Tragic Sense of Life | Page 7

There is as little humour in the one as in the other. Humour,
however, sometimes occurs in Unamuno, but only in his ill-humoured
moments, and then with a curious bite of its own which adds an
unconscious element to its comic effect. Grace only visits them in
moments of inspiration, and then it is of a noble character, enhanced as
it is by the ever-present gift of strength. And as for the sense for rhythm
and music, both Unamuno and Wordsworth seem to be limited to the
most vigorous and masculine gaits. This feature is particularly
pronounced in Unamuno, for while Wordsworth is painstaking,
all-observant, and too good a "teacher" to underestimate the importance
of pleasure in man's progress, Unamuno knows no compromise. His
aim is not to please but to strike, and he deliberately seeks the naked,
the forceful, even the brutal word for truth. There is in him, however, a
cause of formlessness from which Wordsworth is free--namely, an
eagerness for sincerity and veracity which brushes aside all preparation,
ordering or planning of ideas as suspect of "dishing up," intellectual
trickery, and juggling with spontaneous truths.
* * * * *
Such qualities--both the positive and the negative--are apparent in his
poetry. In it, the appeal of force and sincerity is usually stronger than
that of art. This is particularly the case in his first volume (_Poesías_,
1907), in which a lofty inspiration, a noble attitude of mind, a rich and
racy vocabulary, a keen insight into the spirit of places, and above all
the overflowing vitality of a strong man in the force of ripeness,
contend against the still awkward gait of the Basque and a certain
rebelliousness of rhyme. The dough of the poetic language is here seen
heavily pounded by a powerful hand, bent on reducing its angularities
and on improving its plasticity. Nor do we need to wait for further
works in order to enjoy the reward of such efforts, for it is attained in
this very volume more than once, as for instance in _Muere en el mar el

ave que voló del nido_, a beautiful poem in which emotion and thought
are happily blended into exquisite form.
In his last poem, _El Cristo de Velázquez_ (1920), Unamuno
undertakes the task of giving a poetical rendering of his tragic sense of
life, in the form of a meditation on the Christ of Velázquez, the
beautiful and pathetic picture in the Prado. Why Velázquez's and not
Christ himself? The fact is that, though in his references to actual forms,
Unamuno closely follows Velázquez's picture, the spiritual
interpretation of it which he develops as the poem unfolds itself is
wholly personal. It would be difficult to find two great Spaniards wider
apart than Unamuno and Velázquez, for if Unamuno is the very
incarnation of the masculine spirit of the North--all strength and
substance--Velázquez is the image of the feminine spirit of the
South--all grace and form. Velázquez is a limpid mirror, with a human
depth, yet a mirror. That Unamuno has departed from the image of
Christ which the great Sevillian reflected on his immortal canvas was
therefore to be expected. But then Unamuno has, while speaking of
Don Quixote, whom he has also freely and personally interpreted,[2]
taken great care to point out that a work of art is, for each of us, all that
we see in it. And, moreover, Unamuno has not so much departed from
Velázquez's image of Christ as delved into its depths, expanded,
enlarged it, or, if you prefer, seen in its limpid surface the immense
figure of his own inner Christ. However free and unorthodox in its
wide scope of images and ideas, the poem is in its form a regular
meditation in the manner approved by the Catholic Church, and it is
therefore meet that it should rise from a concrete, tangible object as it is
recommended to the faithful. To this concrete character of its origin,
the poem owes much of its suggestiveness, as witness the following
passage quoted here, with a translation sadly unworthy of the original,
as being the clearest link between the poetical meditation and the main
thought that underlies all the work and the life of Unamuno.
NUBE NEGRA
O es que una nube negra de los cielos ese negror le dió a tu cabellera de
nazareno, cual de mustio sauce de una noche sin luna sobre el río? ¿Es

la sombra del ala sin perfiles del ángel de la nada negadora, de Luzbel,
que en su caída inacabable --fondo no puede dar--su eterna cuita clava
en tu frente, en tu razón? ¿Se vela, el claro Verbo en Ti con esa nube,
negra cual de Luzbel las negras alas, mientras brilla el Amor, todo
desnudo, con tu desnudo pecho por cendal?
BLACK CLOUD
Or