[In the following essay, Balseiro comments on the works and life of Unamuno, arguing that Unamuno himself was a quixotic thinker.]

In his essay on Hamlet and Don Quixote, Ivan Tourguéniev stated that no man aspires to be called a Quixote. The Russian novelist did not presurmise the dream of Miguel de Unamuno. If the Knight-Errant makes clear that his duty binds him to protect the weak, relieve the oppressed, and punish the bad, Unamuno accepts and practices his creed. But Unamuno, being by far more quixotic than Cervantes, interprets the psychology of his hero, adapting it to his own way of feeling and thinking. In his work Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, he says, in relation to another of his masterpieces, Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho:

Escribí aquel libro para repensar el Quijote contra cervantistas y eruditos, para hacer obra de vida de lo que era y sigue siendo para los más letra muerta. ¿Qué me importa lo que Cervantes quiso o no quiso poner allí y lo que realmente puso? Lo vivo es lo que yo allí descubro, pusiéralo o no Cervantes, lo que yo allí pongo y sobrepongo y sotopongo, y lo que ponemos allí todos. Quise allí rastrear nuestra filosofía.

Pues abrigo cada vez más la convicción de que nuestra filosofía, la filosofía española, está líquida y difusa en nuestra literatura, en nuestra vida, en nuestra acción, en nuestra mística, sobre todo, y no en sistemas filosóficos.¹

And he who was destined to accomplish deeds worthy of the Adventurer of La Mancha has done his utmost to heighten Quixotism to the level of a national religion:²

… donde acaso hemos de ir a buscar el héroe de nuestro pensamiento, no es a ningún filósofo que viviera en carne y hueso, sino a un ente de ficción y de acción, más real que los filósofos todos; es a Don Quijote. Porque hay un quijotismo filosófico, sin duda, pero también una filosofía quijotesca. ¿Es acaso otra en el fondo la de los conquistadores, la de los contrareformadores, la de Loyola, y sobre todo, ya en el orden del pensamiento abstracto, pero sentido, la de nuestros místicos? ¿Qué era la mística de San Juan de la Cruz sino una caballería andante del sentimiento a lo divino?

Has Quixotism been the national religion of Spain? Not according to Unamuno. For this reason he has striven to awaken her to that religion. To his mind, Spain indulged herself in indolence and repose. And he wants Spaniards to live lives of disquietude and passionate desire:³

Procura vivir en continuo vértigo pasional, dominado por una pasión cualquiera. Sólo los apasionados llevan a cabo obras verdaderamente duraderas y fecundas. Cuando oigas de alguien que es impecable, en cualquiera de los sentidos de esta estúpida palabra, huye de él; sobre todo si es artista.

He thinks that Spain will never have a powerful and glorious external life until there is kindled in the hearts of her people the fire of eternal anxiety. He condemns the very excess of prudence of his contemporaries, and affirms that facing ridicule with serenity is the only way of achieving a real triumph:⁴

Es el valor que más falta nos hace: el de afrontar el ridículo. El ridículo es el arma que manejan todos los miserables bachilleres, barberos, curas, canónigos y duques que guardan escondido el sepulcro del Caballero de la Locura.

For Unamuno, the courage of the purest water is that which resists not merely a shock to the reason or decay of fortune or loss of honor, but also being taken for a madman or an idiot. This is the courage needed in Spain, and her soul remains paralysed because of the lack of it. Things are so much the truer the more they are believed; and it is not intelligence but will that imposes them upon the world. It is courage that creates all truth. Therefore Unamuno fights against positivism and technicism, against all—periods and doctrines—essentially materialistic and pessimistic. Don Quixote did not stand for ideas, but for the spirit. Unamuno's struggle has always been a spiritual one.

When Don Quixote was going to die he dictated his will and bequeathed all his estate to his niece, under one condition:⁵

… es mi voluntad que si Antonia Quijana, mi sobrina, quisiere casarse, se case con hombre de quien primero se haya hecho información que no sabe qué cosas sean libros de caballerías; y en caso que se averiguase que lo sabe, y, con todo eso, mi sobrina quisiere casarse con él, y se casare, pierda todo lo que le he mandado, etc.

