Youth and Egolatry Part 5

BAROJA, YOU WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING

(_A Refrain_)

"Baroja does not amount to anything, and I presume that he will never amount to anything," Ortega y Ga.s.set observes in the first issue of the _Spectator_.

I have a suspicion myself that I shall never amount to anything.

Everybody who knows me has always thought the same.

When I first went to school in San Sebastian, at the age of four--and it has rained a great deal since that day--the teacher, Don Leon Sanchez y Calleja, who made a practice of thras.h.i.+ng us with a very stiff pointer (oh, these hallowed traditions of our ancestors!), looked me over and said:

"This boy will prove to be as sulky as his brother. He will never amount to anything."

I studied for a time in the Inst.i.tute of Pamplona with Don Gregorio Pano, who taught us mathematics; and this old gentleman, who looked like the Commander in _Don Juan Tenorio_, with his frozen face and his white beard, remarked to me in his sepulchral voice:

"You are not going to be an engineer like your father. You will never amount to anything."

When I took therapeutics under Don Benito Hernando in San Carlos, Don Benito planted himself in front of me and said:

"That smile of yours, that little smile ... it is impertinent. Don't you come to me with any of your satirical smiles. You will never amount to anything, unless it is negative and useless."

I shrugged my shoulders.

Women who have known me always tell me: "You will never amount to anything."

And a friend who was leaving for America volunteered:

"When I return in twenty or thirty years, I shall find all my acquaintances situated differently: one will have become rich, another will have ruined himself, this fellow will have entered the cabinet, that one will have been swallowed up in a small town; but you will be exactly what you are today, you will live the same life, and you will have just two pesetas in your pocket. That is as far as you will get."

The idea that I shall never amount to anything is now deeply rooted in my soul. It is evident that I shall never become a deputy, nor an academician, nor a Knight of Isabella the Catholic, nor a captain of industry, nor alderman, nor Member of the Council, nor a common cheat, nor shall I ever possess a good black suit.

And yet when a man has pa.s.sed forty, when his belly begins to take on adipose tissue and he puffs out with ambition, he ought to be something, to sport a t.i.tle, to wear a ribbon, to array himself in a black frock coat and a white waistcoat; but these ambitions are denied to me. The professors of my childhood and my youth rise up before my eyes like the ghost of Banquo, and proclaim: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything."

When I go down to the seash.o.r.e, the waves lap my feet and murmur: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything." The wise owl that perches at night on our roof at Itzea calls to me: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything," and even the crows, winging their way across the sky, incessantly shout at me from above: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything."

And I am convinced that I never shall amount to anything.

THE PATRIOTISM OF DESIRE

I may not appear to be a very great patriot, but, nevertheless, I am.

Yet I am unable to make my Spanish or Basque blood an exclusive criterion for judging the world. If I believe that a better orientation may be acquired by a.s.suming an international point of view, I do not hold it improper to cease to feel, momentarily, as a Spaniard or a Basque.

In spite of this, a longing for the accomplishment of what shall be for the greatest good of my country, normally obsesses my mind, but I am wanting in the patriotism of lying.

I should like to have Spain the best place in the world, and the Basque country the best part of Spain.

The feeling is such a natural and common one that it seems scarcely worth while to explain it.

The climate of Touraine or of Tuscany, the Swiss lakes, the Rhine and its castles, whatever is best in Europe, I would root up, if I had my say, and set down here between the Pyrenees and the Straits of Gibraltar. At the same time, I should denationalize Shakespeare, d.i.c.kens, Tolstoi and Dostoievski, making them Spaniards. I should see that the best laws and the best customs were those of our country. But wholly apart from this patriotism of desire, lies the reality. What is to be gained by denying it? To my mind nothing is to be gained.

There are many to whom the only genuine patriotism is the patriotism of lying, which in fact is more of a matter of rhetoric than it is of feeling.

Our falsifying patriots are always engaged in furious combat with other equally falsifying internationalists.

"Nothing but what we have is of any account," cries one party.

"No, it is what the other fellow has," cries the other.

Patriotism is telling the truth as to one's country, in a sympathetic spirit which is guided and informed by a love of that which is best.

Now some one will say: "Your patriotism, then, is nothing but an extension of your ego; it is purely utilitarian."

Absolutely so. But how can there be any other kind of patriotism?

MY HOME LANDS

I have two little countries, which are my homes--the Basque provinces, and Castile; and by Castile I mean Old Castile. I have, further, two points of view from which I look out upon the world: one is my home on the Atlantic; the other is very like a home to me, on the Mediterranean.

All my literary inspirations spring either from the Basque provinces or from Castile. I could never write a Gallegan or a Catalan novel.

I could wish that my readers were all Basques and Castilians.

Other Spaniards interest me less. Spaniards who live in America, or Americans, do not interest me at all.

CRUELTY AND STUPIDITY

It appears from an article written by Azorin in connection with a book of mine, that, to my way of thinking, there are two enormities which are incredible and intolerable. They are cruelty and stupidity.

Civilized man has no choice but to despise these manifestations of primitive, brute existence.

We may be able to tolerate stupidity and lack of comprehension when they are simple and wholly natural, but what of an utter obtuseness of understanding which dresses itself up and becomes rhetorical? Can anything be more disagreeable?

When a fly devours the pollen greedily from the pyrethrum, which, as we know, will prove fatal to him, it becomes clear at once that flies have no more innate sagacity than men. When we listen to a conservative orator defending the past with salvos of rhetorical fireworks, we are overwhelmed by a realization of the complete odiousness of ornamental stupidity.

With cruelty it is much the same. The habits of the sphex surprise while bull fights disgust us. The more cruelty and stupidity are dressed up, the more hateful they become.