Azorín's overall note of serenity masks a deep-seated disquietude. (pp. 6-7)

Despite their ideological association in the cultural revolution of the "Generation of 1898", Unamuno and Azorín have been generally considered virtually diametric opposites, separated, as one critic has recently reiterated, by a deep distance between their spiritual and literary styles. So firmly entrenched is this view that to seek to equate in any way the creator of the "delights of the commonplace"—as Ortega y Gasset characterized the art of Azorín in a now-celebrated, and somewhat oversimplified, phrase—with the existential anguish of the tormented philosopher of Salamanca can at first blush seem only an extravagant pretension, if not a veritable contrasense. For how can one bridge the gap between the tortured expression of the conflict of existence of the Basque and the affectionate cultivation of minute details of the Alicantine impressionist; between the poetics...