Unamuno, Epistolarity, and the Rhetoric of Transatlantic Hispanism

Abstract

Twelve years after the loss of Spain's last American colonies in Cuba and Puerto Rico, Miguel de Unamuno wrote in a letter to Chilean poet Ernesto Guzman that ahora lo que es cierto es que nuestro yo, el propio nuestro, lo descubrimos al contacto de otros vos (Epistolario americano 350). This general statement could summarize Unamuno's approach to the intricacies of individual subjectivity and the dilemmas of national identity in post-colonial Spain. The vexing relationship between self and other permeates Unamuno's interest in the mysteries of personality as much as his concern with the national self, especially at a time when Spain was experiencing una de las m?s graves crisis de su existencia pol?tica y vida espiritual and needed to open up to Europe and its former colonies to rediscover itself (Epistolario ameri? cano 351). However, the opening quote can also be read as a succinct comment on the form that frames the Spanish writer's words, namely a letter. Indeed, a fundamental function of epistolary writing is to express a reciprocal relationship between self and other?between the letter writer and the addressee?while at the same time overcoming