Visor de obras.

Many Spanish writers have understood and profited from the conventional nature of the sign «science» in their creation of literary and critical texts. The definition of «science» and its place in Iberian history and society was an important project of late nineteenthcentury Spanish culture as a whole, and Spanish authors, including Clarín, self-consciously examined the nuances of the problem.¹¹⁵ In some texts science is mentioned only in passing as part of generally well-documented realist depictions of society and its ideological controversies, but often discourse tagged as scientific plays a more fundamental role in a text's structure and tropology. Writings like Unamuno's En torno al casticismo or Ramón y Cajal's Cuentos de vacaciones exuberate with scientific theories and methods and their potential for transforming Spanish society. But even a text as ostensibly unconcerned with science as La Regenta owes some of its richness, both formal and thematic, to the ideological struggles over science and religion in post-Restoration Spain.¹¹⁶

In La Regenta, the character, Tomás Crespo, is an artistic image of scientific language, a locus where scientific discourse finds expression in the text. At first glance, the book seems to have very little to do with science: it details the tremendous struggle between the seductive Álvaro Mesía and the powerful, corrupt priest of Vetusta over the soul and body of the frustrated Ana Ozores. The polemic over scientific theories and technological progress, which gives life to other Spanish novels of the period (for example, Galdós's Doña Perfecta and La familia de León Roch, Palacio Valdé's La fe), is only alluded to in Clarín's novel. Though Tomás Crespo («Frígilis») stands as the lone representative of positivism against the post-Restoration aristocratic ideology of his associates, he seems to he an afterthought -a novelistic decoration- just one more character providing colour and interest to a voluminous novel. His dubious credentials as a «Darwinist» and his modest experimental success cast him as a comical figure and tend to diminish the impact of scientific discourse in the novel. Nevertheless, the mere evocation of scientific «progress» is enough to create a powerful foil for the dominant ideology of Vetusta. Just like every other well-developed character in the novel, Frigilis exhibits a Bakhtinian «character zone» or sphere of influence which transcends his presence and even the mention of his name in the narrative (see «Discourse» 316). His «character zone» has the important function of casting the discourse of the other Vetustans in an ironic light. That is, the normal affairs of the Vetustan aristocracy -so important to Ana, Fermín, Álvaro, Paco and the others turn out to be inconsequential and trivial when viewed from the perspective Frígilis affords. Despite Frígilis's ostensibly decorative function in the novel, and the strangely ornamental ways he uses his scientific knowledge, the discourse of this «gardener-hunter-philosopher-Darwinist» who lives on the margin of society provides an ample staging area for the narrator's critique of that society.

Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of language hints at how Frígilis's partial embodiment of progressive scientific language can ironize the words and actions of the Vetustans in spite   —132→   of Crespo's pseudoscientific leanings.¹¹⁷ Balchtin argues that a word is the site of a dialogue between various different social and ideological languages. One word implies a host of other responding words, and this dialogue between words surrounding an object, and within each word itself, can be exploited by a novelist for aesthetic ends («Discourse» 276-81). In novelistic discourse, where words concern characters, their deeds and ideas, dialogism takes place, not only on the level of individual words or utterances, but also between language systems themselves. Each character embodies its own «ideologically saturated» language which becomes apparent through that character's actions and words (271), and every character exudes a type of aura or influence on the discourse surrounding her or him (316, 320). One example of such influence in La Regenta is Quintanar's potential vengeance colouring many of the actions of the other characters even when Don Víctor is absent; another is the hint of the Magistral's influence and shadowy «almost-presence» in virtually every instance where religion or devotion is mentioned in the novel. Scientific language enters the novel in the discourses of Frígilis and Benítez, the young doctor (see 2: 118-21), and is presented ironically in the figure of Robustiano Somoza (2: 235-37; 2: 351).

