¿Dijo Clarín "Felipe Trigo es un corruptor de menores y del idioma"? Historia de un bulo literario

Abstract

The statement "Felipe Trigo is a corrupter of minors and of language" has become a common place to describe this author in literary histories. Supposedly, Clarin coins this phrase in a review of Trigo's novel Las ingenuas (1901). Several Hispanists have quoted this judgment in their handbooks of Spanish literature: Henri Peseux-Eichard (1913), Ernest Merimee (1922), and Sylvanus Griswold Morley (1931). Although Clarin in his review does criticize Trigo for his incorrect use of Spanish, he does not address moral issues in relation to Trigo, nor does he write the phrase attributed to him. Nevertheless, it is possible to demonstrate that, on February 17,1907 Trigo himself employs this expression and attributes it to Clarin in a lecture which would later constitute a chapter of his book El amor en la vida y en los libros (1907). We can understand the artifice, confusion, and mis-attribution of this phrase as part of an attempt by Trigo to consolidate his own myth as a principal representative of the "modern novel.".