[In the following essay, Varey discusses how Unamumo utilizes images of puppets and puppetry as a recurring thematic motif throughout his body of work.]

“Aujourd'hui”—wrote Emile Zola in 1881—“le roman est devenu l'outil du siècle, la grande enquête sur l'homme et sur la nature.”¹ Thirty-four years later, in 1925, José Ortega y Gasset declared that the new art was to be interpreted as “un ensayo de crear puerilidad en un mundo viejo.”² Between these two quotations lies the greater part of the novelistic output of Miguel de Unamuno, and it is within the framework formed by these two contrasted attitudes to art that I shall consider some aspects of the use to which Unamuno puts the theme of puppetry in his novels. Supporting one side of this framework stands the white-coated scientist, scalpel in hand; on the other, Harlequin in his motley, a twentieth-century Harlequin, costume by Picasso and choreography by Njinsky.

The predominant art-form of the second half of the nineteenth century in Spain is the regional novel, with its stress on observation and its prolix detail. The novela bonita finds a champion in Valera, but the eclectic attitude of Pardo Bazán is more in tune with developments outside Spain:

Tengo por importante entre todos el concepto de que la novela ha dejado de ser mero entretenimiento, modo de engañar gratamente unas cuantas horas, ascendiendo a estudio-social, psicológico, histórico, pero al cabo estudio … No son menos necesarias al novelista que las galas de la fantasía, la observación y el análisis … La novela es traslado de la vida, y lo único que el autor pone en ella es su modo peculiar de ver las cosas reales³.

It is against this background that we must set Paz en la guerra (1897), Unamuno's first published novel. In a letter to Leopoldo Alas, Unamuno affirms that his novel is a spiritual autobiography, containing “toda mi niñez y juventud.”⁴ An article written in 1902 indicates clearly that the novel was the result of careful research which turned an existing short story into a detailed documentary account of Bilbao in the period of the Second Carlist War: “Sobre este cuento, así acrecentado, continuó la labor de acumulación y vino otra de asimilación; y así, mediante una serie de acumulaciones y asimilaciones de material, con la excreción consiguiente, llegué a hacer mi novela Paz en la guerra.”⁵ The prologue to the second edition (1923) affirms that “esta obra es tanto como una novela histórica una historia anovelada. Apenas hay en ella detalle que haya inventado yo. Podría documentar sus más menudos episodios.” This same prologue goes on to state that, after the publication of Paz en la guerra, Unamuno abandoned the documented realistic novel: “Después he abandonado este proceder, forjando novelas fuera de lugar y tiempo determinados, en esqueleto, a modo de dramas íntimos, y dejando para otras obras la contemplación de paisajes y celajes y marinas” (II, 73-74). The contrast between Paz en la guerra and Amor y pedagogía (1902) is indeed vivid and full of interest. In Unamuno's second novel the characters are dehumanised and the background lightly sketched in. Amor y pedagogía is in effect a reaction against the well-made novel, the near-realistic account based on fact, on research and on observation.

The reaction from the realistic or naturalist novel was inevitable, whilst the impact of this genre in its own day can of course be overestimated. 1871, which saw the publication of the first volume in the Rougon-Macquart series, was also the year in which appeared Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Humpty Dumpty is a truly Unamunian character:

“When I use a word”, Humty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”.

“The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things”.

“The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that's all”.

As the nineteenth century draws to an end, the philosophy of existence steps forward to challenge the pursuit of objectivity and the passion for totality; in place of the objective philosopher stands the passionate subjective dreamer, the individual, the unique. In the arts, the reactions from realism are many and diverse. The symbolist poets seek their world of Ideal Beauty. In painting, the artist abandons realism (doomed from the moment the first camera plate was exposed to the light) and turns within himself, seeking in his own unconscious a freedom from rational control. In the theatre, dramatists rely on intuition and suggestion; in an attempt to convey their emotions directly to the spectator, they reduce the role of the actor to a minimum. Such reactions were confined to a minority, and it is from this period that the great cleavage dates, the division between the select minority who applaud the new art, and the large majority who are hostile to it: “El arte nuevo tiene a la masa en contra suya, y la tendrá siempre. Es impopular por esencia: más aún, es antipopular.”⁶ Realism appeals, and continues to appeal, to the hombre vulgar; the new art is for the hombre egregio. The reaction, on both sides, is violent.

