181
For other interesting observations about this «Mount Sinai episode», see Joseph Schraibman, «Las citas bíblicas en Misericordia de Galdós», p. 496 and Sara E. [Cohen] Schyfter, «Almudena and the Jewish Theme in Misericordia», The Jew in the Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós (London: Tamesis Books, 1978), p. 96. (A shorter, less fully-developed version of this last-mentioned study was published earlier in Anales galdosianos, 7 [1973], 51-61.)
182
The New Columbia Encyclopedia, p. 2394b.
183
Leon Livingstone, «Interior Duplication in the Modern Spanish Novel», PMLA, 73 (1958), 399a; Andrés Amorós, «La sombra: realidad e imaginación», Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Nos. 250-52 (1970-71), p. 553. The fabrication and ultimate materialization of Don Romualdo is seen by John W. Kronik as an intriguing exercise in metafiction («Misericordia as Metafiction», Homenaje a Antonio Sánchez Barbudo: Ensayos de literatura española moderna [Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 1981], pp. 37-50).
184
Vida y obra de Galdós, 2d ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1961), p. 131.
185
St. Romuald's Feast Day, which is not moveable, is celebrated on February 7; however, the beginning chapters of the novel and the cited conversation between Benina and Paca take place in March (see the first line of the fourth paragraph of Chapter I which begins: «Una mañana de marzo, ventosa y glacial...» [p. 686a]). Also in her conversation with Benina, Paca says that St. Romuald was «confesor y obispo de Farsalia». Pharsalia was an ancient Greek district of Thessaly, surrounding the city of Pharsalus. An exhaustive search of biographies of Roman Catholic saints indicates that there was only one recognized saint known by the name Romuald and, although he traveled briefly as a missionary in the area of modern Hungary and Yugoslavia, he is associated almost exclusively with Italy (see note 14195, below). Either Galdós erred in these details or he perhaps meant to give the impression that Paca had confused st. Romuald with another saint.
186
John J. Delaney, Dictionary of Saints, p. 499; The Encyclopedia of Catholic Saints, II, 51-55; Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada - Europeo-Americana, LII, 232b-33a; George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974), p. 141; James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (London: John Murray, 1974), p. 267; The New Catholic Encyclopedia, XII, 661a.
187
Flora H. Loughead, Dictionary of Given Names (Glendale, Calif.: Clark Co., 1966), p. 94.
188
Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, p. 29; Dictionary of the Bible, ed. James Hastings (New York: Scribner's, 1952), p. 905b.
189
Monroe Z. Hafter has said that Samdai serves only as a foil on which the character of Don Romualdo is contrasted («Ironic Reprise in Galdós' Novels», PMLA 76 [1961], 233-39). The present investigation reveals that the role of King Samdai is more important.
190
Dreams in the Novels of Galdós (New York: Hispanic Institute in the United States, 1960).