The Tree of Knowledge: A Novel of Disillusionment

Posted on Sep 19, 2024 in English

The Tree of Knowledge

Part One: The Life of a Student in Madrid

This first part depicts the process of spiritual and intellectual formation of Andrés Hurtado, the protagonist. It encompasses almost the entirety of his university years. We are introduced to his family members: Don Pedro, his tyrannical and hypocritical father whom he despises; Alejandro, his older brother, a playboy and parasite whom he also despises; Pedro, for whom he feels some sympathy; Margarita, anodyne, resigned, and good; and Luisito, the younger brother, weak and sickly, for whom he has compassion.

During these years, he meets disparate friends: Lamela, Julio Aracil, Montaner, and Ibarra. Andrés evolves psychologically and intellectually. His first readings are novels, but little by little, he delves deeper into philosophy.

Life, his brother’s illness, his time in the San Juan de Dios hospital (and the cruelty of physicians and patients he witnesses there), and his reading of Schopenhauer lead him to become increasingly pessimistic. He begins to abandon his optimism, becoming sad and increasingly hopeless about the possibility of changing human nature.

He starts working as an intern in a hospital, where he realizes that he has more of a vocation for psychology than medicine. The atmosphere of corruption prevailing in the hospital is described.

Part Two: The Carnaria

Andrés meets the Minglanilla family (Doña Leonarda, Nini, and Lulu) and develops a certain friendship with Lulu.

One night, Andrés and some friends tour some places in Madrid: the home of Doña Virginia, an abortionist and madam; that of Villasuso, an old-fashioned romantic playwright who has failed to provide a decent life for his daughters, Pura and Ernestina. We are introduced to Doña Venancia, a neighbor of Lulu, and her son, Manolo “the Chafandín,” a drunk and lazy cave dweller. The strange inhabitants of Lulu’s house are described: Don Cleto, the Black, the Maestrino, Don Martín, and others.

In the last chapter of this part, there is a conversation between Andrés and his uncle Iturrioz. Andrés wants to discuss the philosophical interpretation of the residents of Lulu’s house. The aspects discussed can be summarized as follows:

  • Iturrioz considers all these lives, drawing a parallel with Darwin’s theories of the struggle for survival: “Life is a constant struggle in which we’re eating each other.”
  • Andrés believes that the struggle for life is applicable to the animal kingdom, but not to resigned and lame men.
  • Iturrioz adds that human behavior is a reflection of the animal, and there are many ways to fight and thrive in human life. For example, the case of Uncle Miseries (the oppressor) would correspond in the zoological world to a parasite that survives by feeding on others.
  • Andrés replies that we differ from animals in our ability to have feelings, for example, justice.
  • Iturrioz concludes with the idea that justice does not exist; it is a human invention, like so many artificial inventions that man has created. The human world is animal, and both share the same laws: birth, growth, reproduction, and death.

From the rooftop where this conversation takes place, a school and a convent of friars can be seen. They symbolize two attitudes in life: natural life (the school) and artificial (the unnatural, voluntary seclusion of the convent).

This part ends with Andrés wondering which path, what attitude to take in life. He is sensitive and intelligent and not ready to take on the role of hunter; he sees no function for himself in that environment: life.

Part Three: Sadness and Pain

This part begins with Andrés’s final year of university. Luisito’s health worsens. Andrés travels to Valencia to find a house where Luisito can spend some time and improve with the pure air of the area; he seems to have tuberculosis. Andrés finishes his degree and goes to Valencia. He lives there quietly for a while, taking care of his brother and enjoying nature.

Andrés’s father cannot financially support two homes, so Andrés, Margarita, and Luisito go to live with relatives in Valencia. Andrés finds that looking for work is not easy and decides to pursue a doctorate. He spends the winter in Valencia.