Unamuno believes that he who dictated such a will was the mortal Don Quixote, not the real, not the eternal one always solicitous to act as a reliever of the oppressed and a punisher of the bad. In Don Quixote's niece Unamuno recognizes modern Spain; and discovers in her future husband who was never conversant in books of chivalry the young men at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Consequently, when Unamuno published, in 1905, his Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, he was desperate, thinking that Don Quixote's last will appeared faithfully executed. He hates the timorous, home-keeping, narrow-souled niece and young men that renounced all knight-errantry in order to enjoy the estates left by the reasonable, not by the divinely heroic adventurer.

In that way the religion of Quixotism became the politics of Quixotism. Unamuno has pressed closely his metaphysical ear to the heart of his people. He has succeeded in accelerating the rhythm of its withering heart, not by means of intellectual subtleties nor of abstract philosophy but by virtue of piercing strokes capable of producing painful and profitable wounds. His staunch friend and admirable English translator, Mr. J. E. Crawford Flitch, wrote in his introduction to Unamuno's anthology of Essays and Soliloquies:⁶

The impulse towards action and the exertion of personal influence which forms one of the dominant features of Unamuno's character, finds a considerable part of its expression in his participation in the public affairs of his country. He has little patience with the view that the scholar or professor ought to stand aside from the larger issues of the day in order to devote all energies to perfecting himself as a machine for grinding out erudition and culture. Indeed, he considers that politics are themselves an invaluable instrument of culture, in that for large masses of people they provide the principle, perhaps the only avenue of approach to consideration of general ideas. Devoting himself in his political activities primarily to the exposition of these general ideas, the basic principles of citizenship, Unamuno has always evinced a whole-hearted contempt for that preoccupation with political machinery and an intrigue which tends to make the professional politician, particularly perhaps in Spain, little more than an electioneerer. Unamuno is among the prophets rather than the politicians, and his followers form not a party but a band of disciples.

Unamuno is a master of faith, a champion of truth, a propagandist of ridicule in the noble way already explained. Unamuno is a worshipper of doubt. These are verses of his second Salmo:⁷

No te ama, oh Verdad, quien nunca duda,
La vida es duda,
y la fe sin la duda es sólo muerte.

Do we find, in the case of Unamuno, the man of action at one with the man of spirit? Decidedly so. In the first pages of his book Contra ésto y aquéllo (1912), he asks:⁸

¿De qué me serviría predicar a los cuatro vientos el evangelio de Don Quijote, si llegada la occasión no me metiese en quijoterías por los mismos pasos porque él se metió? Encontrarse él con algo que le pareciese desmán o entuerto y arremeter, era todo uno.

Further on he adds: “quien predica el quijotismo, quijotece.” Unamuno never stopped to determine the moment or to choose his adventures. All of them seemed to him opportune to correct evil doings, propitious to defend, with lofty unselfishness, truth and the soul of Spain.

In 1891 he won the professorship of Greek in the University of Salamanca, of which he became rector in 1901. Did he then withdraw from national politics and devote himself wholly to academic duties? No. Just as Don Quixote lived twelve years for his Dulcinea, dreaming of victories and suffering his failures, and—according to the order of chivalry-errant—was obliged to live always upon his guard, being at all hours his own sentinel, so Unamuno has been constantly and unflinchingly alert in behalf of Spain for over thirty years. He attacked, whenever he believed it necessary, the government from whose officers he had received his appointment. He was discharged. He published two articles censuring Alfonso XIII, and he was sentenced to sixteen years of imprisonment for a crime of lèse-majesté. Without soliciting it he was pardoned. And the condonation, rather than pacifying him, stirred him the more. He seemed to desire that in the future of his country Napoleon's observation should be fully realized: the Bourbons might have preserved themselves if they had controlled writing materials.⁹ When Unamuno reentered the University of Salamanca—where he taught, besides Greek, the history of the Spanish language—it was not to soften his rebelliousness.

