Part 9 (1/2)
I do not find old painters to be as incompatible as old authors. On the contrary, my experience has been that they are the reverse. I greatly prefer a canvas by Botticelli, Mantegna, El Greco or Velazquez to a modern picture.
The only famous painter of the past for whom I have entertained an antipathy, is Raphael; yet, when I was in Rome and saw the frescos in the Vatican, I was obliged again to ask myself if my att.i.tude was a pose, because they struck me frankly as admirable.
I do not pretend to taste, but I am sincere; nor do I endeavour to be consistent. Consistency does not interest me.
The only consistency possible is a consistency which comes from without, which proceeds from fear of public opinion, and anything of this sort appears to me to be contemptible.
Not to change because of what others may think, is one of the most abject forms of slavery.
Let us change all we can. My ideal is continual change--change of life, change of home, of food, and even of skin.
MY LIBRARY
Among the things that I missed most as a student, was a small library.
If I had had one, I believe I should have dipped more deeply into books and into life as well; but it was not given me. During the period which is most fruitful for the maturing of the mind, that is, during the years from twelve to twenty, I lived by turns in six or seven cities, and as it was impossible to travel about with books, I never retained any.
A lack of books was the occasion of my failure to form the habit of re-reading, of tasting again and again and of relis.h.i.+ng what I read, and also of making notes in the margin.
Nearly all authors who own a small library, in which the books are properly arranged, and nicely annotated, become famous.
I am not sentimentalizing about stolid, brazen note-taking, such as that with which the gentlemen of the Ateneo debase their books, because that merely indicates barbarous lack of culture and an obtuseness which is Kabyline.
Having had no library in my youth, I have never possessed the old favourites that everybody carries in his pocket into the country, and reads over and over until he knows them by heart.
I have looked in and out of books as travellers do in and out of inns, not stopping long in any of them. I am very sorry but it is too late now for the loss to be repaired.
ON BEING A GENTLEMAN
Viewed from without, I seem to impress some as a cra.s.s, crabbed person, who has very little ability, while others regard me as an unhealthy, decadent writer. Then Azorin has said of me that I am a literary aristocrat, a fine and comprehensive mind.
I should accept Azorin's opinion very gladly, but personality needs to be hammered severely in literature before it leaves its slag. Like metal which is removed from the furnace after casting and placed under the hammer, I would offer my works to be put to the test, to be beaten by all hammers.
If anything were left, I should treasure it then lovingly; if nothing were left, we should still pick up some fragments of life.
I always listen to the opinions of the non-literary concerning my books with the greatest interest. My cousin, Justo Goni, used to express his opinion without circ.u.mlocution. He always carried off my books as they appeared, and then, a long time after, would give his opinion.
Of _The Way of Perfection_ he said:
”Good, yes, very good; but it is so tiresome.”
I realized that there was some truth in his view.
When he read the three novels to which I had given the general t.i.tle, _The Struggle for Life_, he stopped me on the Calle de Alcala one day and said: