¹ A summary of this study was presented at the University of Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 22–24 April 1965. I am grateful to the University of Illinois Research Board for its support of the project.

² i: El romanticismo, in Obras completas, xxxvii (Madrid, [1910]); ii: La transición, in O. c., xxxix (Madrid, 1911); iii: El naturalismo, in O. c., xli (Madrid, [1912?]). Textual references to these volumes are abbreviated Lit. jr. and apply to the 2nd ed. in the case of Vol. i.

³ Luis Araujo-Costa, a friend of the Countess and expert in matters of her work and thought, caviled at this projected fourth volume of the series, objecting that it was unjust to censure this period as decadent and maintaining that decadentism was nothing more than a fashion peculiar to Huysmans and imitators of his who delighted in “el bizantinismo delicuescente” (“Emilia Pardo Bazán y la literatura francesa del siglo XIX,” Raza Española, iii, No. 30, 1921, pp. 41–55). This judgment is highly debatable.

⁴ The following comment is as close as she came to a definition of decadentism: “Habría que decir por centésima vez que la palabra decadencia no significa inferioridad artística, porque mucha gente se alarma ante el vocablo, sin recordar que son varias las decadencias, hasta en nuestro arte nacional, y que nuestro Churriguera es un artista extraordinario, y nuestro Góngora un prodigio. La decadencia representada por Oscar Wilde (y por otros, como los grandes poetas Baudelaire y Verlaine, por ejemplo) es un período en que el culto a la belleza se muestra fervoroso y engendrador, y en que el sentimiento lírico, al parecer agotado en sus fuentes por el romanticismo, renace en formas nuevas, exaltadas y a veces maravillosas” (“Un poco de crítica decadente,” ABC, No. 5304, 10 Jan. 1920).

⁵ This is not surprising in view of the nebulousness of these movements' distinguishing traits. The confusion in terminology persists to such an extent that critics of our day who are among the most expert judges of the subject, such as A. E. Carter (The Idea of Decadence in French Literature, Toronto, 1958) and Guillermo de Torre (La aventura y el orden, [2nd ed.], Buenos Aires, 1948), fail to commit themselves to a precise, unhesitating distinction between symbolism and decadentism. In this essay, we shall use “symbolism” as a specific referent to the group of poets that Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Moréas headed and “decadentism” more loosely and generally—as is often the practice and as was Pardo Bazán's—to cover all the end-of-the-century movements including and allied to symbolism. It should also be pointed out that our focus, in line with Pardo Bazán's, is largely on poetry, the genre that lent itself most readily to the artistic creeds of the decadent movements.

⁶ Porvenir de la literatura después de la guerra (Madrid, 1917), pp. 27–28.

⁷ In this Pardo Bazán concurs with certain later critical appraisals of the period, notably Mario Praz, La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica (Milan, 1930). The likelihood of influence left on her, despite disagreement with them, by her readings of writers like Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso must not be discounted.

⁸ However, the Countess was not always consistent in her thoughts on the subject: “Nadie ignora que si el romanticismo corno escuela literaria había muerto hacia 1850, corno escuela literaria reapareció hacia 1889, bajo otros nombres variados, entre los cuales prevaleció el de decadentismo” (El lirismo en la poesía francesa, in O. c., xliii, Madrid, [1926], 25). (Further references to this work are abbreviated El lirismo.)

⁹ “El neo-romanticismo … por segunda vez emancipa el yo, y precipita la madurez de la decadencia próxima” (Lit. fr., iii, 337). Cf. Karl Uitti's interesting study, The Concept of Self in the Symbolist Novel (The Hague, 1961).

¹⁰ See Carter, p. 150.

¹¹ Among others, Morse Peckham, “Toward a Theory of Romanticism,” PMLA, lxvi (1951), 5–23, and “Toward a Theory of Romanticism: ii. Reconsiderations,” Studies in Romanticism, i (1961), 1–8; and Jacques Barzun, Classic, Romantic and Modern (Boston, 1961; rev. ed. of Romanticism and the Modern Ego).

¹² “Catholic naturalism” is the term that Donald F. Brown employed to underscore Pardo Bazán's ambivalence in this matter (The Catholic Naturalism of Pardo Bazán, Chapel Hill, N. C., 1957). See also Harry L. Kirby, Jr., “Pardo Bazán, Darwinism and ‘La Madre Naturaleza’,” Hisp., xlvii (1964), 733–737.