Following the disaster of the Spanish army in Morocco, in 1921, Unamuno's pen and voice carried on unchecked, stirring public opinion into demanding a disclosure of responsibilities, beginning with the king and terminating with the last culprit. It was then, in the Ateneo de Madrid in the year 1922, that I saw and heard Unamuno for the first time. With soul-stirring speech, rhetorically incorrect, but virile and dramatic, he stigmatized the Bourbons, pausing to discharge his rancor upon Ferdinand VII, and his scorn upon Alfonso XIII, whom he despises as a Hapsburg and whom he always associates with Charles II, El hechizado.¹⁰ An intellectual audience—an audience teeming with free spirits, with disciples of Unamuno—thrilled in deep and patriotic vibrations. His speech was desperate and hopeful. In it he mixed the most piercing satire, aimed to hurt the disloyal Spaniards, with the most spirited tenderness with which to defend Spain. And in order to belittle the more those who publicly and miserably denounced him as crazy—believing thus to humiliate him—Don Miguel offered a hymn to madness reminding us that Columbus, Joan of Arc, and—again and always—Don Quixote, were also insane in their own way. Spain was in need of this type of lunatics. The derangement of mind of the Admiral, of the Maiden of Orleans, and of the Hidalgo was an illusion: and vision is what moves nations to go forward.

From one Spanish city to another, Unamuno went on, sowing restlessness where there was indifference, sharpening the critical sense of the obtuse, polishing the sensibility of the masses, virilizing the civility of a nation that had lost ten thousand young lives in only one combat of an unjust and futile war. His crusade was so impressive that the collective consciousness began visibly to manifest itself against the government. Alfonso XIII lost ground; the commanding staff of the army lost prestige. It became necessary for the state to save the crown, and the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera solved the crisis of the moment on the thirteenth of September, 1923. Unamuno then increased his protest, more upon his guard than ever. Respected and loved by the best of Europe—the greatest religious poet of contemporary Spanish literature, the genial fictionist of Niebla and Abel Sánchez, the spiritualist of Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, the landscape painter of Por tierras de Portugal y de España, the most original and audacious commentator of Don Quixote, the profound and original essayist—Unamuno was exiled without trial to Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands.

From Salamanca Don Miguel went to Cádiz. Just as Don Quixote asked the innkeeper to excuse him from paying anything—for he would by no means break the laws which the knights-errant were bound to observe—Unamuno refused to pay his hotel bills during the days he was an outcast under the Spanish flag. He refused because he carried with him the personality of Spain—“conmigo llevé a la isla la personalidad de Espana”—as he explained at the foot of his Sonnet XLII¹¹ and because he was bearing with him, as he himself wrote on January 1928:¹²

lo más íntimo del alma de nuestro pueblo, su esencia eterna, su divina sobrerazón de ser, el jugo de su cristiandad quijotesca, al conocimiento y al entendimiento de los pueblos de lenguas latinas, anglosajónicas, germánicas, eslavas … a la humanidad civilizada

The Dukes made fun of Don Quixote more than once in a plebeian mood. The Marqués de Estella (Primo de Rivera) not only exiled Unamuno, but at exactly a month from his banishment gave to the press a note that, in part, read as follows:¹³

Para mí, Unamuno no es sabio ni nada que se le parezca, y de ello estamos todos convencidos en España, donde hace falta quitarle la careta. Pero conviene que en el extranjero se le dé el lugar que le corresponde, sin apoteosis ni homenajes que resultan un poco ridículos.

