Youth and Egolatry by Pio Baroja
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Pio Baroja >> Youth and Egolatry
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When Schmitz and I arrived, Valera had just settled down for the
afternoon to listen to his daughter, who was reading aloud one of the
latest novels of Zola.
Valera, Schmitz and I sat chatting for perhaps four or five hours. There
was no subject that we could all agree upon. Valera and I were no sooner
against the Swiss than the Swiss and Valera were against me, or the
Swiss and I against Valera, and then each flew off after his own
opinion.
Valera, who saw that the Swiss and I were anarchists, said it was beyond
his comprehension how any man could conceive of a state of general well
being.
"Do you mean to say that you believe," he said to me, "that there will
ever come a time when every man will be able to set a bowl of oysters
from Arcachon upon his table and top it off with a bottle of champagne
of first-rate vintage, besides having a woman sitting beside him in a
Worth gown?"
"No, no, Don Juan," I replied. "In the eyes of the anarchist, oysters,
champagne, and Worth are mere superstitions, myths to which we attach no
importance. We do not spend our time dreaming about oysters, while
champagne is not nectar to our tastes. All that we ask is to live well,
and to have those about us live well also."
We could not convince each other. When Schmitz and I left Valera's house
it was already night, and we found ourselves absorbed in his talents and
his limitations.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
Ortega y Gasset impresses me as a traveller who has journeyed through
the world of culture. He moves upon a higher level, which it is
difficult to reach, and upon which it is still more difficult to
maintain oneself.
It may be that Ortega has no great sympathy for my manner of living,
which is insubordinate; it may be that I look with unfriendly eye upon
his ambitious and aristocratic sympathies; nevertheless, he is a master
who brings glad news of the unknown--that is, of the unknown to us.
Doctor San Martin was fond of telling how he was sitting one day upon a
bench in the Retiro, reading.
"Are you reading a novel?" inquired a gentleman, sitting down beside
him.
"No, I am studying."
"What! Studying at your age?" exclaimed the gentleman, amazed.
The same remark might be made to me: "What! Sitting under a master at
your age?"
As far as I am concerned, every man who knows more than I do is my
master.
I know very well that philosophy and metaphysics are nothing to the
great mass of physicians who pick up their science out of foreign
reviews, adding nothing themselves to what they read; nor, for that
matter, are they to most Spanish engineers, who are skilled in doing
sufficiently badly today what was done in England and Germany very well
thirty years ago; and the same thing is true of the apothecaries. The
practical is all that these people concede to exist, but how do they
know what is practical? Considering the matter from the practical point
of view, there can be no doubt but that civilization has attained a high
development wherever there have been great metaphysicisms, and then with
the philosophers have come the inventors, who between them are the glory
of mankind. Unamuno despises inventors, but in this case it is his
misfortune. It is far easier for a nation which is destitute of a
tradition of culture to improvise an histologist or a physicist, than a
philosopher or a real thinker.
Ortega y Gasset, the only approach to a philosopher whom I have ever
known, is one of the few Spaniards whom it is interesting to hear talk.
A PSEUDO-PATRON
Although a man may never have amounted to anything, and will probably
continue in much the same case, that is to say never amounting to
anything, yet there are persons who will take pride in having given him
his start in the world--in short, upon having made him known. Senor
Ruiz Contreras has set up some such absurd claim in regard to me.
According to Ruiz Contreras, he brought me into public notice through a
review which he published in 1899, under the title _Revista Nueva_.
Thus, according to Ruiz Contreras, I am known, and have been for
eighteen years! Although it may seem scarcely worth while to expose such
an obvious joke, I should like to clear up this question for the benefit
of any future biographers. Why should I not indulge the hope of having
them?
In 1899, Ruiz Contreras invited my co-operation in a weekly magazine, in
which I was to be both stockholder and editor. Those days already seem a
long way off. At first I refused, but he insisted; at length we agreed
that I should write for the magazine and share in meeting the expenses,
in company with Ruiz Contreras, Reparaz, Lassalle and the novelist
Matheu.
I made two or three payments, and moved down some of my pictures and
furniture to the office in consequence, until the time came when I began
to feel that it was humorous for me to be paying for publishing my
articles, when I was perfectly well able to dispose of them to any other
sheet. Upon my cutting off payments, Ruiz Contreras informed me that a
number of the stockholders, among whom was Icaza, who had replaced
Reparaz, took the position that if I did not pay, I should not be
permitted to write for the magazine.
