Miguel de
Unamuno

Miguel
de Unamuno, in full Miguel De Unamuno Y
Jugo (b. Sept. 29, 1864, Bilbao,
Spain—d. Dec. 31, 1936, Salamanca),
educator, philosopher, and author whose
essays had considerable influence in
early 20th-century Spain.
Unamuno
was the son of Basque parents. After
attending the Vizcayan Institute of
Bilbao, he entered the University of
Madrid in 1880 and in four years
received a doctorate in philosophy and
letters. Six years later he became
professor of Greek language and
literature at the University of
Salamanca.
In 1901
Unamuno became rector of the university,
but he was relieved of his duties in
1914 after publicly espousing the Allied
cause in World War I. His opposition in
1924 to General Miguel Primo de Rivera’s
rule in Spain resulted in his forced
exile to the Canary Islands, from which
he escaped to France. When Primo de
Rivera’s dictatorship fell, Unamuno
returned to the University of Salamanca
and was reelected rector of the
university in 1931, but in October 1936
he denounced General Francisco Franco’s
Falangists, was removed once again as
rector, and was placed under house
arrest. He died of a heart attack two
months later.
Unamuno
was an early existentialist who
concerned himself largely with the
tension between intellect and emotion,
faith and reason. At the heart of his
view of life was his personal and
passionate longing for immortality.
According to Unamuno, man’s hunger to
live on after death is constantly denied
by his reason and can only be satisfied
by faith, and the resulting tension
results in unceasing agony.
Although he also wrote poetry and plays,
Unamuno was most influential as an
essayist and novelist. If his vigorous
and iconoclastic essays have any common
theme, it is that of the need to
preserve one’s personal integrity in the
face of social conformity, fanaticism,
and hypocrisy. His first published work
was the essays collected in En torno al
casticismo (1895), in which he
critically examined Spain’s isolated and
anachronistic position in western Europe
at the time. His Vida de Don Quijote y
Sancho (1905; Life of Don Quixote and
Sancho) is a detailed analysis of Miguel
de Cervantes’ literary characters.
Unamuno’s mature philosophy found its
fullest expression in Del sentimiento
trágico de la vida en los hombres y en
los pueblos (1913; The Tragic Sense of
Life in Men and Peoples), in which he
stressed the vital role spiritual
anxiety plays in driving man to live the
fullest possible life. This and other
themes were explored in La agonía del
cristianismo (1925; The Agony of
Christianity).
Unamuno’s novels are intensely
psychological depictions of agonized
characters who illustrate and give voice
to his own philosophical ideas. His most
famous novel is Abel Sánchez: una
historia de pasión (1917; Abel Sanchez),
a modern re-creation of the biblical
story of Cain and Abel, which centres on
the painfully conflicting impulses of
the character representing Cain. His
other novels include Amor y pedagogía
(1902; “Love and Pedagogy”), which
describes a father’s attempt to raise
his son scientifically, ending in
failure and the son’s ruin; Niebla
(1914; Mist); and San Manuel Bueno,
mártir (1933; “Saint Manuel the Good,
Martyr”), the story of an unbelieving
priest. Unamuno’s El Cristo de Velázquez
(1920; The Christ of Velázquez), a study
in poetic form of the great Spanish
painter, is regarded as a superb example
of modern Spanish verse.