Pérez de Ayala y Ortega y Gasset: testimonios de una amistad. Trece cartas en su contexto (1904-1913)

Abstract

The Agrupación al Servicio de la República, organized in 1931, came to be the last in a series of cultural and political initiatives in which Ramón Perez de Ayala and José Ortega y Gasset had collaborated since the beginning of the twentieth century. The political role played by each of them has been the subject of many studies, but we know little about the nature of the friendship that united them in their shared desire of national reform. Neither of them wrote memoirs, and although there have been speculations about the nature of their relationship, we do not have many facts which shed light on it. Fortunately, some of the letters exchanged between them have been saved, and only two of those have been previously published. A part of that unpublished correspondence (1904-1913) is provided in this article, along with information which illuminates the context in which it was written. The image of Antón Tejero (Ortega), created by Ayala in his novel Troteras y danzaderas, is analyzed in terms of its fidelity to the biographical reality of the its model in 1912; then it is considered in the light of one of Ayala’s letters to the philosopher. This correspondence contains valuable autobiographical information about two of Spain’s outstanding twentieth century intellectuals