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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
projects his artistic consciousness as a thematic strain into his own novels. By that token, Correa has
captured El amigo Manso's dimension as a novel about novel writing 125 . Even so, rather than fixing
on it as an end in itself, Cornea treats the self-conscious aspect of Galdós' artistry as a feature of the
novelist's construction of the illusion of reality. Many of the most perceptive readers of El amigo
Manso have, in fact, responded to the work's suggestive treatment of the nebulous frontiers between
reality and fiction. 126
125 Realidad, ficción y símbolo en las novelas de Pérez Galdós (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo,
1967), esp. pp. 100-07. A propos of Felipín Centeno he says that « el autor descubría en sus personajes
mismos de novela la posibilidad de sentirse ellos como seres reales, pero, al mismo tiempo, de hallarse
conscientes de ser criaturas de ficción » (p. 79). Some of his introductory remarks, which he restates
in his conclusion (p. 291), bear repeating here: « Nos hallamos situados, así, frente a un arte que se
propone ser una representación fiel de la realidad, pero que insiste, al mismo tiempo, en su carácter
estricto de ser un mundo de ficción. el hecho de convertir esta preocupación de arte en sustancia
misma de novela viene a constituir una de las peculiares maneras que adopta el novelista para llevar a
cabo este proceso de transformación de la realidad en un mundo de ficción. La novelística de Galdós
revela, así, una dimensión interior de arte que es consustancial a su propia creación » (p. 11).
126 For example, Leon Livingstone, «Interior Duplication and the Problem of Form in the Modern
Spanish Novel», PMLA , 73 (1958), 393-406, includes a brief discussion of El amigo Manso in support
of his postulation that this technique of interior duplication and character autonomy is a statement
of a relativist metaphysic in which fiction and reality have no fixed outlines. Monroe Z. Hafter's
introductory remarks in «Ironic Reprise in Galdós' Novels», PMLA , 76 (1961), 233-39, might suggest
that he is to take up the problem of internal repetitions of the fictional construct, but he deals, rather,
with characters' reflection of each other. He extrapolates the self/other antinomy from complementary
pairings cither of characters or within characters and thereby dramatizes Galdós' subtle illumination
of an elusive human reality. Eamonn Rodgers, in « Realismo y mito en 'El amigo Manso' », Cuadernos
Hispanoamericanos , No. 250-252 (1970-71), 430-44, aware of the frame's presence throughout the
novel, takes note of Manso's mythic dimension but remains tied to a defense of the label of realism.
Nancy A. Newton, « El amigo Manso and the Relativity of Reality», Revista de Estudios Hispánicos ,
7 (1973), 113-25, cleverly weaves Manso's autonomy into her thematic considerations. She defines
his trajectory from object-centeredness to subject-centeredness as «a dynamic act of auto-creation» (p.
122) and takes note of the special textual kinship between Galdós and Manso as a «deliberate rupturing
of the fictional illusion which the nineteenth-century realist novelist normally makes every effort to
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