«El Cristo de Velázquez», by Miguel de Unamuno

Abstract

The most pressing issue for Miguel de Unamuno is survival after death. For him, God is the one who is immortal and who can immortalize man. According to Unamuno, Christians declared the Man Jesus God in Nicaea in order to ensure perpetual life for humanity. This solution from the Christian faith to the main human question is treated by Unamuno in his great philosophical work "On the Tragic Sense of Life". The rationalist Unamuno adopts an agnostic position in the face of the enigma of death. In his poem «El Cristo de Velázquez», on the other hand, it is the Unamuno of the immortalist will, that of the «heart», who tries to access perpetual immortality. In the Christ of the Sevillian painter Unamuno discovers two features that surpass Unamuno's own desire for immortality: the face of the Nazarene ("the dead Man who does not die") and his white body ("only your moonlight... tells that the Sun lives").