Miguel de Unamuno: A brief Chronology

Spanish author and philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a predecessor of Existentialist philosophy with Søren Kierkegaard. He was an educator, whose essays had great influence in early 20th-century Spain. Unamuno was one of the foremost representatives of the movement known as the Generation of 1898. Main themes in his works are the contrasts between reason and Christian faith, religion and freedom of thinking, and the tragedy of death in man's life, in which reason offers no consolation. "Faith which does not doubt is dead faith," he wrote.

As a philosopher Unamuno did not create a systematic presentation of his view. He objected strongly to those academic philosophers who overemphasized our rationality. Instead, he stressed that the deepest of all human desires is the hunger for personal immortality against all our rational knowledge of life.

"The man of flesh and blood; the one who is born, suffers and dies - above all, who dies; the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks and wills; the man who is seen and is heard; the brother, the real brother." (from The Tragic Sense of Life, 1913)

Miguel de Unamuno was born in Bilbao. At the age of ten he witnessed the violence between traditionalist and progressive forces during the seige of Bilbao. Unamuno studied at the Colegio de San Nicolás and the Instituto Vizacaíno, Bilbao (1875-1880). In 1880 he entered the University of Madrid, receiving his Ph.D. four years later. Unamuno's dissertation dealt with the origin and prehistory of his Basque ancestors. He then worked as a private tutor in Bilbao and was appointed in 1890 professor of Greek at the University of Salamanca. In 1891 he married Concepción Lizárraga Ecénnarro; they had ten children.

In 1901 Unamuno became rector of the university; he held the post intermittently until his death. He was relieved of his duties in 1914 for political reasons. In 1924 he was exiled to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands for opposing Primo de Rivera's government. After a few months, he escaped to Paris and then settled in Hendaye, the French Basque town nearest to the Spanish frontier, where he spent five years. Unamuno returned in 1930 to the University of Salamanca. In 1931 he was reelected rector. He worked as the professor of the history of the Spanish language, but in 1936 he was removed once again - this time denouncing Francisco Franco's Falangists. Unamuno was placed under house arrest. He died a few months later in Salamanca on December 31, 1936.

Unamuno mastered 14 languages. For example, in order to read Kierkegaard in the original language, he learned Danish. He wrote his works in Spanish, although his mother tongue was Basque. Unamuno published poetry, plays, novels and essays. Among his major works are Del sentimiento tragico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos (1913), an example of his longing to find some assurance of immortality against all reason; Abel Sanchez: una historia de pasion (1917), a modern exploration of the Cain-and-Abel theme; El Cristo de Velazquez (1920), meditations on Velazquez's Crucifixion; and the novella Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr (1931), which focuses on a country priest, Don Manuel Bueno, who doesn't believe in the afterlife. Don Manuel continues to take care of his parishioners, revealing his tragic secret only to few people before his death. In Mist (1914), Unamuno presents a multitude of characters to the reader. Unamuno himself takes the role of God, as he has created his characters. One of them is Augusto Pérez, who decides to commit suicide. Before it he meets the author, and realizes that he is a fictive character. Augusto rebels against Unamuno, and dies - perhaps by suicide or because of disappointment in love.

"Wisdom is to science what death is to life or, if you will, wisdom is to death what science is to life."

As an essayist Unamuno's career began in 1886 under the spell of positivism. He was briefly interested in Marxism, but by 1917 he became openly anti-Marxist. A personal religious crisis in 1897 broke Unamuno's trust in the power of science and progress. Articles written during the Spanish Republic (1931-36) reveal a liberal, who welcomed secular legislation but yet wished to preserve some traditional religious values. Unamuno caused a great stir with his attacks on casticismo, the dominance of the Castilian center over other regions, such as the Basque. He was often horrified by the devastation he saw imposed by the modern age on the genuine Spanish peasant.

According to Unamuno, "It is not our ideas which make us optimists or pessimists, but our optimism and pessimism, derived as much from physiological or perhaps pathological origins, which makes our ideas." (From Del sentimiento trágico de la vida). Sentimiento (the tragic sense of life) is no exception although it can be corroborated by rational beliefs.

