Benito Prez Galds (1843-1920)
Benito Prez Galds (May 10, 1843 - January 4, 1920) was a Spanish realist novelist. Considered second only to Cervantes in stature, he was the leading Spanish realist novelist. He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, and, when nineteen years old, he moved to Madrid, where he spent most of his adult life. In Spain, his most popular works are the early Episodios nacionales (46 volumes) and Fortunata y Jacinta, while outside Spain his Novelas espaolas contemporneas are better known. The early novels mix historical and fictional characters and are the result of documentary research. As in Balzac's novels, some characters reappear in different novels. They cover the time from 1805 to the end of the 19th century, providing glimpses of Prez Galds's radical and anti-clerical views, which are developed in the contemporary novels. In Doa Perfecta (1876) a young radical arrives to a stiflingly clerical town. In Marianela (1878) a young man regains his eyesight after a life of blindness and rejects his best friend Marianela for her ugliness. In Miau (1888) a pretentious family lose their livelihood when the father, an aged civil servant, loses his job because of a change in government, and eventually kills himself. Prez Galds's masterpiece is Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-1887). Almost as long as War and Peace, it concerns the fortunes of four characters: a young man-about-town, his wife, his lower-class mistress, and her husband. ngel Guerra (1891) tells of an unbalanced man who attempts to win a devout and inaccessible woman, swinging from agnosticism to Catholicism in the process. In 1886 then prime minister Prxedes Mateo Sagasta appointed him as the (absent) deputy for the town and district of Guayama, Puerto Rico at the Madrid parliament; he never visited the place, but had a representative inform him of the status of the area, and felt a duty to represent its inhabitants appropriately. In 1897, Prez Galds was elected to the Real Academia Espaola (Royal Spanish Academy). In 1907 he became a deputy for the Republican Party in the parliament. He went blind in 1912 but continued to dictate his books for the rest of his life. Prez Galds died at the age of 76. Shortly before his death, a statue in his honour was constructed in the Parque del Retiro, the most popular park in Madrid, financed solely by public donations. Galds was a prolific writer, publishing 31 novels, 46 Episodios Nacionales (National Episodes), 23 plays, and the equivalent of 20 volumes of shorter fiction, journalism and other writings. He remains popular in Spain, and galdosistas (Galds researchers) considered him Spain's equal to Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. As recently as 1950, few of his works were available translated to English, although he has slowly become popular in the Anglophone world. While his plays are generally considered to be less successful than his novels, Realidad (1892) is important in the history of realism in the Spanish theatre. His novels have yielded many cinematic adaptations: Beauty in Chains (Doa Perfecta) was directed by Elsie Jane Wilson in 1918; Viridiana (1961), by Luis Buuel, is based upon Halma; Buuel also adapted Nazarn (1959) and Tristana (1970); La duda was filmed in 1972 by Rafael Gil, El Abuelo (1988) (The Grandfather), by Jos Luis Garci, was internationally released a year later; it previously had been adapted as the Argentine film, El Abuelo (1954). The Galds museum in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, features a portrait of the writer by Joaqun Sorolla.
Benito Perez Galdos's Books:
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