He returns to Madrid and submits his thesis. Two months later, he moves to Burgos to replace a doctor. There, he enjoys the placid days of his life, serene, without existential concerns. He receives news that his brother is dead. Following his brother’s death, he undergoes a further evolution, from his previous pessimistic suffering to a new nihilistic indifference.

Part Four: Inquisition

He returns to Madrid and meets with Ibarra, whose health has improved. Ibarra has studied engineering and become an inventor.

Further discussions with his uncle Iturrioz ensue:

  • Andrés wants a full explanation of the origin and existence of the world, an explanation that combines physical and moral cosmology and biology.
  • Iturrioz advises him to read French and English philosophers, who are more practical and less metaphysical than the Germans, by whom Andrés seems to be greatly influenced.
  • Andrés insists on the theories of the Germans, on Kant, for whom time and space do not exist but are only the result of our intelligence; outside of human consciousness, they have no existence.
  • Andrés wields his empiricist ideas: experience is not truth, our senses can deceive us, no absolute truths exist, everything is relative. Only science, the laws of causality, gives some meaning to life. Really, what we mean by truth is the unanimous agreement of all intelligences.
  • Andrés talks about the tree of science, which has an improving tendency that “kills.” The tree of life, however, has ignorance, faith, fiction, superstition… but all that is “healthy” life.
  • Iturrioz critiques rationalism, science, and the materialistic way of life, which have left the world devoid of illusion and mystery. He believes that a new Society of Jesus1 would do better, instilling values such as serenity and courage, without Judeo-Christian sentimentality or sadness.

Part Five: Experience in Town

Andrés goes to Alcolea, a village in La Mancha, as a resident physician. He stays at an inn and meets Juan Sánchez, the town doctor, and the town clerk. The town is very hot. He spends the summer there. In September, he leaves the inn and becomes a guest in the home of some locals.

Dorotea, his landlady, is beautiful, and her husband, Pepinito, is taciturn. Andrés cures the miller’s daughter, which creates enmity with Sánchez, but he gains prestige as a physician among the people. He observes and describes the life and character of the people, their antisocial tendencies, chieftaincy, individualism, lack of concerns, and so on. He observes this way of life, the resigned, backward, and uncritical attitude of these people, and his nihilism2 grows, to his disappointment. He concludes that it is better to stop thinking and decides to see how life goes.

Andrés spends the winter in Alcolea. He begins to frequent the casino and meets the Pianist and Don Blas Carreño, a wealthy gentleman. Andrés feels sympathy for these quirky characters. Don Blas lives far from reality and remains immersed in the language and way of life of Cervantes. But Andrés begins to get bored and despair among the people. In an attempt to distract himself, he intends to write, to change from philosophical readings to literature and history… but he is poisoned by philosophy, and nothing motivates him.

He seeks new ways of life to escape the state of disappointment in which he finds himself. He thinks he should get married but is not willing to sacrifice his independence. Then he decides to change his eating and lifestyle habits, and he improves. He enters a sort of ataraxia3 and is relaxed. But he increasingly feels antipathy towards the townspeople, and it is reciprocated. Andrés feels even more marginalized than in Madrid.

In the spring, he resigns and leaves. The night before his departure, he makes love to Dorotea. Andrés feels entitled to commit this act; the cuckolded husband is a miserable fool who does not deserve his wife. He returns to Madrid, passing through Aranjuez and spending three days there. He is baffled by his own attitude.

Part Six: Madrid Experience

Back in Madrid, the war with Cuba and the Philippines breaks out. Andrés gets a three-month replacement position. Before the war, he notes the outburst of Spanish patriotism, with people chattering excitedly. After the disaster, the world continues to live with total indifference to what happened.

He visits his uncle Iturrioz and has another conversation with him, in which he speaks of Alcolea and the resigned spirit of the poor. Iturrioz puts forward the Nietzschean thesis that “the slave has a slave spirit”; the cowardice of the poor is what prevents them from moving forward, evolving, and freeing themselves from their shackles.

