Note 40 — Chapter XIII · TWO ANDALUSIANS

To go beyond Unamuno—into the present constructive period of Spain’s waking, into the transition from her “old ordered sleep” to the new ordered consciousness now dawning, would be to turn this chapter into a discussion of writers and young literary movements: and this would be to digress from the formal province of my book. Since Unamuno answered Ganivet, there have arisen leaders in æsthetic and social criticism, in the novel, in the drama, in the field of creative erudition, whose aggregate work makes the contemporary literature of Spain perhaps the most pregnant of the West. I regret that this is not the place to analyze these younger men. The modern writers whom I have mentioned at all I have chosen arbitrarily for the distinct formal purpose of my portrait of Spain. It must be understood that whereas I consider them important, I have been silent about others equally important. Throughout, I have felt called on, no more to discuss all of Spain’s great men, than to describe all her cities.