Youth and Egolatry | Page 4

terms. In him, from first to last, one observes all the peculiar qualities
of the Iberian mind--its disillusion, its patient weariness, its pervasive
melancholy. Spain, I take it, is the most misunderstood of countries.
The world cannot get over seeing it through the pink mist of Carmen,
an astounding Gallic caricature, half flattery and half libel. The actual
Spaniard is surely no such grand-opera Frenchman as the immortal
toreador. I prescribe the treatment that cured me, for one, of mistaking
him for an Iberian. That is, I prescribe a visit to Spain in carnival time.
Baroja, then, stands for the modern Spanish mind at its most
enlightened. He is the Spaniard of education and worldly wisdom,
detached from the mediaeval imbecilities of the old regime and yet
aloof from the worse follies of the demagogues who now rage in the
country. Vastly less picturesque than Blasco Ibanez, he is nearer the
normal Spaniard--the Spaniard who, in the long run, must erect a new
structure of society upon the half archaic and half Utopian chaos now
reigning in the peninsula. Thus his book, though it is addressed to
Spaniards, should have a certain value for English-speaking readers.
And so it is presented.
H. L. MENCKEN.

PROLOGUE
ON INTELLECTUAL LOVE
Only what is of the mind has value to the mind. Let us dedicate
ourselves without compunction to reflecting a little upon the eternal
themes of life and art. It is surely proper that an author should write of
them.
I cultivate a love which is intellectual, and of a former epoch, besides a
deafness to the present. I pour out my spirit continually into the eternal
moulds without expecting that anything will result from it.
But now, instead of a novel, a few stray comments upon my life have
come from my pen.
Like most of my books, this has appeared in my hands without being
planned, and not at my bidding. I was asked to write an
autobiographical sketch of ten or fifteen pages. Ten or fifteen pages
seemed a great many to fill with the personal details of a life which is
as insignificant as my own, and far too few for any adequate comment
upon them. I did not know how to begin. To pick up the thread, I began
drawing lines and arabesques. Then the pages grew in number and, like
Faust's dog, my pile soon waxed big, and brought forth this work.
At times, perhaps, the warmth of the author's feeling may appear ill-
advised to the reader; it may be that he will find his opinions ridiculous
and beside the mark on every page. I have merely sought to sun my
vanity and egotism, to bring them forth into the air, so that my aesthetic
susceptibilities might not be completely smothered.
This book has been a work of mental hygiene.

EGOTISM

Egotism resembles cold drinks in summer; the more you take, the
thirstier you get. It also distorts the vision, producing an hydropic effect,
as has been noted by Calderon in his Life is a Dream.
An author always has before him a keyboard made up of a series of I's.
The lyric and satiric writers play in the purely human octave; the critic
plays in the bookman's octave; the historian in the octave of the
investigator. When an author writes of himself, perforce he plays upon
his own "I," which is not exactly that contained in the octave of the
sentimentalist nor yet in that of the curious investigator. Undoubtedly
at times it must be a most immodest "I," an "I" which discloses a name
and a surname, an "I" which is positive and self-assertive, with the
imperiousness of a Captain General's edict or a Civil Governor's
decree.
I have always felt some delicacy in talking about myself, so that the
impulsion to write these pages of necessity came from without.
As I am not generally interested when anybody communicates his likes
and dislikes to me, I am of opinion that the other person most probably
shares the same feelings when I communicate mine to him. However, a
time has now arrived when it is of no consequence to me what the other
person thinks.
In this matter of giving annoyance, a formula should be drawn up and
accepted, after the manner of Robespierre: the liberty of annoying
another begins where his liberty of annoying you leaves off.
I understand very well that there may be persons who believe that their
lives are wholly exemplary, and who thus burn with ardour to talk
about them. But I have not led an exemplary life to any such extent. I
have not led a life that might be called pedagogic, because it is fitted to
serve as a model, nor a life that might be called anti-pedagogic,