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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
is subjected to the most merciless satire in this terrain 146 , and the effects of his emphatic phrases
on Máximo are graphically portrayed: « sus huecos párrafos resonaban en mi espíritu con rumor
semejante al de un cascarón de huevo vacío cuando se cae al suelo y se aplasta por sí solo » (XII,
72). Manuel Peña's fustian speech in the theater is enough to assure his political and social future and
catapults him into prominence, though even José María is impelled to comment: « ¡Lo que vale aquí
la oratoria brillante y esa facultad española de decir cosas bonitas que no significan nada práctico!
» (XXXI, 1891-90). As pervasive as political oratory is, poetry has not escaped the damaging touch
of rhetoric either. Galdós' frequent derision of poets, from La Fontana de Oro on, for the sins they
have visited upon the Spanish language is well known. In El amigo Manso , Francisco de Paula de
la Costa y Sainz del Bardal, to whom Máximo refers as « Este tipo » (XII, 71), is the poetaster
who thrives on a doting and tasteless moneyed class. From his name to his beard to his health to his
character to his address to his talents as a versifier, this « caballerito ignorante » is unrelentingly
caricaturized. The pompousness of his self-esteem is comparable only to that of his odes. 147
The reflexive nature of El amigo Manso filters through this attention to the word to a consideration
of literary styles. Manso knows that his brother's house is six minutes or 560 paces away from his,
and he phrases his report about Doña Javiera thus: « un día se metió en mi casa (tercero derecha)
sin anunciarse »; « cuando entraba en su casa (principal izquierda) » (III, 14, 15). Along with
the ridicule these details heap on Manso's exaggerated sense of precision, they also show Galdós
laughing at his way as a novelist, at the realistic novel's insistence on exactitude in its descriptive
technique. More frequently, however, it is the romantic style that the author of Marianela chooses
to burlesque 148 . Time and again in his narration, Manso adopts romantic postures and language
146 For his portrait and a snippet of his prose, see Ch. XXVI.
147 One is reminded of Leopoldo Alas' several satirical incarnations of this literary type in his stories:
Miguel Paleólogo Bustarnante in « Bustamante » ( Pipá [Madrid: Fernando Fe, 1886]; Don Tristán
de las Catacumbas, the protagonist of « El poeta-buho »; Don Ermeguncio de la Trascendencia in
« Don Ermeguncio o la vocación »; Don Teopompo Filoteo de Belem in « Versos de un loco »,
whose calling card identifies him as a « Poeta esotérico ultratelúrico » (all in Doctor Sutilis [ Madrid:
Renacimiento , 1916]).
148 Nimetz (p. 14), like Casalduero before him, points out that Galdós frequently satirizes
romanticism and romantic taste in the Novelas contemporáneas , but he does not mention El amigo
Manso in this connection. The subject of Galdós' romantic parodies in his later career has provided
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