rambling through Old Madrid, waving, talking, listening, copying, he points to a stall-keeper who is the spitting image of old, parrot-faced Estupiñá, a character type so familiar that no description is warranted. (page 13)

Galdós, enrolled as a law student at the University of Madrid from 1862 to 1866, witnessed events such as the Noche de San Daniel on 10 April 1865, a student protest against the dismissal of the eminent orator and professor Emilo Castelar, and the “Revolt of the Sergeants” (22 June 1866), in which a military garrison at Madrid declared its support for the progressive leader, General Juan Prim. (page 19) [Juan Santa Cruz is arrested on the opening page of the novel for participation in the riot on the Eve of San Daniel.]

I think this excerpt, from Professor Francisco Caudet lecture "Cervantes in Galdós" at the The Pérez Galdós Editions Project, encapsulates what I was hoping to provide in a post on historical context:

With the exception of Gloria, the thesis novels and the novelas de la segunda manera share a similar interest in the middle class’s habitat, a crossroad of Madrid streets and buildings. But as Galdós wrote his novelas de la segunda manera, so his dissatisfaction with the new bourgeois generation, which, after the failure of the September Revolution, had hastened to embrace the unpredictable life of the Restoration and, comfortably placed to enjoy economic power, was starting to take on a major role in society, increased. And in many cases, as with Baldomero and Barbarita Santa Cruz, and even more so in the case of their son, Juanito, this occurred regardless whether the characters deserved or had worked for such a position in society. If in the Old Regime noble standing was inherited, today money was the supreme inheritance. Thus the nobility and those with money - from the world of the Santa Cruz family to that of Torquemada - engaged in all manner of schemes and without the slightest scruples to intermarry.

In the 1880s - as Galdós had proclaimed he would in 1870 in his ‘Observations on the contemporary novel in Spain’- he found it impossible to sing of the virtues of the offspring of the Cordero and the Araceli lineage. The ‘power block’ posed by this hegemonic class and the political system of the Restoration upon which this class was based, had turned into a scam, which had negative repercussions on the process of modernizing the Spanish nation which Galdós had long desired. When he realised this, his novels turned against that block and its political system. Thus his novels moved away, in Bakhtin’s words, from the ‘absolute past’ of the epic and were based instead – again in Bakhtin’s words - on the ‘imperfect present’, the period of the modern novel, in ‘the real and dynamic time of contemporary life’.

Thus Galdós’s novels were moving closer to the ideas he expressed in his inaugural speech to the Academy in 1897, than to what he had written in his 1870 article ‘Observations on the contemporary novel in Spain’. As he said in his 1897 speech, when ‘the great and powerful energies working towards social cohesion’ failed, since it was not ‘easy to predict which forces will replace those which have been lost as regards the direction and government of the human flock’. Art ‘was able to take sole comfort from giving imaginary beings a more human than social life’.

Pérez Galdós: The Illusion of Life itself

At the risk of turning into the Galdós channel (all Galdós, all the time), I plan on intermittent posts on the author and Fortunata and Jacinta over the next few weeks. Hopefully they will be helpful for anyone thinking about exploring the author or book. In this post I want to highlight The Pérez Galdós Editions Project as a great resource. The Annual Pérez Galdós Lecture page (currently) has the transcripts for ten of the lectures.

The first lecture, given by Roy Hattersley (the British Labour politician and author), focuses on the question of realism in Galdós’ novels and provides the title of this post. He delves into issues in That Bringas Woman, which I recently covered (translated as The Spendthrifts), and several other novels including Fortunata and Jacinta. Along the way he references a wide range of material, from Thomas Hardy to Monty Python’s Flying Circus to East Enders.

