not the old placid escape from life, but a new stimulation to arduous
and ardent living. And out of the ruck of authors, eager, exigent, and
the tremendous clash of nations, new and old, there finally emerged a
prose based not upon rhetorical reminiscences, but responsive minutely
to the necessities of the national life. The oratorical platitudes of
Castelar and Canovas del Castillo gave way to the discreet analyses of
Azorin (Jose Martinez Ruiz) and Jose Ortega y Gasset, to the sober
sentences of the Rector of the University of Salamanca, Miguel de
Unamuno, writing with a restraint which is anything but traditionally
Castilian, and to the journalistic impressionism of Ramiro de Maeztu,
supple and cosmopolitan from long residence abroad. The poets now
jettisoned the rotundities of the romantic and emotional schools of
Zorrilla and Salvador Rueda, and substituted instead the precise,
pictorial line of Ruben Dario, Juan Ramon Jimenez, and the brothers
Machado, while the socialistic and republican propaganda which had
invaded the theatre with Perez Galdos, Joaquin Dicenta, and Angel
Guimera, bore fruit in the psychological drama of Benavente, the social
comedies of Linares Rivas, and the atmospheric canvases which the
Quinteros have painted of Andalusia.

In the novel, the transformation is noticeable at once in the rapid
development of the pornographic tale, whose riches might bring a blush
to the cheek of Boccaccio, and provide Poggio and Aretino with a
complete review; but these are stories for the barrack, venturing only
now and then upon the confines of respectability in the erotic romances
of Zamacois and the late enormously popular Felipe Trigo. Few Spaniards
who write today but have written novels. Yet the gesture of the grand
style of Valera is palsied, except, perhaps, for the conservative
Quixote, Ricardo Leon, a functionary in the Bank of Spain, while the
idyllic method lingers fitfully in such gentle writers as Jose Maria