Unamuno and the Religion of Uncertainty

Abstract

f. HERE has rarely been a writer who was more preoccupied with religion than Miguel de since almost everything he wrote can ul* timately be related to his efforts to resolve the . problem of the existence of God and the immorWr) tality of the soul. It is often taken for granted Sthat, in spite of his preoccupation with religious matters, most critics think that Unamuno did not believe, or as Vicente Marrero Suarez puts it: Cada vez se ponen mas de acuerdo los estudiosos sobre que en el fondo, no creia (251). Nevertheless, I have found that this opinion is not completely accurate. Although many critics do regard him as a nonbeliever, they are by no means a majority, since there is a large group of writers who see him as a believer, and still another group feels that his attitude was somewhere in between the two extremes of belief and unbelief. One of the first to express a positive opinion with regard to Unamuno's religious faith was his friend and fellow-poet, Antonio Machado, when in the concluding lines of his poem, A Miguel de Unamuno, he wrote: