Youth and Egolatry Part 9

I do not find old painters to be as incompatible as old authors. On the contrary, my experience has been that they are the reverse. I greatly prefer a canvas by Botticelli, Mantegna, El Greco or Velazquez to a modern picture.

The only famous painter of the past for whom I have entertained an antipathy, is Raphael; yet, when I was in Rome and saw the frescos in the Vatican, I was obliged again to ask myself if my att.i.tude was a pose, because they struck me frankly as admirable.

I do not pretend to taste, but I am sincere; nor do I endeavour to be consistent. Consistency does not interest me.

The only consistency possible is a consistency which comes from without, which proceeds from fear of public opinion, and anything of this sort appears to me to be contemptible.

Not to change because of what others may think, is one of the most abject forms of slavery.

Let us change all we can. My ideal is continual change--change of life, change of home, of food, and even of skin.

MY LIBRARY

Among the things that I missed most as a student, was a small library.

If I had had one, I believe I should have dipped more deeply into books and into life as well; but it was not given me. During the period which is most fruitful for the maturing of the mind, that is, during the years from twelve to twenty, I lived by turns in six or seven cities, and as it was impossible to travel about with books, I never retained any.

A lack of books was the occasion of my failure to form the habit of re-reading, of tasting again and again and of relis.h.i.+ng what I read, and also of making notes in the margin.

Nearly all authors who own a small library, in which the books are properly arranged, and nicely annotated, become famous.

I am not sentimentalizing about stolid, brazen note-taking, such as that with which the gentlemen of the Ateneo debase their books, because that merely indicates barbarous lack of culture and an obtuseness which is Kabyline.

Having had no library in my youth, I have never possessed the old favourites that everybody carries in his pocket into the country, and reads over and over until he knows them by heart.

I have looked in and out of books as travellers do in and out of inns, not stopping long in any of them. I am very sorry but it is too late now for the loss to be repaired.

ON BEING A GENTLEMAN

Viewed from without, I seem to impress some as a cra.s.s, crabbed person, who has very little ability, while others regard me as an unhealthy, decadent writer. Then Azorin has said of me that I am a literary aristocrat, a fine and comprehensive mind.

I should accept Azorin's opinion very gladly, but personality needs to be hammered severely in literature before it leaves its slag. Like metal which is removed from the furnace after casting and placed under the hammer, I would offer my works to be put to the test, to be beaten by all hammers.

If anything were left, I should treasure it then lovingly; if nothing were left, we should still pick up some fragments of life.

I always listen to the opinions of the non-literary concerning my books with the greatest interest. My cousin, Justo Goni, used to express his opinion without circ.u.mlocution. He always carried off my books as they appeared, and then, a long time after, would give his opinion.

Of _The Way of Perfection_ he said:

"Good, yes, very good; but it is so tiresome."

I realized that there was some truth in his view.

When he read the three novels to which I had given the general t.i.tle, _The Struggle for Life_, he stopped me on the Calle de Alcala one day and said:

"You have not convinced me."

"How so?"

"Your hero is a man of the people, but he is falsified. He is just like you are; you can never be anything but a gentleman."

This gentility with which my cousin reproached me, and without doubt he was correct, is common to nearly all Spanish writers.

There are no Spaniards at present, and there never have been any at any other time, who write out of the Spanish soul, out of the hearts of the people. Even Dicenta did not. His _Juan Jose_ is not a workingman, but a young gentleman. He has nothing of the workingman about him beyond the label, the clothes, and such externals.

Galdos, for example, can make the common people talk; Azorin can portray the villages of Castile, set on their arid heights, against backgrounds of blue skies; Blasco Ibanez can paint the life of the Valencians in vivid colours with a prodigality that carries with it the taint of the cheap, but none of them has penetrated into the popular soul. That would require a great poet, and we have none.

GIVING OFFENCE

I have the name of being aggressive, but, as a matter of fact, I have scarcely ever attacked any one personally.

Many hold a radical opinion to be an insult.

In an article in _La Lectura_, Ortega y Ga.s.set ill.u.s.trates my propensity to become offensive by recalling that as we left the Ateneo together one afternoon, we encountered a blind man on the Calle del Prado, singing a _jota_, whereupon I remarked: "An unspeakable song!"

Admitted. It is a fact, but I fail to see any cause of offence. It is only another way of saying more forcefully: "I do not like it, it does not please me," or what you will.

I have often been surprised to find, after expressing an opinion, that I have been insulted bitterly in reply.

At the outset of my literary career, Azorin and I shared the ill will of everybody.

When Maeztu, Azorin, Carlos del Rio and myself edited a modest magazine, by the name of _Juventud_, Azorin and I were the ones princ.i.p.ally to be insulted. The experience was repeated later when we were both a.s.sociated with _El Globo_.

Azorin, perhaps, was attacked and insulted more frequently, so that I was often in a position to act as his champion.

Some years ago I published an article in the _Nuevo Mundo_, in which I considered Vazquez Mella and his refutation of the Kantian philosophy, dwelling especially upon his seventeenth mathematical proof of the existence of G.o.d. The thing was a burlesque, but a conservative paper took issue with me, called me an atheist, a plagiarist, a drunkard and an a.s.s. As for being an atheist, I did not take that as an insult, but as an honour.

Upon another occasion, I published an article about Spanish women, with particular reference to Basque women, in which I maintained that they sacrificed natural kindliness and sympathy on the altars of honour and religion, whereupon the Daughters of Mary of San Sebastian made answer, charging that I was a degenerate son of their city, who had robbed them of their honour, which was absolutely contrary to the fact. In pa.s.sing, they suggested to the editor of the _Nuevo Mundo_ that he should not permit me to write again for the magazine.

I wrote an article once dealing with Maceo and Cuba, whereupon a journalist from those parts jumped up and called me a fat Basque ox.

The Catalans have also obliged me with some choice insults, which I have found engaging. When I lectured in Barcelona in the Casa del Pueblo, _La Veu de Catalunya_ undertook to report the affair, picturing me as talking plat.i.tudes before an audience of professional bomb throwers and dynamiters, and experts with the Browning gun.

Naturally, I was enchanted.

Recently, when writing for the review _Espana_, I had a similar experience, which reminded me of my connection with the smaller periodicals of fifteen years ago. Some gentlemen, mostly natives of the provinces, approached the editor, Ortega y Ga.s.set, with the information that I was not a fit person to contribute to a serious magazine, as what I wrote was not so, while my name would ruin the sale of the weekly.