His first solid
success at home was made with _La Barraca_ in 1899--and it was a
success a good deal more political than artistic; he was hailed for his
frenzy far more than for his craft. Even outside of Spain his subsequent
celebrity has tended to ground itself upon agreement with his politics,
and not upon anything properly describable as a critical appreciation of
his talents. Had _The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse_ been
directed against France instead of in favour of France, it goes without
saying that it would have come to the United States without the
_imprimatur_ of the American Embassy at Madrid, and that there
would have appeared no sudden rage for the author among the generality
of novel-readers. His intrinsic merits, in sober retrospect, seem very
feeble. For all his concern with current questions, his accurate news
instinct, he is fundamentally a romantic of the last century, with more
than one plain touch of the downright operatic.
Baroja is a man of a very different sort. A novelist undoubtedly as
skilful as Blasco and a good deal more profound, he lacks the quality of
enthusiasm and thus makes a more restricted appeal. In place of gaudy
certainties he offers disconcerting questionings; in place of a neat and
well-rounded body of doctrine he puts forward a sort of generalized
contra-doctrine.
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