An Unamuno Sourcebook: A Catalogue of Readings and Acquisitions with an Introductory Essay on Unamuno’s Dialectical Enquiry by Mario J. Valdés, María Elena de Valdés (review)

402 LETTERS IN CANADA ment with such ostentation that its referent is almost forgotten. Another striking example can be found in Mailhot's commentary on Camus' poetic use of language (pp 376- 7). Camus' texts seem modest in comparison with the way in which M Mailhot describes them: Le mot est une realite concrete pour Camus: il rechauffe ou endort, il brule au il glace, il est dur ou mou, matiere et forme, objet irreductible aaucun autre ... Les mots fondent ou resistent, heurtent ou seduisent, blessent au caressent. I1s ont un poids, une densite, une forme, une activite propre: ils marchent, se tralnent ou se volatilisent... [p 3771 The same might be said of the words of any writer, indeed, of words in general. M Mailhot is obviously fascinated by word play and in his own enthusiasm for language Camus comes off second best to alliteration, internal rhyme and chiasmic structure: 'aveuglant et aveugle' (p 205); 'un silence dechire, dechirant' (p 369); 'de spheres englobees et englobantes' (p 372); 'differente et differee' (p 374); 'devorantes et devorees' (p 428); 'Ia pierre est entierement desert et Ie desert tout entier' (p 230); 'Ie monde sans hommes et les hommes sans monde' (p 370); 'elle donne aune forme sa matiere, aune matiere sa forme' (p 428), etc. In the end the constant use of such devices becomes tiresome and, 1think, irrelevant to the analysis because it serves its own ends rather than the text it purports to examine. This is a book which will arouse both admiration and frustration in the reader: admiration for its obviously sympathetic and thorough knowledge of Camus, frustration at its lack of coherence, its self indulgence , and the missing conceptual dimension which would have given its many but scattered insights a broader application and perhaps a new Significance. (JOHN A. FLEMING) Mario 1. Valdes and Maria Elena de Valdes. An Unamuno Sourcebook: A Catalogue of Readings and Acquisitions with an Introductory Essay on Unamuno 's Dialectical Enquiry_ University of Toronto Press 1:973, 305, $1.5.00 This is the type of book which reguires an enormous investment of time, and which will prove enormously useful to scholars and researchers. The major portion of the text is made up of some 8,000 annotated items which are still, and/or were at one time or another, part of Unamuno's personal library. To the list of the 5,700 extant items which now make up the library , Mario and Maria Elena Valdes have added more than 2,000 items culled mainly from a personal catalogue kept by Unamuno. In addition, this extensive bibliography of holdings includes certain key symbols which inform us whether or not an item contains markings by Unamuno : direct commentary in response to content; commentary which indicates an HUMANITIES 403 interest in language; translation into Spanish of certain passages, etc. As a supplement to this basic catalogue, the authors have added two appendices , the first a list of titles and authors cited by Unamuno in his works and which are not included in the main catalogue, the second a list of newspapers and journals cited by Unamuno andl or newspapers and journals in which he published articles. Both these appendices contain only one representative entry from the complete works of Unamuno. Yet this book is more than just an extremely useful handbook, for Mario Valdes has included a brief, concise introduction, which is an attempt to define a systematic methodology by piecing together an apparently disjointed process of intellectual and aesthetic assimilation. Using the marginalia found in the works of some of Unamuno's predilect authors (eg, Pascal and Melville), Professor Valdes tries to demonstrate the parallel between Unamuno's existentialist writings and the structuring of his thoughts and reactions as a reader, especially as a reader of someone he considered to be a kindred soul. Thus, in the case of Pascal, for example, using a 1913 edition of the Pense.s which was liberally annotated by Unamuno, Professor Valdes reconstructs the mental process involved in Unamuno's attempt to isolate those passages of the Pensees which stress the inherent strife of existence. This reading procedure, a quest for fundamental polarities, is related to...