Although he deserved to have been a Spaniard for writing them, it was not a Spaniard but an Englishman who wrote these lines:
For nothing worthy proving can be proven
Nor yet disproven; wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith.
It was Lord Tennyson who wrote these pregnant lines, and in the same poem, “The Ancient Sage,” he tells us that “knowledge is the swallow on the lake that stirs and sees the surface-shadow there, but never yet hath dipt into the abysm.”
Let, then, my last words here, while I am preparing to consider how it is possible to Spaniardize Europe, be that nothing worthy proving can be proven nor yet disproven.
THE SPANISH CHRIST
He was a foreigner, a South American, and he came from Paris. “But these Christs!—Good God!” he said to me, as we stood before one of the bloodiest of those that are to be found in our cathedrals, “this thing repels, revolts—— ”
“It revolts him who knows nothing of the cult of suffering,” I said. And he replied: “But suffering is not blood. There is bloodless suffering, serene suffering.” ...
And we began to talk about it.
I confessed to him that I have the soul of my people, and that I like these livid Christs, emaciated, purple, bloody, these Christs that someone has called ferocious. Lacking in art? Barbarous? I don’t know. And I like these harsh Marias Dolorosas, rigid with grief.
The Spanish Christ—so Guerra Junqueiro has often said to me—was born in Tangiers. Perhaps. Perhaps He is an African Christ. Would He be more Christ if He were an Attic or a Parisian or an English Christ? For the other Christ, the Galilean, the historical, we must bid farewell to. And as for history as applied to Christianity.... This history is the history of the last twenty centuries, and here, in Spain, history is Spanish. He was born then, perhaps, in Tangiers. Not very far from Tangiers was born St. Augustine.