SOURCE: Earle, Peter G. “Unamuno and the Theme of History.” Hispanic Review 32, no. 4 (October 1964): 319-39.

In the following essay, Earle provides readings of Unamuno's En torno al casticismo, Abel Sanchez, San Manuel Bueno, mártir, and Paz en la guerra, among others, to suggest that in Unamuno's conceptualization of history, the destiny of peoples is inextricably linked to the destiny of individuals.

“¿Es la eternidad que pasa o el momento que se queda?”

The emphasis which Unamuno repeatedly placed on romantic, spiritual anxiety and on the enigmatic notion of intrahistoria has tended to obscure his permanent interest in the theme of history itself. Intrahistoria, antihistoria, sotohistoria, metahistoria: precisely because of his stylistic inclination to emphasis (a trait which reminds us of his enthusiasm for other writers of the “emphatic school”—Carlyle, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard), it might appear that Unamuno was expressing opposition to everything in a historical context, that...