He reconnects with Montaner, who is unemployed, and Julio, who is doing very well in life; he has thrived thanks to his lack of scruples. He also sees Ibarra, who wants to go abroad to patent his inventions. Spain is a country that neither supports nor believes in progress. He also reunites with Lulu, who has managed to open a store thanks to the marriage of her sister Nini to a wealthy older man.

Andrés gets a job as a hygiene doctor. He is becoming more antisocial. He scorns the rich and the poor equally: the former for being exploiters and the latter for being resignedly exploited.

He leaves the job because dealing with prostitutes, pimps, and lovers increasingly depresses him. He continues to visit Lulu and gets a job as a doctor at La Esperanza, assisting the poor. Dealing with the poor, their ignorance, misery, and absurd resignation makes his character more bitter and aggressive.

In one of his visits to old acquaintances, he finds Villasuso, who has gone mad and lives in abject poverty. Days later, Villasuso dies, and his bohemian poet friends hold a pathetic and surreal wake for him, assuming that the deceased suffered from catalepsy4.

He visits Lulu more and more frequently. He courts her, without passion, like almost everything he does in life.

Part Seven: The Experience of the Child

In another of his talks with Iturrioz, Andrés, very sensitive on the issue of genetic inheritance, raises to his uncle the problem that would be caused by the marriage and procreation of two weak people.

He makes the decision to marry Lulu. He gets a job as a translator of medical books and moves away from the humane treatment of patients. He enters a period of peace and quiet, another ataraxia.

All goes well until Andrés starts to get depressed by Lulu’s refusal to have children. Andrés gives in, and when his wife becomes pregnant, his old fears return. He is afraid to open that window into the abyss that makes him dizzy. He had managed to create an organized, quiet, dull life, and he fears that the responsibility that comes with the child will awaken all the ghosts that he had managed to put to sleep with so much effort. He starts taking morphine to avoid thinking.

The child dies a few days after birth, and Lulu dies as well. On the day of the funeral, Andrés commits suicide by poisoning himself.

The book ends with Iturrioz’s reflection. Andrés died without pain, not driven by suicidal despair or by the suffering of losing loved ones. It is nihilism. He was a misfit for life, and it offered him a cozy little hole with his marriage to Lulu. With Lulu’s disappearance, he did not know what to do; in her absence, he would probably have committed suicide earlier. In reality, he was always dead. His excessive consciousness prevented him from enjoying life.

Structure

At first glance, we find a rambling structure, with characters, stories, situations, and places intermingled… which makes it difficult to organize the work.

But this is only at first sight; deep down, there is a very coherent structure in the novel, and it is the figure of the protagonist, present in all chapters, and his psychological development that confer unity to the work.

External Structure

53 chapters divided into 7 parts.

Internal Structure

We propose the following:

Part One (I and II): Andrés’s Formative Stage

He meets his main friends, Aracil, Montaner, and others. He has experienced his brother’s illness and has met Lulu. He ends this part with his degree finished and considering the position to be taken in life (school or convent).

Part Two (III): From Pessimism to Nihilism

With the illness and death of Luisito, the questions and reflections raised at the beginning continue to develop in this part, leading to increased pessimism and confusion.

In the figure of his younger brother, sensitive and intelligent, and his friend Choriset, savage and primitive, Andrés reinforces his Darwinian theories applied to the human world: the strong survive.

In this part, Andrés feels uncertainty, boredom, and confusion. Here, the evolution of his personality is shown: pessimism gives way to nihilism.

Part Three (IV): Intermediate Reflection

Philosophical treatises with his uncle Iturrioz: the tree of knowledge kills because it symbolizes truth and, therefore, suffering; the tree of life is healthy because it symbolizes the useful lie.

Intelligence and science are decadent in themselves because they kill. Iturrioz sides with life, with the biologically useful lie; Andrés sides with truth and science.