¹³ Pardo Bazán's more significant references to Gautier may be found in La cuestión palpitante (Madrid, 1883); p. 33; Al pie de la torre Eiffel (Madrid, [1890]), p. 55; Lit. fr., i, 216; ii, 8, 11, 89, 141, 212, 271–281, 309–314, 332; iii, 20, 59–61, 248, 251–255; El lirismo, pp. 296, 360–361, 365. It is interesting to note that while Pardo Bazán generally classified Gautier as one of the great figures of romanticism (on one occasion as a “romántico impresionista”), she also credited him with assisting in the disorganization of romanticism through his ideas of technical perfection and with being one of the spiritual fathers of the Parnassians. Other French writers whom Pardo Bazán praised for their technical excellence and high degree of artistic consciousness were Flaubert, Banville, and on many occasions Leconte de Lisle.

¹⁴ Por Francia y por Alemania (Crónicas de la Exposición) (Madrid, [1890]), p. 188 (this section not included in the edition of this work in O. c., xix).

¹⁵ She accused not only Mallarmé of this sin, but on one occasion attacked the indecipherability of the symbols in Maeterlinck's Ariane et Barbe-Bleue in its operatic form, stating as a general principle: “Las cosas simbólicas no han de ser, desde luego lo reconozco, tan claras como el agua; sin embargo, han de sugerir una idea y abrir un camino de luz al entendimiento y al sentimiento” (“La vida contemporánea,” La Ilustración Artistica, xxxii, 1913, 154).

¹⁶ Pardo Bazán deplored the moral and utilitarian nature of the symbols used by Zola in his novels (Lit. fr., iii, 120–121) and berated another writer whom she admired, Núñez de Arce, for an application of symbols that was rational and therefore different from and inferior to “el simbolismo plástico, sensual y musical de Baudelaire y Verlaine” (Retratos y apuntes literarios, in O. c., xxxii, Madrid, [1908], 71).

¹⁷ Por Francia y por Alemania, pp. 64–65. A few years later, again not without a chauvinistic touch, the Countess predicted that the artificially perverse and restless tendencies of modern Paris would not pass south of the Pyrenees to disturb the Spanish sense of balance (“España conserva un fondo de sano buen sentido”), and, contradicting comments made at other times, she went so far as to say that had she visited Paris during the apogee of romanticism, she would have stayed, but its present atmosphere of buffoonery gave her no such inclinations (Nuevo Teatro Crítico, No. 30, Dec. 1893, pp. 270–271). A decade earlier (Oct. 1882), in her “Prólogo de la autora” to La tribuna, she had already pointed to a healthful superiority on the part of the Spanish people over their northern neighbors: the “abominaciones monstruosas” of Zola, the Goncourts, and others of the naturalistic school were entirely truthful portraits of their own civilization (Obras completas, Madrid, 1956, ii, 103–104).

¹⁸ An explanation of this trend in literature was provided by Jean-Paul Sartre in his suggestive book on Baudelaire (Paris, 1947), where he commented on the modern poet's push into isolation. No longer functioning for the benefit of the aristocracy, he is of no service to his own class, the bourgeoisie, either. He ultimately withdraws from society with a narcissistic spirit of independence and seeks expression behind a veil of bohemianism, oddity, and abandon, in which he takes pride.

¹⁹ “La vida contemporánea,” La Ilustración Artística, xxviii (1909), 154.

²⁰ Pardo Bazán espoused this dual level of evaluation of decadentism, which she was never to abandon, as early as 1890, when she wrote in warning against “la blague literaria”: “No es buen camino echarlo todo a risa; pero tampoco es fácil conservar gravedad excesiva tratándose de decadentistas y bizantinos. El talento de los pontífices prevalecerá …” (“Ultimas modas literarias,” La España Moderna, ii, Feb. 1890, 166). The passing of time brought about only a change of emphasis: as Pardo Bazán focused more on the work of the pontiffs and as the threat of the followers receded, the harshness of her general condemnations was allayed.

²¹ Among the French moderns whose singular merits Pardo Bazán cherished were Bourget and Anatole France in prose, Mallarmé and Verlaine in verse. The unreplaced masters whom she had in mind were again for the most part the giants of romanticism: Hugo, Chateaubriand, Musset, Lamartine. The following words make her position clear: “El sentimiento, cuando es real, sencillo, verdadero, es la más limpia fuente de originalidad literaria. Y yo no diré que todos los sentimientos de la generación simbolista y decadente fuesen afectados y falsos. Bastaría acordarse de Verlaine … para no hacer en conjunto tal aseveración. Pero al menos entre los discípulos de éste y de otros maestros, entre los mil poetas menores, bien se podrá asegurar que los sentires proceden de ideas críticas y estéticas, ya que no muy maduradas, anteriores a la inspiración, y actuando perniciosamente sobre ella” (Porvenir, p. 21).