In the theatre, as I have said, dramatists, of whom the most important is Maeterlinck, and producers, of whom the most influential is Lugné-Pöe, reacted against the over-use of realism, the Fourth Wall of the theatre, the “slices of life” of the early cinema. Maeterlinck's plays are static; in contrast to the well-made play they lack a carefully contrived plot; the dialogue is repetitive, rhythmical, staccato; all the resources of the contemporary stage are brought into use to enhance the symbolic effect of the play. In La Princesse Maleine (1889), in Les Aveugles (1890) and in Pelléas et Mélisande (1892), relentless forces hold doomed mortals in their sway, and the characters are reduced to unrealities, to shadows, to puppets. It will be noted that Maeterlinck wrote not for puppets, but through puppets. He makes his human actors into puppets, dehumanising them.

Maeterlinck, and others, were attracted to the puppet because it allowed direct contact between the author and his public, replacing the human actor who, by concentrating the audience's attention on himself, stood so often as a mental and physical barrier between dramatist and audience. Other writers turned to the puppet for quite other reasons: the puppet could stand for the simplicity and honest enjoyment of “the People”, which Huntly Carter wished to see introduced into the theatre,⁷ or as a convenient metaphor—by no means original—to illustrate philosophical ideas. For some artists it was a self-sufficient medium, and it was these latter who helped to recreate the dying art of puppetry in Western Europe.

But in Spain, as in Italy, professional puppet players continued to survive throughout the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth. In the nineteenth century, audiences flocked to the marionette shows which every Christmas were staged in Madrid, and also in Catalonia. The theatre of La tía Norica, of Cádiz, is typical of this unsophisticated, but lively, entertainment. The toy theatre also proved very popular, and shadow puppets found special favour in Catalonia. The hand puppet, however, was the most representative of all Spanish puppets, and Don Cristóbal, the antihero of the evergreen tale of the old, petulant, suspicious husband soundly cuckolded by his young and sprightly wife, had changed very little from the time of Ramón de la Cruz. The Catalan hand puppet theatre flourished likewise throughout the century.

The interest of Spanish artists and authors in puppets at the turn of the century is clearly to be seen in Barcelona at L'Hostal dels IV Gats, where artists and puppet players came together.

It is noteworthy, however, that puppet influence in the legitimate theatre in the early years of this century does not, in Spain, suggest any intimate contact with the indigenous puppet theatre. It is the attitude of Maeterlinck which one finds reflected, for instance, in the plays of Jacinto Grau, whilst Benavente's Los intereses creados (1907) is an excellent refundición of an old theatrical genre, used to impart a very modern message. Direct contact with popular puppetry does not become a significant influence on dramatists outside Catalonia until the 1920s.

The kind of dehumanisation to be found in the plays of Grau and Benavente is not generally apparent in the novel as early as in the theatre. In the novel the typical expression of the reaction aganst realism is the growth of fantasy. Misericordia, whilst in choice of background apparently a Spanish L'Assomoir, is in effect a novel where fantasy is shown to be as essential as reason, and a more reliable spiritual guide. The little studied novels of the last period of Galdós, and the later Episodios nacionales, should also be considered in the light of the reaction against realism. The novels of Baroja, too, whilst still realistic in detail, are anti-scientific, stressing the power of will and setting it against the restrictions of reason. The Pío Cid novels of Angel Ganivet are also germane to this point. The dehumanised anti-hero, the philosophic reaction against determinist theories, show these novels to be very much of their period. But the Pío Cid novels are important in another way: Ganivet imposes a clear-cut pattern on reality, and shows his hand more clearly than does either the Galdós of Misericordia or the Baroja of the Memorias de un hombre de acción. The significant elements in the novels written about 1900, for the purpose of the present study, may be defined as the deliberate intrusion of the author into the action of the story, the stress on fantasy, and the dehumanisation of the characters.

