The name is absent

Personalities of Modern Spain 63
character of the bandit Plumitas in Blood and Sand is one
of the most living characters in modern Spanish fiction, and
it is interesting to note that it was taken from real life. Then
if you read Reeds and Mud, The Cabin, and Blood and Sand,
you will find certain characters that are essentially moving
and characteristic of Spanish literature.

I have told you of Unamuno the Basque, and Ibanez the
Valencian, and now I want to take another character—a
very different sort of person—Ramon del Valle-Inclan. He
comes from Galicia. I do not know whether he is so well-
known or not, but he is a man of very fine literary ideas; he
is characteristic of the Celtic Galicia, and, although his style
is individual, yet you get a certain quality characteristic of
modern Spanish literature—a melange of modern and an-
cient art for art’s sake mixed with feudalism. In Ramon
del Valle-Inclan we find characteristics that recall D’An-
nunzio; his style resembles that of D’Annunzio, and even
with regard to the man himself there is a something of
D’Annunzio about him—his beautiful cloak and long beard;
he is a very picturesque figure, and he cultivates in addition
the manners of a feudal baron. His books seem to have
sprung from the thirteenth century when there were trouba-
dours in Galicia. We meet words of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries mixed with words of the twentieth century;
there is always a hodge-podge of the two personalities, the
ancient and the modern. When I think of Ramon del Valle-
Inclân I am reminded of a story of D’Annunzio, which, I
think, is characteristic of del Valle-Inclan; it was a story told
me by an acquaintance of the Italian author about Chicherin
who happened to be in Italy as a representative of the Soviet
government, and D’Annunzio asked him to dine with him
in his palace of the Vittoriale. Dinner was served in the
Franciscan refectory. At the end of the meal, two footmen

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