UNAMUNO: THE STATUE AND THE CRIME

...Unamuno's capacity for scorn was infinite, but he did not know how to offend...

...but neither the disillusionment nor ths faith could have existed and the reporter's .literary effect being trifling, is prejudicial like almost all trifling things...

...But it pleases some to approach ths statue of the rector of Salamanca and make him say that "the reds" are to blame for all the ills of the world both in the present and future- As for Una* muno's calling us "reds," by the way, that is another Inaccuracy...

...Unamuno was quoted ss saying that he had been heart and soul with France at the beginning of the Civil War, and that he conaidered the Republicans guilty of acta of vandalism against Spain'a cnltural treasures...

...On the other hand nothing is said against Franco...

...One day, in the summer of 1935,1 was talking to Unamuno about some statements of his in the newspapers and he said to me, somewhat pained.: "I did not say thst...

...To a man who would go to him with false spiritual problems and false moral preoccupations Unamuno would answer perhaps that he should read Ponson de Terrell's Rocsmbole, and would praise in an enthusiastic and sophisticsl manner the saddest snd cheapest of adventure stories...

...Neither could poor Don Miguel have spoken of bis aversion for the "vandalism of the Republicans with cultural treasures...

...The person hsrmed and maligned is ths "man of flesh and bone and conscience" who was Unsmuno...

...That is, to refuse to use the divine faculty of the understanding •hove the immediate interests of men and social groups...

...Unamuno died shortly afterward and not as the writer of Carrefour says (of a heart attack), but trom carbonic arid fumes from a charcoal brazier which someone put in his room as he slept...

...The newspapers write about me— especially abroad—as if I were incapable of reacting or of contradicting them, as if I were a stone statue to which others can attribute freely their own opinions...

...How was he going to call in this way those who with him—with Unamuno himself—had worked daily for years in the Cortez Constituyentes elaborating the Constitution and republicans laws...

...It is precisely the contrary...

...they jailed Baroja who asked, whan liberated, to be allowed to remain in ffrison where for the moment he felt more secure...

...The suicide hypothesis is in such absolute contradiction to the religious conscience of Unamuno that no one has even insinuated it...

...Unamuno did not like to be cither a banner-man or a statue-man, but just a man, a man of "flesh and bone " Today Don Miguel do Unamuno is indeed the authentic guest of stone and the desire to make him speak and to place on his lips their own opinions has not been extinguished among press correspondents...

...In extreme cases he used a kind of sarcasm that many times went unperceived- This incapacity for offense was one of the things I most admired in him...

...Perhaps the reporter errs in good faith and there is a transposition of terms in his memory, but if this happens to him with concrete and verified facts which are common knowledge, what will happen to him when speaking of such fragile things as mental attitudes He makes the old professor say: "I was with General Franco with all my soul...

...Whoever hss read the author of ths Lift i.f Don Quixote and Saneho and knows political history, knows, with no nsed to hsve talked with him, that ho was naturally incapable of saying that Hs could not be with anyone "with all his soul...

...This was the only crime that exasperated Unamuno and when he had to face it in the form of literary or political pharisaism or low ambition disguised in any form of advantageous simulation he curbed his irritation with difficulty...

...This is vhe most aggressive personal opinion I ever heard him express and it was addressed to the present theorist of the State...

...In those last years such incidents were frequent and Unamuno, who did not bother to reply, considered himself as a kind df "guest of stone" at moral, philosophical and even political feasts...

...This is not so...

...To a Fascist who is today one of the theorists of the "empire," after having passed through the political parties of the left during the Republic, and who, furthermore, is a cheap writer, he said one dsy: "You can justify assassination because of hatred or love, but because of literary, resentment it is a difficult thing to accept...

...Pio Baroja, the great novelist—also a Basque—told me in France in 1938...

...Unamuno remained at home under house arrest, under constant vigilance...

...Aware that the three of them were going to adopt an opportunistic attitude and that they were going to place themselves on the side offering greater practical advantages, the Republic not only permitted them to leave the country but put at their disposal the necessary means to take along with them their books, notes and other research materials...

...To make Unamuno speak so reveals an unpardonable lack of information and imagination...

...But why attribute to Unamuno opinions and intentions so opposed to his nature and so difficult to sustain if there are established tacts of an absolutely incontestable evidence...

...In Carrefour't retrospective interview there is neither wickedness nor stupidity...

...As for Unamuno we now know how he lived from the time of the Fascist insurrection, and how he died...

...No one- has called the -Spanish republicans reds except Franco's Fascists and their allied newspapers abroad—let us remember with special delight the disappearance of that "tdrehon" called Gringoire...

...Unamuno has said many times: "People are almost never dangerous because of their wiikedness, but because of their stupidity...

...With a certain noble ingenuousness he used to repeat: "This business of living like a statue...

...Unamuno knew very well, as did everyone else, that throughout the history of Spain there had never been the slightest preoccupation in the Peninsula with the cultural life until the Republic was founded with his own personal collaboration...

...Not even with Unamuno —as hs was fond of saying Still less with a politician...

...Although if no one has done so before it is perhaps because the obviousness of the lie seemed to make it unnecessary...

