Youth and Egolatry by Pio Baroja

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With respect to the general subject of structural usage which he raises,
it would be easy to cite ample precedent among our classic authors; with
respect to the word _misticidad_ occurring in one of my books, I
have put it into the mouth of a foreigner. The faults brought to light
by Senor Bonilla are not very serious. But what of it? Suppose they
were?

An intelligent friend once said to me:

"I don't know what is lacking in your style; I find it acrid." I feel
that this criticism is the most apt that has yet been made.

My difficulty in writing Castilian does not arise from any deficiency in
grammar nor any want of syntax. I fail in measure, in rhythm of style,
and this shocks those who open my books for the first time. They note
that there is something about them that does not sound right, which is
due to the fact that there is a manner of respiration in them, a system
of pauses, which is not traditionally Castilian.

I should insist upon the point at greater length, were it not that the
subject of style is cluttered up with such a mass of preconceptions,
that it would be necessary to redefine our terminology, and then, after
all, perhaps we should not understand one another. Men have an idea that
they are thinking when they operate the mechanism of language which they
have at command. When somebody makes the joints of language creak, they
say: "He does not know how to manage it." Certainly he does know how to
manage it. Anybody can manage a platitude. The truth is simply this: the
individual writer endeavours to make of language a cloak to fit his
form, while, contrarywise, the purists attempt to mould their bodies
till they fit the cloak.

RHETORIC OF THE MINOR KEY

Persons to whom my style is not entirely distasteful, sometimes ask:

"Why use the short sentence when it deprives the period of eloquence and
rotundity?"

"Because I do not desire eloquence or rotundity," I reply. "Furthermore,
I avoid them." The vast majority of Spanish purists are convinced that
the only possible rhetoric is the rhetoric of the major key. This, for
example, is the rhetoric of Castelar and Costa, the rhetoric which
Ricardo Leon and Salvador Rueda manipulate today, as it has been
inherited from the Romans. Its purpose is to impart solemnity to
everything, to that which already has it by right of nature, and to that
which has it not. This rhetoric of the major key marches with stately,
academic tread. At great, historic moments, no doubt it is very well,
but in the long run, in incessant parade, it is one of the most deadly
soporifics in literature; it destroys variety, it is fatal to subtlety,
to nice transitions, to detail, and it throws the uniformity of the
copybook over everything.

On the other hand, the rhetoric of the minor key, which seems poor at
first blush, soon reveals itself to be more attractive. It moves with a
livelier, more life-like rhythm; it is less bombastic. This rhetoric
implies continence and basic economy of effort; it is like an agile man,
lightly clothed and free of motion.

To the extent of my ability I always avoid the rhetoric of the major
key, which is assumed as the only proper style, the very moment that one
sits down to write Castilian. I should like, of course, to rise to the
heights of solemnity now and then, but very seldom.

"Then what you seek," I am told, "is a familiar style like that of
Mesonero Romanos, Trueba and Pereda?"

No, I am not attracted by that either.

The familiar, rude, vulgar manner reminds me of a worthy bourgeois
family at the dinner table. There sits the husband in his shirt sleeves,
while the wife's hair is at loose ends and she is dirty besides, and all
the children are in rags.

I take it that one may be simple and sincere without either affectation
or vulgarity. It is well to be a little neutral, perhaps, a little grey
for the most part, so that upon occasion the more delicate hues may
stand out clearly, while a rhythm may be employed to advantage which is
in harmony with actual life, which is light and varied, and innocent of
striving after solemnity.

A modern poet, in my opinion, has illustrated this rhetoric of the minor
key to perfection.

He is Paul Verlaine.

A style like Verlaine's, which is non-sequent, macerated, free, is
indispensable to any mastery of the rhetoric of the minor key. This, to
me, has always been my literary ideal.

