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 Three
Spanish
Philosophers
 SUNY series
in
Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture

Jorge J. E. Gracia and Rosemary Geisdorfer Real, Editors

 Three
Spanish Philosophers
Unamuno, Ortega, Ferrater Mora

José Ferrater Mora

Edited and with an Introduction by J. M. Terricabras

State University of New York Press

Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2003 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address the State University of New York Press,

90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Michael Haggett

Marketing by Fran Keneston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ferrater Mora, José, 1912–

[Selections. English. 2003]
Three Spanish philosophers : Unamuno, Ortega, Ferrater Mora / José
Ferrater Mora ; edited and with an introduction by J. M. Terricabras.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5713-3 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5714-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Unamuno, Miguel de, 1864–1936. 2. Ortega y Gasset, Josâ, 1883–1955.
3. Death. I. Terricabras, Josep-Maria, 1946– II. Title. III. Series.

B4568.U54 F3913 2003

196'.1—dc21 2002030967

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first,
Latinos were the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. I am sure
that the children of many immigrants read and write Spanish fluently, but no
doubt there are many who do not, and it is to those that this book is dedicated,
so that they may have the opportunity to see that there is much that is
written by Spanish-speaking people that has enriched contemporary culture,
and of which they should be very proud. Ferrater Mora was born and educated
in Spain, traveled to Cuba as a refugee from the Spanish Civil War, lived in
Chile, lectured in Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and lived and
taught for over forty years in the United States, later returning to Spain to give
numerous lectures. His thought is thus the product of both the Spanish- and
the English-speaking worlds.

Priscilla Cohn
(widow of Ferrater Mora)
This page intentionally left blank.
 Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 9

Editor’s note 11
Text 13
Biographical Note 105
Unamuno’s Works 106
Selected Bibliography on Unamuno 114

Part II Ortega y Gasset: An Outline of His Philosophy 123

Editor’s note 125
Text 127
Biographical Note 191
Ortega y Gasset’s Works 192
Selected Bibliography on Ortega y Gasset 201

Part III Ferrater Mora: Chapter Three of Being and Death 209
Editor’s Note 211
Text 213
Biographical Note 257
Ferrater Mora’s Works 259
Selected Bibliography on Ferrater Mora 262
Index of Persons 263
Index of Subjects 267

vii
This page intentionally left blank.
 Introduction

Twentieth-century Spanish philosophy lacks the significance and the interna-

tional influence it might have had due, in part, to the fact that this century
has been a particularly difficult one in Spain’s history. On the one hand,
Spain has suffered two dictatorships: that of General Primo de Rivera, from
1923 to 1930, and then that of General Franco, from 1939 to 1975. The latter
was preceded by three years of civil war (from 1936 to 1939), the prelude to
World War II. For decades afterward Spain suffered from poverty, division,
and isolation. On the other hand, Spain is composed of territories that are
highly diverse in culture, ways of life, and economic status. Not until the end
of the twentieth century did some regions overcome their almost endemic
underdevelopment and approach the more European standards of such ter-
ritories as Catalonia and the Basque Country. Ideological repression and poor
cultural development are then partly responsible for the fact that some of the
most original Spanish philosophers have had to live abroad for long periods
of their lives, and have had little relevance in their own country.

THREE PHILOSOPHERS

That is the case of the three philosophers presented in this book: Miguel de
Unamuno (Bilbao, 1864–Salamanca, 1936), José Ortega y Gasset (Madrid,
1883–1955), and José Ferrater Mora (Barcelona, 1912–1991). Although be-
longing to three different generations, these three philosophers—who to-
gether with Xavier Zubiri, 1898–1983, are the most important Spanish
philosophers of the century—suffered in the flesh some of the political vicis-
situdes of Spain’s recent history and were forced into exile: Unamuno during
the first dictatorship, Ortega and Ferrater Mora during the second one.
The value of the studies collected in this volume lies not only in the
possibility for the reader to see these three philosophers all at once, but also
in the fact that their thoughts are viewed through the eyes of the youngest

1
2 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

among them, Ferrater Mora, who was also the most attuned to modernity.
While Spain was turning its back on the future, Ferrater spent most of his
life in foreign countries: France, Cuba, Chile, and above all, the United
States. This fact was no doubt decisive in allowing him to train his capacity
to integrate tendencies, to promote dialogue, and to nurture his interest not
only in philosophy but also in the most recent developments of art, science,
and technology. With his perspicacious glance, he was able to consider vari-
ous facts, and to interpret complex thoughts, which he unraveled with great
expertise before his students’ and readers’ eyes.
This volume contains three of Ferrater Mora’s fundamental works. On
the one hand, we have selected two highly praised studies that soon became
classical interpretations in their field: Ferrater’s study of Unamuno (Unamuno:
A Philosophy of Tragedy), in its 1962 edition, and his study of Ortega (Ortega
y Gasset: An Outline of his Philosophy), in its 1963 edition. On the other hand,
we have selected a third text by Ferrater to present some features of his own
philosophical thought in a compact but adequate form. This is chapter three
from Being and Death: An Outline of Integrationist Philosophy, which was
published in English in the same period as the other two studies, when
Ferrater was already in his fifties and at the height of his intellectual powers.
José Ferrater Mora was not a disciple of either Unamuno or Ortega, but
he knew their works very well. As a matter of fact, Ferrater was a profound
connoisseur not only of Spanish thought but also of the whole history of
philosophy. His historical and systematic works, together with his well-known
Diccionario de filosofía, corroborate this point. Let us remember that his four-
volume Diccionario is the best and most praised dictionary of philosophy
existing in Spanish, and one of the best dictionaries ever written by a single
person in any language.
Ferrater used to say that in order to understand someone, it is necessary
to consider not only that person’s historical situation, but also his personal
character, and even the role played by chance in that person’s life. In his
works Ferrater manages to combine a vast historical knowledge and a tre-
mendous skill in selecting the main threads that allow us to develop the
thought of a philosopher in a clear and coherent way. Indeed, Ferrater has
two basic abilities as a philosopher: apart from being a systematic thinker
capable of finding the important conceptual relations in a work, he also shows
great skill in presenting, in an intelligible yet not simplistic way, matters
which in someone else’s hands would become unclear and confused. Ferrater’s
thought is both complex and clear.
In a very famous passage of his Logic, Kant wrote that the three main
questions of philosophy, namely “What can I know?” “What ought I to do?,”
and “What may I hope?” in the end refer to the question “What is man?”
because each of them is linked to this question. This is particularly true of
 Introduction 3

the three texts in this book. These texts contain brilliant passages of philo-
sophical anthropology. In these pages, Ferrater wittily shows what it means
to be a human being, as these views were put forward by Unamuno, Ortega,
and himself.

UNAMUNO’S THOUGHT

Ferrater presents Unamuno as a thinker of tragedy, that is, someone capable

of discovering, explaining, and expounding the contradictions inherent in
human life. The fundamental tragic feeling stems from a powerful source:
the opposition between reason and faith. Unamuno is not a contradictory
thinker, however, just for contradiction’s sake. Nor does he show contradic-
tions in order simply to suppress them. He wants to make them clear.
Unamuno, who constantly disagrees with and dissents from other people
both in politics and religion, always promotes fruitful discordance, wishing
to remain true to himself. Because he does not accept the bifurcation be-
tween thought and action, his thought cannot be reduced to a simple defi-
nition. As Ferrater says, for Unamuno to live as a human being is to live
tragically, in agony, in a permanent tension between opposed elements within
ourselves, and particularly between, on the one hand, reason’s commands
and, on the other, the force of those irrational elements within ourselves
that are so important for our lives.
Thus, Unamuno is not concerned with abstractions, but with people of flesh
and blood, complex and concrete people who realize that no explanation explains
everything, that what is really important always remains unexplained, and that in
order to live authentically one has to live tragically. Unamuno doesn’t view him-
self as a philosopher in the traditional sense, for philosophers are concerned with
abstract concepts such as “truth,” “humanity,” “existence,” and “life.” According to
Ferrater, Unamuno’s thinking is better expressed as “poetic realism.” Consequently,
Ferrater points to Unamuno’s novels as the place to find the best expression of
concrete human beings. There individual characters become real because they are
torn by the characteristic turbulence of life.
In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Unamuno was already a very
influential and highly reputed intellectual in Spain, despite his insurmount-
able skill in raising debate and controversy. Ferrater was just two years old in
1914, but Ortega and Eugeni d’Ors (1882–1954)—both of whom were then
publishing their first books—soon became Unamuno’s most serious competi-
tors. After considering the three essays gathered in this volume, it becomes
clear that Ferrater felt closer to Ortega and to Ors—the latter is not repre-
sented here—than to Unamuno, possibly because their style and themes were
more closely connected to modern European thought.
4 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

ORTEGA’S THOUGHT

Ortega pays attention to Unamuno’s work, both to criticize and to praise it.
In his own work, Ortega borrows some of Unamuno’s themes such as the
distinction between “hispanizers” and “europeanizers.” The main theme of
Ortega’s work, however, is the doctrine of human life.
From multiple perspectives, Ortega examines life as a problem, identifies
insecurity as one of its main features, and persuasively shows that science,
culture, and education are more important for life than technology. Ortega
doesn’t build a closed and circular system, but an open one. Ferrater acknowl-
edges that Ortega is one of the few philosophers aware of the problematic
character of philosophical activity. In this sense, Ferrater emphasizes Ortega’s
broad interests and versatile character as a writer who adopts a narrative way
of approaching reality.
Ferrater distinguishes three phases in Ortega’s work. The first one, which
he calls Objectivism refers to the articles written in the period from 1902 to
1913; the second one, called Perspectivism, goes from 1914 to 1923; the third
one, Ratio-vitalism, stretches from 1924 to Ortega’s death. Ferrater neither
defends nor criticizes Ortega’s work. He succeeds in presenting Ortega’s rich
and diverse thought in a way that is at once instructive and rigorous. Ferrater’s
study enables us to understand why Ortega was first accused of being a
rationalist, an intellectualist, and later, of being a vitalist. Ortega, who is
aware of the fact that the problem of our times is to settle the dispute
between rationalism and relativism, aims at making a contribution worthy of
the twentieth century. In this respect the pages that Ferrater devotes to Ortega’s
concept of philosophy are highly thought-provoking. Ortega thinks that
philosophy is bound to be a permanent failure, since it consists in nothing but
the attempt to solve problems that continually change throughout history.
Here Ortega is loyal to the historical character he attributes to knowledge
and philosophy. In the final sentences of his study Ferrater emphasizes that
“what philosophers can learn from Ortega is that ‘the first principle of a
philosophy is the justification of itself.’ ” He adds that “Ortega himself never
lost sight of this necessity.”

FERRATER MORA’S THOUGHT

Ferrater’s first training in philosophy took place at the University of Barcelona

in the thirties. At that time the two main figures in Spanish philosophy were
precisely Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset. At the University Ferrater was
taught above all continental philosophy, particularly phenomenological thought:
Husserl, Scheler, and Heidegger. From 1947, when he went from Chile to
 Introduction 5

the United States, and especially after his arrival at Bryn Mawr College in
1949, Ferrater was able to delve more deeply into the Anglo-American philo-
sophical tradition. Thus he ended up being a thinker with an extraordinarily
broad and balanced background.
The chapter we reprint here is an example of Ferrater’s mature thinking.
It consists of a text about human life and death, in which Ferrater provides
us with the core of his later, more fully developed anthropology. Since the
book, Being and Death: An Outline of Integrationist Thought contains funda-
mental elements of Ferrater’s thought—as is clear from the subtitle—and
since we have included only one chapter here, it may be helpful to outline
some aspects of his thought, particularly those that can lead us to a better
understanding of this chapter and of what he calls integrationism.
Death is a classical theme in European Philosophical thought. In reading
this text we soon see that Ferrater exhibits a deep insight into phenomenologi-
cal descriptions, an enormous skill and subtlety in his analysis of arguments,
and an extreme rigor in presenting reasons. As a result, the very literary style
of the text splendidly integrates the European and Anglo-American traditions.
Thus, the author achieves an integrationism of tendencies, which is the first
version of his integrationism. At this level, integrationism represents a general
attitude rather than a philosophical method in any strict sense.
Ferrater, however, takes a further step and proposes an integrationism of
concepts that amounts to the following insight: constant philosophical dis-
cords expressed in dualisms of all kinds characterize the history of thought.
We have seen, for example, how Unamuno dealt with the opposition between
faith and reason and how Ortega dealt with that between reason and life.
There are innumerable oppositions like these in the history of philosophy.
Let us mention some classical cases of dualism: realism and idealism, subjec-
tivism and objectivism, rationalism and empiricism, internalism and external-
ism, being and nothingness, matter and spirit, body and soul. In his philosophy
Ferrater does not neglect these dualisms but, on the contrary, takes them very
seriously. The reason for this is clear: he does not want to lay the foundations
of his philosophy on philosophical prejudices. He wants rather to take reality
itself as his point of departure; he wants to start from what really happens,
This is why he has to admit that what is really going on, what there really
is, is above all philosophical discord.
Faced with philosophical dualisms, Ferrater does not adopt the quite
common attitude of trying to overcome them in one way or another. He is
aware that discord is practically unavoidable. He seeks, therefore, a way of
making discord fruitful without having either to discredit it or accept it in a
passive and uncritical way. Ferrater conceives of his integrationism as a way
of making use of dualisms. According to him, opposed concepts do not
express any reality: they are simply limiting concepts, or extreme limits. Each
6 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

of them expresses an aspect of reality in an extreme way. In fact, dualisms are

interesting not because they express a philosophical reality one needs to ac-
cept and interpret, but rather because they offer the framework for reflection
within which we have to move when doing philosophy. Thus dualisms are
there not to be reflected on, but rather to constitute the framework and the
occasion of reflection. Though each term functions as a limit and shows its
own insufficiency, at the same time each one counterbalances its opposite
term’s insufficiency. In this way philosophical oppositions are interpretable as
reference points—like conceptual landmarks—for the understanding of real-
ity. Basically this is what Ferrater’s integrationism of concepts consists in. Ac-
cording to Ferrater himself it is a “philosophical methodology,” a new way of
doing philosophy.
Since Ferrater asserts that Being and Death outlines his integrationist
philosophy, we can treat the very concepts “being” and “death” as examples
of a paradigmatic application of the integrationist methodology. The objects
of our world are very diverse: from stars, plants, animals, and human beings
to ideas, projects, feelings, beliefs, and political regimes. We can reasonably
say that all these beings or things exist; but we also have to admit that they
have different kinds of existence. Clearly, any existing thing might cease to
exist, but then we will also have to acknowledge that different kinds of things
will have different ways of ceasing to exist, different ways of “dying.” So
“being” and “death” are concepts that do not apply to all beings univocally.
When they stop existing, all beings cease, but it is not the case that all of
them die. At least at first sight, it seems that dying applies to organic
structures with certain biological functions. If that were always the case, the
concept of dying would be included in that of ceasing, but the reverse would
not be true.
Matters are usually more complicated than they look at first sight.
Ferrater’s philosophy commits itself precisely to a full respect for the multiple
gradations and nuances of reality. In this case, even if it seems convenient to
draw a distinction between “ceasing” and “dying,” we have to admit that such
a distinction will not solve our problems: actually, that distinction cannot be
drawn on the basis of the distinction between “organic entities” and “inor-
ganic entities,” because these terms do not designate any watertight compart-
ments, nor do they divide reality into two absolutely clear-cut parts. In the
end, natural biological entities are organisms, but in a sense so are many
social and cultural entities that have an independent life and undergo many
different kinds of processes of growing and being transformed. Thus “cessa-
tion” and “death” are nothing but limiting concepts located at the extremes
of a continuum: some beings cease when they stop existing; but other beings
die; and there is still a very wide range of beings in the conceptual interval
between death and cessation. This approach is also useful in understanding
the different ways of viewing human death, which depend on the philosophi-
 Introduction 7

cal view one adopts, such as materialism, mechanism, spiritualism, and on the
varying degrees in which it may be adopted.
Ferrater draws no radical, clear-cut distinction between “ceasing” and “dy-
ing”—or between any other concepts of our ordinary language—but rather
tries to find the differences of degree between the concepts. The final reason
for his doing so is that he accepts an ontology of continuity: he believes that
there are no radical ruptures among the many beings which constitute reality;
one cannot discover unconnected realities. Ferrater developed this train of thought
further in De la materia a la razón (From Matter to Reason), published in 1979.
In his opinion, reality is a continuum organized in four hierarchical levels.
These four levels are: physical, organic, social, and cultural. Each level is au-
tonomous, because entities can only be explained in terms of the level to which
they belong, each level being limited by the immediately superior level, which
emerges from the inferior one and so constitutes a continuum with it. In this
way we obtain three levels of the continuum: the physico-organic, the organic-
social, and the socio-cultural. The result of all this is a splendid conceptual
architecture—well-joined, but not at all rigid—that rejects two things at once:
any absolute break within reality, and a monotonous continualism. So Ferrater’s
view is a continualist one—in order to guarantee the unity of what exists. But
it is also emergentist—in order to guarantee the diversity and richness of the
existing reality. Therefore, Ferrater’s opposition to crude dualism coincides with
his opposition to what gave birth to it, namely crude essentialism.
Like Ortega, but more rigorously systematic, Ferrater presents his phi-
losophy as “an open system.” This was precisely the title of his last series of
lectures at the University of Girona in 1989, on occasion of the opening of
the Càtedra that bears his name.

