SOURCE: Del Rio, Angel. Introduction to Three Exemplary Novels, by Miguel de Unamuno, translated by Angel Flores, pp. 11-33. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1956.

In the following essay, Del Rio provides an overview of contemporary American responses to Unamuno and demonstrates that Three Exemplary Novels “are highly representative of Unamuno's conception of the tragic character,” noting that “the central idea in all [Unamuno's fiction is the struggle to create faith from doubt and ethics from inner life.”]

I cannot help wondering, rereading these three strange stories thirty-five years after their first publication, what will be the modern American reader's reaction to them. Their singularity was as great in 1920 as it is today, but it could more easily go unnoticed because their author was then widely recognized as the most important of contemporary Spanish writers, while today his name is less generally familiar. The Three Exemplary Novels seem, in...