This problem has a racial background contrast: Semitism, which represents the interest in lies.

Part Four (V and VI): New Experiences

Andrés becomes a doctor in Alcolea. The idiosyncrasies of the people are presented: lack of solidarity, stupidity, caciquismo… Andrés’s first sexual experience.

Return to Madrid. Reunion with Lulu and old friends: Aracil, Montaner, Ibarra, Villasuso…

War in Cuba. Pessimism grows.

Part Five (VII): Outcome

Marriage. His wife, his son, and he himself die.

Characters

Baroja describes the main characters through the developments their character and ideas undergo in the course of the novel. In contrast, the secondary characters are described from the moment of their introduction.

Andrés

The undisputed protagonist of the novel. He is present in all 53 chapters of the book.

He begins to form intellectually with the support of heterogeneous knowledge; in his library are: treatises on medicine and biology, novels, a history of the French Revolution…

Already in his student days, he realizes that he cared more about the ideas and feelings of patients than the symptoms of the disease.

He is considered rash with republican ideas, but his political leanings are not truly known. He does not opt for any class, despising both the rich and the poor for the defects of both. He believes in classes of people and shows a constant aristocratic tendency in his contempt for vulgarity.

He is a man of action who encounters a large mass of ignorant, cowardly, and resigned people, unable to change the injustices of life. This, coupled with his rebellious and critical spirit, embitters him and makes him a pessimistic man.

Andrés is cold in love, without passion for anything in life, only for unraveling the logic that drives it and the mysteries it involves. In the absence of metaphysical answers and disappointed by human behavior, he ends up sinking into an existential angst that leads him to suicide.

Physically, we know nothing about him; Baroja seems to focus all our attention on the psychological aspect.

Why a Man of Action?

Despite his pessimism and skepticism, Andrés demonstrates throughout the novel that he is a man of action. He shows a critical and rebellious spirit. He struggles, when he has the opportunity, against hypocrisy, cruelty, and cowardice. Thus:

  • He opposes his father’s lifestyle and unjust and tyrannical character.
  • He insults the doctors of the San Juan de Dios hospital for their cruelty and mistreatment of the sick.
  • He confronts the director of a newspaper, who had gone on a spree, for being at Villasuso’s house and mocking him, making stupid and tasteless jokes.
  • He defends Lulu against Manolo “the Chafandín” by hitting him with a chair; Aracil, who is with him, shrinks back.
  • In Alcolea, he defends the truth and tries to do justice to Uncle Garrota, whom the people accused of murder without proof.

Julio Aracil

Andrés’s friend, a fellow student, a Semitic type. Realistic, materialistic, pragmatic. More cunning than intelligent. An adapter to life who, thanks to his lack of scruples, manages to thrive and live comfortably. Physically, he is brown with bulging eyes.

Montaner

Blond with blue eyes, more of an Iberian than a Semitic type. Monarchist, a supporter of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. At first, he has ideological clashes with Andrés, but eventually, they come to have some complicity. Andrés enjoys some friendships with him, discussing politics, literature, and music, but he does not like him because he shows that he has no ideas.

Fermín Ibarra

Sick with arthritis. Little is known about him. He ends up healing and surprises everyone with his skills as an inventor. He goes to Belgium to patent his inventions in the absence of Spanish initiative to invest in new projects.

Rafael Sanudo

Engineering student. Wagnerian.

Antonio Lamela

Older student. Andrés befriended him because they both had an inner life different from other students. Romantic and quixotic, with his idealism, he distorts reality to the point of seeing his ugly beloved as a beautiful lady. At the same time, he is fun-loving and often drunk, but far from being contradicted by his extreme attitudes, he says he practices a practical idealism; his motto was “give the body what is body’s and the soul what is soul’s.”

Letamendi

Andrés’s professor. He publishes a book that applies mathematics to biology. At first, Andrés becomes a follower of his theories, but he ends up realizing that his talk lacks scientific rigor.