THE VALUE OF MY IDEAS

From time to time, my friend Azorin attempts to analyse my ideas. I do
not pretend to be in the secret of the scales, as such an assumption
upon my part would be ridiculous. As the pilot takes advantage of a
favourable wind, and if it does not blow, of one that is unfavourable, I
do the same. The meteorologist is able to tell with mathematical
accuracy in his laboratory, after a glance at his instruments, not only
the direction of the prevailing wind, but the atmospheric pressure and
the degree of humidity as well. I am able only, however, to say with the
pilot: "I sail this way," and then make head as best I may.

GENIUS AND ADMIRATION

I have no faith in the contention of the Lombrosians that genius is akin
to insanity, neither do I think that genius is an infinite capacity for
taking pains. Lombroso, for that matter, is as old-fashioned today as a
hoop skirt.

Genius partakes of the miraculous. If some one should tell me that a
stick had been transformed into a snake by a miracle, naturally I should
not believe it; but if I should be asked whether there was not something
miraculous in the very existence of a stick or of a snake, I should be
constrained to acknowledge the miracle.

When I read the lives of the philosophers in Diogenes Laertius, I arrive
at the conclusion that Epicurus, Zeno, Diogenes, Protagoras and the
others were nothing more than men who had common sense. Clearly, as a
corollary, I am obliged to conclude that the people we meet nowadays
upon the street, whether they wear gowns, uniforms or blouses, are mere
animals masquerading in human shape.

Contradicting the assumption that the great men of antiquity were only
ordinary normal beings, we must concede the fact that most extraordinary
conditions must have existed and, indeed, have been pre-exquisite,
before a Greece could have arisen in antiquity, or an Athens in Greece,
or a man such as Plato in Athens.

By very nature, the sources of admiration are as mysterious to my mind
as the roots of genius. Do we admire what we understand, or what we do
not understand? Admiration is of two kinds, of which the more common
proceeds from wonder at something which we do not understand. There is,
however, an admiration which goes with understanding.

Edgar Poe composed several stories, of which _The Goldbug_ is one,
in which an impenetrable enigma is first presented, to be solved
afterwards as by a talisman; but, then, a lesson in cryptography ensues,
wherein the talisman is explained away, and the miraculous gives place
to the reasoning faculties of a mind of unusual power.

He has done something very similar in his poem, _The Raven_, where
the poem is followed by an analysis of its gestation, which is called
_The Philosophy of Composition_. Would it be more remarkable to
write _The Raven_ by inspiration, or to write it through conscious
skill? To find the hidden treasure through the talisman of _The
Goldbug_, or through the possession of analytical faculties such as
those of the protagonist of Poe's tale?

Much consideration will lead to the conclusion that one process is as
marvellous as the other.

It may be said that there is nothing miraculous in nature, and it may be
said that it is all miraculous.

MY LITERARY AND ARTISTIC INCLINATIONS

Generally speaking, I neither understand old books very well, nor do I
care for them--I have been able to read only Shakespeare, and perhaps
one or two others, with the interest with which I approach modern
writers.

It has sometimes seemed to me that the unreadableness of the older
authors might be made the foundation of a philosophic system. Yet I
have met with some surprises.

One was that I enjoyed the _Odyssey_.

"Am I a hypocrite?" I asked myself.

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 attitude 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 relishing 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 crass, 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 circumlocution. 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 title,
_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 Gasset illustrates 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 principally
to be insulted. The experience was repeated later when we were both
associated 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 God. The thing was a burlesque, but a conservative
paper took issue with me, called me an atheist, a plagiarist, a drunkard
and an ass. 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 passing,
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 platitudes 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 Gasset, 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.

These pious souls and good Christians imagined that I might need that
work in order to earn my living, so in the odour of sanctity they did
whatever lay in their power to deprive me of my means of support. Oh,
noble souls! Oh, ye of great heart! I salute you from a safe distance,
and wish you the most uncomfortable beds in the most intolerable wards
set apart for scurvy patients, in any hospital of your choosing,
throughout the world.