… Es preciso que nos demos cuenta de quién es el señor Unamuno. Yo creo que un poco de cultura helénica no da derecho a meterse con todo lo humano y lo divino y a desbarrar sobre todas las demás cuestiones. Ahora se entretiene en enviar cartas a sus amigos de España diciéndole que no satisfará ningún gasto que le ocasione su estancia en el destierro, y que estos gastos tendrán que abonarlos las autoridades. También habla de que apelará a rifas y a otras cosas por el estilo para proporcionarse recursos. Si vuelve a escurrirse, lo meteremos en cintura y nada más, sin temor a esa protesta de que habló cuando se le impuso el castigo que merecía.

We have to comment on the remarks of the Marqués, in order better to know Unamuno. In the first place, Unamuno has rejected on all occasions, with all his might, the epithet of “sabio” or scholar, even if he possesses more universal culture than any of his contemporaries in Spain. He has rejected it, not on account of modesty: he is too forcible to feign humility, and too well informed, and too well read to make a false show of ignorance. He has spurned it because what interests him infinitely more than the researcher, than the thinker, than the writer, than the artist, is the man of flesh and bone: “el hombre de carne y hueso.” Unamuno is, as he himself said the Argentine Sarmiento was, a noble and unselfish egotist—“noble y desinteresado egotista.”¹⁴

The point that in Spain “we are all convinced” that Unamuno is not a “sabio” is disproved by the fact that almost all the leading professors, intellectuals, and writers of the nation—Menéndez Pidal, Cajal, Marañón, Azorín, Benavente, Fernando de los Ríos, Valle Inclán, Madariaga Zulueta, Antonio Machado—have expressed their admiration for this many-sided genius, who has left his imprint in Spanish philosophy, philology, poetry, drama, fiction, and the essay. “It is necessary,” said the Marqués, “that in foreign countries he should be given his proper place without any apotheosis or homages which are somewhat ridiculous.” However, Croce, Papini, and d'Annunzio in Italy; Keyserling and Curtius in Germany; Havelock Ellis and Aubrey F. G. Bell in England; Romain Rolland, Paul Valéry, André Gide, and Elie Fauré in France—to mention only a few Europeans of a first-class list—are counted among the most devoted panegyrists of Unamuno.

“I believe that a little Hellenic culture does not give the right to meddle with that which is human and divine”—insisted the general. This case recalls that of Carducci when he was a candidate for the Italian Congress. As Carducci was a poet, his enemies did not wish to forget that Plato refused a place to the poets in his Republic. To this Carducci answered, with magnificence:¹⁵

Veramente i nostri avversari sono d'accordo con Platone, che primo bandí i poeti dalla repubblica. Ma quella repubblica platoniana era piú lirica d'un'ode di Pindaro; e a Platone poi pareva che non disconvenisse ai filosofi il disputare su'l logos nelle corti dei tiranni di Sicilia. Solone, per contro, componeva elegie, e pure, potendo farsi tiranno della patria, la dotava invece d'una constituzione che fece la gloria e la grandezze di Atene. Gittandoci in faccia, come qualificazione di inabilità politica, il nome di poeta, gli avversari mostrano di non conoscere altra poesia che quella d'Arcadia. E non ricordano qual tempera di cittadino fosse Giovanni Milton, che fece con potenti scritti l'apologia del popolo d'Inghilterra contro le usurpazioni dello Stuart. E non ricordano che la Germania mandò a discutere nel parlamento di Francfort le leggi dell a sua nazionale riconstituzione Ludovico Uhland, per il merito di avere gloriosamente cantato le tradizioni e le aspirazioni del suo popolo e dottamente illustrato la storia della poesia tedesca; e il nobile vecchio poeta fu pari alla sua gloria e degno della fiducia della patria, sopportando magnanimo i maltrattamenti della violenza militare che disciolse gli ultimi avanzi dell'Assemblea nazionale. E non ricordano, che, caduta nell'ignominia, per gli errori di un dottrinario, Franceso Guizot, la monarchia borghese di Luigi Filippo, un poeta, il Lamartine, oppose per intiere giornate la sua eloquenza ed il petto ai furori di piazza, e, a rischio della fama edella vita, salvò almeno l'onore francese e la bandiera tricolore. E in Italia, per aver fatto dei versi che non dispiacciono, ci si vorrebbe togliere i diritti civili! in Italia! Presento quel che mi possono opporre gli avversari—Ma voi non siete né il Milton né l'Uhland né il Lamartine.—Né voi, che bandite i poeti dallo stato, siete Platoni.

