Tragic Sense of Life | Page 3

on his
having read Rural Rides, "the hall-mark," he said, "of the man of letters
who is no mere man of letters, but also a man." From that corner of
Castile, he has poured out his spirit in essays, poetry, criticism, novels,
philosophy, lectures, and public meetings, and that daily toil of press
article writing which is the duty rather than the privilege of most
present-day writers in Spain. Such are the many faces, moods, and
movements in which Unamuno appears before Spain and the world.
And yet, despite this multiplicity and this dispersion, the dominant
impression which his personality leaves behind is that of a vigorous
unity, an unswerving concentration both of mind and purpose. Bagaria,
the national caricaturist, a genius of rhythm and character which the
war revealed, but who was too good not to be overshadowed by the
facile art of Raemaekers (imagine Goya overshadowed by Reynolds!),
once represented Unamuno as an owl. A marvellous thrust at the heart
of Unamuno's character. For all this vitality and ever-moving activity
of mind is shot through by the absolute immobility of two owlish eyes
piercing the darkness of spiritual night. And this intense gaze into the
mystery is the steel axis round which his spirit revolves and revolves in
desperation; the unity under his multiplicity; the one fire under his
passions and the inspiration of his whole work and life.
* * * * *
It was Unamuno himself who once said that the Basque is the alkaloid
of the Spaniard. The saying is true, so far as it goes. But it would be
more accurate to say "one of the two alkaloids." It is probable that if the
Spanish character were analyzed--always provided that the
Mediterranean aspect of it be left aside as a thing apart--two main
principles would be recognized in it--_i.e._, the Basque, richer in
concentration, substance, strength; and the Andalusian, more given to
observation, grace, form. The two types are to this day socially opposed.

The Andalusian is a people which has lived down many civilizations,
and in which even illiterate peasants possess a kind of innate education.
The Basques are a primitive people of mountaineers and fishermen, in
which even scholars have a peasant-like roughness not unlike the
roughness of Scotch tweeds--or character. It is the even balancing of
these two elements--the force of the Northerner with the grace of the
Southerner--which gives the Castilian his admirable poise and explains
the graceful virility of men such as Fray Luis de León and the feminine
strength of women such as Queen Isabel and Santa Teresa. We are
therefore led to expect in so forcible a representative of the Basque race
as Unamuno the more substantial and earnest features of the Spanish
spirit.
Our expectation is not disappointed. And to begin with it appears in
that very concentration of his mind and soul on the mystery of man's
destiny on earth. Unamuno is in earnest, in dead earnest, as to this
matter. This earnestness is a distinct Spanish, nay, Basque feature in
him. There is something of the stern attitude of Loyola about his "tragic
sense of life," and on this subject--under one form or another, his only
subject--he admits no joke, no flippancy, no subterfuge. A true heir of
those great Spanish saints and mystics whose lifework was devoted to
the exploration of the kingdoms of faith, he is more human than they in
that he has lost hold of the firm ground where they had stuck their
anchor. Yet, though loose in the modern world, he refuses to be drawn
away from the main business of the Christian, the saving of his soul,
which, in his interpretation, means the conquest of his immortality, his
own immortality.
An individualist. Certainly. And he proudly claims the title. Nothing
more refreshing in these days of hoggish communistic cant than this
great voice asserting the divine, the eternal rights of the individual. But
it is not with political rights that he is concerned. Political
individualism, when not a mere blind for the unlimited freedom of civil
privateering, is but the outcome of that abstract idea of man which he
so energetically condemns as pedantic--that is, inhuman. His opposition
of the individual to society is not that of a puerile anarchist to a no less
puerile socialist. There is nothing childish about Unamuno. His

assertion that society is for the individual, not the individual for society,
is made on a transcendental plane. It is not the argument of liberty
against authority--which can be easily answered on the rationalistic
plane by showing that authority is in its turn the liberty of the social or
collective being, a higher, more complex, and longer-living
"individual" than the individual pure and simple. It is rather the
unanswerable argument of eternity against duration. Now that argument