THIRST FOR GLORY

Fame, success, popularity, the illusion of being known, admired and
esteemed, appeal in different ways to authors. To Salvador Rueda, glory
is a triumphant entrance into Tegucigalpa, where he is taken to the
Spanish Casino, and crowned with a crown of real laurel. To Unamuno,
glory is the assurance that people will be interested in him at least a
thousand years after he is dead. And to others the only glory worth
talking about is that courted by the French writer, Rabbe, who busied
himself in Spain with la _gloire argent comptant_. Some yearn for a
large stage with pennons and salvos and banners, while others are
content with a smaller scene.

Ortega y Gasset says that to me glory reduces itself to the proportions
of an agreeable dinner, with good talk across the table.

And he is right. To mingle with pleasant, intelligent, cordial persons
is one of the more alluring sorts of fame.

There is something seductive and ingratiating about table talk when it
is spirited. A luxurious dining room, seating eight or ten guests, of
whom three or four are pretty women, one of whom should be a foreigner;
as many men, none of them aristocrats--generally speaking, aristocrats
are disagreeable--nor shall we admit artists, for they are in the same
class as the aristocrats; one's neighbour, perhaps, is a banker, or a
Jew of aquiline feature, and then the talk touches on life and on
politics, relieved with a little gallantry toward the ladies, from time
to time allowing to each his brief opportunity to shine--all this,
beyond doubt, is most agreeable.

I like, too, to spend an afternoon conversing with a number of ladies in
a comfortable drawing room, which is well heated. I visualize the
various rewards which are meted out by fame as being housed invariably
under a good roof. What is not intimate, does not appeal to me.

I have often seen Guimera in a cafe on the Rambla in Barcelona, drinking
coffee at a table, alone and forlorn, in the midst of a crowd of shop
clerks and commercial travellers.

"Is that Guimera?" I asked a Catalan journalist.

"Yes."

And then he told me that they had tendered him a tremendous testimonial
some months previously, which had been attended by I don't know how many
hundreds of societies, all marching with their banners.

I have no very clear idea of just what Guimera has done, as it is many
years since I have gone to the theatre, but I know that he is considered
in Catalonia to be one of the glories of the country.

I should not care for an apotheosis, and then find myself left forlorn
and alone to take my coffee afterwards with a horde of clerks.

I may never write anything that will take the world by storm--most
probably not; but if I do, and it occurs to my fellow townsmen to
organize one of these celebrations with flags, banners and choral
societies, they need not count upon my attendance. They will not be able
to discover me even with the aid of Sherlock Holmes.

When I am old, I hope to take coffee with pleasant friends, whether it
be in a palace or a porter's lodge. I neither expect nor desire flags,
committees, nor waving banners.

Laurel does not seduce me, and you cannot do it with bunting.

ELECTIVE ANTIPATHIES

As I have expressed my opinions of other authors sharply, making them
public with the proper disgust, others have done the same with me, which
is but logical and natural, especially in the case of a writer such as
myself, who holds that sympathy and antipathy are of the very essence of
art.

My opponents and myself differ chiefly in the fact that I am more
cynical than they, and so I disclose my personal animus quite
ingenuously, which my enemies fail to do.

I hold that there are two kinds of morality; morality of work and
morality of play. The morality of work is an immoral morality, which
teaches us to take advantage of circumstances and to lie. The morality
of play, for the reason that it deals with mere futilities, is finer and
more chivalrous.

I believe that in literature and in all liberal arts, the morality
should be the morality of play, while my opponents for the most part
hold that the morality of literature should be the morality of work. I
have never, consciously at least, been influenced in my literary
opinions by practical considerations. My ideas may have been capricious,
and they are,--they may even be bad,--but they have no ulterior
practical motive.

My failure to be practical, together, perhaps, with an undue obtuseness
of perception, brings me face to face with critics of two sorts: one,
esthetic; the other, social.

My esthetic critics say to me:

"You have not perfected your style, you have not developed the technique
of your novels. You can scarcely be said to be literate."

I shrug my shoulders and reply: "Are you sure?"