The Marqués threatened to keep Unamuno “in a state of subjection.” The sixteenth of May, 1924, this indomitable Don Miguel wrote:¹⁶

Al sol de la verdad pongo desnuda
mi alma; la verdad es la justicia
que a la postre a la historia siempre enjuicia
y ante la cual pura la fe no muda.
Él me enseñó a cantar con mi voz ruda
lo que otros callan y al perverso enjuicia
y me enseñó a escapar de la avaricia
de dones del Espíritu; Él me escuda.
Doy lo que Dios me dió, pues mi talento
moral no entierro por temor al amo;
mal le sirve el cobarde, el avariento;
voy a su ley de amor como a reclamo,
echo mi entera mies al libre viento
que deja el grano y que se lleva el tamo.

Three days afterwards, in Sonnet XVII, he despairs of patriotism because he has placed in the heart of Spain the gospel of Don Quixote and the Spanish people continue to fawn at the feet of him who kicks them:¹⁷

Tu evangelio, mi señor Don Quijote,
al pecho de tu pueblo cual venablo
lancé, y el muy bellaco en el establo
sigue lamiendo el mango de su azote.
Y pues que en él no hay de tu seso un brote,
me vuelvo a los gentiles y les hablo
tus hazañas, haciendo de San Pablo
de tu fe, ya que así me toca en lote.
He de salvar el alma de mi España,
empeñada en hundirse en el abismo
con su barca, pues toma por cucaña
lo que es maste, y llevando tu bautismo
de burlas de pasión a gente extraña
forjaré universal el quijotismo.

At times he breaks forth in a lyrical interlude, as his Sonnet LX, one of the most beautiful in contemporary Spanish poetry, in which he sings:

Es una antorcha al aire esta palmera,
verde llama que busca al sol desnudo
para beberle sangre; en cada nudo
de su tronco cuajó una primavera.
Sin bretes ni eslabones, altanera
y erguida, pisa el yermo seco y rudo,
para la miel del cielo es un embudo
la copa de sus venas, sin madera.
No se retuerce ni se quiebra al suelo;
no hay sombra en su follaje, es luz cuajada
que en ofrenda de amor se alarga al cielo,
la sangre de un volcán que enamorada
del padre Sol se revistió de anhelo
y se ofrece, columna, a su morada.(18)

But he soon returns to his civil duty of assailing those who insulted Spain. Dante, the banished Dante, is one of Unamuno's passions: “el Dante no calló su desdén, el Dante supo insultar.”¹⁹

The ninth of July, 1924, assisted by M. Dumay, editor of the newspaper Le Quotidien, of Paris, Unamuno fled Fuerteventura in the sailing vessel L'Aiglon. Two days later they arrived at Las Palmas. The twenty-first of the same month they sailed in the Zeelandia for Lisbon and thence to Cherbourg. Not until the last days of August did he set foot on French soil. There a gathering composed of the League of the Rights of Men and of the representatives of radical parties received him triumphantly. In Paris he did not cease his attack upon the dictatorship and the king. When he attained his political finality, to “brand forever the petty tyrants” and not to give up “till he succeeds in bringing them to trial, so that they receive the punishment they deserve,”²⁰ he purposed to write a book to be entitled Don Quiiote en Fuerteventura.²¹ But in the meanwhile—1924—he must keep on fighting. He produces new sonnets and articles while the religious and patriotic experience of Fuerteventura ripens:²²

Aquí, en París, donde no hay montaña, ni páramo, ni mar, aquí he madurado la experiencia religiosa y patriótica de Fuerteventura.

