ドニャ・ペルフェクタ — Benito Pérez Galdós
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Doña Perfecta Author : Benito Pérez Galdós Annotator : Arthur Richmond Marsh Contributor : Steven T. Byington Release date : April 28, 2005 [eBook #15725] Most recently updated: October 22, 2023 Language : English, Spanish Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15725 Credits : Produced by Stan Goodman, Miranda van de Heijning, Renald Levesque and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. *** START OF R. MARSH VOCABULARY BY STEVEN T. BYINGTON The Athenaeum Press GINN AND COMPANY—PROPRIETORS—BOSTON—U.S.A. PREFACE This edition of one of the best known of modern Spanish novels has been prepared for the use of college classes in Spanish that have already mastered the elements of Spanish grammar, but have not yet had much practice in reading. The editor has found by actual experience that it is safe to undertake the story in three or four months from the time when the study of the language is begun, that is, in the second half of the first year's work in the subject. As the book is not a long one, it should be possible to read it entire before the close of the year. Indeed, with an earnest class, even less time than this will be found to suffice. The novel is printed exactly (save correction of printer's errors) as it appears in the eighth Spanish edition (Madrid, 1896). At the same time, great pains have been taken to make the orthography and accentuation conform in all respects to the standard of the last edition of the Spanish Academy's Dictionary. The Notes are considerably fuller than is customary in college editions of modern works in foreign languages. This has been made necessary in part by the dreadful insufficiency of the existing Spanish-English dictionaries, and in part by the editor's desire to afford the student some aid in dealing with grammatical peculiarities not fully discussed in the more available text-books. As a further help to grammatical study, numerous references have been inserted to Ramsey's Text-Book of Modern Spanish (New York, 1894) and to Knapp's Grammar of the Modern Spanish Language (Boston, 1891). A.R.M. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS March, 1897 In the new impression of this book the accentuation has been conformed to the new (fourteenth) edition of the Academy's Dictionary, a small number of misprints have been corrected, and a vocabulary has been added. As is stated in the above preface, a considerable part of the notes in the first impression were intended as a partial substitute for a vocabulary. Obviously, the insertion of the vocabulary made such notes mainly superfluous; hence in the present edition such notes as seemed to be mere duplication of the vocabulary are omitted. At the same time it was inevitable that in the work of compiling the vocabulary some additional occasions for making notes were found, and new light was obtained on some places where notes already stood. The result is that the notes in the present impression, though shorter than before, contain (apart from vocabulary matter) more information, and it is hoped that they will at least maintain the reputation which this edition of Doña Perfecta has gained. Besides the references to the grammars of Ramsey and Knapp, references to Coester's Spanish Grammar (Boston, 1912) are now given. INTRODUCTION The two literary genres in which Spaniards have most excelled are the drama and the novel. Indeed, outside of these two forms, it may be said that no Spaniard has won a literary success of the first order. Thus, in the past six centuries there have been many Spanish poets of real worth; and yet in the list of the world's supreme poets no Spanish name appears. Among the world's great philosophers Spain has no representative, though she has had thinkers of genuine power. She has had no moralist, or historian, or political writer, or scientist of the highest rank. Even religion, which at first sight would seem to be the predominant interest of Spain, has not there inspired any work of universal and permanent appeal to the race. The other nations of the civilized world have at no time derived from Spain a powerful literary impulse in any of these directions. Palestine and Greece and Rome and Italy and France and Germany and England have all had something lastingly valuable to say upon one or more of these matters; but no one would think of turning to Spanish books for the best that has been thought and said upon any of them. With the drama and the novel, however, the case is very different. Here Spain has had writers universally placed among the great artists of the world. Calderón and Lope de Vega, with the crowd of lesser dramatists of the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century (the period Spaniards call their siglo de oro ), produced a body of dramatic literature, which for extent, variety, poetic force, and original national feeling and conception can be compared only with the Greek and the English drama. Of their own motion these poets learned all the essential secrets of the dramatic art. They acquired the faculty of telling upon the stage any story they chose in such a way that it should seem a picture of life itself to their audience; and, at the same time, they managed to fuse with their tales all their accumulated reflection upon men and things, all the various play of fancy, all the fine gold of the imagination, and all the humor, gay or grotesque, which the plain prose of life itself does not contain. Working freely, unawed by classic models whose perfection they would attain, they were easy in their motions, frank of conception, and ready to follow their matter wherever it might lead them. They had no dread of being dull or unpoetical or undignified; the best o