The struggle of memory to persist. Unamuno, Life 3.20
For
Unamuno, the desire to persist is fundamental. We don't desire glory
or fame for their own sake, but because they represent means to the
real end, which is preserving ourselves, our memory. This is the aim
of Catholicism, too, in his mind, and the next chapter will
illustrate the medieval philosophy some Catholics framed to express
it.
Y
vuelven a molernos los oídos con el estribillo aquel de ¡orgullo!
¡hediondo orgullo! ¿Orgullo querer dejar nombre imborrable?
¿Orgullo? Es como cuando se habla de sed de placeres, interpretando
así la sed de riquezas. No, no es tanto ansia de procurarse placeres
cuanto el terror a la pobreza lo que nos arrastra a los pobres
hombres a buscar el dinero como no era el deseo de gloria, sino el
terror al infierno lo que arrastraba a los hombres en la Edad Media
al claustro con su acedía. Ni eso es orgullo, sino terror a la nada.
Tendemos a serlo todo, por ver en ello el único remedio para no
reducirnos a nada. Queremos salvar nuestra memoria, siquiera nuestra
memoria. ¿Cuánto durará? A lo sumo lo que durare el linaje humano.
¿Y si salváramos nuestra memoria en Dios?
Todo
esto que confieso son, bien lo sé, miserias; pero del fondo de estas
miserias surge vida nueva, y sólo apurando las heces del dolor
espiritual puede llegarse a gustar la miel del poso de la copa de la
vida. La congoja nos lleva al consuelo.
Esa
sed de vida eterna apáganla muchos, los sencillos sobre todo, en la
fuente de la fe religiosa; pero no a todos es dado beber de ella. La
institución cuyo fin primordial es proteger esa fe en la
inmortalidad personal del alma es el catolicismo; pero el catolicismo
ha querido racionalizar esa fe haciendo de la religión teología,
queriendo dar por base a la creencia vital una filosofía y una
filosofía de siglo XIII. Vamos a verlo y ver sus consecuencias.
Here
the foe assault our ears once more, battering them to pieces with
that bitter refrain: Pride! Stinking pride! Is it pride to
wish to leave behind a name that cannot be erased? Pride, really? It
reminds me of the way some invoke the thirst for pleasure, when what
they mean is thirst for wealth. We poor folk are not so much anxious
to take pleasure as fearful of being ruined: terror of poverty is
what drives us to seek money, not eagerness for pleasures. In the
same way, it was not desire for glory but fear of hell that drove men
of the middle ages to the cloister, with its absence of vitality.
This was not pride, either, but fear of annihilation. We dare to
become everything because in this we see the only means to escape
being reduced to nothing. We want to save our memory, at the very
least. How long shall it last? At most as long as the human race. But
what if we were to save our memory in God?
All
these my confessions are wretched miseries: I know it well. But from
the depths of these miseries rises new life, and it is only by
draining the dregs of spiritual pain that any can come to taste the
honey of repose that waits for us in the cup of life. Affliction
carries us to comfort.
Many
folk, especially the simple ones, quench their thirst for eternal
life in the fount of religious faith. But not all are given to drink
from it. The institution whose fundamental purpose is protecting
faith in the personal immortality of the soul is Catholicism. But
Catholicism has desired to rationalize this faith, making religion
into theology, wishing to provide a particular philosophy as the
basis for vital belief: this philosophy comes from the thirteenth
century. We are going to examine it, and its consequences.