I’d also like to mention the fifth lecture given by Professor James Whiston—Galdós: Our Contemporary. Focusing on Galdós’ output from 1884 to 1887, he touches on the relevance of Galdós today:

What never ceases to amaze those of us who have given over significant portions of our lives to studying Galdós's work is how this Canary Islander, from the then very provincial backwater of Las Palmas, is of relevance today. He came from a background and a period many of whose great social institutions of his time, which were the subject of his novels, have since passed into history: the power of the Church, the culture of arranged marriages, the tight restricting bonds and conventions of family and social life, the legal and social subordination of women, the pivotal role as social centres of the coffee houses of Madrid, the marginalization of what the Victorians called the lower classes. Galdós was able to use such institutions and conventions when writing about the personal search for some authentic means of finding one's role in the human drama. Galdós was fortunate to live at a time when the tension between the search for personal authenticity (following the European Romantic movement) and the demands of institutions and social conventions was at a sufficient pitch to enable him to exploit this tension, for artistic as well as for commercial purposes. It is in his artistic conjugation of these three words, 'personal', 'social' and 'human' that Galdós found a voice in his contemporary novels to speak to us today.

Keep this lecture in mind when you get to the end of Fortunata and Jacinta--Professor Whiston goes into detail on several scenes in the novel and provides the original version of a pivotal scene near the end.

The October Fortunata and Jacinta read-along

Ramon Casas
"La Madeleine" (1892) I'm finally getting around to formally announcing the October read-along of Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós. Never having officially hosted a read-along, bear with me as I stumble my way through it. I'll try and adhere to a schedule, at least loosely:

• Week of October 8—Volume 1
• Week of October 15—Volume 2
• Week of October 22—Volume 3
• Week of October 29—Volume 4

That's a lot of book in a short period of time but I don't want it to drag on indefinitely (which tends to be my style too often). I plan on posting resources and (hopefully) helpful links for anyone joining in. If you find something you find useful or interesting and would like to pass it on, feel free to let me know and I'll add it to an upcoming resource page. At some point I hope to write about the 1980 TV series adaptation (561 minutes!). Here are some posts I've made on the novel so far and other Galdós-related posts:

A few resources on the novel and Galdós.

The initial post on the novel, thanks to a mention of it by The Neglected Books Page. Also contains a few quotes I had posted in another online life.

A few more quotes from the novel, focusing on the moneylender Torquemada (and his "student" Doña Lupe).

Posts on Galdós' Torquemada series

Posts on The Spendthrifts by Galdós

I'll post more on the novel and the read-along soon. As always, feel free to comment on the novel in my posts and let me know when you post on it...I would like to keep a "links" post near the top of the page during October.

Updates:

Himardi at The Argumentative Old Git has a post on Nazarin in this post and includes some of the film adaptations by Buñuel. I'm just starting to explore Buñuel's films. I'll post on these soon. I hope.

Article: The streets of Madrid as a structuring device in Fortunata y Jacinta by Phyllis Zatlin Boring looks at the structural framework of the novel, including diagrams of the love triangles and linkages of the city streets.

Upcoming: Fortunata and Jacinta read-along in October

At the start of the year, The Neglected Books Page posted on Fortunata and Jacinta as "The Greatest Novel You’ve Never Heard of." Please read that post about the book and follow the links provided—it's a great overview of the novel and introduction to Galdós. I seconded the enthusiasm for the novel and author and included a couple of excerpts. I somehow stumbled into the role of leading a read-along of the novel (I think it was "volunteered" for me), which I plan on starting in October. I'm posting in advance because (1) the book isn't currently in print in English, although it shouldn't be too hard to obtain a copy, and (2) it's a long novel.

I've read though my battered Penguin edition (pictured above) twice and agree with Neglected's recommendation of the translation by Agnes Moncy Gullón. I hope to provide some posts at the start that will help everyone joining in on the read-along. The Wikipedia page on the novel has a list of characters. I thought a post on the structure of the novel would be good and I'll post some additional links as it gets closer to October. If you have any ideas that would be helpful on enjoying the novel, please don't hesitate to let me know (either in comments or by e-mail—see my profile).

Some additional links on Galdós and the novel (more to come):

The Pérez Galdós Editions Project

Excerpts from a paper by Harriet Stevens Turner on Galdós (my excerpts focused on Galdós and his Torquemada novels, although there's some mention of Fortunata and Jacinta)

Speaking of the Torquemada novels, my posts on them are linked here.

the complete review's entry on Fortunata and Jacinta

Reading Fortunata and Jacinta is a significant commitment, but as Antonio Muñoz Molina said in a note for the PEN.org blog:

Reader: I am a novelist myself, and an avid fan of novels; this particular one taught me the glorious scope and the exhilarating freedom that a novel can provide, both as an art form to practice and as a reading experience to enjoy. You live in it. You move into it. You inhabit it. You get accustomed to it. It becomes part of the daily setting of your life, like your coffee mug or your computer or your dog. You scrape some extra minute to get back to it. You stay awake longer than you should to reach the end of a chapter. You walk the same streets the characters walk, overhear their conversations, visit the same cafés and street markets and bourgeois mansions and working-class slums and taverns.