We may now turn to consider Amor y pedagogía in the light of this reaction against realism. In a letter to Pedro Jiménez Ilundain, dated 19 October 1900, Unamuno wrote:

Voy a ensayar el género humorístico. Es una novela trágica y grotesca, en que casi todos los personajes son caricaturescos … Me esfuerzo por decirlo todo en sordina y que salga todo subrayado. La concepción fundamental es que el mundo es un teatro, y que en él cada cual no piensa más que en la galería; que mientras cree obrar por su cuenta, es que recita el papel que en la eternidad le enseñaron … En esta novela me salgo bastante de mis procedimientos usuales, volviendo a lo primero que hice, a la zumba, con propósitos trascendentales. Quiero hacer una rechifla amarga y fundir, no yuxtaponer meramente, lo trágico, lo grotesco y lo sentimental.⁸

In a further letter to José Enrique Rodó, dated 13 December 1900, Unamuno described the proposed work as “una novela pedagógica-humorística, en que pienso fundir, fundir y no mezclar, elementos grotescos y trágicos, y tal vez le pongo a modo de epílogo un ensayo sobre lo grotesco como cara de lo trágico.”⁹ A letter of 6 June 1901 to Pedro Corominas suggests that the novel may be considered by others as an “excusa para verter una porción de cosas que me cocían dentro. La forma humorística me permitirá decir ciertas crudezas.”¹⁰

These references by the author to his work in progress throw into relief various points of interest to the present study. In the first place, the form and manner are deliberately chosen; points are to be heavily underlined; the characters are to be caricatures, playing their parts upon the stage; there is to be an epilogue in the form of an essay on the grotesque as an aspect of tragedy.

The characters of Amor y pedagogía are clearly unreal. The first intention of the author was, as we have seen, to make them grotesque caricatures, dependent entirely on their author. But, as Ribbans has pointed out, the author's intentions were to some extent modified in practice. “In the finished novel,” he comments, “the characters do not so evidently play up to the gallery” as was Unamuno's stated intention.¹¹ It should be emphasised, however, that the metaphor of the world as a stage does play an important part in the novel. It is pertinent to inquire how far, indeed, the characters can be said to be mere caricatures. In a penetrating study, López Morillas divides the characters of this period into the antagonistas (those who react against their environment) and the agonistas (those whose struggle is within themselves).¹² Ribbans has recently corrected this view slightly by suggesting that Don Fulgencio Entrambosmares represents a transitional stage between antagonista and agonista.¹³ Viewed in this light, the characters are anything but simple caricatures, and Unamuno's dismissal of them as “desdibujados …, muñecos que el autor pasa por el escenario mientras él habla” (Prologue of 1902; II, 424), can be seen to be a deliberate over-simplification.

References to the Maese Pedro episode in Don Quijote appear to reinforce the view that the characters are puppets or ventriloquist's dummies. Clavería has already indicated the significance of this theme, and has linked it to the época carlyliana which he destinguished in Unamuno's development.¹⁴ Just as, in Carlyle's History of the French Revolution, the hand of the author is consistently and unmistakably seen on the stage, so, Unamuno considered, the author should dominate his characters, picking them up and setting them down at will, using them as the vehicles of his ideas.¹⁵ In the epilogue particularly, this point is underlined. As Maese Pedro picks up his shattered figures in the inn after Don Quixote's attack, so Unamuno ruefully contemplates his characters after the catastrophe.

