Dream Us, O Lord

THE LONE HERETIC by Margaret Thomas Rudd. 349 pages. University of Texas. $6.50.

There was never a man who thought better of himself than the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. Even in Spain, his ego was a marvel. "Years after you have left my classroom," he told his students, "you will have forgotten what I may teach you, but you will never forget me." When the King of Spain presented him with a medal for his writings, Unamuno said only: "I deserved it." When his fellow philosopher Ortega y Gasset suggested that they collaborate on an educational scheme, Unamuno turned him down: "What you are proposing in this plan is that I be the head and you the spirit. Well, let me tell you that in my plan, I shall always be the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Noble Desperation. But in a humbler moment, Unamuno once confessed that his egotism sprang "not from pride, but from terror of extinction." Unamuno feared death above everything, and because he did, he cherished human life with a passion found in few other philosophers. His was a kind of exalted pragmatism: he believed it was the duty of philosophy to console mankind, to make life easier to live. Philosophers, he wrote in his masterpiece, Tragic Sense of Life, should follow the example of Socrates, who gave a courtesan so many useful tips she invited him to become her pimp. Philosophy, Unamuno declared, is "spiritual pimping."

Like Kierkegaard, Unamuno spent a lifetime wrestling with religious belief. He believed in God, but he felt that no rational proof of God is possible: "It is not rational necessity, but vital anguish that impels us to believe in God." Life, he concluded, is a ceaseless struggle between reason and faith. Never sure of the truth, man becomes desperate, but this desperation is "the noblest, most profound, most human and most fecund state of mind."

Unamuno wrote five novels to illustrate the eternal struggle of human existence. And just as the author relies on his characters to clarify his message, so does God rely on human beings. If the characters of a novel are the product of an author's dream, writes Unamuno, may not human beings be God's dream? Man's profoundest prayer is to continue to exist: "Dream us, O Lord."

Dance of Death. Unamuno believed in "inherited griefs." All his own griefs have been conscientiously catalogued in this biography, although his thoughts have been muddled. The son of a well-read merchant, Unamuno was born in 1864 in the town of Bilbao in the lush green Pyrenees, but the scenery was not consoling. Even as a tyke, he meditated on death. His most vivid childhood memory was of the slaughterhouse, "its tiled floor streaming with water and blood and those women who seemed to dance a silent, ritualistic dance, beating out with their feet the blood of the slain cattle."

To conquer his fear of death, Unamuno mortified flesh and mind. He scampered daily up a nearby mountain, refused to wear a coat in the winter, plowed through philosophical works that were too formidable for most of his elders. By 16, he was ready to enter the University of Madrid, where he tackled all subjects and became a nonstop talker. After graduation, in fact, he talked himself out of one university job after another because he could not resist showing off his knowledge. One person always willing to listen was a gentle girl named Concha whom Unamuno had known from childhood. Concha married Unamuno and bore him nine children. Unamuno believed in the divinity of sexual love.

Reason Kills. Unamuno finally won an appointment to the University of Salamanca, where a faithful band of students doted on him. "My one desire," he told them, "is not to give you ideas of my own or of others; ideas have little value--but to strike the untouched chords in the psalters of your hearts." But he struck others where it hurt, since he believed that people thought best when they were angriest. Addressing the clergy, he praised heretics. Speaking to Communists, he ostentatiously crossed himself, shouting "Christ be praised!" He challenged all parties and creeds and was never worried about contradicting himself. "If someone should organize an Unamuno party," he said, "I would be the first 'antiunamunista.' "

When the mild dictator, Primo de Rivera, came to power in 1923, Unamuno attacked him mercilessly. Rivera finally packed Unamuno off to the Canary Islands, where he enjoyed a comfortable exile and turned out 103 sonnets. When Rivera was ousted in 1930, Unamuno returned to Spain. But he found the new republic no more to his taste. He welcomed Franco's rebellion, adding that civil war would be good for Spain. In 1936, just before his death, he turned against Franco.

Unamuno's countrymen adored him without ever quite understanding him. And Unamuno, in truth, is not easy to understand. Words often poured from him in a formless rush; he was hostile to reason. The pure rationalist, he insisted, is no more fit to comment on life than the eunuch is fit to judge a beauty contest. In Tragic Sense of Life he wrote, "The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapes it; it seeks to congeal the flowing stream in blocks of ice. In order to understand anything, it is necessary to kill it."

Unamuno put his trust in human passion, and even his driest philosophical speculation is passionately alive. On the other hand, Unamuno failed to see that passions can lead to sheer brutality, as they did in the Spanish Civil War. Unamuno liked to compare himself to Don Quixote in his contradictions and paradoxes, and his critics have accepted the analogy. "He was refined and savage," said one, "modern and medieval, with the unction of an apostle and the wisdom of a picaro, a man in whom all the defects and virtues of the Spanish race seem to culminate."

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