Balchtin argues that consciousness «finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language» (295; my emphasis); consciousness must find a means of expressing itself to others and a manner of «retelling in one's own words» what others say (341). Frígilis's problem is that his language persuades few people besides himself. Because he finds the discourse of nineteenth-century positivism quite reasonable and «internally persuasive» in the Bakhtinian sense (345-46), his words make sense only within the horizon of positivistic ideology. This internal consistence exists only while Frígilis thinks or speaks to himself; in contact with others, his words encounter resistance from the languages of Ana, Álvaro, and Fermín (all respresentatives of the dominant ideologies of Vetustan society). They all translate Frígilis's words into their own languages, and he comes out sounding like a buffoon. The collision of these languages exiles Frígilis into the margins of his society and of the novel he inhabits. Frígilis finds Darwin's theory sublime, and sees science's capacity to «improve» on nature as particularly inspiring, but he canot make his words take root in the discourse of his associates. They both outnumber him and overpower him with their money, social class, and post-Restoration aristocratic conservatism.

Don Víctor Quintanar, Ana's husband, is also exiled to the margin of Vetusta because he speaks a language foreign to the dominant ideology. Unlike Frígilis, however, Quintanar has no idea that his language is in conflict with that of his peers. He embraces as his own the Golden Age world-view of the plays of Calderón and Lope de Vega, and acts as though his associates did the same. His incomprehension of the dialogism of the word -and the points of conflict between his language and that of others- falls squarely into Bakhtids descriptions of «stupidity», and ultimately causes his death.¹¹⁸ Frígilis's awareness of his marginality elevates his discourse above those of all the other characters, because only he can adjust his words -change the register of his language, as it were- according to circumstances. Ana, Fermín, and Álvaro struggle amongst themselves, but they never cross the boundaries of their words into another language as does Frígilis.¹¹⁹ This transgression of limits permits Frígilis to be true to his ideals (positivism) and simultaneously interact with people who do not find positivism to be   —133→   internally persuasive. Though this crossing of boundaries makes him appear clownish in Ana's eyes, from the narrator's standpoint Frígilis becomes a foil for every other character in the book.

Frígilis has often been viewed as one of the most sympathetic characters of La Regenta. His passion for nature and rejection of the hypocrisy of the Vetustan aristocracy seem to provide just grounds for considering him a representative of «un vitalismo sano, en contacto con la naturaleza, indiferente al sucio y mezquino mundo vetustense» (Oleza 228). Emilio Alarcos Llorach suggests that Frígilis embodies the teaching that «sólo en la alegría, bondad y sencillez de la Naturaleza puede encontrarse el sosiego» (245); and Mariano Baquero Goyanes affirms that Frígilis is «algo así como la tesis o la moraleja hecha carne» (173). In contrast with these interpretations, John Rutherford argues that Frígilis suffers from the same problems as the rest of Vetustan society, and that his actions betray not so much a love for nature as a desire to manipulate it. Rutherford does admit, however, that there is much to admire in Frígilis in spite of his supposed egoism and disregard for others («Fortunato y Frígilis» 263-64). Frígilis's «autenticidad modélica frente a esa Vetusta del bostezo y la estupidez» (Beser 88), coupled with his scientific language, is the wellspring of La Regenta's censure of hypocrisy.

The relentless narrator of La Regenta steeps the tale in irony. The tone of the novel is dark and pessimistic. Though the characters seem quite real (according to the sensibilities of nineteenth-century realism), very few of them are likeable. Rutherford notes in the introduction to his translation of La Regenta: «[the novel] abounds in angry sarcasm, expressing Alas's exasperation at the mediocrity all around him» (13; see Durand 105-07). The biting criticism of Spanish society by Clarín the critic is transformed by the narrator into equally harsh disparagement of the fictional society of Vetusta. But such a bleak portrait need not depend solely on the narrator's tone. The narrator of La Regenta stands outside of the tale and fashions an ironic vision of the events portrayed within it, but the critique of Vetustan society loses vehemence if it is grounded solely in the discourse of an external observer. The narrator speaks to the reader, not to the characters, and thus has no voice in Vetustan society. Were it not for Frígilis, and for the «progress» his science represents, the Vetustan aristocrats might live out their lives wholly oblivious of their hypocrisy and guile. But with Frígilis present, the irony of the narrator breaks into the actual discourse between the characters in the novel, and so the intensity of the criticism of Vetustan society stands unmitigated by any narratorial distance or externality. Because of Frígilis, the characters know another way of looking at the world exists. Their rejection of him only magnifies their hypocrisy.