This view, however, needs some modification, for the author shows further that his characters have striven to acquire a life of their own, independent of their creator, a striving which he characterises as la morcilla, the gag: “Morcilla se llama … a lo que meten los actores por su cuenta en sus recitales, a lo que añaden a la obra del autor dramático.” “¡Por la morcilla sobreviviremos los que sobrevivimos!” says don Fulgencio (II, 473-474). Ribbans sees this as the “origin of the conflict between author and character in Niebla.”¹⁶ Its significance for the study of Amor y pedagogía is no less profound. In his epilogue, Unamuno wrote: “Y en cuanto a cambiar el desenlace, no me era posible; no soy quien ha dado vida a don Avito, a Marina, a Apolodoro, sino son ellos los que han prendido vida en mí después de haber andado errantes por los limbos de la inexistencia” (II, 568). The characters, then, are not puppets at all, or, more precisely, have ceased to be puppets in the course of the writing of the novel.

If we now turn to consider the structure of this novel we find that Unamuno's stated intentions have again undergone modification, the suggested epilogue on the grotesque as an aspect of tragedy being replaced by the Apuntes para un tratado de cocotología, humorously introduced by the author as an attempt on his part to fill out his novel to the length prescribed by the publisher. The structure of Amor y pedagogía has been much criticised. Clavería writes: “Amor y pedagogía prueba vacilaciones de un ensayista que, habiendo escrito una novela autobiográfica con recuerdos de infancia e historia civil de su pueblo, se mete a autor de cuentos y novelas sin saber por dónde se anda.”¹⁷ For Ribbans the prologue, epilogue, Apuntes and so forth of this novel are “sympotoms of uncertainty,” whilst in Niebla they are deliberate. Niebla, he says, is tidier than the earlier novel, where “there are many loose ends.”¹⁸ But Ribbans also established an important parallel between the Tratado de cocotología and Teufeldröckh's Philosophy of Clothes,¹⁹ Carlyle being an author much in Unamuno's mind at this period and his Sartor resartus being referred to in the epilogue. In a recent study, García Blanco sees the Apuntes as “un complemento lógico de una novela humorística-pedagógica … Su traza externa es la de un tratado científico, con ilustraciones, planos, dibujos, etcétera. Su contenido, el de un arte de hacer pajaritas de papel. Su tono, deliberadamente burlón.”²⁰ The key-note of the Apuntes is evidently the burlesque, mocking manner in which Unamuno presents them to the reader. Their existence should be considered, I believe, in relation to the typical realistic novel, and as a reaction to that novel.

The clue to the significance of the Apuntes is to be found in an interesting essay of 1888, brought to light by the indefatigable García Blanco, in which Unamuno speaks of pajaritas as “la gran diversión de mis primeros años … ¡Qué silenciosa, qué obediente y sumisa es una pajarita de papel …,” a significant exclamation, linking the pajarita with the puppet.

Brotaron de la materia cuando les llamé a vida, vivieron a mi albedrío y cuando, enojado de niñerías, les arrojé al olvido se fueron, tan resignados como habían venido. Cada vez que veo o hago una pajarita de papel recuerdo mis alegres días …, el germinar de mis ideas, la formación lenta de mi espíritu y todo aquel mundo vivo, variado y fresco que después de enriquecer mi fantasía y excitar mi inteligencia fue a morir al rincón oscuro donde mueren los juguetes dedeñados.²¹

The pajarita de papel, then, should be seen as one of the ways in which Unamuno tried to recapture his childhood: all Unamuno's work can be seen as an attempt to recapture the simple faith of childhood, and is Recuerdos de niñez y de mocedad, his first autobiographical novel, his constant interest in children, can all be equated with the creative activity entailed in the construction of pajaritas.²² The pajarita is an emblem of this nostalgia; at the same time it is a puppet in the hands of its maker. Here, then, is the link between the Apuntes and the novel proper: the creation of inanimate objects and the creation of characters, both of which enable the author to break out of the bonds of rational thought, either by the recapturing of childhood innocence, or by the apparent creation of vital beings. The pajarita, as well as the pupper-character and the novel itself, is, and must be, vivípara.²³

The pajarita de papel, I have suggested, is to be related to the use of the puppet metaphor in Amor y pedagogía and, in order to appreciate the relationship of the Apuntes to the novel proper, one must read the novel in the light of the general Western European reaction against realism. If the content of the novel is anti-Hegelian, the form is anti-Zola.

