SOURCE: King, Shirley. “San Manuel Bueno and Unamuno's Reading of Hauptmann.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 19, no. 1 (January 1985): 39-54.

The following essay, King finds connections between Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr and Gerhart Hauptmann's Der Ketzer von Soana.

“Si quiere usted enviarme algo envíeme de Hauptmann.”¹ When Miguel de Unamuno wrote these words in 1899 in a letter addressed to a friend in Berlin, he was interested in the writings of the German author Gerhart Hauptmann. Thirty-three years later a short novel by Unamuno was published under the title: San Manuel Bueno, mártir, the story of a priest tormented by religious doubt. Was Unamuno aware that in the meantime Gerhart Hauptmann had published a short novel called Der Ketzer von Soana (1919, The Heretic of Soana), about a priest tormented by religious doubt? Can there be some connection between the two?

Various sources have been suggested from which...