The apologia was quite gratuitous.
A book on the war, though by the first novelist of present-day Spain,
would probably have been as useless as all the other books on the war.
That stupendous event will be far more soundly discussed by men who have
not felt its harsh appeal to the emotions. Baroja, evading this grand
enemy of all ideas, sat himself down to inspect and co-ordinate the
ideas that had gradually come to growth in his mind before the bands
began to bray. The result is a book that is interesting, not only as the
frank talking aloud of one very unusual man, but also as a
representation of what is going on in the heads of a great many other
Spaniards. Blasco, it seems to me, is often less Spanish than French;
Valencia, after all, is next door to Catalonia, and Catalonia is
anything but Castilian. But Baroja, though he is also un-Castilian and
even a bit anti-Castilian, is still a thorough Spaniard. He is more
interested in a literary feud in Madrid than in a holocaust beyond the
Pyrenees. He gets into his discussion of every problem a definitely
Spanish flavour. He is unmistakably a Spaniard even when he is trying
most rigorously to be unbiased and international. He thinks out
everything in Spanish terms. In him, from first to last, one observes
all the peculiar qualities of the Iberian mind--its disillusion, its
patient weariness, its pervasive melancholy.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25