In addition to providing an outlet within the tale for the narrator's ironical critique, Frígilis also acts as the natural world's point of entry into the novel's world of words. His use of botanical terms to refer to human beings and his eccentric devotion to caring for the aristocrats' plants lead Ana to think of her sometime benefactor as an intelligent tree, around which the rest of Vetusta conducts its business (2: 137). In La Regenta the intrigues and gossip of the city suffer in comparison with the innocence of the country; this opposition gains its force from Frígilis, whose constant banter about nature and frequent hunting trips makes the contrast explicit. His words and deeds open a space for nature within the text of the novel. More importantly, Frígilis takes Ana's tree metaphor one step further by making it literal: he plants a very important tree right in the heart of   —134→   Vetusta. By the time the novel begins, Frígilis has adapted the eucalyptus tree to the Vetustan environment, a task which required both trust in scientific principles and also the correspondence of those principles to the natural world. However, none of his associates recognizes the import of the feat (2: 528): they fancy Frígilis's enthusiasm and fondness for discussing the tree as symptoms of pride, along the lines of Saturnino Bermúdez's prolixity about the cathedral's art work. Certainly pride can be one component of Frígilis's discourse, but the primary message about the tree is that science works, that it serves not only to license Dr. Somoza's ramblings about medicine but also to improve human society in very real ways.¹²⁰ The eucalyptus towers over the rest of Vetusta, an intruder from the natural world in the heart of the city. It should be noted that the height of the tree rivals that of the cathedral's spire which symbolizes the Magistral's power over the city, and that the colossal tree overshadows both Fermín's interview with Ana in the Parque and also the course Álvaro follows during his nightly visits to his lover's bedroom. The tree stands as a silent rebuke to these scheming men, and as a symbol of the powerful forces of change embodied in scientific discourse.

Despite his comments on the importance of the tree, Frígilis's attempts at speaking about the natural world in the language of the Vetustans at times appear rather ingenuous, and certainly make him a social outcast. Nature really does not belong in Vetusta. Baquero Coyanes attributes Crespo's marginality to a nasve tendency to reduce human activity to mere biological terms:

In commenting on Frígilis's social maladroitness, Baquero again evokes the binary opposition of nature and society, and depicts Frígilis as the loser for siding with nature: because of his biological vision of human activity, Frígilis cannot socialize normally. However, Crespo is not nake at all in his use of biological terms to describe human psychology, for, despite Baquero Goyanes's efforts to deride the process, the strictest deterministic science of the 1870s did reduce human activity to biology and physical forces. In the end, nature's good showing in its conflict with society -the eucalyptus eclipsing the tiny Vetustans- ratifies the narrator's critique of the city, and thus vindicates Tomás Crespo, who has spoken nature into the text.¹²¹ Frígilis's marginality stems from his unique stature as a bearer of (the narrator's) truth in a city of lies and misunderstanding. He offers Vetusta a scientific discourse in which progress is possible and also inexorable, and there is nothing name about it: its force as «truth», ontologically superior to the aristocrats' world-view, derives from its correspondence with a world made up not of words but of biological entities.