"Very well, I shall not write." And I ceased to write.
Previous to my connection with the _Revista Nueva_, I had
contributed articles to _El Liberal_, _El Pais_, _El
Globo_, _La Justicia_, and _La Voz de Guipuzcoa_, as well
as to other publications.
A year after my contributions to the _Revista Nueva_, I brought out
_Sombre Lives_, which scarcely sold one hundred copies, and, then,
a little later, _The House of Aizgorri_, the sale of which fell
short of fifty.
At this time, Martinez Ruiz published a comedy, _The Power of
Love_, for which I provided a prologue, and I went about with the
publisher, Rodriguez Serra, through the bookshops, peddling the book. In
a shop on the Plaza de Santa Ana, Rodriguez Serra asked the proprietor,
not altogether without a touch of malice:
"What do you think of this book?"
"It would be all right," answered the proprietor, who did not know me,
"if anybody knew who Martinez Ruiz was; and who is this Pio Baroja?"
Senor Ruiz Contreras says that he made me known, but the fact is that
nobody knew me in those days; Senor Ruiz Contreras flatters himself that
he did me a great favour by publishing my articles, at a cost to me, at
the very least, of two or three _duros_ apiece.
If this is to be a patron of letters, I should like to patronize half
the planet.
As for literary influence, Ruiz Contreras never had any upon me. He was
an admirer of Arsene Houssage, Paul Bourget, and other novelists with a
sophisticated air, who never meant anything to me. The theatre also
obsessed him, a malady which I have never suffered, and he was a devotee
of the poet, Zorrilla, in which respect I was unable to share his
enthusiasm, nor can I do so today. Finally, he was a political
reactionary, while I am a man of radical tendencies.
XIII
PARISIAN DAYS
For the past twenty years I have been in the habit of visiting Paris,
not for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the city--to see it once
is enough; nor do I go in order to meet French authors, as, for the most
part, they consider themselves so immeasurably above Spaniards that
there is no way in which a self-respecting person can approach them. I
go to meet the members of the Spanish colony, which includes some types
which are most interesting.
I have gathered a large number of stories and anecdotes in this way,
some of which I have incorporated in my books.
ESTEVANEZ
Don Nicolas Estevanez was a good friend of mine. During my sojourns in
Paris, I met him every afternoon in the Cafe de la Fleur in the
Boulevard St. Germain.
When I was writing _The Last of the Romantics_ and _Grotesque
Tragedies_, Estevanez furnished me with data and information
concerning life in Paris under the Second Empire.
When I last saw him in the autumn of 1913, he made a practice of coming
to the cafe with a paper scribbled over with notes, to assist his memory
to recall the anecdotes which he had it in mind to tell.
I can see him now in the Cafe de la Fleur, with his blue eyes, his long
white beard, his cheeks, which were still rosy, his calm and always
phlegmatic air.
Once he became much excited. Javier Bueno and I happened on him in a
cafe on the Avenue d'Orleans, not far from the Lion de Belfort. Bueno
asked some questions about the recent attempt by Moral to assassinate
the King in Madrid, and Estevanez suddenly went to pieces. An anarchist
told me afterwards that Estevanez had carried the bomb which was thrown
by Morral in Madrid, from Paris to Barcelona, at which port he had taken
ship for Cuba, by arrangement with the Duke of Bivona.
I believe this story to have been a pure fabrication, but I feel
perfectly certain that Estevanez knew beforehand that the crime was to
be attempted.
MY VERSATILITY ACCORDING TO BONAFOUX
Speaking of Estevanez, I recall also Bonafoux, whom I saw frequently.
According to Gonzalez de la Pena, the painter, he held my versatility
against me.
"Bonafoux," remarked Pena, "feels that you are too versatile and too
volatile."
"Indeed? In what way?"
"One day you entered the bar and said to Bonafoux that a testimonial
banquet ought to be organized for Estevanez, enlarging upon it
enthusiastically. Bonafoux answered: 'Go ahead and make the
preparations, and we will all get together.' When you came into the cafe
a few nights later, Bonafoux asked: 'How about that banquet?' 'What
banquet?' you replied. It had already passed out of your mind. Now, tell
me: Is this true?" inquired Pena.
"Yes, it is. We all have something of Tartarin in us, more or less. We
talk and we talk, and then we forget what we say."
