Supernatural Naturalism
"Es tan dificil hacerles entender": Natural Supernaturalism in Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, MartirThough western custom usually demands distinction between the concepts of natural and supernatural, the two may be considered inseparable, so closely linked that drawing a line where one ends and the other begins proves difficult. Nineteenth century English Romantic writers Wordsworth and Coleridge (if you will, the generation of 1798) saw this relationship, and Wordsworth states in the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads that his aim was "to throw over 'situations from common life. . . a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect'" (Norton 11). Further, it was Wordsworth's intention to "shake us, out of the lethargy of custom so as to refresh our sense of wonder-indeed, of divinity-in the everyday, the trivial, and the familiar" (Norton 11). Shelley shared this vision and, in his Defense of Poetry, states that poetry "purges from our inner sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being and "creates anew the universe. . . " (Abrams 11). Born about the same time as Lyrical Ballads was published in 1798,
Throughout the novel, Don Manuel is identified with and linked to nature. He sacrifices this understanding to keep his people happy in blind faith. For Don Manual, the power beyond is as close as the nature he can see, the mountain, the lake, and his people. In another conversation with Lazaro, the saint clearly states his disbelief: "cuidad de estas probres ovejas, que se consuele de vivir, que crean lo que yo no he podido creer" (Unamuno 51). As the narrator Ángela tells us, "Que cosas nos decia! Eran cosas, no palabras. " Neither does he believe in God, as we see in the leitmotif running through the novel and linking Don Manuel with Jesus, "Dios mio, Dios mio!, ¿por que me has abandonado ( Unamuno 29). He urges Ángela, "Cree en el cielo, en el cielo que vemos. In this novel then, Unamuno suggests that though one may lack absolute faith he may submerge himself in the soul of nature to achieve a kind of immortality in the same way that a Christian may submerge his soul in God to achieve "la vida perdurable. He reaffirms this belief later when speaking to Lazaro, he says, ¿Religion verdadera? Todas las religiones son verdaderas en cuanto hacen vivir espiritualmente a los pueblos que las profesan, en cuanto les consuelan de haber tenido que nacer para morir, y para cada pueblo la religion mas verdadera es la suya. Water has the power to give life, and the lake and Don M are united in a harmony "que conseguio curaciones sorprendentes. " In this way the non-believer can find salvations, as Don M apparently did, by giving himself to the observable, yet still supernatural, power embodied in nature.
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Acceptance Essays
