101
Booth, pp. 284-285.
102
Kronik's interpretation of the transition between I and II stresses Manso's fictional status and the game of fiction as the subject of the novel (p. 75).
103
The term comes from Raymond S. Willis, The Phanton Chapters of the Quijote (New York: Hispanic Institute, 1953).
104
«Defamiliarization», as formulated by Victor Shlovsky, is outlined in Scholes, Structuralism in Literature, pp. 83-85.
105
Correa has explained this point very clearly: «al enunciar al personaje, en primera persona, la proposición metafísica 'yo no existo', con que se abre la novela, está reflejando por este mismo hecho una manera de ser que se halla intensificada, aún más, por el énfasis argumentativo con que se dedica a probar su inexistencia: 'juro y perjuro que no existo,... no soy, ni he sido ni seré nunca nadie'» (Realidad, ficción y símbolo..., p. 101). Earle discusses the paradoxical effects of the statement «Yo no existo» as does Kronik, who nonetheless also writes: «The passage from 'Yo no existo' to 'Yo soy Máximo Manso' is the affirmation of non-existence, that is, the apotheosis of fictionality. Manso's opening protest against any possible investiture 'de los inequívocos atributos de la existencia real' must be taken literally» (p. 75). Yet the paradoxical nature of Manso's declarations argues for ambivalence, mixture. The very passage between the one and the other denotes flux, contradiction, uncertainty, thus reflecting quite faithfully a basic characteristic of the human condition. Newton has pointed out that «the difference and yet the flux between 'la realidad vivida' and 'la realidad contemplada', between life and literature» (p. 124) depict «the non-graspable, non-absolute, ineluctable essence of reality: its protean relativity» (p. 125). In other words, proliferating confusions and ambiguities mirror reality itself, within and without the novel. While Kronik also observes explicitly the novel's «delectable ambiguity» which «forces these paradoxes upon us» (p. 77), his article is aimed at affirming the self-consciousness of the novel as fiction, as a «game of literary reflexivity» (p. 88).
106
B. Pérez Galdós, El amigo Manso, ed. Denah Lida (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), p. 15.
107
As an acquaintance of the Bringas family who chronicles their story in La de Bringas, the author-narrator explicitly mentions his friendship with Máximo Manso: «Por mi parte, como la viuda de García Grande me era aún punto menos que desconocida, pues mi familiar trato con ella se verificó más tarde, en los tiempos de Máximo Manso, mi amigo, todo cuanto aquella señora dijo me lo tragué» (1580). References to La de Bringas are also taken from the Obras completas, IV.
108
Kronik points out that «Máximo's friend who evokes him -suppose, if you wish, that his name is Pérez Galdós- does not, in fact, exist prior to the narrative as his capacity to 'evoke' Manso might imply. He exists only thanks to Manso, who creates him within the narrative» (p. 76).
109
«-Hombre de Dios -le dije-, ¿quiere usted acabar de una vez conmigo y recoger esta carne mortal en que, para divertirse, me ha metido? ¡Cosa más sin gracia...!» (1289).
110
Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 275.