Chapter I: Front Matter

WOMAN TRIUMPHANT

(LA MAJA DESNUDA)

BY

VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH

BY

HAYWARD KENISTON

WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE AUTHOR

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright, 1920, BY K. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

_All Rights Reserved_

First printing March, 1920

Second printing March, 1920

Third printing March, 1920

Fourth printing March, 1920

Fifth printing March, 1920

Sixth printing March, 1920

Seventh printing March. 1920

Eighth printing March, 1920

Ninth printing April, 1920

Tenth printing April, 1920

Eleventh printing April, 1920

Twelfth printing April, 1920

Thirteenth printing April, 1920

Fourteenth printing April, 1920

Printed In the United States of America

INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

The title of this novel in the original, _La maja desnuda_, "The Nude Maja," is also the name of one of the most famous pictures of the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya.

The word _maja_ has no exact equivalent in English or in any of the modern languages. Literally, it means "bedecked," "showy," "gaudily attired," "flashy," "dazzling," etc., and it was applied at the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth to a certain class of gay women of the lower strata of Madrid society notorious for their love of dancing and their fondness for exhibiting themselves conspicuously at bull-fights and all popular celebrations. The great ladies of the aristocracy affected the free ways and imitated the picturesque dress of the _maja_; Goya made this type the central figure of many of his genre paintings, and the dramatist Ramón de la Cruz based most of his _sainetes_--farcical pieces in one act--upon the customs and rivalries of these women. The dress invented by the _maja_, consisting of a short skirt partly covered by a net with berry-shaped tassels, white _mantilla_ and high shell-comb, is considered all over the world as the national costume of Spanish women.

When the novel first appeared in Spain some years ago, a certain part of the Madrid public, unduly evil-minded, thought that it had discovered the identity of the real persons whom I had taken as models to draw my characters. This claim provoked a scandalous sensation and gave my book an unwholesome notoriety. It was thought that the protagonists of _La maja desnuda_ were an illustrious Spanish painter of world-wide fame, who is my friend, and an aristocratic lady very celebrated at the time but now forgotten. I protested against this unwarranted and fantastic interpretation. Although I draw my characters from life, I do so only in a very fragmentary way (like all the great creative novelists whom I admire as masters in the field of fiction), using the materials gathered in my observations to form completely new types which are the direct and legitimate offspring of my own imagination. To use a figure: as a novelist I am a painter, not a photographer. Although I seek my inspiration in reality, I copy it in accordance with my own way of seeing it; I do not reproduce it with the mechanical servility of the photographic camera.

It is possible that my imaginary heroes are vaguely reminiscent of beings who actually exist. Subconsciousness is the novelist's principal instrument, and this subconsciousness frequently mocks us, leading us to mistake for our own creation the things which we have unwittingly observed in Nature. But despite this, it is unfair, as well as risky, for the reader to assign the names of real persons to the characters of fiction, saying, "This is So-and-so."

It would be equally unfair to consider this novel as audacious or of doubtful morality. The artistic world which I describe in _La maja desnuda_ cannot be expected to have the same conception of life as the conventional world. Far from believing it immoral, I consider this one of the most moral novels I have ever written. And it is for this reason that, with a full realization of the standards demanded by the English-reading public, I have not hesitated to authorize the present translation without palliation or amputation, fully convinced that the reader will not find anything in this novel objectionable or offensive to his moral sense. Morality is not to be found in words but in deeds and in the lessons which these deeds teach.

The difficulty of adequately translating the word _maja_ into English led to the adoption of "Woman Triumphant" as the title of the present version. I believe it is a happy selection; it interprets the spirit of the novel. But it must be borne in mind that the woman here is the wife of the protagonist. It is the wife who triumphs, resurrecting in spirit to exert an overwhelming influence over the life of a man who had wished to live without her.

Renovales, the hero, is simply the personification of human desire, this poor desire which, in reality, does not know what it wants, eternally fickle and unsatisfied. When we finally obtain what we desire, it does not seem enough. "More: I want more," we say. If we lose something that made life unbearable, we immediately wish it back as indispensable to our happiness. Such are we: poor deluded children who cried yesterday for what we scorn to-day and shall want again to-morrow; poor deluded beings plunging across the span of life on the Icarian wings of caprice.

VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ.

New York, January, 1920.

WOMAN TRIUMPHANT