In his last poem, El Cristo de Velazquez (1920), Unamuno undertakes the task of giving a poetical rendering of his tragic sense of life, in the form of a meditation on the Christ of Velazquez, the beautiful and pathetic picture in the Prado.  Why Velazquez’s and not Christ himself?  The fact is that, though in his references to actual forms, Unamuno closely follows Velazquez’s picture, the spiritual interpretation of it which he develops as the poem unfolds itself is wholly personal.  It would be difficult to find two great Spaniards wider apart than Unamuno and Velazquez, for if Unamuno is the very incarnation of the masculine spirit of the North—­all strength and substance—­Velazquez is the image of the feminine spirit of the South—­all grace and form.  Velazquez is a limpid mirror, with a human depth, yet a mirror.  That Unamuno has departed from the image of Christ which the great Sevillian reflected on his immortal canvas was therefore to be expected.  But then Unamuno has, while speaking of Don Quixote, whom he has also freely and personally interpreted,[2] taken great care to point out that a work of art is, for each of us, all that we see in it.  And, moreover, Unamuno has not so much departed from Velazquez’s image of Christ as delved into its depths, expanded, enlarged it, or, if you prefer, seen in its limpid surface the immense figure of his own inner Christ.  However free and unorthodox in its wide scope of images and ideas, the poem is in its form a regular meditation in the manner approved by the Catholic Church, and it is therefore meet that it should rise from a concrete, tangible object as it is recommended to the faithful.  To this concrete character of its origin, the poem owes much of its suggestiveness, as witness the following passage quoted here, with a translation sadly unworthy of the original, as being the clearest link between the poetical meditation and the main thought that underlies all the work and the life of Unamuno.

NUBE NEGRA

O es que una nube negra de los cielos ese negror le dio a tu cabellera de nazareno, cual de mustio sauce de una noche sin luna sobre el rio? ?Es la sombra del ala sin perfiles del angel de la nada negadora, de Luzbel, que en su caida inacabable —­fondo no puede dar—­su eterna cuita clava en tu frente, en tu razon? ?Se vela, el claro Verbo en Ti con esa nube, negra cual de Luzbel las negras alas, mientras brilla el Amor, todo desnudo, con tu desnudo pecho por cendal?

BLACK CLOUD

    Or was it then that a black cloud from heaven
    Such blackness gave to your Nazarene’s hair,
    As of a languid willow o’er the river
    Brooding in moonless night?  Is it the shadow
    Of the profileless wing of Luzbel, the Angel
    Of denying nothingness, endlessly falling—­
    Bottom he ne’er can touch—­whose grief eternal
    He nails on to Thy forehead, to Thy reason? 
    Is the clear Word in Thee with that cloud veiled
    —­A cloud as black as the black wings of Luzbel—­
    While Love shines naked within Thy naked breast?