Nevertheless, the legitimacy of Frígilis's scientific exploits and credentials should be examined carefully in order to understand how scientific discourse works both decoratively and ironically in the novel. The first time Frígilis is mentioned in La Regenta he is called a «personaje darwinista» (1: 122). Even this explicit reference to Darwinism becomes ambiguous in light of the state of Spanish science in the post-Restoration setting   —135→   of the text. To be a Darwinist in the Spain of the 1870s was more an ideological decision than a scientific one. Though a partial Spanish translation of The Descent of Man was published as early as 1872, only a year after the first English edition, the Origin of Species was not translated until 1877 (eighteen years after its initial publication). A complete Spanish edition of the Descent was unavailable until 1885 (Josa i Llorca 28; Núñez 26-27).¹²² Núñez affirms that the popular discussion of Darwin «desde los Ateneos hasta las tertulias de café» owed much to these newly published translations as well as to the words of other evolutionary theorists (27).

During the Restoration, social gatherings and university lecture halls were filled with debate about the merits of Darwin's (and Haeckel's) evolutionary ideas; it became chic to be able to cite passages from these authors, regardless of whether one agreed with the cited passage (Núñez 29). For this reason, much of the debate did not focus on the scientific merits of evolutionary theory. Manuel de la Revilla averred that during the 1870s the polemics over Darwinism had become so confused that positivism, materialism and Darwinism seemed essentially identical to the uninformed observer (Glick 333). At first the staunch Catholic rejected science or instrumentalized it in support of his or her religion, while many liberals took care to find no room for the Catholic faith in any science whatsoever (Núñez 21). Frígilis, «apóstol ferviente del transformismo», encounters this type of liberalism in Don Pompeyo Guimarán's atheism. Guimarán hesitates to believe that he descends from «cien orangutanes»,¹²³ even though he feels a certain affinity for any scientific theory that exudes «un subido y delicioso olor a herética y atea» (2: 151). For him, science is only an additional proof of an ideological belief he already holds incontrovertible: «¡mis principios son fijos! ¡fijos! ¿entiende usted? Y yo no necesito manosear librotes y revolver tripas de cristianos y de animales, para llegar a mi conclusión categórica» (2: 151-52). Crespo's response to this position evinces the pragmatism and good humor with which he approaches most of his dealings with Vetustans. When asked his opinion of the «Atheist», he responds: «es una buena persona. No sabe nada, pero tiene muy buen corazón» (152). Frígilis maintains himself aloof from the political controversies which surrounded Darwinism in Spain during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and so perhaps merits his appellation «darwinista» on scientific grounds.

La Regenta only hints at what «darwinista» might mean to the narrator (it clearly means «chiflado» to the Vetustans). Frígilis's knowledge of Darwin's theories could have been garnered from reading the scattered Spanish abridgements or perhaps from the French or English versions of the Origin and the Descent. Yet during at least one experiment Frígilis the «Darwinist» evinces what, at first glance, appears to be a huge gap in his scientific knowledge: he attempts to graft the combs of English cocks onto the heads of another breed, the Spanish cock (1: 375; 2: 151).

The grafting of roosters' combs seems so absurd to Frígilis's associates (and to twentieth-century readers) that it is difficult to understand the motives behind the surgery Guimarán the Atheist regards the experiment as a «locura» (2: 151), an opinion shared by Ana. She remembers Frígilis as

The strange experiment seems to cast doubt on Frígilis's credibility as a «Darwinist», especially since the very first chapter of the Origin, «Variation under Domestication», treats hybridization as a purely sexual process. Darwin even mentions the beauty and consequent evolutionary import due to sexual selection of the combs of the Spanish cocks (Descent 2: 98).

Whatever the scientific rationale behind the experiment, Ana Ozores sees the «gallos ingleses» episode as a reflection of her marriage to Don Víctor. Just as the transplantation left the roosters wounded and bleeding, with useless pieces of meat bandaged to their heads, Frígilis's «grafting» of Don Víctor into Ana's life leaves her childless and unfulfilled. Rutherford, who sides with the Vetustans in viewing all of Frígilis's accomplishments as trivial and pseudoscientific, argues that the «gallos ingleses» episode takes on metaphorical meaning for both the reader and for Ana, who likens herself to one of Frígilis's «unwilling» grafts (2:97) («Fortunato y Frígilis» 258). The bleeding heads of the birds thus symbolize the failure of Frígilis's matchmaking and grafting.

