But in general that nondescript assembly looked on in passive gravity while El Escultor de su Alma was rendered, as their poet had bidden, in their own theatre and for them. They may have gathered hints and snatches of that mystical message from the dead, whose lofty look, fixed in shining marble, dominated all the house.
The restless Spirit of Man, seeking the perfect Truth, tears himself loose from the bride of his youth, Heavenly Faith, and wanders in beggary through the world. Yet Truth for him can only be the child of his union with Faith, and in parting from one he has parted from both. In old age, almost maddened by his wanderings and woes, he meets his Truth again, full-grown and beautiful, but is so fierce and wild in his desire to possess her that only Death can reconcile them—Death and that Heavenly Faith who could not abandon him, though he had forsaken her.
Ganivet's mother, who, with his brothers, witnessed the play from behind the scenes, is said to have rejoiced in it as a last solemn assurance from her son of his secure repose in the Catholic faith of his fathers. It may not have meant so much to that great audience, many of whom could neither read nor write, but those tiers upon tiers of dark Spanish faces were full of earnestness and of a proud content. However it may have baffled their heads, this legacy of a play, in its Alhambra setting, spoke clearly to their hearts. One ragamuffin said to another, as an all-sufficient criticism, "He was thinking of Granada when he wrote it."
A few days later, I found and eagerly read Angel Ganivet's most significant booklet, Idearium, published in the autumn of 1896, in which he sets forth his dream for the future of his beloved country.
Ganivet claims that the deepest moral element in Spanish character is stoicism, "not the brutal and heroic stoicism of Cato, nor the serene and majestic stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, nor the rigid and extreme stoicism of Epictetus, but the natural and humane stoicism of Seneca." He holds that Seneca, himself a Spaniard, found his philosophy in the inherent genius of the country, and only gave voice to the indwelling soul of Spain. The Spanish church, cherishing this element, became a thing apart from the general Catholicism of Europe. The long warfare and incidental intercourse with the Moors stamped Spanish Christianity with its two other characteristic features of mysticism and fanaticism. "Mysticism was like a sanctification of African sensuality, and fanaticism was a turning against ourselves, when the Reconquest ended, of the fury accumulated during eight centuries of combat."
The author, muy español, is naturally muy católico, yet he protests against violence in the repression of other forms of religion. "Liberty should bring with it no fear." He believes that Spain is, above all, sui generis, independent and individual. The representative Spaniard is a free lance, striving and conquering by his own impulse and under his own direction, like the Cid of old or Cortes in the field of arms, like Loyola in the church, like Cervantes in letters. He lays stress on the achievements of Spanish art—the master paintings of Velázquez and Murillo, the master dramas of Lope de Vega and Calderon, as expressing, better than political history has expressed, that intensification of Spanish life resulting from the struggle against the Arabs "and making of our nation a Christian Greece."
The Columbus Monument in Granada
He finds it logical and right that Spain, after her successive periods of Roman influence, Visigothic influence, Arab influence, and her modern era of colonial expansion, should now abandon foreign policies and concentrate all her vitality within her own borders. Not by the sword, but by the spirit, would he have Spain henceforth hold sway over mankind, and especially over the Spanish-descended peoples of South America.