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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977 masculina y la femenina, los amantes se buscan, porque en espíritu y cuerpo se necesitan uno a otro para formar un todo superior humano ». Man should recognize his need for a superior mate and hence work « para restablecer el santo derecho de la mujer al lado del varón, para mejorar su educación, haciéndole más real, más elevado, más comprensivo... Semejante espíritu anima también a la mujer respecto al varón, de suerte que con su peculiar carácter y prendas regocije y embellezca la vida... » 208 Don Lope Garrido, who maintained that « en las relaciones de hombre y mujer no hay más ley que la anarquía », represents the very antithesis of this ideology. His union with Tristana is a grotesque deformation of what marriage should be, and the lessons he imparts to her the most unhealthy and corrupting of educations. With her egocentric obsession, Tristana is equally guilty. And this, I believe, is what Galdós was trying to say in this his thirteenth novel. Tristana was not the only Spanish novel of the period to treat the institution of marriage -sacrosanct in 19th century society- in an unorthodox fashion. The reading public had already been shocked by Realidad (1889), where the deceived husband forgives the erring wife, and Clarín's Su único hijo (1890), where the hero finds domesticity in his mistress and sensuality in his mate. But such heterodoxy did not end with the thematic material. The novels were also to reveal new experimentation with form. This was clearly evident in Realidad , Galdós' first dialogue novel, and it has also been recognized of late in Su único hijo , Clarín's groping anticipation of the esperpento . It is now important to acknowledge at least such an intent in Tristana also. Detailed exploration on this aspect would constitute a separate study, but we can point here to some salient features of this search for novelty. In the opening lines of his novel Galdós establishes the locale: « En el populoso barrio de Chamberí, más cerca del depósito de Aguas que de Cuatro Caminos... » Precision seems to be the note here and yet, as the novel progresses, Madrid evaporates before our eyes. Horacio and Tristana take walks but they are always in the outskirts; we know that Don Lope frequents cafés but we don't see them. The exchange of letters, a substantial part of the novel, transports us to a world of the mind and emotions. 208 Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, Ideal de la humanidad para la vida , con introducción y comentarios por Don Julián Sanz del Río, (Madrid, 1871), pp. 95, 58, 94. If in Realidad it is the man who invites woman to join him in a higher plane of the spirit, in La loca de la casa it is the other way around: Victoria rescues Cruz from a lower level of self-realization. In Tristana both man and woman are lost in selfish pursuits. 154
Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977 In short, the sense of urban life, so important in most of the author's work, is missing here. This fact made it easy for Buñuel to transport the action of his film to Toledo. The same abstraction dominates the temporal sphere. There is no reference to historical events, so typical of the early novelas contemporáneas ; there are no specific dates as to months or years; the letters give only the days of the week. The narrative pace is slow in the early chapters, hurried in the final ones. All of this gives one the impression of a strong realistic portrait, full of minute detail and yet divested of temporal or spatial density. However, it was in the area of point of view and especially the role of the narrator that Galdós was most intent in breaking new ground. In the early chapters of Tristana the narrator is very much present; he inhabits the world of the novel but keeps his characters at ami's length. He expresses little sympathy for them. On the contrary, he identifies with the society whose rules the protagonists flaunt. He is scandalized: « Inútil parece advertir que cuantos conocían a Garrido, incluso el que esto escribe, abominaban y abominan de tales ideas, deplorando con toda el alma que la conducta del insensato caballero fuese una fiel aplicación de sus perversas doctrinas... se nos ponen los pelos de punta sólo de pensar cómo andaría la máquina social si a sus esclarecidos manipulantes les diese la ventolera de apadrinar los disparates de D. Lope... » (V, 1547). For all that, he makes an effort to be objective and later assumes the role of mere collector of the correspondence between the young couple. « Tristana es una de las novelas de Galdós en que éste deja menos libertad de acción a sus personajes », objects Marina Mayoral. « En toda la primera parte (hasta el 'accidente' de Tristana), el autor nos cuenta lo que piensan, lo que sienten. Si les vemos actuar o hablar, en seguida Galdós nos da la interpretación de los hechos... » 209 . This is true, but it is beginning with the letters that Galdós radically changes his approach. The letters contain much of the « vocabulario de los amantes » that Sobejano has studied so well; they also open the novel to the perspective of the epistolary form with which Galdós had experimented only three years before. But what was basically a monologue in La incógnita becomes now a dialogue between lovers. By means of the correspondence he sought to duplicate -in another form- the technique of the sistema dialogal that so concerned him during that period 210 . There is a marked appellative 209 Op. cit. 210 Roberto G. Sánchez, « El sistema dialogal en algunas novelas de Galdós », Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos , Nº 235, pp. 155-67. 155
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