...It is well to recall, concerning the conduct of the republicans with regard to scholars and writers, that Menendez Pidal, Mararion, and Ortega y Gasset, were in Madrid at the beginning of the civil war...

...I know that Unamuno, with whom I had the pleasure of talking almost every day for more than a year', could under no circumstances have said those words- Even though we should like to accept the absurdity that in the fall of 1936 he had totally changed his moral nature and disposition, he could not have said "I was with General Franco," at the beginning - of the war because at the beginning Franco did not polarize any opinion, and as the only basis of his personality was the conspiracy with Hitler and Mussolini, those conditions do not seem to be sufficient to inspire the devotion of a humanistic mystic "with all his soul...

...That in those days of the civil war (November, 1936) the planes of Hitler and Mussolini were dropping bombs on the Prado Museum (fortunately they fell and exploded outside the building...

...And by no means with a Fascist political general, that Is, with ths three conditions which ¦tool perturbed him in ths last years of his life and against which he accumulated taunts in his articles...

...WRITERS and WRITING THE NEW LEADER LITERARY SECTION UNAMUNO: The Statue and the Crime THE WAY OF REMINISCENCE By Ramon Sender THIS ii the first time, I believe, that anyone has gone out to answer the levity of the newspapers with regard to Unamuno since the desth of the author of The Tragic Sense of Lift...

...Also it is a known fact that neither a single incunabulura nor important manuscript perished, although Franco's incendiary bombs gravely endangered some before the salvsge organization could remove them to safety* Finally, Hitler's planes, using the charts supplied him by Franco, in two hours razed a city like Guernica which was the sanctuary of the traditional liberties of the Basque people—and those liberties are at one and the same time the root and flower of a culture which was also the basic culture of Unamuno...

...He says that the Spain of Franco had named Unamuno rector for life of the University of Salamanca, from which the republicans had dismissed him shortly before...

...Ths Fascists have not shot me because they have not real my books" The Fascist* want to make Unamuno theirs because they have not read him either or because* having read him, perhaps they are committing what Unamuno considered tht greatest of crimes...

...Unamuno was dismissed...

...On the other hand, Unamuno and Baroja were the only outstanding writers in the sector dominated by the Fascists...

...Sometimes a friend said to me in referring to him: "I believe his mind is beginning to fail...

...Under the Republic Unamuno was named rector for life of Salamanca and no one dismissed him until the Fascists arrived...

...There is a verbosity which afflicts some French tourists—among them the elder brother, Maurice Barres—before Spanish statues and paintings- Perhaps the greatest sin of the Carrefour reporter, inexactness, is pardonable on the score that he is relating today what he saw and heard in the autumn of 1930...

...RaRELY hsve i agreed with Unsmuno in our discussions—especially on literature and poetry, In which he seemed to me too scholastic—but that has not influenced the respect I owed his genius and integrity, and that respect only increases with distance and time...

...That in one year the Republic established 30,000 new public schools...

...It is for that reason that I write these lines- I am not trying to defend him, now that ho needa no other defense than that of bis own writings...

...But the truth must be reestablished...

...It may be that he attributes these words to him to givs more force afterward to Unamuno's tUsillussionment...

...Nor is anyone ignorant of the fact that neither a single picture nor a single piece of sculpture of the immense treasure of Spanish art was lost in the Republican zone, although to safeguard them from bombardment it was necessary to use thousands of trucks which were precious for the transportation of food and munitions for the people of besieged Madrid...

...In spite of everything, the Fascists today wish to assimilate him...

...I smiled, realizing that Unamuno had wished to be impertinent to him and had only succeeded in giving him that impression...

...Therefore it is not strange that in the eight or ten preliminary lines in which the author speaks for himself*bcfore making the statue talk, there are two errors of importance...

...If these facts are not eloquent enough in themselves, their significance may be heightened with the reading of the last books of Unamuno in which the rector of Salamanca expressly^peaks of fascism, communism snd militarism, deliberately groups them and considers them the product of the lack of mental responsibility snd manliness of the last two generations...

...It ia against such misrepresentations of the great Spanish philosopher—of whose life and death, snd position on Spain little is known In this country—and to the attempt en the part of the Fascists to claim him for themselves thst Ramon Sender, aether of "Seven Red Sundays," "Chronicle ef Dawn," and other well-known novels about Spain, directs his aaewer...

...The reporter from Carrefour one day approached the statue in Salamanca and today, ten years later, makes him say that the Fascists are bad, that the republicans arc worse and that all Spaniards are odious...

...Much less with a political general...

...These facts are: Unamuno said in an opening speech at the University of Salamanca in the autumn of 1936, addressing the military delegates of Franco's government: "You will conquer, perhaps, but you will not convince...

...t UnAMUNO used to say: "The great crime, the greatest crime, is to refuse to understand...

...The three with their precious baggage passed to the side of the Fascists where they continue today, I know not if happy or resigned in their convictions...

...This article was written for The New Leader in reply to a retrospective interview with Miguel de Unamnno recently published in the French newspaper, Car re/our...

...How was Unamuno going to call reds those who had conspired with him in Spain and France against the monarchy and against Primo de Rivera, father of the founder of Spanish Fascism and Franco's precursor...