ABOUT THIS EDITION

This volume is, then, an introduction to the thought of three philosophers

from three different generations who offer a deep, penetrating insight into
human existence. It is not the least important merit of all three that they
manage to express their thought convincingly in vivid language. Ferrater
Mora—acting here as their interpreter—serves as a perfect example. He
provides us with two synthetic and brilliant versions of Unamuno’s and Ortega’s
rich and complex thought; that is, he produces two introductory and thought-
provoking versions of their thought, without in the least reducing their sub-
stantial content. From his own work, he offers us a chapter which clearly
reveals both his conceptual rigor in dealing with complex matters and his
ability to express those matters in an extremely clear form.
The publication of this book corresponds to an old project, nearly as old
as the Ferrater Mora Càtedra itself. One of the aims of the Ferrater Mora
8 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

Càtedra was to make accessible to a wider public Ferrater’s thought and

works, as well as all his private documents and papers. As it happened, the
fact that he had to go into exile as a young man turned out to be a great
opportunity for him: he had access to a philosophical world and to a freedom
of expression which would have been totally denied him in Spain at that
time. As a result of his exile, however, he suffered two handicaps: first, it
prevented him from having students in his own country despite the fact that
he had many readers; second, although he published five books in English,
he did not become well-known in the United States. That is why this pub-
lication seems so appropriate.
Finally I would like to express my gratitude, above all to two friends who
have been behind this publication ever since it was first planned: Professor
George Kline, who was for many years a colleague of Ferrater Mora in the
Department of Philosophy at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania; and Profes-
sor Priscilla Cohn, Ferrater’s widow, a philosopher herself, whom we have to
thank, among many other things, for having made everything easy in the
difficult process of moving Ferrater’s library to the University of Girona. I am
also grateful to Professor Philip Silver, who translated Ferrater Mora’s book
on Unamuno when it was first published in English, to the Editors of this
SUNY series for their help and their willingness to publish this book, and to
Mr. Joan Vergés, a scholar attached to the Ferrater Mora Càtedra, for his
valuable help in updating the complementary information added as a corol-
lary to each of the three essays published here.
In this volume one can see the truth in what Ferrater said at the end of
the preface he wrote for the first American edition of Being and Death:

I should add that the book makes no pretense of making easy things
difficult. From the point of view of its possible appeal to the public,
making easy things difficult may be occasionally a more effective
procedure than making difficult things easy or simply letting things
be what they are. I know of not a few cases of works whose authors
have succeeded in making easy things very arduous, and have sub-
sequently enjoyed a wide reputation. To be sure, few people have
read such works, but fewer still have dared confess that they did not.
I have myself nothing against success—indeed, I sincerely hope that
the present book will attain some measure of it—but I feel that, if
it comes, it should be the result of understanding rather than of
misunderstanding. Since in the world in which we live we have
already had a good share of the latter, it may not seem too unrea-
sonable to claim some of the former.

Prof. Josep-Maria Terricabras

Girona, March 2000
 Introduction 9

Part I

Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy

This page intentionally left blank.
 EDITOR’S NOTE

In 1944 Ferrater Mora published a book in Spanish called Unamuno: Bosquejo

de una filosofía. He republished it, with some revision, in 1957. From that
book, and with some new revisions, the English version that is republished
here came out in 1962. Ferrater gave that book the title Unamuno: A Philoso-
phy of Tragedy, and wrote a new preface for it. In 1985 a new Spanish edition
of the book appeared. Constantly revising and improving his works in every
new edition, Ferrater prepared this last Spanish edition on the basis of the
English version. Therefore, there is good reason to think that in his opinion
the English edition was an improvement over the earlier ones.
So we reproduce here exactly the same text of the English version of
1962. There are just a couple of additions at the end of the text: first, a
biographical note on Unamuno; and second, we have completed the notes
and the bibliography of works in English. So, apart from carefully respecting
the text by Ferrater Mora, we have updated some information that might
help those readers for whom Spanish philosophy is not a familiar subject.
This page intentionally left blank.
 Preface to the American Edition

There are at least three ways of studying the work of an author and, in
particular, that of a philosopher: the erudite, the critical, and the interpretive.
Those who employ the erudite approach are, or claim to be, impartial.
Their mission is to amass (and, whenever necessary, correct) facts and dates,
edit texts, unearth documents, sort out epochs and phases, inventory themes
and motifs, trace relationships, discover books read, and track down influ-
ences. The work of erudition is, of course, necessary; more than that, it is
indispensable. Without it one runs the risk of committing pompous falsifi-
cations or pronouncing solemn nonsense. Without an existent apparatus of
erudition, the honest study of any author is impossible.
Those who employ the critical approach begin by adopting positions
from which they usually strike out at the writer being studied. When these
positions are purely external to, or have little to do with, the system of
thought that is their target they obtain success as showy as it is useless. One
can criticize Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, and Hegel with considerable
success—particularly if one has the good fortune to have been born much later
than they. When the positions adopted by the critics are purely internal, their
success is equally notable though less spectacular. To achieve their ends they
have only to lay bare the internal contradictions of a system and show that the
conclusions would have been otherwise if the author had been faithful to his
premises.
Neither of these two variations on the critical approach seems to me
acceptable. The first is based upon a falsification; the second, upon pedantry.
There is, however, a third variety of the critical approach which is much more
respectable. This is the criticism of another system of philosophy using one’s
own philosophy as a point of reference—if, of course, this latter is fully
evolved, mature, and not simply a series of more or less arbitrary opinions.
And even then one’s own philosophy should in some way be related to the
philosophy to be criticized.
Those who employ the interpretive approach begin by sympathizing
with the author studied. Yet “sympathizing with the author” does not mean

13
14 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

identification with all his opinions or the appropriation of all his feelings. If
this were to occur, interpretation would be impossible, and the only result
would be repetition or, at best, summary. “Sympathizing with the author”
primarily means getting inside his work, bringing his attitudes to light, scru-
tinizing his suppositions, and, above all, understanding his intentions. All this
can be carried out in a style of thought different from that of the author being
studied. But one must never give way to the temptation of falsifying the
author’s thought. The sympathy of which I speak is not, therefore, that of
adherence, but of comprehension.
My book does not use the erudite approach. It does not pretend to, for
much of this work has already been accomplished. Although much is still to
be done in the study of Unamuno’s themes and motifs, and the analysis of his
modes of expression, in the investigation of his changes and crises, we already
possess a sufficient body of carefully edited texts and of studies on specific
aspects of Unamuno’s work so that any future study of him may now rest
upon a solid foundation of erudition. Furthermore, although Unamuno said
and wrote many things, all of them can be reduced to a relatively small
nucleus of preoccupations that tormented him all his life and make his phi-
losophy, in spite of its apparent diffuseness, a singularly well-mortised whole.
Nor is my book critical in either of our first two acceptations of that term.
I neither adopt external positions in order to refute Unamuno’s ideas, nor try
to expose his internal contradictions. I might, I hope, have set out my own
philosophy and considered Unamuno’s in the light of it, but I suspect that the
reader is more interested in Unamuno’s thought than in mine.
For these reasons, I have used the interpretive approach. This approach
is all the more suitable since Unamuno was one of those philosophers with
whom these is the danger of being unjust if he is measured by alien stan-
dards—standards that lead one all too readily into making the author think
and say what would never have occurred to him. I have decided to measure
Unamuno by his own standards, even though, by so doing, I have forsworn
certain techniques that are particularly congenial to me. It seemed the reader
would arrive at a better understanding of Unamuno’s personality and thought
if I made an effort to expound and interpret them “Unamunianly.” And this
book would not be faithful to Unamuno if it did not contain a certain amount
of disquietude and tension.
It has often been said that Unamuno was an existentialist thinker, or at
least one of the forerunners of existentialist philosophy. To the extent that
labels and tags aid in the understanding of an author—and even help to make
him more widely known—I see nothing wrong with agreeing to such a de-
scription. After all, Unamuno’s philosophy is nearer to the existentialist or
existential philosophies than to any others. Nevertheless, he cannot be ad-
equately understood by merely affiliating him with a philosophical move-
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 15

ment. Unamuno evolved a mode of thought into which various important

philosophical movements entered in a conflicting way without this conflict
ever being finally resolved. Thus, for example, Unamuno was not simply an
irrationalist. But neither was he a rationalist. As I try to prove in this book,
both irrationalism and rationalism were equal ingredients of his philosophy.
The same might be said of other philosophical movements or trends and,
therefore, of existentialism. Yet Unamuno was no less an essentialist than he
was an existentialist. How reason and faith, essence and existence, heart and
head, and even peace and conflict, harmonized and struggled with each other
is primarily what I have undertaken to demonstrate in this book.
J. F. M.
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr, Pa.
This page intentionally left blank.
 Chapter One

Unamuno and His Generation

1 THE GENERATION OF 1898

Miguel de Unamuno was born in Bilbao, the spiritual and industrial capital of
the Spanish Basque country, on September 29, 1864. He spent his childhood
and a part of his youth there, and it left an indelible mark on the whole of his
life. Unamuno was always profoundly aware of his “Basqueness,” even through-
out his struggle against the political nationalism prevailing in that region. Far
from believing that being Basque and Spanish at the same time were incom-
patible, he often urged that the Basques become the substance and, as it were,
the salt of Spain. By so doing, he ranged himself with a large group of modern
Spanish writers who, though born in the peripheral provinces of Spain, have
done their best to revive the seemingly lethargic center—Castile.
Unamuno passionately adopted this center, but instead of quietly surren-
dering to its charm, he tried desperately to rekindle its fire. Whereas for
Unamuno the Basque land was “the land of his love,” Castile must be called
“the land of his pain.” The two regions were constantly at war in Unamuno’s
heart, or, as he saw it, in an unending embrace.
Since Unamuno was born in 1864, it has long been customary to include
him in the Spanish literary Generation of 1898. In fact, he has often been
considered one of its leaders, and even its most prominent figure. I shall
follow here an already well-established usage, but I shall not attempt to
explain Unamuno’s personality and work entirely on the basis of a genera-
tional scheme. For one thing, there are other factors that must be taken into
account—the psychological, social, and political, to mention only a few. For
another, there are many points on which a writer and his generation are at

17
18 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

cross purposes. I would consider the generational approach useful, then, but
with the proviso that some limits be placed upon it.
The existence of the Spanish literary Generation of 1898 raises a few
questions, and at least two of them must be answered within the compass of
this enquiry. The first concerns the members of the generation; the second,
characteristics they reportedly had in common.
Answers to the first of these questions have been legion. Some critics
have restricted the Generation of 1898 to a small group of writers whose
literary achievements and ideological significance are assured—Unamuno,
Antonio Machado (sometimes also his brother, Manuel Machado), Azorín,
Pío Baroja, Jacinto Benavente, Ramiro de Maeztu, and Ramón del Valle-
Inclán. Others have felt that although this restriction is qualitatively valid, it
is not historically so. Azorín and Baroja have convincingly shown that several
writers, once famous but now virtually forgotten (Ruiz Contreras, Ciro Bayo,
and Silverio Lanza), contributed as much to the literary climate that allows
critics to speak of a Generation of 1898 as those writers who have become
a standard part of the history of Spanish literature. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
could also be added to those whom Azorín and Pío Baroja have mentioned.
In principle there is no reason why a phenomenal literary success should be
considered as sufficient reason for excluding an author from even the most
sophisticated histories of literature.
As if this disagreement over the number of writers to be properly in-
cluded in the Generation of 1898 were not enough, the question of whether
or not there were subgroups within the generation has often been asked.
Some critics maintain, for example, that very definite subgroups—shaped by
personal, literary, or political attitudes—persisted for a long time. Other crit-
ics counter by saying that there was by no means any feeling of spiritual
coordination among the members of the generation as a whole, or of any
particular group within it. Connected with the above questions is another:
whether, according to strict chronology, it is even legitimate to include
Unamuno in a generation whose other important members were several years
his junior—seven years for Valle-Inclán; ten, for Azorín and Baroja; and no
less than thirteen, for Antonio Machado. Confronted with this last problem,
some critics and historians of Spanish literature have suggested the following
solution: to consider Unamuno and Angel Ganivet (his junior by one year)
members of a generation or semigeneration immediately preceding that of
1898. This would make Unamuno a member of an influential intellectual
dyarchy occupying an intermediate position between the leading representa-
tives of the Generation of 1898, and that other group or, as it has sometimes
been considered, generation of writers to which Joaquín Costa, Juan Valera,
Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, and Benito Pérez
Galdós belonged.
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 19

Answers to the question of common characteristics of the various mem-

bers of the Generation of 1898 are equally numerous. According to some
critics these characteristics were mainly political or, if one prefers,
historicopolitical. To these critics the Generation of 1898 was symbolic of
the so-called “Disaster” (the loss of the Spanish overseas colonies after the
Spanish-American War) and of the desire to meet this political setback in
new, or supposedly new, ways by an inner-directing of the entire nation and
a rebellion against all the conventional interpretations of its history. Others
thought it was a question of purely literary traits. They felt the Generation
of 1898 represented one of the great revolutions in the history of Spanish
literature. And lastly, others favored traits at once more personal and more
general in nature. They spoke of a community of sentiment at first nega-
tively oriented (a dislike of empty rhetoric, of the routinely official Spain,
of spiritual narrowness); but gradually this orientation became more posi-
tive in intention and in the results achieved. The most positive aspects of
this spiritual renewal consisted in a search for authenticity, a rediscovery of
the “real country,” and a new sensitivity to the beauty of the language. Such
a community of sentiment becomes even more clearly defined when con-
trasted with the intellectual attitudes current in Spain up until this time. It
is by no means certain that the members of the Generation of 1898 reacted
in the same ways to all the views held by the leading representatives of
preceding generations. But since they often considered themselves, for a
time at least, as the sole promoters of the spiritual renewal of which I have
spoken, it is reasonable to assume that they had at least one view in com-
mon: the conviction (soon shaken by Azorín’s indefatigable reconstruction
of the Spanish literary past) that what they were doing in the field of
literature and literary sensibility was something that no one else had done
in Spain since the end of the Golden Age.
Our task here is not to comment at length on the above opinions; it will
suffice to point out that although all of them contain information of use to us,
they also reveal an important shortcoming: their purely schematic character.
Their proponents seem to overlook the fact that there is no such thing as an
unchanging nucleus of ideas and attitudes in a literary generation. It would be
more exact to surmise that for a time a cluster of ideas, attitudes, aspirations,
and desires were condensed into a changing core. As a consequence, the rela-
tions between a writer and his generation display a great variety of forms. It is
quite possible for a writer to be a member of a given generation while moving
constantly in and out of it. It is possible for a writer to do his work in a
direction that a generation will later adopt as its own. It is also possible for a
writer to become a member of a generation that has almost completed its cycle.
Under no circumstances can it be said, then, that a literary generation is a
perfectly definable historical entity and that all the literary achievements of its
20 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

members exactly reflect the same pattern of spiritual ideals and aesthetic norms.
The idea of a literary generation is, in short, not one that we can blindly accept,
nor is it one that we can completely do without.
If we now apply this more flexible view to the problem of the Spanish
literary Generation of 1898, and to the relationship between Unamuno and
this generation, we will be able to conclude (1) that no characterization of
the traits of the generation will ever be completely satisfactory, and (2) that
Unamuno can be said to have been, and not to have been, one of its
members. Thus, for example, although Unamuno and Ganivet were several
years older than the other writers already mentioned, they were quite close
to the cluster of ideas and attitudes usually associated with the Generation
of 1898; indeed, they prepared the way for those ideas and attitudes. To be
sure, Unamuno’s contact with them was intimate, whereas Ganivet’s was
only peripheral. Because they both championed certain mental attitudes
later developed by the other writers, and especially because Unamuno was
hailed (according to Azorín) as a highly respected elder master of the group,
they cannot be considered apart from the generation that they so decisively
molded. On the other hand, with respect to the controversial issues that
occupied the most famous Spanish writers of the time (Europeanism versus
Hispanism, renovation versus tradition, activity versus stagnation), Unamuno
assumed attitudes on occasion widely at variance with those of the other
members of his generation. Therefore, whenever we accept the conventional
picture of the Generation of 1898 and of Unamuno as one of its charter
members, we do so with a number of reservations. And the more we con-
sider Unamuno’s activities en bloc instead of limiting ourselves to his early
work, the more important these reservations seem likely to become. For
example, there is something to be said in favor of the existence of an
“intermediate generation” between that of 1868 ( Joaquín Costa, Juan Valera,
etc.) and that of 1898, and in favor of considering Unamuno, because of his
date of birth, as one of its members. But in view of the philosophical
character of Unamuno’s work, and because a substantial part of it developed
contemporaneously with the work of Ortega y Gasset and Eugenio d’Ors—
who were born almost twenty years after Unamuno—we may even lump
these three together in a special group connected with, but in no way
dependent upon, the ideals promoted by the great majority of members of
the Generation of 1898. So it seems that Unamuno was right, after all,
when he claimed that he was “unclassifiable.” All this helps to explain an
apparently cryptic statement by the Spanish sociologist and novelist, Fran-
cisco Ayala: that Unamuno, far from being a continuation or a simple hiatus
of Spanish tradition, was a true “period and new paragraph”—an abrupt end
as well as a radical departure.
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 21

