The sun., 1919-11-02
By WILLIS STEEL.

* Spain's most prolific and best
- known novelist, is reported
dying. He is "a years old, feeble and
partially blind. and has been unable
to do any writing for six or seven
years. In 1914, when a subscription
was taken, to which King Alfonso gave
$4,000, to keep him from becoming a
public charge, parallel was drawn
between him and a Spanish writer OF
llshakespeares time. BY Spanish jour
rals Perez Galdos was declared to be
1.-THE modern Cervantes.
The parallel Is not far fetched.
Galdos, like the great medieval master,
brought to the Spaniards OF to-day a
fresh vision and insight into the life
around him. He applied the laws OF
creation and development of traits
and the conditions Of their persistence
retrospectively, so that he came 10
understand the Spanard's heritage Of
tradition. Galdos launched his story.
or his play, into a sympathetic but
inarticulate environment. There it
was taken taken up, it. was trans
Formed 1t grew mighty.
Precisely so is the history of Spain's
great prose epic. Cervantes, to whom
belongs what credit there may be for
inventing the novel, did not write
don Quixote" in order to kill the rage
for chivalry. as the vulgar are taught
by the ignorant to think. Instead
he wrote 1t to preserve the traits
exhibited by the men of ancient Spain.
His was a retrospective view Of con-
ditions that had made the Spanish
character.
1t might not occur TO any but Span
iards to put the modern writer on
level with the ancient. Certainly, to
a foreigner he seems to rank far be-
low Cervantes. The master wrote for
all the world and he is read by all
the world. as Shakespeare is. The
traits he dealt in belong to all time
and this 1t would not be safe to say
of those treated by Perez Galdos in
his novels and plays. Cervantes
created an atmosphere in which the
Spaniard lives and without which he
could not live. Galdos, or so foreign
contemporaries must continue to think
until facts prove them wrong covered
with a mist his fellow countrymen.
They walk in 1t and live in it easily
and naturally, but they could live out
Of It.
NIisfortunes in Lives.
Certain misfortunes in the lives of
these two authors, separated though
they are by centuries, help to keep the
parallel alive. Cervantes wrote for
many years and barely made a living.
His plays failed with an audience that
enriched the inexhaustible Lope de
Vega AS he was approaching his end,
feeble of health. in prison for debt, he
composed his immortal masterpiece.
Galdos was born in the Canary Is
lands. at Las Palmas, in 1S45. At an
early age he went to Madrid to study
law but soon he turned to journalism.
Then he began to write fiction, which
was to be his life work. Between 1873
and 1907 he produced a series or ma
tional romances, the "Episodios Ma
cionales," which made the Spaniards
proud of their national novelist" but
did not induce them to buy his works
As a race the Spaniards read very
Ettle and. like my Lord Foppington in
an old English play, they consider the
habit of reading to be a sign of va
cant mind. Galdos did not seriously
attempt drama until comparatively
late in his career.
A drama 1t was, Electra" which in
troduced Galdos to a public north OF
the Pyrenees. The French have q
saying that south of that range oi
mountains Africa begins" They
were the first, Notwithstanding this
dictum, to set the Spaniard Galdos by
the side of Zola, Ibsen, Bjornson and
Tolstoi-a true hit or miss set Of
prophets. What they meant was thai
q new reformer had arisen and hi,
birthplace was Spain.
The great effect Of this drama in it,
native country can hardly be under
stood out of it. Galdos, like Cervan'
tes, 1t was said, had arisen to awaker
Spain from her long apathy. "Elec'
ira" was signalled as the beginning
Of the renaissance.
Electra Disappointing.
II might be well to dispose of "Elec