A comparison of Unamuno's handling of the theme of the puppet in this novel with the brief sketch of popular puppetry which I have given shows clearly that it is impossible to see this novel as deliberately stemming from the popular puppetry of the day; nor does it reflect or anticipate the artistic developments of puppetry already in hand outside Spain. The concept of the literary character as helpless in the hands of his creator may appear at first sight to parallel Maeterlinck's interpretation of the human being as the marionnette, in the grip of deep passions and influences. The source of the puppet metaphor in Unamuno is, however, literary and castizo: the topos of the world as a stage is reinforced by reference to the episode of Maese Pedro in Part II of Don Quijote. And the concept of the puppet finally breaks down: the “system” is challenged by the “unique”. Avito may reply to Leoncia's question: “¿Le gustan a Vd. las flores?” with a dry, pedantic, uncomprehending: “¿Cómo estudiar botánica sin ellas?” (II, 443), but the story teaches us that the individual flower is more important than Linnaeus's system. “Que no te clasifiquen” is the advice of don Fulgencio (II, 507). And the puppet comes to life in the hands of his author, interpolating the gag which was not in the script.

Unamuno's use of puppetry in this novel is original in that he turns his back on contemporary artistic interest, spurns the popular puppet-show, and, basing himself on a literary reference to puppets, evolves a variant which admirably reflects his philosophical attitude. His puppets are not dehumanised human beings, but ventriloquist's dummies which come to life.

In the 1934 edition of Amor y pedagogía Unamuno wrote that: “En esta novela … está en germen—y más que en germen—lo más y lo mejor de lo que he revelado después en mis otras novelas” (II, 429). One can indeed see foreshadowed in this novel two of the most important themes of his later writings: the theme of “el engañoso realismo de la apariencialidad,” and the theme of the relation between puppet and puppet-master, between character and author, between Man and his Creator.²⁴

Both these themes are to be found side by side in Niebla (1914). In this novel the apparent conflict between dream and reality is resolved: paradoxically, dream and reality are one. “Mi Eugenia,” cries Augusto Pérez, “sí, la mía, ésta que me estoy forjando a solas, y no la otra, no la de carne y hueso …, aparición fortuita” (II, 810). This insistence on inner reality at the expense of outward appearance explains the bareness of these “relatos dramáticos acezantes, de realidades íntimas, entrañadas, sin bambalinas ni realismos en que suele faltar la verdadera, la eterna realidad, la realidad de la personalidad” (Prologue to the second edition of Amor y pedagogía, 1934; OC [Obras completas], II, 429). The niebla of the title describes the vague background of the novel, but also suggests that author and characters are, like Antonio Machado, “siempre buscando a Dios entre la niebla.”

If outward appearances are misleading, then there arises again the problem of personality. “¿De dónde ha brotado Eugenia?” asks Augusto. “¿Es ella una creación mía o soy creación suya yo?, ¿o somos los dos creaciones mutuas, ella de mí y yo de ella? ¿No es acaso todo creación de cada cosa y cada cosa creación de todo?” (II, 835-836). Augusto Pérez is, however, more than a point of view, and more than a fictional being. In Unamuno's view, he exists, or, more importantly, he wills his survival.