He tenaciously urges Spain to throw off her yoke besides asking if anyone within the nation dare raise his voice—Sonnet LXVIII:²³

“¡España! ¿A alzar su voz nadie se atreve?
Va a arrastrate el alud de la mentira;
tu amor presta a mi voz ardores de ira …
Sacúdete, mi España” …, etc.

He longs for the sea, a “discovery” Unamuno made while in Fuerteventura, although he was born and raised in a maritime region, being a Basque: “Es en Fuerteventura donde he llegado a conocer a la mar, donde he llegado a una comunión mística con ella, donde he sorbido su alma y su doctrina.”²⁴ And also: “Lo que más echo de menos aquí en París, es la visión de la mar. De la mar que me ha enseñado otra cara de Dios y otra cara de España, de la mar que ha dado nuevas raíces a mi cristiandad y a mi españolidad.”²⁵ He strengthens himself with the conviction that passion is the source of action: “La pasión … es la fuente de la acción.”²⁶ Encouragingly, he says to himself—Sonnet LXXXVI:²⁷ “Corazón, nunca has sido tú cobarde; …” Again he recalls that his story is a delusion, that he dreamed like Don Quixote—Sonnet LXXXVII, verse 6:²⁸ “Soñé, cual Don Quijote,” etc.²⁹ Within himself he communes with God, for Unamuno's life is an interminable auto-dialogue: “El que dialoga, el que conversa consigo mismo repartiéndose en dos, o en tres, o en más, o en todo un pueblo, no monologa.”

Unamuno is universal, but not cosmopolitan. The intolerableness of human nonsense has become with him, as with Flaubert, almost an illness. The French novelist wrote to Mme Roger des Genettes, from Croiset, on January 24, 1880:³⁰

L'insupportabilité de la sottise humaine est devenue chez moi une maladie et le mot est faible. Presque tous les humains ont le don de m'exaspérer et je ne respire librement que dans le désert.

Unamuno, in an article on Flaubert, and discussing the faculty—“une faculté pitoyable”—that Bouvard and Pecuchet developed of seeing human stupidity without tolerating it, confesses: “Lo comprendo y aún diré más, aunque se me tome a petulancia: conozco esa enfermedad.”³¹ Accustomed to the life-giving tranquility of his “dorada Salamanca,”³² where he could enkindle his soul—longing for the sea, repining for a view of Spain—the grandeur of Paris is for him a prison. He had written:³³

Don Quijote fué, ya queda dicho fiel discípulo del Cristo, y Jesús de Nazaret hizo de su vida enseñanza eterna en los campos y caminos de la pequeña Galilea. Ni subió a más ciudad que a Jerusalén, ni Don Quijote a otra que a Barcelona, la Jerusalén de nuestro Caballero.

Nada hay menos universal que lo llamado cosmopolita, o mundial como ahora han dado en decir; … etc.

In the Prólogo to the Spanish edition of Cómo se hace una novzla, a work first published in French, after the translation of Jean Cassou, in the Mercure de France (May 15, 1926, No. 670, vol. CLXXXVIII), as well as in the original book, he explains how unhappily he lived in Paris:

¡Qué mañanas aquellas de mi soledad parisiense! Después de haber leído, según costumbre, un capítulo del Nuevo Testamento, el que me tocara en turno, me ponía a aguardar y no sólo a aguardar sino a esperar, la correspondencia de mi casa y de mi patria y luego de recibida, después del desencanto, me ponía a devorar el bochorno de mi pobre España estupidizada bajo la más cobarde, la más soez y la más incivil tiranía.³⁴

… ¿no guardo yo, y bien apretada a mi pecho, en mi vida cotidiana, a mi pobre madre España loca también? No, a Don Quijote solo, no, sino a España, a España loca como Don Quijote; loca de dolor, loca de vergüenza, loca de desesperanza, y ¿quién sabe? loca acaso de remordimiento.³⁵

Recibo a poca gente; paso la mayor parte de mis mañanas solo, en esta jaula cercana a la Plaza de los Estados Unidos. Después de almuerzo me voy a la Rotonda de Montparnasse, esquina del bulevar Raspail, donde tenemos una pequeña reunión de españoles, jóvenes estudiantes la mayoría y comentamos las raras noticias que nos llegan de España, de la nuestra y de la de los otros, y recomenzamos cada día a repetir las mismas cosas, levantando, como aquí se dice, castillos en España. A esa Rotonda se le sigue llamando acá por algunos la de Trozki pues parece que allí acudía, cuando desterrado en París, ese caudillo ruso bolshevique.

