Jacinto Grau and the Meaning of Existence

Abstract

Anguish and despair have marked the Spanish literature of twentieth century man. One can trace the existential anguish in the works of Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno, Sender, Laforet, Cela, and in the tremendista writings in general. Pedro Lain Entralgo in La espera y la esperanza opposes to this trend his analysis, claiming that Machado and others exhibit in their resistance to despair, a philosophy of hope. Perez de Ayala emphasizes man's free will and the importance of living one's life. Baroja insists on a constant battle with the world to create one's own environment. Unamuno, in addition to his themes of immortality, anguish and search for God, in discovering life's absurdity, finds life as he becomes life. He stresses the idea of the final boundary, and his heroes, like Alejandro in Nada menos que todo un hombre, although they fight with passion and with a will to dominate life, must in the end succumb to unconquerable death. All share the concept of man as a builder of his own moment, the maker of his own future. Sartre claims that man, unlike objects, through present action to construct a future creates a future which permits understanding and changing the present. Ortega, much earlier, expressed the same idea more clearly in his essay, En tomo a Galileo: