Obras completas

Somerset Maugham's well-known novel opened with a proverb from the Upanishad Kathara: "Tough you will find walking the sharp razor's edge; / And painful is, say the wise, the path of salvation." Arduous is, we could say without being wise, the path of literature, when it always runs along the sharp edge of the razor. Like Quevedo, Gracián tried to squeeze all the juice out of the language, although not necessarily in the same direction. He swept clutter and fallen leaves for the benefit of brevity; he extracted the fifth and even the sixth essence of words resorting to etymology, to recreation, to the art of sharpness, frequently supported by puns, double meanings, puns and misunderstandings. But ever since Erasmus, still passing through Pérez de Chinchón, we knew that "there is, in truth, among men nothing more intractable than the language, nor anything healthier using it as it should be." And Gracián, who was lost by a well-placed wit, moved continuously on the edge of the knife. I believe that a good part of the absurd preaching that Father Isla mercilessly attacked in his "Fray Gerundio" has its roots in this metalwork of the language, which must be handled with great care so as not to cut yourself. And so, when Gracián praises those verses by Girón, "very sharp Valencian poet", upon reaching the denial of Saint Peter: "Wouldn't the rooster have to crow / seeing such a big chicken?", they make us want to think, like don Quixote de Sancho, who "every or more times he wanted to talk about opposition and courtly, his reason ended with falling off the mountain of his simplicity to the depths of his ignorance." Gracián, of course, always got away and knew how to stay in the difficult balance of the sharp edges of his tongue. But, as of our imitators are our defects, the ignorant preachers who tried to emulate his wits fell unfailingly "from the high peak of his folly to the deep abyss of his simplicity."