2 THE APPRENTICESHIP YEARS

With all the above in mind I will now trace Unamuno’s biography—in par-
ticular, his intellectual biography. Above all, I will chart some sectors of his
public life. Of course, insistence upon the public aspects does not necessarily
mean that they alone are pertinent to an understanding of this philosopher’s
mind. Unamuno’s public life was always deeply rooted in the silence of his
inner life, so much so that most of the actions of his public existence emerge
as eruptions of that deeper inmost silence. It is unfortunate, moreover, that
the profound inner life of a thinker is often beyond the critic’s grasp. It is
even possible that, like any genuinely private life, Unamuno’s will forever
remain that famous “secret of the heart” which theologicians tell us is revealed
only in God’s presence. Only by examining what is expressed in his writing—
his thoughts, his contradictions, his doubts, his outbursts of joy, of anguish,
and of anger—will we be able to catch a glimpse of his secret and his silence.
During the years succeeding Unamuno’s birth, Spain gave herself up to
such frenzied activity that it was difficult to tell whether the acceleration of
her traditionally irregular pulse signaled a new vitality or a new decay. They
were years of rebellion and crisis—1868, 1869, and 1870. The various up-
heavals suffered by the country had not yet coalesced into what would later
be called the Second Civil War, fought with extreme fanaticism in the
north, particularly when the Carlist siege of Bilbao began in December,
1873. By this time Unamuno, fatherless since his sixth year, was nine. The
“first significant event” of his life, he often recalled, was “the explosion of
a Carlist bomb” (February 21, 1874) on the roof of an adjacent house. The
explosion left that characteristic “smell of powder” in the air around which
many of Unamuno’s ideas and feelings on Spain were to crystallize. From
that moment Unamuno was able to recognize the existence of a tension that
was to make itself felt again and again during his life. He realized that it
was possible for Spaniards to talk about “the others”—the ones belonging
to another faction—while acknowledging that these “others” were no less
Spanish than themselves. He observed factions waging a cruel war against
one another, and it puzzled him that each one of these factions was com-
posed of true Spaniards in spite of the ideas (or, at times, lack of them) for
which they tried to dismember and destroy their enemies. We are today
inclined to suspect that underlying these struggles was a complex pattern of
social and economic problems. But to Unamuno they presented themselves
as a series of obsessions. It was the oppressive and at the same time vital-
izing nature of these obsessions that Unamuno sensed during the monoto-
nous days at school, and in the childish tussles he describes in his early
autobiography, Memories of Childhood and Youth (Recuerdos de niñez y de
22 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

mocedad): angry voices blended with sane words; fierce cruelty linked with
deep charity, all the confused shreds of the anarchist and absolutist tem-
perament of Spain’s immemorial soul.
The basic experience behind his first novel, Peace in War (Paz en la
guerra), was that smell of powder experienced during the siege of Bilbao. Just
as the Iliad had been the epic of the Trojan wars, Unamuno intended this
novel to be an objective epic of Spain’s civil struggles during the third quarter
of the nineteenth century. But it is not only a historical moment that is
narrated in Peace in War; it is, according to Unamuno’s own confession, “the
essence of his people.” He does not confine himself to describing a chain of
events; he means to develop all the implications of a collective experience.
That is why this book remained for a long time the major source of Unamuno’s
later interpretations of the Spanish soul. It is also the first complete example
of his search for peace in the midst of continual war. In fact, for Unamuno
the explosion of the bomb in Bilbao was the first of a long series of Spanish
explosions that he was to witness; and in the center of the last and most
violent of them all—the 1936–1939 Civil War—he was to die.
A year after the explosion, his primary education finished, Unamuno
entered the Instituto Vizcaíno of Bilbao. We know little about him during
these “high-school” years (1875–1880), but it seems that the one experience
that dwarfed all others was the discovery, in his fervid and random reading, of
an entirely new world: the world of ideas. He began to love poetry—the poetry
of poets and the poetry of philosophers. A detailed examination of the authors
read by Unamuno in these years would be most enlightening; here I may only
mention that he avidly read Jaime Balmes—one of the promoters of the nine-
teenth-century neoscholastic revival, and a writer whom he later attacked; Juan
Donoso Cortés—the leading representative of a staunch traditionalism; Anto-
nio Trueba, and a host of Spanish Romantic poets. I suspect that he spent a
long time reading and rereading his own first poems, an activity he might have
defended later by claiming that if they were not original (as most probably they
were not at this age) from a literary point of view, they might be original from
a personal point of view—originality being for him not a question of crafts-
manship, but a question of strong feeling and sincere belief.
When the completion of his “high-school” years in 1880 ended his resi-
dence in Bilbao, he went on to Madrid for university studies, which occupied
him until 1884. There he plunged feverishly into a turmoil of philosophical
ideas and religious doubts; and there, like his hero, Pachico, in Peace in War,
he passed his days “hatching dreams.” It appears that Madrid was not much
to his liking. Unamuno, the native son of a provincial town, at that time still
more rural than urban, was probably ill at ease in a city like Madrid which,
while already proud of her meager cosmopolitanism, was a thousand miles
from that universality which Unamuno felt to be the exact opposite of cos-
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 23

mopolitanism. Nor was Unamuno as greatly influenced by university life as

Spanish students were later to be when, with Ortega y Gasset and others, the
universities and particularly the University of Madrid gained influence and
prestige. Probably more significant and influential than Unamuno’s university
life was his own voracious and diverse reading and his contact with the
writings and the personalities of some of the dominant intellectual figures in
the Spanish capital. The intellectual personalities then in ascendancy, or long
since firmly established, spanned several generations, from those who, like
Francisco Pi y Margall—the highly respected left-wing historian and political
writer—had been born in 1821, to men like Joaquín Costa—the versatile
man of letters—born in 1846. The same time span also included a more
compact generation, that is, one of men born about the year 1838. This so-
called Generation of 1868 included those deans of Republicanism, Emilio
Castelar and Nicolás Salmerón, the educators Francisco Giner de los Ríos
and the writers Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, José María de Pereda, Juan Valera,
and Benito Pérez Galdós. Most of these men shared a desire to rejuvenate
Spain, a desire that was as apparent in the skeptical and somewhat snobbish
accents of Valera as it was in the trenchant language of Costa. Numerous
controversies took place in this connection. The “Krausists” and the “Catho-
lics” opposed each other in the most important of these controversies, each
side representing not only different ideological currents and worldviews, but
also, and perhaps above all, different temperaments. Unamuno picked his way
among the spiritual peaks of his day, now in sympathy with one, now with
another. To be sure, some temperaments attracted him more than others. He
chose at that time the liberal, europeanizing group, and sided with the enter-
prising renovators who, guided by Costa, meant to “locke the Cid’s tomb with
seven keys.” These renovators intended to put a stop to Spain’s quixotic antics
and to her unchecked “Cidismo.” All this was very far from Unamuno’s later
thoughts on Spain’s past, but nevertheless it freed him from the conventional,
shallow views held by the extreme “traditionalists.” At any rate, this was the
intellectual climate of Madrid between 1880 and 1884 which influenced
Unamuno more than the university ever could.
After four years of study, of silence, of solitary meditation, “wrapped in
one’s own thoughts,” of debates in student rooms, at the Círculo Vasco-
navarro and the Ateneo, of long walks (Unamuno was already, and remained
until his death, an indefatigable stroller), he received his doctoral degree and
returned to the Basque provinces and an outwardly uneventful life. With his
return to Bilbao and his renewed residence in the Basque countryside be-
tween 1884 and 1891, past experiences began to arrange themselves mean-
ingfully for him. He earned his living by giving private lessons, found time
to read extensively, to participate in discussions at the Sociedad Bilbaína, and
to walk for long hours through the streets. He soon became aware of a
24 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

historical horizon that would serve perfectly as the setting for a narrative. He
focused his interest on the Second Carlist War as symbolic of a chronic phase
of Spanish life. While he gave lessons, wrote unsigned articles for a Socialist
newspaper, and prepared for his professional competitive examinations, he
collected an enormous fund of anecdotal information about the war from the
lips of survivors and by a continual reëxamination of his own childhood
memories. With this information at hand, he tried to reconstruct the climate
of the war as faithfully as possible. As I have said, he wanted to write a truly
novelistic epic. Outlined as early as 1890, Peace in War, at first a short story,
was not published in book form until 1897. In order to write the book, which
was to become a long novel, Unamuno needed a spiritual and economic
tranquility that Bilbao, for all its “charm,” could not offer. Unamuno’s literary
labors needed new soil for their fruition; this was to be Salamanca, in the very
heart of Old Castile.

3 THE CRITICAL YEARS

Unamuno went then to Madrid, and spent several months taking various
competitive examinations for a teaching position. After several attempts at
various positions, he won a chair of Greek language and literature in Salamanca.
Valera and Menéndez y Pelayo, the defenders of two opposing points of
view—the “modern” and the “traditional”—were among his examiners. These
examinations took place in the spring of 1891, and it was then that Unamuno
met Ganivet in whom he recognized a restless spirit akin to his own. Both
were deeply involved in a quest for an authentically Spanish system of thought
unaffected by external europeanizing influences and untarnished by Spanish
“traditionalism.” If in Ganivet this concern was disguised beneath a mask of
ironic bitterness, in Unamuno, a more positive and more vital person, the
concern was readily visible, based as it was upon an aggressively polemical
nature. Both, however, drew on similar experiences; both were convinced that
a Spanish philosophy could be distilled from Spanish life, rather than culled
from the books on library shelves; both felt that, as Ganivet had written, “the
most important philosophy for any country is one native to it, even though
inferior to the able imitations of foreign philosophies.”
Later in 1891 Unamuno moved to Salamanca, an event that marked for
him the beginning of a new epoch. Salamanca came to mean more than an
administrative position to Unamuno. His residence in this quiet city helped
him to discover himself, his possibilities, and, in a sense, his limitations.
There were few cities that could have provided a more perfect setting for his
type of thinking than Salamanca, so heavy with silence and history, its agora
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 25

interlaced by fields, and its immense plains set under high mountains. Here
was a city in which to discover immutable truths beneath the transitory
anecdotes, the living bedrock of “eternal tradition” beneath the continual
upheavals of history. In his life-long tenure at Salamanca there was, moreover,
a decisive period for Unamuno; it came between the publication of On Purism
(En torno al casticismo) in 1895 and The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho (Vida
de Don Quijote y Sancho) in 1905. The zenith of this period was the year 1897.
He had experienced a great intellectual crisis in Madrid, but the one in
Salamanca was to be more profound, more emotional, more intimate, and
more religious. Even assuming that Unamuno’s religious crisis had been less
profound or less sudden than Antonio Sánchez Barhudo has detailed it, there
is little doubt that a profound experience, or series of experiences, gripped
Unamuno’s soul. At any rate, there is a definite change in tone in his writing
before and after 1897. Before 1897, and particularly between 1895 and 1897,
we find Unamuno in a pitched battle with “purism” and traditionalism, which
he declared to be empty and conventional. Local tradition, he argued, must
be discarded in favor of universality. Repetition must give way to renovation;
Spain must be prodded from the bog that held it fast. After 1897, however,
and especially between 1897 and 1905, we find Unamuno absorbed in a tense
and painful attempt at innerdirection. Here the Three Essays (Tres ensayos) of
1900, with their passionate inquiry into the problem—or rather, mystery—of
personality, individual and collective, is a salient landmark. Unamuno’s “In-
ward!” replaces his cry of “Forward!” Don Quixote replaces Don Alonso
Quijano; and the stuff of dreams, no longer a stumbling block, becomes the
very substance of existence.
It is true that there seems to have been some preparation for these new
views during the two or three years preceding the “great crisis.” After all,
though Unamuno defended—before 1897—the importance of forms and
symbols, and the stuff of which, he said at that time, the world was con-
structed, he also maintained that the former possessed “feelings” and the
latter, “life.” Therefore, the name, the incarnation of a concept must “repossess
itself in the permanent, eternal realm”; forms and symbols were no longer to
be considered attributes of an intelligible world, but of a more substantial
universe—a sensuous and an eternal one. That is why the universality, which
Unamuno opposed to cosmopolitanism, belongs to the “eternal tradition” that
exists beneath the surface of routine conventions. But his ideas on the same
questions became much more trenchant, and in many ways more searching,
after 1897. If Unamuno underwrote tradition at this time, it was as some-
thing quite unlike that seclusion-within-one’s-self practiced and preached by
the traditionalists. For Unamuno, “seclusion within one’s self ” (encerrarse)
meant a definite “opening inward” (abrirse hacia sí mismo). Already in a small
26 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

way before 1897, but much more after this year, he felt the need to “accumu-
late continually in order continually to pour forth, to empty one’s self,” or, as
he once described it, “draw in in order to expand” (concentrarse para irradiar).
In the light of this process we can understand how Unamuno moved
from an eager receptivity to outside forces to a ceaseless pouring out from
within, from the apparent “realistic objectivity” and accumulation of detail in
Peace in War to the “critical subjectivity,” the spareness and whimsicality of the
novel Love and Pedagogy (1902). This is an abrupt change in tone, but we
must not forget that it is but a modulation of the same melody that perme-
ated all of Unamuno’s work and life.

4 UNIVERSITY AND POLITICS

During these years Unamuno’s public life seemed a well-regulated routine of

lectures at the university, conversations, discussions, and walks. These occu-
pations were practice for the more resounding activities of the days and weeks
he spent in Madrid, where he quickened the pulse of literary and political
gatherings in cafés, in the newspaper and literary review offices, and at the
Ateneo. Contact with the emotional atmosphere of Madrid soon drew him
into politics, but from his first visits to Madrid as a respected writer until his
death, his manner of participation in politics was ever characteristically his
own. Unamuno never belonged to any one political party; he was too pleased
and too proud of being a heretic to all parties—and all regimes. He felt the
need continually to disagree, and he saw himself in the role of “spiritual
agitator,” for at that time he was convinced that what Spain, and Europe,
needed most was a quickening of the pulse and a stirring of the soul.
He became still more of a political heretic in 1914, after his dismissal
from the post of rector in the University of Salamanca. The government
declared that politics and the teaching profession were incompatible. To this
pronouncement Unamuno countered by saying that they were, in fact, the
same thing; for whereas politics is teaching on a national level, teaching is
talking politics on a personal level. And to those who thought that this was
only a paradox, he replied that paradoxes could not be dispensed with when
it was necessary to jolt an indolent nation awake.
It has often been said that Unamuno was an impassioned personalist in
his philosophy as well as in his politics, and that whereas the first is accept-
able, the second is intolerable. This view overlooks two points; first, that it is
unfair to expect a complete divorce of thought and action in Unamuno; and
second, that his concern with the personal element in politics had its strict
counterpart in his philosophy. Both were manifestations of one and the same
attitude. At all times this “personalistic” feeling pervaded Unamuno’s political
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 27

life. When he expressed, as he was often to do, antimonarchist sentiments, it

was never as an attack on the concept of monarchy and the royal prerogative
as such. He attacked one monarchy and one king only, and he felt that this
was proof of his predilection for concrete realities. This explains why Unamuno
was always considered (and often angrily denounced) as an unstable political
element: he was not a Monarchist, but this did not make of him, strictly
speaking, a Republican. He was at all times what he wished to be: the dis-
senting element of all political parties, the troublemaker in all political rallies.
After Unamuno’s dismissal as rector of Salamanca, his political activity
increased, and he undertook two violent campaigns: one against King Alfonso
XIII; the other, against the Central Powers and in defense of the Allied cause
in World War I. It is imperative to remember, however, that politics never
occupied Unamuno entirely, and that beneath it—often nourishing it—his lit-
erary and spiritual life continued as before. Between the publication of The Life
of Don Quixote and Sancho in 1905 and the publication of his profoundest work,
The Tragic Sense of Life, in 1913, the channel of his personal inner life broad-
ened and deepened. We have as proof the publication of Poems (1907), of
Memories of Childhood and Youth (1911), of Rosary of Lyric Sonnets (Rosario de
Sonetos líricos) (1911), and of the volume entitled Through Portugal and Spain
(Por tierras de Portugal y España) (1911). This last book is characteristic of his
manner of travel and observation, for he appears at once captivated by the
circumstantial and seduced by the eternal. These trips through Portugal and
Spain thrilled Unamuno to the point of ecstasy, and his myopic perusal of
France, Italy, and Switzerland contrasts sharply with the penetration he leveled
at his own country and that of his “Portuguese brothers.” Baroja wrote that
Unamuno saw little or nothing in his European travels because of his fierce
intransigence and his intellectual blindness. Baroja’s remark is true, but only in
part. For Unamuno’s blindness was largely fostered by a desire not to allow his
observation of foreign lands to distract him from the passionate contemplation
of his own. At any rate, although we may complain that Unamuno was not
objective enough when he looked north of the Pyrenees, we must thank him
for having discovered so much south of that mountain range.
By 1914, Unamuno had become the undisputed mentor of many young
Spaniards. This does not mean that he was always listened to with reverence;
indeed, he was often violently opposed. But his towering figure made itself felt
in the arena of Spanish thought, and there vied for leadership with the other
outstanding figures of his time. His chief competitors were Ortega y Gasset,
who had been publishing in newspapers since 1902 and had sent his Medita-
tions on the “Quixote” (Meditaciones del Quijote) to press by 1914; and Eugenio
d’Ors, who began publishing his Commentaries (Glosas) in 1905. The writing of
these two differed considerably from Unamuno’s both in style and content.
Ortega offered a continental manner that was more than a servile imitation of
28 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

Europe, and d’Ors a twentieth-century viewpoint that was infinitely more

appealing than an irrational exaltation of our Age. Because of the order, lucidity,
and harmony that they proffered, their work was more acceptable to many than
Unamuno’s. Small wonder that there were frequent displays of enmity among
the three philosophers and their followers. But the enmity gradually subsided
as it became apparent that where one was weak another was doubly strong and
that, in all fairness, none of the three was expendable. If some signal issue had
been overlooked by Unamuno it was certain to appear in an essay by Ortega
or a commentary by d’Ors, or vice versa; thus, by supplementing his work with
theirs, they exposed Unamuno’s inevitable, yet fruitful, limitations.

5 THE EXILE

This routine of academic lectures, travels and domestic life, discussions and
political sallies, continued until 1924 when Unamuno burst more loudly than
ever upon the public’s ear, acquiring a notoriety that enormously enlarged the
number and variety of his readers. His opposition to Alfonso XIII reached
new extremes as a result of the Primo de Rivera coup d’état in 1923. His
audience with the king, interpreted by some as a desertion of the antimonarchist
ranks, merely exemplified, as he pointed out in a tumultuous meeting at the
Ateneo and in the El Liberal offices a few days after, his unswerving fixity of
purpose. It had only served to reinforce an opposition that reached titanic
proportions when the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera was sanctioned by
royal decree. Since the physical annihilation of famous opponents was not yet
customary in European politics, Primo de Rivera’s reaction to this ideological
insurrection was at first fumbling and in the end rather mild. For some time
after the advent of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, Unamuno continued to
voice his protests, and after his exile to Fuerteventura, one of the Canary
Islands, they reached an ever larger public. He came to feel that this exile was
the most important event in the political life of twentieth-century Spain, and
he swore to do his best to destroy his now deadly enemy—a personal and,
therefore, according to one of his paradoxes, a universal one.
Unamuno’s contrariness during his transfer to the place of exile would
provide a book of anecdotes. The anecdotes, unimportant in themselves, are
nevertheless a measure of his warlike attitude toward the dictatorship, and
above all toward the dictator. He continued to write and speak against the
king and Primo de Rivera from Fuerteventura, and when the editor of the
French newspaper Le Quotidien, to which Unamuno had contributed, ar-
ranged his escape from the island, he went to France in voluntary exile, to
continue there his implacable opposition. A pardon arrived, by coincidence or
political calculation, on June 25, 1924, the same day that Unamuno left for
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 29

Paris after less than a year of residence in Fuerteventura. On his arrival in

Cherbourg, his private war with the dictatorship assumed worldwide propor-
tions for the first time; Max Scheler mentioned it as one event that helped
blacken the spiritual countenance of Europe in the twenties. Unamuno’s
antagonism had several motives, but the foremost of these was the personal—
and, again, according to his much-used formula, the universal—recuperation
of Spain. He raised a persistent voice, speaking and writing in Spain’s behalf
and in his own.
Given certain inevitable differences, Number 2, rue de la Pérouse, in
Paris, was not unlike the pension where Unamuno lived during his student
days in Madrid. The occupant was a student of supreme caliber, receiving
visits from noted or dull celebrities. But there was little satisfaction in it all.
To Unamuno the Paris of the twenties seemed to be a curtain that blocked
his view of the Sierra de Gredos, which towered over Salamanca. Neither the
spirited gatherings at La Rotonde—the famous Montparnasse café recently
demolished to provide room for a moving-picture theatre—nor the intermi-
nable walks through streets teeming with beauty and history lessened the
feeling that Paris was an obstacle in his path. He continued to publish in the
European and South American press, his fight against the dictatorship never
wavered, but his displeasure with the Spanish political situation inhibited any
full cultivation of his religious and poetic spirit for a number of years. But his
true vocation returned when he moved south to Hendaye within sight of the
Spanish countryside across the border. No doubt this authentic vocation was
more central than his political outbursts and manifestoes, or the Free Pages
(Hojas libres) he published in collaboration with Eduardo Ortega y Gasset
and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. To him his arrival in Hendaye was like the end
of an exile. In The Agony of Christianity (La agonía del cristianismo) (1925) and
in How a Novel Is Made (Cómo se hace una novela) (1927) there were cries of
desperation; in Hendaye the desperation mingled with hope, and their union
produced the experiences that with the advent of the Republic, were mani-
fested in Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr (San Manuel Bueno, mártir) (1933)
and Brother Juan or The World Is a Stage (El hermano Juan o el mundo es teatro
(1934). The stay in Hendaye was a genuine spiritual resurrection.