In the prologue to the second edition of Abel Sánchez (1928), Unamuno writes: “Todos los personajes que crea un autor, si los crea con vida, todas las criaturas de un poeta, aun las más contradictorias entre sí—y contradictorias en sí mismas—son hijas naturales y legítimas de su autor—¡feliz si autor de sus siglos!—, son partes de él” (II, 1004). But this view of the created character as a part of the author is considerably modified in the Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (1905), where Unamuno proposes that the fictional character has a life of its own, independent of its creator, being brought to life, or relived, by each successive reader: “¿Que mi Don Quijote y mi Sancho no son los de Cervantes? ¿Y qué? Los Don Quijotes y Sanchos vivos en la eternidad … no son exclusivamente de Cervantes ni míos, ni de ningún soñador que les sueñe, sino que cada uno los hace revivir” (Prologue to the third edition of Niebla, 1935; II, 789-799). In Cómo se hace una novela (1927), we read that “cuando se hace lector hácese por lo mismo autor, o sea actor … Esto que ahora lees aquí, lector, te lo estás diciendo tú a ti mismo y es tan tuyo como mío” (X, 911). The character, then, is more than a part of the author; it is reborn by an act of volition on the part of the reader. But in Niebla Unamuno goes even further, for there the created character achieves a life independent of his creator, and, at the same time, points out the similarity between his own situation and the human predicament. Augusto Pérez, the created, confronts Miguel de Unamuno, his creator, and when Unamuno informs Augusto that he has decided that the latter must die, Augusto reacts in an Unamunesque fashion, willing his own survival: “Ahora que usted quiere matarme, quiero yo vivir, vivir, vivir …” (II, 981). He dies, but, as he does so, he affirms that his creator, too, will perish: “¡Dios dejará de soñarle! ¡Se morirá usted, sí, se morirá, aunque ni lo quiera; se morirá usted y se morirán todos los que lean mi historia, todos, todos, todos, sin quedar uno! ¡Entes de ficción como yo; lo mismo que yo! Se morirán todos, todos, todos” (II, 982). Augusto is in the abyss, and it is the fear of annihilation which provokes his will to live, just as the tragic sense of life awakens Unamuno's violent and irrational statement of faith. The puppet has become here the symbol of the dependence of the created thing on its creator, but, like some of the characters of Amor y pedagogía, the puppet achieves a life of its own.

This theme can be traced in various ways in Unamuno's later works. Zubizarreta has recently analysed the theme of “el teatro de la vida”, of importance particularly in Unamuno's plays.²⁵ Hamlet is more real than his audience:

¿Cosa de teatro Hamlet? ¿Hamlet cosa de teatro? No; Hamlet no es cosa de teatro; no lo es Segismundo; no lo es Prometeo; no lo es Brand … Los que son cosas de teatro son los actuales ministros de la Corona y los diputados y los senañores; lo que sois cosa de teatro, Pablo, sois vosotros, todos los hombres … públicos. Pero ¿Hamlet? ¿Hamlet cosa de teatro? ¡Es más real y más actual que vosotros todos! ¡Como Don Quijote!

(Soledad; OC, XII, 632)

This same view is to be found in Sombras de sueño: “Los que parecemos de carne y hueso no somos sino entes de ficción, sombras, fantasmas, y esos que andan por los cuadros y los libros y los que andamos por los escenarios del teatro de la historia somos los de verdad, los duraderos” (XII, 789). It is highly significant that one of Unamuno's projected works was a play on the theme of Maese Pedro (XII, 179).

I have endeavoured to demonstrate that the earlier work of Unamuno should be considered in the light of developments in literature at the turn of the century, and in particular in regard to the manifold reactions against realism. Two aspects of this reaction are the non-realistic novel, and the use of the puppet as metaphor, symbol or vehicle. Writing in the 1920s, Ortega suggests that the writer no longer endeavours to concentrate equally on manner (la obra de arte) and matter (la realidad humana que en la obra está aludida). Using the metaphor of a man looking through a window at a garden, he says: “Ver el jardín y ver el vidrio de la ventana son dos operaciones incompatibles: la una excluye a la otra y requiere acomodaciones oculares diferentes” (III, 358). In Amor y pedagogía, to extend this metaphor, Unamuno heaves a brick through the window and, thrusting his head through the shattered glass, wills himself to inhale the very essence of the flowers. Attempting to avoid the banalities of the realistic novel he turns his characters into caricatures, into puppets, but those puppet figures which show a will to survive come to have a life of their own, and, like Unamuno himself in his abyss of doubt, cry: “¡Quiero vivir!” Maese Pedro becomes Pygmalion, and the grotesque caricatures with a will to live, so many unbidden Galateas.