Other Parisian types return to me when I think of those days. There was
a Cuban journalist, who was satisfactorily dirty, of whom Bonafoux used
to say that he not only ate his plate of soup but managed to wash his
face in it at the same time. There was a Catalan guitar player, besides
some girls from Madrid who walked the tight rope, whom we used to invite
to join us at the cafe from time to time. And then there was a whole
host of other persons, all more or less shabby, down at the heel and
picturesque.
XIV
LITERARY ENMITIES
Making our entrance into the world of letters hurling contradictions
right and left, the young men of our generation were received by the
writers of established reputation with unfriendly demonstrations. As was
natural, this was not only the attitude of the older writers, but it
extended to our contemporaries in years as well, even to those who were
most modern.
THE ENMITY OF DICENTA
Among those who cherished a deadly hatred of me was Dicenta. It was an
antipathy which had its origin in the realm of ideas, and it was
accentuated subsequently by an article which I contributed to _El
Globo_ upon his drama _Aurora_, in which I maintained that
Dicenta was not a man of new or broad ideas, but completely preoccupied
with the ancient conceptions of honesty and honour. One night in the
Cafe Fornos--I am able to vouch for the truth of this incident because,
years afterwards, he told me the story himself--Dicenta accosted a young
man who was sitting at an adjacent table taking supper, and attempted to
draw him into discussion, under the impression that it was I. The young
man was so frightened that he never dared to open his mouth.
"Come," shouted Dicenta, "we shall settle this matter at once."
"I have nothing to settle with you," replied the young man.
"Yes, sir, you have; you have stated in an article that my ideas are not
revolutionary."
"I never stated anything of the kind."
"What is that?"
"No, sir."
"But aren't you Pio Baroja?"
"I am not, sir."
Dicenta turned on his heel and marched back to his seat.
Sometime later, Dicenta and I became friends, although we were never
very intimate, because he felt that I did not appreciate him at his full
worth. And it was the truth.
THE POSTHUMOUS ENMITY OF SAWA
I met Alejandro Sawa one evening at the Cafe Fornos, where I had gone
with a friend.
As a matter of fact, I had never read anything which he had written, but
his appearance impressed me. Once I followed him in the street with the
intention of speaking to him, but my courage failed at the last moment.
A number of months later, I met him one summer afternoon on the
Recoletos, when he was in the company of a Frenchman named Cornuty.
Cornuty and Sawa were conversing and reciting verses; they took me to a
wine-shop in the Plaza de Herradores, where they drank a number of
glasses, which I paid for, whereupon Sawa asked me to lend him three
pesetas. I did not have them, and told him so.
"Do you live far from here?" asked Alejandro, in his lofty style.
"No, near by."
"Very well then, you can go home and bring me the money."
He issued this command with such an air of authority that I went home
and brought him the money. He came to the door of the wine-shop, took it
from me, and then said:
"You may go now."
This was the way in which insignificant bourgeois admirers were treated
in the school of Baudelaire and Verlaine.
Later again, when I brought out _Sombre Lives_, I sometimes saw
Sawa in the small hours of the morning, his long locks flowing, and
followed by his dog. He always gripped my hand with such force that it
did me some hurt, and then he would say to me, in a tragic tone:
"Be proud! You have written _Sombre Lives_."
I took it as a joke.
One day Alejandro wrote me to come to his house. He was living on the
Cuesta de Santo Domingo. I betook myself there, and he made me a
proposition which was obviously preposterous. He handed me five or six
articles, written by him, which had already been published, together
with some notes, saying that if I would add certain material, we should
then be able to make up a book of "Parisian Impressions," which could
appear under the names of us both.
I read the articles and did not care for them. When I went to return
them, he asked me:
"What have you done?"
"Nothing. I think it would be difficult for us to collaborate; there is
no possible bond of unity in what we write."
"How is that?"
"You are one of these eloquent writers, and I am not."
This remark gave great offence.
Another reason for Alejandro's enmity was an opinion expressed by my
brother, Ricardo.
Ricardo wished to paint the portrait of Manuel Sawa in oils, as Manuel
had marked personality at that time, when he still wore a beard.
"But here am I," said Alejandro. "Am I not a more interesting subject to
be painted?"
"No, no, not at all," we all shouted together--this took place in the
Cafe de Lisboa--"Manuel has more character."
Alejandro said nothing, but, a few moments later, he rose, looked at
himself in the glass, arranged his flowing locks, and then, glaring at
us from top to toe, while he pronounced the letter with the utmost
distinctness, he said simply:
"M...." and walked out of the cafe.