6 THE RETURN OF THE EXILE

Externally Unamuno’s life in Hendaye was much like the one he had led in
Paris. There were informal gatherings at the Grand Café, interviews, and many
long walks. With the fall of the dictatorship, in 1930, Unamuno was finally at
liberty to direct his steps toward Spain, and on the 9th of February he crossed
the border and entered Irún. The nation was wild with jubilation now. Beside
30 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

themselves, the vast majority of the Spaniards cheered the oncoming Republic,
but not all with the same purity of intention. As often happens, many lay in
ambush, intent upon its quick destruction and the proclamation of any of the
politically extreme ideologies that must mean the eventual death of any truly
democratic regime. In this period of exaltation and easy optimism, a bloodless
revolution seemed possible. But not even the welcoming speeches on his arrival
at Irún, the happiness and enthusiasm of the people, nor the whole pages
dedicated in all the newspapers to the return of Spain’s most famous exile, could
make the hero of all their rejoicing forget the two points that had been his
trademark: his concern with “eternal Spain” and his fundamentally heterodox
approach to each idea and each person. The motto “God, Country, and Law”
(Dios, Patria y Ley)* which Unamuno uttered, once across the frontier, may have
expressed antimonarchist feelings, but it was not yet, as many had expected, an
assertion of Republican faith. Even before the Republic was proclaimed on
April 14, 1931, Unamuno, who had done more than most to help realize that
day, had begun his opposition, as much the political heretic as ever.
The return to Salamanca on February 11, 1930, was quite another mat-
ter. His home was there where the silence, which in the final analysis had
nourished the best things of his existence, awaited his return. Any biography
of Unamuno which presumes to investigate the core of his personality would
do well to devote more space to his return to Salamanca than to either his
entrance into Irún or the political demonstrations in Madrid in early May,
1930, on the occasion of his arrival in the capital and his famous address there
to the Ateneo. In this speech he called the collaborators of the dictatorship
to account, coined sharp phrases such as the well-known “Not up to the king,
but from the king on down,Ӡ and struggled to outline the political future.
The cheers with which young members of other generations than his ac-
claimed him, and the homage of the press, gave the impression that Unamuno
had become a full-fledged political leader. He seemed drawn along by the
rapid, almost feverish succession of events. But in his heart he remained a
poet and a thinker, an indefatigable seeker of the eternal. He raised his voice
in Madrid, but only in the silence of Salamanca was he spiritually at home.

7 THE LAST YEARS

The proclamation of the Republic one year later found Unamuno unchanged:
longing for the eternal and still a victim of the moment. As rector, Unamuno

* Trans. note: which echoed, unfaithfully, the traditional phrase: “God, Country, and
King” (Dios, Patria y Rey).
† Trans. note: “No hasta, sino desde . . .”
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 31

opened the academic year of 1931–1932 at the University of Salamanca in

the name of “Her Imperial and Catholic Majesty, Spain,” thereby seeming to
announce his opposition to the Republic, even if we take “Catholic” to mean
here “universal” rather than a definite politico-religious attribute. What he
really attacked, however, was the Republic’s haggling over trivialities. The
Republic was so absorbed with internecine struggles that it had neither the
time nor the disposition for an examination of its own conscience. According
to Unamuno this was the first, most important challenge of all—the key to
all other problems. He felt it was even a key to the solution and management
of what today has become the greatest single preoccupation of all govern-
ments, regardless of ideology: the national economy. From 1932 until his
death, Unamuno’s major preoccupations were the misgivings awakened by a
growing willfulness in the masses, and the fear of a rapid spiritual and geo-
graphical disintegration of Spain. His articles in El Sol and Ahora became
tinged with bitterness because now no one listened to him, or rather, because
he thought that just when his work was beginning to bear fruit in the spirit
of a new generation, his words fell on deaf ears. But in spite of deep concern
and bitterness he did not lose hope. Repeatedly he exercised those same
tactics that had served him well against the dictatorship. Times, however, had
changed. He was accused by some of “selling out” to the enemy, he was curtly
asked by almost all to define his position—the only thing he could not do.
He had always felt it his mission to maintain an undefined—which by no
means meant an eclectic—position, and to erase the boundaries between
himself and his enemies. People who asked Unamuno to clarify his political
position forgot that, as he had often said, he counted his own votes and they
were never unanimous.
Finally Unamuno’s merit was officially recognized. In 1934, at a magnifi-
cent celebration in his honor, he was formally retired from his chair and made
“Perpetual Rector” of Salamanca. In 1935, he was made an honorary citizen
of the Spanish Republic. These festivities marked the close of an animated
era that had included his speeches, edged with grave injunctions and filled
with incisive attack, before the Constitutional Congress. The tone of his
farewell speech as university professor was more subdued. By now Unamuno
realized that the agitation he had fostered, and the pain and strife he had
decreed, had reached a danger point and needed modulation. At a time when
all over Spain there were ominous signs of the impending Civil War and
waves of violent disagreement, the renowned sower of fruitful discord began
to preach harmony. In the first pages of The Agony of Christianity he had
written: “My Spain, now mortally wounded, is perhaps destined to die a
bloody death on a cross of swords.” In Life of Don Quixote and Sancho he had
written: “Yes, what we need is a civil war.” But now Spain was threatened not
by a civil war, a mere bloodletting, but by what Unamuno with great foresight
32 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

had once called an “uncivil war”; one in which, unlike those he had imagined,
there would never be peace in the combatants’ hearts.
The life remaining to Unamuno, a towering solitary figure, will always be
dwarfed by the magnitude of the war that had begun in July 1936. On the
last day of this same year, Unamuno died amid communiqués of war, as did
two of his great European contemporaries, Henri Bergson and Sigmund
Freud, three years later.
For a time after his death he was called variously, traitor, weakling, and
turncoat. He had hailed the military rebellion, then he had courageously
challenged it; the most ardent supporters of the two factions had reasons to
speak in anger against him. But those who have taken counsel with the man
and his works will realize that he was always true to himself. To be sure, the
little we know of his words and deeds during the last six months of his life
is both baffling and distressing. But the question is whether it could be
otherwise, for everything is baffling and distressing when it comes from the
center of a maelstrom of cataclysmic violence. As if destroyed by lightning,
Unamuno disappeared in the midst of this historical whirlwind. For a time,
his voice was submerged. Some expected that is would remain so forever.
They did not realize just how serious Unamuno had been in his intention to
make each line he wrote vibrant with the life that was his own.
 Chapter Two

The Man of Flesh and Blood—

The Idea of the World—The Idea of God

8 HOMO SUM

“Philosophy is the human product of each philosopher, and each philosopher

is a man of flesh and blood speaking to other men of flesh and blood.” Thus
reads the opening sentence of Unamuno’s Tragic Sense of Life. Never before
have the human condition of philosophy and the “earthly” constitution of the
philosopher been stated in such radical terms. To be sure, ‘human condition’
and ‘earthly constitution’ are hardly expressions that Unamuno would have
used himself; he would have shunned both as bloodless abstractions. The
individual person, the substance that underlies both philosophy and the phi-
losopher, was what mattered most to Unamuno. He often proclaimed that the
individual, concrete human being is the inescapable point of departure for all
philosophers worthy of the name.
A “point of departure” as clear and sweeping as Unamuno’s implies first
the elimination of all idols—particularly the ideological ones. Thus, the first
step that Unamuno proposes—especially when writing in a strongly prag-
matic vein—is the breaking of and with ideas. Now, Unamuno’s pragmatism,
unlike the usual variety, is not just a philosophical tendency; it is, in fact, a
case of “ideophagy.” What Unamuno means to do with ideas is to break them
in, “like a pair of shoes, using them and making them mine.” As a system of
ideas, conventional pragmatism must (in its turn) be dealt with pragmatically;
it must be dismantled, used, and, as Hegel would say, “absorbed.” Unamuno
is against any tyranny of ideas, even the tyranny of those ideas that pose as
guides to action. The conventional pragmatist holds that knowledge is mean-
ingless unless its goal is the fostering of life; however, in his preoccupation

33
34 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

with life and its exigencies, he ends by bowing to a new idol. By so doing,
he sacrifices what to Unamuno mattered most: our own life, pulsating be-
neath the jungle of ideas about it—that life made up of flesh and blood, but
also of anguish, suffering, and hope.
The elimination of all idols is thus Unamuno’s first step in the tireless
search for himself and, through himself, for all human beings who like him
enjoy or, in some instances, suffer an authentic life. Here we have the main
motive for Unamuno’s implacable blows against philosophies and “mere phi-
losophers.” Now, contrary to most of the “vitalist” and some of the “existen-
tialist” philosophers, Unamuno did not think that the ideological idols were
altogether useless. In his fight against “abstraction,” Kierkegaard contended
that anyone who thought as Hegel did, and identified being with thought,
was less than human. Even more “existentialist” than Kierkegaard himself,
Unamuno disagreed with this censure. For Unamuno, even the most abstract
systems of thought were permeated with life. They were, in fact, one of man’s
ways of clinging to existence. Thus to Unamuno, Hegel seemed as human
and as much concerned with his own concrete existence as those who ex-
pressed their concern more openly. Perhaps for Kierkegaard, living in solitude
and anguish, only those who faced the fact of their own imminent annihila-
tion could be saved, whereas for Unamuno, living in tragedy, fellowship, and
hope, all could be saved, even those who insisted on substituting life and hope
for thought.
Unamuno thoroughly criticized the philosophers’ way of thinking, but only
because this thinking frequently prevented the philosophers’ recognizing what,
irrevocably, they were, no matter how earnestly they might struggle to forget it:
concrete, unique men of flesh and blood. Philosophers who attempt to reduce
all realities to a single principle may try to account for the existence of human
beings in purely rational terms, and in so doing they inevitably finish by turning
concrete human beings into sheer abstractions. Although they often emphasize
the life and the existence of men, they never succeed in reaching “my life” and
“my existence.” Unamuno could not help using formulas that are definitely
impersonal in tone; he used language, and language cannot dispense with ab-
stract terms. Thus, he wrote that the individual concrete life is “a principle of
unity and a principle of continuity.” But such words as ‘principle’ should not
mislead us. Unamuno used the term ‘principle,’ but he never identified it with
an abstract “postulate.” A principle was for him a kind of “fountain” or “spring,”
apt enough to describe the “source” of a number of human attitudes that are
invariably concrete: the instinct of self-preservation, that of self-perpetuation,
the awareness of tragedy, the experience of ambiguity, the inextricable mixture
of desperation and hope, and so on. He felt that the “classical” philosophies had
paid little attention to these attitudes. At best they tried to explain their nature,
without meeting them face to face. But explanation is of no avail here; when
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 35

everything has been accounted for, men realize that the most important things
still remain unexplained. Philosophers, Unamuno held, should begin by ac-
knowledging that they are men, and so before they attempt to know “Truth”
they ought to inquire about their own “truth.”
The laborious search for that supreme reality, the man of flesh and blood,
places Unamuno at a vantage point from which all vitalism and all existen-
tialism seem mere theories about a reality that is so “pure” as to be hardly
reality at all. But we must not imagine that in Unamuno’s philosophical
“point of departure” a “preoccupation with man” is at all synonymous with a
“preoccupation with all that is human.” In absolute contradistinction to
Terence’s famous dictum—Homo sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto—
Unamuno declared that humanity—the concept of humanity, that is—was
foreign to him. Such a concept is as suspect as the concept of human exist-
ence with which philosophers attempt to disguise their lofty abstractions.
That is why Unamuno, that tireless sapper of philosophies, began by pro-
claiming his desire to be the exact opposite of a philosopher in the classical
or traditional sense of this word. This attitude was adopted as a consequence
of his rather vague definition of “a philosopher.” Unamuno defined “a phi-
losopher” as “a man who above all else seeks truth,” even when this truth
forces him to acknowledge the lack of substantial, intimate reality in his own
being—or the possibility of its final and complete annihilation in death.
Because Unamuno refuses to be annihilated, he rebels against all the forces
that contribute to man’s destruction. One of these forces is reason, or rather
the overemphasis on reason, which he defined, I am sorry to say, with the
same lack of precision as the concept of philosopher. Nevertheless, it should
be taken into account that Unamuno’s rebellion against this supposed anni-
hilation is nothing like a show of stubborn egocentrism. The man Unamuno
speaks for is, of course, himself. Yet he also speaks for all men who are not—
or cannot be—content with the fictitious comforts of rational philosophy.
This includes, paradoxically, the rationalists themselves, for they are,
along with everyone else, men of flesh and blood whose “being” cannot be
compressed into any abstract concept, not even the concepts of “existence”
and “life.”

9 IDEAS AND IDEALS

Unamuno’s pragmatic point of departure is thus so radical that it has often

been misunderstood, occasionally even by Unamuno himself. He has insisted
so much upon the predominance of the “concrete” as against the “abstract”
that he has led his readers to believe that the “abstract”—ideas and reason—
must be destroyed once and for all. Yet we must embrace pure ideas as well,
36 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

provided that we do it as concretely existing beings for whom ideas are as

necessary to life as life itself. As we shall see later on, men cannot dispense
with the “reprisals against life” launched by ideas. For the worst of ideas is not
what they really are—the opposites life clings to in order to exist—but what
they often pretend to be: comforting explanation that conceal the pangs that
accompanied their birth. Therefore, the man of flesh and blood, who thinks
in order to live even when thinking confronts him with the fact that he must
one day cease to exist, must not simply dismiss ideas and reasons as irrelevant
and powerless. He must face these ideas; he must crack them open and
penetrate them; he must above all discover the ideals that lie beneath them.
In tune with some of Nietzsche’s aphorisms, and perhaps influenced by them,
Unamuno proclaimed that the substance of any idea is the ideal (the Desire,
the Wish, the Will) held by the man who formulated it. Ideas possess an
“essential truth,” whereas ideals possess an “existential” truth. Even the most
absurd of all ideals have a truth of their own that absurd ideas can never have.
The brittle truth of a hundred birds on the wing belies the poor truth of a
single bird in the hand. An idea may be declared to be true or false; an ideal
is beyond the realm of truth and falsehood.
A series of startling paradoxes is the result of these reflections. To begin
with, if ideals are the substance of ideas, it must be concluded that ideas have
also, at bottom, an “existential” truth; otherwise, ideas could not even be
conceived by men. Furthermore, a man of flesh and blood can more willingly
accept (or rather, use) ideas than can some philosophers. Unamuno could not
sympathize with the philosophers who importunately denounce the limita-
tions of reason and of the ideas that reason produces.
The ideas that philosophers—including antirationalist philosophers—have
circulated about man have ever been means of avoiding confrontation with
this “man of flesh and blood,” despite the fact that this “man” has given such
ideas the only life they can ever possess. In defining “man” as “a rational
being,” “a thinking subject,” “a historical reality,” and so forth, philosophers
have imagined themselves in touch with man’s reality; actually, they have
never been close to anything but a mere formal principle. And even if we
define “man” as “an irrational creature,” we will only succeed in laying down
another principle, an abstract, philosophical postulate. Now, we should not
concern ourselves just with the business of living, and leave sterile definitions
to the philosophers. Notwithstanding his claims to the contrary, Unamuno’s
approach to man is still of a philosophical nature. It enters philosophy by the
back door, but enters it nevertheless. In this respect Unamuno is indebted to
a well-known tradition (the tradition of Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Pascal,
and Kierkegaard) which he himself has often acknowledged. The kinship
exists, not because his philosophy is literally based on the works of these
authors, but because it was in them that he discovered—most often, as with
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 37

Kierkegaard, after his own position had been formulated—his true “spiritual
brothers.” But unlike most of them, Unamuno did not want to enslave phi-
losophy. Quite the contrary: he wanted to free it from all idols, those of
“irrationality” and “life” no less than those of “reason” and “ideas.” The mo-
tives for this double objective are at the very heart of his thought, and cast
a vivid light on his conception of tragedy. For Unamuno it would be incorrect
to speak of a man who existed authentically—in flesh and blood—if he did
not also exist tragically, and it would be inadequate to say that he lived
tragically if his life were not continually torn by the enmity—which acts
through the coexistence—of two series of warring provocations: the will to
be, and the suspicion that one can cease to be; feeling and thought; faith and
doubt; certainty and uncertainty; hope and desperation; heart and head; or—
in terms dear to some philosophers—life and logic.

10 REASON AND FAITH

This enmity is the single but powerful source of man’s fundamental tragic
feeling: the feeling that his hope and faith are incompatible with his reason,
and yet cannot exist without it. For reason subsists only by virtue of its
constant war—and therefore its continual embrace—with hope and faith. We
must avoid the common error of supposing that Unamuno’s thinking was
entirely slanted in favor of a complete victory of irrationality over reason.
Were this true neither could exist. Their warring coexistence is the substance
of “tragedy,” and the prime mover of the “tragic sense of life.” If men could
entirely escape the so-called “dictates of reason” to such an extent that they
might then be defined as “irrational beings” hungering for eternal life, or
blindly hopeful of it, there would be no tragedy in their existence. But
Unamuno would then wonder whether they deserved to be called “human” at
all. For Unamuno, to live as a human being and to live tragically were one
and the same thing.
It may be argued here that the question before us is a purely semantic
one; that the identification of “human life” with “tragic life” is a linguistic
convention that we may take or leave. But Unamuno does not ask anyone to
assent to a proposition; he wants everyone to yield to a fact: the fact that the
permanent tension between opposites, and especially between reason and the
irrational, is the very core of existence.
There is little doubt, at any rate, that Unamuno would not agree with
Leo Chestov’s passionate descriptions of man as an essentially irrational crea-
ture. According to the Russian philosopher, every authentic human being
must renounce all ties with the objective world in favor of his own world of
dreams. As a consequence, man’s private universe is not disturbed by reason
38 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

or by the universal and necessary truths—the so-called “eternal truths”—that

reason uncovers and formulates. On the other hand, the human universe that
Unamuno describes is one in which the victory of dreams over reason is no
less precarious than the victory of reason over dreams. It is a universe that
offers no final respite, no quietude, no peace. Even when man is most entirely
and happily immersed in the irrationality of his dreams, reason comes for-
ward to trouble his life. And thus man comes to realize that the world of
reason—of ideas and abstractions—must be cultivated for the sake of life no
less than the world of dreams. The man of flesh and blood is not a person
who turns from unreason and the dream world to embrace the implacable yet
comforting light of reason, nor the person who escapes the rational universe
to hide in the warm, trembling cosmos of faith, but one who vacillates inces-
santly between one and the other; a person who is, in fact, composed of these
two elements.
Instead of being principles from which to deduce and define a concrete
existence, these two worlds are perfectly alive, active almost pulsating realities.
Unamuno has at times called them metaphorically, “whirlpools.” And the
man of flesh and blood, who lives at war with himself and never relinquishes
his desire for peace, appears astride them both, sinking out of sight between
them only to rise uncertainly again.
To claim that man must philosophize in order to live is not, therefore,
just another formula; it is the faithful description of an experience. Unamuno’s
pragmatism, his invocation of utility, his insistence that truth tends to become
veracity and the idea, an ideal, are thus entirely compatible with his waging
war against all things merely pragmatic. Though Unamuno wrote that “the
so-called innate desire to know only awakens and becomes active after the
desire to know-in-order-to-live is satisfied,” he did so only to emphasize,
against the rationalists, the importance of irrationality. He also wrote, and
here against irrationalists, that “the demands of reason are fully as imperious
as those of life.”

