SOURCE: Orringer, Nelson R. “Unamuno and St. José Martí, the Good.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 21, no. 3 (fall 1996): 191-201.

In the following essay, Orringer elucidates Unamuno's views on José Martí and contends that the Cuban freedom fighter served as a model for the character of Emmanuel in Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr.

A young Canadian oak struck down at the height of life, Victor Ouimette, often provided mental kindling for rigorous ideas. Doffing his usual self-restraint in intellectual forums, he relished baiting and debating his interlocutors. Not without autobiographical cause, therefore, he titled the masterpiece of his youth Reason Aflame: Unamuno and the Heroic Will. He could well empathize with Unamuno's heroes, who devoured life with their reason, which, in turn, consumed their lives. One of Victor Ouimette's favorite characters, Don Manuel Bueno, received accurate definition in that monograph as the hero of “creative doubt.” Unwilling to...