Lulu

Not very graceful but funny, with a sarcastic and somewhat acidic humor. She is intelligent, neurotic, pessimistic, and has something of a femme fatale about her since birth, showing strange attitudes. She is unconventional and not very feminine; for her courage and wit, she seems different from other women, hence Andrés likes to talk to her, but, like married women, she succumbs to the instinct of wanting to be a mother.

Doña Leonarda and Nini

Lulu’s mother and sister. They are coming down in the world and unable to accept the reality of their poverty. They live in the past and only aspire to a marriage of convenience for Nini to get them out of the state of misery in which they live.

Villasuso

Poet, playwright. His romantic and bohemian lifestyle is infertile because, unlike Andrés, he lacks an active attitude towards life that would enable him to live decently. He dies insane and penniless.

Iturrioz

He is not characterized as a character in the play. He is rather a pretext of the author, a kind of intellect at the service of Andrés’s intellect, an antagonist for him to discuss scientific and philosophical theses with. Andrés dies, leaving only a lucid intelligence to interpret the true causes of the protagonist’s death and to close the novel: Iturrioz.

Other Characters

  • Dorotea: The landlady in Alcolea. Good, beautiful, resigned to convention, but not buried in it: she knows how to take advantage of the opportunity that Andrés gives her the night before his departure.
  • Pepinito: Dorotea’s husband. Vulgar, taciturn, brutish.
  • Don Juan Sánchez: Doctor in Alcolea. Hypocritical and a bad person. He only aspires to have clients and prestige, even at the expense of professional ethics.
  • Don Blas Carreño and the Pianist: The first, a gentleman out of his time in Alcolea, and the second, his friend. They are a nice and extravagant couple. They communicate with the language of Cervantes and live oblivious to reality.
  • The Choriset: Luisito’s playmate during his stay in Valencia. Insensitive, savage, and very healthy physically, he represents the antithesis of Luisito. This child seems to have settled under the shade of the tree of life. His appearance, like that of so many characters in the work, is temporary but significant for the thesis of the main character: toughness and insensitivity make one perfectly adapted to life, which will undoubtedly dominate.

Among Lulu’s neighbors, we can highlight some characters like:

  • Doña Venancia: Embodies the resignation and sacrifices of the poor. She accepts her social condition with no hope of improvement, like a genetic inheritance. She gives everything, expecting nothing. As Andrés told her, “we find the world this way and leave it this way.”
  • The Black’s aunt: Alcoholic and republican.
  • Doña Pitusa: A beggar, fond of spirits, who lived with her son, El Chop, a funeral home worker, vindictive and spiteful.
  • La Paca: Galician, owner of a boarding house.
  • Don Cleto: The philosopher of the neighborhood. Shabby but cultured and educated. His stoic nature is emphasized.
  • The Maestrino: From La Mancha, lives in a pharmacy. Pedantic and know-it-all.
  • Uncle Miseries: His nickname comes from his job as a loan shark. He is a mean, dark character.

Time

The action takes place over about ten years. Perhaps Andrés died when he was 28 years old or so.

  • Part One: It develops during most of Andrés’s university years: first year, summer, second year, summer, third year, summer, half of the fourth year.
  • Part Two: Vague references to time (Carnival). We assume that he finishes his fourth year, although no mention is made of final exams.
  • Part Three: Starts with the final year. He graduates in June. He is preparing his doctoral thesis. He submits it in May and defends it. He goes to Burgos, where he stays for two months. Thirteen months have passed.
  • Part Four: He spends a summer in Madrid.
  • Part Five: A year in Alcolea.
  • Part Six: He spends a year or so: three months replacing a doctor, early fall, it’s summer.
  • Part Seven: Takes place in one year and nine months. This part begins with the wedding of Andrés and Lulu; a year after getting married, they become pregnant. The baby dies at birth, Lulu dies as well, and Andrés commits suicide three days later.