²² “Cuando la extravagancia de un artista es natural y no llena fines ambiciosos, hay que respetarla. No será modelo imitable, pero será un fenómeno de originalidad y una forma peculiar de psicología. Nadie le pide al artista y al poeta las condiciones que hacen apreciable a un gerente de Sociedad comercial. La bohemia es lícita, aunque sin asomos de ella se puede ser excelso liróforo y maestro engarzador de cláusulas” (“Un poco de crítica. Bohemia literaria,” ABC, No. 5299, 5 Jan. 1920).

²³ Pardo Bazán's earliest references to Verlaine date from 1889, and in 1918 she gave a series of lectures on Verlaine and Moréas at the Ateneo de Madrid. Sagesse first appeared in Dec. 1880, dated Paris, Société générale de Librairie catholique, 1881; 2nd rev. ed., Paris, Vanier, 1889.

²⁴ “A Spanish Francophile: Emilia Pardo-Bazán,” RLC, xxvi (1952), 241–242. Note also the following judgment that she applied to herself in an open letter to Juan Montalvo: “Nadie, si me conoce, ignora cómo soy de tolerante y amplia en mi criterio, dado que siempre me precio de católica, apostólica romana” (“Literatura y otras hierbas,” Revista de España, cxvii, 1887, 133–134).

²⁵ Hégésippe Moreau (1810–1838), a hapless bohemian who died destitute after a short life of misery, leaving behind a slim volume of tales and poems.

²⁶ Porvenir, p. 28.

²⁷ The only aspect of “el misticismo decadente” that caused her concern was, again, its exclusivism, its lack of any social or patriotic connections; and for these noxious ideas of the individual's absolute right against a laboriously woven social structure, she heaped blame on Rabelais, Rousseau, and Nietzsche.

²⁸ See Don Quijote, Don Juan y la Celestina (Madrid, 1926).

²⁹ “Musset es siempre mi poeta,” the Countess exclaimed on one occasion (Por Francia y por Alemania, p. 188).

³⁰ Azorín, for example, has written: “Ha sido netamente española Emilia Pardo Bazán, y ha tratado siempre de injerir lo extranjero, como elemento fecundador, en lo nacional” (“La Pardo Bazán,” Obras completas, ix, Madrid, 1954, 1395). For another view of the eclecticism of Pardo Bazán's critical canon, see Nelson W. Eddy, “Pardo Bazán, Menéndez y Pelayo, and Pereda Criticism,” Romanic Review, xxvii (1946), 336–345.

³¹ Retratos y apunles literarios, p. 100; published earlier in her Discurso en la velada que la ciudad de Salamanca consagró a … Gabriel y Galán (Madrid, 1905). And in a previous essay on Alarcón she had written: “Todo el que lea mis ensayos críticos comprenderá que ni soy idealista, ni realista, ni naturalista, sino ecléctica. Mi cerebro es redondo, y debo a Dios la suerte de poder recrearme con todo lo bueno y bello de todas [las] épocas y estilos” (Retratos …, p. 190).

³² See her review of Gómez Carrillo's Sensaciones de arte in Nuevo Teatro Crítico, No. 30, pp. 263–269.

³³ Enrique Gómez Carrillo, “Mme. Pardo Bazán à Paris,” Mercure de France, lx (1906), 457.

³⁴ Ronald Hilton, in his “Spanish Preconceptions About France, As Revealed in the Works of Emilia Pardo Bazán,” BHS, xxx (1953), 193–204, carefully traced an evolution in the Countess' attitude towards France from a strong early resentment that mellowed as she matured and finally turned into open Francophilia. It must be stressed, however, that both her interest in French culture and her distaste for what she regarded as French immorality were with her at all times.

³⁵ Eduardo Marquina wrote in recognition of Pardo Bazán: “Mis primeras lecturas en prosa hacia horizontes abiertos fuera de España las hice en libros de D^a. Emilia Pardo Bazán” (Raza Española, iii, No. 30, 1921, p. 65). Cf. also J. Rubia Barcia, “La Pardo Bazán y Unamuno,” Cuadernos Americanos, cxiii (Nov.-Dec. 1960), 240–263.