Youth and Egolatry Part 24

"Could they have been joking?"

"No; nonsense. They do not believe that such things are worth knowing.

They think they are petty details which might be useful to railway porters. Trigo imagines that he is a magician, who understands the female mind."

"Well, does he?" asked Regoyos, with nave innocence.

"How can he understand anything? The poor fellow is ignorant. His other attainments are on a par with his geography."

The ignorance of authors and journalists is accompanied as a matter of course by a total want of comprehension. A number of years ago, a rich young man called at my house, intending to found a review. During the conversation, he explained that he was a Murcian, a lawyer and a follower of Maura.

Finally, after expounding his literary ideas, he informed me that Ricardo Leon, who at that time had just published his first novel, would, in his opinion, come to be acknowledged as the first novelist of Europe. He also a.s.sured me that d.i.c.kens's humour was absolutely vulgar, cheap and out of date.

"I am not surprised that you should think so," I said to him. "You are from Murcia, you are a lawyer and a Maurista; naturally, you like Ricardo Leon, and it is equally natural that you should not like d.i.c.kens."

Persons who imagine that it is of no consequence whether Milan is a seaport or not, who believe that Nietzsche is a drivelling a.s.s, and who make bold to tell us that d.i.c.kens is a cheap author--in one word, young gentlemen lawyers who are partisans of Maura, are the people who provide copy for our press. How can the Spanish press be expected to be different from what it is?

AMERICANS

Unquestionably, Spaniards suffer much from the uncertainty of information and narrowness of view inevitable to those who live apart from the main currents of life.

In comparison with the English, the Germans, or the French, whether we like it or not, we appear provincial. We are provincials who possess more or less talent, but nevertheless we are provincials.

So it is that an Italian, a Russian, or a Swede prefers to read a book by a mediocre Parisian, such as Marcel Prevost, to one by a writer of genuine talent, such as Galdos; it also explains why the canvases of second rate painters such as David, Gericault, or Ingres are more highly esteemed in the market than those of a painter of genius like Goya.

To be provincial has its virtues as well as its defects. At times the provincial are accompanied by universal elements, which blend and form a masterpiece. This was the case with _Don Quixote_, with the etchings of Goya and the dramas of Ibsen. Similarly, among new peoples, provincial stupidity will often form a blend with an obtuseness which is world-wide. The aridness and infertility characteristic of the soil combine with the detritus of fas.h.i.+on and the follies of the four quarters of the globe. The result is a child-like type, petulant, devoid of virtue, and utterly dest.i.tute of a single manly quality. This is the American type. America is _par excellence_ the continent of stupidity.

The American has not yet outgrown the monkey in him and remains in the imitative stage.

I have no particular reason to dislike Americans. My hostility towards them arises merely from the fact that I have never known one who had the air of being anybody, who impressed me as a man.

You frequently meet a man in the interior of Spain, in some small village, perhaps, whose conversation conveys the impression that he is a real man, wrought out of the ore that is most human and most n.o.ble. At such times one becomes reconciled to one's country, for all its charlatans and hordes of sharpers.

An American never appears to be calm, serene and collected. There are plenty who seem to be wild, impulsive creatures, driven on by sanguinary fury, while others disclose the vanity of the chorus girl, or a self-conceit which is wholly ridiculous.

My lack of sympathy for Spanish-Americans extends to their literary productions. Everything that I have read by South Americans, and I bear in mind the not disinterested encomiums of Unamuno, I have found to be both poor and deficient in substance.

Beginning with Sarmiento's _Facundo_, which is heavy, cheap, and uninteresting, and coming down to the latest productions of Ingenieros, Manuel Ugarte, Ricardo Rojas and Contreras, this is true without exception.

What a deluge of shoddy sn.o.bbery and vulgar display pours out of America!

It is often argued that Spaniards should eulogize South Americans for political reasons. This is one of many recommendations which proceed from the craniums of gentlemen who top themselves off with silk hats and who carry a lecture inside which is in demand by Ibero-American societies.

I have no faith that this brand of politics will be productive of results.

Citizens of old, civilized countries are still sensible to flattery and compliment, but what are you to tell an Argentine who is fully convinced that Argentina is a more important country than England or Germany, because she raises a large quant.i.ty of wheat, to say nothing of a great number of cows?

Whenever Unamuno writes he decries Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and then promptly eulogizes the mighty General Anibal Perez and the great poet Diocleciano Sanchez, who hail from the pampas. To these fellows, such praise seems grudging enough. Salvador Rueda himself must appear tame to these hide-stretchers.

XVI

POLITICS

I have always been a liberal radical, an individualist and an anarchist.

In the first place, I am an enemy of the Church; in the second place, I am an enemy of the State. When these great powers are in conflict I am a partisan of the State as against the Church, but on the day of the State's triumph, I shall become an enemy of the State. If I had lived during the French Revolution, I should have been an internationalist of the school of Anacarsis Clootz; during the struggle for liberty, I should have been one of the _Carbonieri_.

To the extent in which liberalism has been a destructive force, inimical to the past, it enthralls me. The fight against religious prejudice and the aristocracy, the suppression of religious communities, inheritance taxes--in short, whatever has a tendency to pulverize completely the ancient order of society, fills me with a great joy. On the other hand, insofar as liberalism is constructive, as it has been for example in its advocacy of universal suffrage, in its democracy, and in its system of parliamentary government, I consider it ridiculous and valueless as well.

Even today, wherever it is obliged to take the aggressive, it seems to me that the good in liberalism is not exhausted; but wherever it has become an accomplished fact, and is accepted as such, it neither interests me nor enlists my admiration.

VOTES AND APPLAUSE

In our present day democracy, there are only two effective sanctions: votes and applause.

Those are all. Just as in the old days men committed all sorts of crimes in order to please their sovereign, now they commit similar crimes in order to satisfy the people.

And this truth has been recognized from Aristotle to Burke.

Democracy ends in histrionism.

A man who gets up to talk before a crowd must of necessity be an actor.

I have wondered from time to time if I might not have certain histrionic gifts myself; however, when I have put them to the test, I have found that they were not sufficient. I have made six or seven speeches during my brief political career. I spoke in Valencia, in a pelota court, and I delivered an address at Barcelona in the Casa del Pueblo, in both of which places I was applauded generously. Nevertheless the applause failed to intoxicate me; it produced no impression upon me whatever. It seemed too much like mere noise--noise made by men's hands, and having nothing to do with myself.

I am not good enough as an actor to be a politician.

POLITICIANS

I have never been able to feel any enthusiasm for Spanish politicians.

We hear a great deal about Canovas. Canovas has always impressed me as being as bad an orator as he was a writer. When I first read his _Bell of Huesca_, I could not contain myself for laughing. As far as his speeches are concerned, I have also read a few, and find them horribly heavy, diffuse, monotonous and deficient in style. I hear that Canovas is a great historian, but if so, I am not acquainted with that side of him.

Castelar was unquestionably a man of exceptional gifts as a writer, but he failed to take advantage of them, and they were utterly dissipated.

He lacked what most Spaniards of the 19th Century lacked with him; that is, reserve.