161
E.g., «Eran dos máscaras: la una, toda vestida de esteras asquerosas, si se puede llamar vestirse el llevarlas colgadas de los hombros; la cara tiznada de hollín, sin careta... (1680, b)». The painted faces remind one immediately of the carnivalesque children, some of indeterminate age and sex, whose bizarre appearance frightens Jacinta (v Fortunata y Jacinta, Parte I, cap. ix, «Una visita al cuarto estado», Obras completas, V, p. 102, b).
Travestitism is also typical of Carnival, according to Caro Baroja, pp. 49, 90-92.
162
If, as there is reason to believe, the characterizations presented in Caro Baroja's abundantly documented work are to be trusted; v esp. pp. 93-100, 123-136.
163
The coincidence of reality and illusion here resides in common derivation from the physical fact of grotesquely made-up faces. The reality of the women is that they are of dubious virtue and use their made-up faces to advertise that fact. The illusion of the reporter is his pre-conceived notion that they are made-up for the Carnival festivities. But both the reality and the illusion are based on the common acceptance of a basic fact: the made-up faces. On the other hand, the reporter's carnivalesque illusions regarding Nazarín's sex (v text below) and Nazarín's reality themselves derive from totally different criteria. The reporter's illusion has no coincidence at all with the actual fact of Nazarin's physical appearance. Further, it is unrelated to the priest's «skirts», since they are not visible (the reporter bases his judgement on the upper part of Nazarín's body appearing at a window). Hence, as the text below indicates, reality and illusion do not merge; rather, illusion replaces reality.
164
Francisco Ruiz Ramón, Tres personajes galdosianos. Ensayo de aproxiniación a un mundo religioso y moral (Madrid: Rev. de Occidente, 1964), p. 191, first made the point, although he did not comment on either the apocryphal nature of the inner novel or its possible significance as such.
165
E.g., «Lo que sí puedo asegurar es que desciende de ellas [las «amazonas» de tiempos de Felipe II], por línea de bastardía, o sea, por sucesión directa de hembras marimachos sin padre conocido, la terrible Estefanía de la Peñón, Chanfaina, o cómo demonios se llama. Porque digo con toda verdad que se me despega la pluma, cuando quiero aplicárselo, el apacible nombre de mujer... (1679, b)»; «Este es un árabe manchego, natural del mismísimo Miguelturra, y se llama don Nazario Zaharín o Zajarín. No sé de él más que el nombre y la patria... (1683, b, my italics)». The emphasis provided by the superlative makes the documentary pretense even more humorously ironic.
166
Michael Nimetz, Humor in Galdós (New Haven: Yale, 1968), pp. 95-96. Nimetz also observes that Galdós actually uses the apocryphal pretense to «emblazon» his authorship, and thereby emphasize the fact that the novel is merely a work of fiction and nothing more. The effect of all this is to reduce the true-to-life dimension of the novel's reality (and that of its protagonist), to make the work and its hero less real.
167
Even after the episode he maintains the same position, and disappointedly remarks, «¡Y yo que creí hallar aquí vejaciones, desprecios, el martirio quizá... (1728, b)». Later he affirms «apetezco los ultrajes y el martirio (1729, a)».
168
E.g., «Después de los progresos de la mecánica, la Humanidad es más desgraciada; el número de pobres y hambrientos, mayor; los desequilibrios del bienestar, más crueles. (1725, b)».
169
Also injected into the story are historical fact, historical fiction, and another chronicle of unknown authorship purporting to tell the story of a person who in fact never existed. I refer first to the historical fact that, following the Church debates over papal infallibility in the 19th century, the Armenian Church (along with other Eastern Catholic groups) did indeed leave the Roman Church. Under the aegis of Leo XIII, the schism was pretty much healed (v, e.g., Emilio Castelar, Retratos históricos [Madrid: La Ilustración Española y Americana, 1884], pp. 161-201, for one contemporary account. Even better is León Lopeteguí, S. I., El Concilio Vaticano Primero y la unión de los orientales. Ambiente, intentos, resultados, 1869-1870 [Berriz, Vizcaya: Ed. Ángeles de las Misiones, 1961]). Belmonte's «knowledge» of the patriarch's name and his reference to the patriarch's pilgrimage are historically untrue, a pure fiction, and as such, figments of his quixotic imagination. The chronicle injected into the work derives from the name which Galdós, via Belmonte, gives to the patriarch: Esrou-Esdras. This I believe is Ezra-Esdras in English, and refers to that part of II Esdras, one of the four books of the Apocrypha in the Bible, in which Ezra is mentioned as having restored to the Hebrews their laws (which had been burnt) and also all their other destroyed Scriptures. Biblical scholars have assumed for many years that Ezra was the figment of the unknown chronicler's imagination (this may not have been the prevailing view in Galdós' Spain; the matter merits investigation). Galdós makes this fiction even more ridiculous by having Belmonte label Nazarín's female companions a «canonesa» and a «sudanita descalza» (1730, a).
170
«No me contento con salvame yo solo; quiero que todos se salven... (1727, a)».