man of his finiteness. Unamuno sees the sibling rivalry as the battle of man with his alter ego. The “hero” of the novel is not Abel Sánchez but Joaquín Monegro. He is the point-of-view character, but the title gives the story to Abel. Joaquín, it seems, must yield everything to his alter ego, Abel.

Abel’s death is the culmination of many events. Abel and Joaquín have known each other since infancy; Abel, an artist, has been the more popular of the two, Joaquín, a doctor, the more intellectual. Joaquín has long been jealous of Abel’s attainments, but the jealousy begins to turn to a bitter hatred when Abel steals the affection of Joaquín’s sweetheart, Helena. Abel is complacent and easygoing; Heaven seems to smile on him. He paints a portrait of Helena that becomes famous, thus immortalizing her. Joaquín’s envy consumes him. With all of his medical training and intellect, Joaquín can only temporarily preserve life; he cannot immortalize it. This idea is shown clearly when one of Joaquín’s matronly patients dies, despite his efforts to save her life. Hanging in her living room is a large, stunning portrait: She has been immortalized by Abel.

Fostering his intense hatred for Abel, Joaquín marries Antonia, a motherly woman who pities him. His envy of Abel reaches new proportions when he learns that Helena has given birth to Abel’s son, Abelín. When his own wife, Antonia, conceives, she bears a daughter, whom they name Joaquina.

Abel and Joaquín discuss a picture Abel plans to paint—a representation of the Old Testament version of the first murder. The subject tantalizes Joaquín. In addition to the Bible, he reads Lord Byron’s Cain (1821) and finds himself inexorably identifying with Cain. Abel completes the painting and triumphs again. Joaquín swallows his bitterness and gives a banquet in Abel’s honor, making a speech so eloquent that he increases Abel’s fame considerably.

As Abelín and Joaquina grow up, the young Abelín decides to study medicine and eventually joins Joaquín as an assistant in his medical office. Joaquín takes heart when he learns that Abelín has little love for his father, whom he regards as a self-contained, rather selfish person. Eventually, Abelín and Joaquina marry. Their first child is a son, whom they name Joaquín. Joaquín tries incessantly to win the affections of his grandson, but as the child grows older, he seems to prefer Abel. Finally, Joaquín, desperately longing for the love of his grandson, approaches his old friend and begs him not to take the boy’s love from him, as he has taken everything else during their lifetime. At Abel’s cold response, Joaquín angrily grips him by the throat to choke him, but he does not kill him. In that instant, Abel suffers a heart attack. The horror of the moment is intensified as Joaquín realizes that his grandson, too young to comprehend fully the situation, has watched the “murder” from the doorway. The child flees, as if from a madman.

Joaquín is a reflection of the first rebel, the first to fall from grace—Satan himself. His surname, Monegro, insinuates into the reader’s consciousness the suggestion of “Monseigneur de Negro”—the Prince of Darkness. This parallel is established in a conversation between Joaquín and Helena. Joaquín confesses to her that he plans to find a mate and get married, but he fears his inability to love. “That’s what Don Mateo, the priest, says of the devil—that he can’t love,” observes Helena.

The devil, then, is the antithesis of God. If God is love, the devil is the negation of love; hence, Joaquín speaks bitterly of the “eternal hatred” that freezes his breast (his reference to the “dragón de hielo,” or “ice dragon,” recalls Dante’s ninth circle of Hell, reserved for those who had committed some act of treachery against love). On his deathbed, Joaquín’s last confession consists of an open admission to his wife, Antonia, that he has never loved her; love, he grants, would have saved him, but he has been incapable of loving. Joaquín’s life is cankered by envy, the vice that caused the devil’s downfall.

Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr

If Joaquín is a devil figure, Don Manuel in Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr is diametrically opposite. Manuel Bueno, the priest of the village of Valverde de Lucerna, with tremendous personal magnetism, draws the entire village into a faith in life and Christ while he himself agonizes in the conviction that there is nothing after death: no life, no hope, nothing.

