From the Self to the Nation: Willpower in José María Salaverría

Abstract

FROM THE SELF TO THE NATION: WILLPOWER IN JOSÉ MARÍA SALAVERRÍA IKER GONZÁLEZ-ALLENDE JOSÉ María Salaverría’s (1873-1940) inclusion into Spain’s so-called Generation of 1898 seems questionable for many critics. In classical studies about the writers of this generation, such as those by José Luis Abellán, Donald Shaw or Inman Fox, Salaverría is not present. Even in more recent works, for instance Nuevas perspectivas sobre el 98 (1999), edited by John Gabriele, or Spain’s 1898 Crisis (2000), edited by Joseph Harrison, no chapter investigates Salaverría’s contributions to Spanish literature in this period. Salaverría shares many characteristics with the members of the Generation of 1898: He was born in the same era, grew up in Spain’s periphery, praised the region of Castille, and mostly cultivated the essay genre. Nevertheless, he showed some deviations from the authors of the Generation of ‘98: He did not receive a university education, started to publish later – in 1906 –, traveled around the world, and maintained a very critical attitude towards his contemporary writers. Thus, in Retratos (1926) and Nuevos retratos (1930), Salaverría disparages authors such as Pío Baroja, Miguel de Unamuno, Ramiro de Maeztu and Azorín. Although biographical approaches to study literature may be problematic , Salaverría’s personal circumstances and auto-marginalized position among his writing contemporaries seem essential to understanding his own theories about Spain. The difficulties that Salaverría had to face in his private life because of his shy manner and humble social class made him believe in the necessity of self-improvement and willpower. His vision for Spain tends to follow a similar path. The solution he finds to solve the crisis the country was experiencing at the beginning of the twentieth century involves awakening its citizens and creating a transna61 tional spiritual homeland consisting of Spain and Spanish America. Therefore, Salaverría considers willpower to be necessary in both the personal and the national realms. In his book La afirmación española (1917), he expresses these thoughts clearly: “Lo que yo deseo es llevar mi pasión hasta la idea de España y fundirme místicamente con España, de manera que, para afirmarme a mí mismo y escapar al aniquilamiento de mi ser, necesite afirmar a mi Patria, justificarla, exaltarla” (134).1 The concept of willpower is derived from Arthur Schopenhauer, who is usually considered the philosopher who exerted the greatest influence on the Generation of 1898 (Abellán 29). According to Schopenhauer, the principle that governs the universe is the will to live, and all energies in nature are an expression of this will. The same happens with human beings, for whom life is a task to be performed; due to their consciousness , though, the will becomes a continuous wish that is never totally satisfied. Hence, Schopenhauer believes that human life is suffering, and when the pain can be avoided, the only feeling that remains is boredom (232). The presence of this pessimism appears in the abulia or apathy from which many literary characters in the novels of the Generation of ‘98 suffer. However, Schopenhauer’s ideas were not assimilated integrally in Spain, since most Spanish intellectuals softened his pessimistic doctrine (Alonso 32). In several works of the writers of ‘98, the will to live was transformed into will to power, following Friedrich Nietzsche’s premises. Gonzalo Sobejano has extensively documented Nietzsche’s influence on these authors, especially through the concepts of the superman (“Übermensch ”), eternal return, atheism, importance of life, opposition to democracy, bureaucracy and socialism, and prominence of aristocratic individualism (480-85).2 Salaverría followed many of these principles, as some of his contemporaries documented.3 Salaverría himself offers 62 ROMANCE NOTES 1 La afirmación española is possibly Salaverría’s most Nietzschean work. Apart from criticizing the pessimism of the Generation of ‘98, in this book, he defends the conquest of America and advocates the need for national optimism. 2 Sobejano points out that in a 1918 article in the newspaper ABC, Salaverría indicated that Spain’s modern writers were Nietzschean and that no thinker in the previous thirty...