Essays and soliloquies

ESSAYS AND SOLILOQUIES BORZOI TRANSLATIONS SPRING 1925 FROM THE SPANISH FIGURES OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD BY GABRIEL MIRO Translated by C. J. Hogarth FROM THE FRENCH THE MODERN ENGLISH NOVEL BY ABEL CHEVALLEY Translated by Ben Ray Redman FROM THE GERMAN DEATH IN VENICE BY THOMAS MANN Translated by Kenneth Burke FROM THE RUSSIAN THE CLOCK BY ALEKSEI REMIZOV Translated by John Cournos TALES OF THE WILDERNESS BY BORIS PILNIAK Translated by F. O’Dempsey FROM THE NORWEGIAN SEGELFOSS TOWN BY KNUT HAMSUN Translated by J. S. Scott FROM THE POLISH THE PEASANTS BY LADISLAS REYMONT Translated by Michael H. Dziewicki
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY J. E. CRAWFORD FLITCH
NEW YORK ALFRED · A · KNOPF 1925 COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, BINGHAMTON, N. Y. ESPARTO PAPER MANUFACTURED IN SCOTLAND AND FURNISHED BY W.F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
In “The Tragic Sense of Life” Unamuno says
and:
Readers of Don Quixote will recall
I am writing these lines, to-day the 6th of June, 1924, in this island of Fuerteventura, an island that is propitious to calm thinking and to a laying bare of the soul, even as this parched land is bare, bare even to the bone. Here I have been confined now for nearly three months, no reason for my confinement having been given other than the arbitrary mandate of the military power that is de-civilizing and debasing my native country.
Hither came my friend Mr. J. E. Crawford Flitch to bear me company. He was entrusted by Mr. Alfred A. Knopf with the task of making an anthology or florilegium of my shorter articles and extracts from my more extensive writings which should present a conspectus of my whole literary work. It is he, my friend and translator, who is responsible for the selection of the pieces which form this anthology.
I am in principle an enemy of all such selections or anthologies of an author’s works, and the more so when the author’s influence is due primarily not so much to his ideas as to the passionate tone and gesture with which he expresses them, to his style. This work of selection appears to me to be as difficult as would be that of abridging a sonata or a picture. And what appears to me almost impossible is that the author himself should make the selection. It is not possible for us to see ourselves from the outside, to become part of our public.