The archetype for this work, especially the life-death cycle, is first established in the author’s choice of proper names. Manuel (from Immanuel, meaning “God with us”) is clearly a Christ figure, his name identifying his function from the outset. Angela Carballino’s name betokens at once her angelic tenderness and the fact that she, as the narrator, brings the story to the reader (Angel, from the Greek meaning “messenger”). Moreover, she represents the Good Mother or Soul Mate, for she is a life-giver. The reader knows of Manuel only through her; hence, his achievements live on through her instrumentality. Lázaro becomes a foil for Manuel’s power for creating “new life” in the irony of the Unamunian way. Manuel raises Lázaro from the deathbed of skepticism to the “new life” of awareness—the awareness of utter death.

The source for the name Blasillo is less readily apparent. Antonio Sánchez Barbudo (in Estudios sobre Unamuno y Machado, 1959) sees in the name a reflection of Unamuno’s opinion regarding one of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées (1670). Blasillo (Blas being the equivalent of Blaise), the simple believer, reflects a simple philosophy: “Drink holy water, and it will make you a believer.” More plausible, perhaps, is the theory advanced by James Russell Stamm and Herbert Eugene Isar, editors of two short novels by Unamuno, who hold that Blas is typically the name of the credulous rustic, the “rube” of Spanish tradition. He is referred to, they indicate, as a pobre idiota (poor idiot) in the novel. Unamuno has pointed out that the word “idiot” in its original Greek means simply a common or ignorant person, or, by extension, a villager. Thus, in the largest sense, Blasillo, with pitiful limitations on his awareness, symbolizes the abandonment from which all the characters suffer. Finally, with greatly compressed irony, Unamuno sets the story in a village named Valverde de Lucerna, which suggests “green valley of eternal light” (valle verde de luz eterna)—a paradise that is paradisiacal only through the villagers’ ignorance of the dark truth that Manuel hides in his bosom.

The archetypal intent of the novel is further evident in Unamuno’s treatment of the setting. Valverde de Lucerna lies “like a brooch” between the lake and the lofty mountain reflected in it. Angela continually links Manuel with the countryside, the mountain, and the lake. To her, “everything revolved around Don Manuel: Don Manuel, the lake and the mountain.” Later, alluding to the climactic moment when Lázaro receives Holy Communion, she describes Don Manuel as “white as January snow on the mountain, and moving like the surface of the lake when it is stirred by the northeasterly wind.” Water (the lake) is a symbol of the mystery of creation, as well as the source of life, the element of the security of prenatal confinement. It is also, according to Carl Jung, the most common symbol of the unconscious. Earth (the mountain) symbolizes the harvest, productivity, and—by contrast to the water symbol—consciousness. Reflecting on life, Don Manuel observes, “Have you seen, Lázaro, a greater mystery than the snow falling on the lake, and dying there, while it covers the mountain with a hood?” Snow represents death, enshrouding everything except the lake. Beneath this shroud, conscious life and achievements disappear, yet death itself disappears in the mystery of creation. Moreover, Don Manuel is torn between his conscious desire to act and the agonizing urge to return to the source of creation.

The setting provides still another symbol for the life-death cycle in the magnificent walnut tree that, even after it has dried up, continues to give life to the village—in the form of toys for the children and wood for the poor. Manuel calls the tree a matriarchal tree and fashions his coffin out of the wood of its trunk, for in his suffering, he longs to return to the primordial womb, or the origin of creation. The tree is a symbol of the Earth Mother, who gives life, harbors and protects her “children.” Manuel’s longing is repeated in his attraction for the lake, toward which he is drawn irresistibly. The lake here represents the peace of prenativity, the urge to return to the womb, the source of life.

Don Manuel seems to find in the lake the secret of his spiritual agony. Village tradition has it that after death, fortunate souls go to dwell in a city at the bottom of the lake—a city identical to their own. Part of Manuel’s “sacrificial punishment” (he suffers so that his village may be free from suffering) is that he must carry inside himself the knowledge that the heaven the people see for themselves is but a reflection of their own lives. The only life after death, as Manuel envisions it, is the essence created by the individual—that pitiful portion of one’s identity that he leaves behind in others. His mission is to keep this awful secret to himself and let the villagers dream their lives as the lake dreams the heavens.

