le,
save by death. Further still, in most if not all of his main
characters, we can trace the dominant passion which is their whole being
to a mere variety of the one and only passion which obsesses Unamuno
himself, the hunger for life, a full life, here and after. Here is, for
instance, _Abel Sanchez_, a sombre study of hatred, a modern paraphrase
of the story of Cain. Joaquin Monegro, the Cain of the novel, has been
reading Byron's poem, and writes in his diary: "It was when I read how
Lucifer declared to Cain that he, Cain, was immortal, that I began in
terror to wonder whether I also was immortal and whether in me would be
also immortal my hatred. 'Have I a soul?' I said to myself then. 'Is
this my hatred soul?' And I came to think that it could not be
otherwise, that such a hatred cannot be the function of a body.... A
corruptible organism could not hate as I hated."

Thus Joaquin Monegro, like every other main character in his work,
appears preoccupied by the same central preoccupation of Unamuno. In one
word, all Unamuno's characters are but incarnations of himself. But that
is what we expected to find in a lyrical novelist.

There are critics who conclude from this observation that these
characters do not exist, that they are mere arguments on legs,
personified ideas. Here and there, in Unamuno's novels, there are
passages which lend some colour of plausibility to this view. Yet, it is
in my opinion mistaken. Unamuno's characters may be schematized,
stripped of their complexities, reduced to the mainspring of their
nature; they may, moreover, reveal mainsprings made of the same steel.
But that they are alive no one could deny who has a sense for life. The
very restraint in the use of physical details which Unamuno has made a
feature of his creative work may have led his critics to forget the
intensity of those--admirably chosen--which are given. It is significant
that the eyes play an important part in his description of characters
and in his narrative too. His sense of the interpenetration of body and
soul is so deep that he does not for one moment let us forget how bodily
his "souls" are, and how pregnant with spiritual significance is every
one of their words and gestures. No. These characters are not arguments
on legs. They truly are men and women of "flesh and bones," human,
terribly human.

In thus emphasizing a particular feature in their nature, Unamuno
imparts to his creations a certain deformity whi