11 A WORLD OF TENSIONS

Because he manifests a revolt of naturalism against the idealism of reason,

and of the idealism of reason against pragmatical materialism, all attempts to
pigeonhole Unamuno in one definite philosophical system are bound to fail.
Unamuno does not advocate the union—which would entail a reconciliation,
and eventually, a truce—of life and reason within the framework of a system
where the idea of harmony would forever preclude any discord. There can be
no harmony in that war which each human being wages against himself and
his antagonists, but only perpetual strife, interminable contradiction, and
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 39

continual—and fruitful—incivility. This is the only “formal principle,” if that

is the proper name for it, which permeates Unamuno’s thinking. It may be
stated as follows: To be, is to be against one’s self.
Unamuno’s emphasis on opposition, tension, and contradiction is obvi-
ously related to that type of thinking which since Hegel has been customarily
called “dialectical.” Nevertheless, there are two important differences between
the conventional dialectical systems and Unamuno’s.
On the one hand, dialectical systems attempt to describe and explain
the attributes of the Cosmos as an impersonal being. In such systems,
human reality follows the pattern of the cosmic reality. Sometimes “the
Reality” is identified with “God,” but even then the impersonal traits prevail
over the personal ones. Unamuno’s dialectic, however, is of an entirely per-
sonal nature. Unamuno refers mainly, if not exclusively, to human existence.
And when the ideas of God and world are introduced, they are endowed
with human characteristics. Even when he uses such abstract terms as ‘rea-
son’ and ‘the irrational,’ they are to be understood as embodied in unique,
concrete human beings.
On the other hand, all the philosophers who have tried to describe reality
as a dialectical process of some sort—Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno
no less than Hegel—have built conceptual systems in which the opposites
end in reunification in the bosom of some ultimate and all-embracing prin-
ciple. The war between particulars finds peace in the absolute generality of
the essential One, so that the principle of identity overcomes, in the end, all
contradictions. The dialectical method is one in which—as in Hegel—the
total, “superior” truth (philosophical truth) reconciles the partial, “inferior”
truths (mathematical and historical truth), one which purports to “save” all
within the frame of the Absolute—the only realm in which peace is to be
found. But in Unamuno’s world, animated by the principle of perpetual civil
war and unending strife, there is no place for any final harmony—and still
less, any identity—which would be, in his opinion, the equivalent of death.
Among those thinkers who defended the dialectical approach, there was
something akin to a headlong rush toward the very identity they denounced,
their attempts to dissemble their own longing for an ultimate unity by calling
it an “identity of opposites” notwithstanding. In Unamuno there is not the
slightest eagerness to be absorbed in this identity, nor the least desire to pour
the past into the future; there is just an everlasting will to abide, “to prolong
this sweet moment, to sleep in it, and in it become eternal (eternizarse).”
Unamuno wishes to prolong his “eternal past” because only the moment most
perfectly expresses what he seeks: a sense of being a man of flesh and blood
among other men of flesh and blood, yet still longing to be all that one can
long to be, to be “all in all and forever,” a finite individual and an infinite
reality at the same time.
40 THREE SPANISH PHILOSOPHERS

All identity or even harmony of opposites, all mere submersion of the

moment in an intemporal eternity, is undone in the perpetual battle between
heart and head. So, for the authentic man, the correct spiritual disposition is
not belief in the impossible simply because it is impossible (as some irratio-
nalists would urge), nor yet disbelief because of its impossibility (as most
rationalists would recommend), but its affirmation without believing it or, as
Unamuno said, by creating it. This is the only means of arriving at that point
where man is permitted to walk the floor of the abyss, that “terrible substruc-
ture of tragedy and faith,” which is the common ground for both skeptics and
believers, and where desperation (“the noblest, most profound, most human,
and most fecund state of mind”) meets and fraternally embraces hope. The
embrace is a tragic one, and for Unamuno this means a vital one: a menace
of death and a fountain of life. Desperation and doubt can never attain a
complete victory over hope and belief, but the reverse is also true. At a time
when sentiment and belief ride roughshod over reason and doubt, “there are
reprisals,” with “damned logic” clinging, at the same time, to what we may
well call “damned feelings.” And so the battle goes on forever: reason and
faith, doubt and belief, thought and feeling, fact and desire, head and heart
are united by an association in war, the only apposition in which they can
survive since “each lives on the other,” and feeds on the other, there being no
third party to rejoice in or benefit from the struggle, no absolute unity or
supreme harmony to lay peace between the antagonists. The only attainable
peace lies in the eye of this powerful hurricane, but the eye subsists only
because the hurricane moves on.
Thus the man of flesh and blood, who seemed to be so plain, simple, and
straightforward, becomes a most complex reality seething with confusion and
contradiction. No sooner had the philosopher asserted the concrete character
of this creature than he injects it with what appears to be infinitely removed
from any concrete reality: the pursuit of the impossible, the life of wish and
dream. But even though the boundaries of personal unity seem thus to be
broken, man never surrenders himself to any absolute being or to any tran-
scendent realm of values. The man of flesh and blood strives to be all in all,
while he fights to remain within the limits of his personal unity. He wishes
to preserve his own nontransferable self, for being all in all means an infinite
expansion of one’s own personality rather than ceasing to be what one is.
At any rate, it would be a mistake to enlist Unamuno in the ranks of
classical idealism, as it would be inadequate to consider him a naturalist or
a realist. To be sure, Unamuno speaks often of “realism,” but at such times it
is to be understood as an injunction to create reality rather than as an invi-
tation to describe it faithfully and accurately. Also he seems sometimes on the
brink of naturalism and even materialism, but it is only because he wishes to
emphasize what is concrete in man’s existence. Realism, naturalism, and
 Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy 41

materialism define man in terms of what he is, which nearly always means,
in terms of what he has been. Idealism, on the other hand, defines man in
terms of what he ought to be. Unamuno prefers to “define” him in terms of
what he will become, or more exactly, in terms of what he wants to become,
since “we are lost or saved on the basis of what we wanted to be, and not for
what we have been.” If a name could be given to Unamuno’s philosophical
anthropology, “poetic realism” would perhaps be the least inadequate of all.

12 MAN AS A DREAMER

In view of the above, it is only too natural that Unamuno’s notion of man
should be drawn more successfully in his novels than in his philosophical
essays. In Unamuno’s novels there is frequent use of such expressions as
‘living, suffering, flesh,’ ‘the marrow of bone,’ and ‘the painting of the soul.’
There is frequent mention of dreams, since it is through dreams that the
creatures we imagine, exist. We may say, then, that in the characters of these
novels Unamuno’s conception of man is truly given flesh. And this, as he
writes, “without recourse to theatrical scenery, or other tidbits of realism
which invariably lack the true, eternal reality, that of personality.” All the
“characters” thus described—or, more correctly speaking, created—struggle in
order to exist. They fight against everybody, including their author, in order
to be men of flesh and blood, for only in the course of such a struggle can
they achieve their greatest reality.
Like their creator, all are “men of contradictions,” and their goal in life
is to “carve themselves a soul.” Mist’s (Niebla) Augusto Pérez goes so far as
to threaten his author. He cannot do it, as the latter can, “with a stroke of
his pen”—after all, the character is not an author. But he can menace the
author by reminding him that God—a sort of supreme author—may stop
dreaming him. As we shall see later on, the so-called fictitious characters in
the novels possess a reality of their own. To be sure, they are the consequence
of their author’s “dreams.” But their creator depends on his characters as
much as they depend on him. Thus, Unamuno wants to make clear that
although each man—“real” or “fictitious”—is truly himself, he cannot live
without the others. Unamuno’s repeated insistence on the notions of the
“dream” and “being dreamed” may be grounded, of course, in his undeniable
fondness for paradox; it is indeed a paradox to say that real persons and
fictitious characters in novels are equally “men of flesh and blood.” But un-
derlying Unamuno’s witticisms and puns there is a serious attempt to show
that personality is more basic to men—real or fictitious—than any of the
other characteristics of human existence thus far devised by philosophers.
There is, and most important, the wish to show that all men of flesh and
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mißhandelte er die ergrimmten Matrosen, wozu der Vornehme sonst
nimmer seine Hand mißbraucht, oder er zwang seine Unterführer,
daneben aber auch gemeines Volk, zu Zechereien und waghalsigem
Kartenspiel, bis die minder Ausdauernden, von seinem
Hohngelächter verfolgt, unter den Tisch der prunkhaften Kajüte
fielen.
Es war klar, der Wein dieses Lebens wurde schal und ging in
Zersetzung über.
Einmal fragte ihn der kleine Wichmann, der selbst diesen Verfall
seines Zöglings mit der Aufmerksamkeit eines messenden und
vergleichenden Gelehrten beobachtete:
»Wohlan, Cläuslein, zu welch letztem Ziel voll Purpurglut und
betörender Klänge willst du uns nunmehr steuern?«
Das Ende eines jener übermäßigen Gelage war gerade
herangenaht, so daß der Riese mit dem ehemaligen Magister nur
noch allein hinter der weinbesudelten Tafel lehnte. Aus seinen
Grübeleien aufgeschreckt, hob der Störtebecker das Haupt und
strich sich die wirren Locken aus der Stirn. Offenbar mußte die Frage
des Zwerges in einer sehr ähnlichen Bahn laufen wie seine eigenen
Gedanken, denn der benommene Mensch griff nach der winzigen
Hand seines Gefährten, als wolle er sich überzeugen, ob Fleisch und
Bein jene Auskunft von ihm verlange. Dann sprach er, den Kopf
gestützt, mit einem zerrissenen, nach innen dringenden Lächeln:
»Heino, hast du jemals an das Aufhören dieses ganzen
Gewimmels gedacht? Welche Ruhe muß kommen, wenn das Erdherz
seinen letzten Schlag tut.« Er riß sich die rote Schecke über der
Brust auf, um an sein eigenes Schlagwerk zu greifen. Das hämmerte
laut und stürmisch. »In den Eismärchen unserer Vorfahren, so man
auch hierzulande noch erzählt,« fuhr er dann in sich gekehrt fort,
»läuft ein Wolf herum, der die Sonne verschlingt und nicht satt wird,
bis er alles Leben gefressen. Ich kenn' nunmehr das Untier, Heino.
Es ist dein und mein Geschlecht und heißt Mensch. Es stürmt nach
der Vernichtung. Welch ein Helfer würde der sein, der ihm den Weg
dazu erleuchtet! Bruder,« und dabei zerquetschte er fast den Becher
in seiner Faust, »ich möchte das von Teufeln bewohnte Reich an
allen vier Ecken anzünden und dann, wie jener Sardanapal, mit
Weibern, Suff und Spiel zur Asche fahren.«
Hinter ihm folgte diesem wütigen Begehren ein unbewachter
Seufzer. Der Zecher fuhr herum und begegnete dem übernächtigten
Antlitz seines Knaben. Allein der trauervolle Blick verschlimmerte des
Seefahrers üble Laune noch um ein Bedeutendes.
»Dummer Bube,« herrschte er ihn an, »was starren deine Augen
gleich zwei offenen Gräbern? Bete den Tag an, schlemme und füge
deiner Natur keine Gewalt zu. Willst du, daß dich einst die Würmer
verachten, die den Schluß machen? Heißa, vergeude, womit du jetzt
sparst, und singe Schelmenlieder.«
So trieb es der Zertrümmerte seinen Nächsten zum Ärgernis, und
je näher der Tag der Abfahrt rückte, desto gieriger fahndete seine
Lüsternheit danach, dem Lande, das er preisgeben mußte, allerlei
letzte Genüsse zu entlocken.
Was fehlte ihm noch?
An einem Spätnachmittag bemerkte man von den Schiffen im
Hafen, wie der Reisewagen der Häuptlingsfrau van Neß langsam die
Höhe der Brokeburg hinaufknarrte. Da fuhr der Admiral wie
gestochen mitten aus dringenden Anordnungen empor und winkte
heftig einen der Schiffsjungen zu sich. Jähe Röte flackerte in seinen
Zügen, denn er schämte sich fast, daß er gerade dasjenige
unvernichtet zurücklassen sollte, was seine Flamme schon so nah
umzüngelt.
»Geh,« befahl er ohne Rücksicht auf die Umstehenden, zu denen
auch Licinius gehörte, »melde dem Häuptlingsweib, ihr Wunsch sei
erfüllt. Die Flotte laufe aus. Darum lade sie der Admiral zu einem
Abschiedstrunk auf die »Agile«. Sage, es solle ein ihr würdiges Fest
werden.«
 Ungeduldig warf er dem Boten ein Silberstück zu, dann schrie er
dem Davonspringenden noch über Bord nach:
»Schone deine Lunge nicht, Bursche. Lobe und rühme mich. Es
hat Eile.«

