Envy and the lust for fame. Unamuno, Life 3.18
Sometimes
we think that human suffering arises solely or principally from our
external environment—
that it is imposed on us by material necessity and can be alleviated
simply by material means. We see hungry folk fighting for food and
suppose that the way to end war is to feed them. Unamuno warns us
that the fiercest causes for war arise from spiritual hunger rather
than physical, from the human psyche within us rather than the world
without. If we end wars of material hunger, we will still have to
contend with wars of spiritual hunger, wars driven by envy and lust
for fame: passions that don't respond to reason the way hunger does.
Unamuno fears these wars more.
Tremenda
pasión esa de que nuestra memoria sobreviva por encima del olvido de
los demás si es posible. De ella arranca la envidia a la que se
debe, según el relato bíblico, el crimen que abrió la historia
humana: el asesinato de Abel por su hermano Caín. No fué lucha por
pan, fué lucha por sobrevivir en Dios, en la memoria divina. La
envidia es mil veces más terrible que el hambre, porque es hambre
espiritual. Resuelto el que llamamos problema de la vida, el del pan,
convertiríase la Tierra en un infierno, por surgir con más fuerza
la lucha por la sobrevivencia.
Al
nombre se sacrifica no ya la vida, la dicha. La vida desde luego.
«¡Muera yo; viva mi fama!», exclama en
Las
mocedades del Cid
Rodrigo
Arias, al caer herido de muerte por D. Diego Ordóñez de Lara.
Débese uno a su nombre. «¡Ánimo, Jerónimo, que se te recordará
largo tiempo; la muerte es amarga, pero la fama eterna!», exclamó
Jerónimo Olgiati, discípulo de Cola Montano y matador, conchabado
con Lampugnani y Visconti, de Galeazzo Sforza, tirano de Milán. Hay
quien anhela hasta el patíbulo para cobrar fama, aunque sea infame;
avidus
malae famae,
que dijo Tácito.
What
tremendous passion inspires us to make our memory outlast the
oblivion to which others are consigned, if only we can. From this
passion springs the envy that drove Cain to kill his brother Abel,
the first crime in human history, as it appears in the biblical
account. That was not a fight for bread; it was a fight over survival
before God, over persistence in the divine memory. Envy is a thousand
times more terrible than hunger, because it is spiritual hunger. If
we ever resolved what we call the problem of life, our fight for
bread, the earth would then turn into hell, as the struggle to
survive surged forth in even greater earnest.
To
our name we sacrifice not just life, but happiness. Life follows
after as a matter of course. "Let me die, but my fame shall
live on!" cries Rodrigo Arias in Feats of the
Young Lord, when he falls mortally wounded by Don Diego
Ordóñez de Lara (†). Our selves belong to our names. "Courage,
Geronimo! For you will live long in memory! Death is bitter, but fame
endures forever!" Thus did Geronimo Olgiati address himself, a pupil of Cola Montano and the killer of Galeazzo Sforza, tyrant of Milan, whom he cut down with Lampugnani and Visconti (‡).
There are those whose desire for fame makes them lust after
execution, even for notorious crimes: "eager for ill repute,"
as Tacitus says (*).
---
(†)
According to medieval Spanish legend, Rodrigo Arias was one of the
unfortunate sons of Arias Gonzalo, a knight who undertook to defend
the city of Zamora against Sancho II the Strong (c. 1036-1072 CE),
who was conquering the domains inherited by his siblings. Sancho laid
seige to the city but was assassinated by Vellido Dolfos right before
it was taken. As a result, Sancho's knight Diego
Ordóñez de Lara
accused the city of cowardice and treachery. Arias Gonzalo answered
by sending his sons Pedro, Diego, and Rodrigo out in succession to
joust against
Don
Diego, who killed them all. The line Unamuno quotes is from an
early seventeenth-century
tragedy
dramatizing these events:
Las
mocedades del Cid,
written by Guillén
de Castro
y
Bellvís.
(‡)
Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444-1476 CE) inherited the duchy of Milan
from his father, the mercenary Francesco I Sforza, known for his
friendship with Cosimo de' Medici, the godfather of Florence.
Galeazzo is remembered for his patronage of the arts, especially
music, and his wanton cruelty, which made him many enemies, among
them the three assassins Unamuno names and their abettor, the
humanist scholar Cola Montano, who provided arms and encouragement.
The three attacked the duke on the day after Christmas, in the church
of St. Stephen, where the city came for mass. The duke died
relatively quickly, stabbed by all three men and one of Lampugnani's
servants. Lampugnani was killed in the church by a guard, and the
duke's government hunted Visconti and Olgiati down later, after which
they were publicly executed. Machiavelli, in his History of
Florence (7.6), records that as he was being put to death,
Olgiati repeatedly uttered the phrase Unamuno translates from
Latin: Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memoria facti.
(*)
Tacitus uses the phrase to describe Fulcinius Trio, a snoop whose
information against Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus led to his trial
before the Roman senate, which found him guilty of plotting against
the emperor Tiberius but was too late to punish him, as he committed suicide before the verdict was reached (Annals 2.27-31). Tacitus believes
that Libo was a fool, but innocent.