¡Qué horrible vivir en la expectativa, imaginando cada día lo que puede ocurrir al siguiente! ¡Y lo que puede no ocurrir! Me paso horas enteras, solo, tendido sobre el lecho solitario de mi pequeño hotel—family house—contemplando el techo de mi cuarto y no el cielo y soñando en el porvenir de España y en el mío. O deshaciéndolos. Y no me atrevo a emprender trabajo alguno por no saber si podré acabarlo en paz. Como no sé si este destierro durará todavía tres días, tres semanas, tres meses o tres años—iba a añadir tres siglos—no emprendo nada que pueda durar. Y sin embargo nada dura más que lo que se hace en el momento y para el momento. ¿He de repetir mi expresión favorita la eternización de la momentaneidad? Mi gusto innato—y tan español!—de las antítesis y del conceptismo me arrastraría a hablar de la momentanización de la eternidad. ¡Clavar la rueda del tiempo!³⁶

Unamuno, for spiritual and economical reasons at the same time, looks for possible freedom and consolation, for solitude and relief in the smallness of Hendaye, a village bordering his country. But also a political purpose moves him:—“Allí, en Hendaya, puedo hacer más daño. Estoy más cerca y han de sentir mejor mis ataques.”³⁷ Here he finishes—the 28th of July, 1927—his Romancero del Destierro: “Y así, como en Fuerteventura y en París me dí a hacer sonetos, aquí, en Hendaya, me ha dado sobre todo, por hacer romances.”³⁸ About the title he explains:³⁹

propiamente no se podría aplicar más que a los dieciocho romances octosílabos con que termina, escritos los dieciocho aquí, en Hendaye, e inspirados en la triste actualidad presente política de mi pobre España. Mas aun las otras poesías, hechas las primeras de ellas en París, están más o menos inspiradas en esa misma actualidad y algunas de ellas podrían ser llamadas políticas.

The first part of his Romancero is, perhaps, more lyrical than any other poetic book of Unamuno. The opening poem touches his reader's heart immediately and demonstrates how just Rubén Darío was when he referred to Unamuno as … “el buen obrero del pensamiento que, con la fragua encendida, el pecho desnudo y transparente el alma, lanza su himno, o su plegaria, al amanecer, a buscar a Dios en lo infinito.”⁴⁰ In the second part—the eighteen romances—each verse represents either an anguish which Spain experiences or an attack—clean-cut and outspoken—thrust bluntly at those who oppressed her. He acclaims unto God in his VIII ballad:⁴¹ “Hazme, Señor, tu campana, campana de tu verdad …” Martí, the Cuban liberator, thought that to complain is a degeneration of character. Unamuno, in his books and in his letters of exile (of which I possess some) never degenerates.

The morning of February 9, 1930, the Quixote of contemporary Spain returned to his mother land, where an immense throng awaited him. The eleventh we find him back in Salamanca. Undauntedly he carries on his crusade for the liberty of the nation. He speaks, and continues speaking. Unamuno uninterruptedly proves that which Saint Bernard believed: that the tongue is the best means by which to empty human heart.

The second of May he gave a lecture at the Ateneo de Madrid,⁴² preceded by a clash between the police and the people. The fourth he delivered another address at the Teatro Europa.⁴³ Both oratorical pieces are part of our hero's history, of the history of Spain. Both are tremendous documents against Alfonso XIII. Unamuno remains inspiring, agonizing, quixotizing. But by this time—1930—he was not alone. Other men worked secretly for the same ideal—the men of the Pacto de San Sebastián. The fourteenth of April, 1931, the Republic triumphed in Spain. Unamuno was soon afterward elected to the Spanish Parliament, and is again the rector of the University of Salamanca.