Nevertheless, this metaphorical leap from a transplantation experiment to the arrangement of a marriage stretches credulity. It transforms Frígilis from a gentlemanly natural philosopher into a heartless, manipulative «Celestino» whose machinations lead only to unhappiness:

More importantly, the association of the «gallos ingleses» with Ana's dissatisfaction privileges her imaginings and obsessions over the narrator's generally flattering presentation of Tomás Crespo. The narrator goes to great effort throughout the novel to present Frígilis as decent and benevolent in all his dealings with other Vetustans (Beser 87-88; Alarcos Llorach 245). Even his nicknames evokes an accommodating attitude of forgiveness and compassion:

While Ana's loneliness and pain are very real and stem directly from Frígilis's unsatisfactory arrangement of her marriage, any metaphorical connection between the «gallos ingleses», Frígilis's plant grafts, and the unconsummated marriage comes strictly from Ana and not the narrator. Ana invests the bloody combs with symbolic meaning; she sees both her marriage and the rooster episode as two particularly grievous mistakes in a long series of failed experiements; and she thinks of Crespo as a bumbling charlatan who knows nothing about either the social or the natural world. But her identification with the bleeding roosters makes unfounded assumptions about Frígilis and denies any scientific character to his experiments, and therefore cannot be viewed as an objective evaluation of his credentials.

Despite the disparaging remarks of his associates (and of the critic Rutherford), Frígilis's rooster studies show how close he is to the mainstream of nineteenth-century   —137→   transplantation surgery. Experiments on cocks' combs were quite common: John Hunter (1728-1793), the father of experimental surgery, records that «taking off the young spur of a cock and fixing it to his comb is an old and well known experiment» (58). Hunter also successfully transplanted a human tooth into a rooster's comb, and performed numerous other experiments on roosters and hens. While these operations sound positively bizarre, they constitute the dawning of organ transplantation, and similar experiments continued well into the nineteenth century. Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard. (1817-1894), an associate of the famed Claude Bernard, «carried out variants of Hunter's methods of grafting intact structures by implanting the tails of rats and cats into cocks' combs» (Saunders 16). Brown-Séquard was no pseudoscientist: he won the Lacaze Prize (the greatest award from the French Academy of Sciences) in 1881. Frígilis's experiment, even if it were based on notions about plant grafting, is a perfectly reasonable extension of Hunter's and Brown-Séquard's studies.¹²⁴

Crespo's successful experiments provide some insight into the rooster episode. Frígilis has been able to create a monochromatic pansy (2: 80-81) and of course to adapt the Eucalyptus globulus to the Vetustan environment. In each of these three cases, the goal was decorative. The combs grafted onto the English cocks are an external addition, which did not change the rest of the bird (it should be noted that the animals survived the operations). The monochromatic pansy has no agricultural value; Frígilis just wants to send its seeds to a floricultural exposition (2: 80). The eucalyptus, though it does have economic potential as lumber and as a medicinal, serves only a decorative purpose in Quintanar's Parque. To graft a cutting of one plant onto another is to retain the essential characteristics of both plants; it does not result in hybrid fruit and seeds. A graft of a pear tree onto an apple tree makes an interesting sight -pears and apples growing on the same tree (but not the same branch)- but the fruits are still apples and pears. There is no evolutionary transformation; there is no Darwinian natural or artificial «selection». In the «gallos ingleses» episode, Frígilis utilizes his knowledge of grafting in an attempt to transform the Spanish cocles appearance while maintaining its character.¹²⁵ A sexual union between the two breeds would result in a corruption of both, but a grafting of one onto the other would «harmonize» them. His goal is to mix elements of both without changing their essential nature -to beautify or decorate them.

