What
can a man ask for more? And who does not recollect the verse?--
_Coda vez que considero
que me tengo de morir,
tiendo la capa en el suelo
y no me harto de dormir._[60]
But no, not sleeping, but dreaming--dreaming life, since life is a
dream.
Among us Spaniards another phrase has very rapidly passed into current
usage, the expression "It's a question of passing the time," or "killing
the time." And, in fact, we make time in order to kill it. But there is
something that has always preoccupied us as much as or more than passing
the time--a formula which denotes an esthetical attitude--and that is,
gaining eternity, which is the formula of the religious attitude. The
truth is, we leap from the esthetic and the economic to the religious,
passing over the logical and the ethical; we jump from art to religion.
One of our younger novelists, Ramon Perez de Ayala, in his recent novel,
_La Pata de la Raposa_, has told us that the idea of death is the trap,
and spirit the fox or the wary virtue with which to circumvent the
ambushes set by fatality, and he continues: "Caught in the trap, weak
men and weak peoples lie prone on the ground ...; to robust spirits and
strong peoples the rude shock of danger gives clear-sightedness; they
quickly penetrate into the heart of the immeasurable beauty of life, and
renouncing for ever their original hastiness and folly, emerge from the
trap with muscles taut for action and with the soul's vigour, power, and
efficiency increased a hundredfold.
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