Cambridge Companion to Cervantes Book

This is a short little novella (about 50 pages in this edition, the rest of which is introduction, notes, and analysis) that nonetheless manages to capture Unamuno's core. Its central character, Don Manuel, is a heroic priest who is secretly an atheist. Little happens in the book. A freethinker, Lázaro, is converted to Don Manuel's strange brand of self-abnegating disbelief; and his sister, Ángela, survives to write about it. The most dramatic moments of the book do not contain any action, but rather are explorations of Don Manuel's paradoxical mode of life.

A saintly priest who cannot believe in scripture is a quintessentially Unamunian character'embodying both his love of the quixotic and his tortured relationship with Catholicism. The final message seems to be that religion must be embraced and promoted regardless of its credibility, since without it we cannot be happy. This is a duty, even if we ourselves cannot believe, since belief is the only thing that makes this life tolerable for most people. Catholicism is right, then, because it grew organically from the people; it grew out of their psychological and social needs. In other countries other creeds should be given the same respect by skeptics.

But did Unamuno really believe this? The very existence of this book seems to belie the message, since it exposes the very thing the saintly priest is intent on keeping hidden. Or did Unamuno count on his audience being people like Lázaro'skeptical and disdainful of religion'and thus hope to convince them to be more tolerant of religion for the unlettered masses? It is quite an elitist philosophy, in that case.

However coherent the message, the book still manages to be moving for its portrayal of the classic Unamunian dilemma: a man who desperately wants to believe in the Catholic dogma, but who cannot.