Schweigsam hatte die schöne Occa die Botschaft angehört. Jetzt

saß sie an dem Ausguck ihrer Kammer, von wo sie die Lichter der
Flotte durch die Dämmerung zucken und blinken sah, und ihr eitler
Sinn überlegte, welchen Entschluß sie fassen sollte.
Die Einsamkeit tat ihr nicht wohl. Voller Dunkelheit hing der Raum,
in dem sie weilte, und nur aus ihrer offenstehenden Schlafkammer
schwamm der trübe Schein eines Öllämpchens herüber. Allein die
spärlichen Strahlen trugen ihr noch etwas Besonderes herzu. Jetzt,
da der Augenblick herannahte, wo der glänzende Freibeuter, der
Mann des Zufalls und des Abenteuers in das Ungewisse seiner
gefährlichen Laufbahn hinausgerissen wurde, jetzt, wo man den
Sagenumwobenen leicht für immer verlieren konnte, mit dem ihre
Einbildungskraft nicht allein oft gespielt, sondern dessen
schicksalsgestaltende Mannheit sie sich bereits durch ihre Künste
gefügig gemacht zu haben glaubte, da kam ein bitteres Erinnern, ein
Vergleichen über die Verkaufte, und ihr bisheriges Dasein erschien
ihr nicht mehr so spielerisch und harmlos wie früher.
Seltsame Gestalten tauchten aus dem matten Schimmer zu ihren
Füßen. Zuerst glaubte die Verlassene, die flüchtigen Lichtflecke
formten sich zu einem menschlichen Klumpen, und obwohl ihre
Sinne unerschrocken und grobkörnig waren wie die der meisten
Frauen ihrer Zeit, so rückte sie doch belästigt zur Seite, als sie der
Täuschung unterlag, das Ferkel kröche auf sie zu, um sein
Borstenhaupt tierisch an ihrem Knie zu reiben. Die dunstige Wärme
wurde ihr zuwider.
 »Mach fort,« scheuchte sie das allzunahe Phantom und –
erwachte. Offenen Auges sann sie dann weiter in die Nebelluft des
versunkenen Tages. Dort drüben zwischen den dämmernden
Lichtern harrte ihrer jetzt gewiß der Riese, denn hinter seiner
Einladung – das wußte sie – lauerte sicherlich der Wunsch, sie
endlich in seine Arme zu schließen, um sie zu unterjochen. Niemals
hatte er ein Hehl aus seinem brennenden Verlangen gemacht,
ebenso wie sie selbst kaum aufgehört, durch ein lässiges Versagen
sein Gelüst zu schüren.
Versonnen lächelte die Goldblonde und stützte ihren Arm auf die
Mauerplatte. Ein unendliches Wohlgefühl verursachte es ihr, sich dies
alles vorzustellen. Ungebrochen war sie noch, und gerade ihre
Freiheit sowie die Geschicklichkeit, mit der sie ihr höchstes Gut
verteidigte, sie erfüllten sie mit einem herben Stolz. Aber während
ihr jetzt die feuchte Seeluft die Wangen kühlte, da begann in ihren
Gedanken jener heimlich nagende Ehrgeiz zu schmerzen, den sie
von ihrem tollen Vater geerbt, und allerlei weitmaschige Pläne von
möglicher Größe und künftiger Herrschaft knüpften das Netz
zwischen ihr und dem Entfernten enger. Wenigstens versuchte die
Schwankende, sich jenes unerklärliche Treiben und Drängen in ihrem
Blut so auszudeuten. Warum sollte sie nicht die Kräfte jenes
Unbändigen sich dienstbar machen, der mit Schätzen,
Fürstentümern und Kronen so unbesorgt spielte wie sie mit den
Huldigungen vernarrter Männer? Warum sollte sie nicht den Fuß auf
jene Hand setzen, die sie hoch ins Licht heben wollte? Unermeßlich
hoch vielleicht. Draußen in der Welt war man gerade dabei, einen
König zwischen Schloß und Mauern verhungern zu lassen. Wohin
konnte ein Kühner, den die Goldfäden des Volksliedes schon
umspannen, nicht kecken Fußes gelangen? Namentlich wenn ein
begehrtes Weib ihm List und Tollheit ins Ohr wisperte? Vielleicht war
sie überdies schlau genug, selbst jenen Gewalttätigen noch einmal
zu mäßigen. Gerade dieses letzte, dieses ungewisse, gefährliche
Spiel reizte, wie sie meinte, ihre Unternehmungslust aufs äußerste.
 Ja, sie war entschlossen, und während sie hastig in ihre
Schlafkammer eilte, um sich heimlich und einsam anzukleiden, da
überfiel sie der ganze, von ihr kaum gekannte Rausch, den ein Weib
zu erregen und mitzuteilen vermag. Eine Metallscheibe zeigte ihr ihre
Gestalt, und sie genoß dabei die Wonne, ein unsichtbares Schwert
um ihre Hüften gegürtet zu tragen, das auf ihren leisesten Wunsch
blutige Gesetze schreiben würde.
In diesem Augenblick umfing sie den Fernen und lehnte ihr Haupt
an seine Wange.
Sorgsam wählte Occa ihr schönstes rotes Fältelkleid aus Leyden,
und als sie es mit geschwinder Hand angelegt, da empfand sie selbst
voll Befriedigung, wie der starre Goldschmuck des Gewandes, der
sich über ihrer Brust zu einer Art Sonne verdichtete, den
Strahlenkranz des Reichtums um sie schloß. Noch einmal spähte sie
vorsichtig aus dem offenen Fenster, allein auf dem dunkelfeuchten
Burghof war keine Seele zu erspähen, sie hörte nur, wie die
Windsbraut von der Linde Wolken dürrer Blätter abtrieb, um darauf
mit dem Kehricht tief unten auf den Steinen umherzukichern. Nun
galt's!
Hurtig warf sich Occa ihren grünen, gleichfalls über und über mit
Goldblechen besäten Mantel um, zog ihn nach der Sitte der
Friesinnen über das Haupt und huschte leichten Fußes die
Steintreppen hinab. Wie ungewohnt ihr dabei das Herz hämmerte,
wie angestrengt ihre Brust atmete, und doch erinnerte sie sich nicht,
jemals eine ähnliche Lust gekostet zu haben. Weiter, weiter, damit
ihr jenes fremdartig beglückende Sehnen nicht etwa noch zuletzt
durch irgendein Hindernis gehemmt würde. Jetzt schlich die dunkle
Gestalt bereits über den Hof, nun drückte sie gegen das Pförtlein der
Mauer. Gottlob, es war offen. Von der Anhöhe überschaute die
Broketochter noch einmal das nächtige Gefilde. Der Meerwind, der
über das Flachland pfiff, blähte ihren Mantel, die bunten Lichter der
Flotte stiegen auf und ab wie ungeheure gebändigte Leuchtkäfer.
Dies war die Sprache, in der der Störtebecker zu den Seinen redete.
Aber plötzlich zog ein eigenartig überlegenes Lächeln um den Mund
der Flüchtigen, genau so, wie durch die Signale dort unten die Nacht
erhellt wurde; wie, wenn der unbeherrschte Mensch, den sie zu
versuchen gedachte, sie nicht mehr aus seiner Gewalt entließe,
wenn er sie mit sich schleppte? – O Schmach, ihr Stolz litt es nicht,
sich solch einen Niederbruch vorzustellen, und der goldene Stirnreif,
den ihr das Abenteuer noch eben entgegengereicht, er erblindete
sacht in dem feuchten Nebel der Finsternis.
Eben wollte sie ihre Gewandung schürzen, um desto ungestörter
wieder den Fahrweg hinaufeilen zu können, da stutzte sie, und im
ersten Schrecken stürzte ihr der Mantel vom Haupt. Hilf Himmel,
dicht unter ihr knarrte etwas Ungefüges aus der Schwärze hervor,
das durchdringende Quietschen trockener Räder meldete sich, und
ehe Occa noch den Entschluß fassen konnte, wieder durch das Tor
zurückzuschlüpfen, wurde ihr Antlitz von dem Flackerschein einer
Fackel übermalt. Ein Knecht trat hinter dem Wagen hervor. Der hielt
ebenfalls inne, als er seine geschmückte Herrin gewahrte. Unter dem
Leinendach aber grunzte wie in Spuk und Traum jene viehische
Stimme, vor der ihre Jugend eben noch voll Widerwillen geschaudert
hatte. Stumm, unbeweglich mußte das schöne, fackelbeleuchtete
Bild mit ansehen, wie zwei Wäppner die gemästete Rundung des
Ferkels von dem Gestell herabhoben, watschelnd kroch das
Ungeheuer auf sie zu, dann weidete es sich lange an der Pracht und
dem Schmuck der Wegbereiten, während die schmalen
Schweinsäuglein fast hämisch dazu glitzerten. Endlich schnaufte der
Klumpen so sanft er vermochte:
»Wohin, mein Trautchen?«
»Zum Störtebecker,« brach Occa zornig aus, da sie es
verschmähte, vor ihrem Gatten Geheimnisse zu bergen.
»Recht,« nickte der Sternendeuter beifällig, als wenn nicht das
geringste an dem Betragen seines Weibes auszusetzen wäre, »dacht
ich mir doch, daß ich dich warnen müßte.«
 Dabei griff seine schwammige Rechte nach dem Arm der Schönen,
schob sich selbst dicht unter ihren Mantel und drängte die noch
immer Widerstrebende auf diese Weise mit sich in den Hof. Erst
unter dem Hauseingang löste sich der Fettwulst von seiner
Begleiterin, um schnaufend gegen den bedeckten Himmel zu weisen.
»Was schaust du dort oben an dem Bogen des Wechsels?«
stöhnte er bedeutungsvoll, und es sah beinahe grausig aus, wie die
fette Ungestalt mit der Sicherheit des Besitzers die Hand gegen das
finstere Gewölbe reckte, als wollte er dort droben einen Schrein voll
Kostbarkeiten aufschließen.
Doch Occa brachte seiner Wissenschaft nicht die von dem Ferkel
gewünschte Verehrung entgegen.
»Ich sehe nur, daß es regnen wird,« erwiderte sie spottend und
wollte sich abkehren.
Der Klumpen aber hielt sie zurück.
»Leichtfertig Kind,« grunzte er, »und ich hab' deinetwillen die
schmerzhafte Fahrt angetreten. Siehst du nicht, wie das
Siebengestirn drohend nah gen Luna rückt? Und wie von der
anderen Seite das Gewimmel der Plejaden gegen die Sichel drängt?
Das bedeutet Abnahme und Tod eines Mächtigen. Übermacht rottet
sich zusammen. Mit vierzig Koggen segeln die Hamburger schon in
Sicht der Inseln, so daß es kein Entrinnen mehr gibt. Wer in
Marienhaven morgen Wäsche spült, wird sie rotgefärbt
herausziehen.«
Da lehnte sich Occa sprachlos gegen den Torpfosten, aber
wunderlich, ihre heiße Regung verflüchtigte sich überraschend
schnell vor dem Heranziehen des Ungemachs oder des
Zusammenbruchs, so daß es fast nur noch der Schreck über ihre
eigene Verbindung mit dem Gezeichneten war, der ihr ein Zittern
einflößte.
 »Wer trug dir dies alles zu, Luitet?« fragte sie um vieles
vertraulicher.
Der Dicke streichelte sacht ihren Mantel, bevor er zögernd, aber
mit einem schlauen Blinzeln in den Schweinsäuglein erwiderte:
»Lasse mir meine Erkenntnis gern nachprüfen, Occa. Bin nicht
stolz darauf. Diesmal taten es eine Anzahl von Fischern, die Hisko in
Sold hält. Ja, der Pfaffe hat den Hansen sogar schon einen
Unterhändler entgegengeschickt.«
Als das geschmückte Weib diesen nackten Bericht über Abfall und
nahende Schande überlegte, da überkam es beinahe eine Art
Dankbarkeit für den rechtzeitigen Warner. Übermütig, wie sonst,
klopfte sie ihm die feiste Wange.
»Bist doch ein klein kluges, nachdenkliches Vieh,« lobte sie ihren
Eheherrn und versetzte ihm einen leichten Schlag, der das Ferkel
jedoch befriedigt aufbrummen ließ. »Komm, ist kalt hier. Die Mutter
soll dir warmen Wein in den Trog schütten.«
Schritt vor Schritt zog sie das schwankende Ungeheuer die
unbequemen Treppen hinauf. Aber noch während des schwierigen
Hinaufklimmens hing sich der Klumpen fest unter ihren Arm und
schnaufte recht aus Herzensgrund, fast wie ein ehrlicher Beichtiger,
der seinem Seelenkind zuredet:
»Meinst du nicht, Liebe, daß dieser Gottversucher mit Recht Pein
und Block verdient? Gibt es wohl ein boshafter Beginnen, als die
frommen Satzungen von reich und arm umzuwühlen, so daß
schließlich der Edelingsrock auf deinem schönen Leib nicht mehr gilt
als der Bettlerkittel?«
»Komm, komm,« rief Occa schaudernd, »laß uns am warmen
Feuer niedersitzen. Und dann wollen wir der Ausgeburt eines
Tollwütigen für immer vergessen.«
 Die grünen und roten Lichter zogen flußabwärts. Eine langsam
gleitende Bewegung war in die hölzernen Massen geraten, und
während die Ungetüme im Schein ihrer Laternen, schattenhaft
nachgebildet und wie flach über das Land hingeworfen, ihre
huschende Wanderung antraten, da schrillte, trillerte und pfiff es von
allen Seiten durcheinander, als wenn die großen Vögel nunmehr
auch ihre Stimmen wiedergewonnen hätten, damit sie sich
gegenseitig warnen könnten. Allein es handelte sich um keinerlei
Vorsicht, denn dies war der Gesang des Angriffs, des Stoßes und des
Ausbrechens aus dem Käfig. Zur selben Stunde, da Occas Eheherr
ihr die dunklen Sprüche des Himmels offenbarte, da standen drei
Snykenführer,[*] die schon seit Tagen draußen auf offener See
Vorpostendienste leisteten, vor ihrem Admiral, und das, was sie
meldeten, das war der Ruf des Lebens und des Todes zugleich, das
war die ernste unerbittliche Ordnung und das lustige leidenschaftlich
wühlende Chaos.
[*] Befehlshaber leichter Schaluppen.

Zwischen ihnen auf den Wellen schwankte die Wage.

Der Feind war da. Auf unbegreifliche Weise erschienen. Wie der
Dieb in der Nacht. Vierzig kriegsstarke Koggen. Das ganze hansische
Aufgebot, vor allem Hamburger, und an ihrer Spitze ein ungefüges,
plumpes, breitstirniges Schiff, das im Topp die Admiralsflagge gesetzt
hatte. Die »Bunte Kuh«.[*]
[*] Es war aus Utrecht gechartert.

Es war der Name des Fahrzeuges, der dem Störtebecker zuerst

während des Kriegsrates in der Kajüte ein hämisches, nach
Hellebarden und Schwertern klirrendes Gelächter entlockte:
»Ho, Brüder,« hieb er sich auf die Brust, »welch gutes Omen! Wir
wollen das Hamburger Tier erst melken und dann schlachten. Gönne
ich doch meinen Kindlein schon lange solche Milch. Und nun« – er
wanderte weiten Schrittes durch den hell erleuchteten Raum und
zog dabei ein paar der Lukenbretter zurück, um finstere Blicke auf
das vorüberziehende Land zu heften, »nun, Heino, sprich, mein
Freund, wie siehst du das Ding sonst an?«
Der Kleine lehnte am Tisch und stützte sich auf seinen Hieber. In
dem faltenlosen, glatten Kindergesicht stand dunkler Ernst.
»Daß die Krämer mit einer solchen Übermacht erscheinen,« sagte
er bestimmt, »beweist mir, daß der Michael geliefert ist.«
»Möchten dich doch die Furien erwürgen,« unterbrach der
Störtebecker hier dunkelrot, denn seit seiner Kindheit hatte sich der
Unbändige stets in beleidigter Auflehnung dagegen gesträubt,
ohnmächtig gegen ein schwarzes Wetter zu starren. »Der Gödeke
lebt. Meinen Kopf dafür. Ich sehe ihn, ich höre ihn sprechen. Meinst
du, der Satan würde mir sonst Dietrich und Brecheisen ins Wappen
setzen, wenn's nicht der guten Kumpanei wegen geschähe?«
Wütend schlug er gegen die Schiffswand. Unter den Führern
erhob sich ein widerstreitendes Gemurmel. Unbeirrt jedoch und kühl
streichelte sich der Magister das Kinn.
»Wie dem auch sei,« beharrte er, »ist jetzt nicht an der Zeit,
Claus, sich in den römischen Triumphmantel zu hüllen. Hab' all mein
Tag auf die Ehre gepfiffen. Ha, ha, ohne Ehre kann man leben, aber
ohne Kopf nimmer. Ich stimme dafür, wir wollen entwischen, solange
es noch Zeit ist.«
Die anderen schwiegen.
Auch der Admiral stand wortlos am Ende der Kajüte, dort, wo sie
sich sanft verjüngte. Ohne Absicht hatte er einen dicken Folianten
von der Truhe emporgerissen und nagte emsig an der Unterlippe.
Jetzt aber warf er den Wälzer polternd zur Erde und richtete sich jäh
zur Höhe.
»Habt ihr euch,« rief er mit seiner durchdringenden Stimme, die
jedem einzelnen einen Messerstoß in die Brust versetzte, »während
ich euch Wohnsitz und Unschuld geben wollte, nach Blut und Beute
gesehnt?«
»Ja,« sprachen die Männer gemeinsam.
»Und ist's nicht euer einziger Freibrief, daß ihr mit Beelzebub
Karten zu spielen wagt, ganz gleich, ob der Gehörnte die Bilder in
der Klaue hält und ihr die Nieten?«
»Ja,« schrien die Freibeuter überzeugt. Fuhren aber gleich darauf
wild durcheinander. »Haben selbst einen Trumpf im Spiel, heißt Claus
Störtebecker.«
Da glitt ein stolz zerrissener Schein über das dunkle Antlitz des
Riesen, den man früher nicht an ihm gekannt.
»Habt mir nur die Helmzier abgebrochen, ihr wetterwendisch
unbelehrbar Volk,« grollte er mehr zu sich selbst, »aber gleichviel« –
er trennte die Seekarte von der Wand und schleuderte sie auf den
Tisch – »will das Kunststück ausführen, um des Kunststücks selbst
willen. Wohlan, Heino, gib dich, wir schlagen morgen. Und jetzt habt
mir acht auf ein gar sauber Stücklein von einem Plan.«

Es war tief in der Nacht, als der Admiral in seine Kajüte

zurückkehrte. Bis dahin hatte er bei Laternenschein jeden Winkel
seines Schiffes gemustert, er hatte die Rüstkammer besucht, die
Winde der drehbaren Geschütze geprüft, Leinen und Segel zur Probe
gezogen und überall die verwegenen Gesellen, die ihm an ihren
Rollen ihre Künste weisen mußten, durch ein wildes zündendes
Scherzwort in jene bis zum Reißen straffe Spannung versetzt, die auf
der »Agile« bisher immer die letzte, unwiderstehlichste Waffe
gebildet. Jetzt hatten die Schiffe, schon außerhalb der Inseln, Anker
geworfen, Ruhe war vor dem roten Erntetag befohlen, und der
Störtebecker selbst betrat müde und in sich gekehrt seine
Wohnstätte. Er hatte noch nicht sein Haupt entblößt, als der
Heimgekehrte mitten auf einem der dicken Teppiche des Fußbodens
seinen Knaben hingelagert fand, den wohl beim Warten auf seinen
Herrn der Schlaf übermannt haben mochte. Gedankenvoll blieb der
Störtebecker vor dem friedlichen Bilde stehen, denn die scharfen
Lichter aus den venezianischen Gläsern enthüllten ihm deutlicher als
je zuvor, wie hager und abgezehrt die Wangen seines folgsamsten
Gesellen eingesunken waren, ja, wie tief die ganze schwärmerische
Bildung seiner Züge in Leid eingebettet ruhte. Wahrlich, der Sturz,
den diese ihm hingegebene Seele aus einem versprochenen Himmel
getan haben mußte, er hatte der Ärmsten gewiß für immer jene
Inbrunst geraubt, in der sie wie eine steile Flamme aufstieg und
ohne die ihr Dasein zu Asche sank. Die Menschheit hieß der große
Tempel, in dem der Gläubigen ein Hüterinnenamt zugesichert war.
Wohin würde sie sich nun flüchten, nachdem offenbar geworden,
daß die Fratze des Wahnwitzes vor der Tür des angeblichen
Heiligtumes grinste? Leise berührte der Hinabschauende die Weiche
des Schläfers mit dem Fuß, um sich von der ungestörten Fortdauer
des Schlummers zu überzeugen, dann aber verdüsterte sich seine
Miene, und er sprach dumpf vor sich hin:
»Zerbrochener Scherben! Deinetwegen könnte ich Reue lernen.
Kein morgenrotes Eiland mehr in der Ferne, mein Büblein, nur die
Fahrt in den Pfuhl, darüber das Fieber tanzt. Dir wäre besser, du
blasser Traum, du gingest gänzlich in Schlaf über.«
Vorsichtig beugte er sich, nahm den schlaff herabhängenden
Körper in seine Arme und las eine Weile angestrengt in den gelösten
Zügen, die ohne das Licht der Augen nur den Ausdruck versenkter
Ruhe wiesen. Aber gerade diese unbeteiligte Ferne schien den
Späher zu trösten. Leise ließ er seine Last wieder auf die Kissen
sinken, blickte noch einmal mit vollem Verlangen auf die Pracht des
kostbaren Raumes, dann löschte er selbst das Licht, und bald
verkündeten kräftige Atemzüge von seiner Lagerstatt, daß auch
dieses unruhige Hirn der Betäubung unterlegen sei. Drückendes
Schweigen webte in dem weiten Gemach, und nur das regelmäßige
Gewoge der See zählte in der Finsternis seinen eigenen Herzschlag.
 Und doch – es gab hier noch ein ander Hammerwerk, das in einer
menschlichen Brust aufgestört fieberhaft seine enge Kammer zu
sprengen drohte.
Linda schlief nicht.
In den Armen ihres Gebieters war sie aus ihrer schweren
Verstrickung erwacht, sie hatte seine dunkle Prophezeiung
vernommen, und nun lag sie angehaltenen Atems und suchte
kältegeschüttelt zu ergründen, ob sie wirklich das mit sich selbst
bekannte und einige Wesen sei, in dessen Brust vom Schicksal Urteil
und Vollstreckung zugleich gelegt wären.
Draußen schlugen die Wellen unabänderlich an die Planken: »Du
mußt – du mußt,« und während der Hingestreckten vor dieser
Bedrängnis die Zähne gegeneinander bebten, da warf ihr
schäumendes Hirn allerlei Fetzen jener Verhaltungsmaßregeln
durcheinander, die ihr von dem scheusäligsten aller Verbrecher, dem
dicken Wichbold, überkommen.
»Sieh, du mußt erst das tun – mein schlaues Büblein, und dann
mußt du jenes – – aber vorsichtig, damit er dir nicht deine Sprünge
ablauert.«
Er – er, das war der Mann, der ohnehin schon den Glanz, den
Strahl, das Gold seines Ichs eingebüßt und nur noch dahinraste, um
hinter wilden Lastern seine Niederlage zu verstecken. Kein Messias
mehr, sondern ein frecher, sich selbst verspottender Judas! Keine
Labe in den Händen für die Schmachtenden und Niedergebrochenen,
nein, nein, vielmehr ein Gurgelschneider, der in Selbstverzweiflung
seinen Opfern wohlzutun glaubte, weil er sie abschlachtete.
Der Morgenstern in einen Kothaufen verloren.
Nimmer!
Linda erhob sich. In ihrer Blässe stand wieder jene unerbittliche
Treue zu ihrem Entschluß, die in dem langen Zusammenwirken mit
dem Gewaltmenschen ihr Erbteil geworden. Jetzt lauschte sie nicht
mehr, keine spitzfindigen Fragen legte sie sich weiter vor, getrieben
von einer finsteren Notwendigkeit, furchtlos und überzeugt schlich
sie unhörbar die Treppe der Kajüte hinauf.
Wie hatte es doch der dicke Wichbold gemeint?
Immer seine listig heisere Einflüsterung im Ohr, strich der
Schatten über Deck, dann wand er sich wieder zwei enge steile
Treppen hinab, bis dahin, wo tief im Bauch des Fahrzeuges der rote
Schein der Schiffsschmiede glimmte. Vorsichtig öffnete Licinius die
rußige Höhle, allein die halbnackte Zyklopenschar, die noch vor
wenigen Stunden hier an ihren Amboßen Pfeil- und Lanzenspitzen
geglüht und gehärtet hatte, sie lag jetzt irgendwo in der Schwärze
verborgen, und mit der rasselnden Wucht arbeitender Blasebälge
entströmte ihr Atem. Halblaut, prüfend rief sie der Schatten an:
»He, Detlev – Olav – Henneke!«
Als sich jedoch nirgendwo ein Zeichen des Verständnisses
kundgab, da wandte sich der Knabe gegen den verlassenen Herd
und schob einen der Schmelztiegel in die noch lebende Glut. Dann
bückte er sich und blies seinen eigenen ängstlichen Odem in die
müde Asche.
Und wieder und wieder versuchte der nächtliche Gast während
seines Tuns die hingestreckten Schmiede: »He, Detlev – Olav –
Henneke.«
Umsonst. Keiner von ihnen bemerkte das zitternde Menschenkind,
wie es rötlich angestrahlt und doch mit geschlossenen Augen die
Nägel zu dem gemeinsamen Sarge goß.
Kurz darauf wurde über die Hintergalerie der »Agile« eine
Strickleiter geworfen, derselbe geschmeidige Schatten glitt hinüber
und an dem ungeheuren Steuer tauchte er hinab von Rippe zu
Rippe. Immer tiefer.
Dazu pfiff der Wind sein einförmig Lied, und die Wache im
Mastkorb sang sich zum Zeitvertreib eine Weise von Heimkehr und
Magdtreu.