One of Unamuno's most stimulating works is The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, in which the heroic and tragic knight assumes the virtues of Christ. Quixote is the crystallization of our wish to overcome our destiny. With his unyielding will to create new spiritual values in the world of materialism, Don Quixote finally solves his existentialist quest: "I know who I want to be." In an introductory essay called 'The Sepulchre of Don Quixote,' the Spaniards are asked to find Don Quixote's tomb, and after many wandering, they conclude that there is no tomb, that they must think Don Quixote only as the incarnation of the Spanish mind. Unamuno draws parallels between Don Quixote and the life of the founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatious of Loyola.

"He combines the imperious, warrior-like vitality of a Nietzsche with the intellectual paralysis of a Pirandello, the stirring pride of an Ibsen with the frustration of a Kafka, oscillating between his frenzied exaltation of the man of flesh and blood and the diaphanous concepts of dreams and shadows. The heroic adventurer plunged into the tragedy of impotence. Unamuno relieved the irreducible opposition of the real and the ideal, the all and the nothing that Don Quixote lived before him. He sought the quixotic in all things, whether in creative writing or in contemplation of other writers, and assumed with his patron saint Don Quixote the tragic contradiction of all the great feelers of Europe." (Unamuno the Novelist by R.E. Batchelor, 1972)

La Generación del 98 was a cultural movement, born after the Spanish-American War of 1898. It was an attempt to reestablish the lost values of Spanish life through education and through opposition to all forms of provincialism. At the same time the movement celebrated the Spanish people and sought to introduce international influences to literature. Most prominent members of the group were Antonio Machado, Ramon Pérez de Ayala, Jacinto Benavente, Ramon Valle-Inclán, Pió Baroja, Miguel de Unamuno, and José Martínez Ruiz.

For further reading: Unamuno by A. Barea (1952); Unamuno, a Philosophy of Tragedy by José Ferrater Mora (1962); The Lone Heretic by M.T. Rudd (1964); En torno Unamuno by M. García Blanco (1965); Miguel de Unamuno by J. Marías (1966); Miguel de Unamuno: The Rhetoric of Existence by Allen Lacy (1967); Miguel de Unamuno by D. Basdekis (1969); Miguel de Unamuno by Martin Nozick (1971); Unamuno Novelist by R.E. Batchelor (1972); Reason Aflame by V. Quimette (1974); Miguel de Unamuno: the Contrary Self by F. Wyers (1976); Miguel de Unamuno: The Agony of Belief by Martin Nozick (1982); The Word in the World by Thomas Franz (1987); The Elusive Self by Gayana Jurkevich (1991); Las máscaras de lo trágico by Pedro Cerezo-Galán (1996); One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers, ed. by Stuart Brown, Diané Collinson, Robert Wilkinson (1998)

