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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
The work in its entirety is a study of the influence of the individual on his milieu and of it upon
him. Earlier critical approaches sometimes brought to the work an a priori belief that the undeniable
Krausist ideas expressed in El amigo Manso required a positive reading. Such approaches are now
being tempered by interpretations in keeping with Galdós' hope and charity, without requiring him
to have faith 115 . Imagination, the ever-present « loca de la casa » in his works, never triumphs.
The other novels that deal with change in the individual and in society -and on the highest level this
may be the prevailing theme of all his work- are pessimistic. El amigo Manso is no exception, nor
is the author subtle about the matter. In the first chapter Manso claims to be the « humilde auxiliar
de esa falange de nobles artífices que siglo tras siglo han venido tallando en el bloque de la bestia
humana la hermosa figura del hombre divino » (12), but he admits that « la penetración activa, la
audacia fecunda, la fuerza potente y creadora, me están vedadas como a los demás mortales de mi
tiempo » (12; underlining ours). Later he states categorically that « es ley que el mundo sea nuestro
molde y no nuestra hechura » (69) 116 . And finally, in the last chapter, his existence concluded, he
finds that « de cuánto escribí y enseñé apenas quedan huellas » (224). In the case of Manuel, «
115 Useful representative studies, from differing vantage points, are those of Ricardo Gullón, op.
cit. ; José F. Montesinos, Galdós , II (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1969); and Denah Lida, « Sobre el
krausismo de Galdós », in Anales Galdosianos , II (1967), 1-27.
116 These words express the central theme of the novel, one of contemporary man's most disturbing
perceptions. B. F. Skinner, in his Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Bantam Books: New York, 1972) -
one of many elaborations that might be cited- states categorically that «a person does not act upon the
world, the world acts upon him». (202). Ernest Jones explains Freud's comparable view in The Life
and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1955) as the result of three scientific blows to
mankind's narcissism -those of three revolutions: the cosmological of Copernicus, the biological of
Darwin and the psychological of Freud. (II, 225-26). Galdós, clearly responding elsewhere in his work
to the first two and markedly pre-Freudian in his best work, is nevertheless, in Manso , concerned with
a social rather than a scientific perception. Karl Marx' view that «it is not the consciousness of men that
determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness» ( A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [1859], reproduced in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. L. S. Feuer, [Garden City: Doubleday, 1959], p.
43.) is not far removed from the statement made by El amigo Manso , one of the early overt treatments
of the theme.
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