My social critics reproach me for my negative and destructive views. I
do not know how to create anything, I am incapable of enthusiasm, I
cannot describe life, and so on.

This feeling seems logical enough, if it is sincere, if it is honest,
and I accept it as such, and it does not offend me.

But, as some of my esthetic critics tell me: "You are not an artist, you
do not know how to write," without feeling any deep conviction on the
subject, but rather fearing that perhaps I may be an artist after all
and that at last somebody may come to think so, so among my critics who
pose as defenders of society, there are those who are influenced by
motives which are purely utilitarian.

I am reminded of servants shouting at a man picking flowers over the
garden wall, or an apple from the orchard as he passes, who raise their
voices as high as possible so as to make their officiousness known.

They shout so that their masters will hear.

"How dare that rascal pick flowers from the garden? How dare he defy us
and our masters? Shall a beggar, who is not respectable, tell us that
our laws are not laws, that our honours are not honours, and that we are
a gang of accomplished idiots?"

Yes, that is just what I tell them, and I shall continue to do so as
long as it is the truth.

Shout, you lusty louts in gaudy liveries, bark you little lap-dogs,
guard the gates, you government inspectors and carabineers! I shall look
into your garden, which is also my garden, I shall make off with
anything from it that I am able, and I shall say what I please.

TO A MEMBER OF SEVERAL ACADEMIES

A certain Basque writer, one Senor de Loyarte, who is a member of
several academies, and Royal Commissioner of Education, assails me
violently upon social grounds in a book which he has published, although
the attack is veiled as purely literary.

Senor de Loyarte is soporific as a general rule, but in his polite
sortie against me, he is more amusing than is usual. His malice is so
keen that it very nearly causes him to appear intelligent.

In literature, Senor de Loyarte--and why should Senor de Loyarte not be
associated with literature--presents the figure of a fat, pale, flabby
boy in a priests' school, skulking under the skirts of a Jesuit Father.

Senor de Loyarte, like those little, chubby-winged cherubs on sacristy
ceilings, shakes his arrowlet at me and lets fling a _billet doux_.

Senor de Loyarte says I smack of the cadaver, that I am a plagiarist, an
atheist, anti-religious, anti-patriotic, and more to boot.

I shall not reply for it may be true. Yet it is also true that Senor de
Loyarte's noble words will please his noble patrons, from whom, perhaps,
he may receive applause even more substantial than the pat on the
shoulder of a Jesuit Father, or the smile of every good Conservative,
who is a defender of the social order. His book is an achievement which
should induct Senor de Loyarte into membership in several more
academies. Senor de Loyarte is already a Corresponding Member of the
Spanish Academy, or of the Academy of History, I am not quite sure
which; but they are all the same. Speaking of history, I should be
interested to know who did first introduce the sponge.

Senor de Loyarte is destined to be a member, a member of academies all
his life.

IV

ADMIRATIONS AND INCOMPATIBILITIES

Diogenes Laertius tells us that when Zeno consulted the oracle as to
what he should do in order to attain happiness in life, the deity
replied that he should assimilate himself with the dead. Having
understood, he applied himself exclusively to the study of books.

Thus speaks Laertius, in the translation of Don Jose Ortiz y Sanz. I
confess that I should not have understood the oracle. However, without
consulting any oracle, I have devoted myself for some time to reading
books, whether ancient and modern, both out of curiosity and in order to
learn something of life.

CERVANTES, SHAKESPEARE, MOLIERE

For a long time, I thought that Shakespeare was a writer who was unique
and different from all others. It seemed to me that the difference
between him and other writers was one of quality rather than of
quantity. I felt that, as a man, Shakespeare was of a different kind of
humanity; but I do not think so now. Shakespeare is no more the
quintessence of the world's literature than Plato and Kant are the
quintessence of universal philosophy. I once admired the philosophy and
characters of the author of Hamlet; when I read him today, what most
impresses me is his rhetoric, and, above all, his high spirit.

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