Some time passed before Alejandro heard that I had put him into one of
my novels and he conceived a certain dislike for me, in spite of which
we saw each other now and then, always conversing affectionately.
One day he sent for me to come and see him. He was living in the Calle
del Conde Duque. He was in bed, already blind. His spirit was as high as
before, while his interest in literary matters remained the same. His
brother, Miguel, who was present, happened to say during the
conversation that the hat I wore, which I had purchased in Paris a few
days previously, had a flatter brim than was usual. Alejandro asked to
examine it, and busied himself feeling of the brim.
"This is a hat," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "that a man can wear
with long hair." Some months subsequent to his death a book of his,
_Light Among the Shadows_, was published, in which Alejandro spoke
ill of me, although he had a good word for _Sombre Lives_.
He called me a country-man, said that my bones were misshapen, and then
stated that glory does not go hand in hand with tuberculosis. Poor
Alejandro! He was sound at heart, an eloquent child of the
Mediterranean, born to orate in the lands of the sun, but he took it
into his head that it was his duty to make himself over into the
likeness of one of the putrid products of the North.
SEMI-HATRED ON THE PART OF SILVERIO LANZA
A mutual friend, Antonio Gil Campos, introduced me to Silverio Lanza.
Silverio Lanza was a man of great originality, endowed with an enormous
fund of thwarted ambition and pride, which was only natural, as he was a
notably fine writer who had not yet met with success, nor even with the
recognition which other younger writers enjoyed.
The first time that I saw Lanza, I remember how his eyes sparkled when I
told him that I liked his books. Nobody ever paid any attention to him
in those days.
Silverio Lanza was a singular character. At times he seemed benevolent,
and then again there were times when he would appear malignant in the
extreme.
His ideas upon the subject of literature were positively absurd. When I
sent him _Sombre Lives_, he wrote me an unending letter in which he
attempted to convince me that I ought to append a lesson or moral, to
every tale. If I did not wish to write them, he offered to do it
himself.
Silverio thought that literature was not to be composed like history,
according to Quintilian's definition, _ad narrandum_, but _ad
probandum_.
When I gave him _The House of Aizgorri_, he was outraged by the
optimistic conclusion of the book, and advised me to change it.
According to his theory, if the son of the Aizgorri family came to a bad
end, the daughter ought to come to a bad end also.
Being of a somewhat fantastical turn of mind, Silverio Lanza was full of
political projects that were extraordinary.
I remember that one of his ideas was that we ought all to write the King
a personal note of congratulation upon his attaining his majority.
"It is the most revolutionary thing that can be done at such a time,"
insisted Lanza, apparently quite convinced.
"I am unable to see it," I replied. Azorin and myself were of the
opinion that it was a ridiculous proceeding which would never produce
the desired result.
Another of Lanza's hobbies was an aggressive misogyny.
"Baroja, my friend," he would say to me, "you are too gallant and
respectful in your novels with the ladies. Women are like laws, they are
to be violated."
I laughed at him.
One day I was walking with my friend Gil Campos and my cousin Goni, when
we happened on Silverio Lanza, who took us to the Cafe de San Sebastian,
where we sat down in the section facing the Plazuela del Angel. It was a
company that was singularly assorted.
Silverio reverted to the theme that women should be handled with the
rod. Gil Campos proceeded to laugh, being gifted with an ironic vein,
and made fun of him. For my part, I was tired of it, so I said to Lanza:
"See here, Don Juan" (his real name was Juan Bautista Amoros), "what you
are giving us now is literature, and poor literature at that. You are
not, and I am not, able to violate law and women as we see fit. That may
be all very well for Caesars and Napoleons and Borgias, but you are a
respectable gentleman who lives in a little house at Getafe with your
wife, and I am a poor man myself, who manages as best he may to make a
living. You would tremble in your boots if you ever broke a law, or even
a municipal ordinance, and so would I. As far as women are concerned, we
are both of us glad to take what we can get, if we can get anything, and
I am afraid that neither of us is ever going to get very much, despite
the fact"--I added by way of a humorous touch--"that we are two of the
most distinguished minds in Europe."
My cousin Goni replied to this with the rare tact that was
characteristic of him, arguing that within the miserable sphere of
tangible reality I was right, while Lanza moved upon a higher plane,
which was more ideal and more romantic. He went on to add that Lanza and
he were both Berbers, and so violent and passionate, while I was an
Aryan, although a vulgar Aryan, whose ideas were simply those which were
shared by everybody.
