ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters I have had occasion to mention that Unamuno’s thought, whether broadly philosophical or more narrowly linguistic, is closely connected to his interest in personality, that is, in what makes us what we are, what gives us our sense of personal identity and self-awareness, whether this is something real, separable from our body, and even whether it could endure beyond our bodily death. The connection between the self and the book is represented in Unamunian ontology by the symbol of the mirror. Unamuno saw the book (originally of course the Old Testament, although he usually refers simply to ‘el Libro’) as the attempt of the Jewish people to forge an identity for themselves, and he extended this vision of a nation struggling to find a common identity after the humiliation of enslavement and captivity to literary composition as a whole. What binds together is the spoken language, but once the latter gives rise to a written form it creates an enduring tradition that serves to garner not only a sense of community but also of collective identity. 1 In Cómo se hace una novela he wrote:
Todo es para nosotros libro, lectura; podemos hablar del Libro de la Historia, del Libro de la Naturaleza, del Libro del Universo. Somos bíblicos. Y podemos decir que en el principio fue el Libro. O la Historia. Porque la Historia comienza con el Libro y no con la Palabra, y antes de la Historia no había conciencia, no había espejo, no había nada.
(II, 575)