Part 4 (2/2)

We Europeans who are of the region of the Pyrenees and the Alps, love small states, small rivers, and small G.o.ds, whom we may address familiarly.

Salaverria is also mistaken when he says that I am afraid of change. I am not afraid. My nature is to change. I am predisposed to develop, to move from here to there, to reverse my literary and political views if my feelings or my ideas alter. I avoid no reading except that which is dull; I shall never retreat from any performance except a vapid one, nor am I a partisan either of austerity or of consistency. Moreover, I am not a little dissatisfied with myself, and I would give a great deal to have the pleasure of turning completely about, if only to prove to myself that I am capable of a s.h.i.+ft of att.i.tude which is sincere.

NEW PATHS

Some months since three friends met together in an old-fas.h.i.+oned bookshop on the venerable Calle del Olivo--a writer, a printer, and myself.

”Fifteen years ago all three of us were anarchists,” remarked the printer.

”What are we today?” I inquired.

”We are conservatives,” replied the man who wrote. ”What are you?”

”I believe that I have the same ideas I had then.”

”You have not developed if that is so,” retorted the writer with a show of scorn.

I should like to develop, but into what? How? Where am I to find the way?

When sitting beside the chimney, warming your feet by the fire as you watch the flames, it is easy to imagine that there may be novel walks to explore in the neighbourhood; but when you come to look at the map you find that there is nothing new in the whole countryside.

We are told that ambition means growth. It does not with me. Ortega y Ga.s.set believes that I am a man who is const.i.tutionally unbribable. I should not go so far as to say that, but I do say that I do not believe that I could be bribed in cold blood by the offer of material things. If Mephistopheles wishes to purchase my soul, he cannot do it with a decoration or with a t.i.tle; but if he were to offer me sympathy, and be a little effusive while he is about it, adding then a touch of sentiment, I am convinced that he could get away with it quite easily.

LONGING FOR CHANGE

Just as the aim of politicians is to appear constant and consistent, artists and literary men aspire to change.

Would that the desire of one were as easy of attainment as that of the other!

To change! To develop! To acquire a second personality which shall be different from the first! This is given only to men of genius and to saints. Thus Caesar, Luther, and Saint Ignatius each lived two distinct lives; or, rather, perhaps, it was one life, with sides that were obverse and reverse.

The same thing occurs sometimes also among painters. The evolution of El Greco in painting upsets the whole theory of art.

There is no instance of a like transformation either in ancient or modern literature. Some such change has been imputed to Goethe, but I see nothing more in this author than a short preliminary period of exalted feeling, followed by a lifetime dominated by study and the intellect.

Among other writers there is not even the suggestion of change.

Shakespeare is alike in all his works; Calderon and Cervantes are always the same, and this is equally true of our modern authors. The first pages of d.i.c.kens, of Tolstoi or of Zola could be inserted among the last, and n.o.body would be the wiser.

Even the erudite rhetorical poets, the Victor Hugos, the Gautiers, and our Spanish Zorrillas, never get outside of their own rhetoric.

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