nse individualism, a constant slipping over
into the grotesque is inevitable. And so it comes to be that the
conscious or unconscious aim of their art is rather self-expression
than beauty. Their image of reality is sharp and clear, but distorted.
Burlesque and satire are never far away in their most serious moments.
Not even the calmest and best ordered of Spanish minds can resist a
tendency to excess of all sorts, to over-elaboration, to grotesquerie,
to deadening mannerism. All that is greatest in their art, indeed,
lies on the borderland of the extravagant, where sublime things skim
the thin ice of absurdity. The great epic, _Don Quixote_, such plays
as Calderon's _La Vida es Sueno_, such paintings as El Greco's
_Resurreccion_ and Velasquez's dwarfs, such buildings as the Escorial
and the Alhambra--all among the universal masterpieces--are far indeed
from the middle term of reasonable beauty. Hence their supreme
strength. And for our generation, to which excess is a synonym for
beauty, is added argumentative significance to the long tradition of
Spanish art.

Another characteristic, springing from the same fervid abundance, that
links the Spanish tradition to ours of the present day is the strangely
impromptu character of much Spanish art production. The slightly
ridiculous proverb that genius consists of an infinite capacity for
taking pains is well controverted. The creative flow of Spanish artists
has always been so strong, so full of vitality, that there has been no
time for taking pains. Lope de Vega, with his two thousand-odd
plays--or was it twelve thousand?--is by no means an isolated instance.
Perhaps the strong sense of individual validity, which makes Spain the
most democratic country in Europe, sanctions the constant
improvisation, and accounts for the confident planlessness as common in
Spanish architecture as in Spanish political thought.

Here we meet the old stock characteristic, Spanish pride. This is a
very real thing, and is merely the external shell of the fundamental
trust in the individual and in nothing outside of him. Again El Greco
is an example. As his painting progressed, grew more and more personal,
he drew away from tangible reality, and, with all the dogmatic
conviction of one whose faith in his own reality can sweep away the
mountains of the visible world, expressed his own restless, almost
sensual, spirituality in forms that flickered like white flames toward
God. For the Spaniard,