PARTISAN REVIEW
and concentrates on the psychological interior of the personality; Spanish
tragedy, on the other hand, exhibits a naive delight in action for its own
sake similar to the delight of early novel readers in sheer narrative action.
But this leads to the general question of action versus contemplation as
forms of experience; and Ortega, shifting this opposition to the plane
of the psychology of attention, demonstrates that while the sophisticated
reader is no longer enthralled by action for its own sake, yet the elimina–
tion of all action from a novel, as in Proust, proves "that there has to be
at least a dash of action to make contemplation possible." And so the
essay proceeds, darting from one perspective to another, never dwelling
in any one for very long, but always striking sparks that light up hidden
corners before dying out. Ortega's conclusion is that "the interest in
the outer mechanism of the plot is today reduced to a minimum," and
that "the novel must now revolve about the superior interest emanating
from the inner mechanism of the personages."
Having gone this far to make Ortega's writings on aesthetic mat–
ters available to English readers, it is unfortunate that the publishers
did not go further and give us a really representative sampling of
Ortega's voluminous work in this field. Such a sampling might include
other lengthy essays on aesthetics, like "Adan en el paraiso" and "Sobre
el punto de vista en las artes" (which contains a fascinating parallel
between constructivist art and modern phenomenology), as well as
Ortega's articles on Spanish and French writers and artists like Azorln,
Baroja, Barres, Velasquez, Zuloaga and others. Although known to
English readers, if at all, mainly as a writer on social and political mat–
ters, Ortega is a first-rate practicing critic, who combines to an un–
usual degree a quicksilver sensibility with a capacity for incisive philo–
sophical generalization; and it may well be that his writings on art will
prove his least ephemeral productions. In addition, English readers
should know that Ortega is one of the great prose masters of modern
times, whose style, in the original, is remarkable for its nonchalant ele–
gance and expository finesse. It was probably too much to hope that
something of this might be retained in English, but the present version,
nonetheless, seems unnecessarily awkward. Nor, since the translator un–
accountably omits phrases and needlessly shuffles clauses, is this caused
by what would be a commendable effort to stick closely to Ortega's
Spanish syntax. From the evidence of the text, the truth seems to be,
unfortunately, that the translator does not have the requisite command
of English idiom to do as much justice to Ortega as might otherwise be
possible.
Joseph Frank
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