Acknowledgments
¶ The wanderer upon the face of the earth will love these lands whose drama is the burden of my book, if for no other reason for the pure hospitality of their peoples. To move from the Sahara of the Arabs to Biscay of the Basques, is to move from hospitable home to hospitable home: is to be chained forever in the remembrances of kindness. Unto all my friends, whose names are not too numerous to mention but whose grace would feel itself abused by public thanks, my thanks, then.
¶ Acknowledgments more intellectual are more easy. Above others, I am indebted to Federico de Onís, Head of the Department of Spanish Literature at Columbia University. Professor de Onís, whom I was fortunate to find in Spain, carried me to his native Salamanca (whence alas! Unamuno had just been exiled). After my book was written, he took time to read the proofs and to give me the unstinted, generous, invaluable aid of his erudition. I must name also José Ortega y Gasset, the outstanding intellectual master of the younger generation in Spain; Juan Ramón Jiménez, the poet; Luis Araquistáin, the satirist and social critic; Manuel Cossío, the authority on Greco; Azorín and Pío Baroja, Spain’s leading novelist; Ramiro de Maeztu and Enrique Díez-Canedo, critical leaders in Spain’s cultural renascence; Ramón Carande, the historian, and Pedro Salinas, the poet. All of these eminent men of Spain, in long conversations, helped me with a hospitality truly of their land, to my search for understanding of a people notoriously poor in critical and historical tradition. Nor can I neglect to mention Alfonso Reyes, the Mexican poet and Ambassador to the Argentine Republic, and Baldamiro Sanín Cano, the Colombian essayist, who helped to clarify for me that so urgent aspect of the Spanish spirit which is American. It must, however, be understood that none of these men is to be held responsible for the conception or for any of the ideas of this book.
¶ Much of the materials of my work has appeared in article form in magazines. To the Editors of The Commonweal, The Dial, The Menorah Journal, The Nation, The New Republic, The North American Review, La Revista de Occidente (Madrid), The Saturday Review and The Virginia (University) Quarterly, my acknowledgments, also.
¶ Finally, a word by way of explanation. What I have attempted might be called a Symphonic History. Spain is a complex integer: some of the elements which compose it are known commonly under such terms as climate, geography, historical events, literature, manners, custom, laws and art. Since I felt the Personality of Spain to hold all of these immediately, as a body holds all its organs, I have essayed, not to discuss them severally, not to relate their passage and chronological order, not primarily to picture or to dissect them. But I have let them come, each in its measure and its turn, upon the scene: and like actors in a play, like themes in a symphony, they have spoken their parts. If I could have my way, the pages of my book would come unto my reader as a drama he sees acted in an evening, or as a work of music he hears performed in an hour. I cannot command this proper and impossible hearing. I can but pray my reader, in some such spirit and attention, to take the book which lies now in his hand. Let him do this for me, and I shall gladly leave to him the judgment of my failure or success.
W. F.
New York, December, 1925.