Heroic Spain

About the Book

The book tells the story of an investigator whose  views change dramatically as his knowledge of Spain quite dramatically grows in the course of a few years.  He comes under the influence of the Catholic Church, very directly, as an experience that repeats itself in certain holy Spanish places.  This is a personal reaction.  But it is a religious reaction.  He accepts it as such.  He comes to a better sense of the Royalist tradition in both politics and living,  he feels the strength of it in Spain,  and its usefulness in the day-to-day of the country.   Above all, he comes to realize the beautiful way the Spanish miracle is conducting itself.  The Republican Cause is everywhere triumphant.  There's a new Democracy out there.   As peacetime flowers, Spain is flowering. in a democracy of an  ideal type.  There is a benevolent king.  The old country has decreed some  novelty in old vessels and fabrics still stained with the blood of savage conflict,  and ventured into the domain of the New, as well.

The investigator plunges into all this strangeness, and is charmed  by what he finds.

In this book, the study of poets is in collaboration with the doings of a Participant Observer as in Cultural Anthropology.

At all  times a true report is attempted, and editing has been drastically limited, mostly to correcting obvious solecisms or mis-steps.

The principal bias will be noticeable to any reader, it  is a love of Spain and of the Spanish language and of some Spanish people.

The book tells a story--but the author of the book is not the author of the story.  That comes from the way things are, in Soria and Baeza, in Seu de Orgell and Madrid,  in the mountains  and  on the plains, and in the language left behind by the genius of  this wonderful people

About the Author

Edward Loomis, author of HEROIC SPAIN, has been engaged with Spanish and Spanish-American literature and culture during the last seven years, concentrating on Rubén Darío and Antonio Machado, and the poems collected here come out of that effort. The idea of this book is that these poets were leaders in the Hispanic civilization, and were accepted as such. Their work shows some of the strengths of that civilization, decadent as they found it which is successful now partly because of them, and their work lives on as privileged by their talent and dedication.