Es war bestimmt, daß man durch eine vorgetäuschte Flucht gen

West die Übermacht der Hansen erst auseinander zerren solle, um
dann nach einiger Zeit gewendet, die ungefügeren Koggen der
Krämer einzeln überfallen und niedersegeln zu können.
Auf dem Fischmarkt zu Hamburg erzählte man sich später vielerlei
über den glückhaften Hergang.
Ein regenfeuchter Oktobermorgen war angebrochen. Die
Schwarzflaggen unter Führung von Wichmanns »Goldener Biene«
waren längst nach West ausgeschwärmt, nur die »Agile« lag noch
verhaftet an ihren Ketten, ein riesiger Adler, der den Abzug seiner
Küchlein decken wollte. Oder reizte es den Störtebecker nur,
Schußsicherheit für eine Ladung seiner Steinkugeln zu gewinnen? In
Lederwams und Kappe stand er breitbeinig auf dem Bugaufbau,
nicht mehr jenes goldene Leuchten im Antlitz, dafür aber von einem
verbissenen, fürchterlichen Grimm durchwettert, der sich allen
mitteilte, die auf diesen Mittelpunkt ihres Schicksals hinstarrten.
Jetzt kam der erste Befehl.
»Schießt,« forderte er nach einem scharfen Ausspähen, von den
ihn umdrängenden Bombardieren. Er sprach ganz ruhig. Die Lunten
senkten sich, ein Rollen, und dort drüben in der langen hölzernen
Zeile begann es Takelwerk und Leinen zu regnen.
»Gut, meine Kindlein,« lobte der Admiral, und das unheimlich
niedergehaltene Feuer in seinen Augen stäubte etwas höher. »Es
war nur, um ihnen den Morgenbrei zu wärmen.« Er riß sich die
Kappe vom Haupt und schwenkte sie höhnisch nach der Gegenseite.
»Grüß Gott, ihr Herren. Die Diebe mit dem Brecheisen grüßen die
Spitzbuben vom Gänsekiel! Gibt's was zu schachern? Haben nur
unsere Freiheit, und die ist ein teuer Ding!«
 Damit setzte er die Sprachdrommete an die Lippen: »Anker auf.«
Die Ketten rasselten, die Brust des Schiffes hob und senkte sich,
wie ein Schwimmer, der sich die erste Glut kühlen will.
»Schüttet Segel aus. Ruhe – kalt Blut, meine Kinder. Bevor die
Krämer drüben ihr Leinen mit der Elle gemessen, sind wir davon.
Nun die Pinne hart an Steuerbord; lebe wohl, Hamburg!«
Allein die »Agile« vollführte die gewünschte Schwenkung nicht.
Wie von unsichtbaren Geisterfäusten gepeitscht, sauste der Renner
dem Halbkreis seiner Häscher entgegen.
»Plagt dich der Böse, Wulf Wulflam?« brüllte der Störtebecker von
seinem erhöhten Stand halbtoll über Deck und schob sich vor
ratlosem Erstaunen die Kappe aus der Stirn. »Hundsfott, dreh
augenblicks gegen den Wind ab, sonst lade ich deinen Kopf in die
nächste Lederschlange. Hölle und Graus, was geschieht hier?«
Inzwischen war der Freibeuter Lüdeke Roloff neben den
stiernackigen Wulf und seine Gesellen gesprungen, beide Männer
schoben sich gegen den Baum, daß ihnen das Blut aus den Wangen
spritzte. Doch unverändert tobte die »Agile« ihre böse Fahrt weiter.
Vom Land aus einen steifen Südwest in den Segeln, so schnitt das
Schiff durch die spitzen Wellen, als müsse es in wenigen Sprüngen
sein Ziel erreichen.
»Herr,« keuchte es jetzt zweistimmig vom Heck, »geliefert sind wir
– es ist Blei in die Angeln gegossen.«[*]
[*] Die Sage vermochte sich den Hergang nicht anders zu
erklären. Übrigens war die geschilderte Kriegslist zu jener Zeit
eine durchaus übliche. Auch der gefeierte Seeheld Paul Beneke
von Danzig benutzte sie etwa um das Jahr 1473.

Einen Atemzug lang blieb alles still, das Entsetzen wohnte an

Bord. Dann aber wirbelte eine riesige Gestalt vor aller Augen die
zwei Stockwerk aus der Luft herab, schoß durch die heulende,
kreischende Mannschaft hindurch und warf sich gleich darauf mit
ihrer ungeheuren, durch Verzweiflung und Grimm verzehnfachten
Körperwucht gegen die Pinne. Das Holz ächzte und krachte, das
Steuer bewegte sich nicht.
Jetzt lösten sich die Bande des Gehorsams. Die Schwarzbrüder
verließen ihre Posten, die meisten warfen ihre Waffen fort, sie irrten
durcheinander gleich den Ameisen, und der Wahnwitz fächelte sie
mit seinen Mohnflügeln. Das Unsinnige gewann die Oberhand.
»Reißt die Segel herab.«
Als ob das verlangsamte Fahrzeug weniger verloren gewesen
wäre!
»Flieht – flieht – in die Boote!«
Als ob angesichts des Gegners und bei der rasenden Fahrt die
aufgepeitschte Menge in den winzigen Kähnen Platz gefunden!
Immer hurtiger hetzte der Springer über die Wogenhügel. Aber
gerade in dem Augenblick, da er das ihn bändigende Halfter völlig
zerknirschen wollte, da fühlte sich das Roß noch einmal von jener
stählernen Faust gepackt, die es bisher noch immer bezwungen und
beruhigt. Hoch auf dem Heckaufbau zeichnete sich in seinem
verwitterten Lederkoller der Schwarzflaggenfürst gegen den
wolkigen Dunst ab. Um kein Haar anders stand er da als sonst, da er
die letzten Befehle zum siegreichen Angriff zu geben gewohnt war.
Nur der bösartige Grimm war aus seinen Zügen entwichen, ja, er
lächelte jetzt sogar, ein helles, gereinigtes Lächeln, wie es nur die
von sich selbst befreiten Sterblichen kennen.
Die Gefahr, die drängende Sorge um andere hatte unvermerkt das
Beste in diesem Menschen geweckt.
»Hört ihr mich, meine Kinder?«
»Ja, Claus,« schrien sie hoffnungsvoll. Sie sammelten sich um
diesen Klang wie um einen schützenden Turm.
 »Das Spiel fängt erst an, ihr Schuimer. Schüttet Segel aus, bindet
Leinen auf, der letzte Fetzen muß fliegen.«
»Segel?« Sie glaubten, er rede im Fieber.
»Ich sage, knüpft eure Hemden an die Rahen, ihr Burschen, und
fegt durch die Luft. Unter dem Bug gibt's gleich ein
Schädelknirschen. Schießt – schießt!«
Was weiter geschah, das sauste von der Spule, ruckartig,
unpersönlich, gedankenlos, denn all die von Tod und Untergang
angegrinsten Menschen, sie hatten ihre eigene Überlegung, ihre
Glieder, ihr Handeln und Aufhören diesem einen überliefert, und der
riß nun an ihren Fäden und lenkte seine Figuren, willkürlich,
gnadenlos, nur zu dem einen Zweck des Lebens.
Alle eigneten sie ihm, bis auf die schwächste und hilfsbedürftigste.
Die lehnte an der Bordschwelle, hatte ihre Hände krampfig über der
Brust ineinander geschoben, aber ihr ungesprochenes Gebet war
zum erstenmal nicht mit dem Herrn ihres irdischen Loses, sondern
sie rief und flehte zu dem Schicksal, auf daß es größer und auch
barmherziger walten sollte als jener lebend Tote, der jetzt dort oben
den letzten gespenstischen Kampf focht. Sie bereute nichts, sie
widerrief nichts, sie fühlte, daß Mitleid und Gnade einzig bei ihr
wären, die mit ihrer schwachen Hand das Tor des Gemeinen und
Verworfenen vor dem sterbenden Messias abschloß.
Vor ihren umflorten Augen wandelte sich das flutüberströmte
Schiff in eine langhingestreckte, menschenwimmelnde Kirche.
Schwärzlicher Himmel wölkte sich über dem Dom als tiefe
unergründliche Decke, und die Musik des Meeres pfiff und stürmte in
fernen Orgelweisen einen silbernen Engelsgruß.
Sie sah nur den einen, dessen bleiches, lockenumflattertes Antlitz
schon jetzt hoch droben dem Irdischen entrückt war.
Ein Krach! Ein herzumwühlender Stoß. Die Hamburger hatten dem
unter stärkstem Druck daherfliegenden Admiralsschiff einen alten
unbrauchbaren Kasten mit der Breitseite entgegengeworfen – die
»Agile« schnitt ihn mit ihrem Rammsporn auseinander, wie dünnes
Glas.
»Triumph,« schrien die berauschten, vom Wunder bereits in eine
andere Welt geschleuderten Gleichebeuter, und jeder packte seinen
Spieß oder die Armbrust nerviger. Ein wildes, tumultuarisches Gebrüll
stieg zum Himmel.
Da schwang schon wieder der schrille, gellende Pfeifentriller des
Admirals, die Schwarzflaggentrommel wurde gerührt – der alte
fortreißende Wirbel zuckte durch die Herzen.
»Entert,« schrie der Störtebecker von seiner Höhe.
Er befahl es mehr mit seinen blutig leuchtenden Augen, mit dem
hoch erhobenen Hieber, mit der weit ausgestreckten Linken.
»Aller Welt Feind,« antworteten die Vitalianer mit ihrem
fanatischen Schlachtruf.
Die Brücken rasselten, ein splitterndes Reiben und Knirschen
meldete, daß sich jetzt zwei der ungeheuren Rümpfe eng
nebeneinander geschoben hatten. Die »Agile« biß in die Wange der
»Bunten Kuh«.
Und mitten in diesem Knäuel von Lanzenspitzen, zischenden
Bolzen, Pulverdampf, herunterbrechenden Spieren und dem
Gekreisch Getroffener lehnte Linda noch immer wie unbeteiligt
neben dem hohen Bord. An ihr vorüber heulten Steinkugeln und
rissen das Deck auf, so daß der entsetzte Blick in das Eingeweide
des Holzleibes irren konnte, dicht neben ihr bauschten sich die
unheimlichen, riesenhaften Malereien, mit denen die Hamburger ihre
Segel geschmückt hatten. Ein titanischer Schwan blähte sein
Gefieder und starrte die Einsame mit roten Augen gefräßig an.
Dahinter flatterte ein steiler Turm und schleuderte ihr seine Ziegel
gegen das Haupt. Doch all das Grauen zog wesenlos über sie fort,
weil sie in den Greuelgestalten nur ihre Helfer erkannte, die sie
herbeigerufen hatte, um den verirrten Heiland in sein Grab zu
betten.
Ein Goldgefunkel blendete ihr die Augen, und sie wußte, daß dort
auf der Enterbrücke die Klinge des Gewaltigen ihre sausenden Kreise
zog, sie hörte eine menschliche Fanfare in dem dicken Haufen jedes
Ohr wecken:
»Meine Schuimer, meine Kinder, drauf, drauf, schlagt, spießt,
stecht, – melkt die Gold-Kuh!«
Und sie lächelte nur matt über jenen habsüchtigen Aberwitz.
Aber dann kam der Augenblick, wo auch ihr Geist aufgerissen
wurde. Ihr Gebet war erhört.
Dumpfe Stöße erschütterten kurz nacheinander die »Agile«. Von
zwei Seiten war das überflügelte Schwarzschiff in die Mitte
genommen. Fremde Scharen quollen über Deck. Blutende Männer
sprangen zu Hunderten in die See. Und von der Enterbrücke, wo
eben noch der Goldkreis gesummt und gesungen hatte, stürzte ein
höllisch kreischender Haufe zurück. An seiner Spitze ein
Wahnwitziger, der noch immer retten wollte.
»Licinius,« schrie er aus tiefster Brust. »Licinius.« In seiner
Notstunde erinnerte sich der Riese an sein eigenstes Besitztum. Da
leuchtete der Knabe beseeligt auf.
Ja, der Himmel öffnete sich, ein goldener Lichtweg strahlte gegen
das Sterbliche, und eine Heiligenschar trug einen Sarg hinunter.
Das gotterfüllte Ende war da.
Als sich der wirre Knäuel gelöst hatte, sah man einen
blutüberströmten Mann mit dem linken Arm an den Hauptmast
gebunden, die Rechte aber führte immer noch das Schwert, fegte
und bahnte um sich her, und dazu schrie eine in Jammer erstickte
Stimme:
 »Wer – wer hat mir das getan?«
Sein rollendes, in Irrsinn und Auflehnung brechendes Auge erfaßte
den Getreuesten, heftete sich an ihn und wollte ihn nimmer lassen.
Da sank der schöne bleiche Knabe mitleidig vor dem Gerichteten
in die Knie.
»Claus Störtebecker,« sprach er verklärt, »diese Hände haben dein
Steuer angehalten, mit weißen Segeln wirst du in die Ewigkeit
fahren.«
Heftig wurde er emporgerissen, und mit hocherhobenen Armen
warf sich der Blonde in den Busch zögernder, halbgesenkter Lanzen.
Der am Mast ließ sein Schwert fallen. Ohne Verständnis kehrte er
seine Augen gen Himmel, ohne Begreifen spiegelte er die
verstummte, blutige Menschenschar. Tief stöhnte er, und sein Haupt
sank ihm auf die Brust.
Um ein weniges glich er jenem Anderen, der gleichfalls an ein Holz
geheftet, gesprochen hatte:
»Herr, Herr, warum hast du mich verlassen?«

Am Abend des 19. Oktober 1402 nach Feliciani sprang ein Gaukler
durch die winddurchpusteten, regenfeuchten Gassen von Hamburg,
und der buntscheckige Narr schlug Purzelbäume zum Ergötzen des
Haufens, ließ seinen Dudelsack ausströmen und quäkte dazu:
»Hei – hei!
Morgen verschwemmt die gefährlichste Klippe der
Nordsee,
Daran gestrandet manch stolzes Schiff,
hei – hei!«[*]
 [*] Nach einem alten niederdeutschen Bänkelsängerlied aus
Wächters historischem Nachlaß.