I want to encourage you to join in, even if it's for only a hundred pages or more, so you can experience it with all of us. I look forward to all who join in!

Galdós: the novel is fact and fiction at the same time

I wanted to take a short break from posting on the Torquemada novels to link to an article by Harriet Stevens Turner on the author and some of his work. It sounded like there was quite a bit of interest in Fortunata and Jacinta--if you plan on reading it you should find the article very helpful.

Turner, Harriet Stevens, "Benito Pérez Galdós" (2004). Spanish Language and Literature. Paper 11.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/modlangspanish/11

A few excerpts, useful for an overall understanding of Galdós and pertaining to the Torquemada novels:

(Pages 394 - 395) In two essays, written nearly thirty years apart (1870, 1897), Galdós states the premises that shaped his Realist novels: the central role played by the rising middle class; the religious problem, which either divided or dissolved families; adultery and prostitution, which posed the contested question of personal and civil rights; and the rising mix of rural and urban masses, occurring as peasants flocked to the cities after the disentailment of Church lands (1837), the tariff reforms of 1849 and 1868, and as the ensuing boom in real estate development and industrialization began to produce an upper bourgeoisie. We find the mercantile and banking families like the Santa Cruces and Moreno Islas (Fortunata y Jacinta) mixing with "indianos," people from impoverished, rural areas who emigrated to the West Indies (Cuba, Puerto Rico), made fortunes as slavers or entrepreneurs, and returned to Madrid to flood the markets with money, as does Josi Maria Manso (El amigo Manso). Soon "indianos" and the newly rich of Old Madrid's trading neighborhoods evolved into ruthless financiers and speculators like Shnchez Botin in La desheredada and the usurer Torquemada, who starts as a ragpicker at the Gate of Toledo (the southern entrance to Madrid) and ends as a mogul, virtually owning the city.

In between rich and poor we find a chafed petty bourgeoisie of moneylenders, laborers, artisans, salesmen, disgruntled office-seekers, civil servants, and, a step up, professional people - pharmacists, lawyers, doctors, and engineers. Galdós celebrates this motley, nascent middle class as the "inexhaustible source" of creativity and entrepreneurial energy. One example, which occurs in the first part of Fortunata y Jacinta, is the column of an old-fashioned storefront in Old Madrid. Shopkeepers have dressed the column in corsets - red, black, and white - transforming it into an erotically charged, novelistic personage - female, wily, slightly sexual, who beckons provocatively to passers-by. The narrator sees this transformation as a shopkeeper's "sentimiento pintoresco" ("flair for the picturesque" [Obras, v, 991) but now the old notion of "picturesque" has become a culturally transparent sign for the changing status of women. In the novel of modernity women have taken to the streets as consumers, like the matriarch Barbarita Santa Cruz, but also as sexual objects, like Rosalia de Bringas, who squeezes her body into a corset and becomes, literally, a streetwalker who sells that plumped, perfumed body for money to buy luxury items. This surging middle class holds the key to the novel of modernity. Even in the early essay (1870), sure of his mission, Galdós registers doubt and unease about modernity's trends and conflicts - "graves cuestiones" ("serious matters") for which he, as a Realist writer, cannot supply solutions.


(Page 397)Adultery, identified by Galdós in his early essay (1870) as problematic, blurs boundaries between private and public spaces. As Jo Labanyi observes, "if it is possible to be simultaneously inside and outside, the boundary between the two positions disappears."