Notes

1. Les Romanciers naturalistes (Paris, 1881), p. 331.

2. “La deshumanización del arte”, in Obras Completas (Madrid, 1957-1962), III, 384.

3. Emilia Pardo Bazán, preface to Un viaje de novios (Madrid, 1881), pp. 7-8.

4. Letter of 9 May 1900, in Epistolario a Clarín, ed. Adolfo Aalas (Madrid, 1941), p. 97. Unless otherwise stated, references to the works of Unamuno are to the Obras Completas, 16 vols. (Madrid, Vergara, 1958).

5. “Escritor ovíparo”, in Las Noticias, Barcelona, 19 April, 1902; quoted in OC, II, 15.

6. Ortega y Gasset, OC, III, 354.

7. Huntly Carter, The New Spirit in Drama and Art (London, 1912), p. 10.

8. Quoted in OC, II, 19-20.

9. Quoted by M. García Blanco, “Amor y pedagogía, nivola unamuniana”, LT, IX (1961), 450.

10. Quoted in OC, II, 20.

11. Geoffrey Ribbans, “The development of Unamuno's novels: Amor y pedagogía and Niebla», Hispanic Studies in Honour of I. González Lluvera (Oxford, 1959), p. 272.

12. Juan López Morillas, “Unamuno y sus criaturas: Antonio S. Paparrigópulos”, in Intelectuales y espirituales (Madrid, 1961), pp. 11-39. The article was published originally in CA, VIII (1948), 234-249.

13. Ribbans, pp. 279-282.

14. Carlos Clavería, “Unamuno y Carlyle”, in Temas de Unamuno (Madrid, 1953), pp. 9-58. See especially the essay “Maese Pedro”, OC, III, 522-532.

15. Compare the way in which, within the novel itself, Apolodoro becomes a ventriloquist's dummy for the ideas of Menaguti.

16. Ribbans, p. 280.

17. Clavería, p. 41.

18. Ribbans, p. 276.

19. Ribbans, p. 273.

20. LT, IX (1961), 462, 465.

21. LT, IX (1961), 470.

22. “¡Ah, qué triste es después de una niñez y juventud de fe sencilla haberla perdido en vida ultraterrena, y buscar en nombre, fama y vanagloria un miserable remedo de ella!” Letter to Clarín of 5 May 1900, Epistolario a Clarín, ed. Adolfo Alas (Madrid, 1941), p. 86. Antonio Sánchez Barbudo, “Sobre la concepción de Paz en la guerra”, in Estudios sobre Unamuno y Machado (Madrid, 1959), pp. 62-65, equates this with the references to erostratismo in Amor y pedagogía; see also Ribbans, p. 281. For a study of the theme of the retorno a la niñez, see Armando F. Zubizarreta, Unamuno en su nivola (Madrid, 1960), pp. 250-257.

23. Cf. the satirical letter which Unamuno wrote in 1902 to a South-American periodical, Caras y caretas, which had printed an article on cocotología: “Hoy por hoy la cocotología sufre también la lepra darwiniana y hay quien se empeña en probarme que ha surgido por evolución la pajarita que les remito, estando, como estoy, cierto de que la he creado yo; aunque fuera partiendo de otras figuras.” Quoted in LT, IX (1961), 471.

24. Cf. Sánchez Barbudo, p. 64.

25. Zubizarreta, pp. 145-148, 312-316.