Blieb dann stehen und deutete mit seiner Klapper auf die
ungefüge Haube des Katharinenturmes, von wo die ganze Nacht
Lobweisen geblasen wurden.
»Horcht,« krähte er, und er schüttelte vor Kälte und fröhlichem
Grusel seine abgezehrten Glieder, »pfeifen dem Störtebecker das
Schlummerlied. He, Dörthe, möchst jetzt bei ihm liegen?«
Allein der Gefangene, zu dessen letztem Gang die Stadt sich so
festlich rüstete, er bedurfte weder Gesellschaft noch Aufheiterung.
Denn ruhte er zwar auf Stroh in einem lichtlosen Kellerloch unter der
Kanzlei, so hockte doch sein Lehrer Wichmann bei ihm auf einem
Schemel, und beide zechten bald aus der riesigen Weinkanne, die
ihnen der Rat gespendet, bald grölten sie Zoten und Schelmenlieder,
daß sich die Wache vor dem Gitterfenster ehrlich entsetzte.
Ein alter graudurchfurchter Stadtknecht schob deshalb seinen Kopf
gegen die engen Eisenstangen, damit er die beiden Gerichteten zu
ehrsamerem Wandel anhielte.
»Bedenkt, ihr Bösewichter,« riet er wohlmeinend, »wem ihr bald
Auskunft erteilen müßt. Sollen eure Schandmäuler dort droben
etwan noch vor Unflat überfließen?«
Da nahte sich dem Gitter die riesige Gestalt des Störtebecker, und
im Licht einer Laterne erschien das hochmütige, wenn auch jetzt
totblasse und verwüstete Antlitz. Unwillkürlich fröstelte es den
Stadtsoldaten vor diesem noch immer schrecklichen Bild gestürzter
Größe.
»Du irrst, grauer Rostfleck,« antwortete der Seefahrer heiser.
»Weißt du nicht, daß wir an der Tafel des Schwarzen obenan sitzen
werden? Dort unten ist ewige Freude, Trunk, Hurerei, Fraß,
Diebesglück und erzielte Übervorteilung. Alles, was hier nur halb
gelingt. Wer die Welt verständig umzukehren weiß, der gewinnt's!
Geh, küß deinem Pfaffen den Hintern, vielleicht findest du's.«
»Gott erbarm' es sich,« stöhnte der Alte.
Darauf juchheiten die beiden und pokulierten weiter.
Allein je schläfriger es auf dem Gange wurde, je eiliger die Nacht
vorrückte, desto mehr verstummte auch der grelle Singsang der
Schuimer, und allmählich erkannte der schildernde Hellebardier nur
noch aus dem Rascheln des Strohs, daß dort drinnen ein
Schlafgemiedener seinen Weg suche.
Schon spät war's, als der Störtebecker, nur kümmerlich von dem
hereinzitternden Strahl getroffen, vor dem blonden Zwerglein Halt
machte. Das pfiff leise vor sich hin und schierte sich um nichts.
»Heino,« schickte der Admiral stockend in die Dunkelheit hinab
und holte etwas Versenktes aus sich hervor. »Mein Freund, mein
Bruder, sprich, wie denkst du dir unsere nächste Reise? Nicht als ob
es mir leid wäre, aber es plagt mich, ob man Ufer spürt oder nur
Fahrt – Fahrt? Ob man nur Schiff ist, oder auch Steuerer?«
Aus der Finsternis kicherte es belustigt heraus, dann schlugen ein
paar sanfte Finger leicht gegen die Hand des Freundes.
»Bleibst doch der tolle Bacchantenschütz, der du warst, du stolzer
Herkules! Meinst, du müßtest überall dabei sein. Schade, daß ich dir
morgen mittag nicht weisen kann, wie wir einen Strich passieren, wo
Bewegung und Stillstand dasselbe sind, wo du verhundertfacht auf
weißen Lichtschimmeln in die Windrose schießest, während doch
dein eigentlich Selbst nach deinem Seneka ganz friedlich dort
schlummert, wo alle ruhen, die noch ihrer Geburt harren.«
Der Störtebecker regte sich nicht.
»Nichts?« forschte er nach einer Weile rauh.
 »Nun freilich,« gab die feine Knabenstimme bissig zurück: »Willst
du ewig Umgetriebener etwa die große Wohltat verketzern? Den
Hamburger Pfefferkrämern könnt' es womöglich leid um uns werden.
Nur eines!« Und der Kleine scharrte mit seinem Hüker und schien
näher zu rücken. »Man muß freilich schon hierorts mit dem Nichts
seinen Pakt geschlossen haben. Nicht glauben, daß von uns etwas
zurückbleibt, Unerfülltes, Lebenswertes oder gar was von Segen.
Törichter Nimmersatt, hier oben redet das Nichts, dort drüben
schweigt's. Sonst kein Unterschied.«
Eine Weile verstummte alles, der Störtebecker schob nur an
seinem Wams hin und her, als ob es ihm zu eng würde. Dann aber
drückte er dem Kleinen die Hand auf die Schulter und lachte grell
auf:
»So können wir denn ohne Sorgen abfahren, Geliebter. Nehmen
nichts mit und lassen keine Erben zurück. Wahrlich, ist kein geringer
Trost.«
Damit ließ er von dem Kleinen ab, der ruhig weiter zechte und
streckte sich der Länge nach auf seinem Strohlager aus.
Um ihn herum drückte die Dunkelheit wie ein Sargdeckel, und der
Riese warf ein paarmal die Faust vor, als könnte er den Verschluß
lüften. Merkwürdig, wie rasch sein Herz ging und wie angestrengt er
auf das winzigste Geräusch achtete, das jetzt noch zu ihm drang.
Gierig hörte er eine Ratte an der Mauer entlang wischen, und bald
zählte er die Schritte der Wache draußen auf dem Gang. Unvermerkt
labte sich dieser Gestalter an dem Getön der Erde. Auch konnte er
sich nimmermehr von dem müden Lichtschimmer trennen, der fahl
und schmutzig um das Eisengitter sickerte. Er wartete, er wartete
ungeduldig, als ob die Welt ihm noch eine Antwort schuldig sei.
Und siehe da, die Antwort kam ihm.
Geraume Frist mochte er so gelegen haben, er wußte genau, daß
seine Seele nicht vom Schlaf umwölkt sei, da er den heißen Blick
seiner Augen spürte, die angespannt die schwarzen Striche des
Gitters einsaugten. Eben noch war der Schatten des Stadtsoldaten
über sie hinweggeglitten – da – der Riese runzelte die Stirn und hielt
den Atem an. Da drängte sich ein hustendes grünbleiches Haupt
gegen die Stangen, und ein rotgrauer Wirrbart quoll hindurch.
»Was willst du?« murmelte der Wache, ohne sich seiner Lähmung
entreißen zu können. »Geh, du Hauch, mich schreckst du nicht.«
Jedoch das Haupt des alten Claus Beckera wich nicht, es fing
vielmehr an, gehüstelte Worte zu speien, ganz so, wie er es im
Leben gepflegt.
»Armes Kind,« brummte er in seinem hohlen Baß, »war dein
Unglück, daß du zu uns gehörtest, ohne unser zu sein. Seidene
Kleider, Ringe, Ketten in der Fischerhütte, Rache am Glanz, Gier nach
dem Glanz – wehe!«
Das Gesicht nickte und verging. Aber vor dem Gitter war es
lebendig geworden, lautlose Scharen wehten vorüber, bis sich
abermals zwei Hände in die Stangen einhakten. Funkensprühend
flimmerten die Haare der Becke hindurch.
»Liegst du endlich auf dem Mist, mein Schöner? Bin auch dort
verfault. Hat kein Hund mit mir Mitleid gespürt, sondern haben in
mir gewühlt und geschunden, damit meine Armut das einzige
hergeben sollte, was ich besaß. Ist so im Leben. Gelt? Lust und
Vergnügen kümmern sich nicht um das Erbarmen! – Wehe!«
Draußen erlosch das Geflimmer, als wäre es von dem
Laternenschein eingeschluckt, und der Zug der Schatten stob weiter.
»He, du Menschensohn,« kreischte plötzlich eine hitzige Stimme,
und in der Höhlung dämmerten die blutlosen Züge des Iren Patrick
O'Shallo. Ein Strick schlotterte ihm um den Hals, und die Zunge fiel
ihm oft aus den Zähnen. »Ist dir nicht der Henker prophezeit? Wer
hat sich wie du an der menschlichen Schwäche versündigt? Meinst
du, das Elend ließe sich in eine Form pressen von einem
Ehrgeizigen? Du Vergewaltiger schlimmster, du Säufer von unserem
Schweiß, der Narren oberster fährst du von hinnen. Zu spät. –
Wehe!«
Der Störtebecker gedachte sich in seinem Sarge zu rühren, um
sich gewaltsam zu erheben, allein er vermochte keinen Finger zu
krümmen. Starren Blickes mußte er erkennen, wie sich gewichtig ein
ander Haupt vor die Öffnung rückte. Düsterblond rahmte ein
Ringelbart die braunen Wangen ein, und die großen Augen schauten
ernst und trauervoll.
»Verlorener Bruder,« hob die markige Stimme des Gödeke Michael
an, »was hast du für den Treubruch erkauft? Wem hieltest du dafür
dein Wort? Hast die gültigen Gesetze der Menschenbrust verrücken
wollen. Aus böse gut machen, aus Neid Hingabe. Und errietst nicht,
wie auch die Laster Sinn und Zweck kennen. Verirrter im Nebel, wer
bist du, da doch nur ein Stärkerer dies alles sondern kann.«
»Wer?« suchte der Liegende zu erfassen.
»Die Zeit – wehe!«
Das Phantom löste sich in Kälte auf.
»Muß ich auch dies noch erdulden?« rief der Eingekerkerte
schmerzlich hinter ihm her. »Hat mir all mein Glanz nicht eine einzige
Seele erkauft?«
Fahler Morgenschein kroch schon durch das Gitter, aber aus der
Blässe formte sich noch einmal ein fast durchsichtig Bild. Dem liefen
Tränen über die Wangen.
»Mich,« klang es sanft, »deinen Knaben. Dafür, Claus
Störtebecker, hast du mich befleckt und besudelt. Wehe – jetzt weiß
ich, daß nur ein Reiner das Unerfüllbare denken darf. – Wehe!«
Da hatte der Ausgeraubte, um sein Letztes Betrogene endlich den
Bann von sich gerissen, schäumend sprang er auf, stürzte wie ein
Toller auf seinen Genossen zu und entwand ihm die Weinkanne,
deren Rest er auf einen Zug in sich hinabschwemmte. Was
kümmerte es ihn, ob in diesem Augenblick die Stadtknechte
hereindrangen, um den Verurteilten ihre seidenen Prunkgewänder zu
bringen, da ihnen der Rat für ihren letzten Gang jene geile Pracht
überlassen? Ohne den Schergen auch nur einen Blick zu gönnen, fiel
der Losgebundene über den verwunderten Magister her, und
nachdem er den Kleinen hoch emporgerafft, herzte er ihm in voller
Raserei Mund und Stirne.
»O, du Weiser,« schrie er gellend und preßte den Kopf des
Zwerges unlöslich an sich, »wie unsagbar Köstliches hast du
verheißen!? Komm, tummle dich, damit wir es um alles nicht
versäumen. Diese Wölfe, mit denen wir bisher getrottet, könnten
uns am Ende beneiden.« Er packte einen der Knechte an der Gurgel.
»Höre, du Wicht, wenn du ein ehrlicher Mann bist, so gehe hinaus
und verkünde, das Dunkel meine es besser mit den Sehenden als
das Licht, die Verwesung küsse uns heißer als das Leben im
Brautbett, und dein Kot dufte lieblicher als alle Rosenbeete von
Schiras.«
Sie entsetzten sich vor ihm. Doch meinten sie, die Todesfurcht
habe dem Sünder wohltätig Sinn und Verstand gelockert. Selbst der
Magister begriff nicht bis zum Grund, wie erst jetzt an den
fürstlichen Abenteurer, während man ihn in die alte, prunkhafte
Tracht hüllte, jener unerbittlichste Peiniger heranschlich, nachdem er
ihn ein ganz Leben gemieden – der Ekel vor sich selbst.
Aus dem niedrigen Rathauspförtlein taumelte der früher so
Glanzvolle hinaus, ein landflüchtiger Fürst, der seinen letzten Heller
verpraßt hatte, jetzt aber voll Bettlerstolz nur noch den
nichtsnutzigsten Schein zu wahren bestrebt war, obwohl er im
Herzen die Schmähungen seiner Verfolger billigte.
Da standen sie alle, Männer und Frauen, ja, die Kindlein hoben sie
auf die Schultern, damit sie von dem gewaltigen Seefahrer, dem
grausamen Bedränger ihrer Stadt einen winzigen Schein seines
Gewandes erhaschen sollten, sich und ihren Nachfahren zur
unvergeßlichen Weide. Ein Aufzug war's, der mehr einem Fest glich.
Voran zogen Trommler und Pfeifer, dann folgte Meister Rosenfeld,
der Henker, der grüßte grinsend nach allen Seiten, als feiere er
heute seinen frohen Ehrentag. Durch Hellebardiere eingerahmt,
wurden hinter ihm Hauptmann Wichmann und seine Schuimer
einhergeführt. Ungefesselt schritten die Männer in stattlichen
Wämsern und sangen noch immer voll derber Lebenslust und
trotziger Auflehnung das Störtebeckerlied. Und seltsam, Knaben und
Mägdlein fielen in die Weise ein, denn das unbestimmte Gefühl der
Jugend lehrte sie, in jenen Söhnen des Abenteuers den Wechsel des
Schicksals zu ehren. Als aber zwischen zwei Ratsherren – weit
geschieden von den anderen – der Mann in dem blauen Wappenrock
erschien, da brach der Jubel ab, und ein banges Verstummen der
Bewunderung begleitete den hochragenden Wanderer. Noch jetzt
ließ seine blasse, verwüstete Schönheit den Jungfrauen das Herz
pochen. Nur ein paar Händler, Bierbrauer und Lederkrämer, denen er
Verlust zugefügt, sie versuchten es, den noch immer hochmütig
Blickenden zu höhnen.
»Sag an, du Prophet Elias,« klang es aus ihren Reihen, »fährst du
jetzt im güldenen Wagen in dein tausendjährig Reich?«
Der Störtebecker verbeugte sich und zeigte den Spöttern eine
unflätige Gebärde.
»Ihr würdet mitfahren können, ihr Ewig-Blinden, wenn sich euer
Gelichter in dem Gefährte nicht schon seit Jahrtausenden den Steiß
verbrannt hätte.«
So schritt er in Frechheit und kaum verhüllter Auflösung durch die
zurückweichende Menge, und überall, wohin sein brennend
ausgehöhlter Blick traf, dort segnete man sich und schlug heimlich
ein Kreuz.
Wahrlich, ein Gezeichneter zog seines Weges.
Mit weiten Schritten war er bis an eine Straßenkreuzung gelangt,
als er unvermutet stockte, so daß der ganze Zug gezwungen war,
Halt zu machen.
 Betroffen hob der Geschmückte die Rechte. Was stand dort dicht
neben dem unscheinbaren Männlein in grauer Mönchsgewandung für
eine Bauernfrau aus der Rügener Gegend? Die hatte ihr Tuch tief
über das Gesicht gezogen, als ob sie sich vor den zahlreichen
Fremden schäme, aber dem Sohn verriet sie sich dennoch durch ihre
bekümmerten unbestechlichen Augen.
»Was willst du?« forschte der Störtebecker unentschieden und
zugleich ein wenig zurückweichend.
Noch immer demütig vor der Pracht des Verlorenen, machte
Mutter Hilda eine hilflose Bewegung, als möchte sie ihre Hand
teilnehmend auf die Brust des Riesen betten, zog sie jedoch
verschüchtert zurück. Fast wie zur Entschuldigung brachte sie dann
hervor:
»Du liebe Not, weil du doch aus meinem Blut bist.«
Der Riese hob das Haupt. Der Ton klang anders, als all das, was er
bisher vernommen. Lag auch etwas darin, was ihn an die Sehnsucht
dieser Nacht erinnerte. Lange suchte er in jenen ernsten
bekümmerten Lichtern, und siehe, er fand darin all das geduckte
Leid, um dessentwillen er einst ausgezogen, um es zu lindern.
Und dies Leid währte ewig?
Zögernd nur trennte er sich von dem wortkargen Weibe, und als
er nun ihren Begleiter streifte, da geschah etwas Wunderliches.
Mitleidig richtete sich Abt Franziskus auf, und jene welke Hand, die
schon den Eintritt des Fischerbuben liebreich begrüßt hatte, obwohl
er nach dem Glauben der Zeit doch nur ein Sohn der Erde[*] war, sie
zog jetzt schweigsam die Linien des Kreuzes.
[*] Hutten nennt noch jene Kinder so, die weder Vater noch
Mutter kennen.

Der Priester segnete den Scheidenden.

Aber der Störtebecker lachte schrill auf.
 »Spar deinen Kram, alter Mann,« rief er schneidend, »hab gestern
erst einen von deiner Kumpanei weggejagt. Wo ich hinfahre, fährst
auch du hin. Glaub mir, wird keiner mehr von dem Fährmann nach
Ölung und Sakrament gefragt.«
Damit wollte er grußlos fürbaß schreiten, als sich von neuem das
Außerordentliche wiederholte. Noch entschiedener reckte der
Priester die weiße Hand und segnete abermals. Dem Schuimer gab
es einen Schlag.
»Weißt du nicht,« sprach er finster, indem er sein glühendes Auge
jetzt voll auf den Alten richtete, »wem du dein Heil spendest? Hast
du mich nicht selbst bei Hurerei und Raub betroffen? Ich sage dir,
der Leichenhügel, den ich meinem Wahn türmte, er ragt weit höher
als der Trauerberg, dem sie mich jetzt zuführen. Weiche darum von
mir, damit sich dein Gott nicht entsetze!«
Und dennoch ließ der Mönch nicht von ihm, ja, während er ein
drittes Mal bedeutungsvoll das Kreuz zog, öffnete er endlich den
feinen Mund und sprach ganz sanft und barmherzig:
»Du Wollender, du Mensch im Tatensturm, ich, ein Christ, segne
dich. Sieh, in meiner engen Zelle, dein Leben betrachtend, ging mir
endlich sein Sinn auf. Was sich erdumwälzend, gewitterschwül im
Reiche der Geister zusammenballt, was sich ohne Hemmung über
Erde und Menschen ausschüttet, das, mein Sohn, wirkt der Zeit fast
immer zum Unheil, denn Schollen und Sterbliche vertragen nur
Tropfen.«
»Du sprichst die Wahrheit, Greis,« schrie der Störtebecker gepackt
und griff mit beiden Fäusten nach dem Kleid des Männleins. »Sieh,
ich bin solch eine Wetterwolke. Jäh zerriß ich und brachte nichts als
Zerstörung und Niederbruch.«
Da umschlang der Priester den ihm Nahen und küßte ihn zärtlich
auf beide Wangen.
 »Verwirf dich nicht, du Stürmischer,« flüsterte er ihm zu. »Wenn
die Flut abschwemmt, dann dringen über Jahr und Jahr etliche jener
Tropfen in tiefere Schichten und erwecken dort ungeahnt Wachstum
und Blüte. So wirkt ins Ferne, was in der Gegenwart verrauschte und
zerfloß. Zieh hin in Frieden.«
Der Gesegnete richtete sich auf. Heller Sonnenschein überglitzerte
die feuchte Wegkreuzung, helles goldenes Licht breitete sich in den
Zügen des Seefahrers, so fortreißend und strahlend, wie es ihm sein
ganzes Leben lang beschert war. Aufatmend blickte er sich um, und
er fand, daß er all die Menschen, die großen und geringen, die ihn
beinahe ehrfürchtig umdrängten, von jeher und bis zuletzt gehegt
und geliebt hatte.
Da schlug die Verführung, die der Zauberer zu wecken vermochte,
noch einmal über alle Schranken des Herkommens. Die Trommler
wirbelten, die Pfeifer schmetterten, blonde und braune Mägdlein
streuten ihrem Feinde Blumen auf den Weg, und das Volk rauschte
um ihn, wie Halme, die sich vor dem Schnitter neigen. Er aber
achtete ihrer nicht mehr. Er schritt dahin, heiter, entrückt, ein
tatenfroher Vollender, und hinter dem Hügel der Schmerzen
empfingen ihn Zukunft und Sage!

Ende
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