Selected works: EN TORNO AL CASTICISMO, 1895 - About Casticismo; PAZ EN LA GUERRA, 1897 - Peace in War; TRES ENSAYOS, 1900 - Three Essays; AMOR Y PEDAGOGÍA, 1902 - Love and Pedagogy; PAISAJES, 1902 - Landscapes; DE MI PAÍS, 1903 - About My Country; LA VIDA DE DON QUIJOTE Y SANCHO, 1905 - The Life of Don Quijote and Sancho; POESÍAS, 1907 - Poems; RECUERDOS DE NIÑEZ Y LA MOCEDAD, 1908 - Memories of Childhood and Adolescence; LA ESFINGE, 1909 - The Sphinx; MI RELIGIÓN, 1910 - Perplexities and Paradoxes; Rosario de sonetos líricos, 1911; SOLILOQUIOS Y CONVERSACIONES, 1911 - Essays and Soliloquies; POR TIERRAS DE PORTUGAL Y ESPAÑA, 1911 - Through the Lands of Portugal and Spain; FEDRA, 1911; CONTRA ESTO Y AQUELLO, 1912 - Against This and That; EL ESPEJO DE LA MUERTE, 1913 - The Mirror of Death; SENTIMIENTO TRÁGICO DE LA VIDA EN LOS HOMBRES Y EN LOS PUEBLOS, 1913 - The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and People; NEBLA, 1914 - Mist; ENSAYOS, 1916-18 (7 vols.) - Essays; ABEL SÁNCHEZ: UNA HISTORIA DE PASIÓN, 1917 - Abel Sanchez: A Story of Passion; TRES NOVELAS EJEMPLARES Y UN PRÓLOGO, 1920 - Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue; EL CRISTO DE VELÁZQUEZ, 1920 - The Christ of Velázquez; LA TÍA TULA, 1921 - Aunt Tula; FEDRA, 1921; LA VENDA 1921; SOLEDAD Y RAQUEL, 1921; RAQUEL, 1921; ANDANZAS Y VISIONES ESPAÑOLAS, 1922; RIMAS DE DENTRO, 1923; TERESA, 1923; DE FUERTEVENTURA E PARIS, 1925; LA AGONÍA DEL CRISTIANISMO, 1925 - The Agony of Christianity; RAQUEL ENCADENADA, 1926 - Raquel in Chains; EL OTRO, 1927 - The Other; CÓMO SE HACE UNA NOVELLA, 1927 - How to Write a Novella; DOS ARTÍCULOS Y DOS DISCURSOS, 1928 - Two Articles and Two Speeches; ROMANCERO DEL DESTIERRO, 1928; SOMBRAS DE SUEÑO, 1930; DOS ARTÍCULOS Y DOS DISCURSOS, 1930; ENSAYOS Y SENTENCIAS, 1932; EL OTRO, 1932 - The Other; SAN MANUEL BUENO, MÁRTIR, 1933 - Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr; EL HERMANO JUAN O EL MUNDO ES TEATRO, 1934; DISCURSO LEÍDO EN LA SOLEMNE APERTURA DEL CURSO ACADÉMICO 1934-35 EN LA UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA, 1934; LA CIUDAD DE HENOC, 1941; ENSAYOS, 1942 (2 vols.;) EL PORVENIR DE ESPAÑA, 1942; ANTOLOGÍA POÉTICA, 1942; CUNCA IBÉRICA, 1943; TEMAS ARGENTINOS, 1942; LA ENORMIDAD DE ESPAÑA, 1944; PAISAJES DE ALMA, 1944; LA ENORMIDAD DE ESPANA, 1945; Perplexities and Paradoxes, 1945; ALGUNAS CONSIDERACIONES SOBRE LA LITERATURA HISPANO-AMERICANA, 1947; VISIONES Y COMENTARIOS, 1949; MI SALAMANCA, 1950; MI VIDA, 1950 (2 vols.); DE ESTO Y DE AQUELLO, 1950-54 (4 vols.); OBRAS COMPLETAS, 1951-58 (16 vols.); Poems, 1952; CANCIONERO, 1953; Abel Sanchez, and Other Stories, 1956; EN EL DESTIERRO, 1957; INQUIETUDES Y MEDITACIONES, 1957; CINCUENTA POESÍAS INÉDITAS, 1958; ESPAÑA Y LOS ESPAÑOLES, 1959 (2 vols.); INQUIETUDES Y MEDITACIONES, 1957; MI VIDA Y OTROS RECUERDOS PERSONALES, 1959 (2 vols.); AUTODIÁLOGOS, 1959; PENSAMIENTE Y POLÍTICO, 1965; LA VIDA LITERARIA, 1967; EL GAUCHO MARTÍN FIERRO, 1967; Our Lord Don Quixote: The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, with Related Essays, 1967; LA AGONÍA DEL CRISTIANISMO, MI RELIGIÓN Y OTROS ENSAYOS, 1967; DESDE EL MIRADOL DE LA GUERRA, 1970; The Agony of Chtistianity, 1974; The Last Poems of Miguel de Unamuno, 1974; Ficciones: Four Stories and a Play, 1975; ESCRITOS SOCIALISTAS, 1894-1922, 1976; ARTÍCULOS OLVIDADOS SOBRE ESPAÑA Y LA PRIMERA GUERRA MUNDIAL, 1976; EN TORNO A LAS ARTES, 1976; CRÓNICA POLÍTICA ESPAÑOLA (1915-1923), 1977; REPÚBLICA ESPAÑOLA Y ESPAÑA REPUBLICANA (1931-1936), 1979; ARTICULOS Y DISCURSOS SOBRE CANARIAS, 1980; ENSUEÑO DE UNA PATRIA, 1984; The Private World, 1985; EL RESENTIMIENTO TRÁGICO DE LA VIDA, 1991; ARTÍCULOS EN 'LA NACIÓN' DE BUENOS AIRES, 1919-1924, 1994;