The essence of Frigilis's science is decoration and adornment, a process more akin to aesthetics than to the instrumentalization of scientific knowledge in the name of nineteenth-century «progress». The transformations effected in the garden, in the chicken coop, and in the lives of Victor and Ana, are merely of appearances. Yet decoration is a powerful and deceptive operation in La Regenta. Because Frigilis's decorative botanical exploits and his gruesome animal experiments border on grotesque parodies of legitimate scientific activity, they function in the novel to make science appear supplementary rather than vital. Science as decoration, and not as indispensable knowledge and power, is the only form in which scientific discourse can survive in Vetusta. But just as the eucalyptus continues to grow and eventually towers over the rest of the park, so too do the implications of Frigilis's successful (albeit trivial) manipulations of the natural world.

The most enlightened characters of the La Regenta still do not exemplify the progressive nature of nineteenth-century science, as does, for example, Pepe Rey of   —138→   Galdós's Doña Perfecta. The «gallos ingleses» episode, an egregious failure, holds a larger place in the novel than do Frígilis's successes, in part because of the unforgiving criticism of the Vetustans. His meagre success makes «the Darwinist» seem almost comical in light of modern science's real technological and creative potential. Nevertheless, the case of the eucalyptus makes scientific language an important alternative discourse in the novel, even though science's representatives stand on the fringes. Indeed, spectacular success would destroy the story with didacticism and would make obvious the inferiority of the dominant discourse to Frígilis's discourse of science. Frígilis's activities function within the tale to make the Vetustans aware of the possibilities of other ideological formulations of the world. The treatment of scientific discourse in La Regenta and in Doña Perfecta are so different partly because Frígilis belongs to the community (though on the margin) whereas Pepe Rey is an outsider. Frígilis uses his sciences to embellish his socity from within; Pepe Rey seeks to turn a hostile, technologically backward society upside down in the name of progress. But Pepe can never bring his knowledge and technological sophistication to bear on the problems of Orbajosa. Frígilis offers the eucalyptus tree as a metaphor for the power of science to change the world; Pepe Rey himself symbolizes the potential use of that power, and for this reason, he is murdered at the end of Doña Perfecta. Frígilis survives because he only hints at the power of scientific progress -he does not have to contain all its potential within himself.

So, science and its language are never presented in La Regenta in a non-mediated and non-ironic context. Bakhtin's notion of an «artistic image of a language» entails viewing a character and its discourse as «striving for social significance and a wider general application as one distinctive language in a heteroglot world» («Discourse» 336). The «image of a language» is not that of a pure, unspoken ideology, but of that ideology in contact and conflict with the host of alien discourses surrounding it: «languages do not exclude each other, but rather intersect with each other in many different ways» (291). A character presenting an image of a language conveys an incomplete and imperfect notion of that language, sometimes an image so distant and indistinct that it only alludes to the real possibilities and nature of that discourse. As Morson and Emerson suggest, «novelistic images also activate and develop some of the potential of these languages, the wisdom they could impart in the right dialogic situation. The novel is not just a description, but also an act of creative understanding for each language and by each language» (312). Frígilis is a human character and also an artistic image of a language, as are Benítez, the young doctor whose successes also reveal the efficacy of his scientific studies, and Amadeo Bedoya, who writes about diseases of the potato (1: 260). These characters, to the extent they are characters and not purely didactic constructs, embody a variety of languages; they are loci of heteroglossia in which scientific language is but one component. As an image of scientific language and ideology presented in a heteroglot context, Frígilis evokes the potential of modern science through his discourse but does not implement it in any truly significant applications (Benítez's and Bedoyd's contributions are even less important because of the obscurity and shallowness of these characters). Frígilis presents «science» to Vetusta as an alien word which he himself does not fully appreciate. He can invent, observe, graft, and acclimatize, but he appears ludicrous and inconsequential when he sews a bloody comb onto a rooster's head. His decorative and   —139→   trivial science is infected by bourgeois ideology -the desire to cultivate beautiful gardens- but it is also fueled by its own potential power to modify the world.

