Halma By Benito Perez Galdos

Galdós’s early writings were inspired by the French writer Émile Zola, a practitioner of the literary school of Naturalism. This interest then turned to a type of spiritual naturalism under the influence of Russian writers, including Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev, whom he called his “great teacher.” One of his most important works during this period was the novel, Nazarín, a kind of retelling of the life of Christ, in which the main character, a disgraced priest, wanders about the countryside with two female companions, attempting to follow the teachings of the Bible to the letter. He is taken for either a saint or a mad man, and at the end is shut up in an institution. The publication of Nazarín was followed by its sequel, Halma, only six months later. In this novel, the protagonist, an aristocratic lady named Halma, after suffering great hardships, decides to use her inheritance to found an idyllic Christian society, harboring the needy and the sick. Two of its citizens will be the priest, Nazarín, and one of his two women followers; another will be Halma’s ne’er-do-well male cousin, Urrea. Her family and their friends express admiration for her high ideals, but they also believe she may be just as mad as the priest, and work to defeat her. A fortunate denouement comes only after the unforeseen intervention of the supposedly “mad” priest. Halma also has many points of contact with the motion picture Viridiana, by Spain’s’ great director, Luis Buñuel. In this film, a religious novice, Viridiana, attempts to turn a farm into a shelter for needy beggars. During her absence, however, the beggars wreck the house in a drunken orgy. While not sharing Buñuel’s artistic vision, Galdós, nevertheless, expresses his own ideas with great imagination.

The play begins with the Countess of Halma, telling his marriage to a military sad, narrating the vicissitudes and sorrows that had to suffer when he died in the East. Our Countess starts living in his brother's house, but soon hears of Nazarín and deeds, now imprisoned and awaiting sentencing. This, along with his religious zeal, takes her to plan the creation of a new order convent with the remains of his fortune and recovered short.

Recoge este volumen dos novelas publicadas en 1895 por Benito P�rez Gald�s, Nazar�n y Halma, que la cr�tica ocult� tras otras obras de mayor fama y que, ahora, recupera con especial inter�s. Son dos novelas en las que las oposiciones naturalismo frente a idealismo y tribulaci�n frente a serenidad sirven para incidir en algunos de los temas m�s candentes de los l�mites entre el realismo y el simbolismo, adem�s de ofrecer un peculiar retrato de la sociedad de la �poca. Yolanda Arencibia, catedr�tica de la Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria y reputada especialista en Gald�s, edita estas dos novelas teniendo en cuenta tanto los manuscritos conservados como las distintas ediciones, y redacta una introducci�n fundamental para el mejor conocimiento de dos novelas �ntimamente relacionadas.

Halma is a stirring and moving novel of society in the Madrid of the later 19th century. From the periphery of the provincial world and nestled into the famous city, a young lady arrives, enamoured of the glitter and the glamour. Opening her eyes to these experiences leads to unforeseen tragedy, and as she grows and matures it becomes increasingly clear that there is no easy way of annulling past mistakes. Ultimately, the novel is about the lurking melancholy and stress of the city, the vanity and heedlessness of the privileged, and the awe-inspiring truth that the sad and bitter truth of life is that there is no hope. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Halma es una novela del escritor espa�ol Benito P�rez Gald�s publicada en el oto�o de 1895, dentro del ciclo "espiritualista" de las "Novelas espa�olas contempor�neas". Hab�a sido concluida en su casa santanderina de "San Quint�n", en octubre de ese mismo a�o. Recuperando el personaje de Nazar�n lo confronta y al�a con Catalina de Halma, otro m�s en la galer�a de personajes-h�roes movidos por un puro y elemental ideal cristiano, junto a la Benina de Misericordia y a �ngel Guerra.Haciendo una lectura muy personal de la socializaci�n en el medio rural y el colectivismo agrario que conmov�an el caciquismo finisecular espa�ol contempor�neo a Gald�s, el escritor concibi� el personaje de Catalina de Artal, condesa de Halma-Lautemberg, "ejemplo de piedad, rectitud y obediencia". Iconoclasta con su propia clase y descontenta ante el esquema social de su �poca, la arist�crata concibe una especie de comunidad agr�cola de organizaci�n monacal con el objetivo concreto de practicar la caridad a gran escala. Y para ponerla en marcha, resultando insuficientes los bienes de su herencia, recurre a la ayuda del Estado y de la Iglesia. El sistema ideado por Halma para hacerle frente a la miseria nacional es m�s sencillo que el que hab�a puesto en juego Nazar�n en la trama de la novela que lleva su nombre y que precede a Halma, cuya protagonista solo pretende "ofrecer una alternativa caritativa a la sociedad burguesa sin atacar sus bases".

Philosophers have contemplated the meaning of life, the who & the why, since nascent self-consciousness of the evolving hominid species. Yet practical efforts, i.e., control of life, have always transcended the philosophical: how to dominate what happens to the physical body itself, how to control the environment, and the interaction therefrom. Thus are born rites, rituals & religions. A rite can be a prescribed religious or other solemn ceremony or act it can be a social custom or practice, or even a mundane conventional act. A ritual can be the established form for a ceremony, the order of words used for example; a ritual observance can be either a system of ceremonial acts or actions, or an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner. Religion generally encompasses a socio-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Religion is a set of beliefs, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances (rites and rituals). Control efforts highlighted in this volume range from prehistoric cave paintings, Amerindian ceremonies, Christian denominational (especially Roman Catholic), traditions & Afro-Caribbean syncretic rites, to crossovers, which deal with the more socio-cultural rites of passage like the quinceanera, and/or dance rites & rituals like the Southern Cone tango, African candombe, Cuban habanera and European waltzes and polkas and the corrida, from the public ritual known as tauromaquia. The premise behind this comparative volume is to discover how rites, rituals & religions are addressed in real life in these divergent societies by exploring the visual and literary representations of control. Rites, Rituals and Religions is eighth and final volume in the Hispanic Worlds series

Halma es el nombre de una mujer aristócrata, viuda de un conde alemán, que con su fortuna planea crear un centro de beneficencia para pobres en Pedralba, una de su propiedades. Para ello cuenta con Nazarín, a quien invita a incorporarse al proyecto.