"[E]l hombre se nos revela mejor":The Place of Photography and the Visual Arts in Misericordia Curtiss Wasson Stephen Miller's exhaustive study of Galdós's sketch albums, Galdós gráfico, also serves to catalogue the visual material found in the library of the Casa-Museo Pérez Galdós. Among the collection are thirteen volumes of clippings, mainly etchings and other visual material, primarily taken from periodical literature, and three albums of photographic carte de visite, or collectible photo-cards (Miller 139; 160). The volumes of clippings, all in good condition, are filled with diverse materials, juxtaposed with complete indifference to thematic or chronological order (153). This indifference translates into the elimination of many of the titles and other identifying features from the clippings (144-45). The volumes of clippings probably date from 1880, a year in which Galdós does not publish anything, in part because he spent the year planning an illustrated edition of the Episodios nacionales (158-59). In his study, Miller also suggests that the volumes reflect Galdós's general interest in documenting his contemporary reality (159-60). In comparison to the jumbled albums of clippings, the photograph albums are thematically organized, and in varying condition, with the worst being that of the volume dedicated to literary and cultural figures of note (161). Although Miller casts doubt on Galdós's role in collecting the images, due to the several hands in which the inscriptions are written, two of the three volumes bear his ex libris, and the first replicates certain preoccupations present in his albums of clippings (161). Critical attention to visual technologies and their relationship to Galdosian narrative has largely been focused on the kinds of items found in the first set of volumes (that is, etchings and the like), rather than the photograph albums, which are in worn condition, and could be considered cheaper, thus poorly made, mass-produced, and therefore uninteresting in comparison to the sketchbooks and albums of clippings. Rather than a lack of value, however, the worn condition of the photo albums, in contrast to the near-pristine albums of clippings, might suggest their constant use as another means of visualizing contemporary reality. Additionally, if one compares the large selection of clippings and the small collection of albums, it appears that repetition is less the province of photography than of other, more time-consuming forms of visual representation. If the clippings are eclectic and repetitive, the photographs are selective and unique. Discounting the photo albums for the collection of clippings is a response to cues we find within the narrative theory of the nineteenth century, and within later critical suppositions about the relationship between the narrative of the time and photography, in both of which the disjunction between photography and artistry is strictly maintained.1 Galdós's reliance on painterly metaphors within his novelistic theory leads critics to focus on painting and etching within Galdosian narrative. As a result, the presence of the photograph in Galdós's novels is unexplored. Yet photography too subtends his narrative theory, primarily in the ways in which [End Page 35] he describes his contemporaries as a mutable crowd, one seemingly best captured by the camera's lens. In what follows, I explore how the tension between rapid movement and artistic discourse plays out in Misericordia (1897), concluded only two months after Galdós's February 7th address to the Real Academia Española, La sociedad presente como materia novelable. Misericordia can be read as a hybrid creation, as painterly metaphor in the novel gives way to and is underlined by photographic imagery.2 I contend that the less exact and more time-consuming visual arts, such as painting and engraving, serve as the metaphor for the repetitive gesture on which the narrative of Misericordia is constructed. If the painter or etcher retraces lines to create a picture and construct meaning, so too does the novelist gradually build narrative structure and characterization through the accumulation of lines.3 This accumulation, when done to excess, results in little more than cliché.4 In this I differ from the usual formulation of photography as an inherently repetitive genre. I suggest...