Thus Joaquin Monegro, like every other main character in his work, appears preoccupied by the same central preoccupation of Unamuno.  In one word, all Unamuno’s characters are but incarnations of himself.  But that is what we expected to find in a lyrical novelist.

There are critics who conclude from this observation that these characters do not exist, that they are mere arguments on legs, personified ideas.  Here and there, in Unamuno’s novels, there are passages which lend some colour of plausibility to this view.  Yet, it is in my opinion mistaken.  Unamuno’s characters may be schematized, stripped of their complexities, reduced to the mainspring of their nature; they may, moreover, reveal mainsprings made of the same steel.  But that they are alive no one could deny who has a sense for life.  The very restraint in the use of physical details which Unamuno has made a feature of his creative work may have led his critics to forget the intensity of those—­admirably chosen—­which are given.  It is significant that the eyes play an important part in his description of characters and in his narrative too.  His sense of the interpenetration of body and soul is so deep that he does not for one moment let us forget how bodily his “souls” are, and how pregnant with spiritual significance is every one of their words and gestures.  No.  These characters are not arguments on legs.  They truly are men and women of “flesh and bones,” human, terribly human.

In thus emphasizing a particular feature in their nature, Unamuno imparts to his creations a certain deformity which savours of romantic days.  Yet Unamuno is not a romanticist, mainly because Romanticism was an esthetic attitude, and his attitude is seldom purely esthetic.  For all their show of passion, true Romanticists seldom gave their real selves to their art.  They created a stage double of their own selves for public exhibitions.  They sought the picturesque.  Their form was lyrical, but their substance was dramatic.  Unamuno, on the contrary, even though he often seeks expression in dramatic form, is essentially lyrical.  And if he is always intense, he never is exuberant.  He follows the Spanish tradition for restraint—­for there is one, along its opposite tradition for grandiloquence—­and, true to the spirit of it, he seeks the maximum of effect through the minimum of means.  Then, he never shouts.  Here is an example of his quiet method, the rhythmical beauty of which is unfortunately almost untranslatable: 

“Y asi pasaron dias de llanto y de negrura hasta que las lagrimas fueron yendose hacia adentro y la casa fue derritiendo los negrores” (Niebla) (And thus, days of weeping and mourning went by, till the tears began to flow inward and the blackness to melt in the home).

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