From 1873 until his death, July 18, 1891, he lived principally in Madrid, until 1888 taking a large part in literary life, and not without some mingling in matters public. In 1875, as one of the early supporters of the Alfonsine restoration, he was made Councillor of State; and on December 15th of the same year he was elected to the Spanish Academy, in which he took his seat about a year later. His pen was very active. El Sombrero de tres picos, El Escándalo, El Niño de la Bola, La Pródiga, El Capitán Veneno, are from this final period, which was opened with La Alpujarra. He gave much time also to revising, selecting, and destroying, to which process we owe the definitive collection of works noticed below. In 1887 his powers began noticeably to fail. In 1888 there was a first hemiplegia—then other attacks followed in December 1889, and February, 1890, and the final one in July, 1891.
II. Alarcón's Works
Alarcón's writings have been brought together in nineteen volumes, sixteen of which are of the well known Colección de Escritores Castellanos. There are three volumes of short stories, the Novelas Cortas; four longer novels,
El Escándalo, La Pródiga, El Final de Norma, El Niño de la Bola; two stories that are neither long nor short, El Capitán Veneno and El Sombrero de tres picos; one volume of popular sketches, Cosas que fueron; three volumes of travels, Viajes por España, one volume, and De Madrid a Nápoles, two; an historic-geographical study, La Alpujarra; one volume of essays, Juicios Literarios; and one volume of verse. The three volumes outside the collection contain the celebrated Diario de un testigo de la Guerra de África.
Of all this mass, only two works are really first-rate: El Sombrero de tres picos and El Capitán Veneno; of the special merits of these we shall speak again presently. The diary of the African war has won praise, and so have the books of travel; an occasional short story is good; the longer novels have no permanent worth, the verse is insignificant.
The most ambitious of the novels, El Escándalo, was published in 1875. Its author, in his Historia de mis libros, included in the collected works in the volume with El Capitán Veneno, makes a defence of this book that is most illuminating as to the principles of criticism practiced by the Spanish critics of the day, and that gives us a clear sight of the literary conditions of the time. The artistic question does not seem to have been raised: the one asked is simply as to the author's attitude toward certain other matters, chiefly of religion; and it is on the correctness of these views that the book is to stand or fall. Alarcón in his defence, accepts the situation, and joins issue: and he does this with a willingness that lets us see that his own mind could discover no impropriety in treating literature in that way.[1] Herein lies the explanation of many weaknesses in Alarcón's work, which, given his many good qualities, might else cause us to wonder.
Alarcón's best points are a very keen eye for a situation, thorough control of a language adequate to his matter, an excellent idea of the exigencies of style offered by his situations, and a keen sense of humor, which, however, occasionally goes to sleep or deserts. His weakness lies in the faulty idea of his task already pointed out, in a certain immaturity, a childish petulance that stays with him to the last, and in an utter inability to develop a character. He can picture one admirably, but he cannot make one grow; and in general, he does not try it. The one place in which he has some measure of success in this not easy task is in Don Jorge of the Capitán Veneno, whose struggle is very prettily exhibited; but the great, the serious effort, Fabián Conde in El Escándalo, falls flat. His is a metempsychosis, not a development.
The Spanish language does not lend itself with much grace to the needs of the modern short story. Its leisurely diffuseness is a fair reflex of the mode of thought it represents; so Alarcón cannot, except within the four seas of Spain, be held a really good writer in this genre.[2] It is in the happy borderland between the long and the very short, that he has done his best. Finding himself for once—or for twice—with a literary task (quite unconsciously to himself, it is true) exactly fitted to his abilities, he has arrived, and succeeded. El Capitán Veneno and El Sombrero de tres picos are real works of art, for their author in them has shaken himself free of self-consciousness, forgotten to preach or to moralize, let ethics and politics alone and written without outward haste or inward restraint.
Alarcón's work in pure literature was beyond question much hampered by his political life, and by the false notions of the aims and ends of belles-lettres into which, as he grew older, the life of the times and his own disposition caused him to fall. The history of Spain of his lifetime is a nightmare. Whether, if he had lived in happier days, he would have done better work, is one of those literary questions that are good and pleasant to think and talk over, but unprofitable to write about. Still, the constructive psychologist should have great joy in Alarcón, should he have the patience to read all his works, for the man reveals himself naked as do few; and it is most edifying to see the conservative academician of El Escándalo and La Época making his peace with the world and with heaven for the sins of the editor of El Látigo. Truly he seems to wish that we should know that he felt indeed that he had sinned much, and need make great haste.
III. El Sombrero de Tres Picos