The narrator of La Regenta reveajs his own ideological bias by positing scientific discourse as superior to that of the aristocratic society of Vetusta. He sees scientific discourse as being in some essential way ontologically different from other discourses.¹²⁶ A brief glance at Bakhtin's and Kuhn's ideas on scientific discourse will help to sketch the problem. Bakhtin's brief excursus into scientific rhetoric in «Discourse and the Novel» hints at how inevitably linguistic scientific facts can still be different from the objects of other discourses, especially literature. He writes:

For Balchtin the rhetoric of scientists has no impact on the object of their discourse.¹²⁷ This resort to an objectivism imbued with scientific optimism (which is strange in light of the dialogism Balchtin sees in every other use of language) can be tempered without resorting to a radical constructivist position. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn discusses a variety of discursive intrusions into the subject-mater of science, and how scientific discourse, through paradigms, essentially creates the world scientists study, but he, like Balchtin, never abandons the idea that the sciences are ontologically distinct from the arts. According to Kuhn, «to say, for example, that the sciences, at least after a certain point in their development, progress in a way that other fields do not, cannot have been all wrong, whatever progress itself may be» (209). The notion of progress is where the narrator of La Regenta, Balchtin, and Kuhn converge. Airplanes do not fly because scientists write a story about aerodynamic principles they have imagined and then incorporate it into a paradigm they impose on nature; planes fly because our socially-constructed approach to nature happens to relate to nature (Bakhtin's «mute objects») on some fundamental level. The same occurs when someone works with eucalyptus seedlings, and that is why Frígilis's language and activity serve the narrator's critique so well. Although how human thought and language relate to the natural world is a matter of current debate among the realist, social constructivist, and logical empiricist camps of the philosophy of science, all would agree that the only way Frígilis could have had any success with his experiments would be through adherence to principles which have force not only in the world of words but also in the world of objects. «Progress» occurs when theories are modified or new paradigms are created to approximate more closely the extra-linguistic reality of the world of objects.¹²⁸

The narrator of La Regenta, along with Balchtin and Kuhn, sees scientific discourse as being significantly different from artistic discourses. The narrator exploits such differences by making them hierarchical and then positioning «science» and «progress» above the dominant ideology of the Vetustan aristocrats. Part of the beauty of La Regenta (and another of its ironic twists) is the way the narrator can establish such a hierarchy by making scientific activity seem supplementary and trivial. The eucalyptus tree decorating Quintanar's Parque seems innocuous enough, but as a metaphor for scientific principles called into play it provides powerful commentary on the process of its creation.

It is as a «native speaker» of scientific language, then, that Frígilis can be seen as a virtual «moraleja hecha carne». Sergio Beser argues that no explicit thesis can be made out in Frígilis because of his clownish aspects and his fundamental failure to understand human nature in marrying Ana to Don Víctor (88), but a more profitable way to understand the character's important function in the novel is to see him as a ratifier of the narrator's ironic critique. Nor is Frígilis «la naturaleza hecha hombre, una especie de extraña emanación del campo agreste y bello» (Baquero Coyanes 176), but rather nature's point of entry into the novel. Frígilis is the artistic image of scientific language in a heteroglot world. His questionable credentials as a Darwinist and his relatively inconsequential experimental success make him comical and (carefully) reduce the direct impact of nineteenth-century science on the novel. Yet his few true successes set him apart from the quack doctor Somoza, «the legitimate representative of science» in the minds of the benighted Vetustans (2: 235), and from the other characters. Once aparton the margin, and as a decorative element -Frígilis serves to make the Vetustans' actions even more horribly trivial and immoral than before by providing a glimpse within the novel of another way of approaching life, one that corresponds with the natural world. After thousands of tries Frígilis finally succeeded with the eucalyptus. In a sense, his success was guaranteed as long as he followed the rules of science. He produces meagre results, though no one else in Vetusta accomplishes anything worthwhile within their own ideologies. While Ana dreams and swoons, Álvaro meditates on seduction and Fermín broods over the diocese, Frígilis experiments and attempts to learn truths about nature which might empower him to change (or at least decorate) the world. The knowledge he gains, unlike that of those who scoff at him, ironizes the discourse of every character in the novel (including his own, which makes his failures so laughable). Through Frígilis's «character zone», his knowledge casts a shadow -the long shadow of a decorative eucalyptus- on all the hypocrisy and immorality of Vetustan society. Unlike the characters of the novel, however, the eucalyptus does not sleep through the siesta.

