El Humorismo, Romantic Irony, and the Carnivalesque World of Galdos's 'El Amigo Manso.' (Benito Perez Galdos)
1997; Columbia University Press; Volume: 88; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2688-5220
Autores Tópico(s)Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism
ResumoBienaventurados los mansos, porque ellos recibiran tierra por heredad. (Mateo 5.5) The title of comic masterpiece has graced El amigo Manso ever since Galdos's writer-alter ego first plunged a disembodied Maximo Manso in ink and with additional alchemical hocus-pocus brought hero painfully to life in opening pages of novel. Shortly after book's publication in 1882, labeled El amigo Manso maravilla de gracia, naturalidad, observacion y estilo and anticipated response of generations of future readers with his own reaction of la carcajada indomita, alegria franca, risa estrepitosa (Kronik, Clarin 67, 70). Following on heels of desheredada (1881), arguably author's closest approximation to French naturalism, and emerging on Madrid literary scene just a few months before initial installments of Pardo Bazan's cuestion palpitante, Galdos's prose fiction provides a highly suggestive, personal commentary on contemporary Spanish novel.(1) In my opinion, El amigo Manso's which surprisingly remains least studied and understood aspect of this comic masterpiece, offers a provocative key to Galdos's evolving concept of novel, and genre's capacity to represent contingencies of human experience as well as complexities of human spirit.(2) Umberto Eco has characterized fictional worlds as finite microcosms inhabited by entities with distinct properties governed by certain laws.(3) The principles of humorismo and carnivalization rule small world of El amigo Manso, which distances Galdos's comic narrative from naturalist determinism and ostensibly mimetic imperative of realist fiction. himself identifies novel with humorismo: La narracion de Manso es de un humorismo triste y dulce, es de un pesimismo resignado, casi optimista, puede decirse, si no tomara al pie de letra paradoja (Kronik, Clarin 68). Manso's tale of unrequited love and disillusionment, punctuated both by remarkable scenes of uproarious slapstick and moments of ennobling self-awareness and self-sacrifice, does evoke a paradoxical, bittersweet tonality that reflects text's multiple contradictions. expands notion of humorismo to embrace narrator-protagonist's internalized sense of dissociation, noting that Manso se contempla a si mismo como si fuera un progimo cualquiera, and that hero's intentions frequently differ considerably from his subsequent actions and results (68). As for author, Galdos seems to have refined himself out of existence in an almost godlike manner: [E]n narracion misma, en el modo de comentar los sucesos, el autor usa una indiferencia aparente, de un sublime humorismo. Esto hay que verlo en el libro, no explica facilmente (68). The novel's sublime humorismo may indeed be difficult to explain, nevertheless when he employs term, obviously has something quite specific in mind that one cannot render accurately in English simply as wit, humor, or the comic. Francisco Giner de los Rios's ?Que es lo comico? (1872) offers a clue to special meaning of humorismo. As Raquel Asun has shown, Galdos skillfully uses techniques of point of view outlined in Giner's essay, which famous educator derived from Jean Paul Richter's Vorschule der Asthetik (1804), in order to generate laughter in response to El amigo Manso.(4) Giner essentially provides a condensed version of Jean Paul's fifth Programm uber das Lacherliche [Course on Ridiculous] to analyze how writers create comic effects and make readers laugh.(5) According to Giner and Richter, comic arises from a disproportionate relationship or a disjunction between motivation and action, effort and result, what should happen and what actually does happen. The fictional character involved in these disjointed events remains ignorant or blissfully unaware of mismatch, while readers watch with amusement as they project their own superior knowledge and perspective onto same occurrences (Giner 34-38; Richter 28. …
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