DONA PERFECTA

by B. PEREZ GALDOS


Translated from the Spanish by Mary J. Serrano




INTRODUCTION

The very acute and lively Spanish critic who signs himself Clarin, and
is known personally as Don Leopoldo Alas, says the present Spanish novel
has no yesterday, but only a day-before-yesterday. It does not derive
from the romantic novel which immediately preceded that: the novel,
large or little, as it was with Cervantes, Hurtado de Mendoza, Quevedo,
and the masters of picaresque fiction.

Clarin dates its renascence from the political revolution of 1868,
which gave Spanish literature the freedom necessary to the fiction that
studies to reflect modern life, actual ideas, and current aspirations;
and though its authors were few at first, "they have never been
adventurous spirits, friends of Utopia, revolutionists, or impatient
progressists and reformers." He thinks that the most daring, the most
advanced, of the new Spanish novelists, and the best by far, is Don
Benito Perez Galdos.

I should myself have made my little exception in favor of Don Armando
Palacio Valdes, but Clarin speaks with infinitely more authority, and I