Brigham Young University

• Alarcos Llorach, Emilio. «Notas a La Regenta». Clarín y «La Regenta». Ed. Sergio Beser. 227-45.
• Alas, Leopoldo. La Regenta. Ed. G. Sobejano. 2 vols. Madrid. Castalia, 1989.
• Bakhtin, M. M. «Discourse in the Novel». The Dialogic Imagination. Tr. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981. 259-422.
• Baquero Goyanes, Mariano. «Exaltación de lo vital en La Regenta». Leopoldo Alas «Clarín». Ed. José María Martínez Cachero. Madrid: Taurus, 1978. 157-78.
• Beser, Sergio, ed. Clarín y «La Regenta». Barcelona: Ariel, 1982.
• Brockway, Lucile. Science and Colonial Expansion. The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens. New York: Academic Press, 1979.
• Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981.
• ——. On the Origin of Species. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964.
• Davidson, Donald. «On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme». Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. 183-98.
• Durand, Frank. «Leopoldo Alas, 'Clarín': coherencia entre sus ideas críticas y La   —143→   Regenta». Clarín y «La Regenta», Ed. Sergio Beser. 95-115.
• Click, Thomas F. «Spain». The Comparative Reception of Darwinism. Ed. Thomas F. Click. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1974.
• Gray, Ernest A. Portrait of a Surgeon: A Biography of John Hunter. London: Robert Hale, 1952.
• Hunter, John. Treatise on the Natural History and Diseases of the Human Teeth. Philadelphia, 1839.
• Josa i Llorca, Jaume. «Introducción». Charles Darwin. El origen de las especies. Tr. Antonio de Zulueta. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1988. 13-34.
• Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970.
• Motón Arroyo, Ciriaco. «Ciencia, Inquisición, ideología. Temas de nuestro tiempo». Arbor 124 (1986): 29-43.
• Morson, Cary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990.
• Núñez, Diego. «Estudio preliminar». El darwinismo en España. Madrid: Castalia, 1969.7-58.
• Oleza, Juan. La novela del XIX: del parto a la crisis de una ideología. Barcelona: Laia, 1984.
• Peckham, Morse. «Darwinism and Darwinisticism». Victorian Studies 3 (1959): 19-40; rpt. in The Triumph of Romanticism. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1970. 176-201.
• Pérez Galdós, Benito. Doña Perfecta. Ed. Rodolfo Cardona. Madrid: Cátedra, 1984.
• ——. La familia de León Roch. Obras completas. Ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles. 6 vols. Madrid: Aguilar, 1962. Vol. 4.
• Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981.
• Rutherford, John. «Fortunato y Frígilis en La Regenta». Clarín y su obra en el centenario de «La Regenta». Ed. Antonio Vilanova. Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1985. 251-64.
• ——. «Introduction». Leopoldo Alas. La Regenta. Tr. John Rutherford. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1984. 7-17.
• Saunders, John B. de C. M. «A Conceptual History of Transplantation». Transplantation. Eds. John S. Najarian and Richard L. Simmons. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1972. 3-25.
• Sieburth, Stephanie. Reading «La Regenta»: Duplicitous Discourse and the Entropy of Structure. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990.