An Examination of Ramiro de Maeztu

Extract

A proper evaluation of the work of Ramiro de Maeztu at this point is hampered primarily by two factors: an almost frenetic admiration on the part of those who exalt him as a martyr to the cause of Falangism, and the emotional charge implicit in the mantle of oblivion thrown over his memory by those who consider him a lost leader and turncoat. Recently an entire issue of a review published in Madrid was dedicated to apotheosizing the writer who was executed in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War; throughout the four hundred pages comprising the issue it would be impossible to glean a single word of refutation, a single adverse critique of Maeztu's thought. In another issue of the same review, Dionisio Gamallo Fierros announces that 13,000 articles written by Maeztu would be collected in an Obras Completas of 76 volumes. Such a project, we are forced to conjecture, would put far too much emphasis upon much that is topical, hasty, and obsolete in journalistic work covering a span of almost forty years. Yet it is undeniable that Maeztu's spiritual and ideological evolution is one of the most dramatic and characteristic of our times. Although we cannot place him among those who worshipped and later turned away from “The God that Failed,” he is a true enfant du siècle in so far as we can trace the metamorphosis of his enthusiasms from the cause of liberalism and progressivism to a denial of the validity of these attitudes in favor of reaction, tradition, obedience, hierarchy, and clericalism. It is tempting—and perhaps even justifiable —to allow an objective consideration of Maeztu's contributions to literature and thought to be influenced by a natural aversion for his later anti-Semitism, his approval of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, his admiration of Hitler and Mussolini, his dire predictions of the collapse of democratic Europe and America. But perhaps for that very reason we should focus our attention on the phenomenon of yet another man whose enlightenment provided no inoculation against forces of darkness, whose disappointment with the cult of progress led him to wish ardently for the suppression of even the best aspects of modernity, whose religion crowded out all tolerance and left room only for submission. Furthermore, we cannot dispute the fact that Maeztu was sincerely convinced he had found the right formula for the salvation of mankind, that his convictions were rooted in religious faith and the ardent belief that not only Spain and Hispanic America, but all of humanity, could be saved if the lessons of his country's history were correctly interpreted. Lastly, we must concede that Maeztu's voice was raised in denunciation of Communism, that he warned his readers that the materialism of an over-materialistic age would atomize and dehumanize a society bereft of absolute values.