Notes

1. Miguel de Unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida (ed. Renacimiento, Madrid, 1913). Conclusión, p. 301.

2. Del sentimiento trágico, p. 305.

3. El sepulcro de Don Quijote, en La España Nueva, Madrid, febrero de 1906.

4. Ibid.

5. El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, II, cap. LXXIV.

6. Essays and Soliloquies, translated from the Spanish with an introductory essay by J. E. Crawford Flitch (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), Introduction, pp. 16-17.

7. Poesías de Miguel de Unamuno (Bilbao, 1907), Salmo II, pp. 113-14.

8. Contra ésto y aquéllo (Madrid, ed. Renacimiento, 1912), Algo sobre la crítica, pp. 11-12.

9. Cf. Bertaut, Napoleon in His Own Words (Chicago, 1916), p. 63.

10. Unamuno repeated this in 1925, in his De Fuerteventura a París, Diario intimo de confinamiento y destierro vertido en sonetos, commenting on his Soneto V: “Don Alfonso no es tanto un Borbón como un Austria, un Habsburgo, de la casta de Carlos II el Hechizado.” (Ed. Excelsior, Paris), p. 23.

11. De Fuerteventura a París, p. 73.

12. Miguel de Unamuno, Dos articulos y dos discursos, Sección ed. de Historia Nueva (Madrid, 1930), p. 31.

13. Cf. El Sol, Madrid, 21 de marzo de 1924.

14. Contra ésto y aquéllo, p. 8

15. Carducci, Opere, vol. IV, Confessioni e Battaglie, Per la Poesia e per la Liberta, Discorso agli elettori del Collegio di Lugo nel banchetto offertogli il 19 Novembre 1876 (Bologna), pp. 323-324.

16. De Fuerteventura a París, pp. 37-38.

17. Ibid., pp. 40-41.

18. Ibid., pp. 97-98.

19. Dos artículos y dos discursos, p. 21.

20. Ibid., pp. 14, 17: … “y de marcar a los tiranuelos—para siempre—con la señal de los réprobos de la historia,” etc. … “no he de cejar hasta que logre que se les enjuicie y ajusticie al castigo que les corresponda,” etc.

21. De Fuerteventura a París, p. 8.

22. Ibid., p. 109.

23. Ibid., p. 111.

24. Ibid., p. 60.

25. Ibid., p. 118.

26. Ibid., p. 130.

27. Ibid., p. 134.

28. Ibid., p. 135.

29. Unamuno, La agonía del Cristianismo (Paris, diciembre de 1924), (Madrid, 1931), pp. 13-14.

30. Flaubert, Correspondance (1869-80), (Paris, 1924), p. 359.

31. Contra ésto y aquéllo, p. 20.

32. Poesías, Salamanca, p. 29, verses 8-9.

33. Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho según Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, explicada y comentada por Miguel de Unamuno, Segunda ed. (Madrid), cap. XLVI, p. 237.

34. Unamuno, Cómo se hace una novela (ed. “Alba,” Buenos Aires, 1927), p. 10.

35. Ibid., p. 50.

36. Cómo se hace una novela, pp. 60-61.

37. González-Ruano, Vida, pensamiento y aventura de Miguel de Unamuno, M. Aguilar, editor, (Madrid, 1930), IX, 138.

38. Cómo se hace una novela, p. 63.

39. Unamuno, Romancero del destierro (Ed. “Alba,” Buenos Aires), Prólogo, pp. 5-6.

40. Darío, Unamuno, poeta, an article sent to La Nación, Buenos Aires, from Madrid, March, 1909.

41. Romancero del destierro, p. 122.

42. Cf. Dos artículos y dos discursos.

43. Ibid.