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I intended at first to write a short Prologue to this English translation of my Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida, which has been undertaken by my friend Mr. J.E. Crawford Flitch.

El respeto es un sentimiento que nace de la idea de igualdad y a menos que la mujer se coloque al nivel del hombre en las cuestiones políticas, no dejarán de oirse estas o semejantes ignominiosas exclamaciones. ¡Pero, mujer, que entiendes de estas cosas! No te metas en asuntos que no te importan.

As for many years my spirit has been nourished upon the very core of English literature evidence of which the reader may discover in the following pages the translator, in putting my Sentimiento Trágico into English, has merely converted not a few of the thoughts and feelings therein expressed back into their original form of expression. Or retranslated them, perhaps.

J.E. Crawford Flitch fortunately imposed upon me in making me revise his translation obliged me to correct these errors, to clarify some obscurities, and to give greater exactitude to certain quotations from foreign writers. Hence this English translation of my Sentimiento Trágico presents in some ways a more purged and correct text than that of the original Spanish.

"My cat," says Unamuno, who takes this view in his new book Del sentimiento tragico de la vida, "never laughs or cries; he is always reasoning." November 22. I note that a fine scholar remarks with a smile that the direct simplicity of the Greeks hardly suits our modern taste for obscurity. Yet there is obscurity and obscurity.