UNAMUNO AND THE YOUNGER WRITERS IN 1904

Abstract

Unamuno's constant concern, in the middle years of his life, with the work of younger writers is common knowledge. His attitude was usually critical, and through his disapproval of Modernism and the false values he associated with it, he tended to see in most of their work symptoms of the chronic and continuous decadence of Spanish culture. Thus the vehemence of his condemnation of “los jóvenes” was only equalled by his untiring efforts to convert them to his point of view. To the extraordinary number of articles forming a means of attack or a source of persuasion must be added his vast correspondence, often spontaneous and unsought, by which he aimed at personal contact with aspiring writers; and he sometimes turned the letters he received into articles also.

BSS Subject Index:

• UNAMUNO, MIGUEL DE (1864–1936)

Notes

¹ Ensayos (Madrid 1916), III, 47–61. All references are to this edition.

² Vida y arte, reprinted in my “U. and Antonio Machado”, BHS,

¹ De esto y de aquello (Buenos Aires 1951), II, 98–100.

²See “Sobre la soberbia” (December 1904), Ensayos, V, 145–67, and especially “La envidia hispánica” (May 1909), published in Mi religión y otros ensayos breves. For an excellent treatment of the whole theme of envy, see Carlos Cla vería, “Sobre el tema de Caín en la obra de U.”, in Temas de U., (1955), 93–122.

⁸E.g. the letter to Pedro Jiménez Ilundain of 25 March 1898, RUBA (1948), 73. See also the highly significant but little-known essay “Nicodemo el fariseo”, published in Revista nueva, 25.xi.1899, 241–75.

¹Cf. U.'s reply, in Alma española, no. 5, 6.xii.1903, 10, to the question ¿A su juicio, dónde está el porvenir y cuál debe ser la base del engrandecimiento de España? “De orden espiritual ha de ser nuestra sacudida vital. De orden espiritual, y más aún: de orden religioso.… Creo, pues, que será engañoso y sólo aparente todo engrandecimiento futuro de España que no se base entre otros cimientos, en un modo de concebir y sentir la vida religiosa y la libertad de conciencia cristiana, enteramente distinto del modo como hoy lo conciben y sienten los más de los españoles”.

²I have not been able to consult the relevant files of the newspaper.

¹This number Alma española is missing from the collection in the Hemeroteca Municipal, Madrid. I must thank Sr. Manuel Aguirre de Cárcer most warmly for providing me with a transcript of Baroja's essay from his own copy. A note on the essay, entitled “1903: La Dictadura de Baroja”, appeared in ABC, 16.viii.1956, 23, and G. Bleiberg, “Algunas revistas literarias hacia 1898”, Arbor, XI (1948), 476–78, also refers briefly to it.

² Memorias, IV: Galería de tipos de la época (1952), 128–40. Baroja declares that Unamuno (and others) “ejercían un cacicato despótico” in the Ateneo (130) and that “se sentía dictador” (131). He also speaks of “el concepto tan extraordinario que tenia de él (de Unamuno) Maeztu” (128).

¹E.g. see Mocedades (Buenos Aires 1943), 51; quoted by H. Rodríguez-Alcalá, “Ortega, Baroja, Unamuno y la sinceridad”, RHM, XV (1949), 111.

²See Emilio Salcedo, “U. y Ortega y Gasset: diálogo entre dos españoles”, Cuadernos de la Cátedra M. de U, VII (1956), 97–130. I have not seen Guillermo de la Torre's article “U. y Ortega”, CA, 11 (1943). 157–76.

¹See art. cit. “U. and Antonio Machado”, 10–28.

¹“Remy de Gourmont y la lengua española”, in Simpatías y diferencias, 3rd series (Madrid 1922), 107–17.

²See Eleanor Paucker, “U. y la poesía hispanoamericana”, printed in Cuadernos de la Cátedra M. de U., VII (1956), 46–48, and in Bolivar, X (1957), 45–73.

¹See P. E. Jacob, “Remy dc Gourmont”, Univ. of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XVI (1931), 7–175, in which there is a passing reference (114) to Gourmont's “jugement méprisant” of U.

²E.g., see “Sobre la lengua española” (November 1901), Ensayos, III, 95–114, and “Contra el purismo” (January 1903), IV, 11–134.

³No. 16, April 1902, 689. The reviewer, objecting to Ugarte's Gallicisms, adds: “dicho sea con todo el respeto debido al prologuista de Paisajes parisienses, señor Unamuno, de quien soy lector asiduo y a quien admiro y respeto”.

⁴Unamuno reviewed Las crónicas del Bulevar in La Lectura in December 1902.

¹The first of the letters to “Azorín” published in La estafeta literaria, 11, 25.viii.1944, 3, under the title “Soliloquios epistolares: cinco cartas inéditas de Don Miguel”.

²Rubén Darío, Obras completas, XIII: Epistolario (Madrid 1926), 34 and 179.

¹ See “El modernismo”, De esto…, II, 140–42, in which he speaks of “el terrible deseo de agradar, de dar gusto al público” (141).

¹See M. Garcia Blanco, Don Miguel de Unamuno y sus poesías (1956), 126.

²“El concepto de generación literaria aplicada a la del 98”, in Literatura española; siglo XX, 2nd ed. (1949), 31.

¹See Miguel Cruz Hernández, “La misión socrática de D.M. de U.,” Cuadernos de la Cátedra M. de U., III (1952), 41–53.

² Modernismo frente a Noventa y Ocho (1951), 184.

³I wish to express my thanks to the University of Sheffield Research Fund for a grant which enabled me to work on this subject in Madrid in August 1956.