(Pages 402 - 403) In consequence, given Galdós' two-fold objective of representation and critique, as well as the aesthetic imperative to create, in fiction, the illusion of an autonomous, real, and truthful world, his novels offer deftly mediated narrative points of view. This technique creates a fictional, intermediate space, open to the reader, which, like other gap-like features, allows his novels to become forums of public debate. At the same time Galdós continuously retains control of his story, guiding the reader through the perceptions of both character and narrator via monologue, dialogue, and that effervescent, polyphonic mixture known as the free indirect style. The narrator is styled as a character: he evolves as a person; he may or may not be reliable, and he inevitably becomes compromised by what he sees and tells. Yet this sly, winking narrative persona leads the reader to perceive the complexities of his fictional world. As a creator of shifting, intermediate spaces and as one who occupies the vantage point of the reader, who identifies with that reader, and who is, at times, manifestly a reader himself of the faces and texts he has invented, the narrator, through various disguises, becomes perhaps the most subtle culturally transparent mode of Galdós' fiction. Now and again, like the blinded Francisco Bringas who surreptitiously lifts the edge of the band covering his eyes, peeping through a little "ventanita" ("window" [Obras, IV, 1614]), the narrator occasionally drops his mask to reveal the unexpected or unseen. He also frames scenes, focalizing through various "ventanitas" - "claraboya" ("transom"), curtains, keyholes, doors set ajar, balconies, even openings in a hedge - to transmute the import of narrative point of view into an image of what is being seen.


(Page 403) Events appear to have happened. The narrator has seen them and so appends a moral with which he addresses the reader. Now the story of Doña Perfecta is akin to fact; it belongs to the history of the nation. The novel is fact and fiction at the same time.


(Page 408) The origins of the "Torquemada" series reach back to other novels. It is as if Torquemada, an insistently recurring character, had staked a claim not only to unpaid loans but also to the indignation of the narrator, who now feels compelled to write the four-part series.

Leading in to Torquemada: Fortunata and Jacinta

I had planned on reading the Torquemada novels by Benito Pérez Galdós when The Neglected Books Page posted on one of my favorite novels: Fortunata and Jacinta. In that novel, the reader meets Francisco Torquemada, namesake of Ferdinand and Isabella’s inquisitor general.

Dr. Rhian Davies, Director of the Pérez Galdós Editions Project, has provided a summary page of the Torquemada novels:

In 1889 Galdós wrote Torquemada en la hoguera for the important cultural review La España Moderna. The novel is centered on the Madrid moneylender Francisco Torquemada, who had previously appeared in other Galdós novels, notably La de Bringas (1884) and Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-87). Like his namesake, the Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, Francisco de Torquemada, otherwise known as 'el Peor' [‘the Worse’], is renowned for his cruelty towards his fellow men.

I haven’t read the first novel but wanted to post a few quotes from Fortunata and Jacinta that mentioned the moneylender. These quotes focus on his relationship with Doña Lupe—he assisted her after her husband died (the men had been halberdiers) and the widow hoped Torquemada’s daughter and her nephew would marry (if I remember correctly). Quotes and page numbers are from the 1988 Penguin Books paperback edition with translation by Agnes Moncy Gullón).

(Page 262) Doña Lupe lent money through a man named Torquemada to military people, employees, and any other needy individuals.

(Page 282) It was Sr. Torquemada, a close friend of the family who upon arriving always went straight to the parlor, the kitchen, the dining room, or wherever the Señora was. The man’s physiognomy was puzzling. Only Doña Lupe, by virtue of her long experience, could read the hieroglyphics on that plain, shrunken face that somehow smacked of a military man with a clerical touch. In his youth Torquemada had been a halberdier, and as he had kept his mustache and goatee, now graying, he had an ecclesiastical air about him; it was undoubtedly his affected, cloying meekness and his habit of raising and lowering his eyelids that softened his innately gross face. His head was always tilted to the right. He was tall, but not arrogantly so; being nearly bald, his fat, scaly scalp was visible beneath that clumsily wrought grill of hair. Since it was Sunday, his shirt collar was almost clean, but he was wearing his everyday cloak with its greasy borders and threadbare trim. His trousers, shriveled because the cloth had stretched over the knees, rode up so much that he looked as if he had been horseback riding without gaiter straps. His boots (again, since it was Sunday) had been blackened, and squeaked so loudly you could hear them a mile away. [Torquemada proceeds to give Doña Lupe a lesson in the art of lending.]