Space

  • Parts One and Two: Madrid, university, bars, clubs, neighbors’ houses…
  • Part Three: Valencia. Back to Madrid to defend his thesis. Two months as a substitute in a town in Burgos.
  • Part Four: Back from Burgos to Madrid.
  • Part Five: Alcolea (La Mancha). Three days in Aranjuez.
  • Parts Six and Seven: Madrid.

Critical Analysis

The novel highlights the discomfort of the period and, in particular, the ideology of the Generation of ’98, to which Baroja belonged. Thus:

  • Criticism of the low cultural environment that existed at the time (grotesque atmosphere among students, lack of seriousness and rigor among teachers…) and the limited interest of the government to invest in science (Ibarra has to go to Belgium to patent his inventions; there are no physiology laboratories in Spain for medical students to do internships).
  • Criticism of human cruelty: “There was no piety in the world,” thought Andrés.
    • Students in the dissection class ruthlessly abusing corpses.
    • Doña Virginia, the abortionist, operates on and sells women.
    • The doctors of San Juan de Dios mistreat patients.
    • Dorotea’s compassion for the machismo of her husband.
    • Contempt for bullfighting. The spectator of bullfights has a cowardly morality because he demands courage from others.
  • Criticism of vulgarity, of spiritual poverty in all its facets, which prevents people from having a decent life: Doña Venancia, Manolo “the Chafandín,” Doña Virginia, the friends who mock Villasuso’s madness…
  • Criticism of the individualistic nature of the Spanish. It prevents associations and makes us unsympathetic and jealous, as seen in the destruction of Alcolea and the competition among doctors…
  • Criticism of the sexual repression of the culture of the time. It causes the appearance of a dirty and illegal pornography, distasteful, the opposite of what happens in England, where sex manifests itself naturally in higher quality erotic magazines.
  • Criticism of patriotism: Critique of the false patriotism that the Spanish show in their attitude towards the war in Cuba: hollow and exalted patriotism at the beginning of the war and neglect and indifference when they lose the colonies. But on the other hand, it is allowed that the work speaks well of Spain because the criticism itself is not an argument; on the train journey to Alcolea, a passenger complains about the incompetence of the Spanish because the station made a mistake and gave him a second-class ticket instead of a first-class one, as he wanted. The traveler rants about Spain, which he considers uncivilized and uneducated compared to Europe and America. Another traveler shuts him up decisively. Andrés welcomes this intervention inwardly.
  • Criticism of bohemia and sterile romanticism. They are nothing but self-centered attitudes that turn their backs on reality, inactive and devoid of commitment. Perhaps the best example in the work is Villasuso: his miserable life, his inability to raise his children decently, his pathetic wake…
  • Criticism of the poor who resign themselves to being exploited, with a slave spirit. In their ignorance and unconsciousness, they lack the means to procreate offspring; “fertility cannot be a social ideal. We do not need quantity but quality” or “perpetuating pain in the world seems like a crime.”
  • The racial issue is present in the background of the work. The attitude and spirit of many characters are interpreted from a racial standpoint that entails a moral attitude. Thus, although it is Iturrioz who makes the classification into two human types, it is Andrés who will apply it throughout the novel to explain the behavior of some characters.
    • Iturrioz spoke of the Iberian type and the Semitic type: he assigned to the Iberian type the strong and warlike qualities of the breed, to the Semitic type the tendencies towards intrigue and trade.
    • Thus, Andrés considered Aracil as a Semitic type, “he was a true Phoenician,” and Montaner “more Iberian than Semitic”; also, Father Juan was within this group.
    • But the racial issue will offer an even broader interpretation: Semitism has led to the Judeo-Christian religion, which “with its impostors has dominated the world”; it is a religion that exalts human frailty, but “the scientific mind of men in Northern Europe will sweep away the Semitic character.”
    • Lulu also says: “We have Semitic blood. In this unhealthy ferment, complicated by our poverty, our ignorance, and our vanity, lie all evils.”

