YOUTH AND EGOLATRY ***

Produced by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

Youth and Egolatry

By PÍO BAROJA

Translated from the Spanish By Jacob S. Fassett, Jr. and Frances L. Phillips

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION BY H. L. MENCKEN

PROLOGUE

ON INTELLECTUAL LOVE EGOTISM

I. FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS

The bad man of Itzea Humble and a wanderer Dogmatophagy Ignoramus, Ignorabimus Nevertheless, we call ourselves materialists In defense of religion Arch-European Dionysus or Apollonian Epicuri de grege porcum Evil and Rousseau's Chinaman The root of disinterested evil Music as a sedative Concerning Wagner Universal musicians The folk song On the optimism of eunuchs

II. MYSELF, THE WRITER

To my readers thirty years hence Youthful writings The beginning and end of the journey Mellowness and the critical sense Sensibility On devouring one's own God Anarchism New paths Longing for change Baroja, you will never amount to anything (A Refrain) The patriotism of desire My home lands Cruelty and stupidity The anterior image The tragi-comedy of sex The veils of the sexual life A little talk The sovereign crowd The remedy

III. THE EXTRARADIUS

Rhetoric and anti-rhetoric The rhythm of style Rhetoric of the minor key The value of my ideas Genius and admiration My literary and artistic inclinations My library On being a gentleman Giving offence Thirst for glory Elective antipathies To a member of several academies

IV. ADMIRATIONS AND INCOMPATIBILITIES

Cervantes, Shakespeare, Molière The encyclopedists The romanticists The naturalists The Spanish realists The Russians The critics

V. THE PHILOSOPHERS

VI. THE HISTORIANS

The Roman historians Modern and contemporary historians

VII. MY FAMILY

Family mythology Our History

VIII. MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

San Sebastian My parents Monsignor Two lunatics The hawk In Madrid In Pamplona Don Tirso Larequi A visionary rowdy Sarasate Robinson Crusoe and the Mysterious Island

IX. AS A STUDENT

Professors Anti-militarism To Valencia

X. AS A VILLAGE DOCTOR

Dolores, La Sacristana

XI. AS A BAKER

My father's disillusionment Industry and democracy The vexations of a small tradesman

XII. AS A WRITER

Bohemia Our own generation Azorín Paul Schmitz Ortega y Gasset A pseudo-patron

XIII. PARISIAN DAYS

Estévanez My versatility according to Bonafoux

XIV. LITERARY ENMITIES

The enmity of Dicenta The posthumous enmity of Sawa Semi-hatred on the part of Silverio Lanza

XV. THE PRESS

Our newspapers and periodicals Our journalists Americans

XVI. POLITICS

Votes and applause Politicians Revolutionists Lerroux An offer Socialists Love of the workingman The conventionalist Barriovero Anarchists The morality of the alternating party system On obeying the law The sternness of the law

XVII. MILITARY GLORY

The old-time soldier Down goes prestige Science and the picturesque What we need today Our armies A word from Kuroki, the Japanese

EPILOGUE Palinode and fresh outburst of ire

APPENDICES Spanish politicians On Baroja's anarchists Note

INTRODUCTION

Pío Baroja is a product of the intellectual reign of terror that went on in Spain after the catastrophe of 1898. That catastrophe, of course, was anything but unforeseen. The national literature, for a good many years before the event, had been made dismal by the croaking of Iokanaans, and there was a definite _défaitiste_ party among the _intelligentsia_. But among the people in general, if there was not optimism, there was at least a sort of resigned indifference, and so things went ahead in the old stupid Spanish way and the structure of society, despite a few gestures of liberalism, remained as it had been for generations. In Spain, of course, there is always a _Kulturkampf_, as there is in Italy, but during these years it was quiescent. The Church, in the shadow of the restored monarchy, gradually resumed its old privileges and its old pretensions. So on the political side. In Catalonia, where Spain keeps the strangest melting-pot in Europe and the old Iberian stock is almost extinct, there was a menacing seething, but elsewhere there was not much to chill the conservative spine. In the middle nineties, when the Socialist vote in Germany was already approaching the two million mark, and Belgium was rocked by great Socialist demonstrations, and the Socialist deputies in the French Chamber numbered fifty, and even England was beginning to toy gingerly with new schemes of social reform, by Bismarck out of Lassalle,