When somebody makes the joints of language creak, they
say: "He does not know how to manage it." Certainly he does know how to
manage it. Anybody can manage a platitude. The truth is simply this: the
individual writer endeavours to make of language a cloak to fit his
form, while, contrarywise, the purists attempt to mould their bodies
till they fit the cloak.
RHETORIC OF THE MINOR KEY
Persons to whom my style is not entirely distasteful, sometimes ask:
"Why use the short sentence when it deprives the period of eloquence and
rotundity?"
"Because I do not desire eloquence or rotundity," I reply. "Furthermore,
I avoid them." The vast majority of Spanish purists are convinced that
the only possible rhetoric is the rhetoric of the major key. This, for
example, is the rhetoric of Castelar and Costa, the rhetoric which
Ricardo Leon and Salvador Rueda manipulate today, as it has been
inherited from the Romans. Its purpose is to impart solemnity to
everything, to that which already has it by right of nature, and to that
which has it not. This rhetoric of the major key marches with stately,
academic tread. At great, historic moments, no doubt it is very well,
but in the long run, in incessant parade, it is one of the most deadly
soporifics in literature; it destroys variety, it is fatal to subtlety,
to nice transitions, to detail, and it throws the uniformity of the
copybook over everything.
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