There is usually a very Nietzschean critique in which the man of action is praised. Andrés’s contempt is directed towards all those who are not and will not have the will to be: the rich because they live off the work of others, the poor for not fighting to stop being so, the idealists and poets for their comical and ridiculous heroism, which makes them socially inactive.

A Novel of the Generation of ’98

We are dealing, above all, with a philosophical novel. Existential conflicts are the focus of the work. Spain, existential problems, and analysis and reflection on the internal are the pillars of the novel and the essay of the Generation of ’98. This work is one of the most representative of the Generation. The three themes appear sufficiently reflected.

  • Spain: The criticism mentioned above, expressed by Andrés towards Spanish institutions, culture, and character, serves to highlight the concern felt by the Generation of ’98 for Spain. Spain was ill, and to combat the disease, it must first be diagnosed, even if it is necessary to shake the sick; only then can the evil be eradicated.
  • The internal story: Reflected in this gallery of minor characters (housewives, prostitutes, shopkeepers, clerks, teachers, students, farmers…) and in the idiosyncrasies of rural and urban life (liberals, conservatives, debates, classes…). They are, in the case of this novel, essential and inseparable from the criticism of Spain, the cause and object of study of that disease to which we referred earlier.
  • As for the existential aspect, we could say that it is the core argument of the work; the theme of Spain seems to revolve around it, and everything revolves around the protagonist, Andrés Hurtado. Andrés tries to find meaning in his existence in religion, science, philosophy, love… but none of this brings him happiness, not even peace; the most he achieves is a state of ataraxia in two or three moments of his life. Thus:
    • Religion: He does not even believe in the usefulness of faith, considering it dangerous because it opens a door to arbitrariness. He agrees with Kant’s ideas that the tenets of religion are unprovable.
    • Science: Nor does it provide a solution to the meaning of life; on the contrary, science and knowledge exacerbate human suffering. Darwin’s theories also add their note of pessimism because the solution offered is the struggle for life, in which the winners are the strongest. Life is presented to Andrés as a vicious fight in which the most instinctive, the most primitive, devour and defeat the weak, the sensitive like him.
    • Philosophy: It also drags him into the blues. Science offered a description of the facts; philosophy only offered a rational explanation of them.

      Like many characters of the Generation of ’98, Andrés shows throughout the play the dichotomy of man of action / man of no action.

      At first, he is combative, active, showing a strong influence of Nietzsche, and adopts anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, stoic positions… but as his disappointment grows and he sinks deeper into himself, we see the influence of Schopenhauer, and he becomes an inactive being who abandons life and only recovers his strength to leave it.

      The two currents of German irrationalism, so important in the thinking of the Generation of ’98, vitalism and pessimism, are symbolized by the figure of Andrés; he, the alter ego of Baroja, goes from being a man of action (Nietzsche-vitalism) to a man of no action (Schopenhauer-pessimism).

      Kant is perhaps the philosopher who is most present in the conversations with his uncle, but unlike the previous ones, he is more metaphysical; with the empiricists, he makes you understand the relativity of life and its truths, but all the abstraction of these theories is what makes them less painful; sometimes, metaphysical thoughts make you dizzy, but they do not cause the real and continuous suffering that Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s theories about humans do.

    • Love: Experienced as frustrating, cold, free from passion. Love leads to marriage, and this to children, responsibilities, loss of physical and spiritual independence. His scientific and analytical mind makes him describe it as “the confluence of fetishistic instincts and sexual instincts.” For him, man has covered the desire for procreation with the poetic lie called love; “love is a hoax.”

1The Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, is a religious order of the Catholic Church.

2Nihilism is the belief that life is meaningless.

3Ataraxia is a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquility.

4Catalepsy is a medical condition characterized by a trance or seizure with a loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by rigidity of the body.