Wisdom rather than science. Unamuno, Life 1.22

Unamuno ends his first chapter with a list of tragic thinkers, and a glimpse at what the second chapter will examine: health and sickness, as these relate to his idea that life in the tragic sense belongs to peoples as well as individuals. You can hear the Spanish <here>.

Ha habido entre los hombres de carne y hueso ejemplares típicos de esos que tienen el sentimiento trágico de la vida. Ahora recuerdo a Marco Aurelio, San Agustín, Pascal, Rousseau, René, Obermann, Thomson, Leopardi, Vigny, Lenau, Kleist, Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard: hombres cargados de sabiduría más bien que de ciencia.

Habrá quien crea que uno cualquiera de estos hombres adoptó su actitud―como si actitudes así cupiese adoptar, como quien adopta una postura―, para llamar la atención o tal vez para congraciarse con los poderosos, con sus jefes acaso, porque no hay nada más menguado que el hombre cuando se pone a suponer intenciones ajenas; pero honni soit qui mal y pense (†). Y esto por no estampar ahora y aquí otro proverbio, este español, mucho más enérgico, pero que acaso raye en grosería.

Y hay, creo, también pueblos que tienen el sentimiento trágico de la vida. Es lo que hemos de ver ahora, empezando por eso de la salud y la enfermedad.

History records many men of flesh and bone whose experience is typical of those who understand life in the tragic sense. Here I remember Marcus Aurelius, Saint Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau (⸶), René, Obermann (⸷), Thomson, Leopardi, Vigny, Lenau, Kleist, Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard (⸸): men laden with wisdom rather than science.

Someone will suppose that at least one of these men adopted his attitude—as though attitudes like this were something to adopt, the way we assume a posture—to draw attention to himself or curry favor with the powerful, his bosses perhaps. For there is nothing more cowardly than man when he takes it upon himself to guess another's intentions, but shame on him who thinks so ill. This proverb I offer in lieu of another in Spanish—much more energetic, but also rather crude.

I believe also that there are peoples imbued with a tragic sense of life. Our immediate task is to find them, starting with this notion of health and sickness.

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(†) The French motto of the British Order of the Garter, founded in 1348 CE, on the twenty-third of April (St. George's day), by King Edward III. Supposedly, the motto was part of a rebuke uttered by the king at a ball in Calais, when his dance-partner, the Countess of Salisbury (Joan of Kent) dropped her garter and he put it on. To laughing bystanders he said something like this: "Shame on him who takes this ill. For those who laugh now shall come to regard this ribbon as a great honor, and seek earnestly to wear it" (cf. Polydorus Vergilius, Anglicae Historiae 19.24). I am not sure what Spanish proverb Unamuno refers to here.

(⸶) The list of authors Unamuno provides here constitutes something like his own personal curriculum for understanding philosophy. Its first members are all historical figures: the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 CE), author of the Notes to Self; the Christian bishop Augustine of Hippo (354-430), author of the Confessions and the City of God; mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), author of the Thoughts; and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), whose large oeuvre includes The Social Contract.

(⸷) René and Obermann are both fictional characters, titular heroes created to give novel form and voice to the disgruntled, alienated feelings of displaced French aristocrats: René comes from François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), and Obermann, as you may recall, from Étienne Pivert de Senancour (1770-1846).

(⸸) Scottish poet James Thomson (1700-1748) is remembered chiefly for the Castle of Indolence. Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), a poet from Italy, composed Songs (Canti) and a very interesting diary, the Miscellany (Zibaldone). Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) was another displaced French aristocrat turned poet-philosopher; Unamuno might remember him for his novel Stello, or his Journal (interesting like Leopardi's for its keen insights into the human condition). Nikolaus Lenau was the pen-name of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau (1802-1850), an Austrian who turned to poetry after studying law and medicine; he wrote several poems, notably one titled 'Autumn' (Herbst). Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) was a German poet, best remembered for his tragedy Penthesilea and an essay On the Gradual Production of Thoughts in Conversation (Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden). Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881) was a Swiss moral philosopher, descended from Huguenot refugees, who produced a Private Journal (Journal Intime) to rival that of de Vigny or Leopardi. Antero Tarquínio de Quental (1842-1891) wrote sonnets in Portuguese, producing a substantial collection before his suicide. Last in the list comes Unamuno's favorite Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).