Lanza was not satisfied with my cousin's explanation and departed with a
marked lack of cordiality.
Since that time, Silverio has regarded me with mixed emotions, half
friendly, half the reverse, although in one of his latest books, _The
Surrender of Santiago_, he has referred to me as a great friend and a
great writer. I suspect, however, that he does not love me.
XV
THE PRESS
OUR NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS
I have always been very much interested in the newspaper and periodical
press, and in everything that has any connection with printing. When my
father, my grandfather, and great grandfather set up struggling papers
in a provincial capital, it may be said that they were not printers in
vain.
Because of my fondness for newspapers and magazines, it is a grief to me
that the Spanish press should be so weak, so poor, so pusillanimous and
stiff-jointed.
Of late, while the foreign press has been expanding and widening its
scope, ours has been standing still.
There is, of course, an economic explanation to justify our deficiency,
but this is valid only in the matter of quantity, and not as to quality.
Comparing our press with that of the rest of the world, a rosary of
negation might easily be made up in this fashion:
Our press does not concern itself with what is of universal interest.
Our press does not concern itself with what is of national interest.
Our press does not concern itself with literature.
Our press does not concern itself with philosophy.
And so on to infinity.
Corpus Barga has told me that when Senor Groizard, a relative of his,
was ambassador to the Vatican, Leo XIII once inquired of him, in a
jargon of Italo-Spanish, in the presence of the papal secretary,
Cardinal Rampolla:
"Does the Senor Ambasciatore speak Italian?"
"No, not Italian, although I understand it a little."
"Does the Senor Ambasciatore speak English?"
"No, not English, I do not speak that," replied Groizard.
"Does the Senor Ambasciatore speak German?"
"No German, no Dutch; not at all."
"No doubt then the Senor Ambasciatore speaks French?"
"French? No. I am able to translate it a little, but I do not speak it."
"Then what does the Senor Ambasciatore speak?" asked Leo XIII, smiling
that Voltairian smile of his at his secretary.
"Then Senor Ambasciatore speaks a heavy back-country dialect called
Extramaduran," replied Rampolla del Tindaro, bending over to His
Holiness's ear.
The Spanish press has made a resolution, now of long standing, to speak
nothing but a back-country dialect called Extramaduran.
_Our Journalists_
Our journalists supply the measure of our journals. When the great names
are those of Miguel Moya, Romeo, Rocamora and Don Pio, what are we to
think of the little fellows?
Speaking generally, the Spanish journalist is interested in politics, in
theatres, in bull fights, and in nothing else; whatever is beyond these,
does not concern him. Not even the _feuilleton_ attracts his
attention. A wooden, highly mannered phrase sponsored by Maura, is much
more stimulating to his mind than the most sensational piece of news.
The Spanish newspaper man is endowed with an extraordinary lack of
imagination and of curiosity. I recall having given a friend, who was a
journalist, a little book of Nietzsche's to read, which he returned with
the remark that he had not been able to get through it, as it was
insufferable drivel. I have heard the same opinion, or similar ones,
expressed by journalists of Ibsen, Schopenhauer, Dostoievsky, Stendhal
and all the most stimulating minds of Europe.
The wretched Saint Aubin, wretched certainly as a critic, used to
ridicule Tolstoi and the illness which resulted in his death,
maintaining that it was nothing more than an advertisement. The most
benighted vulgarity reigns in our press.
Upon occasion, vulgarity goes hand in hand with an ignorance which is
astounding. I remember going to a cafe on the Calle de Alcala known as
la Maison Doree one afternoon with Regoyos. Felipe Trigo, the novelist,
sat down at our table with a friend of his, a journalist, I believe,
from America. I have never been a friend of Trigo's, and could never
take any interest either in the man or his work, which to my mind is
tiresome and commercially erotic, besides being absolutely devoid of all
charm.
Regoyos, who is effusive by nature, soon became engaged in conversation
with them, and the talk turned upon artistic subjects, in which he was
interested, and then to his travels abroad.
Trigo put in his oar and uttered a number of preposterous statements. In
particular, he described a ship which had unloaded at Milan. When
Regoyos pointed out that Milan was not a seaport, he replied:
"Probably it was some other place then. What is the difference?"
He continued with a string of geographical and anthropological blunders,
which were concurred in by the journalist, while Regoyos and I sat by in
amazement.
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