Manuel’s yearning for the maternal confines of prenativity, reflected in both his attraction for the lake and his fascination with the walnut tree, suggests the motherhood motif, a motif elaborated more fully and literally in the two principal female figures, Don Manuel’s mother and Angela, both of whom function as Christian symbols of the life-giving, almost divine Mother. They provide an absorbing influence for Manuel’s overriding anguish. When he reaches the climactic moment of his Good Friday High Mass, his personal suffering overflows in his cry, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” At that moment, the people believe they are hearing the Lord Jesus Christ himself, his voice springing from the ancient Crucifix. On one such occasion, Manuel’s mother, hearing his words and sensing his anguish, cries out to him, “My son,” and it is as if her cry has issued from the lips of the Mater Dolorosa, “her heart transfixed by seven swords.”

Don Manuel, with the power and trust to absolve the town’s citizens of their sins, is the spiritual father of them all, but Angela, even from the beginning, senses a deeper participation in Manuel’s life and struggles than is typical of the generic body of his “flock.” She yearns for his personal protection and feels the need of his personal influence. Her opening words: I want to leave in writing my testimonyof all that I remember of that matriarchal man who pervaded the most secret life of my soul, who was my true father, the father of my spirit, the spirit of myself, Angela Carballino.

Then, following her first confession with Don Manuel, an inversion begins to take place in their relationship. Her original feelings of awe become compassion and intuitive understanding. She has already begun to fill the need for him that she originally felt was her own. She observes that, even though only a girl, she has felt the flow and stirrings of maternity, and finding herself in the confessional next to the priest, she senses his own quiet confession in the submissive murmur of his voice. As her feelings deepen, she sees herself with qualities that the reader can identify with the Good Mother, for she longs to absorb Don Manuel’s sorrow, sensing his need for solace and refuge. She says: I missed my Don Manuel, as if his absence called to me, as if he were endangered by my being so far away, as if he were in need of me. I began to feel a kind of maternal affection for my spiritual father; I longed to help him bear the cross of birth.

Finally, in her ultimate role as the redeeming Good Mother, she hears the echo of Manuel’s own mother’s voice within her, crying, “My son!” He, at last, is unable to withhold from her his awful secret, and he begs her to absolve him from blame for his pious deceit. She assumes a matriarchal priesthood that invests her with the voice of the whole village, and she absolves her confessor “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” As they leave the church, she again feels the tremblings of maternity within her.

It is in her role as both spiritual daughter and mother that she reflects the angelic qualities that her name suggests. In her relationship with Don Manuel there are also clear resonances of the Virgin Mary. Angela, who remains a virgin all of her life, becomes the immaculate spiritual mother to the Savior of Valverde de Lucerna, Don Manuel, thus assuming the same ironic qualities of deification that Unamuno vouchsafes to Manuel. She fills the function reserved in more orthodox theology for the Holy Ghost. As Manuel administers his last Communion, he whispers to Angela while giving her the Host, “Pray, my child, pray for usand pray also for Our Lord Jesus Christ.” Angela is the earthly version of the Virgin Mother, a Mother of Sorrows, to whom the tormented priest turns in his need.

Unamuno calls his hero a martyr, and so he is. A martyr gives his life for what he believes. Manuel believes in his mission: to give solace, consolation, and faith to others. He does not believe in the Resurrection or in life everlasting. On the traditional expectation that a priest should be personally engaged in that faith, a champion of his own convictions, rests the Unamunian irony: Manuel gives his life for what he does not believe. Martyrs create faith, says Unamuno; faith does not create martyrs.

Unamuno styled himself a man of contradiction and struggle, and so he proved to be. The struggle that characterized his own life finds reflections in the lives of all of his fictional offspring. Absolutes, like mirages, disappear as one draws close enough to them to feel that they are within one’s grasp. Unamuno’s characters reflect the lonely condition of humankind without God, and in this respect, Unamuno’s message has never ceased to be timely.