Benito Pérez Galdós s'impose comme une figure majeure de la littérature espagnole, souvent considéré comme le second après Cervantes en stature littéraire nationale. Voix littéraire prépondérante de l'Espagne du XIXe siècle, il a forgé une œuvre vaste et perspicace qui a exploré les complexités de la société et de la condition humaine. Ses romans et pièces de théâtre sont célébrés pour leur observation sociale pointue et leur profonde perspicacité psychologique, cimentant sa réputation de maître du réalisme. L'héritage durable de Galdós réside dans son engagement profond envers la vie et l'histoire espagnoles, offrant aux lecteurs un portrait riche et nuancé d'une nation.
Set in the fictional town of Socartes, the novel explores the themes of love and beauty through the relationship between Marianela, a young orphan, and the blind Pablo, who is enchanted by her singing. Their pure love faces challenges when Pablo's father hires a doctor to restore his son's sight, jeopardizing their bond. As societal ideals of beauty come into play, the story questions the true essence of love. This classic work by Benito Pérez Galdós has been adapted for various media, showcasing its enduring relevance.
Benito Perez Galdos is often called the Spanish Charles Dickens or the Spanish Balzac, and is one of the great European nineteenth-century novelists. Misericordia (1897) is set among the Madrid poor, and to give his novel authenticity Galdos spent many months studying the lives of the destitute and of professional beggars. The theme of the novel is the problem of goodness, embodied in the servant Benina, whose entire life is a struggle to keep the middle-class family she works for from sliding into poverty. Crushed by poverty or the weight of their pretensions, the high and low life of 19th century Madrid provides the cast for this enjoyably bleak portrait of a family's decline, fall and recovery. The widow Dona Francisca, reduced from salon to slum, is protected by her servant Benita, who begs and barters in a daily battle with starvation and her mistress's pride. When a sudden inheritance enriches the old crow, Benita is cast aside. Galdos's Spain teems with saints and sinners, corrupted as much by poverty as by wealth. -- The Sunday Times
On the eve of revolution, the decadent upper classes of Madrid struggle to maintain a life of conspicuous consumption and extravagant display. This caustic masterpiece of ironic style follows Rosala's attempt to keep up appearances, accumulation of secret debt, and ultimate exchange of the only commodity of value she still herself. The equal of contemporaries Balzac and Hardy, Galds is Spain's best-kept literary secret.
An NYRB Classics Original Don Lope is a Don Juan, an aging but still effective predator on the opposite sex. He is also charming and generous, unhesitatingly contributing the better part of his fortune to pay off a friend’s debts, kindly assuming responsibility for the friend’s orphaned daughter, lovely Tristana. Don Lope takes her into his house and before long he takes her to bed. It’s an arrangement that Tristana accepts more or less unquestioningly— that is, until she meets the handsome young painter Horacio. Then she actively rebels, sets out to educate herself, reveals tremendous talents, and soon surpasses her lover in her open defiance of convention. One thing is for sure: Tristana will be her own woman. And when it counts Don Lope will be there for her. Benito Pérez Galdós, one of the most sophisticated and delightful of the great European novelists, was a clear-eyed, compassionate, and not-a-little amused observer of the confusions, delusions, misrepresentations, and perversions of the mind and heart. He is the unsurpassed chronicler of the reality show called real life.
"Saragossa" is the sixth volume in the brilliant series of historical novels by B. Perez Galdos, which begins with "Trafalgar" and closes with "The Battle of the Arapiles," embracing "The Court of Carlos IV," "Gerona," and "Napoleon in Chamartin." Saragossa is the tale of the second siege of the ancient Aragon city by the generals of Napoleon. (Taken from the Translator's Introduction from the English language version found at Project Gutenberg.)
The León Roch tells the story of love and passionate triangle between two women and a man, in the environment of Madrid's upper class in the second half of the nineteenth century. León is an industrious Krausist, intelligent and heir to a great fortune, who arrives from Valencia accompanying the Marquises of Fúcar, whose daughter, Pepa, is secretly in love with León. But in Madrid, the intellectual is going to fall under the spell of the fiery, imaginative and sensual temperament of María Egyptiaca, the last link of the ruined marquises of Tellería.
"Fortunata y Jacinta", según la opinión mayoritaria de la crítica literaria, se trata de la mejor novela de su autor, y junto a "La Regenta" de Leopoldo Alas `Clarín´, una de las más populares y representativas del realismo literario español y de la novela española del siglo XIX. Articulada en torno a los dos polos que encarnan las mujeres que dan nombre a la obra -la mujer del pueblo, ingenua y temperamental, primaria, natural (Fortunata), y la descendiente de una burguesía pujante, delicada, amable, resignada, convencional (Jacinta)-, la novela no sólo no tiene parangón por el retrato inigualable que hace de la sociedad de la época, sino por los numerosos y profundos registros de la condición humana que en ella y a través de sus personajes se van trenzando. Así, la dinámica única y múltiple que entablan sentimiento y conveniencia, riqueza y pobreza, deseo y realidad, cordura y locura, religión mística y práctica, juventud y decadencia y, en fin, sociedad y naturaleza, acaba erigiendo el rotundo edificio de una obra espléndida cuya mayor recompensa es su propia lectura.
