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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
término: puede decirse que suprimida » 159 . Yet, somehow, one feels that Pardo Bazán's dismissal
of Horacio is too abrupt. The account of Tristana's relationship with him fills chapter after chapter;
his presence is keenly felt throughout most of the novel. However uninteresting Horacio himself may
be, there is no denying his importance to Tristana. What is significant is not Horacio as a real human
being, but what he tomes to represent for Tristana.
Horacio Díaz is a pleasant young man, a somewhat mediocre painter of still lifes, landscapes and
portraits. His life story is not unlike Tristana's. Orphaned at an early age, he spent a lonely, isolated
childhood under the watchful eye of a tyrannical grandfather who denied him every opportunity to
develop his artistic talents and frustrated any effort at self-expression. After his grandfather's death, a
long sojourn in Italy enabled Horacio to study the work of the masters and perfect the techniques of
his craft. It proved to be as well a time of initiation into the sensual pleasures of life and the ways of the
world. The affair with Tristana constitutes his initiation into the mysteries of love and the intricacies
of human relationships.
There is no reason to doubt the genuineness of Horacio's affection for Tristana, nor the authenticity
of his initial attraction to her. Tristana plays a very important role in Horacio's life, being, as it were,
his first love. But even before his departure for Villajoyosa, Horacio has begun to back away from
Tristana, frightened by the intensity of her convictions and the absoluteness of her ideals, intuiting
the growing disparity between the Tristana he has imagined and the Tristana who really exists. In
the letters he receives from Tristana during his stay at Villajoyosa, Horacio becomes equally aware
of the disparity between the Horacio Tristana has created and the real Horacio, so that the dramatic
meeting with Tristana following her operation is, for Horacio, somewhat anticlimatic, only confirming
the mutual disillusionment he had long expected. The half-hearted attempts at reconciliation, at the
rekindling of the earlier passions, are doomed to failure, and Horacio slowly drifts away, ultimately
into marriage with another woman.
Yet the whole experience, for Horacio, is not a negative one. He emerges from it relatively unscathed.
If anything, the experience for Horacio is beneficial: he is introduced to the mysteries of love, and
learns some very valuable lessons about the nature of human relationships. 160
159 Pardo Bazán, op. cit. , p. 1122.
160 Leon Livingstone, in his article «The Law of Nature and Women's Liberation in Tristana », Anales
galdosianos 7 (1972), 93-99, judges Horacio much more harshly, seeing him as the quintessential
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