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Passion and Faith: A Study of Unamuno

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Jeffrey G. Sobosan
Affiliation:
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California

Extract

Miquel de Unamuno, a thinker perhaps too large and passionate to yield to easy labelling, has been characterised in different ways by many of his most brilliant compatriots. Julian Marias spoke of him as a man obsessed by the proud thirst to know, a passionate man who in spite of a ‘problematic intellectual adherence’ was nonetheless able to live and think within a vital Catholic tradition. Ortega y Gasset wrote that all of Unamuno's work was dominated by one theme, that of death; it was one monumental meditatio mortis. It was Madariaga, not an original philosopher but undoubtedly as penetrating a critic as either Marias or Ortega, however, who most faithfully portrayed the often convoluted but always profound man Unamuno was. In most if not all of the main characters of his novels and short stories, he rightly observes, ‘we can trace the dominant passion which is their whole being to a mere variety of the one and only passion which obsesses Unamuno, the hunger for life, a full life, here and after’. This passion, assailed as it was by the constant probings of his critical intellect ought to have made his existence precarious at best.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 141 note 1 See Marias, Julian, Filosofia Espanola Actual (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1963), p. 46Google Scholar; and his Miguel de Unamuno (Madrid: Coleccion Austral, Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1943), p. 34.Google Scholar

page 141 note 2 See Ortega y Gasset, quoted by Marias, , in Filosofia Espanola Actual, p. II.Google Scholar

page 141 note 3 See Madariaga, Salvador de, ‘Introductory Essay,’ in The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno (New York: Dover Publications, 1954.), p. xxix.Google Scholar

page 142 note 1 Unamuno, , Tragic Sense of Life, p. I.Google Scholar

page 142 note 2 Cf. Ibid. p. 2.

page 142 note 3 Cf. Ibid. p. 106.

page 143 note 1 Unamuno, , Tragic Sense of Life, p. 50.Google Scholar

page 143 note 2 Cf. Ibid. p. 121.

page 143 note 3 In his South American Meditations, published in German in 1939.

page 144 note 1 Unamuno, , Tragic Sense of Life, p. 51.Google Scholar

page 144 note 2 Ibid, p. 51.

page 144 note 3 Ibid, p. 72

page 145 note 1 Unamuno, Miguel de, The Christ of Velazquez, trans. Turnball, E. L. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1951), p. 11.Google Scholar

page 145 note 2 lbid, p. 10.

page 145 note 3 Cf. Ibid. p. 114.

page 145 note 4 Cf. Ibid. p. 131.

page 145 note 5 Cf. Ibid. p. 7.

page 145 note 6 Cf. Ibid. p. 27.

page 145 note 7 Ibid. p. 96.

page 145 note 8 Cf. Ibid. p. 42.

page 145 note 9 Cf. Ibid. p. 44.

page 145 note 10 Cf. Ibid. p. 89.

page 146 note 1 Unamuno, Miguel de, The Christ of Velazquez, p. 93.Google Scholar

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page 146 note 3 Ibid. p. 114.

page 146 note 4 Cf. Ibid. p.41.

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page 147 note 4 The Life of Don Quijote and Sancho, p. 10.

page 147 note 5 Cf. Ibid. p. 9.

page 147 note 6 Ibid. p. 9.

page 147 note 7 Ibid. p.11

page 147 note 8 Ibid. p. 15.

page 147 note 9 Ibid. p. 15.

page 147 note 10 Ibid. p. 20.

page 148 note 1 The Life of Don Quijote and Sancho, p. 13.

page 148 note 2 Unamuno, Miguel de, Abel Sanchez (Buenos Aires: Coleccion Austral, Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1952), p. 58.Google Scholar

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page 150 note 2 Ibid. p.14.

page 150 note 3 Ibid. p. 60.

page 150 note 4 Ibid. p. 59.

page 150 note 5 Ibid. p.41.

page 150 note 6 Ibid. pp.146–7.