(Page 296) The ex-halberdier was opposed to “the materialism” of legally insured mortgages at reasonable interest rates. Risky loans with very high returns were his delight, because even though one might not collect until the night before the Last Judgment, most of the victims fell foolishly into the trap for fear of scandal, and the money doubled itself quickly. He could smell a punctilious person a mile off and knew who would rather lose his skin than get a bad name. These were the ones he dug into and glutted himself on.

(Page 296) Torquemada’s wife was so much like him that Dona Lupe listened to her and treated her as though she were Don Francisco himself. And since the two ladies saw a lot of each other, Doña Silvia got to be a strong influence, and she too grafted some of her moral traits onto Doña Lupe. She was mannish and outspoken, and when she stood akimbo, a formidable spectacle. More than once she sprang on a debtor in the street to insult him mercilessly in front of other people.

Fortunata and Jacinta

Ramon Casas
"La Madeleine" (1892)

I seem to have misplaced a week of my life...probably the combination of a brutal head cold and long stressful work days. In trying to get caught up on what others have posted I found The Neglected Books Page's comments on Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós, calling it "The Greatest Novel You’ve Never Heard of". Well, now you've heard of it--read the comments at the above link for a good overview.

In another online life I had a personal finance blog, although I included anything I found interesting. About six years ago I started reading this book and enjoyed it so much I had three posts on it. I still think it has one of the most memorable introduction of a character I've ever run across. If you're looking for a good meaty novel to read this year (I'm especially thinking of those that tackled The Maias recently), I highly recommend Fortunata and Jacinta. I can't speak to the different translations other than to say I have the Agnes Moncy Gullón version and it is as lively as advertised.

I'll repost two excerpts from my earlier posts on this novel to give an additional flavor of Galdós' style. The setting for the first quote, as I initially wrote about it: the following takes place as Juanito Santa Cruz and Jacinta return from their honeymoon. During the trip, Jacinta has badgered Juanito (nicknamed ‘the Dauphin’) to reveal details of his pre-marital tryst with Fortunata. Juanito grudgingly reveals facts little by little until one night, extremely drunk, he pours out everything that happened between them.

Jacinta let herself be caressed. She wasn’t angry. But in her soul, a phenomenon very new to her was taking place. She felt two different feelings shuffling, superimposing themselves, one, then the other. Since she adored her husband, she was proud that he had scorned the other woman for her. This pride is primordial and will always persist, even in the most perfect of beings. The other feeling stemmed from the virtue underlying her noble soul, and it inspired her to protest against his having abused and pitilessly abandoned the unknown woman. Try as he might to deny it, the Dauphin had abused humanity. Jacinta could not pretend that he had not. The victory of her vanity didn’t prevent her from seeing that underneath the trophy lay a crushed victim. Perhaps the victim did deserve it; but whether the woman deserved her fate or not was not Jacinta’s concern, and on the altar of her soul there was a tiny flame of compassion burning.

The second excerpt stands on its own:

Dona Lupe matched the image in her nephew’s mind perfectly: she was sensible, reasonable, she cast a somewhat skeptical eye on human weaknesses, and she was capable of forgiving insults and even abuse; but as for a debt, she never forgave a debt. There were two different people in her, the woman and the money lender. Whoever wanted to be on good terms with her and enjoy her friendship had to be sure to keep her two natures separate. A mere promissory note, made out and signed in the most cordial manner conceivable, was enough to convert the friend into a mortal enemy, the Christian into an Inquisitor.

This lady’s dual personality had an external mark on her body, a fatal sign and a work of surgery which in this case was an accusing and just science. One of Dona Lupe’s breasts was missing; it had been removed because of a tumor while her husband was alive. Since she took pride in her good figure (she even wore a corset around the house), she substituted for her missing part a well-made ball of raw cotton. Fully clothed, she appeared to have a nice figure, but underneath her clothes only half of her bosom was flesh and blood; the other half was insensitive, and a dagger could have been driven through it without causing her any pain at all. Her heart was just the same—half flesh, half cotton. The type of relationship she had with a person determined which half would predominate. When a promissory note was not involved, dealing with that lady was a pleasure, but whoever was forced by circumstances to owe her money had something in store for him.