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Unamuno and Pascal: Notes on the Concept of Agony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Juan López-Moeillas*
Affiliation:
Brown University Providence 12

Extract

In 1923, the Parisian Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale invited Miguel de Unamuno to contribute to a special issue then being prepared in commemoration of the tercentenary of the birth of Pascal. Accordingly Unamuno wrote a short essay, “La Foi pascalienne”, seventh and last of the commemorative Etudes sur Pascal, as the volume was entitled. The following year, Unamuno, exiled in Paris, doubled the length of the essay and incorporated it as Chapter ix of his Agonie du christianisme, a book which, like the absorbed essay, had been composed for a French-reading public; for it was a cahier requested by P. L. Couchoud for inclusion in a series of monographs on Christianity. Both the essay and the book were translated into French by Unamuno's close friend, the hispanist Jean Cassou.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 6 , December 1950 , pp. 998 - 1010
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 Other contributors: Maurice Blondel, Harald Höfïding, Jean Laporte, Frédéric Rauh.

2 References to Pascal are to the Œumes, edd. Léon Brunschvicg, Pierre Boutroux, and Félix Gazier, 14 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1914-25).

3 “Mi religion”, inEnsayos (Madrid: Aguilar, 1945), n, 367. All references to TJnamuno given in this paper are to this edition.

4 “Del sentimiento trágico de la vida”, II, 715.

5 “La agonía del cristianismo”, I, 987.

6 Pensées, 64. References are to the number of the fragments in the Hachette edition.

7 “La agonía …”, i, 987, 943.

8 “La tradicíón eterna”, i, 42.

9 “La agonía …”, i, 949.

10 “La vie de M. Pascal, écrite par Madame Périer, sa sœur”, Œuvres, i, 59 (modernized text).

11 “Soledad”, i, 682-683.

12 “La vida es sueño”, i, 231, 229.

13 “Del sentimiento …”, II, 725, 745.

14 “La vida es sueño”, I, 232.

15 “La agonía …”, i, 991.

16 “Del sentimiento …”, II, 730.

17 Juan de Mairena (Buenos Aires, 1942), i, 159.

18 Discours de la méthode, ed. Etienne Gilson (Paris: Vrin, 1930), p. 8.

19 “La agonía …”, I, 989-990.

20 Ibid., i, 989; Pensées, 284.

21 “La fe”, i, 259; “Del sentimiento …”, II, 878.

22 “La philosophie de Pascal”, in Etudes sur Pascal, p. 182.

23 “Hispanidad”, Aug. 18,1927, in Sintesis (Buenos Aires). Reprinted in Antonio Alonso, Antología de ensayos españoles (Boston: Heath, 1936), p. 66.

24 “La fe”, i, 268.