For this reason my original work-and likewise the Italian and French translations of it-issued from the press with a certain number of errors, obscurities, and faulty references. The truth is that, being an incorrigible Spaniard, I am naturally given to a kind of extemporization and to neglectfulness of a filed niceness in my works.
The fact that this English translation has been carefully revised here, in my house in this ancient city of Salamanca, by the translator and myself, implies not merely some guarantee of exactitude, but also something more-namely, a correction, in certain respects, of the original. Whereby they emerge other than they originally were, for an idea does not pass from one language to another without change. And that is a thing to be done with deliberation and only after having better digested this terrible peace, which is nothing else but the war's painful convalescence.Īs for many years my spirit has been nourished upon the very core of English literature-evidence of which the reader may discover in the following pages-the translator, in putting my Sentimiento Trágico into English, has merely converted not a few of the thoughts and feelings therein expressed back into their original form of expression.
But upon further consideration I have abandoned the idea, for I reflected that after all I wrote this book not for Spaniards only, but for all civilized and Christian men-Christian in particular, whether consciously so or not-of whatever country they may be.įurthermore, if I were to set about writing an Introduction in the light of all that we see and feel now, after the Great War, and, still more, of what we foresee and forefeel, I should be led into writing yet another book.
I intended at first to write a short Prologue to this English translation of my Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida, which has been undertaken by my friend Mr. X RELIGION, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BEYOND AND THE APOCATASTASISĭON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY AUTHOR'S PREFACE VII LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY
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