Unamuno is probably
the Spanish contemporary poet whose manner owes least, if anything at
all, to modern developments of poetry such as those which take their
source in Baudelaire and Verlaine. These over-sensitive and over-refined
artists have no doubt enriched the sensuous, the formal, the
sentimental, even the intellectual aspects of verse with an admirable
variety of exquisite shades, lacking which most poetry seems
old-fashioned to the fastidious palate of modern men. Unamuno is too
genuine a representative of the spiritual and masculine variety of
Spanish genius, ever impervious to French, and generally, to
intellectual, influences, to be affected by the esthetic excellence of
this art. Yet, for all his disregard of the modern resources which it
adds to the poetic craft, Unamuno loses none of his modernity. He is
indeed more than modern. When, as he often does, he strikes the true
poetic note, he is outside time. His appeal is not in complexity but in
strength. He is not refined: he is final.
* * * * *
In the Preface to his _Tres Novelas Ejemplares y un Prologo_ (1921)
Unamuno says: " ... novelist--that is, poet ... a novel--that is, a
poem." Thus, with characteristic decision, he sides with the lyrical
conception of the novel. There is of course an infinite variety of
types of novels. But they can probably all be reduced to two
classes--_i.
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